Slowing Down

Today began at 7:15, when the sounds of Jemma's voice barged into my sleep. "Momma? Ove you. Momma? Ove you" from her crib. Now, who could resist that wake-up call, even when it is about an hour earlier than she usually wakes up for the day?

Annie had school this morning and then I debated packing us all up and driving to Lake Michigan for the afternoon, but I forced myself to laze around the house and yard instead because this is the first weekend we've had in about eight weeks with absolutely no plans. And even though I've been looking forward to this, to a weekend where we can be impulsively wandering from here to there right in our own neighborhood, it's like my brain can't quite handle it. It wants, badly, to make a plan. It wants to make a list (diapers, blankets, fan, bathing suits, sunscreen, monitors, DVD player, dolls, books, jammies, toothbrushes, clothes for church) and cram everything on that list into bags and put those bags in the car. But NO! Instead, I walked to the grocery store for kitchen twine and a bottle of red wine, drew lots more chalk creations on our driveway, sat down to a real family dinner, biked to a park and to get ice cream with the girls, and drank a glass of wine while painting my toenails. Next, downstairs to watch the first presidential debate and probably fall asleep on the couch.

I'm coming to the end of the Edgar Sawtelle book I've been reading for what seems like forever (it is over 500 pages) and, since I'm reading it at the same time as Parenting with Love and Logic, the following quote jumped out at me. (It's about training dogs.)

"Unless they had worked long and hard at it, most people thought training meant forcing their will on a dog. Or that training required some magical gift. Both ideas were wrong. Real training meant watching, listening, diverting a dog's exuberance, not suppressing it. You couldn't change a river into a sea, but you could trace a new channel for it to follow."

Dog training, parenting: who knew they were so similar?