What should we do on Friday mornings?

I would like to make an argument for just doing nothing.

Especially since you have something else planned every other morning of the week.

Just do nothing.

Maybe my kids have too much of nothing.  They've never had daycare, or mother's day out, or even play groups to go to regularly.  Occasionally I've committed to once-a-week storytime at the library but that has been perhaps 20 months worth out of the last 16 years.

This morning, this wonderful blessed Friday morning, was much like every other Friday morning.  I slept in until 9:30. I was laying in bed awake since about 7:30 but was snoozing, then listening, then snoozing, etc.  Listening to the sounds my kids made.

Well, the oldest don't make sounds. They're reading.  My 12yo is still snuggled in bed reading; my 16yo got up and got on computer which he does every day. He checks his assignment lists and starts working, checking email and facebook as he goes.

But the 10yo, 8yo, 5yo and 3yo have been playing in the school room next to my door and the porch and yard outside my window.  They have played with chickens and got chicken snot on their face when they tried kissing them. They decided to look at chicken snot under the microscope so came inside and smeared a slide across their cheek. (I know it's not chicken snot, but I haven't had enough coffee to figure out what they are really talking about.)  They collected beetles and bugs and are looking at them under the magnifying glass.  They are making a chart comparing the characteristics of each of the different beetles-- this one can fly, that one has horn things on its exoskeleton, this one has no exoskeleton.

Sometimes you just have to let them be "bored" and not. schedule. anything.

A mom with a 2yo and a newborn asked this question which prompted this post-- he has daycare or playgroups every other day and she's scared to death to have him home with nothing scheduled on Fridays.  So I answer again.  Just do nothing. Don't offer any excitement and then sit and watch what he does.  Let him play, explore. Let him just have a quiet day at home with nothing to do. 

You know WE love that right?

Yes I know it was different when Jacob was 2 and Ed was a newborn.  Back then I honest to goodness put a waterbottle and a bowl of dry cereal out, and the child could honestly get himself up, pop a VHS in the machine and eat cereal as he watched a 2 hour movie and I could wake up slowly.  Once when I was newly pregnant with John and Ed was snuggled in his crib near my bed, Jacob came tearing into my room, "ACCK I ate the RED SUGAR" and puked red all over my floor. It was cayenne pepper. Hahaha.... So please, do childproof or keep him contained to only his one, childproofed room.  :O