Lazy Days and Reading

With all of the stressful things in my life right now it's sometimes hard to sit back and appreciate the things that really mean something to me.  It's too easy to be stressed out about the bills being paid and where we're moving when our lease is up.  For our part on that, it's just been too much for us to want to stay here.  Our building has been sold once already in June and now they're looking to sell it again.  It's complicated just about everything and we're ready to move on.  All of that stress has kind of gotten me stuck on that and I've forgotten about some of the better moments.

Today I finally caught up with my daughter, since  we've missed reading for the past couple of days.  She's not a terribly strong reader and hasn't shown much interest in reading for herself.  She hasn't really read anything (that I'm aware of) for the past week or so, and I haven't been pushing her.  Instead I've been reading to her.  We absolutely plowed through the first book in her three book The Princess School Special Edition Treasury.  We're flying through the second book too.

I've noticed that's something all of the best moms I've known have done, reading to their kids.  It doesn't seem to matter how old their kids get unless their kids just stop liking it.  A very good friend of mine read Harry Potter with her kids every night.

With all of my daughter's love for ATC and all of that, it's gotten her into writing too.  She writes her name, the date, and title on the back of her cards.  As a result, she's finally learning how to write.  Her spelling is absolutely atrocious, but what can I expect from a girl who used to fight me for so long?  I can't expect immediate results.  She's actually doing pretty well with it.  Now I just need to see if I can encourage her to work with it more steadily.

Just like with the ATC being incentive for her writing, I think our family reading time is incentive for her to read. I just wish I could find something my younger two would enjoy sitting down and letting me read with them.  Neither of them are interested in story time.  They'd much rather run off to play (or attempt to do it themselves!) so it's challenging.  Still, I'm glad I can still share something with my daughter!