The Final Touch

I’m in love with my almost-7-year-old’s brain. Seri­ously. My heart just swells when I think about how intel­li­gent he is. (Please under­stand, I’m not say­ing he’s more intel­li­gent than his brother or his class­mates or any other child; it’s not even so much a mom’s bias at work here as it is amaze­ment at the won­der that is the human brain cre­ated by God.) Yes, I am in love with that mys­te­ri­ous col­lec­tion of gray mat­ter between my lit­tle guy’s ears that makes him capa­ble of doing such things as work­ing his way through a pre­cise series of steps to cre­atively and resource­fully do what he has become fix­ated on doing.

That said, he has — as you might expect of some­one his age — a ways to go in the common-sense depart­ment. In other words, his highly capa­ble brain is some­times too capa­ble for his own good… or for mine. Read the rest of this entry »

I always loved this video — along with many other School­house Rock selec­tions — so I thought it would be appro­pri­ate to share today. Not only does it have to do with gram­mar — which, as you prob­a­bly know, I’m all about! — but it also fits because today is our kids’ first day back at school!

I really wanted to post “Billy Joe McGuf­frey” from the Veg­gi­eTales Jonah movie. If you have kids who’ve watched it over and over, you’ll remem­ber how each verse starts out:

“Oh, Billy Joe McGuf­frey was a really clumsy kid. On the first day of first grade I’ll tell ya what he did…”

“Oh, Billy Joe McGuf­frey was a really clumsy kid. On the sev­enth day of sev­enth grade I’ll tell ya what he did…”

It goes all the way from first to twelfth day/grade of school, but our two boys are in first and sev­enth. In each of the verses some­thing ridicu­lous hap­pens and Billy Joe McGuf­frey ends up in the hospital:

“You could buy a zoo with all the doc­tor bills he paid!”

It’s all sung super-fast so you can hardly under­stand all the words, and it’s done by the awe­some Chris­t­ian rock/pop singer Chris Rice.

Any­way, of course the main thing is that we hope no acci­dents or mishaps befall our two kids — or any of the kid­dos head­ing back to school these days — because no one I know has the money to buy a zoo, and our lives are prob­a­bly zoo-ish enough as it is! Bet­ter to stick with learn­ing about con­junc­tions and all that fun stuff!

(And if you need any help with it, I’m just an email away!)

Hey, while you’re still here, do you have any first-day-of-school mem­o­ries you’d like to share? Leave a com­ment below. Thanks!

What could pos­si­bly be more beau­ti­ful to a parent’s ears than the sound of two young broth­ers play­ing nicely together? — espe­cially when those same two are usu­ally fight­ing, or at least when the elder is usu­ally snip­ping at the younger? Read the rest of this entry »

‘Sweet Son’ by Dori­ana at stock.xchng

“Mom, I’m sad…,” my five-year-old began.

Good gra­cious! I thought. It was only 7:05 in the morn­ing; what could he pos­si­bly have to be sad about? But that was just what flit­ted through my mind in a frac­tion of a sec­ond because he con­tin­ued before I could even ask.

“…because summer’s over,” he said plaintively.

Well, it did feel that way two days ago when we awoke to 40-degree tem­per­a­tures breez­ing in through the win­dows we’d left open to the almost-60-degree air the night before.

“Oh, honey,” I assured him, “summer’s not over yet. It’s just cool this morn­ing, but don’t worry — it will warm up again today.” And indeed, it did. In fact, they’re pre­dict­ing temps in the 90s this weekend.

But life is full of changes, isn’t it? Ups and downs, cool­ing and warm­ing, and hints of things to come before they fully arrive.

In our house­hold, we are presently mak­ing school-supply lists, pur­chas­ing shiny new ten­nis shoes, arrang­ing for back-to-school doc­tor appoint­ments and (don’t tell him yet!) shots. The new school year — and, yes, my child, fall — is coming.

Per­son­ally, I look for­ward to being able to ded­i­cate stead­ier hours to my proof­read­ing and copy­edit­ing work, and to bring­ing YOU more great tips and resources to strengthen your writ­ing. I look for­ward to my kids redis­cov­er­ing the joys of learn­ing from ded­i­cated teach­ers, of renew­ing old friend­ships and mak­ing new ones, and of being engaged in a more cre­ative mix of activ­i­ties than this mom has ever man­aged! (Me? I cre­ate with words — not so much with paint and nature walks and mak­ing up fun out­doorsy games!)

Sea­sons change. Most tran­si­tions are a mix of happy and sad. For now, I’m glad my kids are squeez­ing the last bit of joy out of sum­mer and look­ing for­ward — at least, pretty much — to fall.

How about you and yours? I’d love to hear your thoughts!