I Love You, Guardian Angel

When I put Sasha to sleep at night, I usually lie down next to him and as part of the evening "ritual" I say a prayer. Recently Sasha has started whispering his own prayer while I recite mine.

It goes like this: "I love you, Mommy. I love you, Guardian Angel. I love you, Mommy. I love you, Guardian Angel. I love you, Mommy. I love you, Guardian Angel..."

Perhaps this prayer cannot be found in any Orthodox prayer books, but I think it is just fine for now!

Saved by Paper

While I was recuperating from minor surgery I had to find something to do at home with my son, Sasha, that didn't involve racing, freeze tag, pillow fights or generally climbing on mommy.  Above are the results.

These are relatively easy to make even with a 6-year-old's hands and patience. Here is the link.


I don't know how we survived before the internet!

Practical Arts in the Modern Age

A friend from church homeschools all her 3 children. (She has wonderful children, but still, I don't know how she does it.) There is a "practical arts" requirement in the home schooling curriculum that her children are enrolled in. So we got to talking about what it means in this day and age. She told how she was teaching his son online banking. That is certainly a big change from building bird houses and ironing and sewing aprons like we did when we were in school.

A few days later I showed my son, Sasha, my blog. An hour later he came to tell me he wants his own blog. I thought, aha, a teachable moment, learning by doing, etc...Here is the result: Sasha, Boy in School. Sasha is truly the creator and writer of this blog. He chose the photo, the colors and dictated what to write. I am merely the technical producer (and will be working towards handing that job over soon as well).

So, if the "building trains" career falls through he can always fall back on blogging.

How many women does it take to do a root canal?

Apparently 4, at least when it comes to my son Sasha: myself and 2 nurses (or dental equivalents) to hold his legs, hands and head, and 1 dentist to work on the actual tooth.

After 1.5 hours of struggle (with screams like: "I lied, I lied, my tooth wasn't hurting...It stopped hurting at 11:15." resounding through the dental office) to complete one procedure that should have taken 30 minutes, the dentist kindly asked us not to come back. And this was already the second dentist who threw us out. So the next time he will have dental work done under general anesthesia in a hospital. You'd better start brushing your teeth more carefully, buddy!

I can't really blame him, though. He has his parents' genes when it comes to his dental material. And the water running into your throat during drilling does feel yucky and scary.

He will grow out of it.  Right?