On Monday morning, I was in my office doing some work when Amelia came in and asked if I could help her with an assignment she was doing for school.
I went with her into her room, and took at look at the instructions with her. The students were supposed to choose a word to associate with the year 2021, and then write a little something about why they chose that word, and draw some images related to it.
I did my best to help her decipher the instructions, and then asked if she could tell me what word she chose. Here is what Amelia showed me.
“Kind.”
I admit, I got a little choked up. Given the tumultuous time we are living through, the fact that my daughter chose this word to represent the year ahead shows me that maybe there is still some hope for decency and humanity in the future.
I told her it was a great choice, and truly, I am going to make that my word for the year, too. I imagine if enough of us take it as a mantra, hopefully this first week won’t be indicative of the year as a whole.
The rest of the day went pretty much as Mondays do. Between Henry’s OT and Amelia’s piano lesson in the afternoon, I took the kids to Barnes & Noble. I had a gift card to use, and we are trying to encourage Amelia to read more chapter books, so we wanted to her to pick some out. She did that and I let Henry pick something out too, and he made a solid choice of a Pete the Cat set of five books.
We dropped Amelia off at her piano lesson, and while we sat in the car, Henry sat in the back seat for nearly the entire half an hour “reading” those Pete the Cat books.
It was pretty adorable. He was making up his own stories and reading and singing songs.
After the lesson, we went home and while I was making dinner, the kids played in the rather impressive “fort” Amelia build in the dining room.
Of course, we had to have her disassemble it before bedtime since it took up a significant amount of floor space, but Amelia took the time to take notes on how she had it laid out so she could rebuild it the next day. It’s always good to plan for the next day, I always say.
