All About Johnnie

So it is Tuesday of a short work week and other than my team meeting, which would be the only one I am doing for this week,  I didn't have anything scheduled for work. That doesn't mean I didn't have anything to do mind you. I realized though that any feelings of un-ease around work centered around James and Data Analytics as there were at least 3 things he was supposed to be responsible for yet here he is taking the day off sick today. Which meant there was nothing i could do about pushing things forward. Still people that needed their reports were bugging me about them which is why I was also feeling some irritation. I had to tell myself that things were still under control and the fact that James wasn't here today only heightened a sense of lack-of-control. My feeling of un-ease was a control issue? Seems to be the case isn't it. And so the lesson today was to find a way to put all those negative feelings on the shelf and find a way to better deal with things positively. Fortunately for me I did have one thing that commanded far more attention and that I considered far more important. That was finding something to do for Johnnie ALL DAY today since he had no school. From the moment he woke up this morning he was already in GO mode and he even announced he wanted to draw stuff after breakfast. And so I did my team meeting, let him watch some animal stuff on YouTube and then got him to doodle something with watercolors. The good thing about Johnnie is that you can always get him to do some artwork. And you can always get him to draw dinosaurs. And you can always get him to do stuff under the guise of making his mom something for a present. While I did try to do work - and after all I had at least a dozen purchasing invoices I needed to catalog and approve - before long he had at least half a dozen things he had drawn. He was eagerly showing them to me of course. He was trying to tell me what each drawing was. And then I had the most BRILLIANT idea. "Johnnie, I asked him, why don't you write down a sentence about each drawing?" After all, you want mommy to know what each drawing is about don't you? HOMERUN! And so he spent another hour writing something. He had to ask me how to spell stuff but hey that part was easy. The astounding thing I realized was after the end of the activity, he had written himself a dinosaur book! I mean how amazingly cool was that?! He had a cover and an END page and everything. I mean it wasn't like I told him to write a book or anything. It just sort of worked out that way.   

And then later on after lunch I had another A-HA event that sort of just unfolded organically. We were taking an activity break or a video break. I started to watch something Christmassy and I chose the video "Closing of the Year" from the movie Toys by Wendy and Lisa. I was thinking how this was a bit of a ritual listening to this song and watching this video and it brought me back to a time when I was listening to it when I was still living at Maplewood. It was then that it hit me that we hadn't taught Johnnie any Christmas songs. I mean I know we're not at all religious but at least we have to teach Johnnie some holiday rituals right? Like the Christmas tree he helped his mom put up? And so i decided that I was going to teach him a Christmas carol today and we were going to sing it together and we were going to post the video of it in FB. THAT is sort of my way of getting into the holiday spirit right? I chose Silent Night. I figured it would be nice and short and mellow. And I had Johnnie write the words even. And then we sang it and sang it. The video I posted is us practicing it. The final version I posted on Facebook actually turned out very well. Ok, so maybe Johnnie is way out of pitch. He hasn't really learned how to sing. More like yell really. But he tried. And his facial expressions were totally priceless. As we were heading home from picking up his Panda Express dinner, he actually broke out into the song and knew all the words. See? Mission accomplished. One Christmas carol taught. All good.  With these 2 activities alone that Johnnie got to do with me, it was already a day I won't forget. In these times that doesn't feel like Christmas, we made it feel like Christmas. Way to go dad.