Surprises

I have been unable to come on here and update much at all.  Now I feel life slowing down a bit and I am looking forward to that.  The snow on the ground outside my window has me feeling much like staying in bed all day today.  I have still to unpack anything from Team Challenge.  But I got a new laptop last night so I need to test it out right?  So here I am. 

I have yet to post about some exciting news.  My youngest daughter just turned 7 years old about two weeks ago.  She is a fairly unique child in that she is so young yet very responsible and determined.  Very Type A personality.  We just had teacher conferences last night and her report card she received all A+'s.  It is one thing to get all A's but all A+'s how does that even happen??  But with her I believe it.  She just does not get anything wrong.  It is almost like she won't let herself.  I am NOT this type of person so I do no know where she gets it from.  Maybe she is that way in spite of me, I don't know but it is who she is.  I can only remember having to really correct her one time and that was recently and only because I was trying to make a point about how important it is to pay careful attention when caring for the horses.  It nearly devastated her to have to be corrected and I had to spend more time telling her that it is OK to not be perfect than I did explaining my point so that she would not be crushed.  When she gets it in her head that she wants to do something and if she has asked for permission she will do it 100%.  That she may get from me.  Well all that to say that about 2 months ago she got it in her head that she wanted to start riding.  That was the beginning of the end.  EVERY SINGLE DAY since I have heard the words, "Mom, can I ride?".  If I say no we are busy she will then say, "well then can I ride later?".  Again if the answer is "no", then she asks, "can I ride tomorrow?".  She is relentless, or determined, or obsessed or all of the above, I don't know but it became a DAILY thing.  Well I don't have a real beginner kid safe horse.  So she was content that I was only comfortable with leading her on Lily.  But it made it hard to really teach her anything.  She needs to learn how to post and well pretty much everything. She does have decent balance on a horse because she has ridden quite a bit but only usually for short periods of time and a couple months for fair time.

Well she proved to me that this was very important to her.  She would feed, water, clean stalls, groom, saddle and any other brunt work happily with absolutely no complaints.  I don't just let my kids do the fun parts if they are serious about it they need to prove it and learn all aspects.  My 10 year old eagerly took her on as her project and started teaching her how to groom and saddle the Lily.

Well I require much of my kids.  They are very well behaved and kind children because they are not aloud to be any different.  Some people disagree with my type of parenting but I strongly believe I am trying to not raise children but the goal is to raise independent, confident, strong, intelligent, helpful, kind and well balanced adults.  So I do probably expect more from my kids than many parents (but those parents are usually asking me how I raised such well behaved children) but I am careful to balance those expectations with praise, love and acceptance for the strengths, weaknesses, successes and failures.  And if they want something in life and prove it is not just an emotional whim then I will move heaven and earth to give it to them.  Understanding that it can just as easily be taken away if it is not appreciated and respected by their words, behavior and actions.  And you know what I found is that when you expect and give these things children are capable of being and doing SO much more than adults who want to say, "but they are just children" think that they can.

Kelcie proved every bit of what I ask when it came to really wanting to start riding.  Enter Mom moving heaven and earth.......and this is what appeared in our back yard on Kelcie's 7th Birthday.

Meet Penny!

The perfect Kelcie size pony.

And she is the happiest little girl in the world!

Surprise Kelcie!  Being such and awesome kid does have it's benefits.

 

We are just leasing this little cutie for an indefinite amount of time.  Kelcie does understand that but it doesn't make it less special to have your own pony to love and care for and learn how to ride on.  And since Kelcie has made great progress on her posting and Penny is loving having her own kid  to take care of again.