Try, Try Again

I'm going to try to be a bit more regular about updating this blog. There are a variety of reasons I want to keep a better track of what goes on in our lives, but the topmost consideration is that I plan to unschool Tre, and keeping track of what happens each day on a blog seems a bit easier that just about any other form of recordkeeping.

In that regard, today I was watching Andy for the afternoon. We got a bit of a late start, but Tre was feeling sociable, so he invited Andy to come "visit" early (I was supposed to start watching him about 2:30pm and Tre invited him back about noon.

They played some LEGO Batman until Tre got ridiculously frustrated by Andy not doing what he wanted him to do (he was trying to accomplish a particularly difficult goal and Andy was making it more difficult). Tre and I had a conversation about the fact that when working cooperatively with others, we can't always make all the decisions as if we were playing alone. Tre seemed to understand, but it didn't ease his frustration any. He decided he wanted to cry loudly (seconds after giggling, he made this decision in a calm tone of voice). I told him that was fine, but I'd need to close the door between him and us (Andy and me). He agreed, and went back to crying for a minute or two more.

After that drama, they played happily for a while, playing with Tre's Thomas wooden train set. That lasted an hour or two until they decided that it made more sense to jump on each other. Tre got tired of that well before Andy did, so I decided to come up with another form of entertainment.

So, we all three got into swimsuits, I figured out where I could find an outside water spigot I had some reasonable access to, and I started filling up water balloons. The boys had a blast. They each tossed about 10 baloons at each other, only two actually hitting their targets. (One of those two was caught, undamaged.) They retrieved the broken balloon pieces in order to get their next balloon, so there was little to no trash left in the yard. Then we just took turns spraying each other with the hose.

After that, we came back inside, changed into regular clothes, and watched some TV until Andy fell asleep. His parents came home within minutes of him waking up from his nap.

This afternoon and evening, Tre has mostly spent playing LEGO Batman on his own. He's doing a great job, which is pretty impressive given that he's only five years old.