"Mama and Me"

Life has been ridiculously chaotic over the past few days, let me tell you. But I really don't feel like getting into it on my blog because the situation has passed, it's over and done with and I am moving forward.

Trust me, if I decided not to move forward and chose to write about all the drama on Musings of a Single Mama, I would be here until Christmas just trying to get it all down.

Anyways. Moving on to what I actually want to talk about.

I previously posted about some of the things I have tried that I found on Pinterest. And one of the ideas I took and implemented at home was a Mama and Me book for KBug and I.

So I have created our very own notebook for KBug and I to write notes back and forth to each other. It looks like this:

**I recognize that on this blog I am "Mama". For reasons behind why the notebook reads "Mommy" instead check out this blog!!**



I wrote the first entry and gave the notebook to her the very next day. I wasn't sure exactly what KBug would actually do with the notebook, to be honest. She loves to write, but I didn't know if the concept would be too radical for her or if she would even want to write notes back and forth with me. So KBug and I read the first entry together and I told her she could write back to me whenever she wanted.

KBug wrote back to me within an hour of having the notebook. I loved watching her walk through my bedroom door and listening to her tell me she had written back to me.

Since then, we have written each other a couple of times. And everytime I have possession of the book she is continuously asking if I have written back to her yet. And when I say continuously, I absolutely mean it. To the point where she will walk into my room, see the notebook and ask, then walk out of my room only to walk back in five minutes later and ask again.

I think it is completely awesome that she has embraced this form of communication so easily and willingly. And it has helped her to be more confident in her writing abilities, especially when it comes to her schoolwork.

She has an assignment every week: "Wednesday Write Night" where she has to come home and write at least five sentences. Sometimes her teacher provides a topic, other times she just has to write sentences utilizing five of her spelling words. And this particular homework assignment was a huge struggle for weeks.

But then, KBug and I started writing back and forth in our notebook. And suddenly "Wednesday Write Night" is easy as can be! She grabs a piece of paper, a pencil and either her instructions or spelling words and settles right in to write! And she's discovered that it is really easy for her and that she enjoys it.

We still struggle with the KBug is a perfectionist aspect of writing, meaning that she is obsessed with correctly spelling her words on her homework and if a letter is not written exactly as it should according to the penmanship worksheets she completed starting in the 3-year-old program she has to go back and re-write it. But it is much easier to be patient with her about things like that when she's already come up with her sentences and it hasn't taken an hour and a half.

Another reason I am completely in love with our notebook? She, like me, writes the things that she tends to not say. For example, the cover of our notebook, she wrote, isn't "[KBug] & Mommy anuf".(I love the way she sounds out her words instead of being a perfectionist with her spelling!) Now, that isn't something she didn't feel comfortable saying out loud because she thought it might hurt my feelings. But I wrote back and told her that I thought her ideas for decorating the cover more sounded great and I would look into getting what she needed.

KBug is very in-tune with the feelings of those around her and she is always trying to keep from hurting anyone's feelings. Granted, she's only 6 so sometimes she says things without realizing what she's said and it ends in hurt feelings, but she is quick to apologize. I think it's great that she is so compassionate at such a young age, though, and I am hoping that her compassion only grows with her as she continues to get older.

My daughter is an amazing little girl, and I love her with all my heart.

She's my everything.