This post isn’t about us sharing.  It’s about others sharing with us :)

When you’re living the lazy, super flexible, unscheduled life – you never know what’s around the corner.  This week, we spent several hours playing with other people’s toys.  Hours of free fun.


hot dog man


Why not start the trek with a lunch for champions… hot dog’s from Harry’s.  Jack wasn’t too sure about the hot dog man.  Can you blame him?!!


the apple store


Next stop, the Apple Store.  We had over an hour of fun playing around on the new iPad.  Thanks for hosting our play-group Mr. Gates.


playing with toys


Mr. Froggies up the block was so nice to share his toys, too.  


playing with toys


Something for everyone.  We did leave with a couple bags of marbles, so it wasn’t completely free :)


puppies?


This may be as close as we get to a puppy…. You never know :)


Our friend “Dick” was nice to have us over the next day.  He was so gracious to share his putting green and clubs for a cool (literally) diversion.  For those MOAT readers not in Dallas – it’s already smoldering.  It could be a long one.

Lesson for my day, today … Unschedules can be nice to many, but thorny to a few.  I need to walk the road in their shoes, too!

The kids have been passing around some funky virus.  Everyone has had their share except for Jon.  It hit Teen Take-Out pretty hard.  I’m embarrassed to admit that when he first started “feeling bad”, I didn’t buy it.  The fact that he coincidentally crashed on the day he was to start swim team practice seemed a bit hokey.  I gave him grief, told him to snap out of – you know, the “get a better attitude” talk, then, I took his temperature. 101.5 Ooops.  Once again I was way off base and offering one huge apology.

This poor kid gets a load of the I’m-not-buying-it’s.  Just last summer he was horsing around with one of his cousins.  After whacking his finger on a bunk bed, he moaned and groaned that he had been hurt.  I told him to toughen up.  Come on, he bumped his finger.  How bad could it be?  Come to find out 3 months later (he hadn’t complained at all, I just noticed him wince when he bumped it accidentally) that the tip of his pinky was in fact broken.  I felt awful.

I’m not sure why I don’t always believe him.  He can sometimes be a glass half empty and a tad dramatic, but one thing the kid is … he’s honest.

So, he’s suffered though a few days of fever and massive headache, which have just been topped off by a rampant rash that compelled us to the doctor’s office.  We sat and waited, waited, waited for one of my favorite physicians in the practice to see us.  By the time he got to us, the kid (who didn’t feel great) was pretty frustrated.  Then Dr. Funny (thus named by my crew years ago, because he is) asked, “So what are you up to this summer?”

“mummbble…mummble”

“What?… you’re huh?”, Dr. Funny continues

(I had just answered every health question for him, now I was going to have to answer the summer question.)

“Well ….. he’s going to summer school,” I reply.

(ooooh.  I had no idea the response that was coming after that one.  He actually got angry and beligernat in frontof the doctor.)

“We’re doing NOTHING this summer.  NO VACATION.  NO BEACH.  NO NOTHING!  She keeps telling EVERYONE we’re doing SUMMER SCHOOL.”

“I used to like summer school.  It gave me something to do,” Dr. Funny tried to alleviate the situation, echoing my sentiments exactly.  So what if you’re doing summer school.  At least it’s something productive.

We all ignored the outburst, chalked it up to him feeling rotten and moved on.  When the doctor left our room, TTO looked at me and strongly retorted, “Please stop telling people I’m going to Summer School!”

Even though I should have known, I really didn’t think about the fact that: #1 – he doesn’t want to go to summer school, #2 he’s mad that he has
to go, #3 no one else he knows is going to summer school and #4 he’s mortified about it (even though we’re only doing it to keep him sharp…Speed Police is taking a typing class).  Here I am waving the summer school flag proud and high, as if it’s not a big deal …. but to him it is.

Sometimes I’m completely tuned out to the sensitivity level of this great kid.  I’ve got to slow down, quit thinking things are no big deal.  (Let’s face it they are a huge deal to him.  He doesn’t want summer school to define his break.)  And, I need to remember that tween/teen years are defined by a lot of things… solid self esteem is not one of them.  Rationality holds a neighboring bottom rung spot.

I need to do a better job walking the road with them, not for them?  Recognizing/validating those idiosyncrasies along the way.   Doing my best to steer them away from irrational and emotional thinking in a gentle, uplifting manner instead of sarcastically joking our way through it.  Remembering to consider things from their point of view.

If you hear a beeping sound, that’s my truck backing up starting over.

Thanks for walking the road with me.-Kay

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