Slice of Life #3 - Breakfast


This year we became a three-schedule family.  The girls are in elementary (8:30-3:30); my son is in middle school (7:30-2:30) and I'm teaching high school (8:55-4:05).  It really means we're going from early to late.  Every.  Day.

When I got the notice that #1 son would be getting on the bus at 6:30am, I was a bit shocked.  Seriously?  The poor kid would be non-stop tired.  I imagined grouchy mornings, pulling back the covers to squinty eyes and a crackly voice pleading for five more minutes.  I imagined evening homework battles with an exhausted kid trying to do math, writing and reading when he really just wanted to go to sleep.

Middle school has been none of the above.  Like so much of parenting, my worries outweighed the reality.  Somehow my kid gets out of bed every morning at 5:55, rubs the sleep out of his eyes and gets on with it.  No drama even if he is tired.  The best part is that we have breakfast together every morning.  I fix my coffee and bowl of oatmeal, and he makes his little feast - toast with jam, bagels and cream cheese, yogurt, fruit, cereal, whatever he feels like that day, and we sit at the island chatting about sports, what his plan for the day is, or what the weather will be like.

I'm savoring every moment with this boy who before my eyes has transformed from a chubby, semi-crazy toddler into a squirrely, elementary-school, on-the-go boy, and now into this responsible almost-teenager who does his homework and helps me make dinner.  I'm savoring this in-between time of middle school, when he's too old for most of his little kids stuff (except Legos), but not yet an independent teenager off with friends, wanting to drive, get a job, go on dates.

I'm savoring the quiet breakfast conversations while I'm still mom and he's still my little boy.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Teachers, take back your power and create an amazing end to this semester!

Image
It's December and that means the end of the semester is rushing at us, faster than Joe Rantz's boat in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin (sorry, just reading The Boys in the Boat ...fabulous, by the way). Despite the fact that I allow retakes on every assignment all semester, somehow the realization that it's December wakes up many of my students, and now the work pours in.  There are also final projects, conferences, revisions, book groups, portfolios, grading (and more grading), study sessions, finals ... and stress. DID I MENTION STRESS?! Students are stressed. Teachers are stressed. And parents are definitely stressed. This is the time of the year when I wonder why I didn't take a sabbatical this year. I could be in the English country side, curled up next to 17th century stone fireplace that's hung with fresh pine boughs and ribbon, sipping a steaming mug of coffee, the snow softly falling outside the window, all while writing that book I've talked about for ...
Read more

A Classroom Library in High School

Image
My transition from being a middle school teacher to being a high school teacher was bumpy.  I took a job in a brand new high school to teach a reading intervention class and 9th grade English at the very last minute (a week before school started) two years ago.  I was thrilled and terrified at the same time - what did I know about teaching HIGH SCHOOL kids?  Would I be too babyish for this job? So I marched in ready to be a REAL high school teacher.  I would follow my colleagues and learn the ropes.  Armed with Lord of the Flies , I began my first literature unit. It was a dismal, flat-out, fall-on-your-face failure. Most kids did not read the book.  Most could not read the book.  And most were not thinking at all.  They were waiting for me to tell them, lead them, to "discuss" the book. Year one was SO educating and enlightening.  And oh so wrong.  My students did not read until we got independent reading going for real....
Read more

Teachers: You Matter More Than You Know

Image
This week was difficult at my high school.  We lost a teacher to cancer.  A teacher who was young, energetic and cared so much about his students, his football players, his family.  As I sat this morning in the warm September sun on the bleachers of our football stadium, I watched his young wife, their toddler sons, his parents.  I watched the bleachers fill with faculty, students, coaches and friends.  Graduates came back.  Faculty who've moved on came back.  And we mourned, and we celebrated Jon's life. Jon was pretty quiet in my eyes.  We taught at different ends of the building and our paths only crossed occasionally.  My first year, I got lost in his wing of the building, trying to deliver my keys so he and his class could change my car's oil for his automotive car care class.  Not only did he change the oil, but he told me he was concerned about my tires being low and he didn't think I'd rotated them lately, so he and the kids ...
Read more