My 5-Year-Old Can’t Read

My daughter Hannah is a perfectly normal 5-year-old. She can hold up her end of a conversation, she enjoys books and music, and she loves to play outside. She can print her name, most of the time. She can dress herself and use the washroom on her own, and she plays well with her friends at preschool. All things considered, she is pretty typical.

Like a lot of parents, I still feel anxiety about my daughter’s development. The other day I met a child exactly 1 year younger than Hannah. An adult was reading a book that neither kid had seen before, and would occasionally point at a word. Hannah guessed based on context and the picture, with about a 30% accuracy rate. The other child, though, was clearly reading the words. I’m not particularly proud of myself, but seeing that a child a full year younger could read words when my own daughter doesn’t recognize all the letters in the alphabet sort of caught in my throat. I became concerned that my child is behind somehow, and won’t catch up.

There are a lot of organizations that prey on these parental fears and concerns. Of course we all want to make sure that our children have the basic skills to succeed in life. And so people and organizations step up to the plate, promising to help our children do better. They claim that the younger that reading starts, the better a child’s reading skills will be in the long term. In reading I even heard somebody cite the Matthew Effect as a reason that babies should read.

The Matthew Effect is named after Matthew 25:29 in the Bible, which says:

For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.

In the context of reading, what this means is that when children don’t master reading by a certain age, it negatively impacts their educational advancement. They continue to fall farther and farther behind. This is because reading becomes critical to learning about many other subjects – children can’t research whales, or ancient Rome, or do mathematical word problems if they can’t read. However, it seems that most educational experts believe that the threshold for the Matthew Effect is around grade 3, not in preschool.

I have no doubt that people touting the benefits of teaching your baby to read are very sincere. But I will admit, reading their sites fills me with panic. If the sensitive period for reading really does start to close at 4, as one site claimed, then we have totally missed the boat and I have failed my child.

And then I came across a fabulous post by BluebirdMama, who is writing a series on her thoughts as her son gets ready to start kindergarten in the fall. Her post, Let Them Play, spoke to me and calmed a lot of my fears. In particular, I was delighted to hear about a study from New Zealand that demonstrated that by the time they are 11 years old, there is no difference in reading ability between early readers and later readers.

Anecdotally, our own family confirms that study. My husband Jon apparently started reading at around age 4, and I didn’t learn to read until I was in grade 1, at around 6 1/2. It makes no difference today, just as the fact that I was an early walker makes no difference to my current walking abilities. The fact is, children develop in their own time and at their own pace, and most of them end up just fine regardless of what that pace is.

Current research actually indicates that preschool-aged children, like my daughter, often do better in a an open-ended and creative environment that focuses on their social and emotional development. If children are interested in reading, that’s great. But if they’re not and we force them to complete academically-oriented tasks they can actually become discouraged and develop negative school associations. If we don’t impose academics on preschoolers who aren’t ready, they will catch up down the line. In fact, strong social skills in early childhood are linked to learning abilities in school-aged children.

Sooner or later my daughter will learn to read, when the time is right for her. In the meantime, we will do puzzles and paint and dance and role-play. And I will feel confident that I am not, in fact, dooming her to a lifetime of illiteracy.

With the Touch of My Hand

It’s the middle of the night and my 18-month-old, Jacob, is awake. He is stirring and kicking and maybe even crying. If I don’t hear him right away and I’m not already in bed with him he might even pad down the hall, a bleary-eyed little man in a footie sleeper on a search for Mama.

He finds me, or I find him. Then I am there, and he is there, and in my lowest voice I say, “Shhh, shhh, you don’t have to wake up, it’s time for sleeping.” And I lay my hand on him, and he quiets. He stills. He exhales. He reaches for me and I nurse him and he falls back to sleep quickly. I follow him, my hand still on his back, and together we drift off and share our dreams.

There are other nights, too, when my 5-year-old Hannah wakes up from a nightmare. Her waking is far more rare, but much more dramatic. It has always been this way, my girl has slept well at night but has always woken crying if it’s still dark outside. On those nights, my husband often goes to her while I pull the night shift with her little brother. But not always. Sometimes I find my way to her in the night, and I lay my hand on her and she clings to me and the tension melts out of her. Mama is here, she is safe, and she can go back to sleep again.

Of course it isn’t always so idyllic or easy. I have had the nights where nothing I can do will calm the children, when teeth or stuffed noses or the phase of the moon force the whole house awake for an hour at 3:14am. I have had night terrors and bed-wettings and late night diaper disasters from newborns. I have struggled with the different personalities and needs of two children at night, and fought to balance them with my own.

But most of the time, still, I am like a talisman in the night. I am Safety and Comfort, and my mere presence means that everything is OK. It baffles me and inspires me, the way that I am not just a 30-something suburbanite who can’t figure out what she wants to do with herself. I am not just Amber, math whiz and all-around crunchy sort with a tendency to talk too much and rush to judgment. I am also Mother, the source of all things, the symbol of nurturing and abundance.

It will not always be so. My feet of clay will be all too visible to my children one day. I will be the one who mixed everything up or said the wrong thing or left them waiting for 27 minutes after band practice. But for right now my children are still small, and I am still the world to them. So I am mostly willing as I drag myself from my bed and bestow calm, with the touch of my hand.

Just a quick reminder about my Crafting my Life link-up, which is happening on February 25th. February’s Crafting my Life series is about time management. Exciting? Debatable. Important? Absolutely. To participate, write a post on this month’s theme and add yourself to the list that will appear with my regular post at 6am on the last Thursday of the month. Then go off and read everyone else’s ideas and thoughts and be inspired! Check out January’s link up to get a feel for how it works.

Toddlers are Hooligans

18 months ago I welcomed sweet baby Jacob. He did not always sleep as much as one would hope, and he sometimes cried rather a lot. There were hijinks involving spit-up and other bodily fluids that I could have lived without. But that baby stayed put, man. I could lie him down on a blanket in the middle of the floor and he wouldn’t go anywhere. He wouldn’t even reach out to grab a toy, because he didn’t even have control over his wee baby hands.

Babies like to change things up, though. Jacob started grabbing things and rolling and crawling and walking, and pretty soon I had a toddler on my hands. A terribly cute little person who is on a one-man mission to destroy everything in sight. Along the way he’s picked up skills like a short-term memory and the basic ability to plan. I imagine this is what Jacob’s internal dialogue sounds like, “I see a terribly dangerous object on the counter. I see a stool. If I move that stool to the counter, then I can get that dangerous object. Oh! Mama is moving the dangerous object and putting the stool back. OK, I’ll go get the stool again and move it to the dangerous object’s new location.”

18-month-old Jacob

At 18 months Jacob can climb higher and reach farther than is good for anyone. He can also remain dedicated to a goal in ways that both impress and terrify me. Whereas he used to get in trouble when my back was turned, now he is quick enough and tenacious enough to get in trouble right in front of me. Mayhem frequently follows him, like it did on Saturday when I was attempting to mix up a loaf of bread.

I gathered my ingredients on the kitchen island, and Jacob climbed on to the island to check them out. I moved him back to his stool and gave him a snack to occupy him. He brought his snack up on to the island. I took him off. We did this a few times, and then he climbed back on to the island and threw my whole wheat flour on the floor. The container holding the flour opened and a small amount spilled out. I picked up the container and replaced the lid, more securely this time. I placed Jacob in front of the pile of spilled flour, hoping it would entertain him. He climbed back on to the island and I moved the other containers on to the floor where they would be safe. He crawled down on to the floor and knocked over the white flour, and that container fell open and a large amount of flour fell out. Jacob proceeded to roll around in it.

Rolling in flour is fun!

You can draw designs in the flour with your fingers

I know that Jacob is acting his age. He is behaving exactly as an 18-month-old should, it’s just that his abilities are outpacing his judgment. His judgment will catch up at its own pace, and so I am trying to take it in stride as much as possible. All I have to do is keep everyone alive and remain approximately sane, and it will work out. But in the meantime, you may find me screaming into my pillow so that I don’t frighten the kids. And the muffled words you hear will be, “Toddlers are HOOLIGANS!”

Commiseration, or stories about the time you attempted to wash the dishes and your toddler nearly burned your house down, would be very welcome right about now.

Walk to Nowhere

Sometimes our children are our teachers. They open our minds to new ideas and perspectives that we never considered before. These experiences are inspiring and life-affirming, and they are among my best parenting moments. However, sometimes our children are not our teachers. Frankly, they lack anything resembling good judgment a lot of the time, which is why we don’t leave preschoolers to roam the world unsupervised. They will, if given half the chance, spend all day watching TV and eating marshmallows. And then they will be cranky and we will have to pick up the pieces.

While the transcendent moments make parenting worthwhile, the not-so-transcendent moments are probably a little more common. It depends a little bit on the day or my mood or the phase of the moon, but whatever it is I could never claim with a straight face that child-rearing is all glitz and glamour. There is, sometimes, rather a lot of glitter, but that’s only because that stuff just sticks to everything, not because my life is so sparkly and rainbow-y.

Jon and Hannah set out in search of a small climbing tree

The other day almost-5-year-old Hannah decided to go for a walk to a small tree. She described this small tree by saying that it was not at a park, but rather beside a small house, like a playhouse. She can see it on the drive to school, but Jon and I have overlooked it. She feels this tree is just the perfect size for her to climb, and wants to give it a go. She will lead us right to it, if we only follow her.

Jacob, along for the ride on the tree search

Our family of four loaded up and followed Hannah, because a walk sounded like a good idea. A particular destination is sometimes less important than getting everyone out of the house for a while. Out of curiousity, we did try to get more detailed information as to this tree’s exact whereabouts. Was it near our house? Yes. Was it near her school? Yes. Was it past the Starbucks? Yes – and hey could we stop in for a drink on the way?

Sharing a hug while we wait at a stoplight

Hannah’s school is approximately 3km from our house, which is rather far for a kid her age to walk, especially round trip. We knew that the mystery tree could lie anywhere along this 3km route, and that we weren’t going to make it the whole 3km if it came to that. Hannah was dogged and determined, though. She declined to stop at the playground, or slow down. She insisted that we follow her directions exactly, and that we keep on moving at all costs.

The corner that served as our final destination

Eventually, we reached a corner just over 1km from our house. We asked Hannah to look down the road and tell us if she could see the tree, and she said no. We realized that we had to turn around. I’m glad we aborted when we did, because by the time we got home Hannah was tired, and her feet hurt, and she just didn’t want to walk anymore. We came inside and I pulled up Google Street View, to see if we could find the tree. She pointed it out, on the corner in front of her school. The play house is a small gazebo attached to a condo development. I was even more glad we didn’t continue in search of the tree, seeing that.

We sort of had a good time, on our walk to nowhere, all the same. It was fun to see how dedicated and single-minded Hannah can be. It was good to get out and breathe some fresh air. It was also good to be reminded that, at the end of the day, I still have better judgment than my kid, and I am far better at judging walking distance. She’ll learn these things in time, but for now I will continue to pilot this ship.

Breastfeeding Father

Breastfeeding is, primarily, a relationship between two people – the mother and her nursing child. Even when a mother nurses more than one child at a time, she still has a unique breastfeeding relationship with each nursling, with its own individual quirks. Since breastfeeding is about a mother and child when problems arise the focus is on the breastfeeding dyad, how they are interacting and what issues they are encountering. And that is as it should be.

While a mother and child are the principal players in breastfeeding, other people often do play an important role. The support, or lack of support, from friends and family can help or harm the nursing relationship. Fathers, especially, impact the way that breastfeeding unfolds in a new family. A supportive partner is correlated with higher breastfeeding rates, which is really not surprising if you think about it. Mothers are often very vulnerable as they work through nursing difficulties, and so having someone who can help you through that time is priceless.

Jon holding newborn baby Hannah

I credit my own husband, Jon, for getting me through the early days of breastfeeding with my daughter Hannah. She was born at 34 weeks gestation and following her birth I suffered a major hemorrhage. I spent 4 days in the hospital, and during that time I was very weak and tired. Hannah struggled with breastfeeding, and didn’t latch once in the week she spent in the NICU. I pumped, but never got enough milk. I felt extremely discouraged and was beginning to believe that breastfeeding wouldn’t work out for us.

I don’t think that Jon had very strong feelings about breastfeeding one way or the other before the birth of our daughter, or even after it. However, he knew that breast milk was the best food for our baby, and he knew that I wanted to breastfeed. He also knew that, being physically weak myself, I needed a lot of help with basic tasks. He stepped up to the plate and helped me out. He found a breast pump for me to rent when I came home from the hospital. He went shopping for anything that we needed, he did all of the diaper changing once Hannah came home and he supported me in my efforts to work through our breastfeeding struggles.

Feeding Hannah pumped breast milk in the hospital

If I hadn’t had someone holding my hand and helping me through I don’t think that I could have succeeded at breastfeeding. I had some very low points in those early days. A lot of well-meaning people suggested that maybe my struggles were a sign that breastfeeding wasn’t going to work for us. There were many moments where I wanted to quit myself, just so that I wouldn’t have to struggle any more. But I didn’t, and I credit a big portion of that to my husband.

I don’t know if Jon and I always share the same parenting philosophy. Probably not, although I would say that we have more or less reached a consensus on the essentials. And that’s all fine, because we’re different people with different personalities and experiences. What really matters, though, is that we can work together and communicate and support each other. Jon has done that for me, and as I breastfeed my second child and look back on the years I spent breastfeeding my first, I am tremendously grateful to him.

Jon with Jacob and Hannah

I wrote this post for February’s Carnival of Natural Parenting, hosted by the fabulous Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama. For more great reads on this month’s theme of ‘Love and partners’ check out the other amazing contributors.

Furtive Snacking

When you have little babies you can eat whatever you want in front of them. They are not at all interested in food at first, and when they do become interested they don’t yet know that chocolate pudding tastes much better than mashed peas. It’s a lovely time, really, feeding the baby squash while you have a bowl of ice cream. So lovely.

Unfortunately, this time does not last forever. Eventually children have their first taste of sugar, eat a cookie their grandma gave them, learn the difference between a chocolate chip and a black bean. They start to recognize what is ‘good’ and what is ‘not so good’ on sight. They may even memorize handy information like where you keep the marshmallows. Knowing where the marshmallows are is practically a toddler’s number one responsibility.

Jacob sees something he wants

Once your kid knows what a treat is and what it looks like your world is never quite the same. You start indulging on the sly. You cultivate ’secret hiding spots’ for the good chocolate, the expensive ice cream, the baked goods. You refer to pop as ‘daddy juice’ and tell them that dark chocolate is ’spicy’.

I reached this stage years and years ago with my daughter Hannah, of course. I got used to eating my treats after she went to bed, or at work where no one would demand in screeching tones that I share. You adapt, you figure out work-arounds, you learn what you can and can’t get away with right now. Recently the kid has started smelling my breath, forcing me to raise the bar even higher. By the time she’s 7 I’ll have a PhD in furtive snacking.

Jacob points out the thing he wants

Jacob, just shy of 18 months now, is far more advanced at sniffing out the treats than his sister ever was at this age. I am at home full-time with him, so I have fewer options for eating chocolate on the low-down. He is a second child, so I was less dedicated to keeping him away from the sugar when he was little. Plus he has a big sister who wants the occasional treat, and unlike me can’t be expected to down it in one gulp with her face hidden by a cupboard door.

These days, Jacob shrieks when I open the cupboard that holds the chocolate chips. Unfortunately it also holds our crackers, nuts, raisins, vitamins, honey and all manner of other foods. It’s a cupboard I open frequently. I could move the chocolate chips, but I’m not sure where as our other cupboards also hold food and I’m short and not able to reach the ones that don’t. Once again, being 5′ 2″ limits my options.

Jacob attempts to scale the cabinetry to reach the thing he wants

I could give up the treats, but I have so few vices already. I don’t like coffee, and I rarely consume alcohol. I’ve never smoked and I don’t even own a television. I need an outlet, and sugar is the one I’ve chosen. If it means I need to eat it in the bathroom while the children pound on the door and call for me, so be it. I might feel a little bad while they wail for their mother, but not bad enough to open the door and share.

Kindergarten Registration

On Tuesday I registered my baby for kindergarten. My daughter, Hannah, who was born 6 weeks early, and who at 4 days old weighed only 4lbs, 14oz. The child I feared would never learn to walk, or talk, or use the bathroom on her own. The child who made me a mother. I am so, so not ready for this.

I loaded the children up and we trekked the 3 blocks to the school. It’s not far, but it does involve a fairly steep hill, not fun with a toddler in a stroller. I think that walking to school and back twice a day, 5 days a week may turn out to be good for me. Hannah wanted to bring her bike but I talked her into riding her scooter, since the scooter is lighter and hence easier to handle if when she gets tired of riding it.

Hannah riding her scooter to the registration. Watching her ride away felt very wistful.

There is, as it turns out, a whole lot of paperwork involved in kindergarten registration. The form is short, only two pages of large, well-spaced font, but you need to bring documentation. For instance, you need a rental agreement, home-buying contract or property tax assessment to prove your residency. An electricity bill will not do. Your driver’s license will not do. You also need to provide verification of citizenship for your child and yourself. Does the school district really need to know my age? Apparently so.

No surprise to me, Hannah wasn’t up to riding the scooter the whole way.

I sort of wonder about the necessity of these documents. I understand that they want to make sure that kids aren’t providing fake addresses, but how much of a problem is this really? Local enrollments are declining as the population ages and the birth rate declines. I needed less in the way of documentation to register to vote, for Pete’s sake!

Checking out a hallway display.

Thanks to our fastidious record-keeping, we did in fact manage to find our house purchase agreement. Good thing, because we don’t have a paper copy of our tax assessment due to my husband’s habit of scanning and destroying all of our documents. You’d better believe that when it’s time to register Jacob I am keeping a copy of the tax assessment. And maybe knocking 5 years off the age on my birth certificate with some white-out and a pencil. Or, if I’m feeling really wild, I’ll knock off 10.

Posing in front of the school.

Hannah talked the secretary’s ear off while we registered. She shared all sorts of personal details, and let her know that she’s feeling a little shy. She also let her know that her baby brother isn’t ready for kindergarten, that she is 4 3/4 and will turn 5 soon, and that kindergarten starts in a really, really long time after baby Jacob’s birthday. Having a 5-year-old teaches you to watch what you say, let me tell you.

They are implementing full-day kindergarten here in British Columbia, but not at our school. After much hand-wringing we opted for the afternoon slot. I’m hoping that Jacob will nap while Hannah’s at school and I will have actual time to myself. It could happen, right? (Please say yes.) Or, just share some kindergarten survival tips with me, because I think I’m going to need them.

On Having No Time

It’s Thursday and I’m Crafting my Life! Today I am lamenting the fact that I have no time. Join me, won’t you?

Back in late August I talked about our culture’s Cult of Busy-ness. Money and status come with Important Responsibilities, and Important Responsibilities mean you’re busy. Having Too Much To Do is almost like a religion for us, and productivity is how we measure our value as people.

As the mother of a two young children, I feel as if there will never be enough time in the world for everything that I need to do, let alone half the stuff I merely want to do. I have been at home full-time, I have worked outside the home and I have worked at home, and lack of time has remained a part of my reality regardless. There are upsides and downsides to whatever choice you make, but as long as you have little kids you are going to be hard-pressed to find the hours in a day to do it all.

Having ‘no time’ and being ‘busy’ are relative. I thought I had no time when I was a single university student, and then I thought I had no time when I worked full time and did some volunteer activities, and then I thought I really had no time when I had my first baby. These days, my friends with more than one child and I say to each other, “Do you remember how we thought we were busy with one? Yeah, we really didn’t know from busy.” Your definition of ‘busy’ changes, along with your definition of ’sleeping in’ or ‘getting out the door quickly’.

As my life has gotten fuller I’ve discovered that being busy is less about having stuff to do, and more about how you choose to spend your time. I complain to my husband that I can never finish an article in the paper, yet I read dozens of blogs every day. I used to complain that I had no time to work in my garden, and now I find that time more easily because I am home during daylight hours and my kids like to be outside with me. They help me water and we kill two birds with one stone, but I don’t get through my email inbox. And even in the middle of the lost socks and Jacob peeing on the floor and trying to get dinner on the table and do some freelance work, if something really important comes up I do it. I find the time.

In the place I’m in now, trying to build a new life, I do not have the luxury of long, uninterrupted stretches in which to work. While I write this post I am holding Jacob, who is napping in my arms because that’s the only place he sleeps during the day. The cat is on my desk, the dishwasher is running, and the room I’m sitting in is a terrible mess. I have to set my priorities, though, or I will not get any writing time at all. By necessity, I have gotten better at seizing the time I have and pressing through, because it’s the only choice I have, the only way I can get work done.

There are lots of ways to manage your time and become more efficient. But the best way that I know is this – recognize that you are never going to have ‘more time’. Waiting for the magical day when you do is fruitless. So in the little time that you do have, set priorities and do what needs to get done. If that means turning off the computer and writing with a pen and paper so that Twitter doesn’t call to you, so be it. If that means setting a timer and saying, “OK, I have 15 minutes to clean this room,” then so be it. And if that means that you need to take a little downtime so that you don’t fall in a million pieces, do it and do it unrepentantly. The only time you really have is right now, so you’ve got to make it work to your advantage.

How do you combat the reality that just aren’t enough hours in the day? Or, have you managed to overcome that feeling? Please share!

February’s Crafting my Life series is about time management. Exciting? Debatable. Important? Absolutely. On the last Thursday of the month, which just happens to be the 25th, I will include a link up. To participate, write a post on this month’s theme and add yourself to the list. Then go off and read everyone else’s ideas and thoughts and be inspired! Check out January’s link up to get a feel for how it works.

Big Boy Bed

Our crib is no more. It does still exist, in pieces in our crawlspace, but it is no longer the intended sleeping place of our babies. Hannah used it for a time, and Jacob used it pretty much not at all, but I still cried when I took it down. I’m a mom, I cry over every little thing, it’s all part of my charm. Plus Jacob was listening to his favourite CD (it’s a long story) while we did the disassembly, and it was playing this song about how quickly children grow up. Totally, totally unfair.

Last shot of the crib in one piece

Hannah jumping on the crib mattress

We decided to take down Jacob’s crib and replace it with a double bed because our bed was getting too crowded. We did the same thing with Hannah at around the same age. Both kids reached a point where they weren’t sleeping well unless they were in our bed, but they were also reaching a point where they were sort of sprawly and kicky and taking up a lot of space. By moving them to a bed in their own room an adult can join them as needed, and the other one doesn’t even need to wake up. With two kids this is especially critical. So I bought the bed and the bedding and the mattress and we set to work building furniture.

Jon doing some bed-building

Completed bed and bedding, just waiting for a mattress

Jacob likes his new room, especially the lamp we bought. He climbs on the bed and turns it on and off, on and off. Still, the first night in the new digs were sort of rough. I was with him, but he was restless and out of sorts. We got through it together, and things have improved significantly from there. I am hopeful that the new bed will continue to grow on Jacob, and I look forward to the day when he sleeps in it all night long, all by himself. Although I know that may not be for some time yet, and I’m OK with that – it’s why I chose a nice mattress.

The mattress arrived!

Hannah testing the bed out

I realize that at not quite 18 months our kids are on the young end of the spectrum to have a big kid bed, and especially one that could comfortably sleep more than one person. It works for our family, though, and I learned a long time ago that’s the only criteria that really matters, especially when it comes down to getting enough sleep.

The whole family on Jacob’s new bed, excited at the prospect of better rest

Do you have any big kid bed stories to share? Please do!

Feeling Slumpy

When I wake up in the morning my muscles are stiff. I’m not getting any younger, I know it. With each passing year my body is less and less able to handle the slings and arrows of daily life without objecting. But I also think that at least some of my early-morning aches and pains come from the full-contact-parenting of 2 kids cocktail I’m nursing over here. Between co-sleeping and trying to breastfeed and type at the same time and regularly stepping on little toys left strewn about I have plenty of slings and arrows to contend with.

The slings and arrows and stiffness leave me slumpy and hunched over. When I become aware of my downward bend I straighten my back and it feels like I’ve grown 3 inches. I can’t believe how much of a difference it makes to actually be upright. I feel better, too, and the world looks like a whole different place. I don’t realize how slumpy I really am until I spend 3 minutes not being slumpy.

I do understand and accept the conditions that have led to the current state of affairs, and I embrace them. But, all the same, I’m not entirely happy with being perpetually hunched over. It makes me feel old and decrepit, and who wants that? Not me.

I’m not going to adopt a rigorous exercise routine and I’m not going to change the way I parent my kids, but I have found a solution to the slumpiness. Every day I do something fun that causes me to smile and mildly exert myself. So far these activities include singing and dancing to various songs from Glee in nothing approximating the correct key, chasing 4-year-old Hannah around a playground, digging in my garden and taking 17-month-old Jacob for a walk in the stroller. These are not time-consuming activities, and they don’t require me to have personal time or space. Lord knows, I am just not going to get personal time and space. I can, however, play along with my little ones.

I want to play on the swings more

Or maybe I should take my own turn in the spinning chair

I’ve been at this for about a week, and I’m feeling better. I have not lost any weight. I am still sort of stiff sometimes, but less so. I feel less slumpy, and that’s what really matters. It’s liberating to take some time out of my day to feel good. It’s the first time I’ve done that in a long time – maybe the first time in decades, honestly. I’ve spent years hunched over some desk or another, worried about what I should do. Life’s just too short for that, sometimes you need to take a break so that your preschooler can teach you some cool new dance moves.

What do you do when you’re feeling slumpy? Any sure-fire tricks you’d like to share? Please do!