I am LOVING the Sonlight Readers that have come with our curriculum. I can hardly wait for the kids to finish so we can move on to the next set. The first two weeks we read Mara Daughter of the Nile, and The Golden Goblet, both compliment the Egyptian History and Bible we are learning. On Thursdays when I am sitting in the car for hours I read ahead and I was able to get a week ahead of the boys. We just started the Hittite Warrior and I am already half way through. I need to force myself to not read tomorrow in the car so that I have something to look forward to this week.
In my update on Dania I forgot to mention how the pouting was coming along. She used to be a pretty big pouter, but has come a long way. Every once in a while she has a girly, dramatic outburst and on our rafting trip she decided to revisit her past ventures of pouting, and boy was it a doozey, with some good natural consequences. While floating down the river which for the most part came to my knees, she would get out of the current and stall in some shallows on the side of the river. The river was pretty wide, probably 300ft across. Every time someone got stuck on a rock or off course we would paddle with our arms or get out and walk back into the stream. She was very resistant to both, so she would get way behind. She was not scared, she just didn't want to bother. Nate or I would holler at her to get out and walk or paddle. She would make a half hearted attempt, or complain that it was too hard to get out of the raft. Finally at one point when she was getting pretty far behind he waited for her and helped her along. At this point she wasn't being terrible so we were still trying to coax her along. While we were all floating together, Evan started to pull this really pretty long green river grass into his raft. It was a collection to see how much he could grab. Dania decided to play this grass pulling game as well. All was going well until Evan grabbed a handful of grass and flung it across at Dania. It landed on her arm and back, to which she shrieked like a madwoman and cried some kind of angry cry. It did not hurt only made her mad. I told Evan to not pester her and all that a reprimand entails. After about 5 minutes I noticed that Dania still had a huge pout on her face and was no longer trying to keep up. I told her that although what Evan did was not kind, it didn't hurt her and I would not let him get away with any more mean teasing or pestering. I told her that I would take care of Evan, but she now had to take care of her attitude and stop pouting. She refused, and slowly got further and further behind. For a while we all tried to coax her to catch up, even Evan, but she would not stop the pouting. At that time she was so far back she was a speck. Nate told me to just leave her alone until we got to a bend in the river and she would have been out of sight. At that time, we could catch little snippets of noise coming from back where she was ,(she may have been raining down curses on our heads) it sounded like murmuring and complaining. Nate and the boys were out of sight from her now and I decided that enough was enough. I hollered back up at her to "GET OUT OF YOUR RAFT AND WALK." She did, and then I heard her wailing and crying and carrying on. Again this was anger crying, not sad crying, plus she dragging her raft on the island in the middle of the river like she could care less if it could ripped to shreds on the sharp rocks, and I could see that she was avoiding the water, because she knew what i expected. I have to say that if it had not taken her about 10 minutes to catch up, there may have been a mommy dearest moment. The grace of God is good however and I had time to think about what I would say. If you know me at all, I am not a woman of few words, you never have to wonder about what I am thinking, feeling, seeing, smelling, the inklings that I have, the random thoughts, NOTHING. This time I decided that I was going to say nothing about her behavior. (which had been rotten for the past 45mins) When she got to me the only thing I said was "get in." I held onto her raft for a few minutes to make sure she would stay in the current and then let go. The only other thing I said when I let go was "If you get stuck, you will get out and keep up" I closed my eyes and sighed like I was in utter bliss enjoying the wonderful day without a care in the world. She started to talk to me about some Hawks that were flying above and then said, "mom, I am sorry for pouting sooo long." I said "you sure did, but I forgive you." And that was that. Believe it or not, she thanked us for taking them and said she had a good time.
