Discovery

   It's been a week of discovery for us. Some happy, some sad. It started with an email I got from Daniel's teacher on Thursday. What didn't surprise me was that Mr. P said Daniel is a delight to have in class, but he's having a hard time getting any work out of him. Yep, that's Daniel. The manipulative charmer. He has a passive-agressive personality disorder and he'll try hard to please you and make you think that he's going to do everything you want, and then he does none of it and gets out of all of it. I always thought he didn't want to do the work, but it may be that he can't do it. I fear something more may be going on than the passive-agressive stuff. We've discovered this fact, and it's going to take some discovery to find out what's going on.
   Yesterday the boys and I went to the Discovery Science Center for a school field trip. Being that we're in a hybrid homeschool program all the boys can come regardless of age or grade. So off we went to Santa Ana.
   Now, I have to give you a bit of background, without taking up too much space. Kenny's sister is his only sibling. She has two sons, ages 6 and 18 months, who are the only full cousins my kids have since my brother and I are estranged. They live in Chino Hills, which really isn't that far from Murrieta, maybe an hour away. We don't see them often...let's just say I never saw her pregnant with her youngest, and she never saw me pregnant with my youngest. Sad, I know, and what's worse is that we had a sort of falling out a couple months ago.
   Well, I knew that she homeschooled her first grader through the same charter school as my boys, but I didn't think about the fact that she might be on the same field trip as us yesterday.  But, she was. Since our falling out was over the phone and email, I discovered that things are alot different when you're face to face. Not much was said about the situation, but we hugged and spent the day together.
   Our falling out was caused, in part, by her comments about things we were doing in our life. Our reply was that she had no idea of what our life was really like. I think it might have been a day of discovery for her too. At least I hope it was, because it might actually help the situation. She saw first hand how life with Noah is. It was a fairly good day for him, but it had some rough points. He panicked when we had to take the elevator rather than the stairs because we had strollers with us. He had to leave the Grossology exhibit because the noise level in the enclosed area where it was displayed was too much for him to handle. There was a six-foot tall robot "person" with a water faucet for a head telling the facts about snot, and Noah got quite attached to him, wishing he could take him home. So, she might have discovered that we weren't exaggerating about how difficult life is for us sometimes. In turn, I discovered (when she told me) that her family has some issues with ADD and anxiety as well.

   The boys discovered stuff about how things worked and why things happen the way they do. We all discovered what it felt like to lay on a bed of nails! And I discovered that life rarely unfolds the way you expect it to. 

My boys and their cousins.