Start of a reader

The book To Kill a Mockingbird has been in the news a lot lately thanks to a new biography of Harper Lee, which may or may not be 'authorized' by Miss Lee. So I decided to give the classic book to Reed to read on one of his long, summer days.

He hadn't gotten far into it when he said "This has a great quote, come read it."

The lines Reed wanted me to read are highlighted.

In this part of the book, Scout's brand new first grade teacher is upset because Scout already knows how to read, and even tells her to tell her father to stop teaching her, to which she replies with surprise "Teach me? He hasn't taught me anything, Miss Caroline. Atticus ain't got time to teach me anything. Why, he's so tired at night he just sits in the livingroom and reads."

I didn't think about it the last time I read the book, but Reed learned to read in much the same way that Scout did – by just following along as we read. No wonder this part of the book resonated with him "Reading was something that just came to me." – that's surely what happened with him.

Like winning the lottery

Today, Tod volunteered at the Girl Scout camp Amy is attending at Claude Moore Park. He worked the fishing station, as you can see....

Fish faces!

As part of being a volunteer, they gave him a copy of the all the camp groups' daily schedules for the week. At dinner tonight, Tod mentioned having the schedule and boy, you'd have thought he'd told Amy he had a million dollars he was going to give her, she was so excited. She loves, really really loves, to know what the plan is for things, and if she's the only one who knows the plans, and the rest of the girls don't? Even better!

Having Dad help out at camp made her day, but having access to the camp schedule was priceless in her mind!

Summer of their dreams? Time will tell!

As Reed has gotten older, summers have become more challenging. In the "good old days" (for us, not the kids), the kids went to CASA summer camp all summer. The cost was low and it was convenient - right at their elementary school. But the kids (mostly Reed) have tired of that, and now Reed's even aged out of it anyway. It's always been Reed's dream to not have to go to summer camp. I think in his mind, the kids with stay-at-home moms get to have screen time all day, every day, with no responsibilities or ever having to do anything they don't want to, for the entire summer.

When they got a bit bored with CASA camp, we mixed things up by adding scout camps, flag football camps, going to the in-home day care Amy went to in kindergarten. It really was challenging to map out the whole summer with different camps every week...and then actually getting both kids where they needed to be? Ay yi yi.

So this year we decided we'd get a babysitter for the summer. That was a whole process in itself, posting a job ad, reviewing applicants, doing interviews. We had two top candidates and had each of them watch the kids for a couple of hours to see how it went. Candidate number one, Samantha, Amy thought was super nice. Reed stayed gone riding his bike pretty much the whole time she was at our house. (Tod's theory is that Reed didn't know quite what to do being around a really cute, blond, perky cheerleader type....I refuse to accept that!) Candidate number two, Jessica, turned out to be the daughter of the school library assistant. She played Apples to Apples with them, and then she just happened to have in her car a Harry Potter version of the game Scene It...the three of them played and both kids were enthralled. So we hired Jessica and our summer plans were in place.

On day two of summer, Jessica called at 10:30 a.m. to say Reed was having terrible stomach pain and couldn't even stand up. Since he's not usually one to complain like that, I headed home. Got him in the pediatrician's office, where Dr. John suspected Reed had a kidney stone. A urine test was negative but that's not always definitive, so off we went to Loudoun Hospital in Lansdowne to get Reed an ultrasound of his kidneys and bladder. As he laid on the table for the very lengthy ultrasound process, I noticed he didn't seem to be in any pain anymore. Sure enough he was feeling better. It took probably two hours total to complete the process...but it's all good because in the end they said they found nothing wrong. And he was feeling fine. So off we went for pizza and frozen yogurt, since we hadn't eaten since breakfast. Dr. John called later to say that it was most likely just really bad gas...I'd say so! So now we know that kind of pain can just be as simple as gas. But what a first second day for Jessica, I know she was really scared. Heck I was too, no doubt.

A few bumps in the road so far (too much screen time / not enough outside time) but I hope things will settle in nicely.