For Christmas, Sebastian got two ant farms. Because he did not need two, he chose one to keep, and gave the other to Isaac so that they could both have pet ants (lovely). When the weather started to show signs of warming, we filled out the ant order forms for each of them (on the same day), and mailed them off to order the long-anticipated ants. Each form stated that we should expect to wait 2-6 weeks for our ants to arrive.
Well, yesterday at lunch, Lucas went out to get the mail. In it, there was a yellow-orange package with Isaac's name on it. Lucas helped him open it up, where, lo and behold, they found a tube of ants. Isaac was elated! His face was beaming, and he was so excited he could hardly contain himself (if you've ever seen Isaac get truly excited, you will understand exactly what I mean). I thought he was going to burst a seam all the way down in his toes he was so happy.
That was at lunch. Sebastian was at school. He didn't know.
When Sebastian got home from school, Isaac could hardly wait to share his excitement with his big brother. He rushed Sebastian downstairs into the basement to show him and to check on the ants' progress at building tunnels (which they had made a surprising amount of already). Sebastian was happy for his brother, and thought the ants were pretty cool to watch. But they weren't his ants. Where were his ants? How much longer? Will they be here tomorrow? The next day?
So, Sebastian did what he does when he needs a bit of therapeutic time. He got out a composition notebook and a pen, and he began to write a story. He wrote a non-fiction story, with dates and facts as accurate as possible, about the day his brother got ants in the mail and he didn't. The story goes as follows (copied exactly from Sebastian's notebook):
"Hello my name is Sebastian." Me and my brother Isaac ordered ants a long time ago. On May 27 2008 Isaac got his ants. That was on Tusday. I lost all my patienc I think. Isaacs ants are busy little succers. Thanks for listening to my non-fiction book of ants.
(followed by an illustrated diagram of the two ant farms - 'My ant farm' with an arrow to an empty box with gel in it; 'Isaac's ant farm' with an arrow to a box with gel and dots (being the ants) and a tunnel started in the corner)
He was quite a sport about it. He was as content as he could be to check in regularly on his brother's ants to see what kind of progress was being made, etc. But he said to me, "Mom, I think I used up all my patience. I think today I ran out, and I used up the last bit of it I had. I've been waiting and waiting, and I don't think I can wait any more."
Poor guy. I can attest, lessons in patience are some of the hardest to learn.
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