Friday, August 20, 2010

Practice Bus Ride


We arrived at the elementary school just in time. All of the other children looked just as excited to be starting kindergarten as mine did. Frantically jumping up and down tugging on their parent's hands, wonder filling their little eyes. We walked in and prepared for the practice bus ride all of the kindergartner's got to go on. They finally called my sons bus number and he jumped up and flew out the door before I had a chance to get out of my seat. I hurried to catch up to him pulling my youngest son along beside me. I think I was more nervous than my soon to be kindergartner was. In Fact, he was not nervous at all! As my oldest boarded the bus with his friends he had made in preschool my youngest started to frantically wave stress-fully saying "Bye Jake, Bye...BYE!" After my oldest was out of sight my youngest turned to me burying his head into my stomach and started to cry.
"What's wrong?" I asked him
"I'm gonna miss my brother!" he muffled back through his tears, then proceeded to cry harder.
"Aw sweetheart, it will be okay. Your brother is coming back."
"But I miss him!"
I comforted my youngest as he cried for the entire twenty mintues my oldest was gone on his practice bus ride. When the bus finally arrived back at the school my oldest stepped off the bus with the biggest smile glowing across his face! My youngest ran up to his brother greeting him with a strong brotherly hug as if he hadn't seen him in years. I smiled to myself. I knew then that I must had done something right for them to have so much love for each other.

Monday, August 2, 2010

A Little One's Pocket

"Boy's! Get your stuff together we're getting ready to go!"
It takes about 30minutes to get the kids from my mother's living room to the back seat of the car. As I was walking the children out the front door of my mother's farm house my youngest son walked up to me with his little hand clinching his shorts pocket tightly and stated in an innocent voice... " THERE'S NOTHING IN MY POCKET MOM!" Now every mother of a little boy knows that what he really meant was "MOM - YOU NEED TO CHECK MY POCKET RIGHT AWAY!"
I had a gut feeling this was going to be interesting.
"Let me see what's in your pocket Brent." I replied.
"No!, There's Nothing in my pocket!"
For fear of what it could be he was hiding I changed the tone of my voice..."LET ME SEE NOW!"
He put his head down in shame, reached into his pocket and pulled out a frog! Oh My...
I tried to keep from laughing then quickly realized that this frog looked familiar. It was the same frog I had seen my son playing with in the yard about two hours before that!
Oh No I thought to myself. Could this frog have been in his pocket for the past 2 hours! We had done a lot in that past two hours; went to the store, went on a walk, the boys wrestled outside.
It was clear that the poor frog was dead but I explained to the kids that the frog was tired and sleeping and that we had to take him back to his home. Brent wanted to keep him forever!
When we finally arrived home the boys rushed inside. As usually I lagged behind because of having to carry things in and cleaning up the car. On my way in the house I passed a frog on the sidewalk. "Run little frog." I whispered. "RUN!"