Of Boys and Cars--Oh, and Messes!

One cold, January morning, I was just so proud of myself. I got out a baking pan full of cornmeal and decided to let Josh draw in it--you know, maybe work on numbers or letters or something. It was the start of one of those great homeschooling moments that just don't come often enough--so I thought.


Being a boy, Josh had a different idea. He and big brother, William, decided that this cornmeal made an excellent place to drive their cars. It was fun, they discovered, to bury the cars and then use a paint brush to recover them. Pretty innocent, I thought, until this "sand," as Josh began calling it, got all over the floor and into the nooks and crannies of the train table. And you can just imagine how cornmeal sticks to bare feet.

I don't know if you know this about me or not, but I HATE messes! My kids know that I hate messes. They dread my reaction to messes, but they just can't seem to help themselves. They make them anyway.

You might have already taken note that I didn't take a picture of this "sand" mess. It really wasn't all that funny.

And for the record, I pretty much kept my cool. It's something that I've been working with God on lately. Keeping my cool. Not yelling. Not crying. The key words are "working on." I am a work in progress.


Since the "sand" mess was so big, we didn't have any cornmeal left in the container--and any that was retrieved from the train table was silently thrown away. Josh now just asks for "Sand?" When I tell him that it's all gone, he says, "Get some at Meijer."

Until then, he has become creative.



Bird seed works just as well as cornmeal.



You'll never guess what my sweeper swept up the next day.
Sunflower seeds.