CAUTION!!! Mom bragging on a kid coming up…. Please pass this post by if you’re not interested…… but I just gotta BRAG on this kid a little bit!!!!!

Yes, my baby. Maggie. My youngest child. Of two. She’s 15 and well, she’s had a rough ride of things… she’s an autistic kid, with some learning delays and it’s really the main reason that we started homeschooling. My old kid was have a few issues as well, so we said, we can’t do any worse than they were having at the time in school… so we started homeschooling about 8 years ago and never looked back! Jessy is going great, in her second year of college and doing wonderfully. And Maggie just tested out to be really close to her age appropriate skill levels for her K12 classes!!! Considering that she only just became a fluent reader about a year, year and a half ago, max… we are SUPER proud of her.

But, really…. something super cool happened last week. To me, it was just simply wonderful.

Jessy used to do all our order fulfillment. She was great at it. She packed orders, made her rock kits, and oversaw all the business of our hard goods sales. I loved it! I pretty much was only involved in the order process of stock. And of course, toting the stuff to the post office. But she did everything else.

And then the rotten kid went and started college!!!! HAHA… And now all the sudden, with her big deal 15 credit hour class schedule, and harder classes and all in her second year… well, guess who gets to do all the order fulfillment again? (sigh….) Me.

(I’m being silly, of course, I want Jess to have all the time in the world to deal with the more important priority in her life at the moment… but still, it is a big paradigm shift for me! Back in the order desk room!!!)

Well, of course, I was having some trouble getting back into the swing of things. Having my other work to do, and then the school and college schedules and all to adjust to, and now, all the orders, too? Talk about overwhelmed Mom here. And add a couple huge orders that were late and some mad customers… well… it was not a pretty picture.

But then, something wonderful happened.

Maggie asked if she could help. And I’ll be perfectly honest… I thought, no, that’s okay… I can handle it, but then I thought, no… that’s dumb. Yeah, a year or two ago, she couldn’t really handle it. It was primarily the reading issues. Hard to pack an order when you can’t read the invoice and can’t type in the addresses to our mailing program, and things like that. So I thought, yeah, let’s give it a whirl.

Of course… Jack approved. After all, it was Maggie’s kindness that gave him a home. He’s a big fan of Maggie!

And of course, Lune knew that Maggie would be awesome help. After all, Luna sits and watches how diligent and focused Maggie has been with her online school. She’s almost logged in 100 hours in less than a MONTH!!! I kid you not. She’s been doing all that they ask and more. And not one whisper of complaint or lack of dedication. She loves it. Well, maybe not LOVES it… well, no… she loves the history and the science. She likes the art. Math and language arts? Well, those are not favs yet… but at least she’s giving it a good honest try.

So we started out. First I had her helping to bag pounds of rocks and she was using the scale and packing and worked like she’d been doing it for years. And then she started to pull stock, read the invoices and find the products that were needed. I had her set it aside, each order and I would check it, which she was fine with. And she made not a single mistake. It was perfect, every order. So then we both were packing orders and boxing them up… and she asked if she could address them! And dang it… a little part of me started to say no no, that’s okay and I said, no to my stuck brain and thought patterns of old… and told her, sure, give it a try!

After all, what would be the harm? A messed up box? I asked if I could check it before we printed the label from Endicia, and she was fine with that. To be honest, a double check is a good thing… good customer service and makes it easier to catch any mistakes.

Larry in Arizona? You might have a few little super duper proud Mom tears on your package!! (g) I hope you don’t mind! Naw, I nearly felt a little teary though with just bust-a-gut pride. She did a great job! Even the one turned around D… well, hey, we’re working on that! I knew what she ment and Jessy was able to read it just fine.

Jessy came home from school as we were finishing up the evening’s orders and at first she was a little puzzled to see Maggie doing “her” job… but then she started in like a good big sister and was giving her pointers and help in getting things perfect. But to be honest, Maggie knew the whole routine and was doing wonderfully!!!!

It was just so cool to me. I mean, she’s been paying attention all this time and knew our routines and was just waiting for a chance to show us that she’s growing up so wonderfully and talented. Her eager spirit and her focus on getting things done right is so strong. I’m so stinking proud of her! She’s still got challenges ahead of her. No doubt. And Maggie can find some social interactions puzzling and problematic, but every week, every day, she’s getting so much more accustomed to the ways people act and react and how to deal with it.

I just love it when she talks about when SHE learns to drive and when SHE is going to college and all. I know she’ll do those things and so much more. Maybe not on the same schedule as most of the world, but I don’t care. She’ll do it in Maggietime and that’s all that is important to me. And now she’s got a new job too! (hahaha)

Oh shoot. Another kid employee to have to start paying!!! She even asked me how much order filling pays!!! I told her she was an apprentice right now and that we’d talk. She told me that since we didn’t have a guild and I wasn’t an official master craftsman at order filling, then she couldn’t be an apprentise!

Dang, it’s bad to educate these kids in Medieval business practices! Okay, okay… yeah, paydays are once a month…

Jack is very good at supervising the whole process for me. He is one funny cat.

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