08 May 2012

Sit back and snare a gopher

It occurs to me sometimes that there is a whole lot more I could be doing with my boys.  There is preschool, swim lessons, zoo programs, art classes.  There's gymnastics and baseball, soccer and tumbling. Even around the house I could be doing weekly letters and themed activities.  My Eli is almost five, and while he could count to 10 at 18 months, he hasn't gotten much beyond that.  There is a whole lot out there, and not much of it do we do.  Sometimes I feel guilty about it. Maybe we would be better off getting up and going to some lesson or another, rather than sitting around all morning eating breakfast slowly and playing lego.  Maybe the boys would have a happier summer at the lake if only I had them in swim lessons all year long. 

And then, we go out to the farm to do a whole lot of nothing, and Eli spends half an hour staring at a gopher hole.


And catches a frog in the grass, calmly examining it before he "lets it go back to it's family."


And in the meantime, Silas quietly and independently crawls over piles of wood, up mountains of dirt, and in and out of barb wire fences, staring down horses in the way.   



 And to some, racing off to swim lessons and gymnastics club, this may not seem very productive or educational, but to me it was absolutely beautiful. They will learn to swim this summer when they see all their cousins jumping in the lake.  You should see their tumbling acts as they wrestle on my bed every morning. Next week I may work on the alphabet, and counting past ten, and writing their names.  This week we're going to work on nothing, and enjoy every minute of it. 


And in case you wondered what Baby Brother was doing, he was going for his first horseback ride, just as you would expect a boy of mine to do.



2 comments:

  1. Sometimes what looks like a whole lotta nothin' is actually a whole lotta somethin' is what I say:)

    Oh my goodness...I didn't see the pair of legs behind the horse at first and my heart just about stopped. I thought that must be a VERY trustworthy horse! On the naming front...native American legend has it that the Father would leave the teepee after the birth and the first thing that they saw they would name the baby after..."dancing cloud...flying bird...whispering leaves"...easy schmeesy:)Though you may risk "dirty dish" "carpet fuzz" "crying brother" if you go that route...but its a start! I could see it taking off in celebrity circles.
    So my kids who also skipped preschool can count to 100 only because every time we are a couple of minutes from home we start counting to see how many seconds it will take. It is a ritual that they won't miss so they count to 100 at least a couple times a day...or as close to it as they could until they learned all the numbers. It is an easy and fun "game". Ben loves a computer game called www.abcmouse.com it is pretty good if you don't mind your kids on the computer...video games make him insane so we don't do those ever (angry birds most specifically) but this is different, they earn new learning activities and take their avatar through the zoo, farm etc for different activities. For a half an hour every day...it was worth the membership. Otherwise...have a great summer doing "nothing:)"

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  2. Hahaha, carpet fuzz for sure!!!

    That picture of the horse also freaked even me out for a sec!

    And you know I am all about a whole lotta nothin turning into amazing things!!!

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