The Smell of Christmas

Simon's favorite breakfast is two big bowl of Cheerios with milk. I serve cold cereal two or three times a week, because it's a more expensive breakfast. Well, with three packages of strawberries waiting in the fridge and a bunch of crisp bananas sitting on the counter I decided to serve cereal. I woke Simon up with the promise of his favorite cereal.

He was so excited! He chuckled. He shouted his order in joy. Then I went to the pantry for the extra box of Cheerios... that wasn't there.

It was almost enough to make me knock on neighbors doors and beg for Cheerios. I felt rather bad for the completely crushed two year old without Cheerios to eat for breakfast.

Thankfully we had sugary shredded wheat so he tolerated one bowl of second-rate.

In the morning Alynna and I sat together to read slowly through "Hop on Pop". And I mean slowly. She is learning how letters work together to make words. She has to concentrate to train her eye to take in one word at a time on a page full of story and temptation. She would fidget and ring her hands and scoot back and forth as her little lips twisted out the sounds of H and O and P. Hop.

Learning to write as almost as tense. I had to be very aware of how hard she was working so I didn't jump to frustration. She only makes straight lines to start out letters. A's are always straight up and down with a slight slant to the right and a little line through both. Even lower case O's end up as squat little D's.

Practice. Practice. Practice. I keep telling myself. She needs the practice of reading and writing. I need the practice of patience and praise.

Then it was Nathan's turn to do school. We were in a friend's garden playing and read and writing. Alynna skipped off to play with her plastic yellow grasshopper. Nathan threw his floppy blue spider toy to the ground and clambered up the white metal lawn chair. "Dick and Jane" are now our good friends and role models. Today Baby Sally dropped her teddy bear in the crane. He went "up, up, up" but by the end of the story had come "down, down, down".

It didn't take too long for me learn statements like, "Nathan! Sit down! Down. Down. Down!"

I tested him on some easy spelling and was happily surprised he knew how to spell several of them. The writing needs practice and control of hand.

I watched his lips as he slowly sounded out words. I laughed to myself when I saw spiderwebs caught in his hair from exploring the garden bushes.

I sat in the cool shade and listened to the dry leaves fall to the ground. I marveled at the different shades on one dying grape leaf.

Simon pushed a Mandarin orange in my face yelling repetitively, "I have this? I have this? I have this?" I peel our first Mandarin orange of the season and smell it deeply. "Ah, it smells like Christmas." That little moment of mine, where my childhood Christmases in Germany seem to flash before me, is interrupted with Simon's repetitive yelling, "I smell it? I smell it? I smell it?"

I put the citrus to his nose and instruct him to smell. He takes a big whiff and then breaths out... deeply... through his nose. Um, okay, that orange is yours now for sure!

All the other children run to get their own orange and try to peel it in one piece. They each smell for Christmas and each tell me, "Oh, yes, I can smell it!" But Nathan's wrinkled nose and snarling upper lip tell me he has no idea what I'm talking about.