Delayed in Charlotte

Returning from Cancun, we had a five hour delay in the airport, then an unplanned overnight in Charlotte. The Kid did great with all the waiting and delays; she had far more patience than I did!

The delay in Charlotte was so long that we slept there and still had a few hours to fill. We discovered the Discovery Place and had a wonderful morning exploring.

Learning on Vacation for Me

The trip to Cancun that I talked about in the last post was the first time in years that The Kid and I have traveled together without The Husband. What did I learn? That I need to be stricter about our routines when away than I do at home. The first two days were full of meltdowns (from The Kid, I didn't always have patience, but no full scale meltdowns!) before I realized that if I was exhausted, she was, too. Once I instituted a bedtime and a wake up time, she turned into a wonderful little traveler.

Learning on Vacation for The Kid

The vast majority of our vacation looked like this:

Playing in the sand and the shallow waves. And, of course, I forgot the camera when we went to El Rey, a smaller Aztec ruin site, the one part that looked like more traditional learning.

But some things that The Kid did get to experience: hearing lots of Spanish, eating new foods, watching the tides change, building with sand, and airports.

Forming New Habits

Why is this so hard?

I wrote last post about trying to form writing habits for the month of November. Didn't go so well for me. The Kid and I decided that in November, we were also going to try to form the habit of doing yoga every day. It would be a great habit to form, fun for both of us, but it hardly ever happened. We got the great Kids Yoga Deck, chose a handful of poses when we remembered, but did yoga maybe ten days last month. We're still working on this, though!

For December, she decided to try to form the habit of clearing off her art space when she was done working on something. I suspected this would not go well. She loves creating, and often the first step in a new creation is pushing aside the old creating materials, which is sometimes enough to put her off altogether, so it would be a great habit. Not happening so far, though.

I decided this month to work on Spanish every day using DuoLingo. It's amazing the excuses I've come up with to delay - mostly being sick and/or tired. Then a trip to Mexico, where I did at least work on my Spanish. I really need to get on this. We're planning a trip to a language school in Guatemala this spring and I want to make as much progress as I can through the free resource before paying for a tutor!

Writing Goals Update

At the beginning of November, I posted that The Kid was doing the Young Writer's Program for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). This required that she write (well, dictate) her story nearly every day to reach her goal of 1500 words by the end of the month. It took until the last day, but she did it! Yay Kid!







I also posted that I was going to try to blog every day. Obviously, that didn't come even close to happening. Probably just as well, as I'm still pretty sure I don't have 30 days of new stuff to say.