The Day Star Shines Again!

I have made mention of the rain recently, I know. You have to understand that soccer has been rained out for three, maybe four games now, the parade was rained out, our Saturdays have been rained out, and I have long since resorted to sending my children out to play in the rain and the mud.

Because a house can only hold so much pent up energy before it bursts at the seams.

However, yesterday, a strange thing happened. The sun came out! It was gorgeous! I sat in church and prayed that the beautiful weather would hold out all day long so that we could get the kids outside and all enjoy it. The Lord heard my plea and the day proceeded on in it's beautiful glory!

As soon as church was over, we hurriedly changed clothes and took off to eat some lunch. Then we hauled ourselves over to Bridge Street and moseyed around until the kids could not longer stand up straight because they were so tired. At that point, we infused them with ice cream from Maggie Moos in hopes of them being able to walk themselves back to the car. It worked!






We tried for a cute All Four Kids Smiling Shot, but these were what we wound up with before the real threat of Thomas letting Anna slip out of his arms made this Mommy call it quits!


And then they slept soundly.

Incongruousness

Life in our home is never quite predictable. There are the usual hi-jinx that simply come from lots of little ones.

Case in point...this is what I found wandering around in the living room this morning. Arrrr, Mommy!

Then there are my own fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants antics that just go to show you can't judge a book by it's cover.

Just in case you aren't familiar with them, Whole Foods is a natural and organic market that would never carry the likes of Archway. However, this happened to be the bag that I grabbed out of the back of the van when we were going into a decidedly not Whole Foods establishment.

The irony wasn't lost on me.

Rainy Day Petticoats

It's raining. Again. Still. Not that I am complaining (much) just simply stating the fact. Rain makes me have to utilize parts of the gray matter that I don't normally call into action. Like the get-creative-and-keep-my-kids-occupied-or-we-will-all-slowly-go-insane part. And all the usual suspects for keeping the kids entertained have been played out over the course of the past whole bunch of rainy days in a row.

Let's just say we are a tad ahead in our school work after today, m-kay?

Again, not complaining. I'm just sayin', is all.

This afternoon, Granny was prowling around trying to find a petticoat for a project she is working on (for me!!) and she pulled out all her old square dancing clothes. The children were thrilled to get to play with the petticoats and spin some of their energy out!

So I sat and snapped picture after picture after picture. It is a testament to my photography skills that any of them came out un-blurry. Here are a few of the better shots.

Doesn't that snazzy red petticoat just scream Mammy?

Cute little buncha boogers, ain't they?

Little Moments In Time

My plans for the day were rained out, and so I found myself with what seemed like an entire extra day on my hands. Originally, it was to be a day of hard work for me, away from my family, promoting my business. However, when your customers come largely from street festivals and craft shows (outside venues, in other words) rain puts a bit of a damper on things.

The day was incredible. I got to have a rainy, relaxing day at home with the entire family. And because it was 'unexpected', I was able to truly enjoy it all. The day wasn't planned out with a To Do List. So, I cuddled more, read more books, and just sat in the floor and wondered at how quickly it is all going by.

My baby Anna crawled all over me, head butted me, pulled up on me, and even managed to balance on her feet unassisted for two whole seconds. She then fell to her bottom and grinned up at me. I had to scoop up that baby with her chubby, dimpled cheeks and nuzzle her. I had to breath in the sweet smell of her. To savor it, because it all changes so fast. Wasn't it just a few days ago that my Thomas was this fun little package of nine month old joy?

So fast, so fleeting. Time refuses to stand still even for a moment. It determinedly marches on, with no regard as to how much I am enjoying this moment, leaving me wondering where all the yesterdays have gone off to.

Bring on the rain, you dreary skies. I'll just cuddle up and stay warm as these sweet little faces and moments etch themselves farther into my mind and deeper into my heart.

OMG! Laundry!

In my parent's house, we had what we referred to as the laundry closet. What that really meant was that everyone's dirty clothes landed in the floor of the bathroom linen closet. You would often find my Mom sitting on the floor sorting whites, colors, denims, and linens into separate piles to be whisked off to the laundry room as the appliances became available for the next load. It was a short jaunt down the hall and around the kitchen into the laundry room, which also doubled as extra closet space. There were four closets in the whole house (including the linen closet) and five people (four of which were women). You do the math.

When Joshua and I moved into our first house, we utilized the same method, until I simply could not stand the possibility of digging into that pile of dirty cloths and finding a spider anymore. I bought four large laundry hampers and placed them in the laundry room. Then I bought several baskets. The hampers held the sorted dirty laundry, and each person in the house had a basket of clean laundry. It was glorious.

For a few months, anyway. Eventually, the system had to evolve again. I have learned that laundry is ever evolving...the family grows, kids learn how to put their own clothes away, kids learn to fold their own clothes and put them away (really? really and truly, will I be there someday?).

I have always said I would rather do laundry than any other house chore. I think I would like to retract that statement now. For various reasons, laundry is out of control for me these days. Cloth diapers, a haphazard potty trainer, two little girls who feel the need to change clothes if they splash the eensiest bit of water on themselves, a soccer playing boy (Shower and change into fresh clothes, Son, you stink!) husband's work clothes, husband's occasional play clothes, my clothes, the baby's two or three per day outfits (who is trying to learn to feed herself), the extra towels used to clean up spills...it's a never ending parade of smelly fabric at our house.

Oh, and one more teensy-weensy detail that is just barely worth mentioning...the appliances are on a different level of the house than our dirty laundry hampers and our closets and our dressers. Just a minor thing, really. That I will never willingly allow to happen to me again as long as I draw breath.

So now that you know all of that, let me tell you how my oldest daughter nearly got her dainty little self lobbed across the room the other night.

After being told to go put on her pajamas, she came back in only her underwear. 'I don't have any pajamas in my drawer.'

Our pat answer to this is to borrow from Thomas, who has somehow accumulated around 734 over sized-to-him t-shirts that we call pajamas.

To which Sarah Grace put her hands on her hips and replied, 'Well, Thomas' drawer is almost empty and then I won't have any pajamas!'

Joshua told her that Mommy worked very hard to keep up with our laundry and that the drawers would be refilled soon. (the man chooses to see the best in me, what can I say?)

Sarah Grace, not convinced of this, retorted, 'Well, she is taking a long time to do it.'

If there had been any sass or spitefulness in that child's voice, she would be going naked for a few days. As it stands, Sarah Grace is learning a lesson in gratefulness that her laundry is done for her and spending the day putting away a lot of clothes! And that is all I have to say about that!

Faith Like A Child

I've heard it used in church. I have been admonished to have childlike faith. I bobbed my head and sang along with Jars of Clay as they jammed to their song. I knew how to utilize the phrase in conversation correctly. But until a few years ago, the phrase was essentially meaningless to me.

Then I had children of my own. I saw as they grew in those first tender years, the complete faith and trust that they had in Mommy and Daddy to take care of them, tend to their needs, and to only want good for them. I witnessed in awe as they hit preschool age, the sureness that Mommy and Daddy could fix 'it' and the certainty in their eyes that we would be there to catch them when they jumped.

My heart has ached with wonder as I listen to Thomas and Sarah Grace and their frequent answers to the swerve balls that get thrown in their direction. 'It's okay, Jesus still will love us', or 'We can just pray and it will be okay', or 'That's just the way God wanted it!'. My heart knows that that the simplicity of their words mirrors their absolute faith, but my mind tends to be jaded by the tragedies in life I have been witness to.

One of those very tragedies came up this morning. Thomas and I were doing his math work when I realized for the first time today that it is the anniversary of such a heart breaking day in our nation's history. I was taken by surprise when my eyes watered, but I managed to swallow it back, not wanting to get into that discussion at the moment. I needed to organize my thoughts and be ready to answer questions that were bound to be asked of me.

A couple of hours later, I had the opportunity to talk to Thomas one on one. As we drove down the road, a song of courage and hope that was written in the aftermath of 9/11 came on the radio. I told Thomas I wanted him to listen closely to the music and the words. As the song ended, he looked at me with questions in his eyes. I started telling him about the planes, the towers, the Pentagon, the attempt on the White House, the sad hatefulness of the whole thing, and of the bravery of the men and women who were there. The ones who lived, the ones who died, and the ones who are still surviving.

Tears rolled down my cheeks and my voice broke several times. I had to pull over to finish the conversation. My son sat their and held my hand as I told him of that dreadful day. And when I was out of words, he simply said, 'Let's pray, Mommy, that those bad guys will get to learn about Jesus.'

To The Bat Cave!

We spent Labor Day in what Joshua referred to as a 'gently occupied' manner. We made no big plans to go anywhere or do anything. We just kind of slept in a little (as much as the Munchkin Brigade would let us), lazed the morning away, then went for a picnic lunch at the playground. Afterwords, we came back home and took a nice, long nap.

Joshua and Thomas worked on Thomas' bike. They put a new inner tube in his back tire and adjusted the training wheels to encourage balance. We have high hopes of seeing him lose the training wheels in a few weeks. He was awesome!

At some point, Joshua went up into the attic to fetch something for his Mom. He came back down and announced we had lodgers. I eyed him curiously and he went on to tell me we had 17 bats sleeping in our attic.


Nice, yes?

The kids and I all climbed the attic ladder and gazed upon our sleeping guests. There are actually 18 bats there. One even stretched a little.

The kids were full of questions about the bats and even fuller on excitement about the possibility of living in the attic. Sarah Grace was all about some attic living. I reminded her that there was no bathroom and no kitchen. She seemed undeterred. Finally, I just told her we simply would not be living in the attic.

With the bats.


We really do try to be hospitable!

Soccer!

I may have mentioned in passing that Thomas is playing soccer this fall. We started practice back in August and finally had our first game this past Saturday.


I am here to tell you I can't remember the last time I have laughed so hard. There were six little boys out on that field chasing after a ball for a solid hour. It probably took the first ten or fifteen minutes for them to understand whose goal was whose. Then those short little four and five year old legs pumped hard up and down the field as they all chased after the ball. Or each other.


After a month of practice, the boys had become pretty good at remembering to not touch the ball with their hands. They were decent at keeping it on the field, inside the touch lines. They were hilariously adorable as they dribbled the ball all over the field and made, sometimes wild, attempts at kicking it into the goal. Kicking gently and frequently to keep it close to their own feet hasn't even occurred to them yet. They kick hard and then all chase after it to see who gets to kick it next!


At this age, they don't keep score. Good thing since I know at least once our team kicked the ball into the wrong goal. They did keep up with how many goals each boy scored. Thomas scored three! In fact, he was the highest scorer on his team that day, and got to bring the team flag home with him. We are now proudly displaying a very large, very lime colored flag with their team name and mascot on it in our living room.


It's all about feng-shui people.

This Is The Way We Go To School

For more reasons than I care to get into on the blog, Joshua and I made the choice to home school our children. It was not a lightly made decision, nor is it without much apprehension on my part as Teacher/Mommy. However, it is the right choice for our family. I have spent much of the last two years poking about and looking into curriculum and homeschool-ology and trying to grasp what home schooling would look like for us.

The curriculum, so far, has been the easy part. I taught at a pre-school for several years prior to marriage, and while there, became quite familiar with A Beka's phonics and reading program. Having seen the method in use and how well the vast majority of children took to it, it was a simple decision for me.

With that in mind, we started letter recognition and phonics two years ago. The only way I knew to cope with little ones who were asking for something to do (or getting into things because they were 'bored') was to start tossing learning at them. It stood us in good stead. We picked up
The Ordinary Parent's Guide To Teaching Reading for Thomas this year and have been breezing through it for four or five months now. In fact, we skipped through the first 25 or so lessons in less than a week, due to the foundation Thomas already had with reading. Now we are well into it, and the moment he sees me pull out that blue book, he gets all excited about reading a 'story'. I am forever thankful that he is doing as well as he is, but I must confess to sending him off to find Granny or Daddy to read through the stories a second, third, or twentieth time. My patience wears thin after we stutter our way through it once.

One of my hang-ups in life is that I like books to stay nice looking. To that end, I adopted the method of writing out each story on this printable kindergarten lined paper. (I like this paper because it encourages proper spacing) Each night, I copy out the next day's stories (or for several days, if I am feeling industrious) and set them aside. Thomas and I then do our lesson the next day and he reads the story. After he reads it to me, he takes it and traces the entire story. This gives him a little extra practice with proper letter formation as well as keeping my book nice and neat looking. It also allows him the freedom to roam around with his story and read it to anyone or anything who will listen.

Speaking of handwriting, we are using A Reason For Handwriting. Or I guess I should say we will start that sometime in October. It was another favorite of mine from the pre-school days. Thomas is anxious to get started in this book (he just loves the idea of adding another book to his desk!) but continues to work diligently on tracing. This may be overkill, but I would still rather that he spend just a little more time on the tracing. When left to his own to write, he still writes in all capitals. The tracing is reinforcing the idea of small letter and large letter, among other things.

For Math, I chose yet another curriculum I was familiar with (again, from working at the pre-school (which actually went up to second grade)). We are using the Saxon Math series. At first I was hesitant about going with this math, because of how in depth the morning meetings were at the school. When I started looking, though, for homeschool, the meeting is much shorter. All the points are there, but for one kid rather than 15. Thomas loves pulling out our Meeting Book and going through the routine of the calendar, patterning, etc. It takes just a couple of minutes, and then we are off to the lesson.

I am supplementing his actual math learning with the A Beka Numbers Writing Tablet. This isn't something that we do every day. Maybe once a week, again, just for the extra practice. And, again, Thomas loves that he has another book in his desk.

Lora Lynn sang the praises of Five In A Row so loudly that after I poked around in her book, I opted to use this curriculum as well. The kids all gather around me each afternoon (or often, evening, so that Daddy can be with us) and we read the book selection for the week. Then we pull out a lesson or two each time and refer to what we have already learned that week. FIAR offers a bundle of lesson suggestions for each book including math, science, Bible, art, language, and social sciences. Plus, there are invaluable online resources that have helped us find music and additional books to go with each week's book. The kids love it, I love it, and they are learning so much. Their favorite part is when I pull out the map and show them the part of the world that the book is set in. It makes learning so much of a game that they have no idea how much information they are storing away. Sometimes neither do I!

For Sarah Grace, we are using more A Beka stuff. ABC-123, Readiness Skills, and other odds and ends that I have picked up at curriculum fairs or consignment sales. She and Elizabeth and Thomas all love the Animal Alphabet cards. Elizabeth's attention doesn't hold out for it yet, but the older two love to hear all about the animal featured with each letter. The back of the card holds all kinds of information and songs and poems.

And that about covers it. We don't adhere to a strict schedule but rather have a loosely framed routine. It allows us the flexibility to actually be a family in the middle of all the schooling. We spend a lot of time reading, and because of the FIAR, the kids have learned to dissect each story into meaningful pieces, so I count that as a huge part of our day.

I know that in years to come, things will have to be a bit more structured, but for now the intentional time spent with the kids is building what I hope to be a good Teacher/Mommy foundation. I really thought that being 'teacher' would be hugely different from being 'mommy'. The simple fact, though, is that home schooling starts the moment they are born. I have been teaching them all along. It's just that there are now a few books and crayons and pencils and maps thrown into the midst of it.

Yes, homeschooling is definitely the right choice for our family.

Anna Joy - 9 Months

I am nine months old today and...

...Mommy cannot believe it has been nine whole months!
...do you see that thing in my mouth? Mommy had to fish it out. She spends a lot of time doing that. Because I am more effective than any vacuum cleaner!
...I am pulling up on things and thinking about what to do next.
...I still nurse once or twice a day.
...I still have not cut a single tooth.
...I want to be held.
...no, I want to be put down.
...I have a great set of lungs. No problems there.
...my hair just gets curlier on top every day.
...I get excited just by the sight of the bathtub! My arms and legs start going and won't stop until I am playing in the water!
...I couldn't care less about the swimming pool.
...love to eat 'muffs' (puffs).
...I love to eat ice cream.
...I love to eat peaches and strawberries and cantaloupe and hamburger and sweet potatoes and scrambled eggs and chocolate and broccoli and carrots and mango and bananas and...
...well, I just love to eat.
...Mommy still hasn't put shoes on my delicate little feet.
...I am learning what ' no touch' means. This does not make me very happy.
...I love to play in the grass.
...I love to pull at the grass.
...I love to eat the grass.
...I graduated from the infant seat to a big seat.
...I still don't like being in the car seat.
...I like to topple over the waste baskets and paw through the paper.
...Mommy is oh-so-glad that the kitchen trash hides under the sink.
...I like to pet the cat.
...I like to pull the cat's tail.
...I like to chew on the cat's tail.
...the cat is learning to make himself scarce when I am outside.
...I love, love, love to be outside.
...one of my favorite activities is to be put in the Moby or the BJorn and go for a walk with Mommy or Daddy.
...I love to be pushed around in a stroller by my siblings.
...I like to eat. Did we cover that?
...I still nap at least twice a day. Sometimes three times a day.
...it's tough to be a baby.