A marked improvement...

Yes, today I felt in a better space to deal with what came at me.

We started off with some friends coming over this morning.

After they left we sat down for some reading time. The kids really enjoy it and instigate it as a way of reconnecting and resting. So we had a mixture of books that Danielle enjoys, and then read one of Nathan's chapter books.

They then decided to watch a video with a couple of Hans Christian Andersen fairytales on it while I prepared lunch. They've had them for years and used to watch them daily, but they haven't been out for many months.

We then headed off to do our grocery shopping. Nathan announced to me today that he wanted to help get the things. He usually does anyway lol, but for some reason he decided to approach it with intent. I also decided for the first time to show him about the prices on things with his newfound interest in numbers and will slowly introduce him to price comparison and the way the numbers are displayed to show $ and cents.

The kids chose a bag of sweets as their treat today. They ate what they wanted on the way home and then Nathan announced he wanted to save the rest for tomorrow. Since Danielle still seemed to be intent on eating, I suggested that we divide the rest in half. Fine. So we split the 10 lollies into 2 piles and Nathan put his into a container. He then went about wanting to keep eating the other 5 - but no, those were his sisters. Hmmm, a dilemma. There was a bit of explaining about what he'd chosen to do, he was free to eat the ones he'd saved. No, he wanted to save them and put them in his room. Only problem was a few hours later when Danielle came out chewing on a lollie - oh oh! I had forgotten to directly let her know that those ones weren't hers. OK, chalk that up to experience and move on and remember to inform Danielle next time. Nathan was promised a bit of chocolate from mum and dad's stash tomorrow to make up for the loss that occurred. All was well. And he still has one lollie saved for tomorrow. Phew!

After the kids put away the groceries, I decided to sort out Danielle's wardrobe as I had acquired a storage hanging thing that I thought would make it easier for arranged her winter clothes and playcentre clothes into. The kids had a heap of fun trying on bigger clothes as well as some fleece sleepsuits that Nathan wore a few years ago that Danielle will wear this winter.

The kids instigated a game this afternoon where one of them was a deer and the other was shooting it. I'm kind of still uncomfortable with gun play - but hey, it seems to have come from out of nowhere - well of course it hasn't, it's in the books we read (namely, Little House in the Big Woods). I guess it's almost instinctive to do it since guns/weapons and killing for food is so much in our history it's unavoidable (not to mention the meat that we eat, that Nathan is fully aware of where it came from!). We don't have toy guns in the house, but hey it seems a finger does the same job.