Abby went off to babysit her charges this morning and romp in the sun with them. Kyle was resistant to editing his newspaper article, so he, his dad and I had a talk. You know what kind of talk, the kind that takes over an hour, is calm and involves concepts like responsibility, effects, consequences, how choices you make now affect you long term. yes, one of those. They can be rather draining, but they are periodically necessary when you are parenting. It had an effect, though. Kyle quite cheerfully did an edit, then found on his own the punctuation and structure mistakes he had missed and corrected them. And, even better, when Abby got home from babysitting, he was pleasant, cheerful and non-confrontational. Abby worked on her article - it did not take long and did a little cleaning and all was peaceful. How nice.

It was warm and sunny - not as warm as yesterday, but low 60's is still pretty respectable, so I shooed Abby and Kyle outside. Let them soak up sunshine, tramp through the woods, wade in the river and be free. There'll be many more days for seatwork. And some important lessons were grasped today. One can't see them on paper - but they shine through all the same.

We're scheduled to have rain and cold (near freezing temps) for the next four days, so I'm sure we'll all be glad for the sun we got today. The trees are still just on the brink of budding, and the only blossoms are the occasional bulb or forsythia. Soon, though, spring will be here. Soon.