Full Buckets and The Readings of Dr. Seuss

I stayed home with Isaac today. Not because he was sick, but because I only work part-time, and because of that he is only part-time at the Gundersen childcare center. And since he is only part-time, at Gundersen that means he is not guaranteed a space. Gundersen can only take him if they have room for him that week. So every week I look at the weeks ahead, submit the hours I need (which is 8:30 am to 2:30 pm pretty much all the time, except on the rare occasion), and then call Gundersen the next week to see if the hours I asked for were approved. Usually they are. But on the rare occasion they are not, and this week there are occasions that space is not available.

So we spent the day at home. And to my surprise he pretty much played by himself all morning, either outside doing this and that, or inside playing cars. He never asked me to watch TV (which would've been tempting because I had work I wanted to be doing) and he never even asked me to read him a book. He didn't really ask me for anything, except one time when he wanted me to come look at the "pie" he made outside (which was a bucket full of sand; but this isn't where the buckets reference from the title comes in...).

At 1:15 pm I pick Sofi up from her childcare at Bluffside, and when we got home I assumed with certainty that all bets were off, that the wonderful morning I'd had with Isaac was about to be replaced with loudness, turf wars, and tears. But I was to be proved wrong.

Instead Sofi and Isaac sat together, of their own accord, on the porch and Sofi "read" to Isaac a total of four books, three of them by Dr. Seuss ("Mr. Brown Can Moo!", "I Wish that I Had Duck Feet", and "Green Eggs and Ham") and also one small one by Sandra Boynton ("A to Z"). It was not only really cute to watch and listen to, but also quite impressive; I knew Sofi had a couple of shorter books memorized, but I didn't realize she had (for the most part) so many longer ones memorized, and to sit and "read" that many in one sitting, to her brother no less, was very impressive.

How does one follow up the readings of Dr. Seuss? With a slumber party: Sofi and Isaac just declared "We're having a slumber party on the porch!" as they marched past me in the dining room dragging their sleeping bags behind them.

From there it was back outside to play together some more, and even when Sofi asked to go across the street to play with the neighbors, Isaac simply continued to play on his own outside.

Mary had to work late and wouldn't be home til 8:00 pm or so, so we had supper with out her. S for supper I played it safe and made tuna sandwiches, and we were all grateful for a meal that everyone was willing to eat.

And then they played outside some more while I cleaned up, and then afterwards we picked up, and then they took a bath together without incident (usually we have them bath seperately, because the bathroom tends to get loud and water-logged if we do otherwise).

And while getting ready for bed Sofi said to me "Make sure to tell Mom we have full buckets! REALLY FULL!" And what she meant was this: we'd all been really good to each other today, with Isaac and Sofi being especially good to each other. The bucket reference comes from a book we'd checked out from the library a while ago called Have You Filled a Bucket Today? when we were getting tired of her constantly picking on her brother, and in the book it talks about everyone having a bucket, and you can either dip into someone's bucket (by being mean, etc.) or you can fill up someone's bucket (by being nice, etc.)... it's a metaphor that really appears to work with Sofi.

And it was so true; it truly was a day that filled my bucket.