High School Words

 I recently introduced the boys to this blog and they found it so entertaining. Part of the reason I stopped blogging about them was because they were getting old enough that I wanted to be sure they owned their stories and not me. But after seeing how much enjoyment they got from looking back at the stories, they said they would like it if I kept writing them.

Peterhas been going through some general teenage angst. He seems unhappy most of the time and gets snippy or sullen most days. I'll mention it every now and then and try to see what's going on but most of the time he doesn't really have an answer for me.

The other day when he came back from his dad's house he was grouchy and had his unhappy face on. I asked him what was going on and he gave me his generic "nothing" answer. So I said something about his feeling of "malaise". He didn't know the word so I pulled up the dictionary and showed him..."a general feeling of of discomfort, illness, or uneasiness whose exact cause is difficult to identify". He read it, looked back and me with a shrug and said "pretty much".

A few days later, I reminded Peter that school conferences are coming up and asked if there was anything he wanted us to talk to his teachers about. He couldn't really think of anything but then said "well, maybe you want to talk to one of them about my malaise". He figured it might be good to talk to his English teacher because she'd know the word.

I made an appointment to talk with his "Freshman Seminar" teacher. This is the class that's kind of an introduction to High School and tries to help the kids figure out where they fit in, make connections, and get used to high school. I told Peter I made the appointment with her and he said "well, she'll probably know the word because she's an English teacher too". I find it so funny that the most important part of this discussion is whether or not people know the word. I told him I guessthere's no guarantees but I would have expected most people that got through high school or college to know these kinds of words.

Even though he has cranky times, he still happily does stuff with us. We take walks in the evening or watch some TV. He's been getting good about taking care of things around the house (like taking out the garbage) without being asked.

A week or two ago we stopped at the park in the evening. Grady brought a tennis ball and wanted to play catch. If he and Peter play, Grady throws the ball all over the place to try and make Peter run around more. But Grady wants someone to throw for him to make him jump or dive for the ball. I practically throw my shoulder out trying to play with him because he keeps backing up farther and then reaches his arms up and yells "I want to jump!".

The one night Grady was wanting to dive, but obviously it's kind of hard to throw the ball just short enough for him to dive. He'd occasionally have to reach for the ball, but I wasn't accurate enough for a real good dive.

Peter was mostly sitting on the grass making grass whistles but then after watching Grady a few times, he had to demonstrate a good dive. Here is Grady tossing the ball so Peter could get a good dive in. These two make me smile.