A Snapshot of Thankfulness

Yesterday was one of those oddly-spaced busy days.  The busy always happens in bunches.

I had MOPS at church in the morning, so I packed up Rerun and his breakfast cereal and fruit and went there.  Tad stayed at home with the Webmaster, who was waiting by the phone for hiring managers to call him back, and watched shark documentaries.  Ane had a half-day of school, so by the time I came back from MOPS, it was only an hour or so before she was due to be home.  And by that time, Rerun was down for his long nap of the day, and I had tossed dinner into the Crock Pot.  It was the perfect kind of blustery day for a pot roast.

Naturally, he woke up just before I left again – this time, to head over to Ane’s school for my parent-teacher conference with Ms. V.  Ane is doing very well – her reading skills have taken off, though Ms. V. notices how easily frustrated she can get when she stumbles across bigger words.  Her math skills are solid, but the whole class (Ane included) is having a harder time translating the visual (i.e. fingers for counting) into the mental (memorizing simple equations, both adding and subtracting).  I mentioned the appearance of Ye Holy Abacus at our house, and how that has helped cut down on the frustration in a big way.  Bottom line, Ane is a solid student academically who is very popular socially with her peers.  She’s a well-rounded kid.

Once I got home, Rerun was getting very cranky.  I nursed him, but he didn’t feel like settling down at that point.  Ane had wandered off to her room to play, and Tad was playing with his LEGO Army Men at the kitchen table.  Rerun was getting crankier and crankier, so I finally handed him to the Webmaster (who was reading on the couch) along with his pacifier.  When I came back to check on Rerun, he was fast asleep in Daddy’s arms.

I sat down on the couch as well to relax as dinner simmered, and then Tad came over to the couch and curled up in my lap.  I was flipping channels to see if there was something fun on, and finally discovered that Animal Planet was showing a Blue Planet: Seas of Life marathon.  Less than two minutes after tuning in, a basking shark swims onto the screen for a segment.  Tad was hooked, and snuggled down.  Then he crashed.  And then I noticed that the Webmaster had fallen asleep as well, book in hand and baby in lap.

Then Ane wandered back out of her room, sprawled into a chair, and she and I watched sea otters tie themselves to kelp (to keep from drifting off to open water) and eat shellfish, and lobster eggs hatching into tiny larvae, while talking about all that we were seeing on the show.  My daughter has quite the inquisitive mind – Ms. V. had just said how much Ane wants to know all the answers, and that she is quite hard on herself when she doesn’t know them.

So, there we were – two sleeping boys, one dozing Daddy, and one bright-eyed girl and her watchful Mommy having discussions about sea life while the pot roast cooked itself.  While Rerun snuffled, the Webmaster roused to join in the conversation on how an octopus could eat a crab.  Ane learned where an octopus’ mouth is, Tad drooled in his sleep on my shirt and completely missed the segment on salmon sharks, and my heart was full of peace and thankfulness.

We have our health, a warm roof over our heads, a hot dinner in a Crock Pot, and each other.

I am thankful for what I have.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 19th, 2010 at 12:20 am and is filed under Children, Mommyhood.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed and Both comments and pings are currently closed.