Creative Joy & Mutual Incomprehension

This Summer has been different.

As I approach the dawn of homeschooling everyone together, I do so with great fear and trembling.  The only factor that meagerly bolsters my weak confidence in this new education plan is that something rather profound has happened during this Summer: My children actually play together.

Is it because, in turning 3, Sue is finally a worthy playmate?  Perhaps Joseph has finally accepted that Edward knows more about science than anyone, yet still struggles to catch a football?  Or maybe Edward acknowledges that Joseph is a fast, mean middle linebacker, but completely ignorant of and disinterested in the periodic table?

Is there something about sleeping like slaves that bonds children?

I don’t know.

Yet I can tell you that the three have steadily slouched toward a mutual acceptance of one another this Summer.

They know they don’t understand each other, and they are cool with it.

We are Spies:

“Come with me smallish, younger girl spy who knows nothing about being a spy.”

Yet now instead of getting angry and frustrated with her for the cherubic innocence that accompanies having just turned three, he gives her a spy toboggan and a job she can understand.

“Go over there by that tree and select 5 small stones.  We will use those to be spies.”  She nods happily.

She doesn’t understand what this means, and he knows she does not understand.  Yet both play along peacefully.  Believe me, this is big, big, big for us!

Even after eight years of having boys, I am still continually surprised at a boy’s capacity to make a weapon out of trash.  Here you see a handy weapon made “on-the-spot” with items found during one grocery store visit:  Rubber Band, Coffee Stirrer and Pencil.

Makes a fine bow & arrow.

I don’t understand why boys must make weapons out of everything.  I don’t even understand what compels an 8-year-old to hurl a basketball at a bird.  Yet finally I appreciate and accept this creativity.

Today, I walked by and noticed this on my kitchen counter:

I can just imagine the conversation:  “Look up there behind the ice bucket–there’s an old box of fudge–let’s eat it with a Christmas cheese spreader!”

I don’t understand why my children search the dark recesses of the pantry in the wee hours of the morn in an attempt to find some post-date specialty food item given to us by a relative who works at Steinmart.

Yet I embrace the creativity of a child who would seek out a Christmas cheese spreader in the china cabinet instead of using a common butter knife.  There’s something special there.

We press on!