Thursday

I came home from tutoring this evening, and Anna had a band-aid on one foot, and was walking around with an ice pack on her finger. I asked her what happened, and this is what she said:
"I bleeded my toe. I really did. I not kidding. Um, also, I hurt my finger in the door. Um, I standed on the Magneato box and then I fell. I don't know how I hurt my finger in the door. I was trying to close it and it shutted on my finger."
Jonathan just came in the room, and threw his toy up in the air. It is a large toy ax from the Lego store, and it has made for many humorous reprimands. Like just now: Jonathan! Don't throw your ax in the house! And then Anna said, Yeah, it might fall and hurt my other toe.
Or: "Anna and Jonathan! We don't hit each other with axes!' Or: "Anna! Don't hit your brother in the face with that ax!" It is situations like this that make me glad our windows stay shut year-round. Who knows what the neighbors would think if they heard what I said, without actually seeing what was taking place?

What's for dinner? We decided on pizza, since I have no groceries, just walked in and changed into pajamas and sat my butt down on the sofa. I just asked Dave, "Did you order the pizza?" And he said, "No. I was waiting for the computer."
Oh, I said. He waited a minute, as I continued typing this, and then said, I guess I could just order it on the phone. Isn't it funny that ordering pizza online is the new norm?
Anna just came in the room, in tears, because Jonathan choked her. I said, "WE don't choke each other!" She looked at me with those big teary blue eyes and said, "But him just did! He choked my neck!"
This is one of my dumber parenting techniques. I started it when they were just babies... "We don't hurt each other. We love each other." But now I say it on auto-pilot (like when I am trying to ignore my kids so I can blog). In situations like this, where they actually did hurt each other, simply stating, We don't hurt each other does nothing to change the fact that we did hurt each other. I think it comes from trying to state the behavior you do want, rather than focusing on the behavior you don't want. Which is a good idea, but somehow I've twisted it into this we don't hurt each other thing, which I never say unless they have just hurt each other.
I was at work this morning, pondering how on earth I ever learned to read, and read pretty well at a fairly young age. I was wondering this because I realized how poor my phonics skills are, and reading instruction was very much based on phonics when I was a kid. I am having to go back and re-learn all the phonics. Like a and o as in ax and ox, meaning when you just see a, you should prounounce it like ahhh, but when you just see o, you prounounce it more like aww, rather than ohhhh. Does that make any sense? Probably not. I am just saying, there's been some confusion over these basic sound awareness and phonemic skills for me, and it has made me feel quite stupid and inadequate. I find it easier to tutor the 4th graders than the 1st graders! I guess that makes more sense, since I have worked with older kids more than kids in primary grades. But I learned A LOT this week, and I have all the materials at home with me, and we have next week off, so I can hopefully get caught up enough to be "smarter" than a 1st grader. My Dad watches that Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? show, and I've noticed, watching it either makes me feel really dumb, or it makes me think the contestant is really stupid. It seems like the questions are either really, really tough, or they are really basic and the contestant won't know any of them.
So, Dave gave up and used the phone to order pizza. It will be here shortly, and we have a nice three day weekend ahead of us. Although I have A LOT of stuff to get done before I can actually relax. Tomorrow Dave and I have from 8-2 together, with both kids at school. We will go to the gym. Dave and I both joined Planet Fitness this week. They were having the Dollar Sale. I decided since it is apparently NEVER cooling down in Florida this year (record heat all this week), and once it does it will be too dark to walk at night, we should try a gym again. They don't have childcare but that's okay, since the last gym we belonged to had such awful childcare that we refused to use it.
I just told Jonathan, "I love you, buddy."
He said, "Thanks. I hope they get cheese pizza, Mama."