Thursday, July 22, 2010

Today I am staying home. I am grateful for the opportunity for a little time in my home to clean, cook and allow the dogs to run free. Over the last few weeks I have been running around with kids, trying to keep them forever entertained. But, today a lot of rain and 3 exhausted kids made it possible to find an excuse to just stay home. I am so happy.

As I write this blog I am being entertained by many happy sounds. My daughter Maeghan has a friend over and they are happily playing Polly Pockets in her room. My son Alec, our exchange student and Alec's good friend are all in the basement playing FIFA World Cup on the X-Box. They are yelling with excitement! Hannah also has a friend over and they are scrap booking in her bedroom. All are entertaining themselves, for once.

This brings me to an ongoing problem that I have had over the years that I created myself. My children seem incapable of entertaining themselves. When they were small, I gave into the peer pressure of my generation that told me that I needed to keep my children entertained at all times. My life was devoted to taking them to museums, playgroups, story times, outings and anything else you can imagine. They were always in structured play. Now, that I am older and appreciate that simplicity is best, they are unable to grasp that concept. The first thing they say to me every morning of summer vacation is "what are we doing today?" When I was a kid I never asked that, instead I said "I'm bored!" My mom's response was "go find something to do", and I did. I don't know how to undo the damage I have done. But, I no longer give in as much to that question and just let them sit, bored. However, I have a problem with letting them get to that point, something I need to work on.

But, today we sit at home and listen to the rain. I baked a cheesecake and made some soup (I am aware that it is too hot for soup, but the mammoth zucchini that we have demanded attention). I did a little cleaning, balanced the checkbook and tried to organize my calendar for the upcoming school year and now I blog. Later, I plan on reading a book and maybe watching a Netflix movie that we have had lying around for a few weeks. It has been a good day.

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