The long, lazy summer is over and we are now back in the swing of things. All summer, Monsieur would ask “What day it is today?”* and upon receiving the reply he would continue, “so we go to?”. He loves his routines and was thrown a little by nothing being how it should be. He is very satisfied to have his weeks going according to schedule.
The weekly schedule is:
Monday: Skype chat with a friend, followed by a train video on YouTube – he can now quite accurately tell when we’ve had an hour to chat and will start asking to say goodbye and watch trains. After one, or two train videos we go to creative dance class and then Storytime at a local book store. Somewhere during the morning we will stop in for a coffee at our favourite coffee shop. I love Mondays! Such a great start to each new week.
Tuesday: Playgroup, which is full of fun activities, often followed by coffee with a couple of friends from playgroup. One of his playgroup friends is Japanese, and he will be learning Japanese at school from grade two so clearly he will be continuing the connection to Japan.
Wednesday: Grandma day!! We all have breakfast together – R, Monsieur and his grandparents. Monsieur quite confidently orders his own breakfast, which I share. After breakfast, Grandma and Monsieur go off together to his Shichida class – an early learning system based around right-brain learning. This term they are also trialling a new music class with a teacher who has come highly recommended by his Grandma’s choir instructor. Monsieur has lunch and his nap at Grandma’s place, and woe betide me should I arrive too early for pick-up and interrupt his post-nap reading time with Grandma. We often stop at the shops near Grandma’s house to pick up ingredients for dinner and we must always put coins in the “round-and-round thing” – his words! The round-and-round thing is a donation collection… thing, like a big bucket with a large funnel and a particular point to insert the coin so that it goes round and round and round and round the funnel section before dropping into the bottom bucket. We have discovered that five and ten cent coins work best, other coins are too heavy so they go to the bottom far too quickly. These are the little things that I never expected to notice or care about or study before having a child!
Thursday and Friday are schedule-less days. These are the days that we tend to arrange playdates, although I do want to go swimming each week, so Friday mornings may become pool mornings.
We have no afternoon commitments at all. Monsieur’s nap times vary which make it too hard to reliably get to anything or meet up with anyone. Also I want him to have a lot of free playtime and exploration time. Since moving back in, we have discovered the joy and ease of having almost-next-door-neighbours with a similar aged son. Our neighbours of three (or was it four?) years had Monsieur over at their house a couple of times while I moved boxes and did things in preparation for our move back. Sadly they moved, just as we were discovering just how amazing it could be to have another family so close, but happily their friends moved in who also have a son of a similar age to Monsieur. We do have some afternoon playdates/house swaps and, wow! It is amazing what a difference it makes having a family *right there* who we can catch up with, call upon to mind a child briefly or just chill out with on the hot days. Selfishly I want them to stay there forever!
On the weekends R and I take turns sleeping in. Whoever is not sleeping in will just play with Monsieur until the other wakes up. I like to think that these mornings make up for the weekday mornings when Monsieur will ask us to play with him as soon as he wakes up but we are too busy getting ready for the day to do so. Monsieur always likes to know what the plans are for the day, even if we just intend to clean and cook and wash. There is a book that I love to read to him, called “Today we have no plans” by Jane Godwin and Anna Walker, which celebrates the delight of a plan-free day after a busy week. Some weekends when Monsieur asks “so we go to?”, we will say “Today we have no plans. What would you like to do?”. I think that he is starting to love those days too.
* This is not an error on my part, this is how he asks the day.
