Update: 9-13-11

I've been giving some thought to what I'd posted last Tuesday. It's moving slowly, but I have come up with some activities that I can share with my two older boys; I'm still clueless as to what my youngest is interested in, aside from following his brothers around.

My oldest, Ty, really likes reading and creative things. I like reading too, so I thought we might put together a mini book club for just the two of us. We'll take turns picking books; that way he can share books he's enjoyed, and I can share books I enjoyed when I was his age. Once a month, we'll go out to breakfast or something, and we'll talk about the books. Another thought I had to try later is to try writing a story with him. He's really into writing his own stuff. I thought it might be a good exercise to reinforce the writing process, and it would be something we could do together. I don't want to bite off too much early on, especially since we're still adjusting to the changes that came with this last move.

My second, Luke, really likes building and creating things. Recently he's gotten into Perler beads. He loves creating neat designs with those. I'm thinking he and I can work together to make some neat things with that. I can help with creating patterns since Perler beads aren't too far off from the cross stitching I used to do. Moving on from there I might invite him to learn how to work with resins, plastics, and other supplies I use for costume prop-building.

I'm still not sure what I can do with Logan, my youngest, aside from give him more attention in general. I'm thinking maybe sitting down to read a book with him, outside of school time. It's kind of difficult to see where his interests are, like what he really likes. His ability to talk is still limited. He likes doing everything he sees his brothers doing or what they like. A lot of this is just copying them though; I'm trying to figure out what he likes that makes him different from Ty and Luke. Maybe I'll have something for next week.

This week, I'll be reading from Dragon Spell; I let Ty pick our first book. I'm thinking about working with Luke to come up with some Pokemon themed bead patterns, since he really like's Pokemon right now. Logan... I'm going to keep working with him to see what he likes.

Building Bridges With My Boys

For September, my focus will be building bridges with my boys. In other words, I want to work on building a stronger relationship with each of them. Clearly, this is a good thing, but what does it mean practically?

Practically, it means I need to try and spend a little bit of time with each of my boys each day, whenever possible. Today it will not be possible to spend any time really with my two older boys. They are off with my husband today--my husband works about 2.5 hours away, and that is where Ty and Luke's scout troop is. Long story short: we own a house in the Raleigh area; my husband got a job after graduating from NC State with his PhD; we put our house on the market and moved closer to where he works (renting). After a year, our house still hadn't sold, and we were running out of money to pay for both rent and a mortgage, so we made the not-so-fun choice to move back to the house we owned. My husband would commute; we'd still keep the house up for sale, and if it sold, we'd move back down near to where my husband's work is. To avoid disrupting the lives of our kids too much, we opted to keep them with their scout troops, since our last move nearly cost Ty his Arrow of Light, which anyone who knows anything about scouts will know that's a fairly important achievement for those getting ready to move from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts. Different troops do different things at different times, so changing troops created some overlap and gaps for Ty. But, that means, Ty and Luke will be hanging with their Dad today, and he will take them to Scouts tonight. They will probably not be home until really late tonight. We homeschool, so I'm thankful that our schedule is flexible enough to allow them Tuesdays off to travel like that, and then sleep in on Wednesdays since they get home so late.

Believe it or not, that was the short version of the story. XD Back on track... Things I can do to work on my relationship with my boys is 1) spend a little bit of time with them every day outside of school time, 2) set aside longer periods of time where I spend time doing things each boy enjoys, and 3) paying attention to them when they want my attention even if it's not especially convenient for me. Let's see how this goes with this first week.