Stopping to Smell the Roses ... I Mean Watch the Ants

Since I'm in the transition stage of going from working mommy to full-time mommy, I thought it would be really helpful to make a schedule during the day. I noticed that most of the time, Little C was not very receptive to my suggestions that he "go and play" or "go and color" or "stop repeating yourself" or "leave me alone for 2 minutes". So, then I thought about how at his school /daycare, they must have some sort of schedule. So, I decided to make my own, but more about this later. The first thing on the list at 8 am is a morning walk. It's really the only thing I've managed to be consistent about in the past week.

So, the other day during our walk, we stood waiting for the road to clear so we could cross the street. Once it was clear I started to walk but Little C pulled me back wanting to look at a squad of ants. My first instinct was to pull him across the street, but then I realized that the quicker we got home, the sooner I'd have to find something for him to do. So, I knelt down and pointed out that one of the ants was injured and being carried back home. Little C was oblivious and wasn't seeing it. I was thinking that maybe he was too young to focus on this, but after no more than a couple of seconds he commented about how the ant was hurt and the other ant was helping him. And then he noticed, with much sadness, that two other ants were injured. (I suspect that Little C had something to do with the injuries.) It was such a simple thing. But to me, it made realized that I wanted to slow our lives down for moments like this. I've been trying to stop Caleb from smashing every bug he encounters for some time now. But after this scene, he gets why I've been doing this. I think he had just had his first lesson on compassion.