Afternoon Off

 
Today after school Sydney and I decided to blow off gymnastics class and spent a relaxing afternoon together at home.  It was exactly what we needed!  I'm finding weekdays a bit hectic with school and activities and trying to squeeze in everything else that has to happen in a day!  It was nice to just come home and have no schedule for a day!

We spent some time reading books and reorganized Sydney's bookshelf to make room for the new books that our friends Felicity and Carl passed along to us!

We lounged out in the backyard basking in the sun for a while before deciding to pull the art basket full of supplies outside.  We put the splash mat down on the grass and pulled out the paint and poster paper and painted together until we tired of that and then it was play dough time!

At some point Sydney stripped off all of her clothes and was doing her art au naturel, it was pretty funny, especially when she took breaks to ride her tricycle in circles around the backyard completely naked!

I had to laugh when I was talking to her about our schedule for the afternoon, when I mentioned that we had gymnastics, she said, "Mom, I want to skip gymnastics."  I think she was expecting a fight from me and when I readily agreed and asked her what to do instead, she simply said "go outside."  Sometimes being outside on a beautiful, sunny September afternoon beats any activity indoors!

Sydney had another great day at school today and had a little victory, did her first pee on the potty at school!  She had been refusing to go pee until I got there to pick her up and the poor kid's eyeballs were nearly floating by the time she waited until the morning was over and I got there to go!  I had been encouraging her to use the potty without me, and today she did exactly that!  I can tell with everyday that she is getting more and more comfortable in her classroom and at school.  It's great.

I'm still feeling a bit lost having all this time to myself!  I need to find my rhythm and a better balance of being both productive and relaxing when I need to during my four hours a day to myself.  I'm sure a month from now I will have it all figured out!  In the mean time, I'm enjoying getting lots of things scratched off my 'to do' list and doing some long overdue shopping!  Not looking forward to seeing my Visa bill this month!