The Sneaky Reader and the Hot Job

I have a night owl and an early bird. My sweet girl is a night owl like her parents. She'd stay up all night and sleep late the next day if she could. Falling asleep has always been a bit of a challenge for her. Perhaps that's why she loves to read in bed at night. And she often sneaks in a bit of reading—okay, a LOT of reading—after we've given the lights out. So much so, in fact, that I've on occasion discovered her still reading past midnight and had to take her glasses away till morning just so she'd actually get some sleep.

What's most fascinating about her is that if we don't catch her reading exploits, she most always feels the need to confess them. I will often see her padding down the hall toward me well after bedtime, hair mussed from lying on her pillow, a guilty look on her face. Or the next morning after finally dragging herself from slumber, she'll level a serious gaze at me. "Mommy, I read a little bit last night."

Currently, she's working on The Chronicles of Narnia. There are so many worse things she could do than sneak in a bit of C. S. Lewis after bedtime.

Being a night owl, she loves to sleep in next day. She got this honest. And as she's nine now and nearing puberty, I've discovered that she needs to sleep a bit extra. That's a luxury of homeschooling. The day's work waits for them, not the other way around.

Her little brother is a different story. On designated reading nights, I'll often step into their room to tell them it's time to put their books down and go to sleep, only to find him already passed out on his bed, his book shipwrecked at his side.

He's an early bird. In fact, he's the only honest early bird in the family. Some wouldn't consider him very early (approximately 8am), but being a night owl, I do. If they get in bed early enough, most nights we let them have a bit of reading time before lights out.

He's my happy, chatty, sweet and smiley alarm clock.

Two mornings ago he sneaked into my room and crawled into my bed immediately upon wakening, as is his custom, and announced, as is not his custom, "Mommy, I want to be your huggy pillow."

Awesome! I moved the pillow and hugged him close instead. Five seconds later...

"A huggy pillow's job sure is a hot job."

It's it, Mommy

I tutor/teach English at a local homeschool co-op on Mondays. Today my seven-year-old son was a little sick, so he sat in my classroom instead of going to the play room with the other younger siblings. He hunkered down in a chair near where I stood with his nose buried in my iPhone, probably playing Angry Birds Star Wars.

So, I taught the fifth- and sixth-grade girls about nouns and pronouns, then I gave them a sample sentence:

Molly rode the horse.

Then I had students plug in pronouns to replace the nouns. They figured out "she" for the subject, but trying to decide on a pronoun for the direct object "horse" stumped them. One called out "him." I explained that we don't know the gender of the horse, and the horse is not being personified (like in a story with talking animals). I asked again, but nobody answered. Then I glanced down and realized my son had scurried around the podium and was patting my leg.

"Mommy, it's 'it'!" he said in a loud whisper and flashed me a huge smile.

I love that little boy. Being a parent is the most difficult job I've ever had, but I wouldn't give up that boy or his sister for anything.

Shooting Star

I just stepped out of Starbucks, looked up at the twilight sky, and watched a meteor streak from the deep blue canopy of sky above toward the still-warm horizon and vanish. Larger and brighter than any other stars or planets in our night sky, it lasted barely long enough for me to hold my breath. Beautiful.