I’ve mentioned before that Will’s past 2 years at school have not been happy ones. He is so focused and usually calm that the lack of discipline in 1st and 2nd grade (he had the same teacher) did not suit his learning style. Did that sound like teacher-speak?

Well, this year has completely changed. He got the male teacher in 3rd grade (there’s only one in the whole elementary school) and 2 friends he hadn’t been in class with since kindergarten and he has suddenly blossomed! Even the students he’d been with in 1st and 2nd grade, he sees in a different light now: “I can’t believe Danny’s been in my class for 2 years and we weren’t friends until now!”
Friday afternoon, a friend walked home from school with him and then he and a neighbor ended up staying for dinner. Then yesterday afternoon was the first meeting of his book-writing club, of which he is the president. There are 4 other members…3 neighbor girls and another boy…but only 2 of the girls came yesterday. Will jumped into boss mode. He quickly showed the girls around the house and then pulled all the chairs up to the dining room table so they could meet, Sophie joining the club, too. They began the writing of a book. I’m not sure when the next meeting will be…

I am just so glad for the positive changes in and for Will. He is such a happy, laid-back little guy now. :) 3 months ago

A few weeks ago, when it was still grilling weather, Todd grilled us some burgers and I doctored them all up yummy with bacon and cheese and mayoketchuplettucetomatopickles…the works. “Is that red meat?” Sophie asked. A hamburger? Yes, dear, yes it is red meat.
We sat down to eat them and dug right in…except when Sophie picked hers up, she maneuvered it in such a way that her burger slipped riiiight out of the bun and onto her plate. “Woops!” she faked and went on eating her ketchup, tomato, lettuce sandwich.
Sophie will no longer eat red meat. That means no meatloaf (her former favorite) no spaghetti with meat sauce, no shepherds pie. It has also extended into not eating pepperoni on her pizza (I don’t really like pepperoni either) and no lunch meat because there are nitrates in there! Then yesterday, she went through her Halloween candy and took out all the things that she thinks have heinous, cancer-causing red dye in them and piled them on the table (on a side note, I still have not even found her Halloween candy bag!)
This is all well and good because I don’t really eat that much candy either and I’d already limited the amount of red meat we eat, or any meat for that matter, and had found uncured bacon without nitrates…but darn it, I’ve still got a husband who is faaaar from ever deciding it’s ok to be a vegetarian (who is actually almost anemic) and a son who barely eats anything anyway and so she is making pretty difficult to plan meals around here!
Truthfully, I’m pretty proud that she knows so much about this stuff and really cares…:) 6 months ago

At the zoo the other day, we saw some kids with leashes on, some attached to stuffed animals strapped across the kids’ backs. Sophie asked me, “Did you ever put those on us?” No. “Good,” she answered. “I wouldn’t have wanted a monkey on my back.”

^{^}

Sophie and Will were asking me about Democrats and Republicans. “Do we know any Republicans?” asked Sophie. I laughed and answered that yes, most of the people we know are Republicans. Their aunt Emily, Jodi and I are Democrats, I said. Grandma. But most of their aunts and uncles are Republicans. “And Sarah’s kind of in the middle.” So then I explained some differences between Ds & Rs concerning things like taxes and capital punishment and businesses and Sophie suddenly decided, “I don’t think Sarah’s a Republican! She doesn’t believe those things!” Heehee…

This election season is really making an impact on Sophie and she is really aware of what’s going on and wants to know what it means. It’s cool to see her interested and learning… 9 months ago

Yesterday, Will decided he was going to write a book (“I’m ready to write my book now”) and nothing would do until I got him set up with a blank Word document, ready to type away. After a short tutorial on spacing and font size, I stood there still as he stared at the screen. “Could you go away?” he asked quietly. And so I did…until he called me back in for a help a few minutes later.

Inevitably, Sophie got wind of this project and planted herself next to Will (sometimes taking over the actual writing) until the story was a joint venture as well as a source of screaming and fighting. When I set Sophie up on the laptop with her own blank Word document, it did little good since then she didn’t know what to write. Ah, welcome to the world of the writer, little girl!

The story was printed up, with blank spaces left for pictures, and I was surprised at how good it is! Will seems to have a nature feeling for sentence structure and the flow of a story. Sure, there are spots where the action jumps a little but overall, it pretty much makes sense!

So then last night, I was instructed to write their author blurbs for the book jacket. Ego. 16 months ago

Sophie and Will ran a lemonade stand yesterday and I tried to make it a learning experience…and ended up being very proud of them.

Monday night, Sophie began developing a business plan, setting costs, hours, recipes and producing signs. They also decided that half their profits would be sent to Japan. I have to admit I was a little unsure about this, afraid that they wouldn’t sell any lemonade at all let alone enough to send half their income off to Japan. But I went ahead with the plan and we headed to the grocery store to stock up on lemons and sugar and the appropriate cups. Sophie’s business plan changed somewhere in there and lemon shake-ups were added to the offerings so we purchased 2 different types of cups: a small one for plain lemonade ($.50) and a larger one for the lemon shake-ups at $1.50 each. I pointed out the price of everything we bought and showed them how organic sugar costs more than twice as much as regular. They had brought their own money but I ended up financing the start-up at about $16.

Back at home, I set them up with a table and umbrella and comfortable chairs, lemonade, ice, cups, lemons etc. and we made a first, experimental lemon shake-up…delicious! Customers started rolling in including the cruising policemen, teenagers, neighbors, a semi-truck driver, Sophie’s old bus driver. Some people, I think upon seeing the sign indicating proceeds would go to Japan, just gave them money for nothing or several dollar bills for a simple lemonade. I think their success was due in part to waving their signs and yelling at passersby but it did work because they made close to $30, almost doubling their investment. And Sophie says now that she wants to send all the money to Japan. No more talk of buying her own iPhone or loads of candy.
Somewhere in there, something changed for the better… 22 months ago