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Our Daily Thread 4-29-15

Good Morning!

On this day in 1429 Joan of Arc led Orleans, France, to victory over Britain.

In 1852 the first edition of Peter Roget’s Thesaurus was published.

In 1862 New Orleans fell to Union forces during the Civil War.

And in 1945 the German Army in Italy surrendered unconditionally to the Allies.

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Quote of the Day

“You can’t let one bad moment spoil a bunch of good ones.”

Dale Earnhardt

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 Today is Duke Ellington’s birthday. 

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Anyone have a QoD?

42 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 4-29-15”

  1. Good morning from Sog City. It seemed to rain all night and finally stop only to start again. The sunshine we got for a couple of days got put under the bus (turned that school bus pure yellow).

    I just made coffee and again Miss Bosley sat in the middle of the plastic packaging of water bottles so she could nab me as I pulled one out. She is so cute in her wise cat ways of aggravation. As soon as she gets to do her thing and I get my bottle of water, she’s outa there.

    Liked by 1 person

  3. Maybe I should start singing in the rain. The rain would be distressed by the sound and run all the way to the west coast! I would if I could! Miss Bosley would yowl and all the dogs inside neighborhood houses would howl.

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  4. I am working on whittling an article I wrote for my course so I can submit it. It has 1,470 words and the guidelines call for 1,200 words. I guess I need to get one of those As Seen on TV knife sets to help with the chop chop work.
    Michelle is my inspiration!♡

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  5. Good morning everyone.
    🙂 A lady brought some glasses to the Y for me to take to Lions.
    The word gets around.
    Janice’s rain is supposed to get to Hendersonville in about an hour…

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  8. I guessed Weeping Willow at first, but it appears to have blooms on the leaves.
    Then, I thought, “covered by wisteria”. But wisteria grows up the tree.
    So? I don’t know. It has to be in the South somewhere.

    Liked by 2 people

  9. That tree is so beautiful!

    Emily is working until 4:00 this afternoon, & then goes straight to her classes. She’ll be home around 10:30 tonight.

    I wonder who is gonna take care of Forrest?

    Oh, yeah – me! And Chrissy, too, a bit later, as well as some help from Lee, since it is his day off. Even so, it’ll be a long day.

    Liked by 2 people

  10. Chas, I didn’t know there was any other sort of “weeping” tree until I moved to Indiana, where we have gorgeous weeping cherries (some are boring shrub-like little trees, but some are tall and lovely), but this looks way too tall for a weeping cherry. I’ve heard there are also weeping elms, but I don’t know that I’ve ever seen that. There are probably others.

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  11. Karen, does Forrest know how to entertain himself, how to simply play or keep himself occupied? When you talk about long days with him, I wonder about that, because taking care of a child shouldn’t mean constant interaction with that child. (Obviously it’s trickier with an only child, but even so it shouldn’t.)

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  12. How about some sort of schedule, Karen, given you’re now his primary caregiver? We lived off in the country far from others when my two little guys were my only companions–since my husband, as usual, was out to sea. I had a whole planned day and only survived until 5 o’clock because we all knew exactly how the evening would go: Mr. Rogers from 5-5:30 (I cooked dinner and read the newspaper). Dinner 5:30-6. Bath 6-6:30. News 6:30-7 (they played on the floor, I folded clothes and watched the news). Reading books/singing/prayers 7-7:45. Teeth brushing prayers, goodnight 8.

    They did not have to go to sleep at 8 o’clock, but I went off duty then. They could read, play with small cars, sing, I didn’t care. They just had to stay in bed.

    That saved my sanity.

    No TV during the day–but I was younger then– we played, did chores, read books, drew, dug in the yard, planted the garden, raked leaves, rode big wheels (them), went for walks, went to the library, ran errands, went to Bible study (cheers! day care for 90 minutes), and one day a week they went to a friend’s house for the morning while I volunteered at Navy Relief.

    We baked, threw balls, sang, cried, read more stories, built tents, cleaned their room, collected laundry, reorganized the pots, ran the blender, listened to music, stacked blocks, had friends over.

    I’m tired already.

    Off to the gym, instead. Those two are both at work, now! 🙂

    Liked by 2 people

  13. I confess that the late bedtimes of most young children today make me very tired. Often parents get home so late and have so many activities that it is difficult to avoid them. I think the children are often sleep deprived. Each age and child/family needs are different, of course.

    I also insisted mine were in bed early. They could read, but they had to stay in bed. I would insist on lights out, if it got too late. Of course, that all depended on age.

    Children, like adults, are different. It is really difficult when you have one, who is a night owl in the same room with one who loves mornings.

    Grandchildren are a challenge. Especially when they go to different homes and have different expectations and rules.

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  15. Some of my parents told me that their children were in bed by 7. I realized that there was no way I would come close to the energy they had with all that sleep.

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  16. What a grand tree that is!

    Our Jacarandas are all bursting out in bloom now, purple trees everywhere. They are beautiful.

    Annie seems back to her normal self again.She still has a big red owie on her shaved butt, thanks to Mr. Wonderful who ever he was, but she’s back to being perky and her appetite has returned. She’s leaping up onto her cat tree normally, with a big cat-spring, not gingerly & with trepidation like before.

    She escaped the house briefly last night, but I got her in before bedtime, she was on the front porch as usual.

    Liked by 2 people

  17. Some children need more companionship than others and that may depend on how much consistency they have from others in their lives. I spent a lot of time doing those things Michelle mentioned, but also spent a lot of time with doctors and doing breathing treatments with the nebulizer and trying to get son to take lots of meds. At times I felt tied to that machine. He got off the doc and med track when we began homeschooling. Maybe he had grown out of some of that, too. Then later we spent a lot of time in the car going to and from my mom’s to take care of her while homeschooling. It gets sorta blurry thinking back on the craziness of it all. Son got to know his way around nursing homes, rehab centers, and hospitals quite well. No wonder he turned into a good reader. Books were much more fascinating than our lives!

    It is raining again in case you wanted to know.

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  21. Except that thirteen year old used his toothpaste to stick a whole bunch of papers together. No particular reason. And chopped up a pear before scattering it in his room. And tore up a baseball to see what was inside. He wanted the string out of it so he could tie knots. He is really into tying knots. Which is why he has no shoe laces. or socks. or pants. or …..

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  22. LOL.

    I was thinking about having a young one around again while “dancing” in Zumba this morning.

    We did a lot of puzzles.

    A little boy, IMHO, needs to be outside running around as much as possible to get all that growing tired by someone’s naptime! He also needs to learn there’s a time to sit quietly and a time to make noise. The quietly sitting could be as long as, gee, six minutes or so . . . 🙂

    It seems to me, too, that he could be learning things to prepare for kindergarten if he has to go–my oldest adorable granddaughter is learning to spell her name (that could become an active experience–dancing and shouting the letters), recite her mother’s phone number (you could hold up the fingers while reciting the numbers. I, personally, don’t know her mother’s phone number), and so forth.

    It seems to me Karen and Chrissy don’t have a car to drive, so that would limit some activities, but is there a bus? Taking the bus was a terrific adventure for my pre-schoolers the few times we did it.

    Home made playdough–outside game–making dinner. There must be lists somewhere on the Internet, some sort of Montessori type programs?

    It’s actually starting to sound fun to me, but then, I don’t have to do it for 11 hours every day.

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  26. Karen, along the lines of what Cheryl and Michelle mentioned, I think it’s a good idea to train Forrest to occupy himself at times without any interaction from you.

    I remember reading once that a woman from the past who had many children — I think it was Susanna Wesley — would throw her apron over her head when she wanted to engage in quiet prayer by herself. That was the signal to her children that she was not to be disturbed, and that they would have to busy themselves with some independent endeavor, or just sit quietly and wait for their mother to be available again for interaction.

    Could you maybe establish a brief time at the beginning of each hour that is “Grandmom’s time” to be alone? (Sorry, I can’t remember what Forrest calls you.) Say, something like five minutes? Tell him, “You’re going to be five, and we’ll practice having five minutes to ourselves at the top of each hour.”

    He’ll not only learn to occupy himself, but it may help him build his concept of time — how long five minutes is, an hour, etc.

    You get periodic breaks, and he develops some new skills in the process.

    Just a thought.

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  27. Yes, hello Frank and Roy. Are there others lurking? I am anon at the library today since I finished whittling my article and just submitted it. Nice to see the header photo. That is an impressive tree! But somehow all the photos are rather white-washed on this library computer so I am not getting the full effect.

    Michelle has great ideas for the little ones. My son loved things outdoors so much that I was convinced early on that he would be a naturalist. He got into drawing insects, birds, snakes, and all kinds of things like that. Painting is good, too. Splatter painting can be wild and fun. Working with paper mache (sp?) is fun, also. We once made hats, actually Easter bonnets, for a kindergarten project. After we baked them on low in the oven and let them finish drying, we spray painted them outside. Made some really crazy ones for the school’s Easter bonnet parade. Unforgettable! They lasted for years. We did this together with my friend Karen and her daughter. My son’s hats looked nothing like the daughter’s hats, though. One of son’s hats was cut out like a giant sunshine and over the head part he had something like an army helmut and then there were little Easter chicks on there with a few little eggs. I do miss all those sorts of creative activities.

    Liked by 1 person

  28. Along the lines of what 6 Arrows said, if children got rowdy in preschool I would call for a quiet reading time. One complained about not knowing how to read so I explained about looking at the picture book illustrations and “reading” the story from that. It really worked well in the classroom. You need a good reading space especially for that. Also, if you can think up a craft that goes along with a picture book you read each day, that reinforces what they are learning. Another thing I did was to build a cookie monster and let the children make alphabet cookies from construction paper to feed the cookie monster.That really fostered learning the alphabet. And you can call for a quiet listening time to see what sounds you can identify. I know a lot of activities and it is rather a pity that I don’t get to use any of them now. I don’t miss the germs, though.

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  31. Also, Karen, having a quiet-time corner could be a good way to encourage Forrest. If you have room for a child-size chair, or even just a few pillows on the floor with some picture books in the area, he can be encouraged to spend some independent time there.

    Several years ago, when we had a toy room (it is now a bedroom), my husband painted a tree in each of the two corners of the room closest to the doorway. The trunks ran up the walls, and branches and leaves extended up onto the ceiling. The kids would sit on the floor in child-sized rocking chairs and read under the trees.

    Of course, reading outside under real trees is preferable, but we don’t live in a place where that can be done year-round. 😉

    Liked by 1 person

  35. And on another site I visit occasionally, some of the pictures do the opposite — they’re bright until you move the cursor on them, which makes them fade a little. But other pictures on that site stay the same brightness no matter where the cursor is.

    Kind of reminds me of visits to the eye doctor. “Which one is clearer, one or two?”

    Except half the time I can’t tell which one is better! I wonder if they get sick of hearing, “Could I see those again?” Or maybe I’m the only one who has trouble with some of those. 🙂

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  36. I knew we had a bunch of creative people here. We’d go to the library once a week after Bible study, and play and read there, play with the blocks and keep entertained for at least an hour. I sat and read my own books or magazines while they played. We’d then read those books all week and return them the next.

    Story time, too, was great.

    Boys that age tend to like books about real things–cars, trucks, and so forth. Gail Gibbons was an author they liked–picture books all. They loved Richard Scarry’s Cars and Trucks and Things that Go. We went through five copies of that book and the adorable grandchildren also now have one. Those are long, but you can play games with them. Where is Goldbug? How about Mistress Mouse and Office Flossie? Find them before we turn the page.

    Honestly, boys have such trouble with small motor skills and that will hammer him with early kindergarten, if you can get him started writing his name or letting him free play with anything that involves small motor skills, you’d be helping him for school. I like the cookie monster idea–he could even make the letters out of cookie dough and bake them. Why not?

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  38. I hope I didn’t give the impression (although I see how I could have) that Forrest would be up until 10:30, when his mom gets home. He is usually asleep between 8:00 & 8:30. But I am still “on call” if he wakes up crying, which he still does from time to time. I have to keep my hearing aids in so I’ll hear him from downstairs. 🙂 (Both “apartment” doors are open.)

    Forrest keeps us all pretty busy with playing games or playing outside or being read to. But he does need a lot of attention, or as Janice put it, companionship. It’s usually when he’s playing by himself that he gets into trouble. So getting him used to a quiet time would be a challenge, but one we, & Emily, should work on.

    I have been planning on teaching him some things this summer to get him ready for kindergarten.

    What kind of “small motor” activities did you have in mind, Michelle?

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  40. Jo – Emily made a hammering activity for Forrest. She also has some preschool-type learning activities that she does with him.

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  41. Small motor skills are small muscles skills like writing, cutting with scissors. Boys typically are better with large motor skills like running, bike riding, leaping off furniture.

    Schools tend to focus more on small motor skills. Jo probably has lots of ideas. 🙂

    Remember those sewing cards? Rolling cookies and cutting them out might be small motor skill. The idea would be yo help him increase dexterity in his fingers, perhaps in short bursts of time that would keep his attention and yet still allow for movement.

    Any sense on what tile of learner he is? Physical, audio, watching? That can help figure out how yo channel him.

    For example, a physical learner needs to move to learn. So, form letters with parts of the body: show me how to make a T shape, example.

    He probably can count, but teach him how to recognize money and maybe even count it. The idea to teach him how long five minutes is, is a great one. We count everything with the adorable grandchildren.

    We also talk about colors, shapes–one of my nieces could recognize a trapezoid at 2– big and small, high and low. All those things you probably do naturally as part of the daily conversation.

    Or, get Cheryl’s bird book for $3 and teach him the birds.

    I’m getting excited, myself, I may need to go find some of my adorable grandchildren, soon!

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