What I Love Most Mondays

This week has been one of the busiest if not THE busiest week I have had in a really long time. Work is crazy and we have about 16 kids in the child care, over half of them living in the shelter. That makes it so tough because each family is going through their own personal crisis and there is always the need for lots of attention for each and every member. With the high number of kids, I haven't been able to do any kind of administrative duties, but have to focus on teaching, disciplining, and changing diapers for the whole day. Add to that, that one of my good friends and co-workers, Sheire, the one who runs my nutrition program and cooks all the meals, and supervises the after school children, had a 4 year old in the hospital last week, so she was out, leading to yet another hat I needed to wear for the week. Elem had the fever virus towards the beginning of the week, and Mother's day was coming up, Elem needed a haircut, our modem was fried, so we had no internet and me being the name on the bill, needed to run WAY out to exchange them, and not to mention my house needed cleaning! All that said, and all I wanted to do was focus on Elem's outdoor birthday party which was on Saturday, and the for-cast never stopped calling for rain. I really needed to be about 5 places at a time, and the pressure never let up, and by the time Friday night came along, I couldn't have been more ready for the weekend. Although I knew I had not prepared at all, and felt very stressed with what all needed to be done.

.....I will blog on the party, the haircut, and the weekend over the course of this week. :)

But for now, I want to take a few seconds to be thankful. Thankful for the joys Elem can find in the most random of moments, and even in the weirdest of places. On this day, the focus was on a book-I just love children's books. All of them, they are so great. Last Friday I was so stressed, but when I got home, Elem wanted to read a book, his favorite book, "No David". It is written by David Shannon, one of the actors from Saturday Night Live. The book is pretty basic and each page shows a picture of a little boy David, and shows him doing something bad, and his mom says No David. And those are the only words to every page..until the end. So the boy is told no for picking his nose, for banging the drums, and for going outside naked. So I of course fill in the pages with some additional words, just to make the book last a little longer. And Elem LOVES this! He adds in his own little words, but we always say the same thing for each page just about every time we read. Towards the end of the book, David has to go to time out for breaking something in the house, and after time out is over, the mommy tells him its okay and gives him a hug and tells him she loves him. I love watching Elem read this book and just when I thought everything happening was so stressful and there wasnt enough time in the day to even take a second to breath, I sat with Elem and Seth for just a couple of minutes to read No David. It was just the stress reliever I needed, and what I needed to ground myself.

I am just so thankful for reading with my little boy. Books are so relaxing to me, and I love reading with Elem. He loves just about every book, and it is such a special bonding time. Hopefully you can understand Elem's chitter chatter in this video. Listen closely and you should be able to pick up the gist of the book :)

Happy Monday!