Time and Season

We've developed a timer strategy with Kate. When there's something she doesn't want to do, we give her a choice--do it now or set the timer. Then we let her pick how many minutes she wants on the timer. She settled on ten minutes as her standard answer. It works pretty well and she hardly ever complains once the timer goes off.

I mentioned to Doug the other day that we were lucky she hadn't been asking for more than ten minutes. Then when I told her it was time for a bath, she said, "No, I don't want to take a bath! Set the timer. One hundred minutes!" I said, "Uh... I don't think the timer goes that high." So she said, "Ten minutes!" And then I had to set the timer again to get her out of the tub. Isn't it funny how that works.

Painting continues, though not every day since I've been working on other things. Yesterday I was impressively productive and got several things done, and ran some errands with Kate, who was very good.

We had a lovely day yesterday, crisp and cool with patchy sun and clouds. Kate spent a couple of hours playing outside with the neighborhood kids after we got back from errand-running. It was nice after a few days of overcast and drizzle. I'm really okay with the overcast (and even the drizzle, depending on what I'm trying to do) but it's nice to break it up. I've always loved Fall, but the damp, soggy Fall just isn't quite the same. And I had some things that I needed to photograph out on the porch, so I'd been waiting for some good light.

As I watched the kids playing--Ryan trying to throw his floppy frisbee, Tram flashing her beautiful smile, Kate running around getting in everyone's way--I thought that this really is a nice place for us to be right now. I wish we had a little more room (a bit more organization would help a lot, I'm sure) but it's so nice to have this big grassy area and other kids to play with. Our porch is conveniently located off one end of the common area, so we often have kids congregating around. Even the older kids sometimes like to borrow our paintbrushes and a bowl of water and "paint the porch." It's been fun.