My hands are freeeeeeezing

Can’t seem to warm up. Gabe feels the same way; on our way back from the gym today, he started sighing and lamenting. “Why do we have to have winter? Why does it have to be snow?” If the snow has started by the time he wakes up from this nap, I think his poor little head is going to explode at the sight. At this point, only Sam is still maintaining any sort of facade that winter weather is anything other than prolonged torture; he goes out and plays in it with his friends, coming back in with soaked socks and gloves and bright pink cheeks framing his grin.

Had a good time reading with Sam this weekend. I enjoy the more relaxed pace we take with recreational reading, where I don’t worry about making him sound out the words he doesn’t know, and we take turns reading alternating pages to each other. If it’s fun like that, he’s willing to sit for a long while, just turning the pages to see what happens next. I don’t want him to associate reading with drudgery, obviously, so whatever I can do to make it relaxing is the right way to go.

And I’d rather him be a bookwork than the Ladies’ Man with which he’s scaring me lately.
SAM: “I miss Sophie, back at my old school.”
ME: “That’s too bad. I’m sorry.”
SAM: “Yeah, but I have lots of girlfriends now…”
ME: “Um, well, me, too. Sometimes a ‘girlfriend’ is just a girl who’s a friend, right? Doesn’t mean you’re all hugging and kissing! Ha, ha!”
SAM: “Um.”
ME: “…”
SAM: “…”
ME: “Sam, are you hugging and kissing them?”
SAM: “Well, not kissing. Just hugging…and high-fiving.”
ME: “Well, that’s, um, nice. Who are you hugging and, uh, high-fiving?”
SAM: “Katie, and Emily, and Kaitlyn, and – ”
ME: “You’re hugging Kaitlyn?” (Note: this is the 8-year-old with whom he plays nearly every day.)
SAM: “No! I don’t even high-five her! She’s just a friend, I guess.”

He’s going to give me gray hair before I’m 35.