My Favorite Vent

It was cold here this morning: eighteen degrees with a “feels like” of nine degrees.   I woke up fractionally to think about having to layer up to take the dog out to go to the bathroom and was reminded of something from my childhood.

My parents kept the house at a reasonable temperature year-round, but my father was always mindful of the thermostat.   It wasn’t uncommon for him to call out from the hallway, “who touched the thermostat!”  So sometimes in the mornings during the winter months I’d wake up and not want to get out of my warm bed.

But mornings happen and I did need to get up and get ready for school.   I would slink out of bed and onto the floor and lie over the blowing heat vent to get warm before getting dressed.  Commonly I’d stay on the vent warming up until my mother came in and told me I’d better get moving.

This morning my daughter came downstairs and went to the dog cage in our bedroom against the windows on the side of our bedroom.  I told her I needed to take the dog out myself because I was doing something different with house training so don’t open the cage yet.   She told me, “that’s okay, I’m just going to be here on my favorite vent.”  I looked over to see her balled up on top of the heat vent just in front of the dog’s cage.

The Big Boy Update:  My son had limited screen time this long weekend because he didn’t earn that much during school last week.   He was good at holding himself accountable when he used time and marking it off on the refrigerator tally sheet.   He earned extra time for reading though and read more than I’ve ever seen him read before with a book I didn’t think he was ready to read.   He would take full hours to read at a time.   He went from not reading last year to this.   It’s quite the change.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter’s braillesr told her if you try new things you might not like them today, but that’s okay, you may like them when you’re older.   And when you do like them, that means your tongue is growing up.   It must have made an impression on my daughter because she recently tried something she hadn’t liked in the past and said to me, “mom, my tongue is growing up!"