Made it!

Second grader ready to roll!

Laurel started second grade yesterday and suddenly my house feels very quiet. I babysat for three families this summer, so we almost always had some extra kids around. It was great fun, a little wild at times but mellow at others. We had some good adventures. I think the best part was learning how to catch salamanders and crayfish in the creek, and watching them all relax on my porch together, painting and reading and watching the world go by. We sang a lot of Raffi and Girl Scout songs. I also think it was very valuable (although the kids might disagree) that I let them get bored, and then let that whole whiny what-can-I-do cycle play out until they figured out something interesting. One day it led to an elaborate game of dress up. Another day it was a lemonade stand. Last week they started making fishing poles out of the weeds in my backyard.

The "Little Brother"

It's one of those things I'm glad I did, but am not sure I'll do again. First, my house was constantly trashed and I pretty much did only emergency triage cleaning for 2 months. I'm not even that fussy about dirt but it's grossing me out. Second, the kids I watched were all Marko and Laurel's age. Trying to manage activities on their level, while also keeping a busy toddler occupied, was a real challenge. If we went on a hike, he had to ride in a backpack because he couldn't keep up with their pace, but then he would be very antsy from not getting enough exercise. Any art supply we brought out ended up in Max's hair (there's actually a semi-permanent pink tinge to it right now from a mysterious source). There were positives, too, of course. Every kid became a surrogate sibling to him and loved to read to him or teach him songs. He adored them all and learned to say their names. And finally, 5 or 6 kids is a lot of kids no matter how wonderfully behaved. Just the sheer number of pretzels consumed, the weight of all those water bottles in a backpack, the number of lost shoes, the time it takes just to get everybody to the bathroom.

In the spring I started making a lot of plans for summer. However, once it got going, I really just put out one new activity or toy each day and planned one outdoor/gross motor activity. Every so often we would bring our lunches and water bottles and bathing suits and go out for a big "wander" and discover new libraries, spray parks, corner stores to spend the spare change we found, trails, and playgrounds. They could be out for 4 or 5 hours at a time with no problems as long as I really listened to and honored their requests to stop instead of pushing them to get to the place where I thought we should stop.

Overall, I would consider it a success! But I'm going to need a few weeks to recover.