Living Grace Academy

nervous for Friday

2012-02-01T12:09:00.001-05:00

Friday morning is the growth scan to make sure that my blood pressure hasn't caused any issues with lil man's size and development. I wish Scott could go with me for it, but we need him to stay at the house with the other kids. I am worried that they will find something wrong and need to induce, especially knowing what my resting blood pressure has been running lately.

But in good news, my lab testing I did over the weekend came back good. Protein is still elevated but holding steady from the last time, and my blood tests all came back within normal parameters. I repeat them again this weekend. Praise God for the little things!

34 weeks and great news

2012-01-27T18:32:00.001-05:00

I had another visit to the midwife today. A friend of mine brought her son over to play with my girls so I could go without the kids, just in case my blood pressure was acting up so I wouldn't have to deal with that on top of it all. Anyway, I came home to a clean house (minor miracle, she actually got my kids to listen and help out) AND I had a good appointment too.

I gained 3 1/2lbs since my appointment last week, which isn't so great in my eyes, but hey I'm in the final weeks so I'm not surprised. My blood pressure was completely normal for the first time in several weeks, AND I wasn't spilling protein when they did the dip. I do have to repeat all the blood tests and the 24 hour collection again since my 24 hour results last week are higher than the week before, but today was a VERY good day for me with her. She had a smile on her face when she came in, its been a while since I've seen her smile when she opens the door.

I decided to ask for information about permanent birth control options, as the first step in our decision about what to do after this baby comes. We have no plans to make any decisions like that until he is at least 6 months old, however. I'm too unstable emotionally to trust my own judgement at this point, and I don't want to have any regrets later if we choose to do something right now. The only thing I do know is what we'll do while we wait to make a decision when I'm mentally stable again (yes, I've turned into a nutcase this time around, as usual, and I do anticipate that I'll end up on antidepressants after birth again as well).

So I go back next week for the routine tests and checkup that happens at 35 weeks *yuck* and I also get an ultrasound to check on our little boy's growth, placental function, fluid levels, and such. With the issues I've had with my blood pressure, there is some concern that it may have affected his growth, blood flow, or placental function so they are going to take a look to double check that everything is good. While we're looking, I'm going to ask if we can take another peek between his legs to be sure he's still a boy. Yes, I'm still having a little trouble believing that he's a boy after having the 4 girls. That is a surprise I do NOT want to have on delivery day.

Downside to next week? My appointment is at 7am. I'm NOT a morning person, getting up before 8am is really pushing it for me. But I can do it, especially since Scott is pulling strings to get covered at work for a couple hours so he can go in late that day and watch the girls for me. Yes, daddy will be the one dealing with breakfast that day, my poor kids. I just hope that all goes well again next week, now that I'm in crunch time to baby.

FINALLY a homeschool update lol

2012-01-24T17:00:00.005-05:00

Yes, I know I've not done much of that the last couple months, but we've also not done much for lessons lately either. I will explain that one in my pregnancy update here in a minute.

So I was having a good day today with my blood pressure and symptoms, and decided to take advantage instead of taking it easy and trying to not overdo it. I did a history lesson and a tie-in art lesson with the girls. Now, I don't know if I mentioned this yet, but we have streamlined our history from doing a full Sonlight world history core to just reading "A Child's History Of The World" and doing whatever strikes our fancy to go with it as I feel up to it to finish this school year. Simplified history here, so we could work with my limitations of the pregnancy and also be able to not miss much with a new baby and getting settled and adjusted to 5 kids.

Today's chapter was about Egyptian writing, also known as hieroglyphics. Now, a couple years ago I went over this material with Missa when she was in 1st grade with OHVA, so it was review for her and new for her sisters. I read the chapter, and we discussed the stuff that we read (lots more than JUST writing in there, it was also a good bit about Egyptian culture and gods/goddesses they worshipped, I'm going to do some searching later today for coloring pages and simple things to do tomorrow and the next day when I crash physically so they can continue with the culture and such with minimal work from me directly and I won't have to read to them too much hopefully). I then remembered that we had some stuff hanging around from Missa's time in OHVA so I went to dig a minute.

I got out 3 pages that show the American English alphabet and the hieroglyph translations, and made a couple copies for the kids to use as a reference. The project was simple. Draw a simple self-portrait and write their first name (or nickname, in the case of the little girls) in hieroglyphs. I paired them up so that the little girls each had a big girl to help, and then spent 45 minutes listening to Liddy throw a conniption fit because she couldn't draw her name out perfectly enough. *sigh* Yes, she is my motor delayed child, mostly we're caught up but she still has some issues there at times, but she is also a MAJOR perfectionist and drawing is the enemy with her most times. She spent time cooling off and working out her fit in her room while Missa helped both little girls with theirs (this girl has a talent for hieroglyph drawing, she does rather well for an 8 year old I think). Liddy and I came to an agreement that she would draw her picture and point out which hieroglyphs she needed for her name, and I would draw her name out for her.

Missa did better than I did at drawing names out. But that is ok, hopefully Liddy will see that it is ok to not be perfect at everything and sometimes someone else is better than you at something. We hung their portraits on the wall over the fireplace, and a copy of the pages for the "translation key" as a display of our work today. I'll take pictures later and might share, if I feel up to it.

But 3 of the 4 girls thought it was an awesome fun project, and I found it really simple to come up with in a pinch. I just wanted something to fill a little time after reading the history chapter just in case I needed to lay down because of my blood pressure.

snow day!

2012-01-13T07:43:00.004-05:00

We got our first REAL snowfall last night overnight. All of yesterday it rained, then it turned to snow around 8pm here. Roads are covered in ice and snow, and they were shutting down portions of freeways in the area last night until the salt trucks could hit them to try and get rid of some of that ice on the roads. As a result, many public and private schools in our area are on either a 2 hour delay, or closed completely. Our district is one that decided to close for students. So, technically it is a snow day here for the kids in my area. For us, however, it is just another day. We are sort of on a break from schoolwork until the baby comes, just doing a bit of work here and there as I feel able to stay up without my blood pressure acting up too much.

So now I get to decide, are we doing any lessons at all today or just enjoying the pretty snow from the window? I think its just a little too cold right now to go play in it, and Kimi has a cough that sounds strangely like her coming down with a cold so I have to be extra careful right now for her sake. Last thing I need on top of everything else is her to get seriously ill with bronchitis or something that could put her in the hospital while I'm at the tail end of my pregnancy.

pre-eclampsia

2012-01-11T11:10:00.001-05:00

Yup, it sucks. I am still doing the testing, but the OB that I saw yesterday for my appointment (yes, instead of the midwife, but that's ok I like this doctor, she's really nice and willing to talk to me about stuff openly and frankly) said chances are that is exactly what is going on. So, there we have it. I've danced with the vampire for a 4th time yesterday, and have more testing still to do. *sigh* And here I was expecting a nice uneventful pregnancy for a 5th time. Oh well, God knows what He is doing and everything will turn out as it is supposed to.

Now I just need to decide if I feel motivated enough to use the patterns I found over the weekend to make our little boy some footy pj's and such to wear. Sewing calms me, but I'm not sure if it is going to be something I can do without my blood pressure going up too much. Maybe I should go to a yarn store and get some yummy yarn to knit a blanket instead, that may be safer. But then again, I really would like to make him a couple fleece overalls, some cute shirts, and some pjs with matching blankets. The patterns I have are rather cute if I can just work up the motivation to dig through all my fabric.

Horray for 32 weeks

2012-01-09T16:25:00.002-05:00

I've hit that last 8 weeks, and now I remember what it is I hate most about pregnancy. These final weeks are not very fun, with the leaking from parts of my body that normally don't leak and the rib kicks, reflux so bad that we have decided the benefits outweigh the risks and I'm on Prevacid to control things, and now adding hypertension. Yes, I was at the hospital last week again for my blood pressure, after a scary incident involving me blacking out while driving with the kids to go to the dentist, but we got it stabilized in the normal range again so I got tagged with pregnancy-induced hypertension and put on bedrest until my next appointment (tomorrow morning).

So obviously, I've had a rough go physically with this one compared to the girls. But I still am really looking forward to meeting our little boy soon. We decided to toss his name and revisit some other options for his name, and will decide when he is born what his name will be for sure. He may still be Isaiah Preston, or something totally different. This is the first time we've decided to just pick a few different first and middle names and pick the official name when baby is born, we always had a name chosen by this stage. The kids are adjusting to calling him Booger again until he's born, and are excited to find out what his name will be. I think Missa is again hoping that we'll consider her suggestion that we name him Moses.

We also finally got the crib set up in our room, after having it for ummmmm a few weeks or so. Scott also got the recliner set by the crib with my filing cabinet by it for a temporary table, so I have a place for Booger to sleep and me to breastfeed and rock him comfortably with a place to put my drink at. I'm hoping that this weekend one of us can get to the thrift store to find him a dresser, and that we can start buying him some clothes that he'll need. We'll finish decorating his area of our room when we get the tax refund sometime in the next few months.

Yup, that about sums up my pregnancy and all I know right now. I'll have more details and information about how I'm physically doing with it after I see the midwife at 11am tomorrow. Scott is sick and we've discussed him taking tomorrow off to be sick in bed, so if he does then I'll be able to go alone and spend some serious time discussing what's going on and what our options are and a bunch of other things that I am concerned about.

New year, new plans

2012-01-06T10:21:00.001-05:00

Well, its the start of a new year. This is the time I usually look at what we've done so far during the school year and re-evaluate my goals to see what we need to do so that we can accomplish them for the school year. Well, this year is no different for us, although I'm doing things a lot differently.

Math has gone really well for us. My goal was to move at their paces and let things go how they do, with hopes to at least have Missa in Beta and then Liddy and Kimi working well through their books. Well, goal met and all is going well, so no changes will be made there.

Handwriting is going well too. In fact, better than anticipated. Missa decided to start cursive in November, my plan was to have her start by February so she's ahead there. Liddy is about to start her next book, which is also a bit ahead of schedule. Kimi finished her book, which totally threw me off so I had to scramble to find something to fill in with until we can order the next book for her, and Jojo is going to finish up her book here probably by the end of this month. So that is all going well.

Reading..... well Missa finished her first chapter book recently, so now we're waiting for the baby to be born so that we can take her to lunch and a movie like promised. Liddy started one, and the little two are working nicely at it as well. No complaints in this area at all, everyone is making forward progress in reading.

History..... yeah that. I ended up dropping my Sonlight core completely for the most part, now we are just reading through "A Child's History of the World" a chapter 3 days a week minimum until we finish. I don't have the ability now to do anything extra really, but that's ok because the girls, especially Missa, have been pulling the other history books off our shelf to look through in their free time and Scott is reading the read alouds from the core to them at night and on weekends. So its still working here, just not as written at ALL.

Science has been mostly abandoned. We watch stuff on tv and talk about it. That's about all we're going to do the rest of this school year I think in this area, unless Scott takes over this subject as well.

*****CONTINUED*****

Sorry, I had to take a break in mid-post because I started getting dizzy. That happens a lot to me lately when I'm up more than just a few minutes at a time.

Anyway, my mid-year evaluation showed that we are doing pretty good in general here with lessons, even if we've not met a few goals in a couple subjects. So, the plan for the rest of this school year is for me to take it easy and continue with the changes that we were forced to make and just keep up the pace we've set for now with things. Then in August I will send in our notification for the new school year with the plan of moving on to US history. That plan I'll talk about later on, after Isaiah is born next month. But I do have a plan for it, and surprisingly it does not involve Sonlight at this point. I am taking a different approach for a bit, after seeing the troubles we had this school year with the pregnancy and how I had to drop so much. So stay tuned, and I'll share more later with you.

29 weeks and some minor problems

2011-12-20T14:20:00.000-05:00

Its funny, I hate third trimester in case you've not figured this out yet. But right now I'm sitting here thinking that I'd rather have my old third trimester complaints back after what this past week has given us.

About 10 days ago I commented to my husband that I needed to go to the eye doctor as soon as Isaiah is born because my vision in my right eye was blurring up on and off all day and that eye would twitch too. I also started to have an increase in frequency and length of dizzy spells, and an on and off headache. Now, if you know me then you know I am prone to migraines, which are coupled with a visual effect where one eye droops in the socket and twitches, and I run with low blood pressure, low sugar, and am mildly anemic so I also have dizzy spells for a few seconds when I get up or move too quickly. So I don't typically notice stuff like this unless it is a big change from my normal pattern, and I never think to mention it to medical staff outside of initial medical history because it really ISN'T a symptom for me 99% of the time.

Well, Sunday was that 1% that my normal became my symptom.

I woke up feeling kind of off on Saturday, so I chose to rest and lay around the weekend as much as possible (including during a visit to take the kids to visit Scott's mom Saturday afternoon for a few hours, we were going to go to church afterward but opted not to as I wasn't feeling good). Sunday brought a headache that would NOT go away without Tylenol (took the edge off it) and I fell asleep for a good 4 hours or so and my family had trouble waking me up. I took a bath that evening, as I was feeling dizzy to the point that I worried I may fall in a shower, and ended up vomiting in the tub just as I was finishing up my bath because of the dizziness, light reflecting off the water, and the water made the dizziness visually harder to process. So I did what any responsible pregnant woman would do. I made a call to the after hours line to talk to the on-call OB in my midwife's practice. He was a wonderful man by the way, and listened carefully to my description of symptoms and normal and my concerns. He pretty much agreed that I needed to go up to the hospital to get checked out, which I was getting dressed and planning to go in even without his order. I didn't feel right, something was wrong.

My blood pressure was high, and labs showed low potassium and a few other things that aren't too great. However, urine test showed no protein, and my blood pressure wasn't *too* far above the normal range so they let me go home with a couple prescriptions for my reflux (to try and control it better because I'm still throwing up pretty much nonstop) and a potassium supplement.

Fast forward to this morning at 9am when I saw the midwife. I peed in a cup and while washing my hands got hit with another dizzy spell. Get back to the exam room and the nurse said I looked paler than when I went in, so she rechecked my blood pressure. Sure enough, it was 149/91 which isn't *too* terribly high but still high enough for concern in third trimester. Erica, my midwife, looked over my labs from the hospital and the urine test they did in office, and came in not looking happy at ALL. I had to do a third blood pressure check, which came in at 125/79, and was told lay down, rest, do as little as possible, take my medication that I was given at the hospital, and if I'm not feeling any better in 2-3 days I am to call her and then go in to labor and delivery for more testing. *sigh* And yes, my office pee test showed that I am indeed spilling protein into my urine, which is a BAD sign.

She's trying to AVOID diagnosing me with high blood pressure at this point, in case you can't tell. And as for me, well I'm just trying to keep my blood pressure down in the normal range for most people (we won't aim for MY normal, my normal is in the 90/60 range). I know all the risks and what we're looking at here as possible problems, and am doing everything I can to avoid that now.

I've already decided that if I end up in the hospital with this pregnancy for blood pressure issues, we're getting my tubes tied. I'm NOT doing this again, I have now 5 beautiful children to think of first and to have a complicated pregnancy with a 6th child is not something that I feel is worth the risks to my family. We may have some difficult decisions to make this next few days and weeks, depending on my blood pressure, and I do have to put my children first here. I would love more children, but honestly if we have to stop then that is fine because if we are meant to have more God will either resolve these issues I'm having now or He will provide us with the means to adopt later.

random musing

2011-12-14T16:23:00.001-05:00

I thought I was expecting a male human baby....... Instead it feels like I have either an alien or an octopus growing in there. Or, maybe an octopus and an alien mated and then the resulting offspring was implanted in me. I have a power kicker, he LOVES to move around and make my entire belly shake. Sometimes it is adorable and fun to watch and feel, but after a bit it starts to become painful for me with every movement. Ahhh but it is only another 12 weeks or so that I have to deal with this discomfort, and it is a sign that he's got a good strong body. Yes, that's it. I need to see the blessing of a healthy baby instead of focusing on the fact that it can be physically painful when he moves around.

and we have a crib!

2011-12-14T08:28:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I got a call from a friend of mine. She had offered her daughter's crib to us several months ago, once she got her little girl into a regular bed. Well, she was taking apart the crib and had it ready for us to pick up, and a few other things we were welcome to if we wanted them. So I arranged for us to go over last night, meeting Scott at her apartment, so we could pick the stuff up. I now have a crib and mattress for Isaiah, and today the girls and I will start getting things ready in my bedroom for Scott to move furniture around to make room for the crib and baby stuff. Once we get all that done, Isaiah will have a place to sleep at least. We just need more clothes and some diapers now, and we'll have all the basics we need for a newborn. Just a small step, but it is a forward one at least.

dressing a bunch of kids for less

2011-12-12T19:40:00.002-05:00

I thought I'd share a few thoughts on this topic. I know it is one that gets a lot of people scratching their heads, especially if you are looking at a family with several children of one gender. Clothes aren't cheap, especially if you want good quality. And when you have four daughters with very different tastes in colors, styles, and even different body shapes, you can quickly go broke trying to work with it all.

If you have ventured into the girls' clothing department, you will see a variety of styles and looks. Skinny jeans, boot-cut pants, and many others. Low rise, ultra low rise, classic high rise. Stretchy and relaxed fits. And let's not get into sizing. Along with numbered sizing in the girls' deparment, you have slim, regular, and plus size, with or without adjustable waistbands to make them skinnier if needed and/or desired. There are so many options it can confuse anyone who doesn't have some idea of what they are doing before they go to the store. Shirts, skirts, and dresses have the same issue. Asymmetrical cuts, peasant style tops, spaghetti straps, one shoulder or two, empire waists, baydoll cuts. Embellishments, silk-screen prints, embroidery. One can QUICKLY lose themselves in a sea of fashion just walking into the girls' department at any department store. I should know, I've even become overwhelmed.

Often, fashions in department stores don't even fit our rules for modesty and appropriate attire for the ages of our daughters. I'm not a fan of skinny jeans and jeggings, especially with the way the local teen girls pour themselves into these pants. We have a rule that shirts must cover stomachs when both arms are lifted above the girl's head, so that eliminates a good number of styles that are meant to skim the waistband of their jeans. I also am not a fan of clingier clothing, especially as Missa has started developing a figure at the young age of 8 1/2. These guidelines are fairly conservative in general, but also liberal at the same time. I know families who take this further by not allowing tops with lace, designs, or certain necklines (we have rules on the neckline as well, but the girls also know how to layer a camisole under low-cut tops). We also aren't too big on 2 piece swim suits, but have come to accept that this just isn't possible so we try to stick to tank-style swimwear with the swim skirt bottoms to increase coverage a bit. Even I wear a tankini with skirt bottom, but I think I have fat thighs and that makes me feel better about how I look in a bikini.

So, how does one find conservative attire for young ladies? Well, many of the more upscale stores in Columbus have appropriate clothing, or we can purchase some things online. I have trouble sometimes with finding acceptable stuff in local department stores. But going to the upscale stores can break our budget with four girls to clothe, even with the increase in quality that usually makes these items more durable and more likely to hold up to the rough and tumble of the girls so that they actually can pass clothes down to younger sisters. So, our options are limited a bit. I can either compromise on my general guidelines for how they dress and allow them trashier clothing, or I can shop secondhand at thrift stores. I choose to go with thrift stores.

My husband works near a VERY large Salvation Army thrift store, and once in a while will go there to get the girls jumpers, dresses, and pants. Tonight was one of those shopping nights. He got 5 pairs of jeans, 2 jumpers, a doll, and a lunch bag with thermos (for his lunches) for $26 there tonight. Our goal was pants for the oldest 2 girls, as Missa has recently had a bit of a figure development spurt and outgrew most of her slim fit jeans in the waist (and torn out her gym pants in a couple of inappropriate places). Three of those jeans are just for her, and the other two are for Liddy. One jumper for each of the two, and they now have a bare bones starting wardrobe for winter that I can add to a little at a time. Liddy has inhereted some jeans that Missa no longer can fit into, so she's pretty much taken care of, but Missa can wear these few items while I pick up a pair of quality jeans every paycheck until we get her enough to really work well. Granted, the thrift store jeans won't likely last more than a few months before she tears them out in a couple specific spots, but I should be able to replace them in that time with some jeans from Old Navy or Gap easily enough. And I have enough left over from Scott's shopping trip tonight that I can go to the thrift stores here locally over the weekend to find some shirts for her, and possibly pick up a couple new undergarments that she now needs.

I plan to do the same thing with Isaiah's wardrobe. I have a few new things, but the bulk of his infant clothing will likely come from thrift stores and other similar sources. Although, I did manage to get an adorable little 0-3 month size camo zip-up hooded sweatshirt for under $4 brand new. I am excited about that purchase, and look forward to getting to the thrift store for the rest of his clothes that he'll need.

dishonesty and natural consequences

2011-12-06T09:53:00.001-05:00

Lately, dishonesty has been a big issue here in my home. We've had kids sneaking around, getting into craft supplies and food items and using/eating them up without telling us. Now, I don't restrict these items too much, but I do require that they ask beforehand so that I can at least keep tabs on what we've got available. Its a practical thing here, we are on a budget and I carefully plan meals and activities for the family. If something is eaten and I'm not told, then I cannot adapt my menu accordingly. Same with a craft or activity, if someone takes off with the glitter glue and uses it up without telling me they are using it then I may plan a craft using it and then not have something for them to do during that craft time because I'm missing supplies. This is just basic common sense I think, yet the girls are having difficulty with remembering this one rule that we have.

It is very rare that I will say no to something, and that is usually because what they want is either out of our normal budget (requiring us to save up for it or specially budget for just enough with no extra, like certain fresh fruits that may be out of season) or it is not an item they need to eat (seriously, who sits and eats a stick of butter or a package of cream cheese or a boxed cake mix? yuck!). I don't think I'm being unrealistic here, just ask so that I know what you are taking and I can see what's left when you are done. I do 95% of my discipline for breaking this one rule, and usually in conjunction with lying about it afterward. The other 5% of discipline is for unkind words and actions, so obviously I'm doing something right if I'm not frequently breaking up fist fights or correcting unkind words.

So back to the taking things without asking first and dishonesty afterward issue. I am trying to come up with a series of good natural consequences for not asking before they help themselves, and for a series of consequences for when they try to cover it up with lying. The current offense involves Liddy and a craft kit that I had purchased. It is just a simple sun catcher painting kit, it has 12 sun catchers that the girls paint and then they can hang up. I bought this a long time ago and hid it on a shelf, then promptly forgot about it until Scott found it on Sunday while he cleaned up those shelves. I've had it at least a year and a half I think. Anyway, I had this great idea for it. Since we don't have any ornaments for the tree (every year we buy the shatterproof bulbs, and every year the kids manage to break every single one) this year we are doing homemade ornaments. I thought, in a moment of brilliance, that maybe the girls would like to spend a Saturday with daddy in the kitchen with its wood laminate floor (read: EASY TO CLEAN UP MESSES) painting sun catchers while I am out grocery shopping and running errands this upcoming weekend. He agreed that it sounded like something he could manage on his own, and that it would be a great way to distract the girls while I leave to go shopping (there's always a fit from at least one kid because she thinks she must go EVERYWHERE with me and she never lets me out of her sight, we are working on this and she's starting to get better about it though). Well, apparently Liddy decided that she didn't have to wait, so yesterday she snuck into our room, got it out, and started painting one of the sun catchers. She spilled all the purple paint on her pants and managed to get the teddy bear one she was working on half finished before she heard us and hustled to put the stuff back in the box, not in the spot Scott put it, and ran to hide the sun catcher under her bed. I discovered the damaged kit this morning when I went to get the box of Christmas cards out to mail off another one to a person who had sent us one. She first lied about it, and then when I threatened to put the tree up and no Christmas at all she came clean and then went to get the one she had painted and the pants she had spilled paint on to give to me.

Natural consequence for her actions? Well, since the timing coincides with payday weekend, I can go purchase some paint to replace what she spilled (which I need to buy all colors anyway as those kits don't come with enough paint, nor enough brushes for more than one kid). So her sisters still get to do the craft without much issue. However, I'm debating if she should be allowed to participate in the activity with her sisters because she decided that she did not need to wait and went sneaking off to do it herself. I am giving her an opportunity to show us that she has some self control to earn the ability to do the activity this weekend. So far, she's not very receptive to this, as it requires her to actually DO her chores instead of whining until one of her sisters does them for her to shut her up. She is actually quite intelligent and a good planner when it comes to getting out of doing her chores, I'm rather impressed by it at times (but mostly I'm annoyed and she ends up in trouble for it, giving me most of the 5% of discipline that isn't for not asking before they take stuff and lying about it). We have solved many of our past discipline issues through similar natural consequences methods, including the girls' regularly having a chronic case of disrespect and the gimme's whenever I took them shopping (that stopped after I picked up the little two and my purse and walked straight out of the store with the oldest 2 hanging off me and all 4 screaming bloody murder because I left without buying the treat they were going to get that trip, then followed it up with a few months of not taking them out at all except to doctor appointments and other REQUIRED things with no field trips or shopping trips at all), so I would like to implement a natural consequence method for this case. I had a child recently eat half a stick of butter (go ahead and gag, I can wait) and as a result, I ran out of butter and had to make their macaroni and cheese without it one day. The only thing that makes cheapo store-brand generic mac and cheese taste tolerable is the butter in it, so their lunch that day was NOT something they enjoyed and they ate just enough to not starve until dinner that night. We are slowly making progress on the food-eating aspect of this, but still have a long way to go.

pregnancy- coming up on 3rd trimester

2011-12-03T14:28:00.001-05:00

So, on Monday I will be 27 weeks pregnant. Technically, this is that border between 2nd and 3rd trimester. However, the discomforts are starting now. I am NEVER a happy pregnant woman, and my favorite part of pregnancy quite honestly has always been when I go into labor. I have an irritable uterus, so I start dilating early and have contractions. My babies like to sit in a bad position and cause me all kinds of fun pains shooting down my legs and through my hip and backside. I feel like I'm sitting on a bowling ball pretty much all the time, and it feels like my stomach is going to tear open at any moment. Yes, I do *not* take kindly to third trimester at all. I know that there are those who see this time as a blessing, but honestly I see it as something to tolerate until I can have my sweet baby in my arms finally. Yes, pregnancy is a miracle, I do see that, and it is a special gift, however its not one I particularly enjoy most of the time.

So, if I'm not very good at updating my blog for the next few months, know that it is purely because I'm grumpy and starting to get fed up with the discomforts I get to enjoy for the next 13 weeks or so until I deliver. I'll try to post about what the kids and I are doing with lessons, and be positive about the pregnancy right now, but really I am not posting much for a while. After all, if you don't have anything nice to say, you shouldn't say anything at all. Am I right?

So, here's a happy little blip for the pregnancy. We have officially purchased baby Isaiah's outfit that he will wear home. I even have a picture to share.

I still need to add socks and a hat to it, but it is adorable, don't you think? We are anticipating that he will be around 8 1/2 to 9lbs at birth, so we are completely skipping all newborn sized clothing. This one we went straight into Carter's size 3 month clothing, I got the outfit on sale for $12 and the little soft crib shoes for $4. My mom says that she got some socks and newborn mittens that match it, and will send those up with the Christmas gifts this year, so I just need a hat and blanket really to complete the outfit. I sure hope that ultrasound was right since we now have the official homecoming outfit. Next I plan to install the car seat this weekend, before I get too big an uncomfortable to do it easily AND before the winter weather starts so that I know we are covered at least (if we don't buy an infant seat between now and birth, that is! Then we'll get the van into the garage and Scott will install it instead for me) and we have some cleaning and rearranging to do in our bedroom to make room for the little guy.

Prayer request for a friend

2011-12-02T15:52:00.001-05:00

I don't do this kind of post here, but I'm going to today. I'm a little behind in reading the blogs I follow, and I feel bad for not keeping up better with some. Especially the one that I'm about to link with here. I know I don't have much of a following for this blog, but I fully believe in ripples spreading and hope that this happens a bit here.

A dear fellow homeschooling mom of 6 is expecting baby #7, a little boy. She's had complications because her sweet boy has Spina Bifida, and as a way of processing she has started a blog to write about her journey through this. Please keep her family in your prayers, especially for comfort and peace through the times they are facing in the very near future. Here is a link to her latest post on the blog she's started just for this baby boy and their journey.

http://masonsbjournal.blogspot.com/2011/11/dumb-ob-and-dreaded-hydrocephalus.html

Also, if you can keep my friend Shauna and her little girl, Charlie, in your prayers as they walk through some decisions regarding decisions she has to make about her little girl's care. I can't imagine how difficult this decision must be for her, and I pray that she can find calm and peace through her own decision-making process as well.

Both of these women inspire me, and I look to them regularly for inspiration when my own struggles start getting me down. They are incredible women, with a great deal of strength to walk through their lives and the struggles they both face. I pray for them both daily, and now they need more prayer from others. Please, take a moment to lift both these lovely ladies up to our Lord for strength, knowledge, healing, comfort, and support in their times of need.

Thanksgiving here

2011-11-25T17:11:00.001-05:00

We had our dinner yesterday, as did many families across the country. I personally love to cook, so I make holiday meals a rather large affair. I tend to cook in large quantities normally, as I'm feeding a family of soon to be 7 and we all have big appetites and high metabolisms, so I have some pretty big pans hanging around for mealtimes.

This year, we had invited a few friends and relatives over to join us, but as usual nobody wanted to be bothered to celebrate with us so we had our meal just the 6 of us. I still cooked for 30 diners, however, to make sure I had some leftovers for simpler suppers this week. I had both a turkey AND a ham, 2 different types of stuffing, homemade cranberry sauce, about 60 dinner rolls, candied sweet potatoes, candied carrots, my stand mixer bowl FILLED with mashed potatoes, and 2 pies with whipped cream. I'm sure I missed a few things that were on our menu, I cooked a LOT of food. I have left a bit of potatoes, some cranberry sauce, about half the meat, and a pie. Oh, and some of the rolls of course, although they may be almost gone now with the kids snacking on them all day (I made 3 loaves of bread dough into rolls, filled my steam table pan).

Overall, it was a nice quiet day and I enjoyed cooking. I started at 9am by making the pies, and just kept up a nice leisurely pace with it and we ate at about 5pm. I didn't run around crazy with cooking, the kids helped with different parts of the meal, and we had a lot of fun together as a family. The kids made hand turkeys (that's a simple activity, they trace the outline of an open hand on paper and then decorate it with the thumb as the turkey's head, fingers as his tail feathers, add legs and wings, then decorate a background) and we watched the Macy's parade on tv and other Thanksgiving and Christmas-themed shows and movies. Scott took Jojo to the store while I was baking the pies to pick up the ham that he insisted on, which I thought was funny that he wanted one that badly on top of the other food I made. It was a nice day, and a wonderful opportunity for us to be together as a family. I treasure every opportunity to go nuts in the kitchen to make an amazing meal for my family, and spend the day just quietly enjoying our day and vegging out like we did yesterday. Normally my family is so busy with doctor appointments, Scott working, homeschool lessons, shopping trips, errands, housework, and all that other stuff that we don't really take much time to spend together like that. I do believe its time for us to make it more of a priority to spend time quietly enjoying ourselves as a family, not rushing around and doing everything that needs done with this life in the fast lane.

defeating the mom guilt

2011-11-16T10:29:00.001-05:00

I'm sure that anyone who has a child who has differences struggles with this from time to time. Right now, I am struggling with it. I have a child with *mild* health problems, and another with learning challenges. It has been an interesting month for me here so far, with Missa trying to get out of doing her math and reading because it is difficult with her dyslexia, and then last week Kimi's breathing started acting up on us.

With Missa and her differences, we've understandably had to figure out EVERYTHING for schooling so that she could learn effectively without having too many issues with retaining the material. Traditional curricula doesn't always work with her, and I've had to search for just the right fit in each subject or come up with something on my own that will work with her. Thankfully, her sisters are all more typical learners, and the materials that work for Missa work beautifully with her sisters as well because they embrace multiple learning styles at once (we like multi-sensory approaches that use auditory and visual methods along with manipulatives and hands-on activities). But I still feel guilty sometimes over her difference in learning. My mother doesn't help any with this guilt, she told me once that dyslexia and other learning disabilities are either lazy parenting/teaching/learning or caused by not picking one program and sticking to it 100% (changing styles because one approach doesn't work, which is something a LOT of homeschoolers do). She knows that I went through several programs in each subject before finding something that would work well with Missa, and knew it even back when she said that to me. My mother-in-law also doesn't help much either, although her latest comment could be taken as a compliment I think. She's trying to convince Missa currently that she doesn't have dyslexia because "you read just fine honey." The last time the girls were over with her, she watched them for a few hours so Scott and I could go to lunch and Babies R Us without having to deal with all the hassle of keeping 4 kids occupied and happy (meaning I got a meal I LOVED and don't get often at our favorite restaurant, and I got to casually browse all the different areas and get ideas for our nursery and baby boy at the store without being rushed). She doesn't approve of homeschooling, so she quizzes the kids every chance she gets. She tested their reading that day, and decided that they are all doing really well despite not going to a real school and having mommy insisting on playing schoolteacher instead of growing up and coming to her senses about it (yeah we've gone around about this in the past, I'm no longer allowed to discuss it with her per Scott's instruction). Now, last school year I had mono for 6 months, and the ONLY thing I did with her and her sisters was reading. I read to them, they read to me, we listened to audio books, we watched movies and tv shows with the closed-captioning on. Missa jumped during that time from a late K level in reading to now being able to read at a mid to late 4th grade level. She's in 3rd grade. That's something to be proud of, and you KNOW I'm proud of her for working so hard. She's reading the books from our history core (well some of the easier ones, currently she's slowly working through the Usborne Greek Myths book) and she's enjoying reading for fun AND for learning. That was my goal for last school year and this year, now I need to set a new goal for her learning lol

Then there's Kimi's breathing. She has asthma, and was diagnosed a couple years ago. Again, my mom said that I caused it by giving her an inhaler under doctor orders when she had yet another case of bronchitis. For over 2 years I've struggled with this one before I finally decided that my mother has no clue what the hell she's talking about and I've stopped listening to 99% of what she thinks about stuff (she also told me this week that at 24 weeks pregnant, I've gained too much weight and that I'm fat, I gained 12lbs and am thrilled with it, I think she's spent too long on her diet and has lost touch with reality). Anyway, this past week Kimi has had a major flare-up with her asthma and I've had a hard time getting it back under control again. I had her at the pediatrician's office during their walk-in clinic hours on Saturday (Scott had been taking the van to work after blowing out a tire in his car, we had to wait for payday to replace it, so I had no way to get them to the doctor until then) and her asthma didn't disappoint us. She had an attack in the waiting room, and it sent the nurse AND the doctor both running to stabilize her again. We left with a nebulizer and a bunch of medications to get her back in check again. This morning she finished her round of Prednisone, so now she's down to just her 2 daily meds (one pill and one breathing treatment) and her albuterol breathing treatments as needed. Yesterday she didn't need any albuterol at all, which was a first in the last week and a half. I think we are starting to get a handle on it again.

But fighting mom guilt is hard. I feel guilt daily when Missa struggles with her schoolwork, wondering if my mom may be right and I did cause her learning differences by switching around programs so much before we settled last school year on the materials that we are using now. I struggle now especially with the what-ifs and wonder if my pushing for a low-intervention birth with Kimi could have caused all her breathing problems. She was diagnosed with severe meconium aspiration syndrome at birth and needed deep suctioning to get all the meconium from her airways, and has been rattly and suffered with breathing problems from the start. I catch myself several times daily thinking that if only I had agreed to Pitocin in my IV and allowed them to break my water before we did, maybe we could have prevented it from happening.

Yup, the mommy guilt monster stinks. I know none of these challenges are my fault, but still I blame myself because I'm mom. The last thing that any parent wants is to have a child with any special needs, and when it does happen we struggle with blaming ourselves over things that are out of our control. I see my girls, all of them, as unique special blessings from God, and would never trade any of them for another child, nor would I ever wish that any of them were different than they are now. Yet, I still struggle with the nagging guilt that plagues moms everywhere over everything. I may not have a child who is non-mobile with a feeding tube or one with a severe birth defect, but I still fight with the guilt every day. I look at my friends who have children with more needs than my girls have, and know how blessed I am. I also see them as a source of inspiration. I look up to those moms, knowing that their burden is so much bigger while they go through life with grace and strength that I have not yet found. I see what I need to find in them, and pray that I can find it soon. Especially now that I've entered a stage where I'm too paranoid to leave the nebulizer at home even just to take my kids to Pizza Hut for their monthly Book-It coupon pizzas (and I plan to tote it with us here shortly for a trip to the grocery store, hey its raining right now and a chill could trigger an attack, but not going isn't an option as I'm out of a few things that we need for supper tonight).

Nice try kids......

2011-11-11T15:24:00.001-05:00

Nothing bugs me more than the kids wasting my time. They just wasted an hour of my time, by hiding needed supplies for math when I was resting on the sofa (I fell asleep). They spent an hour pretending to search for the hidden supplies, then another 20 minutes insisting that the pencil sharpener isn't in the cabinet, before I finally got fed up and went straight to their hiding spots and extracted the hidden supplies and spent 20 seconds looking at the cabinet to locate the pencil sharpener.

I think this calls for a few extra pages of math, and some extra chores. They waste 1:20 of my life, I will take away free time to make up for it. I'm thinking they can lose 2 minutes for every 1 minute of mine they wasted at a minimum, but we'll see what it turns out to be when I'm done with this one.

And all because Missa decided to try and pull the "but this math is too HARD mom!" card because she didn't want to put forth a little effort in her work today. I think the girl shall be working on math this weekend to make up for taking time from me and making my blood pressure rise (yes it did, I'm high risk for blood pressure issues and am well aware of the signs, I was having physical symptoms of it going up)

math upgrade time

2011-10-26T18:45:00.001-05:00

Missa is giving me difficulties lately. She is using her own personal learning challenges as an excuse to not do ANYTHING. Chores, schoolwork, being nice to her sisters, all of it she is incapable of doing because she has dyslexia. I remember my father going through the same struggles with me growing up when I was older than she is (in case you don't already know, I also am dyslexic). I now understand his frustration and anger toward me whenever I would shut down and refuse to do anything or even try. So, we are proving a point to her now.

Scott gave her a GEM of insight that is just beyond brilliant. He is as tired of her excuses as I am, and dislikes her insistence that she's stupid as much as I do. So, in the middle of her normal whining and complaining that dyslexia makes her stupid he says.....

"Kid, dyslexia doesn't make you stupid; giving up makes you stupid."

Stopped her cold in her tracks. She had no clue how to respond to that one, and just sat there staring at him. I then took that silence as an opportunity to point out how much smarter she is than I was at her age, and how she lets things stop her because she doesn't TRY. I then decided to prove a point to her.

I got out the next level math book I've had waiting for her since the Cincinatti homeschool convention back in tthe Spring and handed it to her. Now, I know she can do the work if she stops and just TRIES, but we bumped her down a level to make sure she had a solid foundation first. She looked at the first lesson pages, and got excited because she knows how to do the work. I then showed her the final test in her test book for this level, and she got nervous and said that she can't do that work. Well guess what kid, by the time you get to that test you will be able to do the work.

She starts Math-U-See Beta tomorrow, just to prove my point. She also has attempted to give up on her chapter book halfway through chapter 3, but I am refusing to let her stop. I told her I don't care if it takes her a year to read it, she WILL finish that book because I know she can do it. I am all about making a point here with her, and right now she needs me to push her like she's never been pushed before. I know it sounds mean to push a child with learning disabilities to do harder work like I am and to be so heartless about it, but I know she's capable. Its all a confidence issue with her.

oh baby!

2011-10-20T08:15:00.005-05:00

Not quite sure what to call this one, but its all about the pregnancy.

We had a few rough days early this week. I have a 4 year old with a cold, and my mother-in-law refused to watch any of the kids at all for us so that Scott and I could go to my anatomy scan appointment without the kids. So I spent several hours frantically calling everyone that I thought I'd have a small shot at getting to watch 3 healthy older kids while we took the sick one with us to the appointment. With 14 hours before the appointment, my aunt and cousin (who live a half hour away) came to the rescue and said we could bring the girls over to hang out while we went to my appointment. Disaster #1 averted.

So, forward to scan. Now, I have 2 friends with special needs children, one who is still waiting for her little man to come, so I was just a little anxious at this scan. If you scan through my list of blogs, you will see Miss Charlie's blog and the Our Busy Homeschool blog. These are the two I am referring to. Both families are incredible and inspirational to me, showing me the amazing love that comes with having a special child or having a large family expecting a special child. So, at the scan I was anxious and wanted to see everything. I asked that we look extra closely at the spine, placenta, cord, and a couple extra areas that I know are common for defects. Everything is 100% healthy and normal. So now we know that its a healthy baby, and I have some amazing pictures from it too.

But that isn't the only thing that we found out. We have a healthy baby, but also we learned that our sweet healthy baby is a boy. Yes, that is right, after having four daughters and figuring we'd never have a son, God blessed us with one. All the girls have wanted a little brother, and now they will have one. I still have no clue what I'm going to do with a boy after so long with just girls, but I'm sure we'll figure it out. I was looking forward to early March already because I couldn't wait to meet our newest family member, but now ALL of us are beyond excited about meeting the new little boy joining our family!!!! (I'll not share the money shot to prove its a boy, I have 5 different angles of it because we couldn't believe it).

And to add to our great day, just as I pulled into my aunt's driveway to pick up the girls I got a call saying that my excusal from jury duty was approved, so I didn't have to spend today sitting in a courtroom. I'll have to go in later, but hopefully I'll have healthy kids so I can do it. I don't mind jury duty at all, but I do have issues sometimes with getting a sitter when I have anyone with any kind of runny nose or cough. Hopefully I can get it done before the baby comes so that I'm not forced to ask for an excusal due to having a breastfed infant.

halfway there! and this week's plans

2011-10-17T12:18:00.002-05:00

OK double purpose for this post. So stay with me please lol This could get scattered.

On the pregnancy, today is the OFFICIAL halfway point for us. I am 20 weeks today!!!! My ultrasound is Wednesday, and Scott got time off work to be able to come. Now if only I didn't have sick kids, I don't know if his mom will watch them for us now. Its just a cold, but she's paranoid about any kind of illness and refuses to watch them even if we have allergies acting up out of fear that she may get sick. Soooooo it looks like he may be stuck staying home with the kids while I go alone to my ultrasound and appointment unless I can get them up early enough to load up on Dimetapp so it kicks in before we get them to his mom's so she doesn't know they are sick. Yes, I know its sneaky, but I do NOT want to miss having him there for my scan and I have a suspicion they wouldn't allow the kids in too if we have a full round of runny noses and coughing. It also messes me up for jury duty on Thursday, if she won't watch them Wednesday she will refuse Thursday as well just to be safe (even if they are ok by then). *sigh* Yup, this week is going to be interesting for me.

On the homeschool front, we're just plugging away with stuff. I got the big 2 doing math right now, and Jojo is complaining and whining about some electronic toy she wants us to buy while also cuddling up to me. Kimi, she's somewhere around here, most likely playing or making a mess. Since we have sick kids right now, we're just going to do a bit of math and such as they are interested to keep their brains working a little bit. The sickest one of the bunch is Jojo, she's all stuffed up and yucky sounding. Poor kid sounds like Kimi because of how stuffy she is.

In reading, Missa is still plugging away at her chapter book. I do believe she is close to halfway done with it. She's discovered that being sick means that she's stuck laying down resting a lot more, and reading a book helps to pass the time. Yeah, she's going to finish her book I think. I need to make out a request list at the library soon so I can pick up a few more books for her, anyone got suggestions for some good books for her to try out next? We're quite liberal in what we allow them to read, and yesterday they watched part 1 of the last Harry Potter on tv with Scott (told ya we're liberal!). She's not *too* girly typically, and I know she'd really like to read the Harry Potter books but she's just not quite there yet in her ability. Oh, and she hates Magic Treehouse, we've already tried that one (maybe it overwhelmed her at the times we've tried it, but we own a few books in that series and she's never even liked them when I read them out loud to the kids)

Hopefully we can get through this week without too much, I really don't like having sick kids and now I think I'm coming down with it too. Yuck!

reading with Missa

2011-10-14T08:54:00.002-05:00

I am dedicating this entire post to my oldest today. She hasn't had an easy time with lessons, and I wanted to just note here how she's progressed over the past few years with her reading.

She started off in K not even knowing her letters by sight, let alone the sounds they make. We got her to at least know the sounds halfway through the year, but it took a half year of public school to get her started trying to read. Their method of doing sight words WORKED with her somehow and she started.

1st grade, she was backed up in phonics with the k12 school into K level because of gaps she had in her reading. She finished K phonics in 1st grade, and moved to phonics 1 for 2nd grade before we withdrew from the virtual academy. It was a smart move for us, and we spent 2nd grade just reading and enjoying books.

Now here we are in 3rd grade. A few weeks ago she decided she is GOING to read the NIV bible she has, and she's slowly and painfully working through it. Then this morning, she was checking out the books on our shelf (I told the oldest 2 girls to get a book each and spend some time reading) and she brought me a CHAPTER BOOK and asked me if she could read it. So, she's sitting in a chair now, slowly reading Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle out loud quietly so she can hear it and see it at the same time. She definitely has moved up in her reading ability I think if she's taking on books like that during her free "ok go read for a bit" time during school. I am now thinking up a reward to give her when she finishes that book, so she has an incentive to actually follow through and finish instead of just giving up. Its her first attempt at reading an entire chapter book, and I don't care how long it takes her but I want her to have something GREAT as a reward. I was thinking maybe going to a movie with me and Scott? I do have free passes to the movie theater at Easton mall, and I'm sure that Scott would be more than willing to get a sitter for the other three so we can take Missa to a movie. Or maybe a special toy? I know she's been wanting a real American Girl doll.

19 weeks and disappointment

2011-10-11T13:00:00.002-05:00

I'm 19 weeks, we have 8 days until that big anatomy scan when they can tell us what this baby will be. Yet, for some reason I am really not looking forward to it. I feel just empty over all this right now. Yes it is our fifth baby, but is it really too much to ask that people try to at least FAKE happiness and excitement for us? I'm so tired of being pushed off like its no big deal, its just another baby in my home. Yes I understand that its important and special that the 14 year old granddaughter of Scott's cousin just had her first baby, and I'm happy for her that she has a supportive family who is there to help and that her baby boy will be fine, but when is it MY turn for a little notice? I act like I don't care that people aren't even acknowledging for the fifth time that we're having another blessed addition to our family, but in reality I am devastated by this. Why can't people at least fake it for me?

I'm not asking for the baby shower I never got or the fawning and "worship me NOW" that most pregnant women get that I never really had. I'm just asking that family at least act like they are happy for us. I'm not asking you to buy all the things we gave away as our youngest no longer needed them, or to go buy anything off my baby registry (which I set up as nothing more than a checklist of what we need to buy still). I'm asking that you smile and say congratulations instead of asking me what birth control we're going to use after this one. I'm asking that you not make "no more babies!" comments before we even announced our pregnancy that we had just found out about. I don't want you to buy us a new minivan or a house, or pay our bills for us. I want acceptance, support, and at least fake smiles and excitement.

Is that really too much to ask for? I don't even WANT to go to my ultrasound next week at this point. I feel like Scott and I are totally alone in our happiness for this baby. I know that I've always been alone doing things and I've never had much support in the past, but that doesn't mean that we should be forced to do it alone all the time. We don't ask for help usually, but we have our moments where we NEED it and we almost never turn down an offer for help. Well, now I need support and encouragement from family, and I'm not getting it at all. Thanks, that shows me how you really see my family.

how I get happy attitudes around here

2011-09-28T08:44:00.002-05:00

If you have more than one child, you know that sometimes it can be difficult to get your kids to get along and be good helpers and all that. My family is no exception. On a regular basis I am breaking up fights and disciplining children for unkind words, and oh the messes they can make and then refuse to clean up.

So what's a pregnant and exhausted momma to do in such a situation? I pulled a trick out of the book of tricks that my local public school must have read. I first bought a HUGE bag of Tootsie Rolls for rewards, then I set up a reward system for different tasks and behaviors. And this weekend, I'm going to the dollar store to get a crate, some little trinkets, and some poster board so that I can make a treasure chest and chart to earn a dive in the chest.

Now, it sounds like I just stooped to bribing my kids with candy, and that's pretty accurate. BUT, so far today I have a clean kids' bedroom, 4 kids dressed, their breakfast dishes in the sink, the little 2 did their Awana verse practice, and now they are cleaning up the mess they made in the bathroom (including cleaning the toothpaste off the wall that SOMEONE smeared all over it, an entire big tube GONE in one shot). All for the total of 4 tootsie rolls each, and the bathroom (being an extra chore considering what all needs done in there) will earn them each another 4 tootsie rolls. My plan is to take advantage of the Halloween candy that's being sold right now to add some variety to my instant rewards, and upgrade it to a bucket (with a lock on it of course, I'm not stupid).

So how do I handle misbehavior with such a system in place? Well, that's easy. Right now Liddy has decided that she does not want to help with cleaning up the bathroom mess, so when its done she won't get any tootsie rolls. Or, in the case of fighting, the two sisters have to work together on a task (usually something disgusting like cleaning the hamster cage or washing out the insides of trash cans). They also can lose the ability to go to Awana, or to participate in our weekly girls' night (pizzas and a movie, Scott is banished to the bedroom while we take over the living room for this). Last week they all four lost the ability to go to Awana by misbehaving in the grocery store (I had to break up an actual fist fight, that almost NEVER happens here, plus they were all disrespectful to me, one another, and the other customers and ignored my reminders of proper behavior and back-talked me constantly).

And I do everything possible to remain consistent with my ways of doing things. Consistency is more important than anything, if I reward and discourage behaviors the same across the board then they learn what the right actions and attitudes are to have. I'm still working on how to incorporate our reward system into our schooling, which is where the treasure chest comes in. That one will have a daily small reward from the bucket, and a weekly reward from the chest. Hopefully it works well and doesn't backfire on me.

car seat is ready

2011-09-27T18:28:00.002-05:00

Yes, I said I got the car seat ready for this baby. LOL As of yesterday, I am 17 weeks pregnant. I'm currently assessing the things we have and are getting these things out and ready so that we can start on the real fun: buying everything ELSE we need. Since we gave the crib and all our baby clothes to a friend's sister, we have literally nothing for basics. I'm hoping I can find the pack n' play for us to use until the tax refund comes and I can buy a crib. Hmmm I think we may *not* have fully thought this through before we decided to have baby #5, it may have been better to wait a few extra months so that I had the tax refund to shop. Eh, we'll figure it out.

So, the first thing we got ready is the most important item of all. We can NOT bring the baby home without a proper car seat. Now, if you know me, you know I'm a safety junkie. I keep up with all the latest safety in regards to car safety and my children. We rear-face until they hit the limits of a seat, then we forward face with a harness until they show the maturity required to sit properly in a booster full time (as long as they meet the legal requirements for a booster as well). Currently, I have 3 in boosters and one in belt only (she passes the 5 step test where she sits, no worries!).

So I decided to get out the convertible seat and get it ready today. Cover: cleaned up. Harness: dropped to bottom slots. Infant insert: found, cleaned up, and put on. Rear facing boot: hunted down, wiped down, attached. Now I just need Scott to put the middle seat for our middle row back in the van so I have a place to install the seat. This baby will be riding in the luxury of a Sunshine Kids Radian80 car seat, which rear faces from 5-33lbs and forward faces from 20-80lbs (yes it IS a harness that goes that high, it does NOT do the booster thing at all!!!!) It has a steel frame inside that plastic shell, and is very plush. It was donated to us when Jojo was a baby by the Kyle David Miller Foundation, and it has 4 years left of the 8 year life span (I had to double check the life span, most seats expire 6 years from date of manufacture but some do go to 8 years). This seat should work just fine and dandy for the baby from birth with the infant insert, if my girls' sizes are any indication of the size this baby will be. I can't wait to get this seat back in use regularly.

And for those whose heads are spinning at my using a convertible instead of an infant seat....... if the baby does NOT fit properly in this seat then I shall wait at the hospital with baby while Scott runs to the store to buy an infant seat to use instead. I have one already picked out, and the local WalMart carries it. But we will not be buying it unless the baby NEEDS a smaller seat, or someone decides to look up my WalMart baby registry and buy some of the stuff for us (I'm using it as a checklist for what we still need to buy for the baby, all our needs plus the goodies we want if we have enough money/time).

God bless the person who discovered peanut butter

2011-09-27T17:21:00.002-05:00

I do NOT like peanut butter. I think it has a nasty texture and it tastes bad. So, why am I blessing the person who discovered it? Well, I am sitting here eating it by the spoonful from a jar now, and its one of the few things that is consistently staying down. I hate it but I cannot stop eating it.

I hope this one passes soon, I don't know how long I'll be able to keep up this peanut butter thing......

holy COW that's cooking!

2011-09-25T19:17:00.003-05:00

I made a late supper tonight for the kids, and just realized exactly how much food I cooked. It was spaghetti night since I had some hamburger in the fridge that I needed to use up, so Scott got water on for me to boil up a 3lb box of spaghetti and I got out the big skillet and the hamburger.

Now, if you've not figured out by now, I like to cook. I cook in mass quantities sometimes so that I can have a meal for the freezer, or a leftovers lunch the next day. This meal is one of those leftovers lunch meals. I doubled everything so that Scott has lunch tomorrow at work, and so that I can assemble a spaghetti bake and put in the fridge to just toss in the oven tomorrow for lunch. (I learned during my pregnancy with my oldest that cooking any time other than supper makes me throw up, so I like to cook at night and have crazy leftovers for at least one more meal)

Now, the essential kitchen equipment for a bigger family is slightly larger than a typical family's stuff. Most people find a 10" skillet to be perfectly adequate, while I tend to reach first for my 14" chicken fryer (its one of those ones with 2 handles) when I cook. A stock pot for me is larger than many would consider adequate for cooking. When I cook, recipes that serve 4-6 automatically get doubled or even tripled so that I have enough food. "Family size" packaging at stores makes me laugh because I know it takes at least 2 or 3 packages to feed my family. In the freezer section are frozen macaroni and cheese and lasagna entrees that are marked as "party size" and THAT is the right size to feed us all. So, as you can probably guess, I tend to fall back regularly on my experience cooking in a restaurant kitchen, making large quantities of things at once to serve the dinner rush. I don't do small amounts of food normally.

So tonight's supper consisted of the BIG box of spaghetti noodles (3lb size box), 3 jars of sauce, 3lbs hamburger, and handfuls of various seasonings and dried onion. I need to go out there and assemble Scott's lunch for tomorrow and the spaghetti pan for tomorrow's baked lunch. There may even be enough left to make extra lunches for me to toss in the freezer for Scott to grab and take to work when we don't have leftovers.

Next bulk meal I'm hoping for will be a lasagna. That one will be made in 3 pans, so I have 2 for the freezer on top of the one that I'm going to serve that night for supper.

movement yay

2011-09-19T17:58:00.003-05:00

Yup, we officially have movement here with parasite. I'm 16 weeks today, and I've not called any of it officially feeling the little booger move simply because it wasn't that strong yet. Well, I can no longer deny it, today it made a few very good attempts at kicking my laptop off my stomach. And a couple nights ago, Scott felt a VERY faint movement himself with his hand firmly on my gut at just the right moment before we went to sleep. Its cute now, but in a few weeks it will get annoying. I already know how I'll react to it, and I can't wait for it to be consistently strong enough kicking and moving for the girls to feel themselves as well.

It makes the next 4 weeks and 2 days until my ultrasound feel like an eternity. I can no longer deny it, there really is another one coming. I can feel movement.

Now if only I could stop throwing up...... but on the up side, I'm losing some of the 12lbs I gained in my first trimester, and I *can* zip my regular jeans up again fairly comfortably. Seems that I may be going the wrong way with that one, I'm supposed to be getting bigger (not smaller). Oh well, I'll pop back out soon enough.

I'll have an update this week hopefully on how the girls' lessons are going, we took some time off with the second trimester pregnancy sickness that has occurred (I had almost none during first trimester).

first baby appointment done finally

2011-09-08T11:18:00.002-05:00

I finally got to have my first prenatal appointment yesterday. I'm sure you may remember, I was seeing an OB about 45min away before. Well, before we moved here it wasn't too bad, I had to drive a half hour to get to ANY doctor for my prenatal care. Well, then we moved here and I kept my amazing doctor because it was just the yearly exam right? No biggie. Add a pregnancy and it becomes a big deal, monthly appointments that go to every 2 weeks and then every week makes for a lot of time loading kids, driving, unloading kids, and all that just to see the doctor for 10min or so. So, I got a midwife locally instead, and yesterday was my first appointment with her.

I had to take all 4 girls with me. That's the downside to the local midwife, when I was making that drive out to the OB I wasn't too far from Scott's mom so she'd take the girls while I was at my appointments. Now, I'm not going to drive a half hour to take them to her, then back home to the practice 5min from my house and then go back to get them afterward. That's more gas than staying with the other practice would have used. It makes more sense for me to just pack them along with me, and arrange for her to take them overnight once in a while for certain appointments (like my next one, which I'm getting to).

So, they drew blood (Liddy had to sit on my lap so that I had a cuddle object while the vampire sucked 6 tubes from me) and they weighed me (their scale LIES!!!!!!) and then they asked me for a full history and all sorts of odd questions (ummm yes my husband IS supportive of this baby, he just has to work which is why he wasn't there or watching our kids, bills don't pay themselves you know). The kids watched Signing Time on my laptop while I got all this done..

Enter midwife, and I get to hear a heartbeat. 158 beats a minute, fast little bugger. It ain't looking good for Scott and his hopes that this time he gets a son..... lol I really like her a lot, she's not the one that a few people I know see but I'm very comfortable with her.

My next appointment is October 19th, I'll be about 19 1/2 weeks along and we'll have the anatomy scan and hopefully determine gender at that time too. I sure hope this next 5 weeks passes quickly, I'm really looking forward to this appointment.

God always provides to His faithful ones

2011-09-04T17:23:00.003-05:00

So, I'm sure you have figured out by now that my family isn't exactly wealthy. In fact, we are probably the opposite of how I was brought up in this area. When we have extra money, we must spend it wisely and usually do so by stocking up on things that we need like extra food and household supplies (toilet paper, dish and laundry soap, shower soaps, stuff like that). We make it work somehow.

So, I did some calculations not too long ago based on the homeschool materials I have here currently, and realized that I may be lucky to make it to our tax refund with the stuff we have currently. I have curriculum I love, but in some subjects it is too expensive to buy whenever we need it. Those subjects I purchase with the tax refund, attempting to estimate how many levels we'll need in math (for example!) or if our history and science will be enough for a year and what supplemental materials to buy.

Well, I can tell you that I likely miscalculated math. Liddy is close to moving up a level in math to Beta, as are Missa and Kimi (they will likely by Christmas). Which that's no big deal, I have the next level already purchased for all 3 children. However, the rate Liddy goes in math I'll need the level AFTER what I've purchased by my birthday in February most likely. That is where the issue lies. Same in history, we're at a good groove in our program and supplements but I can see us finishing by my birthday, putting me in a position where I'll need to purchase the next core level. So what is a girl to do in a situation like this?

Well first, I take it to prayer. I don't do ANYTHING major without praying first until I know what to do. I still didn't know what to do really, but hey it'll work out. That's about all I knew.

Now enter Scott's old babysitter. She would watch him when he was younger than our children, and she homeschooled her 3 kids. The youngest just recently graduated from homeschool in fact, and she decided to clean off the homeschool shelves. She decided to offer to us first, and said that anything we can't use to pass to someone else who can. I got 6 levels of Math-U-See, starting with the very next level in line from where my current collection leaves off, and a lot of books for history, science, grammar, and other subjects. So now, I have solved the issue of what to do, as I have several years' worth of resources and materials that I can just grab and use, supplementing with the library as needed once I get the 2 teacher sets for the math that aren't here.

I think I need to send Scott over to Home Depot for another shelf and brackets for the shelves in our bedroom where I store all the homeschooling books that aren't currently in use...... almost all of this stuff is totally usable to us, with the exception of a couple items that I know right now we won't be using (like Apologia science). I can't wait until later tonight when I can really get deep into this box and log each book into my library spreadsheet and organize and start skimming books to see what will work when and how to best utilize materials.

Just another example of God providing for us when we come to Him in need. He has many times provided things as we needed for our family, by providing extra overtime for my husband at work or leading others to bless us with things that we may need (as in this case, a bunch of homeschool books) or by simply putting us in the right place at the right moment to find something we need (like a much-needed book at a thrift store, or a $1 clearance rack at Target or WalMart for clothing for one of the kids). And sometimes, God smacks us back to reality by reminding us that we do not need what we think we do, that what we have will work for us well enough.

~Blessed are all who fear the Lord, who walk in his ways. You will eat the fruit of your labor; blessings and prosperity will be yours.~ Psalm 128:1-2 (NIV)

~Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.~ Hebrews 4:16 (NIV)

God will always provide what we need when we truly need it, and sometimes before we need it. But we have to have the confidence and knowledge to approach Him with our needs, otherwise He cannot provide if we do not ask.

When is the last time you approached the throne in prayer and asked Him to bless you with the things you need? No matter how small that need may be (perhaps gas to get to the store or a box of pasta for supper that night), when did you ask Him to provide for you in your time of need? When you truly need something, God will NEVER look the other way. He loves us, and wants us to come to Him with our wants and needs just as we as parents want our children to do with us. Give God the chance, and He will bless you beyond anything you could have ever imagined.

4 years ago yesterday.....

2011-09-04T10:19:00.002-05:00

Four years ago yesterday was a holiday. It was Labor Day. It was also 3 days past my due date with my fourth child, and I woke up at about 6am in early labor. She was the only of mine to make it to her due date before being born. She was an unexpected blessing, and it had taken me the first 6 months of my pregnancy to stop being angry at Scott for tossing the condom aside that day. (how's that for TMI mom?) Well, 4 years ago yesterday I fell in love all over again, and we had to FIGHT to time with our baby girl.

An now, here we are with a 4 year old again.......

Happy birthday Pickle...... you are already VERY good at being 4.

seriously? PINK?????

2011-09-03T11:13:00.004-05:00

Scott is getting even with me I think. The last two nights, I've refused to take the pain so I stole his pillows and used to prop my back and stomach in bed while I sleep. I don't have any pain when I wake up, but apparently his neck hurts from no pillows.

So he bought me a body pillow today.

He bought a PINK eff'ing body pillow. Like, I've had a lovely $60 pregnancy support pillow picked out at Amazon (with free shipping too!) for a few weeks now that he said I could get. Well, its payday, and I was looking forward to ordering that support pillow this weekend. Instead, he went to WalMart and got me a $10 cheapo body pillow and he had to choose the pink one.

I hate pink. I may be a female, but pink is NOT a color that I feel looks good on anything but bubblegum and flowers. And he got me a PINK pillow.......

I will find the humor in it later, but now I have to get back to Jordan's 4th birthday. But before I go, here's a picture for you to see what I'm looking like at 13 1/2 weeks pregnant.

Yup, I'm going to be HUGE again this time. And no it isn't quadruplets. Yes, we're sure.

need some guidance here for a health/science study

2011-08-28T08:52:00.002-05:00

So I had a moment this morning. I was just getting out of the shower, I barely had the towel in my hands even, when Kimi and Liddy came into the bathroom. (sometimes I really do NOT like having only one bathroom, this was one of those moments at first) Now, these two kids are my inquisitive ones who make complex connections quickly on a regular basis. I'm regularly surprised by the things they say, think, figure out, and do.

Their question when they came into the bathroom was one that I was NOT prepared for, however. "Mom, we want to know how the baby is going to come out of your tummy." Oh my....... I'm dripping and trying to cover the important parts with a too-small towel thanks to my stomach growing (I show early and then gain a lot during pregnancy, I'm hoping to stick under 50lbs this time) and now I get to figure out how to answer THAT to a 5yr old and 7yr old. I told them I needed a bit to think about how to answer that because it is a little complicated, and they skipped off to let me think.

An hour later now, I still have NO IDEA how to answer that and they've asked me about it already a couple more times. Anyone got suggestions for me on how to explain that to them (we've not had the talk yet about how the baby actually got there, they are starting with the end and working backwards for information) without scarring them for life? We've already talked about the things a newborn needs and what they can and can't do, looked at pictures of them as newborns, and stuff like that. So, now we're talking about the baby growing in there and then coming out. Suggestions?

they never cease to amaze me

2011-08-26T18:42:00.002-05:00

My sweet little Kimi and I have been working on writing her numbers for math mostly, and counting to 20. Well, it looks like now I need to teach the kid to skip count by 10's and then 5's because she can count to 109 with help at each ten's change. CRUD! I'm not ready for her to be moving this fast...... and I'm thinking that Primer may now officially be beneath her level, she's also memorizing some of her facts just from playing with the math blocks with her sisters (they are all playing with them lately to help them memorize which color is what number).

pregnancy- week 12

2011-08-23T14:34:00.002-05:00

I have officially hit the 12 week point, as of yesterday, in my pregnancy. I can now start to relax a bit about it. However, by now I've usually had one or two appointments with my OB/GYN. I've still not had my first appointment due to money issues, but we're getting that fixed now.

I woke up this morning to the sound of my two sweet oldest girls fighting quite loudly. Yesterday I caught them playing in my front yard without even mentioning that they were going outside at all, which doesn't EVER fly with me. As a result, they got the lovely task of "go clean that black hole you call your bedroom and don't come out until it is finished!" for this disobedience. They are more than welcome to play outdoors, but they must ask first and are required to stay out back unless they ask special permission (which is only granted if an adult is able and willing to sit out front since we live on a busy main road). Its the same rule we've had since my oldest was old enough to go down a slide on her own, and it hasn't changed even with moving to a new city and house three years ago. Rules are rules, and I will punish those who break them.

So yes, they got to clean their room, and they took all day until Scott got home and still didn't finish it. So he fed them and sent them to bed after getting on them about it himself, and I gave them hugs and then told them that if their room wasn't finished the next morning before I woke up they would have warmed butts. (I did mention that i have NO patience when I'm pregnant right?) Yeah, they decided to get into a screaming match at 6:30am and it woke me up.

I tried to lay in bed and ignore it, until I heard one spout off, "oh don't worry about cleaning our room. Mom won't do anything, and she's probably already forgotten about it by now." That got me up and I warmed butts for not doing their task I assigned yesterday. 4 hours later, they finally decided to do it and had it finished for me to OK Missa running the sweeper in there. I got my point across....... now let's hope this time it sticks.

But when i had to get up this morning so early from the fighting, I stood up and had this horrible sharp pain in my lower stomach. It felt like i pulled a muscle, so I scrunched right up immediately and stayed for a minute before slowly straightening myself up again and rubbing my stomach to loosen it up. Ahhhh the aches have begun.

I also canceled my appointment with my OB/GYN for next week, and requested the release form to transfer records to another practice. See, I live about 5 minutes from an acceptable hospital, but my practice delivers at an amazing hospital in Westerville (northern Columbus if you aren't familiar with this area). With my being due March 5th, as soon as I found out my due date I started feeling uneasy about the distance to my doctor's practice and to the delivering hospital. I have had to reschedule my first appointment as well, due to financial reasons. So, I spent a lot of time praying about this and trying to figure out why I felt uneasy, and then decided to transfer to a practice with a midwife that delivers locally. Well, when I looked up the number this afternoon at the hospital's web site, I discovered that this practice has three CNM's instead of just the one I knew about. I got the call made, appointment is scheduled with the midwife, and I just need to get my proof of pregnancy mailed in for my insurance coverage and then the form for records transfer to the new practice. Amazingly, despite not particularly caring for the local hospital, I feel completely at peace with the decision. It isn't St. Ann's Hospital, but I'm sure that they can take care of everything just fine with my delivery. Now I just need to find a sitter for the girls for my 2pm appointment the 7th, I really don't want to take them when I'm going to my first appointment at a new practice and not knowing what exactly to expect. Eh, I'm sure I'll find someone.....

I love Math-U-See

2011-08-17T13:28:00.002-05:00

So I posted over the weekend how I'm starting to feel better and was starting officially this week. I really need to learn to not say that kind of stuff, because I now feel like crud again. I'm so tired that I can barely stay awake, pregnancy sickness is starting to make an appearance again, and I'm sore everywhere. Its just that awkward stage for me now. Poor Scott ended up sleeping on the sofa last night because I went to bed before the kids did and I locked the bedroom door, when he was ready for bed he couldn't get me to wake up to unlock the door for him.

But anyway, my love for Math-U-See........ As you may know, we switched in the middle of last school year for the kids. Well, this week with me feeling so tired and unable to do much of anything has pretty much meant that we're just doing basics. For us, basics means they read to me and write stuff as they want to. At least, that's what it meant to me in the past. Now, they can do their math fairly independently as well when I'm not able to spend the time teaching them. Math-U-See has a dvd instruction video for each level that teaches the lessons, and the worksheets ALWAYS follow the same format for practicing the material so there is no guessing. This week, Missa has done an entire lesson on her own pretty much, and will do the test tomorrow or Friday. Liddy is halfway through a lesson herself, and tomorrow Kimi and I will be watching the DVD lesson she's on together (I love my laptop).

Because of our choice in curriculum for math, even days that I'm not really able to be much use beyond the most basic of tasks aren't a total wash academically. If I'm not up to actually teaching, I still have that fallback of them reading to me and being able to do their math fairly independently. I know this isn't exactly how the program was intended to be used with lower elementary students, but it is working beautifully for our family right now when life is upside down because mom and dad got this crazy idea to have another child.

energy bursts, new homeschool year, and stuff like that

2011-08-13T18:20:00.003-05:00

Well, I've hit that point where I am starting to feel less tired. If you read my last post, I'm having some trouble with this pregnancy feeling real to me. I've not had much in the way of symptoms really this time around, and almost NO sickness. The main clues I have, besides my beautiful ultrasound, are tiredness and crampy/achy feelings in my stomach and abdomen as things start stretching and moving around to make room for the baby. OK, I've been hormonal and moody lately too, picking fights with Scott and being harder than usual on the kids. I've said things to the family that I wouldn't normally, and I'm using obscene language more around the kids than what I'd ever do typically. I am having issues with a short temper lately, and saying a lot of unkind things.

So anyway, this week I've noticed an increase in my energy level. It started with a few minutes of playing with the kids instead of just laying around supervising them (I get REAL tired at the start of a pregnancy apparently) and has moved up to where I was able to take a child with me out on a 2 hour grocery shopping trip this morning. So obviously, I'm not needing as much rest as I was even a week ago. It is now that I'm realizing exactly how many symptoms I was having earlier even though I wasn't too terribly sick.

So, now this is starting to feel real to me since I've figured out my major symptom. I now am starting to feel the anticipation. And, I'm beginning to take advantage of the energy that I'm starting to get back. We've put off starting the new homeschool year because of my lack of energy, and now I'm thinking I can do this on Monday. I don't have *all* my supplies really for this, but I've got enough to last for now. I have most of our books, and although I cannot make the switch in history that I wanted to originally (since we did so little history last year I wanted to pick up a couple books and switch from the 2 year program to the 1 year program for world history) I feel like we can totally pull off this whole thing.

I have a few weeks of basic consumable supplies for projects at least, but Scott has worked a lot of extra overtime this last 2 weeks so I will have the money hopefully to go out next weekend and finish off my supply shopping on top of a good restocking of groceries. This paycheck was a bit tight thanks to renewing tags and a driver's license, the mortgage payment, and having to get the drain guys out here to run the auger through our sewage line for the year. That took every bit we had, to where we had to ask Scott's mom for a small loan to get us through this second week of the pay period. I just needed a few more basic groceries, and Scott needed gas for the week so he can make the commute to work. We're good now though, thanks to her. Good supportive family is so important when it comes to the success of our family, and knowing that I can call her when it gets tight or I need a sitter in a pinch has been vital for the success of our family. She watches the kids for my prenatal appointments, watched them for several days/nights when Scott had his surgery, and even took them overnight a few months ago when Scott took me to the homeschool convention in Cincinnati. She will also keep the girls when we have the baby, hopefully we can convince her to come stay here in our house during that time instead of taking the kids all to her tiny 1 bedroom apartment for that 2-4 days. It may just save her sanity to have the extra space (the girls' bedroom is bigger than her apartment, plus the actual yard and toys that we've got to keep them occupied).

I'm really hoping that the fact that I'm starting to feel more energy and less cranky means that my house will start getting cleaned up and that I'll be more able to get things going again around here. Last homeschool year was so filled with interruptions that we have a LOT of math catch-up to do this year. I can't afford to be too far behind at all this year, Missa and Liddy both need to finish Alpha and Beta this school year in math and Kimi needs to finish Primer and start Alpha. Yes, that is more than a year and a half of math in one school year. All 3 girls are about 1/4 to 1/3 through the current levels in math. Last year we made huge strides in reading, so this year the plan is to go heavy on math and get that caught up to a degree. I hope I can pull off my plan for this subject.

Also, next weekend I hope to have pictures to post of the indoor garden that we are starting. I plan to send Scott out to purchase the materials needed to build the platform, and then hopefully we can get hold of one of those hard plastic wading pools still to use for our garden plot. If not, the plan is for him to build a box from wood and line it in pool plastic before filling it with soil. Then we wait for the seedlings we've started to get big enough to transplant successfully. The tallest one is an adorable little 3" tall cucumber plant. I am really looking forward to being able to post an update and pictures of our big science project that I'm doing this year with the girls.

is it real?

2011-08-09T17:22:00.002-05:00

I still am having trouble here with believing that we're expecting baby #5. I've had almost NO pregnancy sickness except for a week or two where I just felt horrible, and really there hasn't been anything to indicate that I'm pregnant happen. Yes, I am tired and I have some round ligament pains, but other than that I'm having no issues really. Scratch that, I've turned mean according to Scott and the kids. I've been picking fights with Scott lately, but he is such a good man he just forgets about it once I get done with my fighting and doesn't say a word.

So I decided that since I hit 10 weeks yesterday, putting me at 25% done with this pregnancy (give or take, as I'll likely deliver sometime the week before my due date), it was time to dig stuff out that I've been storing. The first thing I dug out was my boxes of cloth diapers.

Yes, I use those old-fashioned things. For over a year I used them on 3 kids at once while Missa was being too stubborn and not developmentally ready to learn to use the toilet instead of her pants. And, there are a LOT of options available for diapers now. Some are just as easy as changing a disposable, but you wash them instead of throwing them away. I have some of those; however, I prefer the good old fashioned pinned prefold with a cover over it. And yes, even the prefolds and flatfold diapers (those big squares of cloth you do origami to so they fit the baby) are better quality than they used to be back when we were children. In fact, here's my sweet Kimi modeling one of my diapers at 1 1/2 years old.

That is just a simple bleached infant prefold pinned, she was (and still is!) very small for her age so she never made it into premiums or toddlers before we quit using cloth at the end of my pregnancy with Jojo. I love them, and am planning to use them again this time.

So, I dug out boxes. Now I know I'm missing at least 1 or 2 boxes here of diapers, because I'm not seeing some that I clearly remember that are NOT cheap diapers. I had some very desirable fitteds and pockets with the girls that I was VERY proud of having, and they aren't in the boxes I got out today. However, with what I did find today I discovered that minus pins and a few covers, I don't need to buy ANYTHING to start from birth once the Pampers St. Ann's Hospital gives us runs out. Not too bad huh.........

But even with digging out the diapers, noting where my baby swing is at, and finding the pack n' play, this still doesn't feel real to me yet. I've had an ultrasound already, and I heard the sweet little heartbeat, but still it just isn't quite real to me. I sure hope that changes soon, because it feels odd to know that another baby is coming but its not sinking in really.

the start of a new school year

2011-08-01T16:28:00.002-05:00

Well, it is now August so I decided to go ahead and start our new school year today. I didn't do too much really, but it is more about getting into the habit right now than anything.

We started off this year's big science project. The kids are totally obsessed with how things grow, so I decided a while back to pick up a Miracle-Gro greenhouse kit for kids. It is a cute little thing, essentially a plastic base with clear plastic sides and lids and then there are 4 cups that you put the gro-mix into and then plant 4 different kinds of seeds that it came with into the cups. We have tomatoes, cucumbers, a hybrid of eggplant, and orange bell peppers planted in my living room now. Each girl got to plant one cup, and then Scott is going to build me something to transplant these little plants into hopefully in the next few weeks (or whenever they are getting too big for their containers). It was pretty easy and the kids got a kick out of it, and I have a feeling they will really enjoy watching the plants grow. Tomorrow I'm going to take some dried beans and wet paper towels to put in a clean empty pickle jar so they can SEE the process that their seeds are going through with growing in the "dirt" mix.

Then tomorrow will be a light day as well because we have a 9:30am appointment that will likely take us all morning, and hopefully that will be followed by a small food shopping trip. At least, this is what I'm hoping happens, I've heard rumors that WIC is changing from paper coupons to a debit card style like food stamps are done now so I may not be able to get milk and cereal tomorrow like I NEED to do. If we get to math and reading tomorrow, I'll be happy.

hmmm what do I still need to buy?

2011-07-28T14:15:00.002-05:00

It is school supply shopping time! Yes, that time when the kids all groan and the parents cheer because their kids are going back to public or private school. For homeschoolers, this means cheap supplies for our schooling. I like to take advantage of these sales.

While we may not buy things like lunch boxes and backpacks, there are many things we do get. For example, each of my girls is given a milk crate to keep her workbooks and supplies in. Missa and Liddy are on their third year with their crates, and this year we bought crates to add to the set for Kimi and Jojo. I color code their materials as much as possible also

With the addition of 2 more kids getting crates, this means I need to purchase some additional items. So, I'm trying to remember what all I need so that we can pull off this year beautifully. I'm going to post a list here, and then edit it as I remember more that we need and cross out items we've gotten as they are purchased. Pardon my running tally on this.

100+ boxes of 24ct Crayola crayons
12+ packs Crayola colored pencils
10+ packs mechanical pens
5+ packs ball-point pens
50+ glue sticks
2 pencil/crayon boxes, colors red and green (or clear and some spray paint)
40+ notebooks
1 3-ring binder, 1 1/2" size
ponytail elastics
barrettes
poster boards
paints and brushes
single hole punch
new 3-hole punch (unless I can find my good one in the garage boxes)
8+ pairs school scissors

OK I know I'm missing stuff. I'll edit it later lol

a due date, water play, and disappointment

2011-07-26T21:05:00.002-05:00

Yup, we have a due date. I personally think the ultrasound tech has no clue what she's doing because she didn't take many measurements of the baby and kinda said "uhhhhh I think...." when we asked how far along I am and when I'm due, so yeah. But for now, we are calling a due date of March 5, 2012. And with my pattern for delivery, there IS a chance that I could go into labor on February 29th (leap day baby!!!!) OR on our anniversary March 6th. That puts me right now at 8 weeks pregnant. I'll be asking Dr. Parker about this when I go see him on August 9th and get his opinion.

In terms of water play, the kids have been doing a LOT of that lately. We had to get a new hose over the weekend for their sprinkler, and the increased water pressure as a result has them giddy. I have a feeling our water bill will be over $100 when it comes next month with how much they've been playing in the water out back.

I'm also disappointed. We had to cancel the order from Amazon for my Kindle. Plumbing issues need fixed before we can play. Oh well, just as well I think, Scott's overtime is coming back in a big way now and we're going to have some great paychecks. I'll just take a little from each of them until I have the money for my Kindle again. I'm not going to worry over it, especially since I have the Kindle app on my laptop and can read anything I want at any time.

What I'm reading this week

2011-07-23T19:25:00.002-05:00

I have trouble with books. One, I'm dyslexic and have ADHD (hmmmm sounds like Missa, doesn't it?). I have trouble focusing on pages in a book and getting started reading because of the ADHD, and then the simple act of reading is very tiring for me once I do get going. If you are dyslexic or have a dyslexic child, you know what I am talking about on this one.

And before I go ANY further, I'd like to point out something. Dyslexic people may not be behind in reading. In fact, I was a very early reader and can read anything I want to fluently. However, my dyslexia affects my comprehension of written material. Often, THIS is what happens with dyslexia. Missa is a "classic" dyslexic child, where her reading level AND her comprehension are both affected. Dyslexia looks different in each person, and many would never guess that I am one of these people. I'll spare you the list of famous dyslexic people (ok maybe just a few..... Patrick Dempsey, ya know, Dr. Shepherd on Grey's Anatomy, he's dyslexic, as well as Picasso, Beethoven, Darwin- ok bad example there LOL- and even the son of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ozzy Osborne's oldest daughter, they are all dyslexic) but trust me when I say that dyslexia is much different from what people would normally expect.

So, now you know I'm dyslexic, and I can already hear you screaming at the computer. WHY DID YOU CHOOSE A LITERATURE-BASED CURRICULUM FOR HOMESCHOOL??????? Easy, I can read out loud just fine and dandy. I even have excellent comprehension when I hear myself read out loud. I just flat out love books, and I want my kids to have that excitement too. OK, I got that one covered, I have to go into their bedroom tomorrow and round up all the library books to take back because I have a feeling half of them found their way off the shelf and under their beds, in the closets, and in other odd places. They read constantly, and they enjoy it. Yes, even my dyslexic Missa enjoys reading.

But, outside reading to the kids for lessons, I do very little reading myself outside my college books and what I find on the computer screen. So, I am fixing that now. I have the Kindle software on my laptop, and my lovely husband decided to surprise me by ordering a Kindle for me from Amazon. Yes, I too am joining the crowd of Kindle owners. I am especially excited about this "experimental" feature of the Kindle that reads books to you. If this works well enough, I can immerse myself in books as much as I want to without tiring from the struggle to read. But anyway, my plan is that tomorrow I am going to start with a book on my laptop with the Kindle app, and then I am going to read it. I should finish the book right around the time my Kindle is delivered. So what am I reading this week?

Now this book appeals to me on many levels. One, I'm a slob. There, I said it. I hate housework, and will do anything I can in an attempt to get out of doing it. I don't see any point to cleaning all the time only to have my kids undo the cleaning as fast as I clean it up. I've heard that this book is full of Christian content, and I hope that it can speak to my heart about this little issue I have with cleaning. I've tried so many other things in the past for housework, and nothing really has worked because in my HEART I've always resented chores and don't see a point to doing this stuff most of the time. And if you don't get the title, it is referring to Luke 10:30-42 when Mary sat at Jesus' feet listening while Martha was running about cooking and cleaning. I am very much a Mary, and very little Martha in this case. Hopefully this book will give me some inspiration to embrace the Martha side of my life a little more instead of pushing it away all the time.

Scott's surgery- update 3

2011-07-13T15:49:00.002-05:00

Well, we are now at the 1 week point after his surgery. OK almost, that comes tomorrow. His incisions are healing nicely,and he's not taken any of his pain medication for a couple days now. He even made a short trip to the local WalMart (with 2 kids no less, Jojo ALWAYS goes with whoever is running an errand and then he took Missa to be a useful help to him). He is healing nicely, and much quicker than I expected given his post-op issues. He goes in on the 20th to see the surgeon and get a work release, and to get that pesky 10lb lift restriction lifted as well.

This morning he looked at me and said, "honey I really hope he releases me for work next week when I go in. I love you guys but DANG woman this house is insane during the day!" He misses the peace of his job apparently. At work he is on his feet for 10-14 hours a day with loud machines running nonstop, but at home he's had the joy of a little person poking him every 30 seconds and chanting, "daddy daddy DADDY" from the time they wake up until they go to bed. And that's not including the typical sibling rivalry and fighting, arguing, screeching, complaining, and whining and crying. He's ready to go back, we've driven him to the point where he's ready to shoot himself if he is told he has to stay home longer.

a glimpse of God's awesomeness

2011-07-08T14:45:00.002-05:00

~Sons are a heritage from the Lord, children a reward from Him. Psalm 127:3~

Yes, the day after I worried that I was going to lose my husband from an anesthesia issue from his surgery, we learned that we are going to be welcoming a fifth child into our family. Because I haven't had a cycle since we had my IUD removed in May, I will be going in a week and a half to my obstetrician to have an ultrasound to date my pregnancy and calculate a due date. I am anywhere from 4-10 weeks pregnant. So far, I have been blessed to not have any pregnancy sickness at all. This is a major blessing as the girls all made me so miserable sick that I ended up on medication after a 20lb weight loss each time. It is such a blessing and joy to know that our family is being blessed with another member joining us in 2012.

And now we all know why I was so upset and crying when I got to go up and see Scott at first after his surgery. I overreacted big time because of the hormonal changes I'm going through right now.

Scott's surgery- update 2

2011-07-08T05:09:00.002-05:00

Yesterday was just a bit trying for me. I should have done this last night, but ended up collapsing with exhaustion at 7pm and just now woke up at 6am. So yeah, I'm sure I get a little grace for not updating right away. So anyway.....

Around 3pm yesterday, Scott stabilized and woke up alert. We got him eating ice chips, and when that stayed down he got a small can of diet cola and some saltine crackers. He was given a pain pill and they made him walk a bit in the hall and then make an attempt in the bathroom (anesthesia can affect a person's bladder usage so we needed to make sure that he IS capable of emptying it, he hated that but got over it and tinkled for us a little). At 5pm, we got him dressed and I had the van at the door to pick him up. Since I do not have air conditioning in my van, the nurse made sure that he had a 32oz. mug freshly filled with water and a LOT of ice for the hour ride home.

I dropped off the prescription for him at CVS on our way home, and then I got him inside and he decided that he had to use the bathroom again. That time it was painful because he had to push a bit, but it is a good thing he did go because his bladder was apparently urgently filled. Then I got him into bed, skipped over to the neighbor and asked her to keep an eye on him since he did have surgery that morning, and I went to get his prescription and some Sprite.

Right now, CVS here has a deal for 2 liter bottles of Coke products for 69 cents with their card. I got him a Sprite and me a Coke, and I had to get a new CVS card because I lost ours and they couldn't find it in their system with any of the 5 phone numbers I gave them. Go figure. His prescription thankfully was only $7 so it didn't hurt us too much financially. No, the problem with his prescription is a little different.

The surgeon prescribed him Vicodin for his pain. He is allergic to Percocet (and I have a feeling I completely butchered spelling that one) so that one wasn't an option. So why is Vicodin an issue? I am highly allergic to Vicodin. Last time I took it myself, I broke out into serious hives, itched like crazy all over, and had trouble breathing. Once I recovered from that reaction, I took my bottle and tossed the remaining pills in the toilet, but just coming in contact with them caused me to break out in hives again. So, I cannot even TOUCH his pain pills, or the bottle itself. He had the bottle on his nightstand overnight, and I woke up this morning itchy and a little wheezy. I'll be living on Benadryl for a few days until the Vicodin is gone, in an attempt to reduce my allergic reaction to his medication. I'm not going to ask the surgeon to give him a different medication just because its causing me some issues, it works for him and the other popular one he can't take. I just have to make sure I know where that bottle is at all times until it hits my outside trash, and keep my time around it to a minimum.

So, he is doing MUCH better now than he was at my initial post on him post-op. He says his pain isn't too bad at this point, but he's in bed asleep right now. We'll see how he does in a few hours when I make him get up to use the bathroom.......

Scott's surgery

2011-07-07T11:23:00.002-05:00

Today was surgery day. Yesterday the hospital called and told us that he had been moved to an earlier time, so we had to be here at 5:30am instead of 7am. The gallbladder removal and hernia repair went perfectly, and the other stuff turned out to be fatty deposits so no need to biopsy those. This is WONDERFUL news. He has been out of surgery almost 4 hours how, and I'm sitting here watching him sleep. He has had a bit of trouble with his breathing, so they have him on oxygen. In fact, as of right this moment his stats are....

blood pressure: 104/63
pulse: 61-65bpm
oxygen saturation: yeah uhh.......

The oxygen is a bit of an issue. Even with being on oxygen, his saturation is dropping below 80 every minute or so until the alarm wakes him back up. His body is having trouble coordinating itself to breathe while he sleeps off the anesthesia that is still in his system. He is pale and has been vomiting as well. We're looking at a long day here and possibly him spending the night to get him stable if he doesn't come out of the anesthesia the rest of the way soon. At the moment, while I've been typing up this post his saturation has stayed consistent between 93-98 (so about 10min now, which is an improvement) so he may be able to go down a little in his oxygen flow soon. I'm hoping this is a really good sign that he's going to be off the oxygen soon, he's been on it for about the entire time since he came out of the operating room.

So, now I'm going to find my way to the hospital cafeteria to get some lunch because the Tim Horton's here at the hospital STINKS, their timbits were stale so I'm not going to punish myself with one of their soup/sandwich combos. I'll give another update once I know if he's going home, or if he's staying overnight, or what. Please pray for Scott until then, that he will come out of this quickly.

Thursday is the day!

2011-07-05T07:51:00.002-05:00

Well, we're in the final countdown. Tomorrow around suppertime, I'm taking the girls over to sleep over with grandma and then Scott is going to take me out to eat at Olive Garden with the two $25 gift cards we have (free date night, SCORE!!!!). Then we get to sleep early tomorrow night so that we can be at the hospital by 7am for him to be admitted and prepped for surgery.

I don't know if I shared yet exactly what the surgery is for, so I will now just in case. About 5 years ago, he was having some stomach problems and had a full abdominal MRI done. They found gallstones and a tiny spot on his liver (about 10mm if I remember correctly). We were told that the spot on his liver was likely nothing, and that eventually he'd likely need his gallbladder removed. The last several months, he's been having problems with his gallbladder, and the pain has gotten more severe with attacks as they got more frequent. He had a particularly bad attack a few weeks ago, and ended up seeing his doctor and then being referred to a surgeon to get his gallbladder removed. They did pre-op testing and found a mass around his gallbladder and the spot on his liver has grown, plus he also has a small hernia that is coincidentally at the location of one incision that will be made for the removal surgery. This surgery will be removing his gallbladder, checking out the mass and spot (plus taking biopsies if they look suspicious), and repairing the hernia.

This isn't the first time I've been right by his side through surgery. 3 months before Liddy was born, he had back surgery that removed close to 40% of a herniated disc in the L4 region. That procedure was done outpatient however, at a surgical center. There is a good chance that Thursday's surgery will have him in the hospital overnight for anywhere from 1-4 days, depending on how they have to do the gallbladder removal. If they do it laproscopically, he could be outpatient or spend 1-2 nights admitted, but if they determine that it is too risky and they have to fully open him up for the traditional procedure he's looking at 4 or more nights. We've been together almost 9 years now, and we've NEVER really been apart during this time. Even when I am in the hospital after having a baby, he's usually stayed with me in the hospital room while his mom took care of any kids that we had. I hope the hospital will let me sleep there with him, because I really don't want to go home without him.

I love VBS week

2011-06-29T09:03:00.004-05:00

This week my older 3 kids are at VBS up at SHBC. This means that I've just got Jojo with me in the mornings from around 8am until noon. I'm finding that when she's alone, Jojo is a completely different kind of kid. Right now she is sitting happily on the floor and playing with a duck game (not the way its meant to be played with but she's having fun and it isn't being destroyed so I won't say a word). She's quietly entertained herself every morning so far this week (except yesterday, she didn't sleep well the night before and was WOUND UP from being overtired so she was being aggressive and whiny and wouldn't lay down with me to nap while her sisters were gone, instead she napped for 3 hours after we had lunch).

This is the week I look forward to every year. We are in the period that usually Scott is going 6 months without a week vacation, so I use the VBS week to recharge with fewer kids around. Last year was Kimi's first year in VBS, and I used the week to relax and enjoy myself, reading good books, playing favorite computer games, and doing some errands and chores that don't get done usually with the kids around. This year's VBS week is no exception. I'm catching up on laundry, deep cleaning my kitchen and living/dining room, relaxing with my laptop (instead of playing games and reading constantly I'm working on getting ahead in my college homework and surfing Facebook), and just enjoying my time until I pick the kids up at noon. Monday I did a BUNCH of paperwork for our homeschool, including scheduling some electives, coming up with a working schedule for lessons, making a rotation list for activities to add in Missa's workboxes, and getting my notification prepared to send in late next month so that our homeschool is legal for another year. Tomorrow my plan is to take Jojo to story time at the library at 10am, and I will spend some time with books in the children's section scanning them to determine how much I want to accelerate our time in Sonlight core B followed by core C (I have to be sure they aren't too much for Missa) to make sure I don't hit core D (US history) too early with her, from a maturity standpoint. I will also pick up a few more readers for the girls, and return the ones that we've finished already from my trip there last Saturday.

And of course, I hope to get almost fully caught up on the laundry, clean the majority of the house up completely, and get some yard work done and freezer meals made for while Scott is off work recovering from his surgery. I love having things all planned out for me when we hit a crazy time, and I know that Thursday is going to start a VERY crazy time for us with his surgery. Hopefully I can get all the preparations made for that before this weekend is over.

Introducing..... S'more the hamster!

2011-06-28T04:14:00.003-05:00

He's sleeping right now in the top of his habitat (this section snaps off to use as a transport carrier) so I grabbed the camera to get a shot of him. The girls also tried yesterday and Sunday to get a good picture of him, so I'll share the best they got as well from those attempts.

Don't you just LOVE the white stripe? They picked him out on Saturday at the pet store, and PRAYED that he'd be there still when they got to take daddy to get their pet on Sunday. Apparently, God listened because he was still there for them (he was the only brown one with a big white stripe) and Scott thought he was cute enough so he paid for the one they chose.

Liddy, Kimi, and Jojo love to watch S'more eat, play, and chew. They can spend all day watching him and fighting over whose turn it is to have the center spot for watching (the one with the best view). Missa, on the other hand, enjoys watching him but she's more interested in taking care of S'more. She has been making sure he has fresh water in his water bottle, brushing him, bugging me to put him in his exercise ball so he can run around the living room, and keeping an eye on his food dish and the condition of his habitat. She thinks it is great fun to take care of him. I wonder how she'll feel this afternoon when I have her changing the bedding in his habitat and washing the base of it (from his toileting habits)......... bet she doesn't find THAT part to be very fun.

Now, how long do you think it will take the novelty to wear off to where I'm the one taking care of his feeding, water, and cage cleaning and nobody wants to watch him, pet him, or hold him....... LOL

reading progress

2011-06-27T15:15:00.002-05:00

Usually I post about how my older girls are doing, especially Missa, when it comes to reading. Well, today I'm bragging (again!) on my sweet Kimi.

This afternoon, after the kids got home from VBS, we ate and then took a nap. Jojo is still snoring away happily on the sofa, in all her 3 year old cuteness. So I took the opportunity of her being silent for a bit to work with Kimi on her reading. She's hit a bit of a wall lately with the Sonlight Fun Tales readers that we have been working on, so I decided to change things up at the library. I grabbed her a few of the easiest readers they have there for her to try out as a change of pace. Today, we read one. Its a Rigby 3 reader, so very simple. Each page has one simple sentence and the child is supposed to use clues in the picture if they have trouble with a word in the sentence. There are a total of 5 or 6 sentences in the entire book, so obviously a short book. She and I went through it together once, me helping her with the words, and then she read it by herself to me. Then she read it to her big sisters, and plans to read it to her daddy tonight when he gets home from work. We will *hopefully* spend the week reading this book and the other 3 of this level that I got and then next week we'll move up to the next level of readers if she feels comfortable with this level (I also got her a Dick and Jane book to try out if she wants). I have a feeling that this is exactly what she needs to get going and build her confidence quickly while we slowly work through the Sonlight readers.

But my third baby read a book! Yup, total proud momma moment here......

new pet

2011-06-26T16:16:00.003-05:00

It all started yesterday at Wildwood Park. Scott took the girls there to play while I went to the library to get some books for this week. Liddy cornered a wild bunny just as Scott decided that it was time to go home. The entire trip home, and for a good long while after that at home, she threw a loud noisy fit over not being allowed to keep the bunny she had cornered.

So, we decided to look into what all is needed for a pet rabbit, and do some research at the same time about different breeds and caring for one. Basics, right? Well, we got information and then I went out to get some prices for stuff for a bunny, along with finding out what it will cost for the stuff we need. Of course, Missa and Liddy wanted to come along to see too. So off we went.

We fell in love with the mini lops, but yeah a little too expensive for us right now. So we decided to keep looking at other pets they had there to get ideas. They ended up picking out a brown hamster with a big white stripe around his middle (yes, we made sure we got a male). Then this morning I went and got a habitat, food, and such at WalMart (paid half as much as what I would have at the pet store). We got it all set up, and then went off to get their hamster. Once I get a good picture of him, I'll introduce S'more the hamster.

UGH at Scott's surgery

2011-06-23T08:44:00.002-05:00

So, we had the scans done on Tuesday for his surgery, and they found a couple things in addition to the immediate problem. Great......

And to top it all off, my mother-in-law was going to watch the kids so I can go with him to see the surgeon tomorrow. Well, she's in the hospital now and can't watch them, so now I can't go because I'm not going to be able to find a sitter on such short notice who is willing to take 4 kids at 8am for a few hours so I can take notes at the appointment and make sure I have all the details I need for his recovery post-op and the long term things that we need to take care of because of the surgery. *sigh*

I'd ask what else could go wrong, but really at this point I just don't feel like pushing my luck any further........

looking for something!

2011-06-19T16:55:00.002-05:00

I'm hoping that I get enough traffic that this may actually get answered, but if not then no big deal I'll keep searching on my own. I am looking for every free resource I can find for lapbooks, unit study ideas, activities, file folder games, and such that I can use for our homeschool. Also open to cheaper stuff (we have a few things we want to buy from Evan-Moor and Hands of a Child as we have the money) but would prefer to not spend *too* much. Anyone?

summer school theme 1

2011-06-17T10:29:00.002-05:00

Well the kids want schoolwork daily, despite the break, so I'm doing a bunch of preschool unit studies and lapbooks to make this fun and to include all the girls. On Monday, we start our first week of this. We're going to learn a bit about mice. I have the book "If You Give A Mouse A Cookie" from Sonlight core P3/4, and I just printed off a couple minits from the lapbook at Homeschool Share for the cooresponding lapbook to make a mini lapbook (we'll cut the folders in half for this, it should be perfect). I have a mouse craft, and we'll learn the different parts of a mouse and some interesting fun little facts. To go with it, our baking project for the week will be cookies. Nothing big or fancy, but it should be interesting and light and fun for the girls. The older two will have copywork from the story as well, and they will each read the story to me by the end of the week. I'm not doing full-blown week units here, just a little theme activity to get them all having fun together and hopefully teach Jojo and Kimi how school works in our home so that they are ready when we get into the big lapbooks and studies this fall with each pair (if you didn't know, Missa and Liddy are a pair and then Kimi and Jojo are a pair).

And the bonus is that since I'm only going to do mini-laps with them, we only have a couple minits to do each one and it should be easily finished in a week. It is those longer units that take more than a week and/or have a dozen or more pieces for the lapbook that get me bogged down and overwhelmed.

proud momma moment

2011-06-15T11:12:00.002-05:00

Let me tell you about my Kimi. She is 5, was a late talker, and is small for her age. She has an attitude the size of Texas, and a stubborn streak wider than the Mississippi. Needless to say, she's my difficult strong-willed child of the bunch. We butt heads regularly as she attempts to plow through the boundaries and rules in our home.

Well, today I believe we had a small breakthrough moment. She didn't get her way with a sister, and decided to stomp on her hand as a response to it. As a result, I smacked her butt and put her in her bedroom, prompting her to throw a lot screaming tantrum complete with dumping a bin of toys and throwing them around. She asked me after a bit if she'd be allowed out, and I told her (as usual) that she can come out after she cleans up the mess she made with the toys she dumped out and threw around. She did try to tell me that she didn't throw and dump any toys, but I just looked at her with that "yeah, right" look and she gave up. She pouted off to their room again. When I peeked in on her after about 10min, she had picked up all the toys PLUS put dirty clothes in the laundry pile, throw away a few papers, put some crayons back in the drawer the art stuff goes in, and was making their beds.

I told her that she can go outside and play if she wanted, with Jojo. I think she is starting to figure it out....... And I hope that her cooperation this time wasn't just a one-time thing. She's becoming such a wonderful and helpful young lady lately, these little moments of sweetness and rule-following have been happening more often.

Just so I can remember this later

2011-06-11T20:14:00.003-05:00

Scott has his pre-op testing on the 21st, needs to be there at 7:30am and fast at least 8 hours prior. Then the 24th at 9:30am he has the surgical consult. Gotta ask his mom if she will watch the girls the 24th so I can ask a hundred questions and take notes and all that since he will NOT be smart enough to do it for me, and then I need to uhhhhhh CRAP what did I forget on top of this all? Oh well, I'll remember later. Oh yeah, I need to type and print out a full list of things to ask the doctor and make sure its in my binder with blank paper for me to take notes and write down answers to stuff.

And I need to hit the ATM tomorrow so I can go to JoAnn's for some fabric, I need a couple new dresses and got a coupon for 50% off one item (a single cut of fabric counts so I'm gonna get enough of one pattern to make me a few dresses/skirts I think). I need to oil my machines and get them ready, and I need to remember zippers and a couple other notions to finish a few pending projects. Yup, that should cover it. I hope.

(yes, I totally just used my blog as a notepad to keep track of stuff, you *will* see that quite a bit for now so that I can keep track of everything with the chaos of Scott going in for surgery soon, hopefully I don't start posting chore lists too LOL)

PROOF that I got a second lefty kid

2011-06-10T12:19:00.004-05:00

I was trying to keep Jojo from throwing a FIT over my saying no to watching an inappropriate tv show, so I told her to pick an activity. She chose to do school, strange child.... lol Anyway, I did her math with her (she is not doing Math-U-See with her sisters this year in attempt to hold her a year, instead she's doing Singapore Earlybird) and then we did a lesson in All About Reading. She got the biggest kick out of doing her math lesson and then doing reading stuff. We talked about same and different, and compared sea animals in a picture in her math workbook. In her reading lesson time, we did the capital B lesson. She loves her lessons time, it gives her a chance to have one on one time with me daily and we snuggle and giggle and talk and play games.

Anyway, I like telling people this little useless trivia that we have a perfect 50/50 split in dominance for writing. I'm a lefty. along with Missa and Jojo, while Scott, Liddy, and Kimi are all right-handed. Well, I've had a few people tell me that it isn't possible for me to know that a 3 year old is a lefty, so I decided to get a little proof. So, here we have it, I took these pictures of Jojo during her reading activity page today (she doesn't do the craft part of these pages, she so far just wants to color the pages instead so we do that together)

See? I do know what I'm talking about here. I've been able to identify dominance with each of my girls before her third birthday, and Jojo is no exception. So, 3 lefties and 3 right-handed in this household. Totally blows away the statistic that less than 10% of the population is left-handed........ or something like that.

well I was right

2011-06-10T07:58:00.002-05:00

I mentioned Scott may need surgery in the near future...... He has an appointment in 2 weeks for a surgical consult to get things going there, and also has pre-op scans and tests scheduled. He could be off work for 4-6 weeks recovering, so my life is going to be turned upside down here real soon.

And the kids asked to do lessons, so I had Missa do her journal and then we did step 2 in All About Spelling and Liddy did her journal while Kimi did her handwriting practice. They just came in from recess (they are afraid it may rain) and in a bit we'll do some math and other stuff. I got all our materials for a full day of work pulled out, so if we do it all cool. If not, no biggie. Its not like I have to finish cleaning the house for a friend to visit since he decided to cancel on me last night. So I guess the 11 years we've not actually been face to face in person will continue to go on longer....... since there weren't enough people here that he wanted to see that were available this weekend for him to feel like it was worth coming up. Yes, I'm slightly hurt to know that my family is not worthy enough of a visit if he can't see a dozen others, but hey life goes on. Its not as if I actually spent all week scrubbing my house down and then bought some steaks that I couldn't really afford on my current food budget so that I could feed him a good meal. Its not as if I saw his coming up as a special occasion and got all excited like a kid looking forward to Christmas. I don't feel heartbroken and want to just break down and cry because I got my hopes up. Life goes on, I've got too much to do to be bothered with doing all that stuff.

Which speaking of my busy life, I may not be around much for a while. With getting things in order for Scott's surgery next month, the kids insisting on doing schoolwork anyway, and keeping up with my college classes I have enough on my plate that I may not be able to post much of anything. If you are one of my Facebook friends, I'll have myself logged in with the window minimized while I study. If you want to message me, feel free and I'll get back with you during a break from my studying.

summertime plans

2011-06-07T15:38:00.002-05:00

Like I said last week, summer is one of my favorite times of year. I had originally planned to spend the summer working full speed with history, science, the basics, and all our extras. However, every time I set out to do a full day of lessons I get stopped by life and I get a feeling that I need to focus on other things. So, I do believe this year we will get a summer vacation and only do a bit of math, reading, and journal work a few days a week so they don't lose what we've done.

The biggest reason right now for that is because Scott is having a *small* health issue that will require him to have surgery at some point, likely in the near future. I am not sure what will happen when we are in that place, but I have faith that we will end up just fine and all will work out in the end. Scott is worrying about how we will pay the bills, but I don't think that we need to have any worries at all.

That has also lead to us trying to simplify our lives. I'm sorting through everything we own to cut down how much we have and hopefully make everything easier to keep track of and cleaned up. I'm hoping that this summer we can have one heck of a yard sale to bring in a little extra money (which will have the added bonus of easing a little of the worry about money that Scott is having).

Of course, there are other things beyond Scott's health that we are juggling. But only time will tell what is happening with those things. So there you have it.

summer treats

2011-06-01T11:28:00.002-05:00

I love summer. We had to get a new grill to work in a pinch while Scott does some work on ours (the ingition system is malfunctioning on one burner) so we got a cheapo charcoal grill. He bought it Saturday and we've used it twice already, and I'm planning to again tonight I think.

But it is also popsicle season. This year we decided that instead of buying them we would try making our own. And my recipe that I used is a total hit. For less than $1 I can make 24 popsicles that are similar texture to the ones that are $4 for a box of 12, and the flavor is WAY better. We just finished off the ones that I made 2 days ago, so I need to make more and refill our molds. The nice thing is, I can do any flavor combination I want, as I'm only limited by the flavor availability of Kool-Aid and Jello powder. I'm sure it can be tweaked to use natural ingredients, but part of the fun of popsicles, in my opinion, is the lack of nutrition on top of the cold smooth frozen goodness. If you've never made your own popsicles, here's what I use for them (and you can do them in paper cups with store bought sticks, or in ice cube trays with toothpicks if you like)

1 small packet Jello
1 packet Kool-Aid mix
1 cup sugar
2 cups boiling water
2 cups COLD water

Mix the jello, kool-aid mix, and sugar. Add boiling water; stir until fully dissolved. Add cold water, stir and pour into molds. Freeze until solid.

What are your favorite summertime treats?

what's gonna work? TEAMWORK!

2011-06-01T10:06:00.004-05:00

If you have preschoolers, you are probably beating your head on the desk now at that image and the reference to their teamwork song. Unless you don't have television, then you are lucky. (for those of you who fall in the latter group, that is a picture of the Wonder Pets, show same name is on Nick Jr. and they focus on teamwork and problem solving skills)

So how does this apply to my home? Well, yesterday Missa and Liddy started their guided journals from Write Foundations. They each had a verse from the bible to copy, and then a journal prompt. Since they are both in book 1.1 the expectation is only one sentence answers for journal topics. Missa loves doing such things, she thinks it is great fun to copy books into a notebook and doing writing prompts. So, it wasn't much difficulty for her. I just explained to her what to do with her page and let her loose. Liddy, on the other hand, hated it. She has fine motor delays, and tires quickly with writing. She can spend hours reading daily without issue, but writing tires her out in seconds. She also didn't quite understand how to do the work, since she has never done a journal topic or copy work before. Lots of whining and complaining from her obviously, with me helping her figure it out until I got frustrated and told her to ask Missa because I can't take it any longer.

So a few minutes later I go back to the table to apologize to Liddy for losing my patience and help her finish the assignment, and what do I see? Missa scooted over close to her, with her journal right there to use as a model to explain how to do it. They are one grade apart in age, but have such different strengths that they are worlds apart at times. I think I need to take advantage of their strengths more often like this, teach them more about teamwork and working together to do things when one is struggling. I've discovered yesterday that they are an amazing team, maybe I should use that with Missa's math struggles to try and get Liddy to help her with math and see if they can teamwork their way to Missa mastering her basic facts, or for Liddy's hatred for history to get Missa to help her with the work when we are working together in history lessons. This is something I need to consider, I'd never thought that they could work together like that so well.

and I think I figured out the history issue

2011-05-30T19:18:00.002-05:00

So, I posted a couple days ago about options I was considering for history with Missa and Liddy. If you didn't see it, well nutshell is.....

Missa loves history and can't get enough, Liddy hates history and would rather spend her days doing math. I slowed down part 1 of Intro to World History (Sonlight core B) to try and keep Lydia interested and get her to do some of the work, and am supplementing way more than I have the time to do without my own grades suffering (in fact, in the course of my supplementing so much, I failed one college class and am struggling badly in another that ends today).

So, my solution? I'm dropping Liddy as a target for our history studies, and moving on in life with Missa. Also, I have the guide for the one-year condensed Intro to World History (Sonlight core B+C) and I'm looking at it now to try and see what I need to purchase in terms of spine books to switch over to the one year program instead. Missa can keep up with it just fine, and if I don't just go to the condensed core program then Missa will have me moving double speed anyway and I'll end up buying core C (part 2 of the program) likely by Labor Day. This way, well I may have a chance at keeping her engaged and moving at her pace, and then we'll move into whatever we choose next (not sure if that will be US history from Sonlight or if we're going to be finding a different program for history or following their interests or what we're going to do).

So now I need to start tracking down copies of 3 books that we need for the switch to the one year program. I think Missa will LOVE the pace too.

this momma is strange

2011-05-30T15:36:00.001-05:00

Yes, that is purple hair...... it didn't take as well as I had hoped, so next payday I'm going to bleach it down as light as my almost black hair can go, and then do the purple over it again. I love being different like that!

What I'm reading for June

2011-05-29T10:46:00.003-05:00

So often I only read the kids' books, I forget to take the time out to read for ME. So, at the library yesterday I picked up a few books that I wanted to read. Here's my lineup.

This one I chose because well, I have 4 kids and we don't always eat as well as we should. I need ideas on how to maximize the nutrition, particularly with my picky eaters. This is just one book I'll be previewing to see if it is worthy of being purchased to add to our home collection.

Now, I've read this one a few times before, but never really took it to heart. Now that our budget is starting to dwindle for future years of homeschooling while more kids are coming up into compulsary education and reporting age, I need to start buckling down on what I spend on curriculum. I need to cut back on what we buy to teach with so that I can afford things like gas money for field trips and stuff like that. So I'm going to read this one again and take some notes for me to remember of different ideas, and possibly purchase this book since I have checked it out at least 4 times in the past 5 years.

OK this cookbook says it is for ADHD and Autism, well guess what. It is a book full of recipes that are gluten-free, dairy free, and free of certain other common allergens such as corn, eggs, and soy. We have issues with gluten, soy, and dairy (along with citrus, red dye 40, and shellfish). So, this book is more to help me figure out some new twists on recipes the kids can enjoy that are friendly to our current allergies and intolerance/sensitivities. Again, this book is on my list of potentials for purchasing.

I've heard so many good things about this one that I just had to check it out. Enough said.

Missa has MULTIPLE learning challenges, many of which are included in this book. Specifically, the kid is AD/HD-combined and has dyslexia and sensory issues. Yup, I think this one will help me out. Don't know yet if I feel it is worth considering buying, but I'll decide that after I read it through real good.

So that's my pleasure reading for June. It all involves the kids in one way or another, but so goes my life. I gave up fiction fluff novels years ago, unless it is one that I'm reading to the girls. I love learning and getting new ideas in my free time, and hopefully I have enough time to read these books in this next month. If not, I'll renew them and keep going through July too.

help me decide what to do

2011-05-27T08:26:00.002-05:00

In case you haven't already figured it out, we use Sonlight for history in our home. Missa and Liddy are paired up in a study group, and are doing core B (also known as Introduction to World History, Part 1). We are studying ancient world history, and we've added a lot of materials to it for hands-on elements. Missa is eating it up; she adores history and does very well with it. She can't get enough of history lessons and would love it if I would pick up the pace so she gets more material. Liddy, on the other hand, doesn't care for history so much. She'd much rather do math and skip history lessons completely. So, my moving slower is paced for her while the added material is to keep up with Missa. However, Missa is starting to get restless with so much added to cover the same stuff for soooo much longer.

So I'm considering a couple different things:

1) just pick up the pace in our core and if Liddy doesn't do it, fine.
2) split them up so Missa is going her pace in the core and Liddy is going HER pace in it too (so I'll end up doing 2 cores with a one grade gap, which is the ideal for combining kids)
3) add in Sonlight's core W to give a lot more depth to slow Missa down and keep her satisfied (core W is the one year World History in Depth program, geared to grade 8 for the most part)

Now there are problems with all 3. Option 1, then Liddy doesn't "do" history lessons really. She may here and there but yeah, that just irritates my teaching securities. But then, she's REALLY into math and reading, so if she's not getting it now she'll likely pick up the books from this core at a later date to read on her own so she'll get the material then. This option has possibilities.

With option 2, well that just creates so much more work for me to do the two girls separately. I'd burn out FAST from reading the material twice so each kid gets it at her pace, and then add in that it would essentially mean that I'm doing 3 full cores since my younger two are doing the Sonlight preschool cores now (I'm doing a combination of P3/4, P4/5, and core A at their interest and pace). I have 4 kids, and at this point my limit is two full cores.

Then there's option 3. It has the same disadvantages as option 2 does, with it adding a third core to my heavy workload of stuff I do already. But also, there's the added need for me to pre-read all the books first because Missa is only going into 3rd grade this fall. She may or may not be ready for the workload of core W, even stretched out to last the entire time we're doing core B and then core C. But at the same time, it would be an advantage because I'm taking that time to read it all first, then she and I read aloud together and it could lead to some great discussions.

Of course, there's other options that I could pick too, but these are the ones I'm stuck on right now. What do you think? I can't decide.........

what they are reading right now

2011-05-27T08:06:00.003-05:00

Liddy loves books, and it is a challenge sometimes to find one that she can read that is going to challenge her at the same time. She's whipped through all our Sonlight grade 1 readers in just a few weeks, and has reread these books dozens of times. She LOVES the Dr. Seuss books. So after hearing her read one of those books yet again, I decided to test out my library stack of readers for Missa to see how her reading is. This is the book she's reading now........

She made it about halfway through it before deciding that she wanted to stop. That book was a *bit* of a challenge and a stretch for her, but she did very well with it.

Missa, on the other hand, has been slowly working all year long through the stories in this book........

She's not *quite* ready yet to tackle the book that Liddy is reading, and she struggles with the book she's reading now. We spend a lot of time reading together, me helping her with the words she doesn't know. She's about 1/4 through her book, we read stories a few times before moving on and revisit favorites that she's already read as we continue to work on her fluency.

Both girls' books are part of the Sonlight grade 2 readers set. I own the one Missa is reading, and Liddy's (plus most of the others) came from the local public library. I intend to buy the reader package here soon if I can scrounge up the money, giving Liddy and Missa both their own bible books (Missa will NOT part with her bible book any time soon, I already know this). But I thought it would be fun to share where my girls are in their reading (and even more surprising, Liddy's book is further into the reader schedule than Missa's book is but I think Missa's may be a harder book because of all those names).

When life happens.....

2011-05-04T22:24:00.002-05:00

Yes, I am posting at 11:30pm. I got home not too long ago from the hospital, poor Missa has been in pain all day. She's described it as someone poking her in the stomach with a sharp knife. I didn't sweat it, and figured she'd be fine by this evening when she woke up at 7:30 with the pain. Obviously my day was SHOT.

She spent the day laying on the sofa, just kinda staring blankly at the tv and napping on and off. She didn't eat much today because it hurt, although she did go out front for a bit to watch the road construction (they are repaving the road we live on). She did have some relief early in the afternoon, or else she decided that the bubbles were just too tempting, and got up to say she'd do dishes for me when I said I had to get them going on. But other than that, she laid around, watching tv and napping and reading until Scott got home and decided that I needed to take her to the ER.

After 4 hours there, they determined that it *could* be appendicitis but said that its too early to tell and that it won't show up on any testing for a minimum of 24-36 hours from the initial onset of symptoms (which her only one so far has been the stomach pain). Since she has no fever (not like she does normally anyway when she's sick, last time she had a real fever was when she was in K and they sent her home with a fever of 104 and then an hour later she was at the ped's clocking it at over 106 while they scrambled to get it down again, they packed her in a lot of ice packs held to her body with a sheet) they felt that just some Tylenol would be sufficient, and sent us on our way. Thanks guys, next time I'll not bother wasting my time with y'all, I'll just wait for her doctor's office to open up the next morning instead since I could have given her Tylenol myself and called it good.

We didn't do any lessons of course, we just went with the flow of things. Tomorrow we'll try to pick up again if she's feeling up to it, we'll see how she's doing. If she's still in pain I'll take her to her doctor, but if it gets worse I'll skip the local hospital and make the drive with her and her 3 sisters to go to Children's Hospital up in Columbus instead. I'm not playing with Licking Memorial, they can't tell their bums from a hole in the ground.

preschool and learning goals- or why NOT to have them

2011-05-02T12:46:00.003-05:00

I've been thinking a lot lately, thanks to a post I read over at the Sonlight forums last week. A mom asked on the forum there for the preschool cores what goals we set for our little learners to accomplish prior to the start of their K year. I answered, and then thought that it may be an interesting topic to cover here too just so anyone who reads this blog can better understand how we teach here in my home.

In our family, its not what the children learn so much as it is the journey they take to learning the material. We call ourselves eclectic unschoolers, which is a bit of an oxymoron. See, an eclectic homeschooler uses a variety of curricula to tailor the schooling as much as possible to their child's individual needs, taking current interests into account and changing up what doesn't work as needed. An unschooler has faith that a child will learn what they need to as they need and want to, and they provide incredibly rich learning environments and get their children involved in activities such as having a garden, taking care of pets, cooking, pursuing an area of the arts or athletics (or both!), and just about anything else you can think of. We are the best of both worlds. I use a variety of curricula as desired/needed for different subjects, particularly reading, writing, and math. Then I have curriculum for history and science, but we use it more exploratory. We may spent a year studying the same time period that is assigned to just 6-8 weeks in our history program, doing a lesson when they want to from the program or watching documentaries that go with the subject, finding information online, doing crafts and projects to replicate (sort of!) different things in our topic. Right now we're in Mesopotamia still, and the kids are waiting for me to feel the weather is good enough for us to go outside to try making mud bricks to build a small wall with. Yet, we don't pressure the kids. I suggest to them that they do some math or reading dailybut if they don't it is ok because I know that when they do, they will do multiple pages at a time and be more receptive to the work. I don't stress, and we have about as rich a learning environment as I can think of to do in our home with my physical limitations.

So, how does this apply to preschoolers? Well, my little Jojo, at the sweet age of 3 1/2 years old, is a preschooler now. She asked for some schoolwork like her big sisters do, I got her a few things to do gently with her. But I also thought about what my real goals with her are. I've never actually set goals for my preschoolers, as they have all be more than ready for K material when it comes time to start their K year at home. I had to really stop and think about what it is that I set out to do with my preschoolers, and here is what I came up with.

1. love learning Now, this sounds a bit odd to many, especially if you have children who go to public school. Those kids tend to HATE school by the time they hit 3rd or 4th grade, so loving to learn would be a foreign concept to some of these parents. However, this is one of my biggest goals for this age. Since we learn in a more organic manner, providing the tools for the girls to learn while not forcing them at the same time, it is vital that our girls be interested in learning more about things and know how to go about learning about what they are interested in. The preschooler's focus for this particular skill is to develop a love for learning about things. We do this by trying to always take the time to answer when one asks "why?" or "how?" or any question like that.

2. get down and dirty with life We do a lot of hands-on stuff. A LOT. Like I mentioned earlier, we are waiting on the weather to get just right for us to make mud bricks. We also are planning on building raised garden boxes this year and attempting to grow some food to take a little strain off our grocery budget. We don't have any pets due to Kimi having too many allergies to allow that, but we go to the Columbus Zoo regularly and they have a petting zoo for the kids, and the aquarium has a spot where you can get in line and wash your hands first to touch some of the sea life they have there (starfish, anemone, stuff like that). You can pet some reptiles there too sometimes, and we can ALWAYS see the animals. Last year, the girls couldn't get enough of the elephants (particularly the baby elephant). We cook with the kids. Just last week Missa made a lasagna with my help, she loves cooking and is pretty good at it for a kid her age.

3. develop a desire to be a part of our team Working together as a family is necessary in some parts of our life. With 6 people, that can make for a lot of messes. However, it also means that there are 12 hands to help pick up those messes, making the work just that much lighter for me. It also means that yard work is done faster, in theory. I have the ability to have the girls work in pairs to do different tasks, and if the job is too difficult for the little ones to help the oldest two take turns working with me while the one not working with me keeps her little sisters entertained. A preschooler can help water a garden, put the pulled weeds into a trash can, and pick up sticks. The extra 4 bodies means that grocery shopping can be done easier. The little ones help with getting things from the bottom shelves to put in the cart, and the oldest girls can push a shopping cart if I need more than one cart. If I go to Aldi, I can easily fill 3 or 4 shopping carts with food so having them able to push a cart really helps a lot. They all help bring in and put away groceries, with me standing at the van passing out bags they can carry until the last ones are ready to go in and then delegating who puts what kinds of stuff away and who unpacks bags for us to put the stuff away.

4. not let her get lost in the shuffle of our BUSY life Let's face it. With homeschooling and having 4 kids, me in college full time, and the various other things I do outside of typical housework and cooking, it can be hard to remember that the preschoolers are there at times. I regularly forget that my preschoolers need to have time focused on them too. It takes extra effort for me to remember this, and I use many different things to do this. I buy curriculum as soon as they start asking and I can afford it, giving me something to do with my preschooler. I have many books that I, my husband, or the oldest girls can read to a preschooler or toddler, and tomorrow I'll have All About Reading pre-level 1 for Jojo to do with me. She and I will take the time to do a bit of creative sewing to make a tote bag and matching apron for her, as well as make a puppet to go with it since I bought the basic package instead of the deluxe. At some point this week Sonlight will ship the handwriting books I got, one of which is for Jojo along with a math workbook that I have coming from them as well. I will use these materials as a way to remember to spend time daily with her as well as her sisters.

For us, the preschool and K years are the foundational years in our homeschool. These are the years that we have the most impact on the future of our little learners. What we do now to encourage or discourage them will shape the way they live and learn for the rest of their lives. Our biggest goals are to have the foundations they need for learning, living, respecting others, and loving God. If these foundations are laid effectively now, then later when they are learning the important academic foundation skills of basic math, effective reading, and the ability to write clearly and purposefully those skills will be easier for them and they will be more motivated (hopefully!) to work on it when they do not understand.

Learning does not stop just because one graduates from high school or college, or when they finish their studying for school each day. To live without learning is to die intellectually. My goal for these early years that all my girls are in with their schooling is to build the foundation they will need to not just learn effectively, but to WANT to learn constantly in their lives.

portfolio review- CHECK!

2011-04-22T04:26:00.003-05:00

Ahhhh, spring. Grass is growing, flowering trees are in bloom (my willow out front is BEAUTIFUL right now), and there are lots of puddles for splashing in when mommy's not looking. Yes, it is a lovely time of year, and when we usually are at our most productive in homeschool.

Spring also marks the time when most homeschoolers are usually finishing up their stuff and getting their reporting options done. Here in Ohio, we are blessed to have a couple choices for reporting. One option is to do a standardized test and submit the scores. The other is to have a review done by a teacher certified to teach in the state. We chose the review this year, after much discussion and prayer on the matter.

This was my first official portfolio review. I had no clue what to expect, and was pretty sure I'd not get our letters to send the school district. After all, I'd been diagnosed with mono the first day we were out on our own homeschooling, away from OHVA, and then we'd been plagued by various illness and injuries since my recovery from mono in January (because I just won't stay in bed like the doctor says to, nope I take my kids trick or treating all over a small town a half hour from my home a week after diagnosis lol). We'd had a rough time finding curriculum that fits our needs and everyone's style of teaching/learning, just now settling into a bit of a groove this past few weeks with things. I think it is safe to say I was just *slightly* anxious about this review.

Thankfully, we had opted to make the 1 hour drive from my home to Grove City to see Dr. Holinga at The Reading Doctor. She was a homeschooling mom and understands the more non-traditional methods that sometimes happen as life gets in the way of textbook learning. We had a great time with her, and it was just so fun to get out and on the road. I had forgotten how much I love to drive, and the girls seemed to enjoy our road trip as well once we had all gotten bathed, dressed, and in the van. I had all our stuff that I could think of to bring for the review, we had math books (both the ones we started with in October and the current program we do now), journals, and samples of the history stuff we're doing (gotta love the queen of supplementing, I had their History Pockets and the current lapbooks to show her) along with a book for each girl so she could informally assess their reading. Missa rocked it with her Bible, and Liddy giggled her way through Green Eggs And Ham. Goofy child....... and we now have 2 pretty yellow sheets of paper for me to send with my notification that says they have completed a year of schoolwork at their levels and pretty much to back off me for a year. She was the PERFECT choice for us this year for review, and I plan to go back every year for review with her as long as I refuse to use standardized tests.

So now let's get rocking with our homeschool, its kind of funny to say that, since we did a year-end assessment at what would be closer to the start of our school years. We have decided it would be better for our family to take winters off the full courseload and do just a minimum of work, and then hump it through the spring, summer, and fall. I don't do as well mentally in winter, and we have so many illnesses that plague us during that time that it really is more practical for us to do it this way. As long as they make progress though, how cares how we do the school year right?

preschool plans

2011-04-18T13:22:00.002-05:00

As you may or may not know, we don't do much normally for preschool here. We are big believers in the better late than early philosophy, and take a completely child-led approach for any child not under our state compulsory education laws. If I don't have to send in notification with that child's name on it, I don't force learning. That said, I do have a preschooler working almost daily in math, reading, and handwriting lessons because she has requested schoolbooks to be like her big sisters.

This upcoming fall, that child will her a K'er still not under compulsory attendance. She will continue her learning as she is doing now with Math-U-See (I have Alpha waiting for her currently), Handwriting Without Tears, and Sonlight readers at her pace and ability. It is her little sister that I am choosing to write about today.

Jojo is a typical 3 year old child. She likes to make messes, and sometimes these messes can take HOURS to clean up. Her beach in my kitchen is one of those messes, she dumped my sugar and flour to make the sand on my wood floor then used the kitchen sprayer to make the ocean. It took her about 3 minutes to do something that took me 4 hours to clean up sufficiently to not leave a sticky residue on the floor (as if anyone would notice my floor being sticky in there, you know what I mean if you've ever been in my kitchen LOL). She flushes entire rolls of toilet paper at one time, has plugged my bathtub with a washcloth, drawn on every wall and door in my home, writes on windows. Yes, she is 3 1/2 and she is VERY good at it.

SO, imagine my surprise when I was putting away the school supplies one day last week and she was helping me sweetly. Very carefully she handed me books to go on the shelf, and when I was marking off the boxes in my Sonlight core guides she fetched me a pencil. She wanted something.......

So I dared to ask her what it was she was wanting. I was not prepared for her answer.

"I want mine own Jojo spelling box and math book mommy, just like mine sisters."

Now, if you know anything at all from reading this, you know that we have been using Math-U-See for the older girls (Liddy, my 1st grader, is switching effective TODAY from Horizons math into Alpha with her older sister) and that Missa, my 2nd grader, does All About Spelling. She wants to do seat work just like the big sisters do.

OK, fine you say. Just hop online to the dozen freebie sites I know and grab worksheets for her, I hear you saying. Well, she's been doing those freebies for over a year now, and is becoming less satisfied with the work. I was anticipating that sometime NEXT school year she would have this request, so I didn't budget in to shop for her when we were at the homeschool convention. Now I'm in a bit of a pickle, aren't I?

So what did I do? First, I checked out blogs and chat forums that I frequent to read some stuff and get a few ideas on what to do with her. We're already lapbooking our way through Sonlight core P3/4, so she'll just move up to P4/5 with Kimi this fall. That takes care of social studies and read aloud time. Science is covered with our choice to do Real Science 4 Kids pre-level 1 with all the girls, she'll just join in on that one easy as can be. She's quite happy with that stuff in fact, she likes being included. But now, she also wants her own math and such.

Well, I personally think she's too young for Missa's spelling program. She'll be barely 4 when we do the official changing of the grades here in September. So I need to come up with something to substitute for the spelling. No problem, they also have a reading program called- you guessed it!- All About Reading! We'll buy that to give her a program of her own in that area. Math, well I'm just going to get the child a copy of the Primer level in our program, and let her go at it as slowly as she wants. She doesn't need to do a whole lesson daily like her big sisters sometimes do.

Crud LOL And here I was hoping for another year before she started asking me for real school books.

All About Spelling

2011-04-06T08:29:00.002-05:00

This is one of those new things we got at the convention for next school year. Well, I spent the weekend cutting up the tiles and applying magnets and prepping the review box for Missa, as well as looking over the material so I know what I'm doing. This morning I got out the big magnetic dry-erase board and sorted out the tiles to get out all the ones we need for this level, putting the ones it said we need to start with on the board and the ones for later into a baggie. I think we will try starting this one today, and see where it takes us. If it proves to be a little too much on top of our current heavy load in history and our current pace in math (Missa's doing 2 lessons a week in Math-U-See at the moment now that we've got her into a routine) then I'll set it aside until around June or so. I try to ease us into new materials, and with as many things as we've changed for next school year we are really trying to start this transition now. It is the only way that I can handle working with the changes, doing it all at once just messes me up too much.

And since we're in the routine with history, math, reading practice, and Missa working on cursive, I thought it would be a good time to try and add in a little more now.

ancient Mesopotamia

2011-04-04T07:27:00.002-05:00

I told you that we supplement our Sonlight core curriculum with a couple other programs right? Well, we do. We add History Pockets and lapbooking to our studies. In fact, right now while I type this post, I am pausing every few minutes to flip pages while I copy the activities for our ancient Mesopotamia lapbook from my new HOAC project pack. At convention I bought this as a full package complete with a prefolded folder and a set of the activity pages on color paper. Well, we are taking the folder from our next unit's pack out so they both have a blue folder, and then they are going to alternate who gets a color activity and who gets black and white (Liddy has been assigned to odd-numbered activities in color and even in black and white, while Missa get odd-numbered activities in black and white and the even-numbered ones in color). They have the understanding that if they share well for the next 2 units with the color activities, that I will buy colored file folders and paper and we will do more lapbooks with colored activities. If they don't, then it is back to black and white minit books and plain folders. I don't anticipate there being much of a problem with these two sharing the color printed activity pages.

Now, these aren't my first HOAC lapbooks. I've done a couple in the past that I borrowed from a friend to have a couple components to add to the free stuff. But this IS the first time that I've done a HOAC unit lapbook as the main component of our lapbooking. Usually we use free things from Homeschool Share to make our lapbooks, and then worksheets and coloring pages from various other sites to add in a bit more. I have never paid for all this material that we've added before this school year. This is the first year we've been able to afford to pay for extras after buying our core program for history, and I'm really enjoying it. I really enjoy not having to take the time to find minit book templates that will work, clipart that is relavant, and create a sort of lesson plan to include it with our Sonlight materials. I don't have to spend the time researching the topic to create a read-aloud handout for the girls to take turns reading me (which was something we wanted this year) and there is no need to spend a lot of time looking through library books to find ones that will work for us with the unit. With the addition of the two programs that we chose to add, I have all these things already finished for me. I just need to take the time to print it all up. My printer is getting *quite* the workout in "copy" mode lately as a result........ lol

But our plan for this week is to get into ancient Mesopotamia real good, hopefully completing half of our lapbook AND history pocket for both. I intend to spend 2 or 3 weeks studying this area, pulling worksheets from the k12 history book that we had for Liddy at the start of the year before we pulled out of OHVA. So, this week I need to get to the library and pick up some books for our study if there is anything available. It may not be super fancy or exciting, but the girls should enjoy it before we dig into our big unit with ancient Egypt. That one, I should purchase a couple more HOAC units to do (in eBook format though) but I'll decide on that after I get us started on this unit. Our Handle On The Arts materials came with a lapbook for ancient Egypt that I'm adding in as well, so we may be able to get away with just the one HOAC unit I bought and the various resources available free online. But I am looking at the HOAC Pyramids unit, so I may end up buying that one no matter what we decide.

my first homeschool convention

2011-04-02T19:15:00.002-05:00

OK so I blogged a couple times about going to the Midwest Homeschool Convention this weekend. Well, last night we loaded up the girls to stay the night with grandma, and then Scott and I drove down and got a hotel room for the night so we could attend today. We slept in, then had breakfast and got to the convention right around 10am. I just wanted to go into the vendor's hall, as I knew what I wanted to get and look at, plus I wanted to explore some new stuff. So, we did for 4 hours before my hip and leg started to give out. In that time, we looked at several different science programs and picked one!!! YAY!!!!! We also managed to get the following other items:

All About Spelling levels 1 and 2 (from the company itself)
Math-U-See Beta with 2 student books, an Alpha student set, a second set of blocks, and the wood storage case (all sold out so they will ship to us)
Real Science 4 Kids Pre-Level 1 Chemestry, Biology, and Physics bundles
Write Foundations books 1.1 and 1.2 times 2 kids (will ship free to us)
Mathematics standards K-12 guideline book (badly needed for my own reference here!)
a book for me to enjoy
Hands of A Child Complete packs for Ancient Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt
a new Sonlight catalog that isn't all torn up so I can read it plus a discount code for my next purchase

Now, I just have to comment on some of this. The Write Foundations books for Missa and Liddy are a spontaneous purchase, and part of my plans for the upcoming school year to try and get them writing more on a daily basis. I walked by their table at the convention, and something made me stop and look. So, being the faithful person I am, I decided to. What the heck, I can learn about something new right? Obviously I liked what I saw and heard, because I got it for 2 kids. I have no clue if it will work well for us, but hopefully it gets them started to thinking about the writing process a bit and starting to write more in general.

My decision to get Real Science 4 Kids came after we looked at several different programs. I've tried so hard to like Sonlight science, I really have, but I just don't like it. Sorry, Sonlight, but it is the truth. It is too random and jumpy for our family, moving from topic to topic and too many books to read from each week. It is a great program overall, but is not the right choice for our family. So, we put science research at the top of our list. I'm familiar with several programs already, so I wanted mainly to get Scott's opinion of the different options. How it worked was...... He looked at Apologia's science books and got this look on his face like he had seen a fat man in a skintight micro-miniskirt with fishnets, heels, and all that nasty stuff. He was horrified by it, and refused to let me even consider it. I have to agree, it wasn't a good fit for our family's needs (and his opinion wasn't based on the religious content either, he read through part of a chapter and was horrified at the way the material was presented and said that it made him want to cry at how terribly it was written with so much misinformation, I didn't bother looking at it myself because I won't use a program without his agreement). A few others we looked at were poorly laid out, or too parent-intensive for finding materials, or too much time in front of a computer screen, so we ended up right back at the Real Science 4 Kids table at the end making a purchase. We are hoping to use all 3 books in the next two years with the girls combined into one big group, and just have fun with it before we move up to level 1.

Now, I'm sure you saw on this post that I bought All About Spelling from the company itself. I was planning to buy from Sonlight, but I wanted Scott to take a look at it before I bought it. So we headed over to the table, and then after he got a look at it and listened to their speil about the program he suggested that maybe we should buy it today. I agreed, and then decided that since I got it today that poor Missa will start it most likely on Monday. My hands are still tingly and sore from cutting up all the letter tiles to put the magnets on them.

Now, I also hear you asking why I would get just a new Sonlight catalog and a coupon code from them. Well, my new catalog was damaged by the USPS in shipping and it arrived on Monday. I decided that it would be better to just grab a new one at the convention instead of asking Sonlight to ship me another one and risk the post office damaging it too. And that coupon code will come in VERY handy here soon, as I am planning to place an order this weekend for the next set of readers that Missa needs and that package is priced high enough for me to use the coupon code. :)

Oh and the lapbook units. Yes, we use Sonlight for history, but we also add in History Pockets, the k12 history 1 student pages that apply, and lapbooking to our Sonlight to give it a much better hands-on appeal for Missa. That gives her another way to absorb the material, and I noticed in the past that when we lapbook she is engaged and interested and actually retains information better. So yeah, I use 3 curricula to teach the same material. No big deal. We are also adding a lot of depth to our core program (the Sonlight) with these added materials, giving Missa the extra that she craves. We chose to repeat ancients this year despite doing it just last year with k12 because she loved it so much and I wanted to dig in deeper to fuel that interest. So we take 2 or 3 weeks sometimes to finish a week of core work, but its ok because other weeks we may bust through a couple weeks of our core work in this subject. So there you have it, we tweak and modify to encourage the maximum potential of each child in their learning and that includes doing lapbooking, history pockets, and the occassional worksheet (for Liddy's sake, she's my worksheet kid).

So, my very first convention was a blast. I'm hoping that next year Scott can get convention week off work so we can go the whole thing, then I'll be able to explore every vendor they have there and go to some of the workshops. I can't wait, I have my list of this year's vendors and I plan to spend the year researching the ones I'm unfamiliar with to see if they are worthy of my investigating further.

countdown to convention!!!!!

2011-03-30T09:47:00.003-05:00

Yes, our tax refund arrived and cleared the bank (minus a hold on almost half of it because of silly bank policies) so I can officially say that we are going to be going to the Midwest convention on Saturday. I am so happy, Scott has arranged for the girls to spend the night on Friday with his mom and then tonight he's going to reserve a rental car for us to take down to the convention (we don't want to put that many miles on any of our vehicles with the way he commutes in his car and our need to leave my van with his mom in case she has to go somewhere with the girls so she can do it legally). I am debating between a full pass for us and just a pass to the vendor's hall (which is what I REALLY want to be exploring and need Scott for help with). But, it is such an exciting moment for me, as it has been a full year since he and I got an overnight without the children (we're considering leaving Friday night and getting a hotel room somewhere closer to the convention since it is a few hours away from here) and we do enjoy getting away for a bit alone whenever possible.

Now I just have to figure out what to wear for the convention and if I need to take something for us to use as a carrying device for any goods we get there (but then, I am married to a man who can pick up a speedboat). I won't be carrying anything so it will be all on him to do that.

I've never been to a homeschool convention before, despite the fact we've been doing this a few years now. So I'm really looking forward to it, and to the CHEO convention in Akron this June when I can go without any kids at all if I want to go to it. I'm reading online for convention tips on how to best navigate it and what I need to have (like uhhh do they take credit cards or should I plan on us having a large amount of cash on hand, I'm making a lot of purchases this weekend based on some special deals that I know will be there at the convention, like the almost $300 I'll be dropping at Math-U-See, if they take cards then I don't have to plan ahead so that we can hit the bank and make a LARGE withdrawal and keep it somewhere on Scott that it can't be picked off him) but if you have anything for me to offer up, please feel free to share with me. I'm really looking forward to this!

dear 7 year old......

2011-03-18T17:45:00.001-05:00

No, I did not ride on a dinosaur's back to go to school when I was a little girl. Thanks for calling me old kiddo, I can't wait until your own kids do the same to you one day.

teaching writing

2011-03-17T21:38:00.002-05:00

I'm not talking about penmanship here, but the actual process of writing and all the technical stuff in grammar, usage, and mechanics (or GUM to make it easier on me). Missa is in 2nd grade, going to 3rd this fall at home, and Liddy is in 1st, going on 2nd at home, so it is time I start thinking about how to teach some of that stuff.

I have NO knowledge of the technical stuff. I was out of high school before I understood what a verb was, and I have no use for that stuff really. Even in my college classes so far, I've not had to do a great deal of stuff involving the technical aspects of writing (and I've taken English classes already, I have my last one starting up here on Tuesday in fact).. I am an intuitive writer; meaning, I know what I want to write and instinctively how to say it so that I can do well. I attribute that to my early start with reading (I believe my mom said she had me reading before I was 3 years old, but then I was an only child with a stay-at-home mom who had nothing but time to teach me that stuff so young) because I have had the opportunity to read a wide variety of literature in many genres and time periods, so I've had the natural exposure to how to write well. But if you ask me to diagram a sentence, I will laugh in your face because I cannot do it. Period.

I do not wish for my girls to suffer the same fate I have with writing. I want them to be beautiful writers, but I also want them to know WHY something is correctly written. I don't want them to depend on instincts to write, and grammar check in Microsoft Word. I want them to be able to write anything at any time without fear of having fragments and run-ons, without fear of being laughed at for their poor style of writing. I want them to have the foundation I never got. So, the search is on for materials I can use to start them with this process. And until I find that one program I'm looking for to teach it, I will teach them what little I know about the subject myself.

If you have a suggestion for me on this, I'm totally open to it, post away and know that I do read all comments and look into anything that is recommended to me.

new math, good response so far

2011-03-15T17:33:00.002-05:00

One of my goals for this month was to switch Missa's math from Miquon to Math-U-See. Well, Friday I ordered Alpha for her and it arrived this morning while I was still rubbing my eyes and trying to wake up (UPS in this area likes to deliver EARLY for some reason, they were here around 9am). Missa appeared totally disinterested in it, and then tried to argue with me this afternoon when I went to sit her down for her first lesson in the book. But after we got going and she was more willing to give it a shot (with reminders that she can either do her math or she can go to bed for the night at 2pm becuase I wasn't going to deal with a defiant attitude today) she decided that it isn't so bad. She watched the DVD lesson with me and then took a brief break while I set up the dining table for 3 kids to do their math at once. I had Kimi and Missa doing their levels of Math-U-See (lesson 1 in Alpha for Missa, lesson 3 in Primer for Kimi) and Lydia doing her Horizons math 1 workbook. Kimi did 3 pages of math, Missa did 2 pages, and Liddy did 1 1/2 pages. Halfway through her first page of math, Missa said she loves her new math book and wanted to do more than just that page so I let her move faster.

what perfect timing

2011-03-09T06:35:00.002-05:00

So, we are approaching convention season here. I have *plans* tentatively to attend the Midwest convention in Cincinatti on April 1 and 2 if I can sweet-talk Scott into letting me go down alone on Friday and then he meet me there that night while a friend of mine babysits for us for those 2 days. She already said she would watch them, so now I just have to convince Scott that I won't get mugged there and it will be OK for part of a day. If I can't convince him, then I'll go just Saturday with him. Or maybe I'll go to the convention in Indianapolis.

But anyway, I saw over at the Sonlight forums this morning a teaser about the new catalog. The new catalog is always a big to-do over there, and last year I got sucked in when I found out that they had chosen one of the pictures I submitted to them to print in the current catalog, along with taking 2 quotes from the forums about how Sonlight works in our family. I was quite honored by that little gesture, and felt it was just amazing to be recognized in such a way. I didn't submit any pictures for the upcoming catalog, so I haven't been too excited about the upcoming release. Until I saw that teaser.

Sonlight is going to be carrying All About Spelling when the new catalog goes live on April 1st. I planned to purchase this program for the upcoming school year, to help the girls with spelling. I have a dyslexic child in this house, so it is especially important to me that we build a solid foundation in spelling and phonics with her when it is coming so naturally for her sisters. I've tried a few other methods for spelling, including k12 phonics as written, giving spelling lists each week and testing on Fridays (like in public school), and using the k12 phonic tiles and creating my own hands-on method for teaching the subject. Nothing has worked too well for her, so we had decided to bite the bullet and just buy a program that is supposed to work really well with dyslexic kids along with "typical" learners. Since Sonlight will be carrying this program come April, I'll be able to buy the first 2 levels and the stuff to go with it (including a second set of the cards just so that the two kids in each group don't feel like they are competing, and at this point I think only the 2 oldest will be doing this program when we get started anyway unless Kimi shows a real interest in it since she's just beginning to learn to read now).

But this really excites me, because I was hoping that I'd be able to get it with free shipping and I was seriously considering buying some stuff at Rainbow Resource that we don't really *need* but would like (Five In A Row to supplement P4/5 for the youngest kids) so that I could get the price needed for free shipping. But now, Sonlight carries it so I can buy it without any worries about not having the minimum for free shipping thanks to my club membership perks. Now I just wonder if All About Spelling will be eligible for their 10% discount that I also get on most products......... I'm already planning to purchase Rosetta Stone Spanish from them for me to learn the language (hey if I'm going to spend that much money I may as well get free shipping, you know what I mean?) and several other things that do actually qualify for my discount (the Rosetta Stone isn't eligible) so it won't add much to my order even if it doesn't get the discount, but man I can't wait for this particular order to be placed and then shipped next month.

I'm almost as excited about being able to make this order as I am at the fact that we've almost gotten rotavirus out of this house after picking it up at Classical Conversations last week when we went to check it out as a possibility for fall. The fact that we brought home *that* particular bug didn't help me sell it to Scott, so I need to do some serious overtime work on convincing him before we drop $1600-ish on a once weekly co-op to supplement our Sonlight, and praying if its the right choice for us. A big part of why we homeschool is because of Kimi's immune system being so weak, any bug that comes through here she gets worse than anyone else and takes longer to get over it. Her sisters and I are all over this virus already but she is still running regularly to the bathroom and has an upset tummy so she isn't eating so much. And Kimi was one of the first ones to get it, she came down with it just a couple hours after Jojo did on Saturday night and then the other 2 came down with it on Sunday night, then me on Monday morning and Scott yesterday. I'm thinking I may see if I can give her something to help with the bathroom trips.

March- new month, new goals

2011-03-01T16:36:00.002-05:00

So, I've discovered that by not setting clear goals and plans for the month, lessons don't happen too easily in this house. Now granted, I never actually accomplish all our academic goals that I set at the start of a month, but they do help motivate me to be more consistent in our daily work. So, I'm going to set some goals for this month in hopes that I will actually accomplish some of it.

finish 3 weeks of core 1 with the older girls
finish that first History Pocket with the older girls
do 4 weeks of P4/5 with the little girls
do 2 lapbooks with the little girls
do 10 days of math with Kimi
order and start Missa in Math-U-See Alpha
math daily with Missa and Liddy
have Liddy master place value
start cursive with Missa
Liddy finish her handwriting book
all kids read aloud to me 15 times each (not counting Jojo in this one)
finish our dinosaurs unit

OK those are actually fairly realistic goals, and I am pretty confident that we can do it now that the weather is becoming more appropriate for us to get outside so I can get more sun and fresh air. I also have a math final that's due on March 7th, so I am working hard to finish up that class and get on with life already.

I am wearing a skirt today

2011-02-16T15:38:00.002-05:00

Shocking, isn't it? If you know me, I love my jeans and t-shirts. Skirts and dresses just aren't something that I enjoy. However, when Jojo was just a couple months old I did start a year and a half journey of only wearing skirts and dresses, complete with headcovering. I felt pretty, feminine, and noticed a major difference in how I carried myself. I wasn't as quick to lose my temper with my daughters when I dressed this way, and I spoke quieter, was more productive, and overall was happier in general. Then life happened, along with a move to a new home, and I transitioned back into my former jeans and t-shirts.

Well, today I dug out a skirt and nice shirt and put them on. I then dug out one of my old coverings, just to see how I looked. As soon as I put it on, I felt this calm sweep over me. I haven't felt this in a long time, and I like it.

I think I may need to do some serious sewing this weekend for me, on top of making those skirts I have planned for my children. And no, I will *not* post a picture of me in a skirt, if you want to see it then give me a call and then stop by.

frustrations in college

2011-02-07T04:19:00.003-05:00

Yes, I'm dedicating a post just to my college complaining right now. But let me start by saying that I am truly loving the journey of getting my degree, it has really helped me to see things in a different light as far as how to effectively teach my girls. That is *always* a good thing right?

So what could be so frustrating about college for me? I mean, I just said that I'm loving it. Well, it happens to be one small thing really, and related to an upcoming class.

Next week on Tuesday, I start a new class. This class puts me into the new semester and back into my original group, but I'll have a 3 week juggle with starting a new semester and finishing the old one at the same time. It isn't a big deal, as the class I'm in now is just a basic math class and I currently am a week ahead in the material AND carrying a 100% grade. But the issue lies within the material for the upcoming class.

Now, if you've read my one and only post where I spoke in detail about my college classes, you know that I am attending a Christian college and studying ministry. WOW big stuff there right? Anyway, the problem is with the textbook I have for my next class that is coming up for this 2 course juggle that I'll have for 3 weeks. Are you ready for this?

The class is Earth Science. The textbook is evolution-based.

I'll leave it to you to figure out what it is that I have a problem with for that class. LOL As if it isn't *quite* obvious enough..........

One, I do not believe that evolution happened on the large-scale that theorists speak of. I don't care if they say the planet is around 4.5 billion years old, if you look at skeletons from ancient Egypt and ones from today you will see that 6,000 years produced very little evolution of our structure. Yes, people look different now from then, but structurally we are pretty much unchanged. Evolutionary theorists want us to believe that over the course of about 4 billion years, life evolved from an amoeba to a fish to early reptiles to dinosaurs and everything else, to eventually the animals we have here today (yes, people are animals too, I don't care if you are civilized and socialized and all that jazz, some of the people I know are more animal than person when it comes to certain desires). Obviously, I believe what we are told in Genesis, that God made everything on a 6 day plan and then rested the 7th day. However, I don't know if I lean more to the thinkings of young-earth or old-earth creationism. I am still sorting that one out on my own terms, and I don't need any help with it (I'm starting to have my lean, and when I decide officially I will let you know).

I had told myself that I was going to keep my college textbooks for my own personal reasons, but honestly I think that this earth science book will be hitting the used curriculum sale that our homeschool group does every year, if I can find a friend willing to put it on her table marked FREE TO A GOOD HOME because I find it that wrong to me. And I just got the book on Friday.......... It certainly won't be lasting long around here, that's for sure.

Math-U-See Primer

2011-01-26T16:50:00.002-05:00

I decided to go ahead and start Kimi today with Primer. I spent a good amount of time yesterday once the program arrived looking it over and playing with the manipulatives and doing the lessons myself to get familiar with it, so I had a rough idea what I'm doing. Well, we did lesson 1 today. Kimi and I sat together and watched the DVD lesson on my laptop, then we pulled that worksheet out of her book and got some of the green blocks to do it. We're just having fun with it right now, she did 2 pages of the lesson today and I anticipate that tomorrow and Friday she'll finish the lesson.

Now, this child is one that I sat and seriously debated on what level to buy her. At first, I thought I should get her Alpha until I discussed it with a couple people over at the Sonlight forums. Their input led me to get Primer instead, and once it arrived and I got a good look at the materials I started doubting that it was the right choice for her. But, we're going to do it anyway with her, and I'm having her actually use the workbook instead of my original plan to have her do the work in a notebook. She will likely finish it before Missa's birthday in April, but that's all right. I'm actually planning to purchase Alpha here I think next month for Missa to do, so I'll be ready when Kimi is ready for Alpha. I just hope that starting in Alpha we can treat the student workbook like a non-consumable textbook, and have the girls do the work in notebooks instead.

If you've done Math-U-See Alpha, do you think it will be possible to do the program the way I want to? The cheapskate in me just doesn't like the idea of spending that much on math workbooks if I can reuse them and have them write in notebooks instead. Notebooks I can get 10/$1 during the back-to-school sales so it is a much more economical choice for us to do this instead.

wow they are fast!

2011-01-25T04:44:00.003-05:00

As usual, I had trouble sleeping tonight. So, I grabbed my laptop off the kids' school desks and am curled up in bed with it while Scott and Kimi sleep (now when did she come join us? oh well it didn't wake me when she did) and decided to check out where our Math-U-See is at in its shipment. According to UPS, it will arrive on Tuesday, January 25th during their normal delivery hours. It is right now currently January 25th, 4:47am Eastern. So, that means that supposedly sometime in the next 3-15 hours or so it should arrive. And THIS is why we like UPS over FedEx, besides the obvious history we have with them delivering damaged packages, the packages being late, and/or them delivering our package at the other end of town requiring me to start making phone calls and yelling at them until they find my package. Maybe it is just me having issues with FedEx, but whenever possible I go with UPS. My college sends my textbooks UPS every time (thankfully that is their default so I don't need to contact the bookstore and get that changed), and since Sonlight started offering the option of requesting UPS for delivery I take the extra day or two of my order being processed to get it (my requesting the different delivery option means that my orders go from the automatic processing to being manually processed, which is a bit slower at the warehouse I guess since a person has to put it in the system for packing and create the shipping order and notify UPS and all that instead of the computers there doing it all). I avoid FedEx for shipping whenever possible after having my Sonlight core P3/4 arrive late, across town, and when it DID show up the box was damaged and some of the corners on my brand new hardback books were dinged up and bent. Back in the spring I ordered a new guide for my core P4/5 and paid the extra for ground shipping instead of Media Mail since I needed it by a certain date, and they managed to lose my order at the local FedEx building where it was supposed to go on the truck for delivery. They claimed they attempted to deliver it Friday but that my business was closed so they couldn't. Last I checked, this was a residence, not a business. That one, Sonlight personally got involved in finding out where the heck my delivery was while I also was making calls, and then when we finally tracked down my package I threw a FIT on the phone (which if you've ever heard/seen one of my little hissy fits you know it is not something small and it can get loud and very nasty, I've had customer service people in tears before when I throw a fit). Needless to say, by the time Sonlight and I got it tracked down and then I threw that fit, they had a guy who wasn't a delivery person personally bring me my package (he was taking personal time mid-day for a few hours to drive in to Columbus to pick his son up at the airport for a visit and since I live on the way and right off the freeway they had him personally deliver it to me). FedEx and I have a looooong history of not getting along. I much prefer to work with UPS or even the USPS for getting my materials.

And the girls always get super excited when I tell them that UPS is coming that day. They know that even if it is one of my college books, a UPS delivery means that there is something new to look at and it puts a little change in our daily flow and it gives me a little boost to have that small change. This delivery today though, that one should be a BIG deal for Kimi since it is supposedly her first official schoolbooks and they all know that we're switching programs so they are all anticipating this delivery so they can check out the manipulatives and see what this new math looks like before they get their own levels to do.

Math-U-See

2011-01-24T14:57:00.002-05:00

I've mentioned it before in past blog posts. I've considered switching to Math-U-See for a long time now, close to 2 years in fact. However, the cost of it has kept us from doing just that.

And then Scott got his paycheck this past Friday. Now, if you know my family we have a VERY tight budget, and every penny counts. On his most recent paycheck, however, we were pleased to find that we had been reimbursed a bit of insurance money. His employer switched health insurance companies for the 2011 calendar year. The old insurance company, they required pre-payment by the employer for the insurance premiums. This means that the money they took out in January was for February's coverage. Well, the new company takes the money the month it is due, meaning that January's withholdings is for January's coverage. So, we got the money that was deducted from his paycheck back in December back. That means that we had a little extra money that we didn't anticipate.

So, we decided to take the plunge. Kimi is 5 now, and bugging us for math lessons of her own. So, on Saturday morning we ordered Math-U-See Primer for her. I've always been spoiled by my experiences with Sonlight for quick shipping, but I don't know anything about how Math-U-See ships. All I knew was from when I ordered and had to pay shipping and that they only offer UPS shipping (cool beans, I don't like FedEx). No clue how long it would take them to ship my order.

Well, I got a tracking number in my e-mail inbox less than an hour ago........ I'm anticipating that we'll have it here by Thursday at the latest. Kimi is really looking forward to it, and Missa is also looking forward to it after I explained that I wanted her to try Kimi's level and see if she wanted to do this math instead of Miquon (since it is rather expensive, I'd like her to get into it and work on some of the material that she struggles with that is in Kimi's level so that she has a real feel for the program before I take the leap and buy her Alpha and Beta both to work at her pace). I have a feeling that by fall all my girls will be doing this math program at their levels and pace.

So, if I changed math to this program, does this mean that next I'll be changing up all my other subjects too? The only one left that I want to change is spelling. I've already changed handwrinting this month, and now math is starting to transition of a new program as well.

eating habits

2011-01-19T19:58:00.003-05:00

Yep, we all have issues with this one don't we? Well, since it is the start of a new year, I'm re-evaluating some things. My goal to exercise at least a bit 3 days a week is great, but it isn't terribly effective if I don't have the energy to do it because of inadequate nutrition. So, I sit here contemplating a drastic change.

While I was pregnant with Jojo, I was pretty good with a vegan diet that was at least 50% raw produce. I had energy, I felt great, and just overall I was doing better than I'd ever done. I'm thinking it may be about time to start incorporating more of this into my life. I love veggies, I could live on a veggie and nut diet I think with a daily fruit tossed in for that morning burst of energy (I'm particularly fond of apples with peanut butter)

Now here comes the interesting thing. I'm married to a man who will hang me by my toes if I try to make him give up his "meat and potatoes for every meal" style diet. I need to incorporate this slowly for his benefit. I would love to see him eating the stuff I want to, but he is so picky when it comes to food that I'm going to end up cooking one meal for him and the kids and then preparing something else entirely for me each meal. Oh well, I can handle that I think.

At this point I don't have any money left in my grocery budget to go shopping for produce, so I will use the canned and frozen food items that I have on hand now until we have money again here in about 2 1/2 weeks. I'm going to be doing a lot of recipe hunting and experimenting this next couple of weeks while we switch to vegetarian breakfasts and lunches then go vegan with 50% or more being raw on my birthday.

Who wants to bet my kids try to throw a fit at me for this at first?

Making Math Easy

2011-01-19T13:08:00.004-05:00

At yesterday's library trip I decided to check and see what kind of math resources were available that I could use for Kimi to last until I am ready to make my next curriculum purchase from Sonlight. Well, I found a couple things I can use with her, and Jordan at the same time, as filler but the big thing I discovered is a book series called "Making Math Easy."

This series is a set of six books by Rebecca Wingard-Nelson. The six books each cover one topic in depth from basic skills to more advanced concepts. All the titles in this series are:

Addition Made Easy
Subtraction Made Easy
Multiplication Made Easy
Division Made Easy
Fractions and Decimals Made Easy
Word Problems Made Easy

I got Addition, Subtraction, and Multiplication for us to check out and review/learn with (multiplication is a subject we've not started yet, and the other two need more practice to solidify skills). The publisher's site also offers free worksheets to download and print for use with the books, so I did just that (however, I only printed the even-numbered pages off since the odd-numbered ones are the title page and answer keys for each worksheet, I can use a calculator to check her work if needed). Now, I have these books for four weeks, plus a renewal for another 4 weeks that I intend to utilize, so I am planning to use these in place of Miquon for a bit to see how Missa does with grasping the concepts.

I also plan to purchase the entire six book series as soon as I have the money to do so. A friend of mine has access to purchasing the set from her local public school district for a slightly discounted price. So I am going to take advantage of this and let her know as soon as I have the money for them, and she is going to check to see if the school has any available to buy. If they do, I'm sending her the money for the books and shipping from Kentucky up here in Ohio. If not, then I'll pay a little more to purchase them online.

If you want to check out this series, here's a link to the publisher's page for the series. I think this is a valuable resource for any homeschooling family, especially if they have a child who struggles with math.

ENSLOW PUBLISHERS, INC.

Dinosaurs!!!!!

2011-01-19T08:02:00.003-05:00

I'm creating my first unit study ever. I've done unit studies before, but only the pre-created kind that I can get from sites like Homeschool Share. But, this time I don't have ready access to all the books for the unit we want to do at Homeschool Share, so I'm creating my own for the first time.

They want to study dinosaurs. Lord help me, I still haven't decided if I am in the young earth or old earth camp on this, so I don't know how to approach the times and such. I'm thinking that for now, I'll just go with the mainstream opinion of the Earth being billions of years old and sidestep the dates as much as possible, replacing the "billions of years ago" references with "a long time ago" type stuff and PRAY that Missa doesn't decide to ask me how long ago that "a long time ago" is.

So, for the month of February and maybe a little bit of March I will be doing a unit study for science on dinosaurs. I have a dozen or so books that I got yesterday at the library, and this weekend I plan to go back and get more.

If you've ever created a unit study, do you have any advice for me on this? Missa is VERY interested in dinosaurs and right now is reading one of the books I got yesterday as a first wave of books to consider for the unit, and I know she's going to want to really dig in while at the same time I have a 3 year old who just likes dinosaurs. (and one of the books I got will really appeal to Lydia and her strange fascination with gross things, it is called "Jurassic Poop" of all things LOL) I'm a little nervous about this, since I've only done a handful of unit studies before and NEVER created my own pretty much from scratch like this.

buy a blank book or do a couple dozen lapbooks?

2011-01-16T14:27:00.003-05:00

So, as I get ready for tomorrow's lessons, and the start of our newest venture in history with being VERY hands-on, I wonder. I have History Pockets to go with our core, as well as the Handle On The Arts Hands-On History year 1 book and numerous resources for free lapbooking pieces to go with our studies in the rest of core 1. So, do I hunt down some blank books that are going to be big enough for us to put all this in through the year, or do I get a couple more 1" binders and more cardstock to hole-punch for a big notebook we can add to all year, or do I just make a couple dozen or more lapbooks? I have an almost full box of file folders (one of the boxes of 100) so I'm not hurting for folders. I'm just trying to figure out the most practical method of putting this all together for the kids. Scott gets paid on Friday, so if I do something that isn't using a couple dozen lapbooks we can't begin assembling for a whole week (well with the binder option we can begin assembling right away pretty much, as I have some cardstock already on hand and we can punch it for them to use in assembly and then carefully store those pages until we get the binders).

If you have insights or input, comment box is open for it.

A Reason For Handwriting- Transition book

2011-01-12T06:51:00.004-05:00

In my last post, I said that we were switching Missa's handwriting program. Well, here's what I think so far.

I've looked through the transition workbook and the "teaching guide" that covers all levels. I like it, a lot. In fact, I like it enough that I've decided to switch all my girls over to this program starting next school year. The only exception will be with Jojo, next school year she will do the preschool level of Handwriting Without Tears before she starts the K book in our new program.

Now, for what Missa thinks of it....... (and I quote her on this one)

"I don't like it. Its too much writing."

LOL Yep, she'll do just fine with it I think. If she sits down and gets to it, she does a great job with it. It is more writing than what she had to do with Handwriting Without Tears, but she'll adjust to it I think. And now for a picture from this morning's practice, it was her first day in it.

Yes, she was up at 6am doing her handwriting practice....... But she did a wonderful job, and I'm very proud of her for it. She's doing the practice lesson pages this week and next to get used to the new style of the paper and such, and then will go into the real stuff. I have a feeling that this will be a good time with her, once we get things going with her and she's ready to move on into the cursive pages (that alone will be what gets her really excited I think, she's been asking for cursive a couple years now)

small changes

2011-01-03T20:35:00.003-05:00

You know I'm all about changing things as needed or desired. Well, I am making one small change in our curriculum at this point in the year.

Missa has been asking me to teach her to write cursive, but I've put it off because she has TERRIBLE printing and a lot of issues still with reversals in her writing. I had decided that this school year we'd spend one more year working on her printing before we introduce cursive. Then she finally wore me down after watching me make crazy fast notes on paper regarding my college work for a paper I had to do.

Being the always researching person I am, I started looking at different programs for handwriting. We've always used Handwriting Without Tears here, and it has been a great experience for us. It helped a lot to undo the majority of the damage that was caused by half a year that Missa was in our local public schools. Being a lefty in the schools is not a good thing if you don't go into the school already knowing how to write properly. Trust me on this one, I speak from experience as a lefty who went to public school and had a 1st grade teacher try to correct me by rapping my knuckles with a ruler every time I was writing properly (like I had been taught at home) instead of using that incorrect lefty hook to print. Missa came out of school her K year with the hook, and I spent all of 1st grade undoing that and teaching her to properly position herself and the paper for writing before we started tackling the bigger issues of these reversals and incorrect formations over the summer before we started this year, her 2nd grade school year. We've got her printing proper formation about 95% of the time, and have fixed about 75% of her reversal issues in this year and a half that she's been home. Yes, I think she may be almost ready for cursive.

So, in my searching I knew I wanted something different from the program we've always used. Yes, HWT is a wonderful program and saved us with her (and with Liddy's motor delays, she is doing HWT now very slowly and learning to form her lowercase letters now). However, I do not like the style of cursive that this program teaches. So, we change now. I spent a lot of time looking at different programs before finally settling on "A Reason For Handwriting" and purchasing the transition book set from Sonlight. (I have mentioned how much I love sonlight in the past right?) It arrives in the mail tomorrow, and that is when we will get started on it after I take a bit to get familiar with the program.

I chose this program (and Scott just said ok and handed me the debit card to pay) for a couple reasons. One, they use scripture for the handwriting practice lessons. Now, normally I avoid using Scriptures for anything related to schooling my girls so that I do not influence them to only believe one specific thing without giving them an opportunity to question it. However, when it comes to Missa I do not have this worry. She is one of God's little children, and has already decided that when she grows up that she is going to be a missionary and wants to go to different countries and teach people about God and Jesus. So I do not need to worry as much with her on the influence of scriptures in some of her lessons, she already has made her choice obviously. Also, this particular program has "pretty" pages for the final day of the weekly lessons to write the entire verse on, which is supposed to make the child work harder to do their best because it is paper worthy of being displayed. Yes, I will have regular displays of her handwriting pieces in our home I think. But the main reason we chose this program is because of the transition book itself.

The transition book starts with printing, going through the first half of the book only with printing practice before the students begin cursive midway through the book. This is exactly the type of material I needed for Missa, to use as a motivator for her to do well with the print work beforehand. Since we switched programs for cursive, I would have likely purchased a print workbook before the cursive book to go through with her in any other program so that she has the time to adapt to the different program. The transition book has that built in for me already, so I just have to sit with her each day and do the lesson with her and help her adjust to the differences while we work on improving her printing at the same time.

But the book hasn't actually arrived yet, it is scheduled for UPS delivery tomorrow. And knowing how wonderful UPS is in my area, it will be here right around 8am (usually just before that actually) so I will have more than enough time to look it over before we start lessons in the afternoon. I will update how I feel about it when it arrives, and again after a bit of time with the program.

Welcome to 2011

2011-01-03T19:55:00.003-05:00

Yes, it is a new year. A fresh start to things, an opportunity to build memories and make changes for the better. I like to call Mondays the ultimate in the do-over because you are starting fresh for a week. Well, the start of a new year is also one of those ultimate do-overs. Its a new year, who cares if you totally screwed up 2010? You got a fresh start now in 2011, so grab it and run wild.

Often, people make resolutions for the new year. Usually those are things like "lose 20lbs" or "quit smoking." Those are BIG goals, and all people do is stare at the end and then get discouraged when it isn't easy and happen quickly, so they give up. Well, not this year for me. I decided that I need to set a few goals for my own betterment in a few areas. One for my physical/mental health, one for our home environment, one for the kids' homeschool, one for my college, and one for my relationships in general. So, here goes, my list of goals.

1: exercise 3 times a week at a minimum
2: develop a consistent routine for housework
3: be consistent in homeschooling at least 4 days a week
4: get my GPA to a 3.0 by the end of next Semester and maintain it
5: say at least one positive thing about each person I love daily

Now, do you notice that the central theme around my goals for this year involve me doing things on a regular basis? Looks like I am working on becoming more consistent with the things i need to do. Right now, I work out uhhhhhhhhh never. Housework happens when I'm forced to, homeschool may happen a couple days a week randomly, and my grades in college are hovering near that 2.0 line just high enough to keep my financial aid eligibility.

So, I need to come up with a course of action in this matter. I happen to know that I am capable of being consistent with things, as I managed to teach myself to take my meds every morning (it only took me 3 months of having an alarm go off at 6:30am every single day before I was able to shut that off because I take my pills when I get up each day). So, I just need to set myself up for success with this. I am going to start small. I have no clue what I'll do exactly, but I know that I am going to do this. I will find a way to remember to do the things I need to do every day to improve my home, my relationships, my education, and my health.

talk about a sign.......

2010-12-13T06:05:00.003-05:00

So, I know from my own experience that this is the start of the difficult period of homeschooling for us. The weather makes me not leave the house unless I absolutely HAVE to, and that means the kids don't go out much either. They get stir-crazy and drive me crazy. The lack of direct outdoor sunlight starts messing with me (sorry but those full-height windows we have just don't make up for it, they filter the vit. D right out of the sunlight before it gets to me I think) and I start cycling more than usual. Overall, it just makes for a hard time here and we don't get as much schooling done because I'm just trying to keep a grip on myself so that I can function enough to do the chores and take care of meals and snacks. And this year, I have the added responsibility of attempting to also keep a grip to keep my grades up in college. Yes, it is a difficult period for us (and the reason why we call it winter vacation instead of summer vacation).

In fact, it has been so difficult here this week for me on a psychological level that, over the weekend, I had decided that on Monday morning I was going to go to the elementary school that we are zoned in to enroll the oldest girls in grades 1 and 2. But, when I made this decision I decided to pray about it. I asked God to give me a sign if I wasn't supposed to enroll them, and went to bed.

Then when I got up I looked out the window at my road. We had snow fall last night, and the road is pretty much untouched. Surprising too, since we live on a main road that is one of the main access routes to the freeway ramp here AND we have the branch campus of Ohio State and the technical college both about a block away. So I looked at the local radio station for school closings and delays, and then laughed. Yep, God gave me that sign all right............. There won't be anyone there to enroll the girls if I managed to get my van out of the driveway (I don't drive so well in snow, it messes with my depth perception real bad, that's part of why we don't go out so much in wintertime). Looks like we're just going to announce our winter vacation now and do whatever we get done between now and when things start thawing out. Our focus during this particular season will be retaining math and reading, making a little progress if we want to, and Missa wants to learn to knit so she and I will knit some hats and scarves for her and her sisters (since I'm pretty talanted in this area I will do her sisters' hats and scarves while she does her own hat and scarf, then she can make some for their bears). Other than that, it is survival mode for chores, meals, and my main focus will be trying to keep up in my college classes to at least maintain a C average so I continue to qualify for financial aid.

I do not like admitting that this time of year is upon us, and I know it will be difficult for us for a while, but it is necessary to take the time off. Scott will likely pick up science lessons on weekends if he wants to, and will pick read alouds from our previous cores to continue reading once he finishes Charlotte's Web (which he was planning to finish over the weekend but life has a way of happening like that so he didn't get to it)

homeschool roller skating

2010-12-10T16:49:00.004-05:00

The local roller skating rink has a homeschool skate on the 2nd and 4th Friday of every month from Sept-May. I'd heard about it but didn't know when or how much it was, and was too lazy to call and ask. Well, this week I saw a message on our homeschool group's e-mail list about the homeschool skate, and when I saw that it it only $7 a family I thought "hmmmmm maybe we can afford that." Well, today was payday for Scott, and I asked him about it. He left the debit card with me so that I could pull cash to take them, and we went. I even got on skates and tried not to fall on my face, and we all had fun. I think we found something to do twice a month to give us PE for a while........ since they didn't like karate and we can't afford much else right now (hey, skate rentals for everyone is included in the price of homeschool skate, that makes it a VERY affordable $14 a month for us to get some exercise). Enjoy!

science thoughts for my girls

2010-12-07T11:18:00.003-05:00

So, I'm sure you've gathered that we don't have a set curriculum for science this year for the girls. There is a reason for that too. See, I ran out of money before I had decided on science materials for our homeschool (thanks to an old house, broke-down pickup truck, and me getting mono and spending a month depending on Scott to bring home takeout almost every night for supper). So I decided that I was going to wing it, more or less, this year and see what comes of it.

Enter my grand idea. I own 4 different Sonlight cores, 1 Sonlight science level, and 4 different levels of Sonlight language arts. Yes, you can safely say that we are a Sonlight family with that stuff on my shelf. Of course, all that is on top of the books we've gathered over the years that we've been parents so far, and the misc. college textbooks I have from my attempts to go to school for a degree. I should have enough to do my own thing with science until we get the tax refund and can buy Sonlight science 1, right?

Now here's my idea. In cores P3/4 and P4/5, Sonlight included science as part of the packages. That gives me uhhhhh 10 books I think that we can really dig into. Now, my girls have read some of these books already with our past runs through those cores, but we didn't really dig in with them at all. So, I'm going to do one book at a time and we're going to read through it, digging deeper in the subject and material it covers as they have an interest. I have the internet (obviously) so we can easily dig in with some searching online without much trouble.

So yesterday I did just that. We started the Flip-Flap Body Book from core P3/4 and I only read the first 2 pages of it to the girls, and they were really interested in it. Missa begged me to read more, then cried when I said no and that we'd read more tomorrow, and then we moved on to history and she got interested in that. Today I'll read the next two pages of that book to them, and again field begging and crying for more before I go on into history and they get sucked into it and want more more more of history. I am NOT stressing over it at all right now, if they ask for more about science once we are done with our schooling this afternoon then we'll hop onto the laptop and do a little digging.

But yeah, that's my thoughts on science. We're going to just start with the books I have and go through them while we wait for the money to buy the curriculum I have picked (which, when I buy SL science 1 I'm also buying core 2 and science 2, plus at least one additional level of readers, which all that should cover me for a couple school years on top of my core 1 stuff we have now)

college for me

2010-12-06T08:38:00.003-05:00

Yes, I know I don't post much at all about my college classes, except with the occassional reference to the busy schedule it creates for me. So I thought I would give a blip about that since this *is* our family's blog and my college journey is a big part of our life here.

I'm taking classes online through Ohio Christian University. I love it, I'm almost done with my first semester of classes. The classes run 3-6 weeks, just depending on what it is, and they send me actual textbooks via UPS about 2 weeks before the start of each class so I'm not trying to keep track of a hundred different books at one time with taking 5 or 6 classes at the same time. I currently have a C average because I had a rough time with my first English composition class, but it will be going back up again with this class that starts tomorrow and the one after that.

Anyway, my class that starts tomorrow is called "Bible Study Methods" and I'm really looking forward to it. There was a glitch with the bookstore not sending me the books for my class, so on Friday morning I had to contact them to find out if I was getting books or not. They had my books on the UPS truck that afternoon, and now they are sitting beside me just arrived and taken out of the mailer bag. I have two books in this class, "How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth" and "Bible Study That Works." Hey its a Christian college, of course I have bible classes like this. Of course, I'm also pursuing a degree in Christian Ministry so it is definitely part of the territory to have bible classes.

Anyway, I've looked forward to courses so far that I've taken, even that English composition 1 course I just finished and got a C- in. But this course, I'm actually excited about it. I'm looking at these texts sitting here (I haven't had a chance yet to skim them) and am feeling slightly giddy about starting my coursework. I have the syllabus, student guides, Word document activity pages, and all other materials downloaded and saved in a desktop folder for my college classes (and if you have to know how OCD I am about it, within that folder I have a folder for finished classes and then one for each class this semester, and within the course specified folder I have a folder for each week of the course which is where the individual week student guides and documents are at, and where I'll save all completed work before submitting it). I've read the syllabus and all the week 1 materials, and I've typed up my devotional response for this week to submit tomorrow morning first thing. Now, today when I'm not doing chores or homeschooling the girls I can get going on the rest of my assignments for this week.

I can't stress enough the value of college classes for a stay-at-home parent. Even if I never actually USE the degree I'm working on, just knowing that I'm capable of obtaining a college degree 10 years after graduating high school (ok in June it will be 11 years since I graudated in 2000) helps to boost my own confidence and that is reflected in how I homeschool the girls, do housework, and just live in general. I love being a stay-at-home mom, but it does get boring after a while to be constantly doing things for everyone else and putting yourself on the back burner. My college classes are that thing I'm doing for ME. Some moms may get manicures or go to an expensive salon for highlights and a haircut regularly, but for me the best way to treat myself and give myself what I need to feel good about myself is to be constantly learning and growing. When I finish my Associate's degree in 4 semesters (after this one is finished, I have one more class after the one starting tomorrow to finish the semester), I may or may not go on to the Bachelor's program online. Actually, after this semester and 3 more, I can choose to transfer into the Bachelor's program instead of finishing my AA first. Then, when I finish my BA at OCU, I may decide to work using my degree or maybe I'll enroll at Ohio State as a part time student and take a class here and there online for fun to keep learning and growing. Continuing my education is how I take care of myself and pamper myself. I'm not one for fancy clothes or expensive haircuts, I want to learn. I want to keep going in my own education and never be finished learning.

I also hope that by continuing my own education like I am with college, my daughters will see that learning is difficult sometimes and that you don't give up, that you keep pushing and trying anyway and just do the best you can and keep trying until you get it. I am hoping that watching their mom go through college while they are working on elementary school at home will give them an example to follow about sticking to it and hopefully inspire them to have the drive that I do to keep learning no matter what. I've already had a few talks with Missa about college and learning because she is the oldest of my crew (at 7 1/2 years old). She's the one of my girls who was in the Newark public schools for half of a school year, and the only one so far who has absolutely NO desire to ever go back to public school (yes, our second year at home is almost halfway done and she still flat out refuses to ever go to school again, she loves homeschooling that much). She asked me a while back why I wanted to go to school because I'm a grownup and don't have to do it, and was surprised that I like learning and think that its fun to do schoolwork. I spent some time showing her about what online college looks like. We sat down with my laptop and I logged into my online classroom and showed her how we do discussions in class, how I get my homework from the teacher, and how I turn it in when its finished. She thought it was just the coolest thing to be able to do college at home on the computer like I am, and asked me if she'd be able to do that when she's old enough to go to college instead of going to one of the big colleges and sitting in classrooms. I told her that when she's done with homeschool that if she wants to go to college that she certainly can do it that way for a lot of degree programs.

Obviously that talk with her about it (which SHE was the one to start) led to us discussing a lot more than just that I'm in college and do schoolwork too. We talked about what kind of jobs need a college degree and what ones don't, why some people go to college even if they don't plan to use the degree to work (like me at this point, I'm not sure yet if I'll use it), and a lot of other things about why it is important to work hard in school and learn as much as you can. I don't know that it had too much of a long-term impact on her with learning, but since we had that particular talk I have noticed that she appears to be more focused and willing when it comes to math and language arts lessons, even to the point where she is getting her math workbook and cuisinaire rods out on her own and doing a page or two when we're not doing schoolwork. She is starting to see the long-term value of working hard in school and learning, through my going to college and pursuing a degree with the snippets of free time that I have. I couldn't ask for a better return of the investment in a college education for me, if I inspire my girls to become lifelong learners and always work hard to do their best in all parts of their life then it is worth the student loans we're taking out right now for me to go to school.

"we're excavating, mommy!"

2010-12-03T11:08:00.003-05:00

Yes, one of my kids said that to me a couple nights ago. We had decided to go ahead and skip the first two Usborne books in core 1 for now, and just incorporate a bit from those books as we go through the rest of the core. So, that puts us in week 7, and we've been learning about archaeology this week. This is super cute, so bear with me on it. I really wish I had taken pictures to share, but I didn't so you'll just have to imagine it happening. :-)

We had just finished reading "Archaeologists Dig For Clues" in history, and I was chatting on Yahoo with a friend of mine while the girls were playing in the schoolroom area. Kimi and Jojo had recruited their big sisters to help them set up an imaginative play, and I wasn't watching too closely to see what was up. Before too long, they had gotten Missa to draw them up a grid map just like in the book we had read, and they had gotten out paintbrushes and some other things. The little two each picked a square tile to work at, and when I started watching what on earth they were doing (before I asked) they were carefully using popsicle sticks to scrape a layer of dirt carefully and put it into a pretend container, and then use a paintbrush to clear away the loose dirt from what they were digging up. (ok before I go any further, they were PRETENDING here, there is no actual dirt on my floor, maybe a few crushed tortilla chips right now but no actual dirt) Now, I had no clue what they were doing, as I was not paying attention earlier to their talking with their big sister and getting out the book we had just read to show her what they wanted and all that stuff, so I had to ask them what they were up to. Jojo, bless her little 3 year old heart, looked at me with a big grin and said, "we're excavating, mommy!" and then Kimi told me that she had found a kitty buried over here just like they found a doggy in the book we read. Jojo ran over to her, and they carefully dug around it and built the box around it and all the other stuff just like in the book to preserve the skeleton until it was back at the lab to be properly removed. Then Kimi drew it on the grid that they got Missa to make for them, and she "wrote" it down on the log. Oh they had so much fun that night!

I really wish I had gotten pictures of them during their "excavation" so I could share them too, it was just too adorable and I had to watch it as it was happening because it just amazed me at how much they learned from simply listening to me reading to their oldest 2 sisters for history. I didn't think they actually WERE listening, but apparently they were.

I do believe that for now, one core for all 4 of my kids to do history is going to be a very workable option. I'm amazed at how much my littlest girls are picking up regularly from the reading we do together, and I can't wait to start getting into history with them next week.

Which, last night I peeked ahead in the core to see what we're doing with history so I could be ready for it. I got "A Child's History of the World" (we'll call this CHOW to make life easier on me) and "Usborne Book of World History" (aka UBWH here from now on) to look over. Now, initially I did NOT like CHOW at all, I had read the first 3 chapters and thought it was terrible. But then someone at the Sonlight forums told me that the first 3 chapters aren't used at all, it starts in chapter 4. So, I decided to give it a chance and see how it worked before I tossed it aside and replaced it with Story of the World. Last night was my first time looking at it beyond chapter 3, and I skimmed chapter 4 and the pages in UBWH that we would be doing with it. Then I went forward a bit more in the guide and skimmed CHOW chapters and UBWH pages, then added in Time Traveler for skimming when we got to it. I ended up stopping around week 23 or so I think with my skimming. I had so much fun looking over what we were going to be covering that I couldn't stop. I do believe the girls are going to have a blast with the hostory coming up, I can't wait to get started on it. (and I honestly do believe that a parent can not successfully homeschool their children with materials if they aren't excited about them as well, I mean they can teach the material effectively but if the parent isn't excited about it as well then the kids won't get even close to as much out of the material because they will pick up on their parent's boredom or dislike of the material no matter how well mom or dad tries to hide it)

Happy December! new month, new goals

2010-12-01T15:33:00.004-05:00

I love this time of year. Honestly, I really do love December. It is that perfect time of year for my breathing, where its cold enough that we must bundle up to go outside but not so cold that even checking the mail is painfully cold. It is December 1st, 2010 and we have our first snowfall of the season today as well! It is a truly beautiful thing, there is just something magical about the first snowfall of the season that takes me back to when I would go sledding on the hill at my grandmother's house with the twins, Amy and Liz (they lived down the street). Of course, I can't remember only the good things about sledding down the hill with them, I have to also remember that one time I slammed straight into the apple tree and almost broke my leg (the upper one on my left leg, OUCH that flipping HURT when it happened too!). Yes, I do love this time of year, when we start putting fires in the fireplace regularly (read: almost daily to keep the gas bill down) and hot cocoa becomes a regular thing at the breakfast table. Hot home-cooked meals almost all the time, the beauty of snow falling, all that great stuff. The only thing I don't like about this time of year is that people seem to forget how to drive.

But anyway, it is a new month, and as you may have noticed already I try to set some goals at the start of each month for our homeschooling. Well, this month is no different. So here's what I'm thinking may happen here.

We've had a major "what on EARTH" time here since October when I withdrew the girls from OHVA. It totally turned things upside down in schooling, but in a very good way. We just finished the book "Archeologists Dig For Clues" today from Sonlight core 1, and the girls are fascinated, as usual, by this subject. Now mind you, a couple days ago I had posted about deciding to drop the first two books in the core history and moving on in history, and not really sure what to do about those two books because there is just so stinking much information in them. Well, I think I figured it out. This month, for December, we are going to add those two books back in and go through them. We are going to spend time learning about archeology and the science behind it, as an integrated history and science unit. This just came to me about a half hour ago, so its still just a beginning idea that I have. I'm going to do some digging at the library's online catalog, in my core 1 guide, and on the world history forum at the Sonlight forums to get some ideas on books and activities and such to add to this. We live less than 10 minutes (maybe about 5 minutes I think) from the Newark Earthworks Great Circle Museum, aka the Newark Indian mounds. I am seeing a field trip in our very near future here........... lol

For math, I am just aiming to work on it with the girls each 4 days a week. Nothing too ambitious, just do some work regularly on it.

With lang. arts and reading, Kimi and Jordan have started Sonlight lang. arts K (see my post yesterday about Kimi's first copywork) while Missa and Liddy are doing the lang. arts 1 program at their individual speeds. I want to continue that momentum, and keep plugging away a minimum of 4 days a week. I also would like to begin working with Missa on cursive I think, she's been asking about it a while so maybe we'll give it a shot and see what happens. For Liddy, we're goign to work on printing lowercase letters and using them in everyday writing instead of using just capitals like she insists on right now. Kimi is going to work on lowercase letters too, but more from the approach of getting it right the first time so we don't have the issues with her that we do with Liddy as far as flat out refusing to use lowercase letters. Jordan will do whatever she does in this area, as we aren't really doing much with her except exposing her to it all right now. The only parts of lang arts K that she is really doing would be the weekly letter sheet, looking at the picture dictionary, and doing some of the activities.

OK what am I missing? Oh yes, arts and crafts! This month I am *hoping* that we can make homemade ornaments for our Christmas tree this year since they managed to destroy all of our ornaments that we had every year prior to this one. I'll make some salt dough and color it with food coloring, then turn them loose on making ornaments to hang. I will also do some of those cinnamon scented ornaments if I can find the recipe for that dough, and we'll do paper ring chains to put on the tree instead of tinsel. At least, that's my plan, and we all know how my plans go sometimes................... *wink*

And for music, I think we'll learn a couple Christmas carols. I'm not thinking of trying to take my 4 kids and teach them to do a flawless "Carol of the Bells" quartet, I'm thinking more like an out of tune Jingle Bells or something. Keep it simple!

For read aloud time, Scott is going to finish Charlotte's Web and move into, and hopefully finish, Homer Price. But that depends on how much he reads to them each night more than anything else.

Of course, all these grand plans depend on the cooperation of my girls and them staying healthy long enough to do even half of it. lol Right now Kimi is sick and on antibiotics, so schooling is much more relaxed than it sounds. But we're still getting things done around here for the most part, when I'm not working on my college homework, keeping up with chores, or handwashing clothes because our washer died over the weekend and we're saving for a new one (it died sooner than we thought, we were already saving).

handwriting 101 for pre-k'ers

2010-11-30T22:47:00.004-05:00

So, if you haven't already gathered, I am fairly relaxed about homeschooling with kids under a certain age. I don't actually "do" a formal preschool here with them, they just kind of pick the stuff up somehow (most likely from television, educational computer games, and having big sisters teaching them this stuff). So, a few weeks ago My sweet little Kimi asked me to teach her how to write her name. I started with just a simple "KIMI" for her on the dry erase board, and in about 2 minutes she had mastered that (as we can all tell by looking at certain doors and walls in my home now LOL she likes to practice and doesn't always use paper for that). So, today when we did our core and such with the older two girls, I though to myself that maybe she'd be ready to take on the writing in Sonlight's lang. arts K program. Now remember, she is only 4 1/2 with a January birthday, so she isn't expected really at this point to be able to write her name or much of anything else. I remembered from doing this lang. arts level with my oldest girls that the first week starts off with writing their first name, so I decided to just go for it and see how it went. I got out a sheet of the Handwriting Without Tears paper (its the ONLY handwriting program I will ever use, it is WONDERFUL and I've had a lot of success with it and myoldest 2 girls) and carefully printed out "Kimberly" for her, just like I typed it. She has NEVER written a lowercase letter in her life, so I didn't expect her to do very well with it. I'm more interested in the exposure at this point with her, and getting her started on using lowercase letters.

So how did her copywork for today go? Well, here is a picture that I took of her paper (used my laptop's webcam, pardon if it is grainy or fuzzy or whatever) and you tell me how she did.

How do YOU think my 4 year old did printing her full first name for the first time, along with using some lowercase letters for the first time ever? I count a total of 5 lowercase letters in her name that she wrote, well the M could be a capital but I do think she was attempting a lowercase with it. I just simply told her to do her best with it, and that tomorrow we'd work together on the letters she had trouble with. I don't have much to work with her on as far as those letters go.......... :-)

changes to my core 1 schedule

2010-11-29T17:14:00.003-05:00

Well I posted a couple hours ago about the girls spending all of last week on the first 2 pages of Usborne's Peoples of the World. After that post, my brain started cranking and I started thinking about this a little bit. I grabbed that book and Usborne's Houses and Homes (the next book we'll be doing after Peoples of the World) and my core 1 guide, and sat down to do a little thinking and looking.

The first 6 weeks of core 1 cover 2 pages of those two books each day. That equals 30 guide days at pace since we're doing the 5 day schedule. If we do 2 pages a week instead of 2 pages a day as scheduled, that means it would give me 30 weeks in those books. So the way I see it, I have 2 options ahead of me.

option 1: do the 2 pages a week, then go into the rest of the core as scheduled and not worry about taking longer than scheduled or planned. That would put us finishing up core 1 at around uhhhhhhhhhh mu birthday of next school year I think.

option 2: do 2 pages a week from these 2 books, and also go ahead in the guide starting in week 7 at the same time. This would give me exactly 30 weeks of material if I go at pace in the guide with the remaining material, so we'd finish the core right around the start of next school year.

The OCD part of me is screaming to do option 2, so that I can stay "on schedule" and not "get behind". But at the same time, the super relaxed part of me says to do option 1 and just see what happens. But then, I also have that nagging little part of my brain reminding me that on my notification, I said we were doing core 1 and I should try to actually do core 1 to where I'm at least 2/3 done with it when I do portfolio review (we won't be doing standardized testing prior to 5th grade by our own preferences, I refuse to teach to the test like they do in schools, and the standardized testing may or may not be used as reporting starting in 5th grade just based on the scores and how accurately we feel they reflect our girls' abilities and knowledge if we choose to do testing then). It just doesn't feel quite right to say I'm going to do core 1 and then when its time for review have to say that we did all the read alouds and poetry but only the first 6 weeks of the history, know what I mean? So, I'm kind of flip-flopping on this one.

If you have insight, input, or an option I've not tought of yet with this, please comment and tell me! I'm totally open on this, and I have a feeling Scott doesn't have much of an opinion beyond "as long as they are learning dear, whatever you choose is fine with me."

Well, I said I wanted to stretch out our core.......

2010-11-29T15:19:00.002-05:00

So, last week I wrote about how we started core 1 finally. Well, we did day 1 of week 1 last week. Yes, that's IT. I did the reading to the girls for that day, and the 2 pages of that Usborne book had so much in it that they wanted to spend more time on that I just said OK fine and we spent Tuesday and Wednesday looking deeper at it, then took Thursday and Friday off since Scott was home on a mini-vactaion thanks to Thanksgiving holiday. So, today I am *hoping* to pick up with day 2 and move a little faster than we did day 1. But then, we have spent the day cleaning up the schoolroom and getting other little things not school-related done, so I don't know if we will get to lessons at all today.

I never expected the kids to want to spend 3 days on the material of 1 day of history, but it was certainly a fun time for us. I can't wait to see where this core takes us, and I'm really hoping that I can find a good pace that will allow us to finish it by the end of next school year. Yes, I said NEXT school year.

But the girls certainly did appear to enjoy spending all that extra time on the material from that first day. I just hope they don't expect to spend a week on one day all the time, I don't mind doing it through these two Usborne books we're reading first in the core but I really don't think I have the patience to do it through the entire core. Heck, 180 days of core scheduled doing one day a week would be 180 weeks or uhhhhhhhh, around 3 1/2 years. Nope, that is NOT happening.

we have OFFICIALLY started core 1 today

2010-11-21T20:02:00.002-05:00

Yes I know, we put that off long enough didn't we? I've had a very hard time trying to get us organized to do lessons, so I called it just good enough at getting a little math and language arts done each day for the most part. Well, tonight Scott decided that he was ready to start his evening read-aloud time with the girls again for bedtime, and he pulled the first read aloud book in our Sonlight core 1 schedule. He is reading 1 or 2 chapters each night to the girls until it is done, and then will pick up a book from our bookshelf to read before he moves on to the next read aloud in the core (therefore allowing me to kind of keep up with the history so that it flows a little bit on the same schedule, he won't get too far ahead of us hopefully). In the morning I plan to ask the girls to tell me about what he read tonight, then maybe we'll do the map assignment in the guide (I say maybe as a major maybe thing, we are trying to let the girls take the lead on this stuff) and hopefully I'll keep the momentum going by starting our history materials. I would LOVE to see the girls getting through their schoolwork in the mornings to free up our afternoons, especially since the little 2 kids are normally at their easiest in the mornings. We'll see how it goes though, I've been really flakey for a long time so it is going to take some serious discipline on my part to get this implemented.