Another Weekend Over

It's Sunday night again. It seems as though I wait all week for the weekend, when Chris and I and the kids have all of that time together. No work, no school, just fun family time! Then I blink and it's Monday again. Where do the weekends go?

We did get to play outside today - it was near 60 degrees! The sun was behind big clouds much of the day, and the breeze picked up in the afternoon, so it was still chilly. But it was nice to let the kids ride their bikes around the driveway. We even took a walk around the neighborhood with Rogue. The poor dog usually does nothing buy lay around inside the house or lay around outside, so hopefully a little exercise will do him good! (At least he doesn't have a nibble bell... Okay, long story for another day, but my mom will get that one!)

But somehow, even with two whole days, I still managed to not touch my taxes once. Or make any Usborne phone calls. I know we all deserve some down time and some lazy time here and there, but I really need to somehow get out of the rut that I'm in. Perhaps once Spring finally gets here - and stays! - I'll feel more energetic and less blah. Well, I'm crossing my fingers.

The kids are doing great. I had a parent-teacher conference at Francesca's school last week. She got check-pluses in the "Always" column for many of the skills they report on, and the others were mostly all checks in the same column. She did get an "almost always" on dressing herself (shoes, coat, hat, mittens, snapping her pants after using the potty, etc.) That's mostly because she's lazy, not so much that she can't do it (except the pants snapping - that can be tricky.) The only thing she got lower on was trying to sound out works as well as recognizing some simple sight words. Oh man, bad mommy! Bad mommy! With Dominic, he taught himself to read within a day or two of his 4th birthday. I don't have any practice helping a child to figure it all out!

Francesca's teacher recommended making flash cards with their list of sight words and practicing them at home. I tried it today - there are about 20 words on the list. Halfway through, Francesca was DONE. To be honest, so was I. She doesn't like to sound things out - she'd rather just look at the first letter and pick any word out of her head that starts with that letter. When I try to get her to look at the written letters to see if those sounds are part of the word, she is not only uninterested, but whines about it. She needs to start doing it, but I don't want it to be miserable for both of us. Not only will it drive me crazy, but she's not going to learn if it isn't enjoyable. I'm at a bit of a loss. I guess I'll just try even a couple of words each day. I might have to resort to bribery.... Hmmm... maybe a mini marshmallow for every word she reads correctly!

It hit me today that she'll be 5 years old this summer. Five. FIVE. Crazy! And then she goes to kindergarten in the fall! Oh man, I hope she's ready. I hope I'm ready. At least I won't have an excuse to not work my Usborne business or not exercise once I'm home alone all day. I just hope I can handle it mentally. I have a tendency these days to have anxiety, feel lonely, and find it difficult to muster up motivation. I think I'm going to need to really schedule my days this fall so that I don't find myself wasting away in the house accomplishing nothing.

And on that happy note, it's bedtime! Supposedly we may get 2-4 inches of snow tomorrow. Oh yeah, 63 degrees today, snow tomorrow. What the heck??? I'm just hoping school isn't cancelled - I need a little time to prepare for my team meeting tomorrow night!