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.

At Least I Got a Hot Chocolate Out of It

Yesterday's car-tastrophe (hehehe, I hate/love this kind of play on words), I know you all are waiting in impatient anxiety to hear my tale of woe.  Or you have completely forgotten my promise of telling you this tale and are busy doing more important things like clipping your toe nails.  Which reminds me, Leigh really needs a nail clip, toes and fingers.  She's quite dangerous.

So, yesterday I headed out of town to drop my daughter off at a friend's house.  It was my parent duty day at Abby's preschool.  Just after dropping Leigh off, I noticed that my heat vents were throwing out cold air.  I thought it was odd and annoying but shut it off and didn't think too much further.  But then I noticed that little light on my dash that said "Check Gages."  I thought Crap!

And then I looked at my gages and said Crap! again.  Because the temperature in my engine was close to the red line, AGAIN.  See, last summer we had problems with our water pump that caused all our coolant to leak out and the engine to overheat.  And it always seemed to overheat when I was driving.  Fixed that in the fall, and life was fine and dandy (well, in the vehicle department anyways).

And then just a couple weeks ago, I came out of the grocery store and saw a big puddle of neon coloured liquid under the truck again.  Flashbacks of last summer haunted me and I was praying that my hubs wouldn't blow a gasket when I got home and told him the news.  It turns out the plug was loose, and once he tightened it, it was fine.  Or so we thought.  Until yesterday happened.

So I noticed the over-heating situation, and pulled over.  I was only about 5 minutes from my friend's place.  Still out of town, so not like I could walk there or home or anything.  I called my hubby who said he was on his way, once he stopped to pick up a new plug, since that's what we figured the leak was from.  The downside of this is that he was also working out of town, but on the OTHER side, so he didn't come for about 40-45 minutes.

Abby and I just hung out, in a turned off truck.  At least it wasn't anything like -20, maybe only -10ish.  I had her sit with me because my legs were cold.  Haha, and to keep her warm too.  Thankfully we had cell service so we watched some You Tube videos to pass the time.  But despite the service, I couldn't get a hold of the nursery school because their number isn't listed.

Anyways, that's the gist of it.  I didn't make it home until 10:30 (I left the house that morning at 8).

But so I don't leave you all depressed about our vehicle situation (Ok, maybe it's just me) here is a conversation with Abby.

Me: It's supper time now.

Abby: Soup?

Me: No, we're having chicken and rice.

Abby: I don't want chicken.

Me: Yes you do, you love chicken.

Abby: No!  No Chicken!

*I take the chicken out of the oven and put it on top of the stove.*

Abby: What's that?

Me: Chicken.

Abby: I have some? (said very hopefully)

Me: Yes, you may have some chicken.

How an Auction Gone Crazy (For Me) Leads to an Embarrassing Moment

Last week the preschool my daughter attends held a charity auction.  All the parents donated a couple items, and some businesses from around town donated as well.  I went there not expecting to purchase anything, maybe a toy or two if there were any that I might want as gifts.  I left there $84 poorer.

I am almost ashamed to put that number down.  I was shocked when it all tallied up.  See, I hadn't kept track as I bid and won item after item.  I got a few good deals, like an electric breast pump (no, not pregnant, just for the future) and a haircut for $20.  The only thing I truly regret is the gift certificate for our bakery.  It is a $20 value and I paid...$20.  At least I didn't lose money.  But in my defense, I though I was bidding $17.50.  I think the auctioneer was cheating.  Ok, not.  There were just a lot of "paddles" in the air.

So I was surprised when I looked at the back of the business card for the hair salon, that it had an appointment time for the next week penciled in.  I though 'Perfect.  I don't even have to make one.'  So today I trucked my kids over to my friend's house and then headed over to the salon.

On the way, I'm pep talking myself about being confident.  Talking confidently with the hair dresser, and saying what I want without it sounding like I'm a little mouse hiding in a corner.  Confidence, confidence, confidence.  And as I'm driving I have a vague thought, like "what if that appointment was actually someone else's and they lost the card, or something like that."  But I proceed anyways because better to find out than just run away, just in case.

I get there, and someone else is arriving at the same time as me.  That is a slight blip to my confidence, since I can be so intimidated by people.  We are walking up at the same time, when I see the closed sign in the window.

Blip number two.  I stop, and then ask if that sign is for the salon.  The other lady, who I actually recognized as another mom from the preschool but I don't know her at all so can't even claim acquaintanceship, said that she must have forgotten to flip it.

Blip number three comes once we're inside.  The hair stylist is still working on someone's hair.  She says to the woman who came in with me, "you must be my 2:15."  To which she replies yes.  At this point  I feel like melting into the floor, because I quickly realized that we can't both be the 2:15 appointment.

As it turned out, the preschool mom was one who helped out at the auction and she had stapled the business card to the gift certificate, but had accidentally stapled the one with her appointment time on it.  Oops.  So now I have my very own appointment for the coming Monday at 6.

I hate these kind of instances.  And I really shouldn't, because it isn't that big of a deal.  To me it feels like everyone must be thinking of how stupid I am, for assuming it was my appointment.  I should have called.  And yes, I totally should have called.  In fact, I actually thought of calling just to confirm.  But I didn't.  The reason?  Because I'm scared of talking to people.  I just feel awkward.  But a little awkwardness on the phone would have been a lot less awkward than standing there with three other people listening in.

So the moral today is to pick up the phone and just call the people already!

Getting Snowhere

Here is my front yard.

And just so you know, at the bottom is my weed patch, I mean vegetable garden

I like the look of snow.  Winter is here now.  I wouldn't mind winter if it weren't for the having-to-bundle-up factor.  Snow is so pretty, and can be fun.  It's the before and after math that isn't fun, namely wet boots, mitts, coats, pants, etc, etc.

Snow and winter mean changes.  Simple changes like not wearing flip-flops (so sad!!!!) and start wearing a warmer jacket, and bigger changes, like putting cellophane around all the windows in your house to eliminate drafts (speaking of which...).  Another change is that I pretty much have stopped walking with the girls to Abby's preschool, and drive the ONE SINGLE block there.  I admit, I do feel ridiculous.

But my strollers wheels are not made for this!  I really need to think about these things more before I buy something I suppose.  Anyways.  It's just nicer to drive, though it takes almost as much time when you factor in the time it takes to do up and undo car seat buckles.  Though if we don't warm up the truck, then I don't really think it's that worth it since it is just as cold.

One big bump that has come as a result of the snow is that dear Abby (hahaha) refuses to wear her snowpants.  When this snow first came, last Thursday, she was excited to go outside and build a snowman (which would have been pretty impossible since it is not sticky-together snow, just fluff).  I got the snowpants on, but right after that it was like something clicked in her brain and she whipped those things off as fast as she could go.

She practically spits on you if you mention them.  This could be a loooooooooong winter.  I could deal with her never playing in the snow, fine.  But her class goes outside two out of three days!  I can send the pants with her, but I don't know if she would put them on, even for someone who wasn't Mama.  I guess we'll find out.

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 Start of September

Where on earth did July and August go?  I sure would like to know.  One minute they were here, and now, POOF!  They're gone.  Suddenly September is upon me with all this new school/speech stuff.  And then swimming lessons and Awanas and who knows what else.

Today was preschool orientation.  We got to go for one hour and let the kids play while us adults learned what all our duties would be on our duty day at the school.  Well, obviously we won't be having any separation anxiety issues about leaving Abby there.  She was gone from me first thing, straight to the rice table.  (Boy am I glad we don't have one of those at home.  Sweeping rice would get really old really fast.)

I am so very glad that she liked it there.  She even told the teacher her name when asked!  Score!  I was a little worried that her shy side would win out.  But that didn't come until we had a meeting with the speech pathologists and the support worker she will have with her.

It was just a sort of meet and greet meeting, since I hadn't met the worker yet.  And I am so SO thankful to my Lord that He obviously worked His ways because I felt good, almost great, after the meeting.  I didn't feel antagonistic or defensive with the one speech worker, and actually felt like we were working as a team for my girl.  Hurrah.

So Abby's first official day is Friday.  This day I will pack a snack in her new Barbie lunch box (that is not a metal one but I suppose I can survive) and put it in her not-new backpack and send her off into the world for 3 hours without me.  I think I might start having an anxiety attack now. 

On the Road and Nothing Gets Done

Yesterday I went to my ladies' Biblestudy in the morning and ran errands in the afternoon, so i didn't get home until 2.  Today I took Abby to the city an hour away for an appointment with a pediatricin, didn't get home until 1:30.  Both days, I have found it a huge difficulty to get anything done.  Partly from being gone for a fair amount of hours, but mostly from the resulting laziness.

But nobody wants to hear a complainer, especially someone continually complaining about themselves.  Instead I will inform everyone of how the doctor appointment went.

We went to the pediatrician on a referral from the hearing specialist.  The apointment was to see if we could pinpoint why Abby has speech problems.  I was apprehensive about the appointment since I didn't feel a super-great connection with the speech pathologist.  The speech pathologist actually made me feel like a huge piece of dog poo.  But that's a whole other topic that I don't need to get into since I've come to terms with it (really).

Anyways, blah blah blah, the appointment went fine, and the doctor is pretty positive that Abby does not have autism.  Which has been an on and off again fear of mine.  I knew that she didn't, deep down, but I still feared that she did.  Basically there are no physical reasons that can explain why Abby is delayed.  All her other developmental areas are fine.  So the doctor says, just start the speech therapy when they call, and that will be the best thing for her.

And despite the fact that I didn't really learn anything new, it felt reassuring to me.  Driving home, I felt empowered to do what I needed to do.  I could continue to do "preschool" at home with Abby, and send her to an actual preschool in the fall.  I could deal with the intimidating speech pathologist and stand my ground about my beliefs.  I could even clean and tidy my house...maybe.

The Glittering Leaves of Fall

About a month or so ago I read a post at The Homeschool Classroom about a glitter-tree craft that I stored away in my brain to do with Abby.  We finally got around to it this week.  (I had completely forgotten on what site I found this so I had to go digging through my Reader looking for it.  Of course it was one of the ones at the bottom.)

She liked to pour a lot of glue on, without smearing it around much.

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So decisive about which colour to pick.

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Right at the end she got a little distracted and wasn't as interested in glittering the leaves as she was in pointing to and naming various body parts.



Like armpits, for example.



It was actually really simple to do, and since I used an old cookie sheet, there really wasn't any mess.  The only part that I found hard was drawing the leaves onto the cardboard.  I am not an artist, so we just got leaves that were the basic tear shape.  I did attempt a maple leaf, but they looked so pathetic I didn't have the heart to cut them out.

Stressful Thoughts Spill Out

I feel like such a newbie to this homeschooling thing, which I am, so feeling like one should be normal.  But I hate this feeling!  I feel so lost and wondering if I'm doing enough, or if I'm doing the right kinds of activities, or just plain doing it right.  I think that the stress I feel of this is comes back to something I have dealt with, well probably all my life.  I expect myself to be perfect at anything I try and do.  Seriously.  My first time snowboarding, I spent half an hour at the top of hill, yelling at God because I was losing my balance. 

But I have read enough books and blogs and other such wisdom to know that there is no "right" way, and that the first year or two is always hard to find a rhythym.  It is all about being flexible and constantly reevaluating where I and the girls are at. 

Maybe I am stressing about what a responsibility it is.  Teaching my own daughter!  Not just academics, but life skills, character-building skills.  What if I screw up?! 

Okay, it's time to calm myself down.  Today I checked off almost all my list of the activities to do with Abby.  The only one we didn't do was a glitter-tree craft, and I am ok with that since I had forgotten to prep some materials anyways.  Doing the worksheets went well, but first the getting her to sit at the table with me was a fight.  Well actually she came fine for the colouring, but I wanted to do a lesson from The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading and she didn't want to come for that.  I had to discipline her for not listening to me and so she ended up throwing a big fit and running to her room. 

Will it always be a fight?  Or will she eventually get used to doing lessons with me?  I hope so otherwise we are in for some stressful days.

I also have been wondering if I have too many colouring activities/worksheets.  A lot of the stuff we do for math and language stuff is colouring sheets, or circle the correct answer type of things.  Should I be looking into more things.  Probably. 

Sorry for how random and crazy my thoughts are today.  I'm just writing how I'm thinking.

What I Have (or Don't Have) to Show for the Month

*Quick Update on Abby:  She is fine.  The whole "dental surgery" went well and she now has a mouth full of silvery fillings.  Ah, welcome to my life babe.  We were in the hospital a total of 4 hours, about half of that spent in recovery.  She wasn't even groggy yesterday, just had a little nap around 4. So thanks for anyone who prayed, I know my family was.*

It is the last day of September, and I am looking back over what I have done preschool-wise with Abby.  Let me tell you, it is a pitiful offering to the school gods.  The only week's 'studies' that I finished completely, was A (along with all the other activities that went along with it like Bible crafts, numbers, etc.).  I only got about another half a week done.  So to sum it up, we only did a week and a half of work.  Though I'm not sure if I can even call it work!   We just do some crafts and worksheets and other stuff.  Sit down time maybe totallying one hour a day if I'm lucky.

Even on the days that I got all the activities done that I wanted to, I felt like it wasn't enough.  Is this going to be enough to get her to the point that she needs to be?  Who am I to know?  On the other hand, why am I stressing so much over this?!?  It's preschool, not high school math or anything.  Maybe I just need to chill out.

Expectations

I have been doing a few activites with Abby every day, like I posted here.  She seems to enjoy them, just like any other time we do any colouring stuff.  My printer had been at the computer shop and I just found out that it's toast, so I hadn't been able to print off some worksheets that I wanted to do with her until yesterday when we went to the library. 

I was excited to try them with her.  In my mind, I had hopes of her exceeding what I thought she could do.  She would ace the sheets, following the directions exactly.  But that wasn't how it went.  The first one was a small maze where you had to follow the 'A's to find the end.  Any other letter led you down the wrong path.  I wasn't concerned with her following the path from start to finish, I just wanted her to identify all the 'A's in the picture.  She did get a few, but she also called a B an A, as well as some other letters.

I have to admit that I felt a little disappointment and discouragement.  I felt like she was so horribly behind where she should be.  But then I reminded myself that she is 3 and it is more important to feed her knowledge and information than trying to 'test' her with worksheets.  Because that's essentially what it was like, I tested her and she failed.  So today we did another couple worksheets, first identifying pictures that started with A and then identifying pictures that had the A sound in the middle.  Basically I just talked through it with her.

And I felt good about it.  She knew all the names of the pictures (well, she called an ambulance a truck but that's ok) and I just told her that they started with A, or had the A sound in them.  And I circled them for her.  Then I just let her colour them.  It didn't look as academic as I might have liked, but I think that it is a good step in the right direction.  It is a lesson for me on how this year might look, and I like the feeling that we are starting our journey! 

We Have Begun!

And we're off. Today I did my first "official" homeschool-preschool activity! But the secret? It sure didn't feel like a school activity. This morning Abby and her friend Geeves, who is spending the day with us, decorated a cut-out letter 'A' with stickers.

Writing this down, it doesn't seem as momentous as it did when I actually sat them down and did it. But it is a big thing for me, and the reason it is a big thing? I planned it.  Yes, I finally got my butt in gear this weekend and planned out my first week of preschool.  I knew that I had reached my limit of reading up on different activities and methods; I had to take what I had learned, decide what would work for me, use the resources I had, and start implementing them. 

Each week will have a different 'unit.'  (As a side note, I feel so official calling them units, and it makes me feel kind of funny.)  This week we are starting with the letter 'A', even though Abby does recognize the letter already, I wanted to do them all.  We will also learn a number each week, obviously starting with '1'.  And there will be a Bible story for the week, and maybe even a shape, though I haven't decided on that for sure since I seem to keep adding stuff.  But everyday we will do some kind of paper craft with the letter and the number.  I will read through whatever Bible story we are learning, maybe with a different children's Bible each day since I have plenty.  I also have a craft book for Bible stories, so we will do that after reading the story.  We will read through the lesson for the letters from The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading by Jessie Wise and Sara Buffington.  I am just using the first 26 lessons that teach letter sounds for now.  I also have Modern Curriculum Press's Phonics level K book that I am going to use for some activites for the letters. 

I am not scheduling a time for these but am basically just checking them off my list each day.  We will see how that goes.  It seems like a lot to me, especially since Abby and Leigh have never had any kind of structured activities before.  We have always just let them do what they want, within reason obviously.  But since we are serious about homeschooling, they will need to learn to sit for a specified amount of time sooner or later so why not now. 

Lessons in Glue

On Saturday I decided that I would try to do a craft with Abby. I feel guilty admitting that this would be the first time but I need to get over that. I'm not perfect and I can't even keep up an image of perfection. Anyways, I won't go down that well-used bunny trail.

An elephant-toilet paper roll was what I decided to do, so I got the tp roll (right off the rack in fact) and drew up an elephant head to fit. I sat Abby at the table and let her draw eyes and a mouth on the elephant. I showed her how to swipe the glue on the 'body' of the elephant and she seemed to like that well enough. She did fine squishing the paper onto the tp roll.

But when I tried to show her to put glue on the back of the head and put the head on the body she started to freak out and pulled the head back off. I tried reasoning with her (why?) but she refused to cooperate. I was getting very frustrated as well and was ready to throw in the towel for the whole homeschooling thing. But then I recalled that she is only three, and I have never really sat down and required her to follow my directions so I decided to try something a little different.

I got a single sheet of paper and then cut up some squares of a different colour and had her glue those squares onto the paper. She did much better with this project. She would only usually apply glue to one spot on the paper but, though this aggravated the perfectionist in me, I told myself that she did really well.

And it's true. Maybe it wasn't what I had originally planned, but it was the same lesson in a way that worked for her. And that is what matters most.