Springing Forward

Yeah, I know I'm a little ahead of myself, but I am sooo ready for this weekend's change to Daylight Savings Time.  Actually I'm ready for winter to be GONE, and two weeks from today it will be, at least by the calendar.  This has been a hard winter, and I can't wait to celebrate the equinox.  Meanwhile, I'm going to really enjoy the lingering daylight of an evening. 

In early celebration, I bought myself a beautiful peach-colored shirt yesterday.  It's a great color on me and such a nice change from the ubiquitous blackblackblack of my winter clothes.  I'd lost 20 or 25 pounds over the course of the year due to the upheaval in my personal life because I'm one of those people who doesn't eat when she's stressed, and of course I lost a bunch more weight in the hospital (NPO for two weeks is good for that).   Now I have a closet full of clothes that don't fit, and not much budget for shopping, so I was very happy to find such a pretty spring-y shirt for only nine bucks.

Liam seems to be doing better.  We haven't seen his counselor in two weeks-she couldn't fit us in last week, and this week Liam came home sick the day of our appointment, so I cancelled the appointment.  But his general disposition has improved and we're working really hard on getting him back on track with his school work.  Both of us had gotten very lazy, but no more.  I know from painful experience how hard it is to get back to good habits once the laziness is established, so I've set some pretty tight parameters for him.  He needs to work hard on everything: reading comprehension, math concepts, even handwriting.  He protests mightily while having to do it, but I can also see the pride in him when he's done a good job.

I'm also pushing him pretty hard to try some new things.  He has been really averse to learning to ride a bike.  He's had his since he was five and he has never even tried to learn to ride it;  in fact, it still has the training wheels on it.  He's old enough that not knowing how to ride a bike going to  cause him problems socially and I want to nip that in the bud, so our project for his spring break is for him to learn to ride.  I have very unfond memories of my daddy teaching me to ride, and I don't want it to be as traumatic for him, so this should be interesting.

He asked for and received Heelys for Christmas, but hasn't spent much time learning how to navigate while wearing them, which was making me crazy since they cost a lot more than I would usually spend on his shoes.  So I've been encouraging him to practice on them a lot (with my heart in my mouth-he's really not very good yet!).  He also asked for a scooter.  He wants a Fusion and I've promised him one once he masters the Razor.  I'm hoping that learning to balance himself on the Heelys and scooter will help him with balancing on his bike.

There is a method to this madness.  Beyond helping him to push his limits a little bit, all of this is designed to get him outside and away from the ubiquitous screens.  Again, we had gotten lazy over the course of the winter, and I finally realized how much time he was spending in front of the television, the Playstation, the computer.  I am certainly not anti-any of those (well, I don't love the Playstation), but I can definitely see a deterioration in his behavior when that's all he does, so it's time to severely curtail them.

Being an only child has its benefits, but I worry about him being lonely.  His best friend changed schools after Christmas break and while they still see each other occasionally, he misses him.  He has a pretty good variety of interests, but has never been much of a joiner.  While he did play t-ball for two seasons, he's not interested in playing baseball or soccer ("Mama, I'm lazy and I hate organized sports.").  The Boy Scout troop for which I signed him up in the fall turned out to be so badly organized that they still weren't having den meetings in November, which really left a bad taste in both our mouths.  I've been sort of preoccupied lately and that's led to not being quite as proactive as I should be about arranging play dates for him.  God bless his friend Sophia's mother, who has invited him over often to play during this time. 

His spring break starts at noon on Friday the 16th and goes through the Tuesday after Easter.  I have only one treatment during that time, so I'm really hoping I feel good and the weather cooperates so we can spend lots of time outside.  Both of us need to clear the cobwebs.

Comments

[Jennifer]

Amen to that, sister friend. I love the tone of this post: all planning and purging and spring cleaning-ish.

Spring FORWARD indeed.

[julia]

I can't wait until the weather gets better. It hasn't really been a bad winter, it's just been long and cold and hard to get out of the house with two babies in tow. I'm hoping the spring allows me to take them for walks without it turning into a production of the Itchy And Scratchy show.

[catherine]

This post sounds as if I could have written it. I go through the same things with my Liam. I had to force him to learn to ride a bike. He doesn't like sports, though we tried soccer for several years. He wants those wheelie shoes, but he's not allowed to wear them to school. He spends way too much time on computer and video games. I've started making him set the timer for one hour. Then he has to do something else, like read, practice the piano, get on the treadmill, before he can get back on the computer. It's a struggle, but I agree with you that he's better when he isn't on 'the screen' all the time.

[Marie]

Awww...your little Liam is an introvert and that is mostly a good thing as long as you know how to nurture such a creature. Mostly as long as you foster a good sense of self-worth and teach them how to develop healthy relationships with others, the rest will fall in place. Other than that, I wouldn't sweat the small stuff.

[Meg]

#4 is the absolute worst!!