We are snowed in today, yay! Albin has sniffles that developed a sore throat last night, so I was going to keep him home from chemistry anyway. I will trudge over to the store for popsicles, but don't imagine we'll be driving anywhere today. Elise's Suzuki lesson may even be canceled tonight, and we won't have our date night, either, with Albin under the weather. Karl was extra tired last night, which is usually his symptom of getting sick, and I feel a little funny this morning. Maybe we'll all catch it. As long as we're better by the weekend--we don't want to miss the PeeWee Herman Christmas special party!

Friends were over yesterday afternoon, and we had a lovely discussion about sensitive children and people. I've been reading up on it, as it fits my profile very well, and I bet Albin's too. I've been reading some books on it by Elaine Aron, and we all took the basic quiz for ourselves and our children--that was interesting. Karl and I did the same last night. There are 22 questions for the adult to check for levels of sensitivity, and he got six true questions, while I got sixteen (thirteen is the threshold for a highly sensitive person). Now I know why I fell apart in Boson at the crowded market when I was really hungry : )!

I'm also reading Natural Learning Rhythms, about children's developmental stages. Wish I'd read it earlier! It's very helpful to understand what stages of growth children go through, and ways to support that growth, especially as they change from one stage to another. Well, we've got a few years left, so maybe all is not lost. After we get back from Karl's sabbatical, I'm going to look into attending a seminar or family camp at the EnCompass Institute. Perhaps we can do that sometime next year.

I think the rest of today will be spent in reading a lot of Redwall, drinking tea and soup, and trying not to get too sick. We'll probably throw in some math games as well. (We also had a good conversation yesterday about math, how it is so much more than arithmetic. There are many people who think that because they are not good at arithmetic they are bad at math, even if they can do logic, patterns, statistics, etc. That's true for a few people in my family, as well as some friends of ours. So I think we'll do a little more hands-on math today, maybe play a game of Set while drinking our tea...)