The Way They Should Go

We were sitting in Burger King yesterday.  On Wednesdays, if they get school work done my noon (which mommy works harder for than them I think) we go to Burger King.  This is not just any Burger King mind you, this is the one with the big multi-story play area!  They think it’s a treat for them.    But it is for Mom too!

I teach a Bible Study on Thursday mornings, so Wednesday they play in the play area while Mommy gets to go over her study again and put together the class discussion guide.  It’s a good bargain all around.

But on this particular Wednesday, between bites of chicken nuggets, KTRose asks, “Why do some Mommy’s go to work during the day like Daddy does?”

At least it wasn’t “Do you get in trouble if you play the waiting game with the police?”  I still have no idea what she’s asking with that one.

So I told her that in some families the Mommies have to go to work to earn money with the Daddies.  So she asked who takes care of the little girls then?  I told her the girls go to school or to a babysitter while the Mommy and Daddy are at work.  She asks why I don’t go to work like other Mommies.  I told her it was because Daddy and Mommy thought it was more important that she and her sister spend their days with Mommy than with anyone else – even if it means we don’t have as much money.

There’s a pause and I’m waiting to hear what is going to be said.  She’s recently discovered how nice it is to have money to buy things… She recently started doing chores around the house to earn money for the skateboard she wants.  So I think it’s very possible she will want me to go to work so she can buy more things.

Instead she pipes up with, “I’m glad Mommy because I love you very much and I would miss you.”

Awww… exactly the right answer. 

Of course then she went on with “And I don’t ever, ever want you to die.  Except I know when I grow up you will die.  But that’s ok because you’ll go to Heaven.  And then I’ll die after that and go to Heaven and be with you.  So that’ll be ok.”

“That’s ok honey, I don’t think you need to worry about that for a very long time though.”  I say.

LOL.  Big thoughts for Burger King.

Well, last Wednesday we are doing schoolwork.  No big shocker.  Working away.  After 4-year-old finishes her math work (Math-U-See Primer), which she zips through, I have a Math-at-home book from Walmart that she picks and chooses pages out of to work on. 

Let me inject an important detail.  This child LOVES to do worksheets.  I have to keep an eye and throw in instructions now and then because she’ll just whip through pages doing whatever she thinks should be done.

 Anyway, I turn the page of the wal-mart book and the next page is subtraction word problems – the first answer is Zero.  This child has never done word problems (directly as math anyway), dealt with subtraction, or the concept of Zero, execept on the numberline we use as reference. 

The punchline?  What the heck, I read “Mike had 4 beetles in a jar.  The lid came off and 4 beetle got out.  How many beetles were left in the jar?”  No hesitation and she throws both arms up announcing, “Zero!”

LOL.  What a hoot.  There you go, no problem.  She seems to have no problem with subtraction.

Later we were at Target, getting lunch in the little cafe.  We get our food, sit at a little table.  KTRose pipes up with “there are 4 seats at our table, but only 3 people.”  Yep, I say.  That’s true.  Eat your pizza.

Then, she pauses a moment and starts, “If the table has 4 seats…”  Ok.  There were some hesitations, stumbling over the way to say it, but in the end after editing what she said was, “If the table has 4 seats and 3 people are sitting at the table, how many more people need to sit at the table to take all the seats?”  And she proudly announced the right answer.

I was just very amused at her making up math word problems spontaneously over her personal pan pizza.    Makes me think we may actually be creating a learning lifestyle for her! 

Yay!! It really is worth it even if I think I may go insane some days!  Hehe. 

Well, it’s been absolutely forever since I’ve written to this site.  My mother actually mentioned it a few weeks ago asking when I would be writing here again.   So I’m finally back.

What’s been going on in the almost year since I’ve written?  Ugh.  The big thing is that we moved last October.  That nationwide housing slump actually hit Northern Virginia and we jumped at the chance to buy a house – after renting here for almost 6 years.  We’ve watched the prices – which we thought were so outlandish when we moved here in 2001 - as they DOUBLED by the end of 2005.  Craziness!  Then this slow down hit and finally people weren’t forced to put in an asking-price-bid-with-an-escalation-clause on the first day a house was on the market in order to buy a house.  There was once again negociation, and we were able to leap.

We worked with a great realtor and found our house on the first day we did a realtor-house visit day, as opposed to our usual wander from open-house to open-house on weekends.  We still looked several more times in the same area before realizing we were still comparing everything to this house, so we put in a bid.  There was haggling, but we got it. 

So now, we have a privacy-fenced 1/3 of an acre!!  For those of you not living on/near the DC Beltway system, 1/3 acre is really nice!  Of course we moved to an area still in Fairfax County, but described most succinctly by a beltway friend as, “oh yeah, isn’t that just before the edge of the Earth??”  :-/  It’s really not far!

The people who owned the house before us did lots of landscaping – in fact had a landscaping company come regularly for upkeep.  We have 5 flowering trees around the house as well as a few evergreens, a japanese maple, and lots of other things I can’t identify.  It’s Cherry-blossom time as I write and we have one flowering in our front yard.  It looks really beautiful.  In fact hubby was commenting on how beautiful all the trees were the other day, and what a shame it will be when he is forced, in a fit of allergy-induced hysteria, to burn them all to the ground. 

We both have TERRIBLE allergies.

I decided (at the direction of a friend who knows such things) to cut down the dead decorative grass in our front yard so the new patch can grow this spring.  I had a rash up both arms for hours.  Yes, that’s with taking a Claritin.  Hehe.  This is going to be interesting.

However, it has been SO NICE to have days where School is done by lunch and afterward the girls go out and play in the back yard for 4 hours!!  They are stinkin filthy when they come in, but they have a blast and I like that so much better than cooping them up all day – or waiting til I’m done with whatever else I’m trying to accomplish so they can walk down to the little park for an hour on a good day.

There’s more, but it will have to wait for another day.  It’s time to go sit on the couch with hubby.  Later all!