Busy

Tomorrow I'm collecting papers from all 145 of my students. Thursday and Friday are parent-teacher conferences, and they'll want to know how their kids did. Why do I do this to myself?

Am I boring you? "I'm soooo busy! Waaaa!" Everybody's busy.

Hey, Lyla's busy. She's smiling in that photo because she just discovered how to slam that door. Do you know the hours that went into that discovery? These things don't just happen, you know. She opened and closed it for many hours before the epiphany hit her that perhaps there was a better, more delightful way to go about it.

So I need a better, more delightful way to grade all those papers. Hey, maybe I'll let Lyla grade some. She drooled on this one; clearly an A. See, what I'm realizing is that it's unrealistic to finish them by conferences, which is actually fine. I have plenty of other things in the grade book. I'll just finesse the parents a little if they ask about the papers.

Lyla understands finesse. When she crawls over to a vent, which she's not allowed to play with, she'll turn to us and shake her head no. Then she'll usually busy herself elsewhere. There she is, a 10-month-old figuring out how to smoothly work her way through the world.

Here's the point, maybe: babies have a certain zen quality, where sometimes they just automatically know the best way to do something.

I should've had Lyla write this.