The Accidental Play Date

World War Z's got nothing on my house these days....  Except I feel like the zombie, and my children are on the war path.  You would think the zombie status has something to do with sleepless nights attributed to a newborn... you would be wrong.  AJ is a freaking child prodigy when it comes to sleep and has been giving us 12 hour nights for 2.5wks now, so I'm not sleepless, just battle weary.   This only added to my total anxiety after seeing the world's 'back to school' pics, that I have forever screwed up our lives by not enrolling Cub in Kindergarten.   So God and I had a little heart to heart today, which looked a lot like me hitting my head while plugging my ears as an escape from the RIDICULOUS NOISE in my house.  Since the decibels in this house have been rivaling that of a scream-o  concert, we've been spending quite a bit of time outdoors, in a weak attempt to salvage any portion of my hearing and sanity.  However, the parks haven't been doing much to assuage my anxiety about homeschooling, given Cub is like a foot taller than any other kid at the playground, with them all back in school..... Until today!

God must have sensed my rapidly approaching major freak out, cause we ventured out to the park today, and first thing I noticed were some boys Cub's size playing.  Then my ears perked up as two of the mom's talking nearby were talking about their home school curriculum.  If women ever fully outgrow the initial insecurities of approaching other women strangers, I wouldn't know yet.  I did that slow awkward walk over, where its kinda obvious you're approaching them, but trying not to draw attention to yourself yet.  Then when you are obviously lurking and they finally look your way, you almost act surprised they looked your way... my winning introduction went something like this "oh hi, how are you, just happened to notice you were talking about homeschooling stuff"  (maybe I noticed cause I've heard every word you've both said for the last 5 minutes, but don't mind me).  People think I'm outgoing, and I am, but for the record it doesn't make the initial introductions any less awkward.

It was awesome!  These women welcomed me immediately into their conversation, their kids are right at the same ages as mine, and they have a regular Wednesday morning play date, where the 4 of them and their collective 12 kids get together to play.  They also let me know of the even bigger gathering that occurs every Friday at another local park!  Wahoo!   Now I don't have to be the creepy school playground person, that hangs at the local school to hit recess so my kids can play with people their own age range....  We did that once last week.... it was weird, I don't recommend it.  I think the only reason they didn't call the cops on me was because I had a baby strapped to my chest, something about those non-threatening infants.

Confession time.... until today, I hadn't opened the boxes of home school curriculum we got, to be honest, they seriously freaked me out.  We've been working on the "Teaching Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lesson's" book all summer, and that had been what I was counting as our 'school' up till now.  After our accidental play date, I was encouraged to bite the bullet, came home and opened them up.  I reviewed the first few weeks/months of content while the boys had quiet/nap time and was SO excited to see that most of the material is stuff I feel pretty confident with Cub's performance in reading now, that he'll grasp quickly!

No matter how many times you hear/learn that you will get 'attacked' as you try to follow God's plan for your life, when you finally get that confirmation that you're on the right path, it feels SO good!  So thankful for the accidental play date today!  NOW.... if He would just weigh in on how to get two miniature humans to love each other rather than contrive new and devious ways to annoy the other and me in the process, we'd REALLY be onto something!