What a wonderful day!
I first started out with my sacred sip in silence ritual followed by my daily total body gymnastics routine, my apppeberry Power Shake before making lunches. When you start your day this way, you feel so much more peace, calmness and enthusiasm for the whole day.
I love my morning alone time.
Cool things about my friends and family today:
1. My eldest son's school had sent home a dance-a-thon fundraising form and envelope. I took it to work the last three days but forgot to take it out. This morning I remembered to do so.
Well, I didn't even say much to my wonderful co-workers... I told a couple of ladies that my son was doing a dance-a-thon, showed up them the paper, then left for lunch.
Soon after lunch, I was wondering where my envelop had gone. Well, within two minutes of that thought (you've gotta love synchronicity!), a colleague came up to me with the form and a filled up envelop!
Collectively, we have already raised $26.50! How amazing is that. And people wanted to do it.
So thank you very much, my friends for your generous support. The funds raised will be used toward the purchase of educational equipment.
2. My daughter gradually became resistant to practicing piano over the last couple of months, and today she wouldn't even go in with her teacher.
This opened up am amazing opportunity to talk. The moment she walked into the music school her face was closed looking down. She shook her head for almost every question like "are you ready to play?"
As the Universe would make it, three piano teachers she had had were there at this talk in the waiting area，which normally would jave been full of other parents.
She wouldn't look at any of them. She kept her eyes low except to throw me some attitude glances.
"What do you want?" I asked.
"I don't know," she responded.
"No one is going to make you do piano if you don't want to. Mommy always wanted to take piano lessons as a kid. So if you don't, I will take the lessons."
"But you already know. You taught yourself."
The conversation contained I ttle snippets of how her teachers came to teach their instrument of choice. It was a great chance to learn about these gifted musicians.
Well, since the lesson was only half and hour, our five person chat soon came to an end, but we still had not reached a resolution.
Her teacher told her warmly that she hopes to see her next week.
Before heading out, we chatted with the school director. Just in talking, my daughter came up with the idea that she would watch me play with her teacher and then I would watch her for the rest of the lesson!
She was very excited about that.
"The you better write that down or else you are going to forget," she said.
Deal. Fellow readers, if I forget, please remind me! ;)
3. After leaving piano, the little girl decided that we would go to Giant Tiger because she wanted to get Daddy, Little R, Little M and Mommy (that's me) each a gift... Interesting because she had made a Bracelet Promise that she wouldn't spend any of her own money... Anyway, that is another blog post.
Well, when we got to the discount store, I picked up a couple of new pillows to replace the barf-destroyed ones, and then to her to hold.
Her state had shifted. She was more open and happier. Soon she forgot that she was there looking for presents for other people... But she came to the cookies section of the store. She asked me if she could have Oreos and other boxed snacks.
She would pass them to me for inspection the ingredients. This is typical, but this time I turned it to her to read the fine print.
"Your eyes are very good, so coukd you look out for a few words to avoid? They are 'hydrogenated', 'colour', and shortening'."
So with that she would pick up every boxed snack that she thought that she wanted and looked for those words. She would put back anything that contained any of those words.
Soon she was able to predict that colourful 'foods' contained colour in the ingredients. She could pronounce 'hydrogenated' so she would call it the H word.
By letting to do that instead lecturing, she felt empowered by deciding for herself. She found two packages that she liked that didn't contain any of the three words.
I bought it for her, and agreed to give her the unhealthy snack for the rest of the week.
Apparently she gets two snacks a day at school. The morning one is a healthy snack while the afternoon one is an unhealthy snack.
I am not not doubtful that snacks at her school are actually unhealthy, but how unhealthy is acceptable?
In any case, I am thrilled I will be joining her for piano and that she will now start to read the labels for herself and decide.
And tomorrow is Thankful Thursday... What is on your list?
Goodnight,
Kim
