I admit that there are days — days as rare as I can keep them — that we don’t do much. If I’m not feeling my best, sometimes all I want to do is sit on the couch. And really, I don’t even want to do that, it’s just that I don’t want to do anything and that’s the minimum level of activity that’s open to me. But from a parenting point of view, this should be treated as a worst-possible scenario. Not just for your child’s sake (even if they jump at the possibility of TV hypnosis), but for your own — if you can summon up that minimum amount of energy to do something and do it with some small amount of cheer, it’s so much easier. This morning, even through a full dose of strong painkillers, my legs were throbbing badly as if I had taken nothing — serves me right for having a skipping and hopping game (“Daddy, I can be your skipping teacher”) with Nefarious before school — and I was worried that the day would be couch-ridden. I admit that for much of the day it was. I’m blessed with the ability to sleep through all but the sharpest breakthrough pain, and this exhaustion seems often to be my body’s response to discomfort as well (although strangely more so during the day than at night), and it really was wonderful to slip away into slumber and build up the strength I knew I’d have to — I’d want to — muster come 3:30PM.
Because it was band practice day, Nefarious and I filled the bathtub (thank you to Leila for having installed a big one) with blankets and pillows, closed the doors to make it the quietest room in the house, and read Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Caitlin poked her head in and snapped this photo of us reading). The last few chapters have been great, with the appearance of the Death Eaters, and now Mad-Eye Moody and the announcement of the Tri-Wizard Tournament.
At school they’re reading the Narnia series in class — she’s reading it in grade one, whereas I think I read it in grade seven, although I’m not sure — so she’s being thoroughly immersed in fantasy literature. I’ve been thinking of trying to find a good sci-fi for us next, but I’m not sure what would be good, and I don’t want to stumble across age-inappropriate scenes, so if anyone wants to suggest anything… She can handle complex stories, but I want to avoid sexual content and profanity and so on.
After school we usually play games for a while. I prefer games of skill like chess or memory or even connect-four, but someone gave us Quirkle for Christmas, a dominoes sort of game, and Nefarious totally loves it. There’s more of a random element than I like (you pull your tiles out of a bag and hope for combos of either color or shape — in some ways it’s a lot like the card game gin rummy), but it’s an enjoyable game of a predictable duration (which is good if you’re wanting to plan it into a schedule). Today as we played it we watched a documentary about a family of tigers after a small amount of howling that I wouldn’t let her watch TV like her mom does (which for all I know is the exact same line that she uses in reverse when she’s there).
Oh, and if you play Quirkle, we made a minor rule adjustment that improves the game play — if you play all your tiles at once (including your final move in the game), you get double the points. It’s a simple change, but it forces a little more strategy and emotionally makes it more stressful as you desperately hope for the piece you’re needing to make a set when you reach into the bag of tiles.
We did a little painting as well. Caitlin got us a new shower curtain last week so the old one has been laid out on the studio floor as a drop cloth. Nefarious and I are splitting the work on the two paintings, building them up layer by layer, probably in flat colors rather than complex fades or such things. I’m forcing her to take it seriously though, so it’s as much a “lesson” as it is for fun.
Speaking of lessons, on school days, now that Nefarious doesn’t have a room that has a sunset window (at our old place the sunrise woke her quite early) — to say nothing of the later winter sunrise — she is usually still asleep when my alarm goes off. Instead of just normally waking her, I’ve been going up to her room and playing the piano to gently rouse her. I’m not a very good piano player, but I play well enough to help get eyes open both on the day and on creating music herself. Tomorrow should be a great day for her, because the gymnastics class that Caitlin got her set up in starts and she’s been very excited.
