Mr. Independent

I'm very lucky to have fairly independent children. Jared, in particular, is very self-directed. For a while this year Dave took over with helping Jared get ready for school in the morning, but now Jared pretty much does it himself. He makes sure his alarm is set at night, wakes up to it in the morning, gets dressed, gets himself a bowl of cereal for breakfast and comes in to say goodbye to me before he goes out to catch the bus. Letting Jared do it himself does sometimes lead to some interesting fashion choices, such as earlier this week when he wore khakis with a hole in the knees and snow boots to school. But in general he does a pretty good job of choosing outfits and getting ready. Recently he has even taken responsibility to do a page of homework and practice his piano as soon as he gets home from school without being asked-- most of the time (it's amazing what bribery with the Wii can do...).

I feel kind of bad that I'm not up fixing him a hot breakfast and walking him to the bus, but overwhelming pregnancy fatigue makes you do what you've got to do to survive. And I haven't always been this lazy... Just for the record, when Jared was a kindergartner, I literally pulled him out of bed, pulled his pajamas off him, put his clothes on him, poured him cereal, tied his shoes, combed his hair and ran him out to the bus stop by 7:30 a.m. But I do have to say, I am grateful that children develop skills and get more independent as they grow up or I don't know if I would survive.