A happy day ~ teary and proud

My daughter just finished the last page of A. A. Milne's The House at Pooh Corner with beautiful fluency. The book is bound together with Winnie the Pooh and together the books total 384 pages. I'm so thankful that we dated the book the day we began -- November 3. Ashley truly thought she had been working on it for months longer.

I've always dearly loved the Pooh stories, but there was something really special about sharing the rich character and intricate detail with Ashley.

It turned out to be a treasury of really wonderful quality moments where we laughed over Eeyore's dry humor, Pooh's "thotful" ideas or Rabbit's fussiness. (I'll never tire of reading about Eeyore's birthday. . . and now I have peals of laughter from Ashley to tag to the memory). It may well have been the first "shared" mother-daughter moments we've ever had -- where we both appreciated and enjoyed a thing equally.

It just doesn't get any better than Pooh when it comes to children's literature. Charlotte's Web is a close second, followed by Ramona and Henry Huggins. Anne of Green Gables is way up there, too, but for a slightly older audience. But who knows? Sky's the limit with this homeschooling thing. Maybe in a week or two. . .

A funny dream

I've often thought that having a clone would help me get all my work done, but I had a really funny dream last night that made me realize how counter-productive it would actually be.

I am a perfectionist. My motto has forever been, "Anything worth doing is worth doing well. . . (unless, of course, there's not enough time to do it well . . .in which case don't bother.)"

I'd rather not do anything than do a half-way job of something. I have tried to just do the minimum before (or even just slightly better than average job of something) and it takes more energy to remind myself every fifteen seconds not to go all-out than it would to do the whole thing Sherilyn-style in the first place.

Anyway, this dream was so me. Double me, actually. I dreamed that I really did have a clone to help share the tremendous workload around here. She was my exact carbon-copy. . . identical in every way, and what did we do? Absolutely nothing except argue over who was going to do the work. . . because neither of us trusted the other to do it as well as I would.

No, I guess a clone wouldn't help me. In the end, I think there's a certain satisfaction that goes with having ownership of the completed task. . .and that's the part I didn't want to share.

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things are busier than ever around here. I'm teaching Ashley at home in addition to the same drop-off and pick-up schedule from before. But I am absolutely loving every minute of teaching her.