Accepting Unwanted Candy and Sorting
Fall Pictures- What are autumn colors?
Mrs. Matlock asked us to look for autumn colors this week and share a post on them. JDaniel and I took a walk around our yard and this is what we found.
We loved the bright red seeds hanging from the tree.
This is JDaniel’s tree. It was planted to celebrate his six month birthday. Its leaves are green with a hint of red and yellow.
These leaves are so pretty that I took a close up of them.
It is a little fuzzy, but I still like the close up.
The deep purple leaves of this tree in our front yard remind me of plums.
It is wonderful to see the many colors in this tree’s leaves as it starts to dress for the fall.
JDaniel selected Warty Bumpy and Greenie from a pumpkin lot down on main street. I bet you can guess which one is Greenie.
Fall came late to South Carolina.
The leaves are just starting to change and only a few have fallen to the ground.
We talked about the colors we discovered. There were shades of red, purple, yellow, green and orange.
What other autumn colors should we look for?
What colors are you seeing where you live?
This post is linked to Outdoor Wednesday and Alphabe Thursday.
You Can’t Serve Two Masters- Darth Vader Made the Wrong Choice
“You can not serve two masters,” I tell Jdaniel when he questions why something he is doing or has seen is bad or just not good.
We have started going over scripture memory verses with JDaniel at meal times using a verse packet called Foundation Verses from Desiring God Ministries and “No one can serve two masters” from Matthew 6:24a was one of the first ones.
He has been told that it means you can’t do what God wants and what you want if they are two vary different things.
As a three year old with tons of his own ideas, he understands that he doesn’t always get his own way. He would love to master of all things, but he really wants to please God too.
We have reminded him that it isn’t his way or our way. It is God’s way we are all trying to follow. He has been reminded that Mom and Dad still struggle with this too.
He seemed to be understanding what we were saying, but we weren’t sure.
Then something happened that made it crystal clear for him. We got three boxes of cereal in the mail with Star Wars characters on them. If you put the boxes together they made a panoramic scene.
JDaniel had no idea who they were or what they were from, but he was fascinated by the robots in the picture.
I tried telling him a little about each of the characters and we watched some short clips on Youtube that weren’t violent. They mostly concentrated on R2D2 and C-3PO. He loved watching them.
Then he started asking about Darth Vader. He has a large picture on the third box. Who was he? Was he bad? Why does he look like a robot?
“Well, Darth Vader was a man who had to make a choice,” I told him.
“He had to chose who to follow and he chose the wrong master,” I continued.
“So, he was bad?” JDaniel asked.
“Yes, he was bad and he didn’t turn away from bad things when he could have (Yes, I know he did in the end.),” I replied.
“Not good,” JDaniel replied back.
“Really not good,” I answered back.
We haven’t really gotten to all the Darth Vader does in the movies series. My husband did show him one of the scenes where Darth Vader is fighting with a light saber. We have chatted more about making good choices and following through with doing the right thing.
I am going to be hosting a giveaway that includes the three cereal boxes with the Star Wars scenes and a $25 Walmart gift card this Sunday. I hope you will stop by and enter it. You never know what conversations the boxes could stir up at your house.
This post is linked to Mrs. Matlock’s Alphabe Thursday.
Mary Lee Remembers a Xanthous Haired Boy
This is my third Mary Lee Tale. The first was Over Near the Tree Sits a Memory and the second was Starting School and Apple Turnovers with Mary Lee. If you like this story, I hope you will give the other two a read.
Xanthous- Of the fair haired type; having brown, auburn, yellow, flaxen or red hair.
Mary Lee sat in one of the rocking chairs just outside of the general store located on the Nevin’s farm. She was surrounded by pumpkins off all shapes in sizes. The three pumpkinsat her feet would be going home with one her grandchildren. She was asked to guard them while the children went to explore the play area in front of the general store. Guarding pumpkins while getting to rock on lovely day had sounded like a wonderful idea to her.
It had been a wonderful morning. Mary Lee’s daughter Sarah and her three children had come to get her at about 9 and they had arrived at the farm by 9:30. Thankfully it was short ride from Simpsonville to the Nevin’s farm in Woodruff. It is had been even a minute longer Davey, Martha’s three year old, would have jumped out the car and run the rest of the way. He was so excited about picking out a pumpkin and getting to go on hayride.
They had barely parked the car when Davey and his older brother William and other sister Lydia had all run to check out the John Deere tractor attached to the hay wagon.
Following a very bumpy hayride each of her grandchildren has taken a very long time selecting just the right pumpkin. Just when it looked like the right one had been found a more right pumpkins would come into their view.
Once they had made their final choices. They had wanted to check out the farms animals. What fun it had been to see a small pink pig kissing a neighboring donkey! All of the children had giggled! Mary Lee and Martha had both smiled at how adorable they looked.
After all the animals had been oohed and ahhed over,children had been ready to bound to the swinging tunnels and play teepee.
Martha had helped Mary Lee gather up the pumpkins and bring them around the rocking chairs before Martha head off to see that the children had gotten up to.
While the children played and Martha tried to keep an eye of her wild tribe, Mary Lee rocked and took in the beauty of the farm.
Mary Lee had spent many summers working on a local farm detasseling corn and doing whatever else Mr. O’Brien needed done. The work was hard under the hot Carolina sun, but Mrs. O’Brien would always send out gallon jugs of sweet tea and lemonade to cool the work crew off and they had paid a very fair wage.
Getting to work beside the O’Brien’s oldest son John made the time fly on days when they were given the same area of the farm to work on. John had blonde hair that glistened in the sun and smile that would brighten anyone’s day or at least Mary Lee had thought so. John wasn’t a big talker. He tended to concentrate on the job at hand. Mary Lee really didn’t care. Just being near John was enough to set her heart a flutter.
John had been a senior in high school when Mary was a freshman. She had known who he was, but hadn’t really spent much time around him until her Uncle Budd had mentioned to her that the O’Brien’s were looking for summer help.
For the past three summers she had looked forward to getting to see John while she worked. He seemed to grow taller and more handsome as each year past. She had heard that he would be leaving in the fall to start a job in Chicago. Mary Lee would have to go out of her way to catch as many glimpses of him as she could she had decided at the beginning of the summer.
She had been quite surprised when he offered to get her a glass of cool lemonade on a particularly hot day in July. She had been barely able to nod her head yes and say that she would love some.
When he returned carrying glasses brimming with cool lemonade and motioned to a bent old apple tree, she had barely been able to move one foot after the other to get to it. The world seemed to have started to moving more slowly.
Yet she tried to look calm when she finally made it there and sat down beneath the tree to wait to be handed her glass.
She tried to remember what they had said as they sat under the tree so long ago, but she couldn’t remember specifically what either of them had said. She did remember smiling a lot and taking really small sips of the cool lemonade. There had been a cool breeze under that bent old tree and she remembered she had felt like she was floating on a cloud.
From that day on John had talked to her frequently. He would ask about her family and her how she was doing. He had never asked her to go to the movies or offered to drive her home.
She would have been over the moon if he had, but she knew that he was moving away at the end of the summer and she tried to enjoy every moment that she was around him.
“He was wonderful boy,” Mary Lee whispered to herself.
She had heard that he still lived outside Chicago. He had married a girl he had met at church and had five boys.
“Remember John today was special, but I am sure glad that the man waiting at home for me make his lunch is Frank,” Mary Lee said to herself as she rocked back and forth in the autumn sun.
There was no man that had ever made her heart flutter more than that dark haired man she met in college her sophomore year. It was Frank that had lengthened days and made her truly feel she was floating.
Watch for the story of how Mary Lee met Frank! It will appear on the last Thursday in October.
This post is linked to Mrs. Matlock’s Alphabe Thursday and I’m sharing my it with Momma Made It Look Easy. You can too.
Waiting is Hard!
When I went to pick Jdaniel up from his first day of preschool, he was one of only three children sitting on the rug staring at the door.
I wasn’t late. I was five minutes early. Apparently the other parents came very early to pick up their children.
His eyes lit up when he saw me in the doorway. I don’t’ know what he was thinking, but I know what I was thinking when I had to wait.
I know what it is to wait.
My mom was one of the first ones to pick up when I was in preschool and early elementary school.
Things changed when I was in third grade and my parents divorced.
Balancing working full time and motherhood was hard.
We went to school with her so, my sisters and I would just walk down to her room at the end of the day and wait for her to be ready to go.
My mom would drop us off for CCD (religion classes) and we would wait for her to come when class was over.. I remember asking if I could wait outside for her to come so the teacher wouldn’t know I was still waiting.
There were other times when I had to wait too.
It was hard to wait! It wasn’t that I was impatient. It was that it didn’t make me feel important.
Sometimes people run late due to traffic or unforeseen events.
Sometimes people run late because they try to run the last errand on their to do list.
It happens!
It may happen to JDaniel.
I hope it won’t be a habit of mine.
I so want to be the mom that is waiting outside the door for my child to be released back into my care.
I so want him to know that he is important. I so don’t want him to leave him to his thoughts and wonder why he had to wait.
This post is linked to Mrs. Matlock’s Alphabe Thursday!
P.S. Many of you have mentioned you played rather than waited for your moms. JDaniel has to sit on a line on the carpet and wait to be called to the door to be picked up. I won’t worry so much about being late if I knew he was playing.
Vehicle Exploration! Fun for Two Generations!
There is nothing better on a Sunday afternoon in South Carolina then to go to your town’s Touch a Truck event. You can wander up and down the closed off main street, climb, explore, and take in the amazing attributes that the various pieces of equipment possess.
Driving a mini front loader fills a preschooler with unexplainable joy.
Discussing the road grader with your dad creates a bonding memory.
Getting to experience shifting gears and checking out each button is heaven.
Boys both young and slightly aging love to take it all in.
Some of the slightly aging boys may need time to explore on their own.
It seems exploring and playing on construction equipment is something boys never outgrow.
This post is linked to Mrs. Matlock’s Alphabe Thursday and Things I Can’t Say’s Magic Moments.
Understanding Preschool-Lessons from the First Week
I am able to learn a lot about JDaniel time in preschool using his communication frame in the kitchen and the white board outside his classroom where his teachers write down everything they do in class.
There are things I hear about over time as we travel in the car to run errands or play with Jdaniel’s construction equipment in his room.
What have I learned?
Free Play Time
Free play time is before school starts. Parents are able to drop their children off between 8:30 and 9:00. The school day starts at 9:00. The more time you get there before 9:00 equals more free play time with the dump trucks and robots.
JDaniel would like to go to school as early as possible to get the most free play time.
Hand Raising
JDaniel has informed me that just because you raise your hand doesn’t mean you get to share. A lot of children like to share and you have to wait your turn. Your turn may not come every sharing time.
This is hard when you want to share your summer vacation at Calloway Gardens with the class. Maybe it is a good thing he didn’t get to share. We went to Calloway Gardens last fall for Thanksgiving. This summer we had cousins visit and went to Atlanta to visit my sister.
Dirty Clothes
The school handbook states that children should wear clothes that can get dirty. Last week the ground was dry and dusty due to lack of rain.
JDaniel’s tan short came home dark brown both days. I asked the Mom Loop moms about dirty clothes and they said to expect them everyday.
Quiet Walking
JDaniel informed me that preschoolers need to walk down the hall with one pointer finger over their lips.
It keeps you from talking he informed me. This is big change from home where we both talk all the time.
Avoiding the Potty
You don’t have to go to the bathroom when you are at school I was told. You can wait until your mama gets there JDaniel explained.
I am hoping he feel more secure about using the restroom this week. He is just doesn’t seem to want to have to go by himself.
I am sure he will learn a lot more this year, but he seems to have learned a lot already. I look forward to seeing what he shares this week.
This post is linked to Mrs. Matlock’s Alphabe Thursday.
Parenting: Tell Me About Your Day with a Communication Frame
Tiggerific linked a post about Back to School Traditions that mentioned taking pictures of her grandson’s classroom. She wanted her grandson to feel more comfortable at a new school he was attending so, she made a poster of things that were in his new room.
That idea stuck in my head as a went to JDaniel’s preschool open house last week. I took lots of pictures of his room and his teachers and put them in a frame.
I decided to use the pictures to help him share about his day with my husband when he comes home from work.
I get to pick JDaniel up from school. When I do, I get to read what he has done in class on a white board outside his classroom.
My husband doesn’t have that advantage. By the time he gets home Jdaniel has had six hours to do more things that now may occupy his mind and the preschool thoughts may have been replaced with digging in the dirt or playing with a friend ones.
The pictures in the frame are there to jog JDaniel’s memory. I have a pictures of the calendar area, work tables, free play area, his teachers, and the snack time prayers in his classroom.
We will be keeping the frame in the kitchen so, JDaniel and his dad can use them as starting points to share his preschool time.
My husband can ask him about what he did in each area of the room by pointing to the picture helping JDaniel reach back into his mind for the details.
My frame is not well done. If you like this idea and decide to do it for your own children, please let me know and I would love to see it.
This post is linked to Alphabe Thursday, Link and Learn, and the Mommy Club Linky Party.
Trail of Tears at the Grocery Store
I have read many tips for moms sending their children to school for the first time. One of them was to avoid the grocery store. I think this tip is really for mom’s whose children are starting in a public school.
The problem with going to the grocery store on a first day when many emotion filled moms seems to be there is the fact that they will all be crying. Every aisle could possibly be filled with teary eyed moms and seeing all those other moms crying may lead you to crying or to crying harder than you have been.
I am guessing these weeping mamas didn’t want to go home to an empty house and they decided to go someplace filled with people and maybe cross grocery shopping off their to do list.
The stores probably do a great business on that first day of school. There must be tons of impulse buying by moms walking aimlessly down the aisles. I think there must be a lot of customers purchasing opened bags of Oreos and tissue boxes that are missing several tissues. The bakery probably sells a lot of cupcakes and donuts that day. There should probably be specials on them offered to moms.
Given all the drama going on in the store. There probably should be signs setup in the parking lot reminding senior saints and everyone else outside this demographic that it is the first day school. These informed shoppers may decide to wait a day or come back later in the day. Unless they are looking for a tear duct cleanse themselves.
Another alternative might be to sequester the mourning moms in an isolated section of the store. The store could offer them coffee and doughnuts while providing them with a cooking demonstration or just place to hang out.
Maybe the moms would meet other mom friends that they could meet elsewhere for coffee and donuts in subsequent weeks.
For those of you that having school starting in your area after Labor Day consider yourself warned. The grocery store can be a very emotional place on the first day of school.
This post is linked to Mrs. Matlock’s Alphabe Thursday!
Starting School and Apple Turnovers with Mary Lee
This is the second Mary Lee story I have shared. Over By the Tree Sits a Memory was the first. It features a lovely older lady named Mary Lee and her thoughts on how quickly children grow up.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Sarah sat in a rocking chair beside her mom cradling a tall glass of sweet tea as she rocked. Her crying had left her breathless and she was now taking deep breathes as her mother had advised her to do. Mary Lee rocked beside her on the porch that summer morning waiting for Sarah’s emotions to settle. She had known Sarah would probably been stopping by this morning.
Sarah had arrived at her house in tears with a frantic look on her face. She had just dropped two of her children including Davey her youngest at Simpsonville United Methodist Preschool moments earlier. Mary Lee was grateful that she and Frank lived only minutes from the school. Sarah hadn’t looked like she would have been able to drive much further.
After hugging Sarah for ten minutes or so, Mary Lee had guided her oldest daughter to the porch and given her a wad of tissue and glass of tea. She had encouraged to take deep breathes and sip the sweet tea to help her calm down.
Sarah didn’t remember being this upset when she had dropped Lydia and William of a preschool. She remember them crying, but she had been excited for them.
When Sarah’s emotions seemed to have calmed, Mary Lee had asked her to share what the morning had been like so far.
Sarah ran through the getting ready for school routine.
Each child had special pancake waiting at their place at the table. Sarah always made smiley face pancakes with blueberry eyes, a chocolate chip nose, and a bacon mouth for the first day of school.
Lydia and William had headed off to their rooms to put on their first day of school clothes and new shoes. Lydia had tan Mary Jane’s with rhinestones and William had new sneakers with blinking lights.
Sarah had guided her three year old Davey to the room he shared with William to help him put on his new robot t-shirt, khaki shorts, and sneakers with racing stripes. William could put his arms in his shirt after it was pulled over his head and was able to pull up his shorts after your helped him put the right leg in the correct leg hole. Shoes on the other hand were difficult. Even his slip on sneakers seemed to frustrate him. Sarah still had to help him put them on.
After everyone was dressed and had their hair had been brushed ,the backpacks and lunch boxes were gathered up. Davey and Lydia really didn’t need a lunch boxes, but Mama you had bought them one anyway. You had told them that they could come to your house to celebrate Davey’s his first day of preschool with lunch with you under the big tree in the front yard and share about their day.
John, Sarah’s husband, took a picture of each of the children dressed for school on their own and individually. John needed to head off to work in a few minutes, but he loved getting to be a part of the first day by taking pictures.
After the pictures were done, the children were piled into the car and strapped in. When Sarah had looked into the backseat via the rear view mirror, her children looked excited and ready to go. Tears had threatened to start as she back out of the driveway, but she was able to contain them.
The first stop was William’s elementary school. It was less than a ten minute drive from their house. As soon as the car had pulled up to the unloading zone. William had jumped out of the car and headed to the door. It had only been just as he went through the door that he turned and blew his mom a kiss and waved good-bye.
Then it was off to Simpsonville United Methodist where Lydia would be in the K4 class and Davey would be in the K3. Sarah a hoped there would be a number of red lights on the way that would delay the inevitable, but they had been all green.
Sarah was able to find a parking spot in the crowded lot. Every parent was required to escort their children in during the first week of school. That meant every parent had to find a place to park during the morning drop off. If the lot had been full, Sarah would have had to circle until a spot had opened up, but she had had no such luck.
Lydia was ready to leap out of the car as soon as Sarah had come around to open her door. Davey had been more tentative. He had been to the preschool many times to drop of his siblings and to attend various family events, but he had never stayed behind on his own.
Despite her desire to keep Davey strapped in and take him home, she had unbuckled him and helped him leap down from his car seat. “Everything is going to be wonderful!” she had reassured him. “You have wonderful teachers and your friend Joe will be in your class.”
“I know,” Davey had said in a whisper. “Are you going to be okay?” he had asked her. “I can start on Thursday if you need me to stay home today,” he had commented after grabbing her hand.
“No, I think I will be okay,” she had said forcing herself to smile and walk towards the entrance of the preschool.
They had first gone to Lydia’s room and helped her hang up her backpack. She was thrilled to see many of the same children from her class last year. She had given Sarah a hug and then bounded to a work table where the teachers had set out puzzles.
Davey had started slowly down the hall with Sarah stopping to point out the bathroom, the office, and the library. Each time Sarah had commended him for remembering where each of the rooms were.
Their pace slowed to a creep as they neared his door. It was like they were both walking in slow motion. It was like they both were putting off getting there.
When they finally arrived, Sarah had helped Davey take his backpack off and hang it on the right peg. Mrs. Robinson, one of Davey’s teachers, had welcomed them to class and offered to introduce Davey to some of the students that had already arrived. Sarah had bent down to hug her youngest and wipe away a small tear.
“Mama, Mrs. Robinson had take Davey‘s hand a guide him to a table with small blocks on it“ Sarah said rocking in her chair. “I’m not sure either one of us would have let go.”
I blew him a kiss and watched him place it in this pocket before I turned to walk away to walk into the hall.
“I tried Mama. I really tried to hold back the tears, but they forced their way out and tumbled from my eyes before I made it out of the building,” Sarah sighed.
“It is totally normal,” Mary Lee assured her daughter as she reached out to stroke her arm. “Many mamas go through this. I bet there were mamas all over the parking lot sitting in their mini vans in tears.
“I am so glad you were home,” Sarah sighed again. “ I just don’t think I could go home to an empty house today. I am not sure I could have driven through my tears much further than your house.”
“ I glad I was here too,” Mary Lee replied. “ I love that I can be here for you. You know I went through a similar challenge when your little sister Martha started school. I think I spent the whole morning crying.
“Really?”Sarah had questioned.
“Yes, I did and I think we need to do what I did that day once you finish your glass of tea. So, take your time finishing and we will go into the kitchen and make apple turnovers to have with Lydia and Davey when they came for lunch.
“Cooking always helps me feel better,” Martha said finally feel a little better. “Me too,” said Mary Lee rocking back and forth slowly in her chair.
Sarah sat in a rocking chair beside her mom cradling a tall glass of sweet tea as she rocked.
This post is linked to Mrs. Matlock’s Alphabe Thursday and Mama Kat’s Writing Workshop. It contains many back to school traditions. They are special pancakes, new clothes and shoes, blowing a kiss and having your child keep it in their pocket, crying moms, needing a place to go that isn’t home, and a special lunch with people you love to share your day with.
I am hosting a Back to School Traditions Link Up. If you have a post on Back to School pictures and/or traditions. I would love for you to link it up!
