A Raw Moment

Bad days happen.

Bad-mom moments happen.

I must accept this.

I am not perfect.

Most of the time I am not even half-perfect.

Mostly, I am just a very, very, very flawed person.

So when I get incredibly frustrated with my children for seemingly being deaf to my voice while they are sitting not even 2 feet away, and possibly react in a way that is not in the best interests of anybody in the house, I will breath, apologize, hug them, maybe cry, and realize that I am the perfect candidate for a Saviour and thank God that He has given me one.

School Time and Moving

So we had our first week back at school last week.  We took a 3 week Christmas vacation, mostly because we spent 2 weeks up north, so I wanted the week at home to let the girls get adjusted back to being home and also so I could do some more decluttering.

And it definitely helped, I have around 10 boxes and a garbage bag waiting to be trucked away to the second hand store in town.  And that isn't even including the toys I have planned on getting rid of.  It's spring cleaning in January.

Actually, it's more like pre-moving cleaning out.  Because we are moving.  Again.  We haven't even been in this house 6 months.  But I'm not complaining.  I complain in jest, and I mock ourselves for moving again so fast, but it is definitely a good thing for us.  One of the biggest factors, the rent will be cheaper.  $300 cheaper.  That is a significant amount of money for us.  The house is older, same as the one we are currently in, but it is in better condition.  We are also good friends with the owners there.  And it's on 7 acres.  That is sweet!!  A down side would be that the house is smaller, but it is a better layout, and the bathroom is bigger. Tit for tat.

Anyways, I was planning on talking about our school week.  The first day back went really well.  Abby was very willing to sit down and do all our work.  She was almost excited to use our schedule and get going.  But then Tuesday came, and that one wasn't as good.  Hahaha.  Second day blues?  Wednesday went well, and Friday was alright.  Neither easy or hard.  Just ordinary.  The book we were reading last week for Come Sit By Me was The White Stone in the Castle Wall by Sheldon Oberman.  And one of the activities was making a castle.  That was loads of fun.

Sometimes it's hard for me not to be perfectionist about projects like this.  Like, no, don't paint it that!!  Paint it like this!  But I just learn to relax and let them do it however they want to, since it's not for me.

Outline of a School Day

Almost done the second month of school.  And I think that we are finally finding some sort of rhythm  to it.  I hope.  Here is what our typical day looks like so far.

Bible:  We have a memory verse that comes from Come Sit by Me, and sometimes they suggest stories to teach and read about.  I will usually find the stories in Kid's Bibles, and then find a craft to go along with that.

Reading: We are working through The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading.

Printing: We are using Handwriting Without Tears.  Abby has fun with using the wooden blocks to make letters, as well as a slate to draw them over sized first.

We usually have a 15 minute break here.  The girls will have a snack and play or draw.

Math: We are using Right Start Math, which has lots of manipulatives to play with.  It's going pretty slowly right now.

Come Sit By Me: For those who don't know, this curriculum covers a variety of subjects.  It has different sections that you do, over a week or two.  You read a selected book every day and then they have activities to do that relate to the book.  Reading a book is always fun for the girls, and they enjoy the different things we get to do.

Depending how things are going we will take a quick break here.

Explode the Code: A mixture of phonics and printing.  It is focusing on lower case right now, and that is a little more frustrating for poor Abby so sometimes this lesson ends in a fight.

And I switch between Bingo games and Sounds Abound, a book and computer game that have kids listening to sounds, like rhyming.

That is the basic outline of how we do school.  Some days, like today, we are done almost everything by 11, but other days we got until almost 1.

School in September

I just put Leigh down for a time-out/nap and she is crying at the top of the stairs.  I am too lazy to go put her back in her bedroom.  I probably should though.  She is being sooooo incredibly cranky today.  I'm wondering if I am letting her play too many "video games."  Lately while I do school work with Abby, I let Leigh play on my iPhone.  Ideally I don't want to do this every day, but I feel like it's just so much easier.

I'm hoping that once the house gets more organized, I'll have more stuff for her to do.  I have lots of ideas, just none really implemented.  And maybe I should be taking more time with her.  Even while she was playing games on the phone today she wanted to stay cuddled with me.  I think that I don't take more time because I'm selfish and just want to get through the "work" as soon as possible, so that I can sit on the computer wasting my time and mind away.

Last week was a really difficult school week.  Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, oh my, it was just rough.  Leigh was fussy and Abby wanted nothing to do with school.  I was stressed out.  I have ladies' Biblestudy on Thursdays, and I asked for prayer for help with school.  We didn't do any school on Friday because, well because I just didn't want to.  But we did some on Saturday, and it was seriously way better.  And so far this week it has gone much better as well.  I am so very excited.

I think that it's not that Abby is any different, well, maybe a little, but I have just more patience.  An that makes a huge difference.

My Newest Inamimate Object Love

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha!  Wheeeeeeeeeee!

That is me laughing and doing a very happy dance.  I used my new laminator for the first time tonight and it works woooooooooooooooooonderful.

I had previously had a different laminator, a Sircle Lam something or other.  It worked alright...sometimes.  If you didn't put too many things in the pouch and if it was heated up enough between times and if you crossed all your fingers and toes and held your breath while it was running.

It drove me nuts because of the amount of things I had to redo.  Probably over 50%.  I was so frustrated.  But I figured that it was my own fault for cheaping out.  I don't remember exactly how much it was, but not much.  Finally after another night of me practically throwing all my papers on the floor because of it, my hubby suggested buying a different one, one that worked and didn't give me the twitches.

So I bought a Scotch TL901 Thermal Laminator, and as you can tell it works.  And bonus for me, I paid less for this one than the other one because it was on sale on Amazon, like somewhere around 80% off I think!  Dude!

I picked it because Carisa from 1+1+1=1 uses it, and I'm sure she does way more laminating than I do, so if she uses it it probably works great.

So tonight I finally got my calendar pieces fixed.  Hurrah!   I would do calendar time with them, but it was difficult, to say the least, when we didn't have the month, or the day.  So I would be like, "Well, today is the 12th, but we don't have that number, so we'll use 23."  Doesn't seem to have quite the same effect.

The Great Combo Post - Only 99¢

I have missed the last two Friday Weigh-In posts.  Just because I'm too lazy to do anything.  Not because I am giving up dieting or that I have binged so bad that I have gained 20 more pounds.  Actually, I am doing quite well and I am so very pleased with myself.  I have lost 10, count 'em 10, pounds since I started as of today!!!  That is a huge victory in my opinion.  There was a part of me that didn't think it was such a huge deal at first since this is actually 10 pounds that I have put on on top of what could be called pregnancy weight.  I have no little children to blame on this.

But that doesn't make it less important of celebration-dance worthy!  Now I am 163lb, and about 40 inches in the waist.  But I'm not confident on my waist measuring skills.  I know it should be easy, but I get different readings almost everytime.  Obviously I made the right choice in not becoming a tailor.

Abby started preschool this week.  She was supposed to start on Friday, but she woke up with a bad chest congestion.  On the first day of school!  Sick days aren't supposed to happen until at least October.  So I was slightly panicky because I wasn't sure how I was supposed to get ahold of the support worker.  But it all worked out, obviously.  I worry for nothing.  And I sent her on Monday, even though she was still a little stuffy.

She had a great time, from everything I can gather.  She isn't the easiest to understand, right, but she wasn't upset when I picked her up so that was a good indication.  And another miracle, was that she didn't throw a fit when we left!  She just let me put her shoes on, grabbed her backpack, and headed out the door with me.  I was amazed, and SO thankful.  That was my biggest worry, that she would have a huge tantrum because she didn't want to leave.

I am so glad that it all worked out.  Oh and something else that made me happy was that, totally by accident, I stumbled across a site of a Christian home schooling group that is in a nearby city.  They do enrolling or registering, and even if I enroll I still can pick our own curriculum, at least for the first 9 grades.  I just feel like it was God leading me because I never found anything about them before or even heard about them here.  But I think that they are what I was looking for.  There is a home group here in town, but they aren't Christian based.  Not necessarily a big issue, but if I had to choose, it's always nice to have people who are on the same page as I am.

So this is my sort of catch-up topics that I've thought about for the last week.  All in one convienent place.

The Best Laid Plans

Abby had an appointment with a speech pathologist on Monday. I was very nervous about it in the preceding weeks. It has become more obvious over the last six months that she has some serious speech delays, and I was prepared to hear all sorts of reasons for this.




The meeting went well, mostly. The gist is that Abby is severley delayed in her speech, around 1 1/2 - 2 years. She mixes up some sounds and leaves off syllables on words. She does a lot of jibber-jabber talk, and the pathologist thought that she was actually saying words but just in some funny way. She doesn't have autism, so it's not because of that. We are going back this coming Monday for more tests.



It wasn't that hard to hear all this. Yes, a little hard, since the denial side of me would have liked to hear that she's just a little slower than others and will be fine and catch up on her own. But the truth is always refreshing, even if it's hard. And now we can get her some help. If we register her in a registered daycare or preschool she will qualify for a worker to be with her whenever she goes, and they would work with her on the program the pathologist designed for her.



I am glad for this, but the whole discussion about daycare/preschool was what upset me in the meeting. The pathologist asked how we would feel about putting her in daycare and I mentioned that the reason I hadn't put her in anything was because we were planning on homeschooling so I didn't see the point of getting her used to being in 'school' when that isn't what was going to happen in her school years.



Well, all of a sudden, it's like the speech lady flicked a switch in her brain and turned into a Nazi interagator. She seriously spouted off questions, one after another, asking which program we were going to use, how we were going to meet the governments criteria, etc. I felt like a tiny beetle that was getting pinned to the wall. She wasn't impressed when I mentioned that I was planning on piecing together my own curriculum, probably based on a classical education. She went on about how it was so important to have the Dogwood Diploma (our diploma here) and that without it so many doors were closed. And if Abby wasn't in a government-funded program, she didn't get any funding for a worker.



That ruined the rest of the time for me. I left there feeling torn. I thought that all my ideas of how I would homeschool were just dumb. I was stupid for even thinking that I could try. I felt stuck in the decision that I had to use the government's curriculum just so Abby could get help. It didn't fit with my ideals.



I am so thankful for all the Godly people around me though. They were praying for us before, during, and after the appointment, and I know it was those prayers that worked to give me a peace from God. It is okay that things are not going like I pictured them. And actually, my plans aren't changing all that much.



Abby will go to preschool this coming September and then next year I will use the governement Kindergarten curriculum to homeschool her. And then I will reevaluate at the end of Kindergarten. If she is doing well enough, I will switch to what I have planned. So that is my new plan. I want to make sure that I am doing what is best for the girls, not just what I think is the best.