Thursday, March 27, 2014

Random sweetness sightings...

A few months ago I was telling my coworkers about a blow-up I had at (or is it "on") the girls the night before.  It went something like this:
I told them not to pull on the curtain that I had just washed and fluffed and folded and swagged "just right".   Sure enough, one of them walked by and yanked it down.  Then a few minutes later, the other one (or maybe the same one) walked by and yanked it again.  I told them to stop pulling on the curtains twice, and then after the third time I BLEW UP!  And it sounded like this:  "That's it!  I've told you 2 times in the last 15 minutes not to tug on the curtain!  There will be NO FLASHCARDS before bed!"


I was THAT parent: the one who punished their kids by taking away their... flashcards.  You see, we had gotten into this routine where we did flashcards every night before bed and they were loving it!  They were learning math!  They were able to beat their peers who were still doing adding and subtracting!  They were getting all this secret knowledge about how multiplication is just repeated addition and how there is a trick for the 9's!  The next day I woke up with this terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach.  Who cares about a curtain?  If I'd have tucked it under the rod like it was BEFORE I took it down to wash it, this wouldn't have even been an issue.  And seriously, the flashcards?  Do you hear how stupid this sounds?!?!

Anyway, here's the happy ending:

I walked into the girls' room the other night to put them to bed and found this on their dry-erase board.

They had been doing math for fun!  I guess they still love math and I haven't ruined them after all!

By the way, shortly after the NO FLASHCARDS FOR YOU incident, we started reading again.  We recently finished Caddie Woodlawn; totally loved it!  Next up is Island of the Blue Dolphins.  What else should we add to our list of bedtime reads?


Also, on a related note:  Our precious flashcards have their own special bowl (see above).  My grandma was cleaning out her china cabinet and allowed me to pick out something special.  I chose this beautiful antique bowl.  When I got home with it, I thought, "It's so special and pretty and meaningful.  What should I put in it?  Aha!  Our flashcards!"  That's normal, right?

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