Week in Review 2016: #10

Life

How do the weeks go by so fast? This week was an unusually warm and very busy one. Temperatures have been in the upper 70's by the afternoon, and today is expected to be in the 80's. It is only the beginning of March! We've been enjoying it. On the first day of warm weather, I tried to get the children to go outside in the backyard to play, but George spotted a few carpenter bees around our garden and decided he was done with the outdoors. I did manage to get him to play in the front yard while I picked up some sticks and other debris from a recent wind storm.

Earlier in the week, I finally created a cornbread recipe I enjoy. I've never been a fan of cornbread, especially when it needs to be slathered in butter just to make it edible.

On Wednesday, Bridget, George, and I all had an appointment with the dentist for a routine cleaning. The kids look forward to going to the dentist. Bridget is finally brave enough to let the hygienist use the mechanical tools to polish her teeth. George has used them in the past, but this time chickened out, so the hygienist used a toothbrush instead. George did not like the fluoride being painted onto his teeth and started to gag, so that was the end for him. Luckily, the hygienist was mostly done anyway.

George also did not care to put the special sunglasses on so he laid like this in the chair with his arm over his eyes throughout the entire cleaning.

I am happy to report that the children's teeth (and mine as well) are perfectly healthy. They ended their visit with their goodie-bags and a rose (our dentists office has a vase of flowers at the check-out desk, mainly for the grown-ups to take, but the children love them as well. Usually they have carnations, but this time they had long-stem roses, so I now have 3 beautiful long-stem roses in a vase in my kitchen.

Liam is too young for a trip to the dentist. However, it did not seem fair to exclude him from the blog post this week. Here he is enjoying his dinner on Monday (mac and cheese, baked beans, and broccoli). All of my children are crazy about broccoli. I steam it long enough to be tender for even little Liam, and they all gobble it up. Liam could not get enough!

Something more adult-related is that I voted this week! Our primary isn't until next Tuesday, but I wanted to avoid any possible long lines and crowds and just get it over with. I spent the time to research each candidate, down to our local district judge. I was most excited on my selection for Superintendent for Public Instruction, as her goal is remove the common core and to bring back Classical education to the classroom. Even though I intend to continue homeschooling (because I enjoy it and it seems to be a good fit for my children), I am so excited that the Classical education model is making a comeback (at least I hope it does!). 

Homeschool 

Nothing too exciting to note for homeschool this week. Some weeks are like that. We just do the work, the reading, and keep going. Bridget still enjoys it, so it's not necessarily a boring week, but just a week that we didn't do any major projects and nothing really stands out.

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Week in Review 2016: #8 and #9

Life

We are getting much closer to signing a contract for our new house. Once we sign, we have to pay a non-refundable 5%, and while the building company wanted us to sign before going to the design studio, we refused to do so, as we have heard from a few people that the cost of the house can go up drastically. They weren't kidding! I picked mostly basics with very few upgrades and our price went up by about $13,000, and that is not including a few other things the estimator has not priced out yet. So we will be eliminating a few more things I think, to get closer to our goal price.

As for the children, Bridget has another loose tooth, this time one of her top teeth. It's barely loose at this point, so I do not anticipate another gap in her smile for another couple of weeks. 

George (now 4 years old) is quite the handful. Sometimes I don't know if it is because he is the middle child, if this is simply a "boy thing", or if I am just doing something completely wrong in my parenting (he is the polar opposite of his big sister). He is getting in trouble a lot lately, getting into verbal arguments (which escalate into physical ones) with his sister or in a hitting fight with his little brother, who is now learning to hit back. Every time I try to correct his behavior and talk to him about it, he shuts down. He closes his eyes and pretends to be asleep, and is unresponsive. Or he screams so loudly and continuously that there is no way that I can be heard. I hope that I can figure this out soon, as some peace in our household would be nice. His doctor said that this behavior is not too unusual for his age, so I am holding out hope that he will soon grow out of it.

Liam is as cute as ever. The other night after family prayers, I had to take a few extra minutes in our living room to discuss with George that grunting and growling throughout the prayer was unacceptable. Liam, sticking to his routine, took his own teddy bear and blanket to his room and climbed in the rocker. When I got in there, he was rocking himself back and forth while humming one of our lullabies to himself.

I did not intend to vent about my frustrations with George here, but I guess I just needed to get it out. I am one tired and worn out momma. It has certainly been a trying past couple of weeks.

Homeschool 

We finished reading Little House in the Big Woods and started and finished The Happy Hollisters at Pony Hill Farm. I had never read or even heard of the Happy Hollisters until reading a couple passages from our Writing With Ease book. We were able to find a couple of the books at the library (even the librarians did not know what they were and had a difficult time finding them on the shelf, as no one had borrowed them for years). They were written in the 1950's, and I have to say, my daughter absolutely loved the book. Our local library has 3 more of the books in the series, which has 33 books total. I don't know what we'll do after we read all that our library has.

We are going back and reviewing what we have learned in history and science, as a couple of months ago I stopped both to focus on writing and reading with Bridget, as she was having a difficult time with both. Now that it has been resolved, we're playing catch up. It is going quickly, as she has retained much of what she had already learned. She is still in no way wanting to talk about mummies. Every time they come up as we study Egyptian history, she refuses to listen to anything I read. That does not stop me from reading it and expecting a narration from her (which she does, mostly unwillingly), though I have promised not to show her any pictures of mummies.

George is learning his alphabet and I am having a hard time getting him to pronounce "L-M-N-O-P" as individual letters and not some jumbled noise. He is also unable to say the letter Q. He pronounces it like "tew". We have done some letter recognition, but not much. With him being only 4, I'm in no rush to get him to read on his own. He loves being read to, and at this age that is more important to me.

I already have been planning for next school year, starting with a schedule for history. We will be studying the Middle Ages, and the Story of the World book has 42 chapters, and there were a couple of other topics I wanted to cover more in depth (like Polynesia and Ireland) so I am just trying to make it all fit. Just like this year, we will also be studying history through the summer, as that is the only way I will have enough time to cover what I want to cover without cramming it all in to a short amount of time. We are also switching over to a 4-day school week, leaving Fridays open for field trips, catch-up days, reading days, and special time with Daddy, so while stories related to what we study in history will be read on Fridays and over the weekend, I only have 2 days a week for a structured history lesson (alternating days with science). That is the plan at least.

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Week in Review 2016: #7

Life

The children were able to see Daddy a lot more this week. It was Parent's Week for Bridget's dance classes, so he was able to make it to those and I brought the boys with me so that they could get some time in with him and so that the boys could also watch Bridget dance.

Today, my mother-in-law spent the day with us. We went to the library, which is an outing the children always seem to enjoy. I was able to get a good selection of books for science and the children and Grandma picked out a good amount of fun books to read. After the library, we met Daddy at our favorite Thai restaurant for lunch.

Other than those happenings, our week was pretty uneventful. Oh wait....

Last Saturday, Bridget lost her second tooth!!!! You'll have to excuse the tiny bit of blood in her mouth. I literally took the picture seconds after the tooth came out. That night, she put it under her pillow and the Tooth Fairy left her a dollar.

This second experience was very different for me because Bridget's permanent tooth had just broken through behind her baby tooth a day or two before her baby tooth came out. I had never seen such a thing, but later learned that it's called a "shark tooth" and that they're quite common (occurring in 1 out of 10 children). A week later, it does seem as though her tongue has pushed her permanent tooth forward a bit, or perhaps I am only imagining it. Here is what it looked like before the baby tooth came out.

Homeschool 

We are really enjoying science right now and have been spending a little more time on that.

We have been reading Little House in the Big Woods every night after Liam goes to sleep. The kids look forward to it. We're almost done and that makes us sad, but I already have a few more read-alouds lined up.

I am also transitioning to a no-school-on-Friday schedule. I needed to have some wiggle room when it comes to make-up days, doctors appointments, and field trips, without entirely giving up our Saturdays. So far it is working and I have already begun planning next years school schedule (second grade is coming sooner than we think!) using a 4-day a week schedule. I'm liking it, as it will give us Fridays for field trips and Daddy time (my husband has off or only works half a day once tax season is over and we like to make the most of it).

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Week in Review 2016: #5 and #6

Life

I dropped the ball last week and did not feeling like blogging. My husband is working 60 hours a week and it has been just me Monday-Saturday taking care of the children and the house. It's rough, but I'm still here, though some days just barely.

It has been another special week for George. This week (February 7th-14th) is Congenital Heart Defect Awareness Week. You can click the link to read about George's journey. Thinking about everything he went through brings up a lot of memories and emotions and I cannot help but hold him a little bit tighter and for a bit longer each day. Also in George news, he had his 4-year check-up on Tuesday. He is a whopping 38 pounds, closing the gap on his 46 pound big sister. This lands him in the 70th percentile for weight. For height, he is in the 78th percentile. He's going to be a big one like his daddy! At the end of his visit, he got four shots. I ended up taking him back to the doctor today because he seems to be having a reaction to one of the vaccines (most likely DTap). On Thursday, I drew a line around the affected area to see if it was still growing and sure enough it was. There is no red line though and nothing to indicate cellulitis, so the doctor thinks it should be mostly gone by Monday. We will of course be keeping a close eye on it all weekend.

It finally snowed this afternoon. There have been a few flakes falling here and there over the past month but nothing that stuck. The children were of course excited. I did not want to go out in the snow because I was cold enough being inside. But the children wanted to go out so we did.

There was not enough snow for a big snowman so Bridget made a baby snow man with the snow that had collected on the patio table.

I wanted a picture of all three of them together. This was the best they could do.

It was no easy task getting a picture of George. He was all over the place, throwing snow balls and hitting snow off of the swing set. I was happy to end up with this one. I think he was getting ready to throw a snowball at me. 

This was the first year that Liam got to walk around in the snow. At first, he just stood there taking it all in. He didn't know what it was and he was unsure about moving. He finally did some walking and tried to pick up the snow but was unsuccessful with those huge gloves on. 

Bridget making a snow angel. The snow really wasn't deep enough to make a good one.

I got to be in a picture too. I am glad I invested in a pair of ski pants 7 years ago for that one time I went skiing. They have come in handy over the years. I kept my warm pajama pants on underneath. It is the only way I could tolerate being out there. 

Homeschool 

This past week has been a catch-up week. We've focused a lot on science and even did a scientific demonstration on camouflage that I had wanted to do when we first covered it but never got around to it in the beginning of the school year. Bridget did not mind going over what we had already learned. She loves any sort of experiment or activity to break up the usual school work.

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