The last 2 weeks of blur!

Well friends, the last 2 weeks have been rough in so many ways.  As a mom that wants to succeed at the task, I had to take inventory or my strengths and weaknesses and had to come to reality about my personal limits.  Like I said, it has been rough, a few personal meltdowns and finally coming to grips with the decisions we made.

I can imagine the “dun, dun, dun” loud eerie music playing.

Okay, no one died! But, my husband has been working some crazy hours with his second job. I feel so blessed that he is willing to work so hard.  These crazy hours are about15-17 hours each day on the weekend and 2-3 nights during the week, him working until 9 pm.  I had no idea how fragile our home is without him.  Let’s just say in no way, can this momma go it alone.  We were getting the kids fed, educated, and dressed, but this momma wasn’t getting to be the momma I want to be.

Now this side job will last like this for about 2 months.  I know we could put our school aside for that time and just focus on being mom, but then there is always another side job that will put the same schedule on him.  On top of this, I have a little test I have to study for that is a major deal. (This goes back to that professional degree I have.) 

So momma is off having day in and out with all 4, with pure exhaustion making me just want to cry when the voices are echoing off the walls to sound like I have an entire herd of hyenas in here.  So I was getting snappy with my precious babies and losing all joy in every moment and realized something needed to change.

I heard a while back on a podcast, that it is the attributes of the stay at home mom that will change the world.  It lingered in my mind as I was facing the stresses in my life at the moment.  What echoed is that it was not the homeschool mom that is changing the world, it is the stay at home mom.  SO it shook me that it is more important for me to be mom, than it is for me to school teacher.  I never thought that I would have to choose between the 2, but this is where my world is fragile without my husband being readily available in my day.

So I made the decision painfully and heartbreakingly.  And once I mourned at the loss this year of being able to school my own children, I put my big girl panties on and got to the business of enrolling my kids.  I made the decision Tuesday, enrolled them on Wednesday, and they started on Thursday!

Here they are on their first day.  Now #1 started kindergarten. #2 is going to VPK.  #3 just wants to go to school, so she totes a backpack with her all day long.  Every time we stop somewhere, she ask if this is her school.  I am using this opportunity to tell her she needs to go pee pee in a potty, so she can go to school one day.

Now we are on day 3 of them going to school and wow!  I feel like I am coming back to my old self again.  So I am embracing the change. I am also changing things with the baby! 

She has been evicted from my bed. She is thrashing around through the night and I am not getting any sleep.  I am almost dried up and have lost all desire to nurse.  SO now I am trying to get her on a schedule to take her bottle and sleep through the night.  I had to get on the phone today and find a crib that would fit in our bedroom, because she has outgrown the bassinet.  Thankfully a friend came through with the coolest port-a-crib.

It is low to the grown, so it is not overwhelming in a small room.  Against better judgement, I will show you what my room looks like.  We do not have anything fancy, it is just the nuts and bolts of real life.

 

And I didn’t clean up from my sewing project.  I even sew in my little bedroom.  Here is my $20 Janome machine I picked up at Goodwill.

I dream of grander things, but today is not the day for them and that is that.  I will make due with what I have got, because I know one day I WILL have them the way I want, so I will practice patience.  None the less, I get a lot of sewing done at this spot.

So all this craziness and meltdowns is the reason I have been lacking any real thought to my postings and why I was late on my give-away.

I do want to share my excitement for the plans to my new family order.  I am giving myself this week to catch back up on my house.  But hopefully next week, we will start back up on the unit study side of the MFW kindergarten program.  I want to continue to show them God in everything around us and the one week unit studies are perfect for that.  The nice part is, the unit studies have so many activities, I doubt they will feel like “work”.

I am also excited to have more time to devote to making my home more stream lined.  Yeah!  I hope that by the end of the school year, I will be more at a maintenance level than a purge and organize level. SO I plan to keep FLYING with the flylady!

I better post my next giveaway, toodles!

~trish

Homes-cool tidbits

I am really enjoying the My Father’s World curriculum. I have read about a few moms that are adding this or that to strengthen the study for their youngster.  At this point, I have no desire to add to it.  It is a good strong program that is not consumed in busy-ness.

The one thing I do think it lacks for our situation is writing. Mostly because I have a soon to be 6 year old doing kindergarten, because of where her birthday fell.  So I really want to have her active in writing daily.  So I got a great writing table from Staples.  And I have her write the day of the week, the date, her name, her phone number, and the letter we are learning that week.  I am also doing this as a way to teach her the days of the week and her phone number.  When she masters her phone number, we will move to the address.

Now I do not want it to be overbearing, SO I write everything with a highlighter and then she just traces it.  Sometimes I put dots at where to start for each letter.

 

Next, we keep all the library books in a basket.  This helps us from loosing them and accruing big bills at the library.

We have a lot going on this week.  One is that #2’s speech therapy will start again 2 times a week and we have a doctors appointment on a different day.  SO I decided that we would take the week off and resume next week.  So do not be surprised when you do not see a summary just yet.

MFW-K Lesson 1 – Sun

Jesus is the light of the world.
We are off and running on our Kindergarten program.  The week long unit study proved to be a hit.  We kicked it off with the library to collect our material.
We did 2 of our lessons late at night because we spent the day at the theater or mimi’s.
Books we used:

Field trip:
Cinderella Play
 
Crafts we did:
 
Projects:
Raisin
This is after 3 days.  We have been having some cloudy days.  The kids have been noting that they are getting soft, smaller, and changing color.  I have been keeping a fresh grape to compare.

Sundial
we did 2 different sundials to see which is better, strictly for mommy’s curiosity.  Instead of using a pencil and clay as the instructions said, I used a skewer stick and a hole on cardstock paper. You can see the shadow on the paper, this is at 2 pm.  I made my paper 6 in by 6 in and was able to cover it with a 5 gallon bucker.
 
I did this style from the instructions on eHow.com The shadow was not as defined as the stick. Plus it was 12 in by 12 in and not easy to cover.  As you can see, it was no longer affective after the rain.

Noodle art

Printables I used/considered:
http://0.tqn.com/d/homeschooling/1/0/e/d/colors2.png
http://www.coloringcastle.com/sun_coloring_pages.html
http://www.starfall.com/ni/download/level-k-bl/bl-s.pdf
http://homeschooling.about.com/od/langearlyread/ss/letterscolor_5.htm

Handling the other littles:
#2 (age 4) did the first 2 days and the today’s, but sat out the rest of the week.  Mostly because of being too tired.  When he is joining us, he is loving it.
#3 (age 2) For this first week, I made sure she was sleeping. Sometimes she was up to allowable craziness.

#4 (9weeks) fussed here and there.  On day 1, while we were going through information about the sun, she started a screaming fit that lasted an hour.  I had only been through 1 book, but I had a VHS from the library about the sun, so I popped that in and excused myself.
Summary
I am grateful for this week and that we did get started.  We are not entirely prepared with being organized yet but we will get there.  I had several defining moments of ohh, yes, this is why we are homeschooling and a meltdown by mommy when I found the mud on the side of the house.
I was terrified that my children would be uneager or even unwilling. I think the change up on activities and not doing the same phonics montra day after day was a success.  The phonics is about 10-15 different activities that only have you doing about 5 each day and they change  on the day.  I like that we will have a routine with the phonics with our activities and after a while it should feel like an old hat for me.
I am really happy to finish the week  positively.  I am extremely tired and fussy with trying to implement a cleaning routine, homeschooling, and nursing the baby.  I am even considering to start supplementing just to have more energy.  She is not keeping me up at night, but I keep waking up more exhausted everyday.
Wheewhooo!
~trish