Is it really already that time?

I was looking at the calendar a few minutes ago and realized that pretty soon I need to schedule a portfolio review or order standardized tests for my notification in the fall.  I can't believe it is already that time, I don't have a lot really to show for our work so far.  I have the girls' math workbooks (or notebook in Missa's case) and their journals, and right now we're working on a lapbook for animal classification (I'm having trouble getting to this one for some reason, the kids enjoy working on it but I'm just having a lot of trouble forcing myself to do it) and doing a study on map reading.  I feel like I should have more to show though, although I know they've come a LONG way in the 2 months we've had them back home again.  I am going to call the lady who did our last assessment to see if I can schedule for Scott's week off in May or the one in June, then just keep plugging along to get some sort of paper trail to show her when we go in.  I have plans for the time until we get the assessment done, but it is tough for me to be so consistent and structured.  We spent 4 years as unschoolers before this year, with lots of literature and some random unit studies thrown in the mix.  We didn't really follow much of a schedule or predictable flow to our days, so I'm having a LOT of trouble with this right now.  I know I need to be more structured for the kids' educational needs, but it just isn't something that comes natural to me.

But at least we have something to show for a few subjects. :)

A year ago yesterday

I was a bit busy yesterday, so I didn't get to post this right away.  After all, the new episode of "The Walking Dead" was on when PJ fell asleep in my lap and I just had to see who was shot, eaten by zombies, and all that great stuff that is pretty normal for the show.  Hey, I know what you are thinking about the quality programming I watch, but it is once a week after the kids go to bed and an opportunity for me and Scott to get a little time doing something together.  I'm not giving up my show (even if I do cover my eyes or look away during some scenes).  Anyway, back to what I was saying.......

Yesterday my baby boy had a big day.  It was his first birthday yesterday, and we spent the day enjoying his first things he did as a 1 year old.  If you want, you can CLICK HERE to read about his joining our family (warning, may be a little profanity in there as I was being very candid and honest about how I felt).

He started his day as usual around 6am, just like a good little morning person (I now have 2 kids who are morning people, luckily I'm one as well).  Running and playing with his oldest sister while the other girls and Scott slept was his start to the day.

Missa made that crown for him; she had so much fun doing it.  His energy in the mornings once he's awake (he's a little grumpy usually the first few minutes until he has had some time to snuggle and nurse, then he's off and running usually) should be illegal I think.  If I could find a way to bottle it I'd be a very rich woman.  He spent all day playing with his sisters when it wasn't time to eat.  We had a big pancake breakfast, which is one of his favorite things to eat in the mornings (he ate 2 whole pancakes) and then everyone got dressed.  I decided that we would eat his favorite foods for the day, except at lunch which Scott handled while PJ napped and I laid down with him.  He played a rousing game of "keep away from Missa because she wants to put a dry diaper on me" after she decided to change him and had taken off his wet diaper, which was a few minutes of entertainment with him running off from her and then turning around and screeching happily before tearing off again. (highly amusing to watch I tell you)  He chased the dog, who was in no mood with her injured paw so she spent most of the day up on a bed or cuddled up with any big human who would protect her from that ornery baby.

Then it was supper time.  I made personal pizzas for everyone, including PJ getting his own for the first time.  We had the choice of pepperoni, pineapple, and mushrooms for pizzas.  He had a cheese pizza and loved it.

As you can see, he enjoyed pizza night and getting the best seat in the house to watch tv.  He ate that entire pizza by himself (the pizza was cut into 4 pieces, he had the smallest pizza of the whole lot).  Then it was time for dessert.

Scott made the cupcakes while I was laying down with PJ for his nap, and then I iced them.  I actually found a can of BLUE icing at the store on Saturday, it was funfetti icing that came with fish shaped sprinkles.  The girls thought it was the best EVER to get to do blue icing on his cupcakes, so that's what we did.  Then we had the joy of dealing with the effects of the artificial food dyes in it for a few hours afterward with the girls, although it was much better than usual AND they spent most of the reaction time sleeping through it.

It wasn't much that we did for his birthday, as we are still waiting for the IRS to process our taxes and give us that refund already, but we had fun.  I had to promise the girls that we'll do a "proper" party for his birthday when the refund finally gets here (and after we pay off the layaway on the new furniture and fix Scott's car so I can have my van back).  But I don't think he noticed that we didn't have presents or balloons or anything like that this time.

As you can tell, it wore him out just in time for the end of our show.  He spent 3/4 of it running from our room into his sisters' bedroom and waking them up to play with him, only to be carried back to us by a GROUCHY Missa clunking around in that walking cast. lol  He got even with them last night for all the times they've interrupted his naps to play with him the last year.

Happy birthday little dude, you survived your first year with all these big sisters and our crazy life.  I can't wait to see what this next year will bring us as you grow more into the ornery little boy you are quickly becoming.

week in review

This week has been interesting for me.  I did basics with the girls, because quite honestly I've been in a funk most of the week and couldn't get my head into the game.  Thank goodness we have some semi-independent materials for them to cover the basic subjects, otherwise it wouldn't have happened this week.

Scott has been taking my van to work the last couple days, thanks to mechanical problems with his car that make it unsafe to drive.  So in addition to my funk I'm going stir-crazy because I can't go out even if I wanted to (which I usually don't want to go anywhere and we don't need to usually either).  It has been quite an exercise for me to have to stay home with no option of going out.  We can't go for a walk right now with Missa's broken foot, she still needs the crutches frequently despite having a walking cast and permission to walk on it, and my knee is acting up still so I'm having trouble walking as well right now.  Thank goodness yesterday the cable guy came and fixed our cable (we fried the box for the second time in under 6 months) so now we have all our digital television and music channels back (we have the smallest package you can get with the Disney channels in it, there's only 2 packages lower, and no premium channels unless they are on free preview).  We don't own a radio or CD player (every time we buy one a child takes a screwdriver to it to see how it works and then we can't put it back together again) so we depend on streaming music online or through the tv music channels.

Speaking of not owning a radio or CD player....... I know there are a few friends of mine locally who read my blog, so I'll share this here as well as on Facebook.  I am planning to put together a workstation for the kids where they can take apart stuff and build things as they desire in hopes that they will leave our electronics alone.  If anyone local has non-working electronics or appliances that they would like to get rid of (of a reasonable size, no stoves or something huge like that) I would be MORE than happy to come pick them up to add to their workstation.  Just e-mail me or call/text with what you have and when I can do a pick up (remember, only one car for now so it will be evenings or weekends only that I can get stuff unless you want to bring it to me).

a thought to share

This morning as I was reading on message boards and Facebook, I came across this post that was shared there by another lady who saw it somewhere else.  I thought it was simply lovely, and decided to share it here as well.  Blessings!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dear Mother of Only One Child,
Don't say it.  Before the words can even pass your lips, let me beg you:  don't say, "Wow, you have nine kids?  I thought it was hard with just my one!"
My dear, it is hard.  You're not being a wuss or a whiner when you feel like your life is hard.  I know, because I remember having 'only one child.'  You may not even believe how many times I stop and reflect on how much easier my life is, now that I have nine children.
All right, so there is a lot more laundry.  Keeping up with each child's needs, and making sure they all get enough attention, is a constant worry.  And a stomach bug is pretty much the end of the world, when nine digestive tracts are afflicted.
But I remember having only one child, and it was hard- so very hard.  Some of the difficulties were just practical:  I didn't know what I was doing, had to learn everything.  People pushed me around because I was young and inexperienced.  But even worse were the emotional struggles of learning to be a mother.
When I had only one child, I truly suffered during those long, long, long days in our little apartment, no one but the two of us, baby and me, dealing with each other all day long.  I invented errands and dawdled and took the long way home, but still had hours and hours to fill before I would hear my husband's key in the door.
I cared so much what other people thought about her- they had to notice how beautiful she was, they had to be impressed at my natural mothering skills.  I obsessed over childhood development charts, tense with fear that my mothering was lacking- that I hadn't stimulated her enough,  or maybe had just passed on the wrong kind of genes.  I cringe when I remember how I pushed her- a little baby!- to achieve milestones she wasn't ready for.
I lived in terror for her physical safety (I once brought her to Urgent Care, where the doctor somewhat irritably diagnosed a case of moderate sniffles) fearing every imaginable disease and injury.  In my sleep-deprived state, I would have sudden insane hallucinations that her head had fallen off, her knees had suddenly broken themselves in the night, and so on.
My husband didn't know how to help me.  I didn't know how to ask for help.  My husband had become a father, and I adored him for it.  My husband got to leave the house every day, and sleep every night.  He got to go to the bathroom alone.  I hated him for it.
When I had only one child, I told myself over and over that motherhood was fulfilling and sanctifying and was filling my heart to the brim with peace and satisfaction.  And so I felt horribly guilty for being so bored, so resentful, so exhausted.  This is a joyful time, dammit!  I should enjoy being suddenly transformed into the Doyenne of Anything that Smells Bad.
I loved my baby, I loved pushing her on the swing, watching squirrels at the park together, introducing her to apple sauce, and watching her lips move in joyful dreams of milk.  But it was hard, hard, hard.  All this work:  is this who I am now?  I remember!
So now?  Yes, the practical parts are a thousand times easier:  I'm a virtuoso.  I worry, but then I move along.  Nobody pushes me around, and I have helpers galore.  Someone fetches clean diapers and gets rid of the dirty ones.  When the baby wakes up in the middle of the night for the ten thousandth time, I sigh and roll my eyes, maybe even cry a little bit for sheer tiredness- but I know it will pass, it will pass.
It's becoming easier, and it will be easier still.  They are passing me by.
I'm broken in.  There's no collision of worlds.  We're so darn busy that it's a sheer delight to take some time to wash some small child's small limbs in a quiet bath, or to read The Story of Ferdinand one more time.  Taking care of them is easy.  It's tiring, it's frustrating, but when I stop and take a breath, I see that it's almost like a charade of work.  All these things, the dishes, the diapers, the spills- they must be taken care of, but they don't matter. They aren't who I am.
To become a mother, I had to learn how to care about someone more than I did about myself, and that was terrible.  But who I am now is something more terrible:  the protector who can't always protect; the one with arms that are designed to hold, always having to let go.
Dear mother of only one child, don't blame yourself for thinking that your life is hard.  You're suffering now because you're turning into a new woman, a woman who is never allowed to be alone.  For what?  Only so that you can become strong enough to be a woman who will be left.
When I had only one child, she was so heavy.  Now I can see that children are as light as air.  They float past you, nudging against you like balloons as they ascend.
Dear mother, don't worry about enjoying your life.  Your life is hard; your life will be hard.  That doesn't mean you're doing something wrong- it means you're doing it right.

(originally posted at http://www.ncregister.com/blog/simcha-fisher/to-the-mother-with-only-one-child#ixzz2JydFXsDU on January 19, 2012)

Saturday is for shopping

Yesterday Scott had to work in the morning, so I made plans for us to spend the rest of the day working together as a full family to clean the house.  When he got home and heard my plan (and saw the list of chores) he decided that he wanted to take us out to look at a few things we need to buy with our tax refund.  So he got everyone ready while I showered and dressed so that we could go out shopping.

We started with lunch at a local restaurant, getting PJ his first kid meal (he had grilled cheese and fries).

He thought it was awesome.  3 of his sisters had pancakes and the oldest one had spaghetti along with his meal.  I wish I had thought to get a picture of all 5 kids and Scott sitting at the table together, it is a great sight I think.

Then we went to Target and picked up some basics that we needed (vitamins for the girls and me) and rummaged a bit in the clearance sections.  Missa got a book for fluff fun reading, and then I found a coat sized perfectly for PJ to wear next fall and winter marked down.

As you can see, the discount was too good to really pass up.  I got a $33 winter coat for $10, and it is blue too.  I'm going to wash it up this weekend with his sisters' coats (they got muddy with this week's thaw)  and then see if it will work for him now too (I know it is too big though, he wears 12mo and some 18mo in clothes).

Then we went to a couple furniture stores as well.  They were sprinkled through our trip as we passed by them.  See, we need a new sofa and a second set of bunk beds.  Our old sofa was gifted to us by a wonderful family when we moved here almost 5 years ago, and it has given out with kids jumping on and over it.  The cushions are ripping, the arms are torn open, and one seat is almost on the ground because the frame snapped.  It is definitely at the end of its life span.  We found a sectional that Scott and I both fell in love with at one furniture store, but it was more than we had budgeted so we kept looking.

Then we went to DFW in Heath and found the exact same sectional for MUCH less, even less than we had budgeted.  We also checked out bunk beds while we were there, knowing what we wanted and the typical prices for that one.  They had one for well under what we had budgeted there too.  In fact we saved so much on budget buying what we NEED in furniture that we decided to splurge and get ourselves a new bigger dining table that we saw there as well.  Scott put it all on layaway and will make payments on it until we get the tax refund that will allow him to write a check to pay it off and rent a U-Haul truck to pick it all up with (they want WAY too much for delivery, and my van isn't big enough to bring the sectional home in even 1 piece at a time).  By this time next month, we should have a bunch of new furniture in our home.

New sectional, we ordered it in reverse to fit the space it is going better.

The bunk bed.  We also did get the under bed drawers, and picked this one BECAUSE of the drawers built into the stairs.

Our bonus table, it has a leaf in it that expands it to fit our family beautifully with a little room to spare.  No we did NOT get the matching chairs, to do that would have been $500 more that we weren't planning to spend.

Now we just have to figure out what to do with our "small" dining table.  Scott suggested we store it in the garage to use when we have company over for supper so that there is room for everyone at the table, but I'm thinking I want to donate it to charity once I get it fully cleaned up and recovered from our family and then buy a couple of folding tables to use for guests.

Week in Review

This week has been full of lots of weird little things and new stuff happening.  If you saw my mid-week musings you know some of it, but the good stuff happened yesterday and today.


This week I struggled with keeping my focus on things.  We managed to get schoolwork done EVERY day this week except today, so I'm calling it a successful week here.  Of course, it helped that the first half of the week looked like this:

 

 There was lots of time stuck inside while the snow kept us from going out with Missa on crutches, we didn't want her to slip and fall again like she did over the weekend at church.  We spent that time reading and learning together, doing chores, and being goofy.

 

 There was a lot of excitement and learning happening as we began our first science unit this week.   We'll be spending time learning about animals for a while, so I decided to start with teaching them about animal classification.  The picture above was taken yesterday, when we talked about the difference between vertebrates and invertebrates.  I did a fast search right before the lesson and found a couple coloring pages to print off for them to do, then snapped this picture while they colored.

And as usual, there was a lot of horseplay, such as yesterday when PJ decided that he was going to wrestle with Kimmy.  We also played charades and a few other games, which somehow always ended up with at least one child streaking through the house naked and laughing hysterically while I tried to chase her down to get clothes on her.

It has been a fun week, and we got a lot of things done.  The girls are finishing up their math lesson pages now and doing their daily journal writing, which is the last thing they have to do today.  Missa is finishing up lesson 7 in MUS Gamma today, after we decided that she needed to spend a couple days on it so that she could get more practice on area of rectangles before moving on.  Liddy and Kimmy and plugging away at a nice pace in their books (Beta for Liddy and Alpha for Kimmy), and Jojo has mastered skip counting by 5 and 10 to 100 so we are moving on to counting by 2 now.

Mid-week musings

This week has been fun for me so far.  Monday we started off by celebrating my 31st birthday, which is a big deal since I was told by a cardiologist that I wouldn't live to see 30 after drug abuse caused damage to my heart.  Obviously that doctor was wrong, as I am still here causing trouble.  Tuesday, I decided that I needed to take charge of our day again, and I started to create a schedule to implement here at home.  I finished it up that evening, and then spent the night with some sort of stomach virus that Scott brought home from work.  Then today, we implemented the schedule.

I'm not keeping 100% to it right now, as it is just our first day on it, but I'm sticking fairly closely to it.  I'm not too worried if it takes us 3-4 weeks to figure out how to do this so that we get everything done in a reasonable time.  Like right now, according to the schedule we were supposed to start eating lunch 15 minutes ago, however it is still cooking so we are going to be late on that.  We missed a subject in lessons today because of being behind (again my fault, just like today with lunch) but I figure in the next few weeks we'll adjust and everything will run more smoothly.

Other than that, really the only excitement happening here is that I'm totally in love with my new printer, and it is getting one heck of a workout.