The nice thing about living in a place with so many elementary schools that follow a year-round calendar is that there is almost always some group of children who are currently tracked out and therefore, there are almost always interesting camps available for this age group. Before we pulled Luke out of school, I sat down with our park district's most recent catalog of programs and proceeded to spend several hours writing down all the things I thought might be of interest to Luke. And then, I realized that I hadn't even looked at what was offered by local museums, libraries, private businesses, and county and state parks (which are apparently different from the parks in the park district? Who knew!) I quickly gave up on the list and put together a spreadsheet. Then, I gave up on the spreadsheet and bought an unnecessarily large desk calendar. And...then, I gave into the fact that if we tried to do it all, (a) we'd be broke and (b) we wouldn't have time to actually do school.
So now, the only things left on the calendar are the things that sounded like they'd be irresistible to Luke. A few weeks ago, he went and dissected owl pellets and found enough bones to make an almost-complete rodent skeleton. Those bones are now hanging proudly on our fridge. And this week, he's going to dinosaur camp for a few hours in the afternoons. Before leaving, he was pretty convinced that they were going to go on a real dinosaur dig and excavate an entire velociraptor skeleton. (Weston was pretty convinced there would be real, live dinosaurs there and he was not pleased when I told him that only four- and five-year-olds could go to this camp.)
I knew Luke would be excited about camp, but you know what I didn't factor in? This is nap time for West and Another Baby, which is inconvenient in some ways, but amazingly convenient in one way, which is that for the first time in five weeks, I'm enjoying the benefits of having two sleeping children and one awake-but-out-of-the-house child. The silence is delicious.
...And now, having enjoyed an entire 20 minutes of luxurious silence and by-myself-ness, it is now time to go wake/try not to wake two sleeping children, load them into the car, and go pick Luke back up. And therein lies the inconvenience. (I still think the 20 minutes were worth it!)
So now, the only things left on the calendar are the things that sounded like they'd be irresistible to Luke. A few weeks ago, he went and dissected owl pellets and found enough bones to make an almost-complete rodent skeleton. Those bones are now hanging proudly on our fridge. And this week, he's going to dinosaur camp for a few hours in the afternoons. Before leaving, he was pretty convinced that they were going to go on a real dinosaur dig and excavate an entire velociraptor skeleton. (Weston was pretty convinced there would be real, live dinosaurs there and he was not pleased when I told him that only four- and five-year-olds could go to this camp.)
I knew Luke would be excited about camp, but you know what I didn't factor in? This is nap time for West and Another Baby, which is inconvenient in some ways, but amazingly convenient in one way, which is that for the first time in five weeks, I'm enjoying the benefits of having two sleeping children and one awake-but-out-of-the-house child. The silence is delicious.
...And now, having enjoyed an entire 20 minutes of luxurious silence and by-myself-ness, it is now time to go wake/try not to wake two sleeping children, load them into the car, and go pick Luke back up. And therein lies the inconvenience. (I still think the 20 minutes were worth it!)
1 comment:
wow! sounds like Raleigh has a lot of great places for kids (and grownups) to go and experience all kinds of things -- hope you guys are having a great winter -- Kitkat and I enjoyed our brief visit with y'all Jim
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