Off

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I am on "vacation" this week.  No school.  No real schedule.  Flexible bedtimes.

It's a mom's vacation; it includes a lot of cooking and dirty dishes, relaxed rules on movie viewing, a sick hubby, a croupy baby, and a low energy 4 yo*.  It does not include a cruise or warm weather.

I'm in my yoga pants doing important/strenuous things like building new play lists in itunes and reviewing foreign language curriculum while I devise homeschooling schedules that I know full well are too ambitious for an actual human to accomplish. 

It's a phantom sort of week- in a good way.  A week for rest and play and imagination and love.

Unfortunately the week will fly by if I'm not careful to look and see. 

I need to see and take note of things like:

• my 3 yo, with his runny nose, kissing my neck. 
• My 4 yo aiming the laser pointer of his toy gun at one of our Christmas ornaments pretending to blow it to smithereens.  
• My 9 yo riding his new scooter in circles around my 18 who is refinishing an Adorandak lawn chair.  
• My 11 year old drawing with new art supplies.
• My 14 yo sitting with her feet up at the den computer highlighting something in her Bible.  
• My 16 yo writing a book list on parchment with an old fashioned quill pen while listening to The Black Keys.
• My husband who is being the most amazingly non-whiny, non-needy, snuffly sort of sick person. 

If I remember to look, what I will see is my whole family in various pursuits without the tyranny of the clock. Nothing especially recordable or momentous.  Just us, "off." 

I'll need these memories to get through the January-February grind.




*In our experience Christmas can be a bit too exciting for a child with a FOD, even in the absence of an acute illness.  Christmas morning left our 4 year old "burning" through his blood sugars for several days.  Blessedly, staying home while relaxing, and taking in extra hourly carbohydrates meshed well with the family's week off.


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