Nudged Forward

There are still a few words that elude Rayna. Last night she was excitedly telling me how SHE had got to run back into the classroom from the playground to retrieve her teacher's "cell-a-phone" for her! Actually, maybe that SHOULD be a word! We talk on a telephone, why not a celephone!

Last night was a family night book reading celebration at Rayna's school. She and I made a "mother-daughter" evening of it. Her school has these family night book reading events periodically, but this is the first one we have gone to. They featured four different books by Robert Munsch. All were really cute stories. The kids moved from room to room listening to different stories and completing craft activities corresponding with each story. The final story was "Mm Cookies" in the gymnasium, where everyone ate cookies and milk together while listening to the final story being read!

All of which pricks my conscious once more. A year and a half ago, we boxed up all our belongings and moved to this town. After nine years of being trapped with house payments that truly were probably beyond our means (accounted for over 60% of our take-home pay each month), we jumped at the chance to downsize. I have not regretted that decision once. Our home here is much smaller, but we don't owe anything on it. Even though our combined incomes are only about 2/3's what they had been in KC, still our month to month budget has been so much lower without the house payments (well, since this past May, that is, when we finally SOLD that house up in KC) that it has not been nearly as stressful as "the old days". But, our lifestyle is so much busier. I work three days (often more than an 8 hour shift) a week now instead of just working one 12 hour Saturday shift a week. I no longer homeschool Darcy. It seems that my "home time" is so much less now. Now I have children attending three separate schools. Grant and I drive each of them to school and back each day, because the bus was not a good option for us. (The kids had to ride for over an hour on the bus each way, when Darcy's school is just a five minute drive and the little kids' schools are just a ten minute drive from home. But, because the bus goes to all four schools in town picking kids up before beginning the actual route, the kids were having to spend two hours a day sitting on that bus. The environment in the bus was not good. Doug came home spouting four letter words he had never heard before in his life, before becoming a bus rider. He came home flipping the birdie (also learned on the bus). Rayna came home telling about the highschoolers who would sit in the back of the bus necking through the hour long commute. Darcy came home telling us how other kids called Doug "Stupid" and "Retard" on the bus. Needless to say, their bus riding days came to a quick end early last year.) Still, even though their schools aren't that far away, it still takes a chunk out of our day running all three of them three different directions.

Working Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday (getting home late in the evenings, often just in time to kiss the kids good-night) AND the fact that I am terribly disorganized by nature, anyway, has made keeping up with the contents of three different backpacks a challenge. Just getting all their notes READ is an accomplishment! Homework is so "hit and miss". It seems like there is no time during the week to sit down and do it. Then, when the weekend comes, school is the last thing they or I want to fool with. So, we end up squeezing it into the morning before the kids go to school and Grant and I head to work.

All of which brings me back to last night. My conscience was pricked once more. We have boxes upon boxes stacked in our garage that have never been opened since our move a year and a half ago. There just is no where to PUT the stuff. So, it remains in the garage, stacked to the ceiling, inaccessible. Somewhere in that mountain of boxes is the wonderful collection of children's books that I had amassed over the years. Not one of them has been read to Doug or Rayna this past year and a half. In fact, reading is practically non-existent in their lives, other than the mandatory reading homework.

A MONTH ago, I bought a little bookcase at Wal-Mart with the intent of putting it together the next day and DIGGING out some of the boxes of books from our garage and filling the bookcase with them. The bookcase is still disassembled...in the box...in the garage...among the mountains of other boxes!

Today I am going to get it put together. Find a place for it out in the family room and dig out at least one box of books from the garage. AND READ to my kids!!!! That is my goal for today. SOMEDAY, I would like to get down to the business of purging our belongings. We have way too much junk to fit into our current home. It isn't just a matter of thinning down the boxes in the garage...I need to thin down what is in our bedrooms, as well. The kids just have more junk than there is space for...especially the girls with their 1/2 room each...especially RAYNA. Maybe she doesn't have more stuff than Darcy and Doug, but, the fact that she never puts anything away in her closet or drawers or shelves makes it SEEM like she has tons more. Her side of the room is a fire trap! Everything winds up on the floor....KNEE DEEP without even so much as a skinny little path to walk through. I'm tempted just to go in there with a snow shovel and a trashcan and clear it out the quick and easy way! I bought her a little coat tree a few weeks ago, thinking that if she didn't have to struggle with hangers, she would be more apt to put her jacket up and even drape the clothes that for some reason she does not deem ready for the dirty clothes hamper, yet, but have been taken out of her drawer (by her) for some unfathomable reason. Did that help? No. Yesterday, when I came in her room and found her coat thrown on the floor for the billionth time, not a foot from the coat tree, I just picked the empty coat tree up and removed it from her room. I figure the last thing she needs is one more thing in her room...and, though she was delighted to receive the coat tree, I haven't seen her use it a single time without me PROMPTING her first. At this rate, she's going to grow up just like her mother. I often wonder why my children could not have taken after their father instead...neat, organized, calm, quiet.