A Jumble

"How could a four year-old (albeit with his two year-old accomplice) make a grown woman practically storm out of preschool Sunday School class vowing never to return? How could one hour of such an innocuous pastime as said class be so difficult? It's just an hour! It's just a four year-old! But it's not just any four year-old, and not just any hour - it's Ryan, in a classroom setting where there are RULES.

So began the last post that I wrote here. It was very long, a little rambling, but very philosophical, and pretty good - but then it vanished before I could post it. So now I'm stuck here feeling a need to post something worthwhile, but having none of the resources left required to do so. Dave has worked the past two weeks in Charleston, coming home on the weekends, and my brain is fried at this point. We did have a Sunday School crisis this week, and it was very revealing for me. Ryan has issues with the demands made of him there - namely the rather strict classroom rules, and very particularly, the ordinary rectangular rug on which he is often supposed to sit (oh, that rug!!!) - and because he dislikes being left there without a parent, I have had to watch it all and struggle with the blurred and conflicting emotions surrounding whether I needed to insist on him following the rules or...well, not. And on Sunday, while he and Chase were, in all likelihood, destroying my reputation as a mother in front of their Sunday School teacher, those emotions were swirling frantically. I could hardly tell who or what I was most frustrated with, and we had to leave the class early. But as I cooled off and the boys played in a room elsewhere in the church building, I realized that I was not willing to make a discipline issue out of something that isn't an issue for me most of the week. Here, the boys run and play - and sometimes even climb on the table - while learning is going on. Sometimes they sit to have a book read to them, but most of the time, our learning atmostphere is one of mostly controlled chaos, and I can hardly expect them to conform immediately to something much more structured (even if it makes me look like a bad mother). And I'm okay with that!

The rest of the week, though crazy and exhausting, had some great moments. We went to Denny's on Tuesday for our free breakfast. We had to wait thirty minutes for a table, but the kids were terrific as they waited patiently in the cold, eager for their eggs and pancakes. And we had such a happy time eating our breakfast - one of the best parts was letting them pour their own syrup from their own little pitchers.

Wednesday we met with some friends so that the moms of our group could have our first book club meeting (The Secret Life of Bees) and that the kids could play - of course.

And Friday, tonight - Dave came home. Joy for everyone, relief for my nearly shattered nerves!

This is the best I could come up with. There's so much more, but there's no way I can get it out now, and no one should expect anything clever or even very informative in the next couple weeks!