So far summer has been going well. I am really enjoying my job a lot. I have learned so much already in the 3 weeks I have been there. I never thought I would be able to tell as much about how a child is parented through simple actions of the child. And this is one of the bestthings for my patience. The philosophy of the Montessori idea promotes self-sufficiency; ie if a child comes up to a teacher to tattle on another student, they are told to go use their own words to talk to the child they are tattling on and work it out between the two of them. We teachers act as a mediator between conflicts not a solver or punisher. The children are reminded that they are responsible for their actions and how they may affect the other students. We don't yell. We ask. And remind. And we give the children choices. Sometimes they may make choices without realizing it and we let them know. For example, if a child is throwing sand, we tell them, "it looks like you just chose to find something else to play with on the playground because you showed us you cannot play with sand properly." Most of the time it works.

Mom and I are moving in a few weeks. We had out garage sale yesterday and sold a bunch of stuff including our family room furniture, my corner cabinet from my room and the dresser I was using. (I took my old dresser back from Ian's room). Moving is a strange experience for me. Hard to explain, but I seem to have almost to emotion towards it. I don't want to move, but maybe because mom and I are both excited about the new house, it is making it easier. We looked at a bunch of houses together with Jesse the realtor, found this one and both fell in love with it.

Speaking of mom, she did (rather, is doing) the Triple Bypass today. It is a bike ride over Loveland Pass, Squaw Pass, and Vail Pass (Over 120 miles and more than 10,000 feet of elevation gain) in one day. She is so amazing. This is the second year she has done it. I get to drive to Vail in a little while to go pick her up at the end. :) Woot.