Conversations with a 4-year-old

Thursdays are busy at this house.

Yesterday was particularly so.

Scratch that...every day this week has seemed particularly busy. 5 people living in one house...all with different things to do. Well, Logan pretty much does what everyone else does, but his sleep needs factor in.

On Mondays and Thursdays the kids have Taekwondo. We are still in the process of deciding what we want them to do. The last Martial Arts place lost out, because they were just not in the budget. We were driving to the park one day and saw a kid riding his bike wearing a Dobak with "Horizons Taekwondo" written on the back. We figured it must be close because he was riding his bike, so we googled it. Super close. We checked them out and they are ridiculously affordable in comparison to everyone else in the city.

We called and spoke to the Master's husband. He said she is the cheapest because she does it because she loves it...not because she's trying to make money. This works for us.

We took Max and Lucy. They have two class levels for their age group. Active Start (ages 3-5) and FUNdamentals (ages 5-10). We took him to both. The Active Start class has a lot of 3 year olds. Their attention span is limited, but their energy is high. He had fun. So did Lucy. She's twice the size of all the other kids. FUNdamentals has mostly 8 and 9 year olds. My kids are quite a bit smaller than the others. They've obviously been doing Taekwondo for a bit. Some of them are a bit too rambunctious and don't listen well. I went last night to observe and was nervous about my kids being involved with those bigger kids. Fortunately, Lucy and Max are always paired together because they're relatively the same size and skill level. They did good. We signed them up for FUNdamentals.

They started the class playing dodge-ball. If they got hit, they had to do a somersault.


After doing two 45-minute classes in a row last night, they were exhausted. Hopefully next week is better when they only have to do one.

I loved watching them practice their kicking and punching and sparring. It comes quite naturally to Max as he is a human jumping bean and has been kicking and punching for a long time. But for Lucy, it is completely against her nature to do anything that even remotely resembles physical violence, so this will be a stretch for her. At one point they got to punch one of the instructors in the chest after doing some kicks and her face was pure glee...like, "I can't believe I'm allowed to do this!"


It was also completely awesome and hilarious to see them counting in Korean. Hanah! Dool! Set!

The class goes until the middle of December and then we'll reevaluate then.

On the way home from TaeKwondo, we're chatting away and all of a sudden Max says:

Max: "Maybe I should wear stilts all the time."

pause

Me: "Why?" (don't laugh mom)

Max: "Because I fall over a lot."

Tyler and I glance at each other.

Me: "I fail to see how that will help."

Max: "Well, if I see something I want to see, and then I turn my head to keep looking at it, but I keep walking forward, then I usually trip and fall down. But if I don't look, then I'll miss the thing I wanted to see."

Me: "Uh-huh?" (I'm still trying to figure out the stilts part of this equation).

Max: "If I wore stilts, I would be taller and I wouldn't miss things all the time."

I think we convinced him that stilts probably wouldn't make life easier, but he nearly had us convinced!

We stopped on the way home from Taekwondo to vote. It was the Ontario Provincial election. Our electoral site was the Fire Hall - which the kids were excited to be inside.

I don't feel I have lived in Ontario to accurately determine who I should vote for. I'm not sure what my Ontario needs are yet, and who will best meet them...but I voted anyway. I explained to the kids that there are men and woman who fight and many lose their lives so we can have the freedom to choose our own government. Going to vote is a way to say thank you. And I am thankful. So even though I'm uncertain who to vote for...not voting seems worse.

Max and Tyler went and voted first, and then Max came with me. When I opened the ballot and paused to read all the names he got frustrated and said, "No Mom! It's this one!" and pointed out who Tyler had obviously voted for. Haha. The rules of voting will be explained to him before it's his turn to vote.

So it was an extra busy Thursday. But we still had time for the kids to have a bath in the BIG tub and to read a few stories before bed.

The weekend is almost upon us, and I am THANKFUL! Thankful for the break. Thankful for the sunshine. And Thankful for the season.

Happy Thanksgiving!