To His Own Drum

Swing Time

this week I’ve been taking Andrew to Zoo Camp while Allison takes Eva to Baking Camp. This is because I go to the gym right afterwards. Andrew wants to walk over to the park and while it means I have to walk back and then go to the gym, it is worth going to see how well he does on the playground equipment. I also got the chance to take a few photos of him with his new haircut. He looks so grown up.

On the first day at camp some little boy remarked about Andrew’s toenails. Over the weekend Eva painted her nails and Andrew had her do his toes, too. He has often gotten his toenails painted when Eva is doing it. I’m 100% behind him doing that if he wants to do so. The boy at camp said that he looked like a girl with his painted toes. Andrew told him to stop. The boy persisted and he told him to stop again. And once more. Andrew told us about this that night. We were proud of him for standing up for himself and the fact that he didn’t haul off and punch the kid. Andrew has learned some good techniques for dealing with bullies through karate and he put those to use. We discussed this with him and the next day (Tuesday) he went right up to the boy and said, “When you made fun of my toes you made me feel bad and I don’t like that. Don’t do it again.”

The kid’s name is Mason and they were fast friends the rest of the week.

When I heard that some boy was picking on him I did get fired up inside. However, I am so proud that he handled it on his own and turned the situation around all by himself. He’s an amazing kid. I still can’t handle things like that as well as he did.