Six

Dear Grady,

Today you turned six. 

The last year has wiped out any remaining traces of your babyhood. Your chubby cheeks and sweet baby smell have been replaced by gangly limbs and a lisp-inducing gap where your front teeth used to be. Your wrist and thigh rolls have been replaced by eye rolls. You are a kid, not my baby. 

You are the coolest kid I know. You are creative and imaginative and I love seeing how your brain works. You want to be a musician (like daddy, or the Foo Fighters, but better than the Foo Fighters, in fact, last week you told us when you grow up your band will be called the Foo Fighters Red Dragon). You want to be a history teacher so you can talk about knights all day and help kids. You are happiest when you're sitting in front of your sketchbook, filling page after page with Ninja Turtles and knights in castles. 

You talk all the time. Like, all the time. You ask questions and you try to figure stuff out and you don't let me get away with explaining things away with "that's just the way it is!" ("But there has to be a reason," you insist.) You are consumed with fairness and I'm doing my best to protect your sweet conviction (while not beating my head against the wall when you ask for the fiftieth time why you have to go to bed hours before me).

You are the best big brother to Poppy. You are loving and kind, and the best part of my day is when she sees you after waking up. She goes from grumbly-half-asleep to pure sunshine when she sees her Guh-guh. You're the only one who can calm her down when she's feeling squirrelly. You sing "Poppy Doodle" and she goes from unmanageable honey badger to a slightly more manageable honey badger. You've taught her to laugh at burps and farts. You share your toys and your food and your Mama and Daddy. Witnessing the ferocity and depth with which you love your little sister is my greatest joy. 

Grady, life is not always shiny and bright. As you grow into your own person, we've had challenges. We are both stubborn and sassy and sometimes it feels like we are going in circles. I'm doing my best to stay patient and embrace the person you're becoming. Some days this is easier than others. 

Six years ago you were born and made me a mama. Every day since, I have felt like the luckiest person alive. Thank you. I love you. Happy sixth birthday, Grady Bug.  

Summer Reading Bingo

Shawn came home and found me in my element: hunched over poster board, using my big ruler, Sharpies in varying colours and widths strewn about. He asked what I was doing and after I told him, he laughed and accused me of taking my "clipboard of fun" to the next level. Advanced Clipboard of Fun, if you will.

I don't even care.

I made an awesome Summer Reading Bingo Card for Grady and he loves it. When he woke up the next morning and found it hanging on the wall he was so excited to get started. We've already made one big run to the library for books and he's managed to knock off nine squares (there's 100 in total) in less than a week. 

Summer Reading Bingo is something I thought up to keep Grady interested in reading during summer break. Grady's school is closed for two full months and that's a long break. I don't want him to lose the momentum he gained, or his enthusiasm for reading. I also want a visual reminder for myself so I can measure how much I'm reading with Grady. With life getting so busy this summer, I don't want Grady's reading to suffer. The visual reminder of how many books we've read together, and how many we have left to go before school starts, will (hopefully) help me stay on top of summer reading better than if I'm relying on my memory. 

Want to play with us? All I did was make a 10x10 grid on poster board and fill it with topics featured in kids' books. Some are easy (Pete the Cat, Iron Man, trucks, etc.) and some will require a trip to the library (ballet dancers). When we read a book featuring one of the 100 topics on the bingo card, Grady gets to colour in the square. He only gets to colour in one square per book (so Pete at the Beach can either knock off the Pete the Cat square, or the beach square, or the cat square, but not all three squares). 

When Grady gets a bingo (ten books in a row), he gets to choose a treat from the list below the grid. The treats are an assortment of things we already had planned for the summer (don't tell him that) like going out for ice cream cones, sleeping in the tent, staying up late, and things like that. 

At almost six years old, the bingo card method ties in perfectly with Grady's need for control (he decides what we're reading and what treat he's earning) and the visual aid is perfect for his personality (he likes to see his progress) and where he's at developmentally. 

How do you keep your kids interested in reading over the summer? 

Thank You Teacher Gift - Customized Pencils

We're stumbling toward the end of the school year with a calendar full of spirit days and classroom events. The thought of adding one more thing to my to-do list is daunting but I wanted to give Grady's teachers a gift from the heart. Grady's first year of school has been more positive than we could have hoped for, largely because of his teachers. Teachers are my heroes. I say that without an ounce of humour. I could not teach 22 five-year-olds and maintain my sanity. 

I realize that teachers probably accrue a lot of stuff, and my desire to give a heartfelt gift doesn't outweigh their desire to not be buried in things. I wanted to find the perfect balance of meaningful and useful. 

I used 1/8" metal hand stamps, a black ink pad, and a rubber mallet to make custom pencils for Grady's teachers and I love how they turned out. With that being said, this was not a fun craft to do with an almost-six-year-old. It requires too much dexterity and the risk-reward ratio was off. My fingers got whacked a few too many times is what I'm saying. 

We added a card with sincere messages from both of us (I may have cried a little while writing mine) and a coffee gift card. It may not be the most elaborate or fancy teacher thank you gift but it checks all my boxes. 

Do you do teacher thank you gifts at the end of the year? What do you give?

Encouraging Kids to be on Mother Nature's Team As Part of The Whole Family Happiness Project

Grady is very into "teamwork" these days. Our family is a team. It's his job to be kind and loving to Poppy and follow our family rules. His kindergarten class is a team. It's his job to follow his teachers' instructions and be nice to his classmates. When we're facing a challenge with Grady, we approach it as teamwork. With the days getting longer as summer draws closer, we're making bedtime all about teamwork. It's my responsibility to brush Grady's sugar bugs and it's Grady's job to pick out a bedtime story. It's up to us as parents to make sure Grady gets enough sleep and it's Grady's job to go to bed when we tell him it's bedtime. It's amazing how excited and accepting he becomes when we frame it in a way he understands. Teamwork makes sense to him. He wants to contribute to his team.

So when we noticed that Grady was becoming less connected to the great outdoors, choosing instead to spend most of his time inside, we decided to "team up" with Mother Nature. He's always been interested in gardening but balks at doing yard work. Instead of asking him to weed the garden beds or water the lawn (booooring), we gave him his own pots and let him choose what to plant in them to build his own little garden. It's his job to water his flowers, it's his flowers' job to grow. He's not overwhelmed by a large garden or hours of yard work, but he does need to check in on his pots every day to make sure they're doing okay. It's a small part of his day but it's becoming a habit. Soon it will be second nature.

As part of his garden, we helped him build a bee bath. Despite never being stung, Grady is terrified of bees. We've come across worms, slugs, beetles, ladybugs, and many more creepy crawlies in our gardening adventures and it doesn't faze him. Add a solitary bee to the equation? Grady is out. Gardening session over. The plants are on their own, hopefully it will rain so they get a drink of water, he's heading inside where there are no bees. Bees get a bad rap with the kindergarten crowd and we wanted to boost Grady's comfort level and view bees as a necessary part of our garden. It was shockingly easy to get him on Team Bee when we explained that without bees to pollinate our flowers, there would be no strawberries (his favourite local delicacy) and without strawberries, there can be no strawberry ice cream (the horror!). It takes ten seconds to say "don't be afraid of bees" but it only takes a few seconds more to explain why bees exist and how we can help them, and how helping them boosts our own happiness (because who can be unhappy with a bowl of strawberry ice cream in front of them? Monsters, that's who.). 

I treasure our time together in the garden. We're not distracted by screens or piles of dirty dishes or "just let me throw a load of towels in the washer." We're hanging out, digging in the dirt, talking about bugs, filling watering cans, working together to make our space beautiful. We're not experienced gardeners by any stretch of the imagination (I probably have as much gardening knowledge as Grady does) but that doesn't matter. What matters is that I feel happier and less anxious when I'm connected to Mama Earth and I want to pass that on to my children. It's my job to introduce my kids to the pleasure of planting something, tending to it, caring for it, and watching it grow. It's their job to bloom. 

This post is part of The Whole Family Happiness Project. Opinions expressed are my own. For more information, or to share your Whole Family Happiness story, visit Whole Family Happiness on Facebook.