Analytic Reverter

New blog

2011-06-15T13:44:00.001-04:00

I'm going to say -- tentatively -- that I have successfully exported all this stuff. New blog here.

Arg.

2011-06-15T13:43:00.000-04:00

Technology is complicated. Hotmail hasn't been working -- it will load everything, I can click on everything except for my messages. I can see them, but can't click on them to read them. In googling the problem, I kept reading complaints about how unreliable hotmail is and how much better gmail is. I haven't had problems with hotmail in the past, and I've had an account with them since D was a baby. But I figured I would set up a gmail account and forward stuff from my hotmail account. Which is fine, except I figure I will want to phase out using hotmail if gmail goes well, which means switching over to my gmail address on things like my blog. My blog is currently associated with a hotmail address; to do that, I had to create a google account for my hotmail address. Since each gmail address automatically has its own google account, I can't switch my blog email to a gmail address. And I haven't figured out if I can switch my blog to a different google account. So I registered for a slightly different blog name with my new gmail address, and I'm going to see if I can import my old hotmail-linked blog. Blerg.

Monday, June 13

2011-06-13T23:00:00.002-04:00

A seems to be over being sick, but now, he's cutting eye teeth. Poor dude. I managed to do two 10 minute exercise segments this morning, and my productivity went downhill from there. I forgot that D's piano lesson has been moved to Mondays; the music academy called to ask where he was.

I did get outside and set up a soaker hose on one of the garden beds and transplanted the last handful of mums. They looked pretty sad by that point, so I hope they do OK. Stuff continues to grow. Beans are so rewarding to grow. They get so big so fast.

Most of the rest of the day was spent making food for people, cleaning up messes, trying to calm down A when he was upset over something, and despairing at how far behind I was falling no matter how hard I tried to keep up. And reading. And puttering around on the computer while A tried to fall asleep in my arms. We ate dinner late; it was after 8 by the time the kids were done eating. They actually seemed pretty tired by the end of it, and went up to bed and turned off the lights after a while without being asked/nagged/threatened with loss of privileges.

R was woken up early by A. He sat up in bed and said "All that screaming is waking me up!" in a chipper, amused voice. He was up earlier than usual, which I thought would be a good thing, but sadly, he just ended up falling asleep before 6pm. I kind of hoped he would just stay asleep for the night, but that was not very likely. He woke up around 9pm and started asking for cereal. And that's why I'm up at 1am; he's falling asleep on the couch. I did manage to get A off to sleep around 11 and I've been catching up on work around the house I wasn't able to do while he was awake. I'm not brave enough to tackle the bathroom tonight, though.

tree guru

2011-06-13T01:06:00.002-04:00

I enjoy it when I hear about something or someone, somewhere for the first time, and then suddenly I hear about it elsewhere. For instance, a few days ago on Unstuffed I read a post about Diana Beresford-Kroeger, tree guru. Tonight, while cleaning up after dinner, I was listening to CBC radio. The topic of the show was how greenery is good for us; the portion I heard was about exposure to nature and green, growing things helping lengthen attention span and curb impulsive behaviours. One of the clips on the show? Diana Beresford-Kroeger. I felt like a nature geek, already knowing who she was before they completed her intro.

Saturday, June 11

2011-06-13T00:57:00.002-04:00

I kind of took today off. N was out of town and I wasn't feeling well last night. I slept in, did a bit of tidying and getting kids fed, and then headed outside with A in the carrier to get some quiet while I mowed the lawn (with a reel mower). I skipped watering the garden because I watered it so late yesterday and there is rain in the forecast.

We had a little lunch and I started some baking: bread in the breadmaker, and squash, banana bread, and chocolate cake in the oven. Then the kids and I headed outside to enjoy the back yard. They filled the little tub with water, donned goggles, and stuck their heads under water. M and S tried talking to each other under water. R grabbed a scrub brush and scrubbed the outside of the tub. Everyone was pretty chilly by the time we went in. I sent them up for showers while I made dinner: baked potatoes, yams, zucchini in butter with herbs from the garden, and fried eggs. The yams were leftovers, so the dinner was pretty easy to make, and the clean up wasn't too bad. Unfortunately, the fresh air and water play didn't really tire them out, so they were up for quite a while after bedtime. Ugh.

Friday, June 10

2011-06-11T01:00:00.002-04:00

Nice cool sunny morning. I could happily putter around and clean stuff up and organize and scrub and mow and declutter and bake all day long on days like this. I did some of that kind of stuff in the morning and then headed out with the older two to their French lessons. We went to Home Depot to look for some zucchini plants to replace the ones I pulled up, and ended up with 2 zucchini and a butternut squash, parsley (which I've been looking for to plant with the tomatoes), and lavendar. Mmmmm.

After we arrived back home, I planted the new stuff, watered the garden, pulled a couple of teeny weeds, and got covered with these teeny tiny light brown crawling thingies. They were all over the garden. If I put my hand on the soil, say to fill up the space around a new plant, they would run all over my hands and arms. Not huge swarms, but more than a few. I'm not sure what they were. There are also lots of ants running around the garden, so I'm hoping they're not aphids. I have research to do.

Thursday, June 9

2011-06-10T08:07:00.002-04:00

I feel like I'm guilty of false advertising... this blog is supposed to be about homeschooling, but at this time of year, we just do a bit here and there, so I've just been going on and on about gardening. I'm hoping to get the kids more involved in the gardening, but for now, they like to swing on the rope or fill the little tub with water and put on goggles and stick their faces in and things like that. And today was no different. I did a bit of watering and pulled about three teeny weeds. I also planted out some swiss chard; when I planted it, I planted it way too close together, and I've run out of seed. So I tried just transplanting some of the swiss chard to thin it. It may have been too early, since they don't have any true leaves yet, but I didn't want the roots to get too extensive before I made the move. I have eight little seedlings transplanted now.

I checked the compost today and thought it was doing well... didn't smell, I didn't see any flies, but then I noticed two little wiggly maggots on the inside of the bin. Arg. I tossed them out and tossed on some sawdust.

D is getting much better with his multiplying. We have a Dutch blitz card deck, which is basically 4 sets of 1-10. I shuffle it, flip out two, and then he multiplies the numbers. I had the brilliant idea today to have D deal out the cards and say the multiplication out loud, so I could check that he was right and still make dinner at the same time. Then D did the same for M, except with addition.

I went out grocery shopping with the two little kids while the big kids & N were at taekwondo. As we were leaving, a motorcycle drove by the store, and R was super excited. Then a second drove by, and he couldn't believe his luck. Then the motorcycle came and parked beside us. He noticed it as we were pulling away, and said, "The motorcycle came to Mike Dean's! Hurray!" A few minutes later, he told me, "You know Mom, a motorcycle would be much faster." When I asked him where we would put the groceries, he said in the van. So I asked how we would get the groceries home. He figured we could walk back to the store and get the van and drive it home.

Living Lightly

2011-06-09T08:19:00.003-04:00

As I've mentioned before, I'm feeling the pull towards living self-reliantly more lately, as I've been out in the garden more. But I also start thinking about sustainability, because I think self-reliance is about more than my family not going hungry. When I think about living self-reliantly, I think about our family working to meet more of our needs on our own. And not only that, but improving the resources we have to work with. Or at least not depleting resources so quickly.

So for instance, we eat a lot of canned tomatoes. Currently, I buy them at the store. Which means they were factory farmed using methods which deplete the soil and use a lot of fossil fuels. The cans are recyclable, but recycling still takes energy and is not perfect, which is why it's the "last resort" in the "reduce, reuse, recycle" hierarchy. But I could can my own tomatoes. I could buy heaps of tomatoes from the local farmer who is not certified organic but uses sustainable farming methods and can them at home in glass jars that can be reused many times, or if I'm feeling really ambitious, I can try to grow the tomatoes myself in my back yard. I still get a year's supply of canned tomatoes, but (presumably) with a smaller footprint and less waste, since I would be composting what I didn't use and not using chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

So these are the kinds of things I think about when I think about how we should go about living more self-reliantly. And I tend to get bogged down in it. Say I figure we should have a year's supply of hair care products. I could stockpile plastic bottles of shampoo and conditioner. But that reminds me of how much plastic is being used just so my family can wash their hair. And I know it's, like, super cool to hate plastic, but I think there is a very good reason to avoid it. A few very good reasons. I think it has its place, and I'm glad for the medical and technological advances that have been possible because of it, but I feel like a bit of a tool when I'm rinsing out and recycling yet another plastic bottle of hair elixir. So what do we do? Switch to baking soda and vinegar? Except... those still come in packages. Paper for the soda, but plastic for the vinegar. Maybe we would be using less plastic, especially since I would likely use the vinegar bottle for storing water (if I were feeling ambitious and all emergency preparednessy), but it's still plastic. So... I could make my own vinegar? I suppose. I mean, people do that. I would just need something to ferment into wine and then make vinegar from it. But considering I barely have enough lettuce for a salad for one person out in the garden, I'm not sure that relying on my gardening skills for our hair care products is going to work out.

But that's how I get bogged down. I feel like I can't change part of something without following the logic behind the change to the very end.

I try to use the church's guidelines for preparedness and self-reliance to guide me here. And that tends to come back to living within your means, small and simple changes that lead to progress, doing as much as you can on your own, having a garden, and building your community. Now, that last one may not be so obvious, but I think it follows from other principles.

I feel kind of silly going on about this when so many other have, much more eloquently, and with more real-life success. I've been reading Unstuffed and getting inspired not only by what she does to avoid generating waste, but also by her herbal knowledge and wildcrafting ways. I've also read Ghost Town Farm (by "read," I mean I started back at the oldest post and worked my way to the beginning, though I did skip the ones about local activities). I am just amazed by what she's done. The animals in the back yard and the gardening are awesome, of course, but I've been really intrigued by her dumpster diving. They managed to feed two pigs (and there is a reason they're called 'pigs') out of dumpsters. A large portion of their other animal food has come from dumpsters, as well. And they also get household items -- she posted once about breaking her rolling pin, and then finding one not long after in a dumpster (a store had dumped excess merchandise).

And I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who mulls over the things I get bogged down on. D and I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle a couple of years ago. There is a lot of talk in there about eating local, sustaining your local economy, etc. And I get why it's a good thing. But bananas a cheap and my kids will eat them. When M begs for tomato sandwiches in the winter, how do you say no to a kid asking for healthy food? One of the stores we shop at always has lots of reduced produce, and I thought, I can rationalize buying it, because it will just be thrown out if I don't buy it, right? And then I came across this post in Unstuffed.

Wednesday, June 8

2011-06-09T07:40:00.002-04:00

A continues to get better. I mean, it's not like he was super sick, but it was enough that it felt like my day was revolving around him. His eyes are much better, as well.

I did just a bit of watering in the garden, to keep the seeds and seedlings moist. I noticed that one of the zucchini had a itsy bitsy yellow zucchini growing on it. I also noticed that the small white patches on the zucchini leaves had grown, and the main stems were now coated with the stuff. I looked it up in What's Wrong with my Plant?, a mostly useless book that does have a very nice flowchart at the back to help you figure out what's wrong with your plant. I say mostly useless, but I realized that part of my problem with it is that it doesn't tell you what to do, only what the problem is, but really, that's all the title asks: what's wrong. I also consulted my Rodale's encyclopedia. For mildew on a bush like roses, it said to cut off the affected leaves, prune to allow more air circulation, and apply sulfur, but for a garden vegetable like zucchini, it said to immediately remove the affected plant. Sigh. So my zucchini are gone.

For the first time in a long time, we had a chore meeting. Having the kids more involved in the housework is something that is always lurking around in the back of my mind, and kind of scary, so I tend to ignore it. But I know how important it is. Ever since D was a baby, I have felt strongly about it, but I've been so terrible at implementing it. N is totally a natural at it. I am not. I always want to have the house at a certain base level of control before I dive into letting the kids help, because I know that things will go even more slowly and even less progress will be made. But I'm generally behind with the housework, so I keep putting it off. Anyway, I decided that today, I should at least have a chore meeting, since that seems to help so much. The kids seem to accept that they have to do their chores more readily when they have taken part in the planning. It went OK; everyone pretty much did their assigned chores, except for M, who only balked at doing what she was asked because she was upset with me for something else at the time.

I worked with D, again, on his math. He really needs work on memorizing his higher times tables. Right now, he uses tricks to figure out when he's multiplying by 12 or 15, which I suppose I do, too, but he's also still slow with 7, 8, and 9. And he mostly uses tricks to figure out when he's multiplying by 9. But he's getting better each day. S is working on multiplying as well.

Piano practice isn't going spectacularly at the moment. Someone was pretending the piano was a race car and knocked something loose inside (kind of easy to do, since it's jury rigged in there) so the sustain pedal is always on, and some of the keys don't work. I'll have to open it up and look under the hood.

Today was a hot enough day that people were keeping their kids home from school (because the school was not air conditioned) but our house was actually pretty comfortable inside most of the day. Still, we switched school time to the afternoon so I could work in the cooler morning.

My poor meal plan has been neglected again. I was supposed to make a lentil casserole in the crockpot today, but was distracted by catching up on work and keeping A happy in the morning. So instead, we had the pizza bagels (bagel pizzas?) I was going to make for lunch earlier in the week, D made a ridiculous amount of mac & cheese, and we finished off the lettuce and had some baby carrots. And even with everyone wanting to help (everyone volunteered for "helping with meals" during the chore meeting, so I said everyone could do it), making dinner went fairly smoothly.

There was a big storm in the city around 5; we just got some thunder and a bit of rain. I'm glad, though. I was worried about my teeny sproutlings being washed away.

Tuesday June 7

2011-06-08T08:09:00.004-04:00

A seemed a little better this morning -- more energy, temperature down -- but he seems to have an eye infection in both eyes. I've been cleaning them out with warm water and applying breastmilk, but I can't keep his hands off his eyes.

I didn't need to do much in the garden, just adjust the soaker hoses a bit and switch the water supply from one garden to the other mid-day. I did water some areas with seeds that looked dry on the surface with the watering can, but it went very quickly. A neighbour came by to take another load of the topdressing, and he saw the hoses set up and was very interested in them. And it's no wonder, because they are awesome. The transplants have perked right up and seem to have grown overnight. The beans are starting to come up, the peas are all up about an inch, and the nasturtium seeds that I saved two years ago (I think) have started popping up. I wasn't sure if they would germinate. And I saw a few little leaves coming up around the cucumber where I planted the lettuce mix.

That was about it for us going outside today. A was cranky and warm again by noon; I spent a lot of time carrying him around. R and M and S were busy building forts in the corners between couches, stacking up couch cushions and tossing blankets over them, and building blanket piles and cushion towers for jumping. D worked on some math and we worked on some memorizing. He has been reading The 6 Most Important Decisions You'll Ever Make: A Guide for Teens by Sean Covey. He picked it up at the library. It's full of funny little anecdotes and comics, which he keeps on sharing with anyone in earshot as he reads it.

PBJ for dinner tonight. Well, PBJ for those going to scouts/meetings, leftover pancakes for the rest of us. I recently made a meal plan for the month and corresponding grocery list, but I'm not really following it with these sick kids.

Miraculously, A fell asleep and stayed asleep at around 6pm. I ended up rushing around to get caught up on the cleaning. I even managed to vacuum and clean the bathroom (well, parts of it). I also went outside to turn off the hose. Parts of the surface were still dry, but I think the way it works is that the water spreads out as it travels down. I noticed that the ground along the edge of one of the beds was very moist, and there were big nightcrawlers up on the surface of the garden. There was a mating pair just by one of the zucchini plants. I'm hoping that's a good sign, and it doesn't mean that I put in too much water.

Picture Post

2011-06-07T09:42:00.002-04:00

Because I'm too lazy to go back and edit pics into my posts:

I didn't notice that black garbage can in the frame when I took the picture. It is our compost bin; I pull it out into the sunshine when we're out there to help heat it up. Not because I like having trash cans randomly sitting in our yard.

Monday, June 6

2011-06-07T09:19:00.002-04:00

Tummy bug still visiting us... today, A was cranky and feverish. Poor little dude.

The kids came outside with me while I worked in the garden, watering the seeds/sprouts and setting up a soaker hose. I watered the plants once or twice after transplanting them, but I'm trying to do the infrequent, deep watering thing. Our soil here is on the clay-ey side, and it didn't hold water well. Watering did not go well, and I think the garden suffered. I'm hoping that it will be better this year, with the raised beds full of compost and top dressing. Weekly deep watering is supposed to help plants grow deep, strong roots and get more water from deep in the soil.

A loves playing in the water as it comes out of the watering can; unfortunately, he also likes to play in the wet dirt. I ended up setting a full watering can on its side on our picnic table. A had a blast splashing around in the "shower."

We managed to do some math and reading in the afternoon, when it was too hot to be outside, but school work is definitely winding down. D and S have been spending more time outside, riding bikes, playing with kids, at the playground, etc.

I still had pots and pans sitting around from two nights ago. A managed to nap for a while in the late afternoon, which gave me some time to tackle them. I don't consider myself a neatnick or whatever, but man is it aggravating to have a messy house and not be able to clean it up, even just to my fairly lax standards.

Saturday, June 4

2011-06-06T09:58:00.002-04:00

The tummy bug has continued to circulate around -- D woke up sick in the middle of the night and spent a lot of the day on the couch. R was sick again. I think A might be fighting it off; he randomly gets cranky, whiny, and clingy, sometimes grabbing at his stomach and pulling his knees up.

I went out to the garden to water the seeds & sprouts, and I ended up planting some more lettuce mix. I read an idea in The Urban Homestead for planting greens. You take a variety of types and sizes and seed them evenly across the area you have. Then as they come up, you thin them, eating the baby greens. You just kind of keep up with it, eventually leaving a few heads of lettuce and thinning the stuff around them so they can have room to grow fully. The smaller greens continue to grow around them. So, I spread the lettuce mix out around my cucumber plants. Hopefully, they will have time to grow before the cucumber spreads too much.

N went to Home Depot for a deck building tutorial. In the afternoon, my dad came by with a chipper and a chainsaw and took down two cedar trees in the corner of our yard. (Well, they start out as one, but the trunks start splitting right away so it looks like two full trees, and he took them down one at a time.) The kids enjoyed watching Grandpa work. So did the neighbours who gathered around. The garden gets a bit more sunlight now.

One of the neighbours brought over an armload of rhubarb for us. I should have been starting dinner, but instead for some reason I decided to make banana bread and rhubarb crumble, and then make pancakes, bacon, and asparagus for dinner. We ate so late and the kitchen was such a mess and I was so tired by the end of it. Ugh. And R and A were both still feeling blerg.

R and I saw a neat fly when we were out by the garden. It had the shape and wings of a deer fly, but it was bright orange. It hung out on the sorrel for a bit, then landed on me a couple of times, then seemed annoyed by my attempts to get a picture of it and flew off. We also saw a june bug digging in the ground, though I couldn't tell if it was digging out or in. Maybe it was laying eggs; it kind of reminded me of a turtle laying and burying eggs.

Friday, June 3

2011-06-04T01:57:00.002-04:00

N had the day off today. Huzzah! I woke up late and we ended up skipping any read aloud stuff. Instead, I gave the boys a bunch of bookwork while I fed and dressed the little kids. Then we went outside; there is dead wood scattered around our oak trees, and we were looking for the stuff that was low enough for N to cut it out. We also cut back some branches that were low enough to interfere when we mowed. Then N took down a dying cedar tree while I nervously hovered and kept the kids away from the fall zone.

We had a nice lunch outside and then N took the boys in to French; M went along with him. By this time, the house was a mess. I had tried to slice up a watermelon to go with lunch, but apparently it was not good, and exploded a little all over my counter when I cut into it. It was really gross and smelled terrible. Ugh. But before I could deal with that, A needed to be put down for a nap, and of course once he was asleep, I decided to write a rambly blog post that has been rattling around in the back of my mind. Turned out to be a good decision, though, because before long, R was saying "My tummy, my tummy," and then throwing up. If I had been off in the kitchen, no way would I have caught as much of it as I did. Of course, I might have been able to bring in a plastic container to catch it, instead of a folded receiving blanket. And since I hadn't yet cleaned up the kitchen, there was no empty sink to dump it in. Urgh. Life is so gross.

I managed to tuck R in on the armchair with a movie and get a couple of pans cleaned before A woke up, and then I had to sit with him for a while so he could wake up fully and move past the cranky-whiny-clingy phase of waking. I did eventually manage to clean up the kitchen, though. In spite of R following me around, clinging to my leg, and asking for a carry hug to the couch. So I would pick him up and carry him to the couch, and then go back to the kitchen. Five minutes later, he's back in the kitchen, asking to be carried to a different couch. By the time I managed to finish in the kitchen, he was pretty cranky, so I sat down beside him, and he fell asleep in a few minutes.

I put up another pole bean tent and planted some sorrel seeds -- I read recently that although they are a perennial, the quality declines after a few years so you should sow new ones. N spent some time helping M learn to ride her bike, and then we had dinner outside and a fire to try and work through some of the branches that fell last year. And our Christmas tree. We followed that up with some marshmallow roasting. M is a very talented marshmallow roaster. What D lacks in skill, he makes up for in quantity.

We saw some neat bugs today. I spotted a little bright green beetle thing with black wings. We saw something that looks like pictures I've seen of ladybug larvae, except almost all black and bigger than an adult ladybug. We saw a couple of little beetle things on our picnic table which looked like they were meant to blend in very well with bark, and of course a couple of spiders. Oh, and a lovely bright blue damselfly.

Self-sufficiency

2011-06-03T13:12:00.002-04:00

With spring in full swing and progress being made in our yard, I'm feeling the pull back into working on different aspects of self-sufficiency. I was really interested in it when D was a baby: read lots about voluntary simplicity, even attended a workshop on it; did a lot of work to plan and track our food storage; started learning skills. But as the kids grew older and more numerous, and our homeschooling took up more time, and as we've been moving around, I've been moving away from it. I used to use cloth diapers for the kids and hung them to dry, even in the winter. Now, there has been one problem after another with using cloth -- hard water, then needing to strip the diapers once we got new, soft water, and now our washing machine doesn't have anywhere to drain, so I drain it into buckets and empty the in the kitchen sink, so washing dipes is not feasible.

Lots of things I've done have kind of gone the same way. But now, I'm hoping to work on adding in good habits, either returning to them or starting them for the first time. Like making yogurt, which I used to do all the time. Or starting a compost bin, which I've been meaning to for years and just started recently.

I'm still really interested in reading about it, reading about people who go for a year without using any petroleum-based products, for instance, or only use a gallon of water a day or don't buy anything new for a year. But hopefully, now I can get back on track with incorporating those ideas that will work for our family. N mentioned the other day that since the weather was getting warmer, we could cut back on our meat consumption. We already don't eat meat every day; in theory, I cook a roast or chicken or something like that once a week, and we use the leftovers in a couple of other meals. In practice, I'll buy three or four roasts when they're on sale, cook them all at once, and put lots of leftovers in the freezer. It comes out to about the same thing -- a few pounds of meat for a family of 7 for a week. I sometimes buy bones or bony cuts of meat (like chicken legs) for soup and gravy. And I buy bacon whenever it is on sale. So cutting back on meat feels like it would be difficult at this point, but I think we can swing it. Though I'll probably still buy bacon. And I plan to work on learning how to cook fish, other than in mushroom gravy or chowder. And we'll eat lots of eggs.

I've been doing well with using cloth menstrual pads and just recently started using sea sponges, which have been great. I experimented with using shampoo alternatives for a while, but I need a lot of conditioning, and everything that can substitute for conditioner seems really awkward to use or pungent. But I'm not crazy about all the bottles of hair product we go through. I would love to find it in bulk.

We've been gradually eating more heavily packaged convenience foods over the last few years. Definitely an area where I need to plan meals better and keep packaging in mind as I do so. Food storage does complicate this somewhat, so I'll be working on finding a balance here.

I really like the church's teachings on self-reliance and how well it meshes with voluntary simplicity and consumption reduction. When I was first learning about both things, I found the parallels exciting and encouraging. I enjoyed the challenges presented by trying to change what we were doing to bring how we were living more in line with these ideals. Now, everything just kind of feels like a hassle. I think I need to slow down and make some time for this. D is always interested in this kind of thing; getting him on board and working together should help.

I've been looking at our yard and making plans for the future. Take down most of the trees, replace them with fruit-bearing trees. Plant raspberry, blackberry, blueberry, red currant, maybe gooseberry and elderberry. Add another garden bed, plus smaller beds for asparagus and rhubarb. Use the partly shady spots for wild greens like nettle. Eventually, add a chicken coop and a rabbit hutch, and maybe a beehive on the garage roof.

But there is a lot of work to put in before we get there. We're putting up a fence this year, and hopefully grading the worst parts of the yard. I think those are the last two big jobs in the yard. Other than taking down trees. N just took down the smallest, an old, half-dead cedar. It was between two other trees, right beside our neighbour's new fence, and the clothesline was on the last side. Everything survived unscathed. Even my little comfrey patch came through fine. Phew!

Thursday, June 2

2011-06-03T07:47:00.002-04:00

It was chilly in the house this morning. A nice change after the heat and humidity. The kids have had a hard time falling asleep the last couple of nights, and so they all slept in this morning in the cool. I spent some extra time reading this morning while they slept in. So nice.

I found some more lettuce sprouts and some beet and turnip sprouts coming up in the garden; the chamomile is just starting to bloom.

Between a late start and a busy afternoon/evening, we had a short day of school today. Reading and piano.

I made yogurt this afternoon. It's a habit I never quite manage to make permanent, and whenever I start back in after being away from it for a while, I wonder why I haven't done it in so long. R has been asking for smoothies, so when he asked what was in the jars I put in the oven, and I told him I was making yogurt, he was super excited and wanted smoothies now. I told him we would need to wait until tomorrow, and it broke his heart.

D had a piano lesson this afternoon and then we were somehow in a big rush to make dinner before leaving for taekwondo. While I was at the grocery store, I ran into a friend from high school. I never run into people when I'm out, so it made my evening.

The Urban Homestead

2011-06-02T14:02:00.002-04:00

I recently read The Urban Homestead (by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen), a book by a couple living in LA in a small home on a small plot (1/10th of an acre, IIRC) and living as self-sufficiently as possible. I've been interested in learning about living more self-sufficiently for a while, though I've probably done more reading than doing. This is one of my favourite books on the subject so far. Lots of simple projects, presented clearly and plainly, so that I felt like I could jump in and actually do these things. I have been wanting a compost pile for years, but it wasn't until reading their description of a simple compost bin made from a garbage can that I felt like I could actually do it. And I did, the compost bin is in place and starting to fill up.

Since the authors are working with a small space in the city, their ideas and advice are better suited to my little back yard than the self-sufficiency books I've read for people living on a 5 acre farm. They live in LA, so the climate they're working with is very different from mine, but I found this wasn't too much of an issue. Most of the gardening books they read when they started out assumed the reader was living in a more temperate climate, and they said they had to do a lot of work to figure out how to garden in their climate, so I think they're sensitive to that kind of issue in their writing.

I really like the section on cleaning and natural alternatives. I've read lots of ideas about using things like baking soda and vinegar, but the way they cover it in their book was, again, clear and concise; after reading through it, I felt like I could go out, get the items they listed, and know what to use for which type of cleaning. Their "big three" products are baking soda, vinegar, and liquid castille soap. They explain how to use them and when. This really clarified things for me, especially how to use the soap. I've been using baking soda and vinegar for a while, but castille soap was beyond me. No longer!

In some (most) of the self-sufficiency books I've read, there is a bit of an "all or nothing" vibe. Even though the authors encourage you to do what you can and start off slowly, I definitely get the impression that my goal should be to live completely self-sufficiently. And that's overwhelming. I don't get this vibe from The Urban Homestead. It feels more like "do what you can/what works for you." I find that attitude much more likely to inspire me to gradually change my habits, which leads to lasting change instead of feeling overwhelmed.

Coyne and Knutzen have a blog, Root Simple, which is also a very interesting and enlightening read.

Wednesday, June 1

2011-06-02T00:23:00.003-04:00

I really enjoy days when I manage to wake up early, which I did this morning, thanks to N. I had plenty of time to read scriptures and write in my journal and exercise and run a load of laundry and shower before the majority of the kids were awake. It was a beautiful windy day for hanging laundry, and R came outside with me while I watered the garden. We found a jumping spider hanging out on our screen door and munching on a lacewing fly (or something similar).

We read some more Carl Sandburg poetry, which D declared weird, and some history, and the section on spiders in the Handbook of Nature Study. I gave the kids a riddle to solve. You are toasting bread in a small pan, just big enough to fit two slices. Each side takes three minutes to toast, and you want to toast three slices. How can you toast both sides of all three slices in under ten minutes? D figured it out more quickly than I was expecting. When I read that riddle, I figured it would have something to do with shuffling the slices around, but it didn't make sense to me that anything like that should help. Even when I read the solution, and physically acted it out with playing cards, it didn't feel like it should work. The world didn't quite make sense any more if you could toast bread more quickly by taking some of out of the pan before it was done. Then once I realized that you're just making sure that there is never an empty space in the pan, the world shifted back into focus and made sense again. But it was awkward for a while.

The kids are rewarded with more free time when they make up a game and get along while they play it. Today, they pulled out the goggles and other swimming paraphernalia and made up some kind of a game, and then used blankets to make a fort or something under the coffee table. Well, R and M and S played; D read.

A couple of A's eyeteeth have popped through, and he seems to be napping better now. That gave me time this afternoon to look up some recipes, make a meal plan for the upcoming month, and make a grocery etc. list as well.

It was so nice and breezy and cool outside after dinner. I finished up mowing the lawn and the kids splashed around and played in the yard. Well, not A; he was once again stuck in the backpack carrier. When N came home, he took M out on a bigger bike without training wheels and gave her an intro lesson. She said it was the best and most exciting day of her life, which is saying something because up until this evening, the best day of her life was spent at a water park.

Tuesday, May 31

2011-06-01T00:54:00.002-04:00

I don't normally enjoy the heat. I'm not fond of blazing sun or sweltery humidity. But on the first really hot day of the year -- like today, with a "feels like" of 40C -- I enjoy the fact that the air in the house is still cool, so when we come back in from outside, it's actually a bit refreshing.

I haven't been too quick in the morning for a while. We always start school late, and now that I'm hanging laundry and keeping seeds evenly moist and taking kids out with me to do these outdoor chores, we're starting even later, sometimes shifting school to after lunch. That's what we did today. Laundry, exercise, eating, cleaning up, outdoor work in the morning. I sent D out to mow at the front of the house just after 8, but the grass is already too thick out there for the reel mower.

For lunch, I made artichoke dip for the first time. The kids all hated it, but I liked it. I had toasted bagels for "dipping," but the kids ended up just having theirs with butter or cream cheese.

After lunch, I played a simple math game with the kids. I took a rook deck, dealt out two cards at a time, and D or S had to multiply them. For M, it was adding. Then we played Lingua Fun!, a game for learning French. There are three types of cards in the deck, and you can make sentences with them by placing them in the right order -- a red card, then a white, then a blue. The red cards have something like I want, we will, etc.; the white cards say to go, to eat pizza, etc.; the blue cards say today, on Wednesday, with my sister, etc. It didn't go too well because half of the people playing were not too interested in the game, and R and A both wanted to get in on the action. But I like the game.

I read to D a bit from "A Splendid Exchange" and I helped the other kids with various things they were working on. The boys spent a little while outside before dinner, but it was still pretty hot and sunny.

We had pasta with a tomato & cheese sauce and squash for dinner. A likes to sit up at the table with everyone and rushes to make sure that he has a plate and the same kind of cutlery as everyone else. Today, he ate two plates of pasta entirely with his fork; his hands were spotless after dinner. His face was a mess, but I'll take what I can get.

N took the older three out after dinner and A conveniently fell asleep. R and I (and the baby monitor) headed outside to play and mow the lawn. I tried the grass at the front but didn't have any more success with it than D had. The grass at the back is much more sparse, due to all the shade, though it does get long fairly quickly. So I mowed there while R played with the faucet and a watering can and a boat and a ladder (flat on the ground). We watched a spider in the garden -- one seems to have taken up residence in my sorrel.

After dinner, I made a batch of cookie dough to be eaten "raw." I left out the eggs and baking soda. It was OK, but I think if I make it again, I'll reduce the flour. It seems pretty crumbly.

Monday, May 30

2011-05-31T09:24:00.002-04:00

Hot and sunny day today. We went outside in the morning and did school in the afternoon instead. I planted some more seeds -- nasturtium, swiss chard, and scarlet runner beans (for which I built a bean tent). The kids helped with watering, and then filled up our little turtle tub with water and splashed around. I was worried that A was getting too much sun; he kept on taking off his hat. Everyone was avoiding the shade because of the big swarms of mosquitoes that would come out of the grass there. When we came in, I slathered him with aloe vera/witchhazel gel, just in case.

We did some math and reading in the afternoon; D went out biking, went to the library, and ran an errand for me. My parents & brother came over for dinner and brought us pizza. Yum. We ate outside, despite the mosquitoes, though I think we went through a can of repellent.

My brother hung out for a while after, played Dutch blitz with the kids, and helped N try to fix our laptop. N eventually managed to get it working again. The power supply had come loose from the plug being yanked on. I think we're going to have to make a rule that the kids can only use it when it's on battery power only, not while it's plugged in.

Saturday, May 28

2011-05-31T09:18:00.003-04:00

Unusually busy Saturday for us. R had a birthday party in the city; N took him in and priced fencing materials and did some other errands with D along to get a haircut and swimming trunks. I stayed here and cleaned the house -- with all the time we've been spending outside, I'm falling more behind than usual -- and then we went outside to do some planting. N had a meeting in the city in the afternoon, so he dropped the kids off here and then turned around and went back in. I managed to plant everything I wanted to get in -- cucumber, lettuce, tomato, zucchini, oregano, basil, rosemary, and marigold plants; beet, turnip, lettuce, and pea seeds; and the thyme, chive, sorrel, chamomile, and forget-me-not plants that I dug up from the old garden before N put the beds in place.

My parents showed up in the afternoon with a gift for me: a kitchen compost bucket to keep kitchen scraps in on the counter. Perfect, because I have just started a compost bin.

N and I had a meeting in the city in the evening, so he rushed back to pick me up. The kids stayed here with N's mom. I guess this will count as our date night for the week.

Friday, May 27

2011-05-31T09:13:00.002-04:00

We had French today, and our plans were changed slightly and I wasn't prepared. We ended up getting there late. It was chilly and drizzly but I had planned to buy some plants for the garden, so I wandered around the outdoor garden centre with A and bought some veg and flowers.

The dirt for our garden was delivered after we came home from French -- 5 cu. yards of top dressing and 5 yards of mushroom compost. That is a lot of dirt. And the compost is quite pungent. There was a break in the rain in the evening, and N and I went out to shovel it into the boxes. M and R came out after a while to help. D took A out for a walk in the back carrier. It was a fun evening. We used only about half of the dirt; the rest is for grading the lawn.

Thursday, May 26

2011-05-27T08:31:00.002-04:00

We had a slow, chilly, resting day today, after a few busy outdoorsy days. Reading and math, piano practice, D made lunch. I finished reading "The Hunger Games." Piano lessons in the afternoon. I wimped out of walking M to her lesson -- if we do, I take S, R, and A as well and then we go for a walk during her lesson. It looked like it might rain and there was a thunderstorm watch on for nearby. But it didn't rain. When I drive her to her lesson, we park and hang out in the van while we wait. I managed to get back into a book I had put aside a while ago, "The Fourth Turning." It's about cycles of history, and the personalities of the different generations which are the driving force of the cyclical change. I'm about 130 pages in now, and it seems like the authors have just been explaining the same things over and over again, the cycles and the generations from slightly different angles. But it's getting me interested in reading more history, at any rate.

After dinner, the three older kids and N went to taekwondo, while I took the two little boys to the grocery store. So exciting. R and A have a bit of Easter money, and R has had his eye on a toy stuffed songbird at the store that makes a bird call when you squeeze it. So we headed over to the stuffed toys, and there was only one left that still made a call when squeezed. But we discovered that they also had an owl and a grasshopper. He loved the grasshopper, so he decided that it would come home with him instead. I showed the songbird and the owl to A, and he immediately reached out and grabbed the owl to him and hugged it, so it came home with him.

Everyone seemed to have a good time at taekwondo. M especially loves it. We asked her first what was her favourite part and what was the hardest. She said the snap kicks and punch-punch were her favourites, and the hardest part I think she said was the push ups. But then when everyone else was listing their favourites and hardests, she kept on chiming in that she loved that.

There were some helium balloons at taekwondo, and a couple of the kids came home with them. M and S each had one. M was absolutely in love with her balloon. When we reached home, I warned the two of them to hold on very tightly to their balloons. M had managed the walk from taekwondo to the van with the balloon, so I figured the walk from the van to the house would be fine, but she had only taken about 7 steps from the van before her balloon was up the the air and she was in tears. Lots of tears. I don't know why I didn't think to tie it to her wrist. Once we managed to get everyone inside, I told her a story about getting a helium balloon at the dentist when I was a little girl and tying it to my seatbelt but having it fly away out of the car window anyway. Knowing that we had both gone through the same thing seemed to help her a bit, but she was still pretty sad. She came back downstairs a few minutes after going to bed, beaming, with S's balloon in her hand; S had giver her his balloon. So the evening ended well after all.

Wednesday, May 25

2011-05-26T12:58:00.002-04:00

We've had some nice weather and have been able to spend more time outside. M and R and A came outside with me while I hung a load of laundry on the line, and then we came in for some reading. We read some Emily Dickinson from the Scholastic series. M especially likes "riddle" poems, so we spent some time on those. We also read some history from CHOW. It was an overview of English history up until about AD 900, which we have been reading in Our Island Story, but it's nice to have summaries like that at times.

The boys worked on math and my mom came to pick up M. She went to spend the day with Grandma, planting flowers. I decided to head outside for some yard work while it was sunny, in hopes of avoiding too many mosquitoes. We have a pile of dirt from taking sod out of the garden and digging the fire pit, and I finished moving it into one of the garden beds. N recently built two 4'x16' beds. We ate lunch outside, and A enjoyed wandering around the yard when I let him down out of the backpack carrier once I was done working. D pulled him around in a wagon and lifted him up on a rope a bit. We went inside when pavers showed up to pave our neighbour's driveway.

We spent the afternoon reading and playing (D recently read "The Hunger Games" and has been anxious for me to read it). Another neighbour showed up in the afternoon with a frame of bees from one of her hives. R thought it was great and loved listening to them buzz.

We headed back outside after dinner. N mowed while I finished tidying up where the dirt I put in the garden had been. D drilled some holes into a garbage bin to turn it into a compost bin. I cut up the little walnut tree I took down yesterday and also cut up some branches that fell out of trees over the last year, so they were small enough for us to burn. Our neighbour's grandkids were visiting and they came over and played with S, M, and R. They had a great time running around, pulling each other in our wagon, and trying to get our little bouncy balls stuck in a tree. They were visiting for a birthday party, and after they went in for dinner they brought over cake to share and ate together at the picnic table. N finished leveling the second garden bed and we rounded everyone up and managed to get them inside. The kids fell asleep super fast, which is one of my favourite things about this time of year: lots of fresh air and outdoor exercise to tire them out, but not too much late sun and sweltery heat to keep them up.

Thursday, March 24

2011-03-24T18:52:00.002-04:00

Another day of resting and recuperating on couches. A woke with a fever and was pretty cranky. I'm looking forward to the weekend. And getting out of the house tomorrow to take the boys to French.

Blerg.

Wednesday, March 23

2011-03-23T22:04:00.002-04:00

Another sick day... D started feeling ill late last night, M was sick again today, A and I have a mild case, and R is just starting to feel better. We just completely took the day off, ate soup, juice, and popsicles, lounged around on couches, and napped, read, watched dvds, or played computer games.

I hope everyone sleeps well tonight. I'm guessing that tomorrow will be the awkward day where we're not better yet but have a bit more energy and are bored with sitting around. The kids will get on each other's nerves and not deal well and make messes.

Tuesday, March 22

2011-03-22T20:30:00.002-04:00

After all my complaining about R sleeping poorly, M was the one who had problems last night. She came down with the cough/sore throat/congestion/fever that R had. So... yet another laid-back day. Math and spelling for the boys, and piano practice for D. The boys had some computer time and did some rollerblading. I gave D an assignment -- I would like to get a home test kit for our garden soil this spring, so I had him read a section on it in a gardening book. He'll look into test kits tomorrow.

I could tell R was getting better because his appetite was back, but he was still under the weather because he was super cranky. He wanted a pbj sandwich. But then I was sharing a bowl of cereal with A, and he decided he wanted cereal. I tried to give him the rest of my bowl of cereal, but he wanted a full bowl of cereal. And then he wanted a smoothie. He was obsessed with them all day. I thought we didn't have enough yogurt for a smoothie, so I offered him a popsicle instead. But he wanted a blue one, and all we had was red. Arg. It just went on and on and on. In the end, I discovered that we did have enough yogurt for smoothies. Phew.

I would love to find a kids' pain relief medication that didn't also reduce fever. I gave M a half dose of ibuprofen this morning, as she was complaining of a headache and rest and water weren't cutting it. But her temperature went down and she got up and started playing and, since she was still sick and cranky, fighting with everyone. Once the dose wore off and her temperature went up, she was feeling worse and was able to lie down on the couch and sleep for a while. When she woke up she was still warm, but in a better mood.

Monday, March 21

2011-03-21T22:50:00.002-04:00

In parenting, I generally think in terms of phases, trusting that most of the things my kids are going through can be chalked up to going through a phase. Baby up 7 times a night? Not going to last forever. Diaper changing? They'll be trained someday. Biting? One of the kids was a bit of a biter, but they haven't bitten anyone in years. Etc. So when I weaned R, and night weaning was the last step, I figured it was only a matter of time before he would be drifting off to sleep at a decent hour without too much of a time investment, just like the other kids. But it is taking forever. I'm starting to wonder if phase theory is letting me down this time. The complication seems to be his tendency towards congestion and coughing. They keep him up at night, and are exacerbated by (among other things) a lack of sleep. So, I let him sleep in when he has had a hard time getting to sleep or woke up in the middle of the night coughing. But that means that he's not tired at bedtime. And the cycle goes on.

I've always been a morning person. I've been told that pretty much from the time we came home from the hospital, I went to sleep at 6pm and woke up at 6am. I eventually started going to bed later, but our schedule growing up meant that I was up early. When D was born, if I was in bed until 7am, I felt like I had slept in. I still loved getting up early and getting a head start on the day. There were long stretches of time when I woke up every morning around 5am. Not recently, though, and not for a couple of years now. And it's difficult. I hate waking up at 7 or 8. I don't like it when a kid is up before me. And I'm not fond of staying up late at night. I don't function well. Not that I have a type A personality, by any means. Actually, I think that's why I like to be up early. If I'm not, my type B self can't manage to get much done.

So, R had a cough, again, on Sat. I thought it was triggered by the dust in the air from blowing insulation into our attics. I have missed a lot of church because of being home with sick kids. I've always said I don't see the point of making them go when they're sick and broadcasting germs all over the place. But it has been ridiculous this winter. So I was determined to go and I brushed off the cough. R was super duper cranky in the morning, but I chalked it up to tiredness (we have to be pulling out by 7:45 to arrive on time). He slept all the way home, and was super duper cranky all afternoon. And then his cough went from being "a cough" to being "A Cough." Barky, wheezy, persistent. And then his throat was sore. And a fever followed. He spent the night trying to sleep but regularly waking up enough that he would realize he was sick and uncomfortable and he wanted me there to comfort him.

So, our Monday after March break, which was supposed to be productive, was slow and low-key. I was tired, R was cranky, and we had a plumbing guy coming in the afternoon, so I had work to do to prep for that. The older kids did some math and spelling, but that was all the sit-down stuff I had them do. R watched Astroboy for much of the day. That's one tricky thing about homeschooling. I like to let a sick kid watch a movie or show if that helps take their mind off of being sick. But when only one kid is sick, it means you have three more who should be doing other things but gravitate to the screen instead. Blerg.

D went out on his bike for a while, in spite of the heavy snow and rain that fell all day, and D and S visited a friend.

N started gluing styrofoam insulation to the basement walls this afternoon. Both attics are insulated, so that's a big concern taken care of.

Friday, March 11

2011-03-11T21:27:00.002-05:00

A still isn't sleeping well at night, I think because of his congestion. That means that I can't catch up on stuff in the evening, which throws off the next day. I spent the morning before French cleaning up and getting food ready. There has been a lot of rain in the area, but the roads going in were fine.

N was home from work by the time we got back. Our yard is full of snow and huge puddles of melted water; one of them is up against our garage. In the past, we've had water in our basement whenever there was a heavy rainfall, because the gutters were wrecked and the water that came off the back of the roof pooled along the back of the house. We replaced all of the gutters this past summer, and haven't had a problem since. But this was a lot of water. N kept checking the basement, and it was always dry. Awesome. But we should have checked the garage, too. We looked out at that big puddle today and realized it might be a good idea to check the garage. I unlocked the door and there was a big bundle of foam insulation right up against it. I figured maybe N had opened the large front door to put it in and had put it up against this door because we were running out of space in there. Nope -- it had floated over. There was 3 or 4 inches of water.

I'm so glad we live close to family. We called my dad and he was able to bring over a sump pump. He helped N lift a few things up out of the water. I'm so glad we did the work we did to the house to help keep the basement dry.

This morning, I noticed a pile of shredded wood around the trunk of a cedar tree in our yard. I went and checked it out this afternoon -- it looks like something has been digging in to the tree. The holes I saw first were fairly small, and it looked like it could have been a bird, but then I saw one that was quite large -- probably a foot long, 3" wide, and at least an inch deep. It was as far in as the heartwood. Maybe it wasn't an animal. Although there is another cedar tree in our yard, which is now more dead than alive, and it has some holes in it that look like they could have started out that way. Hmmmm.

We had chili for dinner, and for a change, I served tortilla chips with it -- yellow and blue. The blue corn tortilla chips were quite dark; they almost looked black. The kids came in one at a time for dinner, and they were each shocked and confused to see the blue chips on the table. I was hoping it might help increase chili consumption for a key demographic, but alas, it did not.

Thursday March 10

2011-03-11T21:19:00.003-05:00

The kids did a lot of independent reading today, as well as math bookwork. D has been working in Math Mammoth, while S has been doing a Miquon book. I'm tempted to get D noise-canceling headphones, so he can work at the table where I can help him easily without getting distracted by the noise of his siblings. It's only when he does math that it is an issue, though. I can understand -- if I'm trying to do any mental math at all, noise and talking make it so much more difficult.

I took M and D to piano, and then we came home to get ready for taekwondo. But all of the kids are still getting over coughs/congestion, and it's a lot of exertion and keeps us all out pretty late. I decided we should stay home. The kids turned in early.

Wednesday, March 9

2011-03-09T19:44:00.002-05:00

Today was an off day. Ugh. The kids did not want to listen during reading time. We started off with some Carl Sandburg poems -- I thought they would like "Fog," but the boys just made jokes about the fog shedding fur instead of raining or meowing. I read another and S was not impressed because he realized that the poems weren't rhyming, so he said they weren't really poems. I told him poetry doesn't have to rhyme, and he rattled off something like "This poem stinks. It doesn't rhyme. It is stupid," and said it was a poem. I think Roald Dahl has spoiled him. I flipped through the book and found "Arithmetic" and decided to give it a try. The boys started really listening halfway through, and then they wanted me to read it over again, and then D wanted me to give him the book so he could read it himself.

Arithmetic

Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your
head.
Arithmetic tell you how many you lose or win if you know how
many you had before you lost or won.
Arithmetic is seven eleven all good children go to heaven -- or five
six bundle of sticks.
Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand
to your pencil to your paper till you get the answer.
Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice and
you can look out of the window and see the blue sky -- or the
answer is wrong and you have to start all over and try again
and see how it comes out this time.
If you take a number and double it and double it again and then
double it a few more times, the number gets bigger and bigger
and goes higher and higher and only arithmetic can tell you
what the number is when you decide to quit doubling.
Arithmetic is where you have to multiply -- and you carry the
multiplication table in your head and hope you won't lose it.
If you have two animal crackers, one good and one bad, and you
eat one and a striped zebra with streaks all over him eats the
other, how many animal crackers will you have if somebody
offers you five six seven and you say No no no and you say
Nay nay nay and you say Nix nix nix?
If you ask your mother for one fried egg for breakfast and she
gives you two fried eggs and you eat both of them, who is
better in arithmetic, you or your mother?

They especially like the last question. D was arguing with himself over it.

But after the poetry, the kids were getting a little too riled up, and A was getting pretty cranky; he has been sick and apparently, he needed a nap. So I gave the boys some reading from the Christian Liberty Nature readers and settled down on the couch with A. He napped for a long time. Long enough that the boys finished their reading and the kids tried to play swap and played some Professor Noggin stuff and M and R started playing some kind of store game where they took all sorts of boxed dry goods from the cupboards and distributed them around the living room. Once A was up again, there was struggle and strife over book work and cleaning up the mess and what to make for lunch. In the end, the mess was only partly cleaned up, and I made spaghetti and meat sauce.

The kids played after lunch, I tried to clean up around them, and A got into everything he could manage in any way possible. Finally, I gave up, and did some reading, and A ended up taking another nap, once again in my arms. N and D went over to my parents' place to help with the maple tree tapping again, and again we had a very informal dinner.

The whole day just felt frustrating and off-kilter. M was cranky and short-tempered with everyone, A wanted to get into everything, and I was slow and unfocused. Blerg.

Tuesday, March 8

2011-03-09T19:13:00.002-05:00

The kids have been spending more time playing games together -- the older three, I mean -- but now, A can climb up on the table and interfere with their card games. Unfortunate timing. We did our usual reading (British history and geography) and the kids did math and spelling. It is still difficult convincing them to do book work, and I think I would prefer we didn't do it, but it does help me feel like they are "keeping up."

They also started playing games with the Professor Noggin games we have -- quizzing each other, tracking points, etc. S likes sorting the cards and reading them so he has an advantage when he plays.

Lunch was a bit late; I made homefries, and tried again making a pan of them topped with eggs and cheese. It never works quite right. The stuff on the bottom gets way overcooked before the top of the whites are steamed. Still yummy, though. I was pretty tired in the afternoon and A had a hard time napping unless I was holding him; we had a quiet afternoon of reading, playing, computer games, etc. I built trains with R upstairs and thought about doing some mending. D went to the library and picked up some books for himself and two holds for me: A Discovery of Witches and Time for Dinner.

The boys had Scouts; I spent the evening trying to clean up a bit in spite of A's enthusiastic participation and reading A Discovery of Witches.

Monday March 7

2011-03-07T22:50:00.004-05:00

M, R, and A are all recovering from a cough/cold/sore throat. So things were a little low-key today, but still good. I exercised on my own and caught up on some housework (though I try to avoid doing that in the morning before school). We did our history reading, the kids did some math, and they played Uno. We practiced piano, too. M has started making up chords to play with her left hand to go with songs she knows how to play with her right hand.

We had 'quiet time' after lunch, which I have fallen out of the habit of doing, but it went well. The older three were reading; M commented to me after that she noticed how much better she was reading. A grabbed a board book and climbed up on the couch beside S and started looking through it. Too cute.

M watched a movie on the couch while the boys read or played. I made dinner rolls and apple crisp and baked potatoes. N and D ended up heading over to my parents' place to help prepare for tapping the maple trees. So instead of the big dinner I was planning to make, we at the fresh rolls and apple crisp. Not a terribly balanced dinner.

Making Math Meaningful

2011-03-04T22:30:00.004-05:00

By Cornerstone Curriculum. This is a math programme we tried out when D was younger; S has used it some, and M just a bit. We haven't used the full programme; we used the K level quite a bit, as well as 1 and 4.

I like having a script, especially with math, and there is quite a bit of hands-on stuff to help explain the concepts. I think the concepts are explained well, though sometimes it seemed like there was some repetition. Which I suppose is a good thing, but my kids tended to get impatient with it. The preparation for each lesson was easy and quick. The biggest drawback for me was the cost of the student workbooks, which cannot be reproduced. They weren't even super pricey, just not cheap. And I have found them difficult to track down from a Canadian supplier; the last time I bought workbooks, I had to special order them through a local supplier.

Reviews from homeschoolmath.net

Friday March 4

2011-03-04T22:21:00.002-05:00

Yawn. Again. R's cough was much worse last night; neither of us got too much sleep. Usually when he's sick at night, R is much better in the day time, but today, he seemed about the same. He vegged on the couch and drank water and ate ice cream (he also has a really sore throat) while I cleaned up.

D picked up new sneakers when we went out for French; I think his feet are bigger than mine now. This is the second pair now that matches a pair of N's sneakers.

R was not happy when I left to take the boys to French, but he fell asleep a little while after I left and was just waking up when I came home. Good timing for everyone involved. He seemed a bit better in the afternoon, and the popsicles I picked up while I was out seemed to help his mood. We had soup for dinner, too, to try and make it easier on his throat. M said her throat was sore on and off, but not too badly; she was quite stuffy by the end of the day, though.

R and I sat on the couch under a quilt and read The Snuggliest Snuggle in the World. He's at the point with it where he knows most of the lines by heart. It is so cute to hear him "read" them!

Thursday March 3

2011-03-04T16:49:00.002-05:00

It must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays. So, after N's all nighter, it was midnight before he managed to get home last night. Poor guy. I drove the kids to drop M off at piano, and decided we should just hang out in the van instead of driving home and being there for 10 mins and then having to get everyone back in the van again. R has been coughing and stuffy -- again -- after going out in the cold on Tuesday. It's crazy. It's like he's allergic to winter.

We rushed home for dinner and managed to get to taekwondo a bit early. Amazing. The little boys and I went grocery shopping. R was adamant that I buy a cake. I told him we could get a pie, but we walked past cakes, and that was it, he wanted cake. I managed to convince him that a cake mix was just as good.

We ended up waiting in the van for 45 mins for the kids to be finished tkd, because we were back quickly from groceries and the kids took longer than anyone else getting ready to leave. Arg. And brrrrr. R's cough was definitely worse after that.

Wed March 2

2011-03-03T09:39:00.002-05:00

Spent some time quietly panicking this morning. N had said he would be out late last night working on his paper, but there was no sign of him here -- or of him having been here -- when I woke up. He called about an hour later to explain that he had been up all night at the computer lab, working on the paper, and that he was on his way to work. Apparently, he hadn't attempted to drive home last night w.hile super tired and fallen asleep and crashed as I thought might have happened.

I worked out my residual worry with some exercising and then treated us to nachos for lunch. Yum.

M has started reading the spines of all the books on our shelves. D and S spent a bunch of time working on a made-up world of some kind, for a game, I think. I finished reading Handmade Home. M wanted me to teach her to crochet, so I tried, but she didn't really get the hang of it. R wound a bunch of yarn around a knitting noddy. Then he and I fell asleep under a quilt on the couch. I just drifted off, and then realized that he was snoozing. Why does he only seem to be able to fall asleep at either 5pm or 10pm? Luckily, he didn't nap for too long; I think he could tell I was making spaghetti for dinner.

I remembered to send D to skating this week! Yay! I think he's kind of over skating; they're practicing for a show that he won't be in. I think he's learned as much as I was looking for him to learn from it, too.

Tuesday March 1

2011-03-02T09:45:00.003-05:00

I seriously need to stop falling asleep on the couch with R. It doesn't make for a cheerful morning.

N has been working on a paper for school, and to save him from taking the time to drive home, pick up the boys for scouts, drive back in, drive back home to drop them off, and drive back in to work on the paper again, he stayed in the city and I drove the boys in. Which seemed like a nuisance until I realized that there is a Value Village relatively close to the church, and I would have time to head over there and do a bit of looking around while the boys were at scouts. Of course, we were running late, and both R and A fell asleep in the van. It took a little convincing to wake them up to get out of the van at VV, but I had already told R that if he was good at the store, he would get to choose a toy; once he remembered that, he was good to go. The kids were very good at the store, and I managed to find a nice handmade quilt in fairly good shape. It's not an old quilt and not my favourite pattern (it's a lone star), but I do like the colours and all of the hand quilting on it is quite nice. And I found some cute napkins that might end up being hankies.

Picking up the boys from scouts did not go quite as smoothly. M was super excited to be at the church when it wasn't church. R likes to run away down the long halls and around corners. The boys didn't want to leave and keep disappearing. It was a half hour after scouts ended before we were all in the van, and then the boys pointed out that dad lets them use tokens to stop at Wendy's on the way home, and so M and R wanted to stop, too. I hate using a drive through, so D went in and ordered while we sat in the van. And somehow, the kids didn't manage to finish their food in the 25 minutes it took us to drive the rest of the way home. It was approaching 10:30 by the time everyone was in bed. I am never stopping for fast food with the kids ever again. Ever.

Monday, Feb 28

2011-03-01T07:50:00.003-05:00

Between the freezing rain and snow, today was a snow day for the schools in the area. I always feel badly for my kids, since they don't get to have the excitement of a snow day, so I try to make them cozy and a bit of fun. Our morning was mostly normal, though a few of us did spend more time than usual staring out the windows and commenting on how pretty the snow was.

In the afternoon, I pulled out my sewing machine to try to get it to work. After a few bumps, I managed to wind a bobbin and thread the machine. It still wasn't sewing quite right -- I think the bobbin is kind of catching, or something. At any rate, it seems like the bobbin thread doesn't want to come out as easily as the top thread does, so things get all messed up, and the top thread is pulled down into the bobbin area at the end of the row of stitching. It's a new bobbin, I don't know what kind, and it may be the wrong one for my machine, so until I get the right one, the sewing machine is back on the shelf. I sorted my sewing box and did some cutting for a blanket instead.

When it was time to make dinner, A fell asleep for a nap, and M asked to play Dutch blitz. I said sure, and the kids and I played a few rounds. Then A woke up and he was super cranky. We ended up eating hot chocolate, popcorn, and yogurt smoothies for dinner, and then I made brownies for dessert. M and D practiced for piano after bedtime, but they managed to practice, so I decided to see it as a good thing.

I spent some time deciding on seeds and doing a bit of garden planning. I need to put together a binder -- I have a notebook with notes from the last two years of gardening, but it's pretty haphazard. A binder would be better. And I won a homesteading book in a facebook contest, which made my day. I've been collecting homesteading books for a while, but it's hard to justify the expense when we're so far from actually doing any of this stuff.

Wed Feb 23

2011-02-24T08:19:00.002-05:00

The kids are still loving Dutch Blitz. I'm happy because they are getting some mental math practice (especially needed for D) in adding up the scores. D and M both had a good piano practice today. It makes such a difference for M especially when she just sits down and works through the pieces a couple of times. Often all that is needed from me is encouragement through a little difficulty or a hint about one bit that is giving her trouble.

S tried out a prank he saw on Prank Patrol today. It involved a packet of unsweetened drink mix, removing the shower head, filling it with the drink mix, replacing the shower head, and -- if you are pranking someone -- waiting for them to get in the shower. S, however, just wanted to see if it worked, so he turned on the water right away. Boy, did it work. Ugh. The tub is super clean now, though, and it was in need of a good scrubbing.

M told me that the best laugh she's ever heard is R's laugh.

I wasn't feeling great today -- managed some exercise, but my legs were aching too much to stand for very long for most of the day. We did a lot of reading, though. The kids and I did some word jumbles and boggle-type games. S is such a great speller.

I cleaned up the boys' room yesterday, and so far, they've kept it clean (with some nagging from me). It just gets so messy so fast in there. The rest of the upstairs looks good, too. It used to feel like this huge, insurmountable task to get it clean up there, but I think I just had to put in some time to get things organized and cleared out. It should be easier now. It has been, so far. Now I just have to deal with a few bins of stuff I filled in the process and put aside to deal with later. I see another few trips to the thrift store drop off in my future....

Reading Radical Homemakers has reignited my interest in urban homesteading. One of the couples in the book have a blog; they have a small house and yard in LA and live as self-sufficiently as they can. I had meant to check out their blog, but hadn't made it there. I stopped in at homesteadingtoday.com, which I haven't visited in a while, to browse through the rabbit info. There was a post about another urban homesteading family who blogs and has written books, and who, apparently, have trademarked (copyrighted?) the terms urban homestead and urban homesteading. Their lawyers have started sending out "friendly notice" letters to anyone who uses the term without properly mentioning them. One of the blogs that received the notification was the couple from the book. Their website is www.rootsimple.com, and they have written about the incident here. The whole thing sounds crazy to me. I had been looking for an excuse to buy Kelly and Eric's book, The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-sufficent Living in the Heart of the City, and I thought that this was a good opportunity to show support for them, so it has been purchased. I really liked reading about the couple's gardening and other efforts; their tone seemed very friendly and down-to-earth. Their blog has been the same.

N was home late tonight; I completely forgot about D's skating lesson. I blame the change in routine.

Tue Feb 22

2011-02-23T01:31:00.002-05:00

I had a burst of cleaning energy today, so while the kids played Dutch Blitz and math squares and Tier auf Tier and did math work and read and wrote and ran around and splashed in the sink (ugh) and made hot chocolate, I vacuumed and tidied and made beds and cleaned up the boys' room and swept and organized and tackled the piles of stuff that have been growing on the counters and bookcases and put the stuff back where it belongs.

I also drew up a little plan for our yard, changes I would like to make and plans for future garden stuff. I can actually see bare grass under the huge spruce tree beside our garage... but that's only because we had warm weather recently and so little snow manages to get to the ground under it. Sigh. I marked where our fence and play structure will go, trees I want removed, the future back porch, and where I'll expand the garden and put the rhubarb and asparagus and raspberries and black currants and gooseberries and blueberries and herb garden and compost pile and chickens and rabbits and beehives and apple trees....

Mon Feb 21

2011-02-21T23:46:00.003-05:00

School holiday here (Family Day) and we took the day off, too. I finally managed to make myself do one exercise dvd segment, and the kids did it along with me, and we finally hit enough exercise times to earn an ice cream sundae. Yay! So, that ended up being breakfast. And then the kids played happily and calmly for a few hours. Maybe we should do that more often. They played Dutch Blitz -- which they got into with Uncle J this weekend -- and Tier auf Tier, where you stack little wooden animals. I managed to get a bunch of cleaning up done upstairs; I finished up most of the prep work for insulating the attic (well, my share of the prep work), tidied and vacuumed the main floor, put away all the laundry and started in on more.

N has been taking the afternoon off regularly -- once or twice a week -- using vacation time, and he had an afternoon today. Which was nice, because my dad and brother were available to help him out, which they also did on Sat. All of the vapour barrier is up (and it is warmer in there because of it!), and they started in on putting in studs for insulating the basement walls. I think.

We ended up having my parents & brother over for dinner tonight, which is always very nice. Uncle J, N, and the kids played Dutch Blitz while it was cooking. R was a little wound up, which is always difficult. A spit out cucumber on Uncle J, who handled it bravely.

A and R fell asleep at about the same time, on the couch with me, A nursing and R leaning on my arm. It was very sweet.

Friday Feb 18

2011-02-21T09:03:00.002-05:00

We managed to get cleaned and tidied up in time to take the boys to French. Just. It was a beautiful day today, high of 11C, when the high hasn't been above -5C for a while. I picked up groceries and diapers while S was in French and D sat and read, and then when D was at French, S and I decided to try hanging out at the playground behind the tutor's house. There was still a foot of snow on the ground, though at one point it was mostly slush and water. I discovered that the winter boots I received for Christmas last year are, indeed, waterproof. S had a good time playing on the equipment -- they have one of those things, I'm not sure what you call it, it's like a zip line but you just hold on to a handle and it's on a metal bar instead of a cable and it doesn't go very far. We call it a slider. I almost finished reading Radical Homemakers while shielding my eyes from the dazzling sunshine -- coming both from the cloudless sky and reflecting off the snow -- and turning up my collar against the wind.

Back at home, I finished making last night's chili and put the groceries away while the kids picked up the mail and played with the "new" shoes, ties, and basket my MIL dropped off for us to look through and see if there was anything we could use. We had a movie night, and just after bedtime, the wind outside picked up, the power flickered a few times, and then went out for good. M has light on in her room when she goes to sleep and she didn't think she could fall asleep in the dark. That led to all of the kids bringing blankets and pillows downstairs, claiming a spot on a couch, and going to sleep here by candle light.

Thurs Feb 17

2011-02-18T08:06:00.002-05:00

These evening activities are taking a toll. N has meetings at the church while the boys have Scouts, but his meetings frequently go late. It was 10pm when they got home on Tuesday. On Wednesday, D has skating until 8pm, so it's at least 8:20 before we can have family scriptures & a prayer. On Thursday, they have taekwondo until 8pm, then it takes at least 10 mins to get out of there and into the van, and then at least 20 mins to drive home. It was 8:40 when we stepped into the house tonight; both A and R had fallen asleep; R woke up when I brought him in; I still had to put away groceries; the kids had to get ready for bed. M especially did not want to go to bed. She was down here until close to 10, helping put away groceries. I want them to get the rest they need, but with these late evenings, that means letting them sleep in, and I'm not really keen on that. Well, for my sake, I'm happy about it, because I'm a morning person and I can get stuff done while they sleep.

So, we started late, because the kids slept in. We read A Child's Geography of the World, Famous Men of the Middle Ages, and Our Island Story. D did a bit more of his Math Mammoth book. He still hates it, but I think some of that comes from being unsure of how to answer some of the questions. I think as he works on it more, he'll see that it gets done if he just keeps at it. S had some math work, too. He spent a lot of his day playing games with M and R, though. It's neat to see him acting more like a big brother than when he's overshadowed by D. I talked a bunch with S today about going to taekwondo; I managed to convince him to try one class by announcing that anyone who tried taekwondo could go to a buffet.

M and D had piano in the afternoon, then we rushed back to start in on a simple, light dinner. We were late for tkd last week, so I rushed us this week, and we were there just before the teacher arrived. Which is a total first for us. R loved running around the gym before the class started, which was kind of a problem for me because with A strapped to me and me in sock feet, I couldn't really chase after him. Luckily, he knew enough to get out of the way and back to me once the kids all lined up to start the class.

S seemed to have a good time. He doesn't like to betray too much enthusiasm about anything other than video/computer games, so sometimes it's hard to tell. But he said he didn't hate it and he would go back. After the kids had all been sent to bed, he came downstairs to tell me that they did kicks at waist height, and he did his kicks high enough, and the teacher had him come up to the front to demonstrate to the other kids how high they needed to kick. Then he ran off back upstairs.

Wed Feb 16

2011-02-17T10:08:00.002-05:00

We had company in the morning, my visiting teachers, which is always a nice visit. M and S were deep into their club game thing they have been playing in their "clubhouse" upstairs. They came down at one point playing a zombie game, where R was a zombie (he had the sound effects down pat) and if he touched S, S would become a zombie, but if M could get to S, she could heal him, because she was a doctor. Then they started playing ninja, where they had to get from one place in the house to another without me seeing them.

D started in on the Math Mammoth and it was like pulling teeth. I've been feeling torn between needing to make sure he's caught up just in case something happens and he has to go to school, and worrying that pushing him will just make him hate math. Blerg. I try to talk math with him when it comes up, but he does often get frustrated because his mental math skills are not strong.

I made bread and yogurt today and took two boxes of stuff from the kitchen to the basement for storage and got another couple of boxes ready for donating to the thrift store. I tried making chili for dinner, only to discover I had used the last of the canned kidney beans. D'oh. We had fried eggs instead.

I read an article about reading to your children, about how it's important not just to read, but to discuss, and that sometimes, the discussions might last longer than the reading itself. We've done a lot of this in the past, but lately, I feel like I'm often feeling rushed. It was a good reminder to slow down and let that discussion happen. The article also claimed that a recent study showed that teens read, on average, for 5 minutes on weekends. I find that kind of hard to believe, unless they are defining reading as "reading a book." I guess reading texts or emails or other messages from your friends shouldn't really count, but I'm curious about where they drew the line.

Tues Feb 15

2011-02-17T10:04:00.002-05:00

We did some work to prep for renovations today -- cleaning up, moving dressers and bunkbeds, taking apart shelves, sweeping, and then the kids had fun building a clubhouse on the bunkbeds and spreading out and playing in all the space there now is in that bedroom.

D is still very absorbed in the HP books. M loves writing letters. Neither of them is practicing the piano enough, and I suspect it's mostly my fault. S, on the other hand, still plays all the time.

I purchased & printed up a Math Mammoth book today (5A). It's a lot of pages, but my printer held up.

Mon Feb 14

2011-02-15T07:45:00.002-05:00

Yawn. I'm starting to wonder if my sleeping patterns will ever return to normal. I fell asleep on the couch, holding R while he fell asleep, and woke up early in the morning when A was making noise on the baby monitor.

We had a slow day today. Read CHOW and Story of Mankind; boys did some math and spelling/analogies. D read HP constantly. Kids watched a movie; it might have been two. I placed a few school-y stuff orders. A was cranky and clingy. He finally fell asleep late in the day, and I decided to sit and read while holding him instead of risk putting him down in the cool bedroom.

Dinner was late; it was supposed to be Italian beans & pasta, a super simple dish consisting of pasta, a can of diced tomatoes, some cooked Italian sausage, and a can of black beans. It wasn't until I had everything else ready that I realized we were out of black beans. Not nearly as yummy, IMO, but the kids liked it.

N and D took seats out of the van and hauled the old water heater up out of the basement and into the van so that N can return it to the rental place tomorrow.

We had a difficult Family Home Evening; R was crazy and loud and just generally tried to sabotage everything we did. M was in tears during both hymns because now, she can read almost all of the words in the hymn, but we sing too fast for her to keep up. We sang "Battle Hymn of the Republic" for our closing hymn, which has easy lyrics and repetition in the chorus, and that helped.

Weekend Feb 12-13

2011-02-14T08:21:00.002-05:00

Saturday was an early morning for D, N, and I. But D managed to get off to the Klondike Derby in time. N spent the day working on installing the new water heater (tankless) and working with my dad on.... something in there, not sure what. Getting stuff ready to put up the last bit of drywall for the ceiling, I think. I have been frustrated the last few Saturdays at trying to do Saturday-type work while accommodating the reno work and keeping the kids out from under foot. Today, I decided I would only try to keep the kids out from under foot and fed and all that. I ended up being able to get a fair amount of stuff done upstairs to prepare for the attic being insulated. It was only a few minutes at a time, but it was several times that I ran up to do stuff. It worked.

A and R had a stomach bug, and I wasn't feeling great either. R was up fairly late Sat night, D was home late from the Derby, N was exhausted. On Sun, I stayed home with R and A. R woke up super early, coughing, and then went back to sleep on the couch until after noon. A woke up just before everyone else left for church, and I changed 4 dirty diapers of his before Sacrament meeting would have been over. R was worse, once he woke up. I was second-guessing my decision to keep them home, but it turned out to be the right decision. But unfortunately, they were also too sick to go to a family dinner for N's side of the family. That was very sad. I was feeling worse, too, so I stayed home with them from that, as well. Kind of a blerg day. I read quite a bit of Radical Homemakers, which I've been reading while (coincidentally) also studying a talk about motherhood by Ezra Taft Benson. The parallels are really interesting.

Fri Feb 11

2011-02-13T10:08:00.002-05:00

I can tell that I've been better at keeping up with the housework because it didn't take me the whole morning to prepare for my MIL to come and watch the younger kids this afternoon. Which was great. We had lots of time for school. M and S had some game they made up that they were playing, and getting along really well, and R was even tagging along without contention, which is a situation I always hate to interrupt. I figure I should reward cooperation. So I sat down to read to D -- I pulled out the books we missed yesterday (MHLW and Story of Inventions) and A Splendid Exchange. Unfortunately, D has started rereading the Harry Potter books, and didn't want to put his down, even for A Splendid Exchange. He did, and he listened, but every time he asked a question, he picked his book back up and started reading in the little bit of time it took me to find my place again after answering the question. He asked where the fertile crescent was, and when I got up to point it out on the big wall map, he started reading HP. Arrg. So I left him to it once I was done that reading. The wonderful MHLW should not be wasted on someone who is just waiting to read something else.

The boys had French in the afternoon. I managed to get my shopping done pretty quickly during S's lesson, while D sat and read. D's lesson today was a group lesson, with one other student. The tutor has been trying for a while to find another student so D could have a group lesson, but she hasn't had anyone who was at around the same level and age and wanted to come in at the same time. But we lucked out and the stars aligned etc. so now, D has another student to work with and he and S can go back to separate lessons. I think one week was enough.

S and I both sat and read while D was in his lesson, which was a nice break. Shopping takes so long and I find it stressful. Blerg. I really want to manage to get things here organized well enough that I can do one or two clothing shopping trips each fall/spring and be done with it. Growth spurts are one problem. But I would also like to manage to buy clothes for the next year when they go on clearance at the end of the season. I do a bit of that now, but I don't know how much I need or of what. I think I would have to box everything by gender and year/size -- so one box for all the boys' size 10 stuff, for instance. Or something. And I usually just buy clothes until we don't run out before we do laundry, but I should be able to figure out the numbers, like 4 pairs pants/jeans, 2 pairs jogging pants, etc. It shouldn't be that tricky.

One problem I've had with shopping for clothes is that the younger kids, who I figured would be outfitted since D and S both had enough clothes, need some clothes. A lot of the stuff I had for the older boys were bought second hand or given to us as hand me downs, and some of that is too worn out to be useful (elastics are a big problem). So I'm unexpectedly buying clothing for them.

After a disappointing stop at Giant Tiger (they had baked beans on sale, but there was a limit of 6. I noticed the sign when I was putting the first of four flats of 24 I was planning to buy into my cart), we came home to a sleeping baby and M reading a Peter Rabbit book to Gma S. N was home early from work, to build a support for the new water heater we're having installed tomorrow. After the late night after taekwondo last night, I wanted everyone in bed early, so we started "movie night" before dinner. D made dinner, and N had to run out to a church meeting in the evening.

D has a Scouts Klondike Derby tomorrow, and a parent from the group just forwarded us the list of stuff he needs tonight. There is stuff on it I would have picked up when I was out today. Arg. We'll just have to make do.

Thurs Feb 10

2011-02-11T07:25:00.002-05:00

I really need to start getting R up earlier in the morning, so that hopefully he will go to sleep earlier at night. But with his cold, I hate to wake him when he's actually getting sleep. So, I was up late with him last night and overslept a bit this morning.

For school time I pulled The Map Book, A Handbook of Nature Study, Madam How and Lady Why, The Story of Inventions, A Splendid Exchange, and A Child's Geography of the World off the shelves. We didn't get to MHLW and Story of Inventions. In the Map Book, we read about a Roman map that was more like a diagram to explain land surveys and titles; there was a town where Roman veterans lived, and they were each given one acre of land. We read about horses in HNS, and the ancient beginnings of trade in A Splendid Exchange.

The boys did some math and spelling and piano playing; D finished reading The Lord of the Rings, which seemed to take forever since he kept on starting and finishing other books that were coming in from the library.

M and D had piano lessons in the afternoon, and then the rest of the afternoon flew by as I made dinner (chicken & lemon egg-drop soup) and tidied up and got us ready to head out to taekwondo. It was M's first night and she was so excited. I tried to convince S to stay, too, but I was only able to get him to agree to come along and watch them for a bit. I had R and A along this time, too, which was... interesting. It was super cold and I had to get the poor kids outside to get in the van to go there, from the van to the school where they have tkd, from the school back to the van, from the van to the grocery store, from the grocery store to the van, from the van to the school, from the school to the van, and from the van to the house. When we were picking up the kids, R said he didn't want to go out in the cold, he wanted to stay in the van instead. Poor guy.

But then he was happy to be in the school. M had gone in to the washroom, and as soon as R heard that, he declared his need for a washroom. And for a drink, when we walked by the water fountain. M was chatting with some girls from the class when we got to the washroom, and seemed to be having fun. And then, we took up most of the lobby while the kids were getting their coats and boots back on to leave. D kept getting questioned by his classmates -- all of these kids are your siblings? How much older are you than your little siblings? What grade are you in at school? Homeschooling? So your mom is, like, your teacher? Etc. It was pretty funny.

It was late by the time we made it back home and really late by the time the kids were in bed. I'm going to have to figure out how to make that transition smoother. I had bagels for the kids to eat in the van on the way home so they wouldn't be all "Mooooom, I'm huuuuuungry" when I was trying to hurry them up to bed, but I did have groceries to put away, so it took a little while to get everyone settled. And, of course, there was R, who was up late. Again. And then woke up coughing about an hour later. He settled down after that, though. He hasn't been coughing that much -- at all, really -- in the evening, but in the past, being out in the cold has been a coughing trigger for him. Poor guy. I'm going to try to find someone to watch him & A next week.

Wed Feb 9

2011-02-09T21:31:00.002-05:00

R was back to being up late again last night. I ended up sleeping in and skipping the exercise stuff.

I have been trying for a while to perfect how we plan and do housework. A chore meeting in the morning worked well, but it meant we had to do it every morning. I recently printed up a couple of pages for my planner with a weekly housekeeping schedule -- just simple stuff like bathroom & living room on Tuesday, etc. -- and ended up adding our daily chores to the bottom. I decided to have a weekly chore meeting and have everyone keep the same daily chores for a week. That still leaves the weekly chores, but I think we'll choose them all on Monday. It seems to be working well so far. It's easier for me to remember who is doing what, and easier for the kids to remember what they're supposed to be doing. We were home all day today, so there was plenty of time to do and catch up on housework.

We also caught up on schoolwork. I read from NT stories, Child's History of the World, Our Island Story, The Story of Mankind, Famous Men of the Middle Ages, and A Splendid Exchange. We had read a bit of A Splendid Exchange last night before bed, and D was happy to see that I had it out again for our school reading. Interestingly, the section we read mentioned comparative advantage, a term I had heard for the first time the day before in a blog post.

The boys did some bookwork -- spelling, math, grammar, and S worked on an analogies workbook. I also pulled out our math dictionary to help D with his math. I'm glad we have it, but felt silly that I needed to pull it out to figure out what a composite number is. It's pretty much what I figured it was, but it didn't seem quite right.

After lunch, we did some housework. I've been trying to find where to fit housework into our day. After breakfast/before school feels best for me, except it means we end up starting school really, really late. After lunch/before free time works well, because there is the carrot of computer time or a movie or playing to motivate the kids to do the work without too much whining to slow them down. But we'll probably end up skipping housework if we're running late on days when we go out in the afternoon. After dinner/before bed is a time when we're generally all home, but then I'm cleaning up from dinner and the kids are starting to get cranky or wound up as bedtime approaches. So, I'm trying out after lunch. Today was OK. Even though we didn' t eat lunch until 2, so it was pretty late in the afternoon by the time we were doing housework.

M has not been practicing her piano enough this week. Today was only the second time. She was frustrated and said the pieces were too difficult and she couldn't do it. I told her she could if she tried a little every day. She said she wanted to quit piano lessons. I told her that she could definitely play the music if she tried it slowly and let me help her. She tried it a few times and started getting the hang of it and was so much happier. She sat down and played her songs a few more times over the afternoon and evening.

I did manage to fit in a bit of journaling time for myself between the (late) chores and dinner prep time. I'm trying to get back into regular afternoon study time, but it's not as much of a priority as making the housework a habit is.

A hold for me came in at the library -- Radical Homemakers. D trudged out in the heavy snow and gloom to retrieve it for me. He was also supposed to pick up milk at the corner store, but forgot until he arrived at our steps. He turned around and went all the way back. He also went all the way to the library to pick up a hold for me yesterday, but it turned out to be a book I requested for him: The Invention of Hugo Cabret. The book is 544 pages long, so D objected strongly when I told him it was for him to read. But the pages are mostly pictures; he started it when I was making dinner and he was finished before bedtime.

The kids were really helpful with the housework after dinner, but it still took quite a while to finish up. We did have time to read a story from the James Herriot Treasury. The pictures in that book are just so lovely. Poor D arrived home from skating just as we were reading the last line of the story; he enjoys that book. And then, after he was ready for bed and about to start reading some Hardy Boys, N came home with a van load of stuff from Home Depot, and called D out to help him unload. A year ago, it would have been me trudging out into the snowy dark to help N unload stuff. Having kids is finally starting to pay off.

Tues Feb 8

2011-02-09T00:43:00.002-05:00

We had a visitor today. My sister, MB, came to take the oldest three kids to the Aviation Museum. She was a bit earlier than expected, which was nice, because R is on the young side for an outing like that, but old enough to feel left out. So he had a chance to play with Aunt MB before they went out.

My plan was to go to the thrift store with boxes to drop off and do a bit of shopping while they were gone, but it was so very cold outside today. R's cough is still an issue. And I didn't really feel like it. A fell asleep not long before they left, and then R fell asleep on the couch beside me. I didn't want to move, since it might wake him up, but eventually I did get up and he continued to sleep for a while. It was amazing, having only two kids in the house and having them nap at the same time!

Mon Feb 7

2011-02-07T23:21:00.002-05:00

Ouch. Made the mistake of not easing back into the exercise routine. I'm still tired out from it.

M loves writing letters. I'm thankful that the dollar store has big boxes of envelopes. She wrote letters today to everyone in the family, put them in a basket, and then went around the house delivering them. Mine was delivered into my "mailbox" -- the cupboard where I keep the diaper changing stuff.

S practiced piano today more than D and M -- who are actually taking lessons -- combined.

I was reading a Dr Seuss book to R this evening, and he looked at one of the creatures in the book and said "I wish that was real." He said it wouldn't step on his feet (?) and he could ride it in the street and D and S and M and A could come along.

D finished the book Smoky the Cowhorse today. I was worried that he didn't really like it, since he kept on stopping reading it to start and finish other books, but he said it was good, but he wanted to read the library books before they had to be returned. He said there were a lot of plot twists.

R has been getting pretty cranky during dinner prep time, since he has been having a hard time falling asleep and then waking up early. He needs something to keep him busy, toys don't work, and I don't want to make dvds a habit. I tried to get him to draw today. Aunt M is coming for a visit tomorrow, so I suggested he draw a picture for her. That turned into drawing a picture of her. I drew a blank stick figure, and he filled in the eyes and nose and mouth and hands. When he finished, he took it over to the fridge and said we needed to put it on the fridge so Aunt M could see it. He was very particular about the magnets we used to put it up.

Weekend Feb 5-6

2011-02-07T07:54:00.003-05:00

Saturdays have become renovation days. My dad has been over for the last few weeks, as have various other family members and contractors. That means I do the gymnastics drop off/pick up for M and S, though since N is home, I can leave R and A under D's care for the little trip. I try not to turn too green with jealousy as I walk past the parents, sitting in armchairs in the school's lobby, who can sit and read a book or do whatever while they wait for their little gymnast. Sigh. Instead, I drive home, clean up from breakfast, probably change a diaper, do some vacuuming, and wait for the timer to beep-beep-beep-beep to let me know it's time to go back and pick them up (which I always do when I have kids somewhere who need picking up, otherwise I may very well be late). And that way, D is available to help N instead of watching the little ones. If R's cough ever clears up, or if the weather ever warms up, I will probably take A and R along, and spend the gymnastics time at the library. I was in there a few weeks ago during gymnastics, to fill out our info for the library's new system, and it was almost empty. It would be a good time for a couple of wee, noisy people to get in some library time.

We will soon be blowing insulation up into the attics of our house. The hatch for one is in our bedroom, and it will be a messy job, and our room needs new carpet and paint anyway. So, we (and our stuff) will be moving in to the big bedroom with M and R while the insulation is done and the room is spruced up. The big bedroom currently functions not only as M and R's bedroom, but also the room where I sort laundry, pile clothes that have been outgrown, box up and store clothes that have been outgrown, where we keep all of our dressers that aren't currently in use, and where N's clothes live. So I'll need to do some sorting, decluttering, rearranging, and such before we can take down a bunch of shelving and move our bed and dresser in. It's stuff I would want to do while A is napping, or on a Saturday when I have lots of time and I don't have to worry about school time.

But on Saturday, there is reno work going on, and the kids want to interfere with that, and it ends up being my job to keep them out of trouble, and make food, and keep the kids from being too crazy while they're being kept busy and away from the renovation action. Which is very frustrating, when I keep on anticipating that Saturday will be the day I can devote to whatever project is in queue, like putting away clothes for the season, or clearing out the big bedroom, or washing all of the windows and blinds, or what have you.

We had an electrician here on Saturday, and there was framing done for the windows in the new kitchen and laundry room. My laundry machines were moved out of the way and then moved back again, and still seem to work. Phew. We ate pancakes and chili and fresh bread. R coughed more and more as Saturday went on; he fell asleep at the table, before dinner, after eating some cereal he found in the fridge. I carried him to the couch to sleep there, then realized that he was in training pants, and that he would sleep better up in his bed where A couldn't come along and poke his eyes. I changed him, carried him upstairs, and put him in his bed, and he stayed asleep through all that, and for about the next 13 hours. It was miraculous and glorious. And then he woke up coughing so much that he almost threw up, and sniffing and snorking. So he and A and I stayed home from church.

After rushing everyone who was going out of the door, R and I spent the morning lounging and watching "bear movies" (he likes Little Bear, the Berenstein Bears, and Ludovic, a series of stop-motion animation shorts about a bear) and reading blogs and thinking about and looking at tablecloths for the kitchen table and quilts and wondering if I could ever be good enough at knitting to make actual clothing and deciding to try out continental knitting and practicing it while standing up so that A didn't grab my yarn and laugh when I said "Ack! Don't grab my yarn!" and thinking about what we'll plant in the garden this summer and writing in my journal and hugging R when he had a coughing spell and changing A 312 times and apologizing whenever I did because he has a diaper rash that is slowly clearing up but looks pretty uncomfortable in the meantime.

The older kids were cranky and restless when they came home. Food and cartoons didn't even help. We ended up employing the early bedtime strategy to deal with it.

Fri Feb 4

2011-02-05T07:06:00.004-05:00

Yawn. Another late night. For everyone. As much as I like having some of the kids' activities in the evening, instead of filling up all of our afternoons, it makes bedtime a little difficult. N often has meetings that run later than Scouts/Cubs on Tuesdays, and he sometimes makes a stop for reno stuff on the way home after. This week, it was around 10 when they arrived home, and then he needed D's help with unloading a bunch of insulation from the trailer before it was buried under snow. Wednesday isn't too bad, but D has skating, which ends at 8, so it's usually 20 minutes after that before he's home. Thursdays now will be late, too, with taekwondo ending at 8, and it looks like we'll all be out for that. So that's only three days out of seven each week, but it turns late nights into a habit. Blerg.

So the morning was spent catching up on laundry and breakfasting and straightening up and vacuuming and lunch packing before Grandma arrived and D and S and I left for French. This week, we tried out having the boys have their lesson together, for an hour and a half, instead of one after the other for an hour each. It was wonderful... for me, not having to run back and forth between the mall/grocery store and the tutor's house, and not having a foot-dragging, treat-asking-for boy-who-doesn't-really-want-to-grocery-shop along while I'm trying to do the marketing. A has just recently proven himself able to stay with Grandma while I take the boys in, which is another glorious thing. So I had grand plans for sitting and reading and spending just a few minutes picking up a couple of groceries and a pair of winter boots for M. I ended up really taking my time with the shopping, and there was no time for reading. Another blerg.

The older kids played outside after we came home. I'm not quite sure what I did with the rest of the afternoon -- oh yes, A was happy but super ready for a nap when I came home, and putting him down to sleep took a little while, and then I worked on some church stuff. Dinner was an omelet (half mushroom, half plain) with celery, cucumber, and cauliflower. And toast. And juice. Breakfast for dinner. Yum. Movie night followed (Muppets Take Manhattan). R fell asleep perched up on the arm of the couch, leaning on the back of the arm chair.

A couple of books arrived in the mail. I love it when books arrive in the mail. One was Paddle-to-the-Sea, which we borrowed from the library forever ago, and I loved it. The other was A Child's Geography of the World, which I haven't read before, but I have now read the introduction, and so far, I love it. Sigh. I hope I'll soon be able to buy A Child's History of Art to complete the set. Hillyer is such a fun author.

Thurs, Feb 3

2011-02-04T08:25:00.003-05:00

We had company again this morning. A playdate. Last night was rough -- R went to sleep around 11, and then A woke up around 3:30 and just cried and yelled and wouldn't nurse and wouldn't settle back to sleep. He has a bit of a cold and is stuffy at night. So I took him downstairs and he ended up settling back to sleep with me holding him upright, sitting on the couch. So, that's how I spent the rest of the night, and I ended up sleeping in and, once again, missing out on cleaning up time. But I was pleasantly surprised to discover how little there was to do.

We had two boys over, I think they are 2 and 5. We know them from church. M is absolutely in love with the 2 yo. S and R had a blast playing with the 5 yo, who is very enthusiastic and lots of fun to play with. I enjoyed getting to chat with my friend/their mom, who I know mostly from brief hallway chats at church. Lunch was fun, with the table completely full of kids, and went smoother and not as messily as I anticipated, especially considering we were eating soup.

I had D do some school work during the visit (spelling, science, French), since he is older and much bigger than the other kids, and their play was pretty rambunctious, and then if he starts trying to play along, it would get out of hand pretty quickly. So he sat and did his school work and listened to us chat. Which is kind of awkward. Not sure how to handle that. I think it will be easier in the summer when the kids can play outside.

The kids had a bit of computer-type time after lunch, and then it was time to head out for piano, and then dinner, and then D was trying out a taekwondo class. His uncle is an instructor there. We have been thinking of martial arts for D for a while, but never managed to get very far with it. I asked my BIL for advice, knowing that he was in tkd, and he gave me some advice, and also recommended his place. He is an instructor also, apparently, for the lower levels. The place isn't too far from where we are -- not just around the corner, but definitely not as far as going in to the city for it -- and it sounded good. So we decided to try it out. I was a little concerned about D, since he kind of took a "you just signed me up for this! I didn't say I wanted to go! HDU!" attitude, but we said just try out a few classes before you decide. On the way home, he seemed happy with it, and only had positive things to say about it. Even the way he told me about the push ups he did was positive.

So, it looks like he will be signing up. M keeps saying she wants to go, though I don't know if she knows what it is. But I'm sure she would enjoy it. She will likely come along next week. And maybe S, too, though he is much more slow to warm up to this kind of thing.

Wed Feb 2

2011-02-03T09:11:00.002-05:00

Snowy, blustery day today. Glad I didn't have to be out in it. We did some reading and math and lots of playing. The box the new toilet came in has seen quite a bit of action. D spent a while putting little foam insulation inserts behind the faceplates of outlets and light switches. I finally managed to find the legs for S's bed and get them put on there. I spent way too much time at SouleMama's blog. It's so lovely. I want to live in her home. All the handknit stuff, the sewing, the wood floors, the big windows, the quilts... so lovely. And chickens and pigs and a barn and woods. Sigh. Oh, and the mis-matching. She's really good at it. Four different chairs at a table, but they all look nice together... completely different tablecloth and cloth placemats, but they look lovely together... dishes from 3 or 4 different sets, all looking like they belong together on the table. I cannot pull off lovely mismatching. So I go for super matchy or lots of plain stuff. Let's call it minimalist.

Tues Feb 1

2011-02-01T23:30:00.003-05:00

R had more trouble sleeping last night, so I ended up sleeping in, and then spending the morning catching up on cleaning. N was home from work and replaced the upstairs toilet with a new, fancy, conservative toilet. This interfered somewhat with my plans to shower before our company arrived, but it worked out in the end. He also fixed & cleaned the washing machine, and turned the door on the dryer around so that it opens towards the washer, which is much less awkward for moving the laundry over. And he re-caulked (or something) the bathtub where it meets the shower liner thingy. And he bought a trailer load of blown insulation at Home Depot.

I had a couple of friends over; they each have a little baby, younger than A. The plan was to make enough stuff for dinner for us to each take home a main course, side dish, and dessert. We made pasta with cheese & tomato sauce, carrots, and buttermilk brownies. I think it went well; the kids behaved relatively well, though I think it helped that N was keeping D busy helping with the toilet and washing machine for a lot of the time. M had a great time playing with the babies. I have avoided having anyone over for a long time, mostly because there are parts of our kitchen that are old and kind of trashed but we're not bothering with fixing them up because we are building a new kitchen. Most notably, the institution-esque, very low pile, very bright blue carpet we have on the kitchen floor. The kitchen floor is slanted -- it is more than an inch lower at the low end -- so more traditional kitchen-y floor coverings don't really work. I think that there is hardwood flooring under a few layers, and if I had thought of it two and half years ago when we first moved in, I would have seriously considered tearing up the carpet and the kitchen tile that is underneath it (not ceramic, something plastic-y and hard, I don't know what it's called) and cleaning, sanding, and painting the wood floor. Even if it didn't look great and was still slanted, it would probably have been better than carpeting on a floor in a kitchen where 4-5 kids eat three meals and two snacks a day. At this point, though, the new kitchen should be done soon enough that it's not worth the work in here. And once we get moved into the new kitchen, we're pulling everything out of here and starting new.

Anyway, all that is to say we haven't had many guests here, and it was nice.

D did some of the Math Mammoth worksheets; he had some problems with it, but it was mostly understanding what they were asking that was the problem. So since I have the pdf, I can just go and reprint that page so he can redo it without having to cross out a bunch of stuff and work around it.

R went to sleep more easily tonight. Almost as late as last night, but it was faster.

Mon Jan 31

2011-02-01T17:53:00.002-05:00

Kind of a weird day today. We did some exercise, some reading, some worksheets. N came home early from work, as he was feeling unwell, mostly because he didn't want to spread it around. I sat down with D and Mother Jones and gave a basic rundown on what's been going on in Egypt. D & M helped N load up the trailer with reno rubble and take it to the dump. I looked into Math Mammoth and ended up buying a worksheet package. I really like it so far, especially the part where I don't pay for shipping or wait for it to arrive.

N wanted to go get some insulation at Home Depot, so we had family home evening early to accommodate that. But by the time it was over, he was feeling worse again, and ended up falling asleep. But the older kids were in bed early, so that was a bonus.

I tried washing a load of laundry, but the machine wouldn't drain. After re-starting it a few times and then draining it manually and cleaning the filter and checking the drain pipe, it still wasn't working. N woke up around then and tried messing around with it. He got as far as getting it to give him an error code and figuring out the problem. I hope it's a quick fix.

R has been having a difficult time sleeping lately; he has a cold and he hates lying down. He was overtired and cranky and was crying and yelling about everything. Eventually, I convinced him to settle down beside me and he fell asleep almost instantly, sitting up beside me on the couch, close to midnight. Poor guy. We have company coming tomorrow, and I was hoping to use the time in the evening after the kids were in bed for cleaning. Oh well.

Fri Jan 28

2011-01-29T21:44:00.002-05:00

We didn't get into too much school stuff in the morning, unless you count exercising as P.E., as I was running around cleaning up before my MIL arrived to watch the younger kids. I was leaving A with her for the first time for this long, and he was a bit cranky and sleepy in the morning, so I sat with him through a short nap in the hopes of de-crankifying him for the afternoon. It seems to have worked, because he was fine the whole time.

I talked with the French tutor about having the boys try a session together, so they can talk with each other, and also because it's more convenient for me, I'll admit. So we'll try that next week.

When we arrived home from French, my MIL had managed to get the kitchen even tidier and had baked bread and egg salad rolls. And my dad and brother had dropped in while I was out and were up in the attic where we're renovating, putting up vapour barrier in a tricky spot (or something like that). It was so nice of everyone. We're so lucky to be close to our familes.

Thurs Jan 27

2011-01-27T20:57:00.004-05:00

I feel kind of selfish about it, but this morning, I did the exercise dvd before the kids were up. I'm really enjoying it. I did three segments and felt really good after. I meant to put on the dvd for them later -- D requested it once he realized that I had done it on my own -- but it never happened.

We read from Famous Men of Modern Times, about Alaric the Visigoth; The Map Book; and The Story of Inventions (which I keep calling by the wrong name), about Thomas Edison. I did not know that he ran factories just full of inventors, inventing things. No wonder he was able to crank out so many inventions and get so many patents! The book talked about film speed and that Edison figured out that 16 frames per second tricked the eye into seeing the changing pictures as real movement. We looked up videos on you tube taken with high speed cameras, usually slowed down. We watched pop corn popping, many water balloons exploding, someone being slapped in the face, another guy being punched in the face, a dog drinking water, a cube of jello being shot, a water balloon being blown up by a firecracker, and a couple of butterflies flying. The kids loved it. Then they had to go and do their math drill and piano practice. That was a less smooth transition than usual.

D and M had piano, which meant packing everyone up for just a short little ride. Sigh. The snow was great packing snow, and M and S played outside after piano.

We had mock fajitas for dinner; adapted from an easy fajitas recipe, but with baked beans added to stretch the meat. I made guacamole for the first time -- mock guacamole, really, with only avocado and tomato, no onion or pepper. And I made brownies for dessert again, but it was justifiable because I wanted to try out a variation: cream cheese stuff on top. It was yummy.

I've been reading up a bit on the importance of family meal time, for inspiration in our lives, and so that was on my mind. The Huffington Post runs a discussion article once a week as a jumping point for family dinner conversation. I didn't get that, but we did have a Mcleans lying around, so we discussed an article from it. The article was about reading over people's shoulders. The kids really enjoyed hearing the different perspectives and little stories from the article. It mentioned Seen Reading, a blog written by an over-the-shoulder reader.

Wed Jan 26

2011-01-26T21:16:00.002-05:00

Our morning started out well, close to on time even. The kids started playing this game where they were farmers and had crops and sold them at a market; D had sheets for record keeping. They were getting along marvelously and I decided I should just let them play. D playing and interacting nicely with his siblings is something he needs practice with, so I let him have the practice. The kids did their math, spelling, and piano practice later on.

I managed to clean out the freezer. Ugh. We had spaghetti with pureed squash and cauliflower in the sauce, since I found some of both in the freezer and it needed to get out of there.

D and S were doing reader's theatre with Calvin and Hobbes comics. I didn't dare tell them that was what they were doing, because they probably would have quit. It was nice to hear them dramatizing the comic strips together and laughing over them.

Dinner was Italian beans & pasta (basically pasta, canned diced tomatoes, canned black beans, and ground Italian sausage), spaghetti squash, and cabbage sauteed in the drippings from cooking the sausage. And brownies for dessert.

D had skating tonight, so the evening was kind of rushed. N drove him tonight and stayed for a bit to check up on what they're doing, and then came home and left again for home teaching.

Tues Jan 25

2011-01-25T19:22:00.002-05:00

We kicked it up a notch with the kick boxing today. Added in a second 10-minute segment. It was all lower-body stuff. It was fun; I was actually sweating at the end.

We started off with a NT story, Child's History of the World, and Our Island Story. We also added in Story of Mankind, starting off with the fall of Rome, which is where we are in CHOW. It was a nice read -- enough more detail that it was interesting, but not too heavy. The kids did their math and spelling and phonics and piano practice. M is doing quite well; she knows a lot of the notes on the staff, and she's good at clapping out the rhythm of the little songs she plays.

D worked a bit on a French tutorial after lunch. M and S played a game with toy phones and cameras, which involved putting placemats in different rooms in the house and pretending that they were teleportation pads.

Mon Jan 24

2011-01-25T09:14:00.002-05:00

N took D skiing for the first time today, with a homeschooling group. I thought they were going to freeze, since the high was -20C, but they said they were warm enough all day long.

The rest of us stayed home and played and read and watched a movie and cooked a nice big dinner.

I had to take our cat in to the vet this morning, for a suspected UTI. A neighbour came over to stay with S, M, R, and A while I popped over to the vet, who is just around the corner (well, two corners, but still really close). They had a great time playing. The cat, however, had a terrible time. Though at least this time the vet didn't have to call in a second person with those big leather up-to-the-elbows falconer's gloves to deal with her. I came home with antibiotics to give the cat twice a day for the next three weeks, unless the urine culture comes back clean.

I did some organizing and planning today -- I am using a half-sized planner and either make my own pages or use ones from donnayoung.org -- and did some recipe hunting. I've started reading through Dinner: A Love Story, and I'm enjoying the recipes. There are a lot we won't be able to make because the ingredients are pricey, but there are a lot of good ideas. I'm planning on borrowing a few of their recommended cookbooks from the library.

Poor N came home after a long, cold day of skiing and managing D and driving, and I knew he would be looking forward to sitting and watching something on the laptop. But sadly, the plug for the power supply has always been fragile on this laptop; it hadn't been working well, and by the end of the day, it wasn't working at all. The adapter was plugged in, but the plug itself was too loose inside and it wouldn't charge. So N took it apart (which due to the way the laptop is designed involves pulling the screen apart) and saw that the wires were completely disconnected, and would need to be soldered. I said my dad had stuff for soldering, so N called him and asked to borrow it. My dad said he would go look for it, and then showed up at our door with it, offering to help N do the soldering. Which they did, and then N had to glue the whole thing back in to the laptop, and it all seems to have done the trick. Phew. Tragedy averted.

Fri, Jan 21

2011-01-21T23:49:00.002-05:00

Our day was mostly consumed by D and S's French lessons. Which is rather ridiculous, seeing as they each get only an hour with the tutor. But, there you have it. We exercised and cleaned and packed and prepared in the morning, and then my MIL came to watch M and R while I took the other kids with me in to the city to the tutor's house.

After dropping off S, I met N at Home Depot; he had the afternoon off work and was there picking up some reno stuff, but it wouldn't fit in his car. We managed to squeeze it into the van, with room left over for the kids and I.

We returned home after a couple of stops for groceries. Dinner was pork and lentil soup; I used the stock from cooking roasts recently, one pork and one beef. The pork had a bone in it, and the stock was as solid as jello. That makes such yummy soup.

Thurs Jan 20

2011-01-21T23:36:00.002-05:00

We were back a bit more on track this morning. Still started later than I wanted to, but better. We did our exercise routine, singing, and started working on memorizing the Beatitudes. I read from Madam How and Lady Why, which is a beautiful book; Famous Inventors and Their Inventions, about dynamos and motors; and The Map Book, about a souvenir map from 200ish AD found in a Roman garrison. The kids did some spelling and math, and D and M worked on a worksheet for piano. There was some lego playing going on, too.

We had a bit of playing and piano practicing in the afternoon before piano lessons. Dinner was late, the kids were up late. Blah. But overall, a good day.

A few exceptionally enjoyable excerpts from Madam How and Lady Why:

"I see you are astonished at the notion that water can make Alps. But it was just because I knew you would be astonished at Madam How's doing so great a thing with so simple a tool, that I began by showing you how she was doing the same thing in a small way here upon these flats. For the safest way to learn Madam How's methods is to watch her at work in little corners at commonplace business, which will not astonish or frighten us, nor put huge hasty guesses and dreams into our heads. Sir Isaac Newton, some will tell you, found out the great law of gravitation, which holds true of all the suns and stars in heaven, by watching an apple fall: and even if he did not find it out so, he found it out, we know, by careful thinking over the plain and commonplace fact, that things have weight. So do you be humble and patient, and watch Madam How at work on little things. For that is the way to see her at work upon all space and time."

"But you have been longing, perhaps, all this time to hear more about Lady Why, and why she set Madam How to make Bracknell's Bottom.

"My dear child, the only answer I dare give to that is: Whatever other purposes she may have made it for, she made it at least for this—that you and I should come to it this day, and look at, and talk over it, and become thereby wiser and more earnest, and we will hope more humble and better people. Whatever else Lady Why may wish or not wish, this she wishes always, to make all men wise and all men good."

"Therefore we must not rashly say, this or that is Why a thing has happened; nor invent what are called "final causes," which are not Lady Why herself, but only our little notions of what Lady Why has done, or rather what we should have done if we had been in her place. It is not, indeed, by thinking that we shall find out anything about Lady Why. She speaks not to our eyes or to our brains, like Madam How, but to that inner part of us which we call our hearts and spirits, and which will endure when eyes and brain are turned again to dust. If your heart be pure and sober, gentle and truthful, then Lady Why speaks to you without words, and tells you things which Madam How and all her pupils, the men of science, can never tell."

A Child's History of the World

2011-01-20T07:39:00.002-05:00

by Virgil M. Hillyer

We're using this book in our history reading. I found it really charming when I first read through it. I enjoyed the writing style, the chapters are a nice length, there are often little footnotes to tell you how to pronounce names that might be unfamiliar, and there are simple maps throughout to describe the geography of the time and place being discussed.

D loves this book. We really should have moved on to The Story of Mankind or something similar by now, but it's a good, straightforward read, and S listens in, too. I think we'll just have to read CHOW on one day and SOM on another.

I believe I purchased this book through Tree of Life, a lovely supplier of classical and Charlotte Mason-type materials located in New Brunswick. And now I see that there are student workbooks and such available. I might have to look into that.

Wed, Jan 19

2011-01-19T19:04:00.002-05:00

This morning was a fail. I was up during the night with A a bit and with R quite a lot. I had a hard time getting up and getting going. It was about 2 hours later than I wanted by the time we got started. We did our kickboxing routine, though I would have skipped it if it had been just regular exercise on our own.

We started off with singing again and read the Beatitudes again. I read the chapter on buttercups in the Handbook of Nature Study, mostly to M, though D found it interesting as well. I started in on Parables from Nature but A was just too fussy and cranky and loud. So I handed out the spelling workbooks and put A to sleep. Things fizzled after that, largely because the kids got out the lego and were engrossed in that by the time A was asleep, and there was mess I wanted to clean. All of the kids practiced piano over the course of the day, and M read two more lessons in her primer. S worked on some multiplying.

I decided to order a few more of the Ambleside books. I think it ended up being one from each of years 1, 3, and 5. Paddle to the Sea, The Heroes (in the additional reading section, but I've liked what I've read of Charles Kingsley so far), and Bulfinch's Mythology.

I'm hoping to send the kids off to bed pretty quickly and put an end to this kind of blerg day. Hopefully everyone will sleep well tonight and tomorrow will be better.

Tues Jan 18

2011-01-18T19:01:00.002-05:00

We did the kickboxing routine for the second day in a row. Go us! Everyone found it a bit easier to follow this time.

We started off singing a couple of hymns. I've challenged the kids (mostly D and S) to memorize the Beatitudes, so we read that section in Matthew and read the little blurb about it in the Bible Dictionary. We read a book with a bit of French in it -- Bon Appetit Bernie -- and the kids spent some time naming things in English after I said them in French. We read a little bit about Walt Whitman and a couple of his poems, and then read some German mythology in Famous Men of the Middle Ages. I'm sure we read about Siegfried a couple of years ago -- probably four years ago, come to think of it -- but I couldn't remember the name of the hero of the story.

After a break for some train track building -- the kids built a track with all of the pieces we have -- and a snack, we read a chapter from Archimedes and the Door of Science. We read about pi and how Archimedes figured it out. It hadn't occurred to me before, but Archimedes was working before the decimal system was invented, so he only expressed it in fractions. I ended up explaining a bit to S about how you might be dividing a number and the numbers after the decimal point just keep going and going -- like pi. D, S, and M each did a few math drill pages; D and S did a spelling page; M did a phonics page and read 6 chapters in her reading primer. S practiced the piano -- though he isn't in lessons anymore -- and was working on songs in D's book.

After lunch, we did the usual stuff -- playing, reading, a bit of time outside, cleaning, watching a dvd, making dinner.

I filled out my planner pages for the kids' daily and weekly stuff. There are a few areas where we're a bit weak, like art and music. I'm hoping to use the Classics for Kids site for weekly music appreciation. It just never seems to happen. I also need to figure out some daily French work for everyone, too. We have a Powerglide programme, but I haven't been able to figure out a straightforward way to get extra workbooks. We have another programme on the computer that D can use. Maybe that will be how I get the kids to do French daily -- let them use the laptop. My pronunciation isn't great, so it does make sense to do it that way.

The kids were much less resistant to sitting down and doing book work today. I think it's a combination of how quickly it went yesterday and the energy they're getting out in the morning with the exercise dvd.

I have a whole list of books I want to buy to go along with the Ambleside reading. We definitely need something more challenging for D to read. The list is sitting in my bookmarks. A Child's Geography of the World is already on the way. I have to renew my library card and start requesting some of the others through ILL.

Mon Jan 17

2011-01-18T06:45:00.004-05:00

I've been trying to organize some kind of lesson planner for the kids. I really like Ambleside Online and follow it loosely, except we do history on a 4-year rotation (I think AO does it in 5) and everyone follows the same schedule for it, instead of it going with the grade. So instead of D being two years ahead of S in the history schedule, they are studying the same time period. So I did a bunch of printing of various booklists and planner forms. I printed some from Donna Young and made others. I also realized that she has math drill sheets, and printed up a few of them.

Our school time was a little haphazard, as I was trying to deal with the paperwork at the same time. But we read from the NT stories book, CHOW (about the barbarian invasion of Rome), and OIS (about King Henry I). D did a few pages of math drills, spelling, a chapter from the Christian Liberty Nature Reader, and piano practice. S did all the same, actually, though he didn't read a full chapter from the nature reader. M did math, most of a page of phonics (what she really wanted was to write in S's spelling book, and her phonics book was apparently not an adequate substitute), and she read a lesson from her reading primer. We played a game of animal tracks memory -- it's memory, but you pair up the animal with its tracks.

D made lunch today, which was great, and I assigned him to plan and make dinner every Thursday. He has a budget and needs to make a grocery list. I think he will enjoy it -- he always enjoys cooking -- but I hope he doesn't get too discouraged by having, like, rules and stuff.

N was home in the afternoon to work on the house -- putting frames around the new windows and putting up vapour barrier in what will be the kitchen and laundry rooms -- and my dad stopped by to help. The kids went out to play, though I called M back in after not too long because it was so cold and getting colder as the sun went down.

Dinner was a bit of a disaster. I bought two roasts last week and decided to try them in crockpots instead of the stove. I have one which I normally use, which is a normal size and fine for smaller roasts, and I have one that I picked up at a thrift store. It is twice the size of my other crockpot, but it is pretty old and I wasn't sure if it would even work. I picked up a super cheap roast and decided that if it didn't really work, I would be out a roast but at least I wouldn't have this big crockpot in my cupboard that I was never using. But it worked fine. But I started the roasts too late for the slow setting I put them on, so we ended up having leftovers for dinner.

Fri Jan 14

2011-01-14T21:06:00.003-05:00

We did a lot of reading today. The boys spent a while at the library. I worked on catching up with the reading for my TJEd-IMP list (I'm on the first week of October) and journaling. The littles played with blocks and tennis balls and pretended that stuffed animals were their babies and took care of them. A few of the kids practiced the piano.

D tried to convince me that he couldn't do some yardwork he was supposed to do because all of his pants were in the laundry except for one pair which were too tight in the knees so if he tried to bend his knees, he would fall over and then not be able to get back up because, again, he could not bend his knees.

I worked with M on her math today. She has been struggling with subtraction. She just doesn't seem to get what I mean when I talk about taking away stuff. If I say "Pretend you have 5 books, and you give me 3 of them, how many books do you have left?" she will often say 5 or an unrelated number that seemed to make sense to her, but I couldn't figure out how. I couldn't figure out what was the problem. She loves doing math problems, though, and is great at addition. At bedtime tonight, she wanted to work on her math workbook. She asked me to check it, and most of the subtraction questions were wrong. She was starting to cry, saying she'll never figure it out, she shouldn't be in grade 1, etc. So I tried explaining it with counting down, like adding backwards, but that didn't help. I tried using the pictures they had with many of the questions, with birds flying out of a tree or cats jumping out of a basket, but that didn't help. I told her to imagine that she had 5 cookies, and then she ate 3 of them, how many cookies did she have now? And she said 5. So I asked her again, imagine that you have 5 cookies, and you eat 3 of them, how many cookies do you have left to eat? And she said 2. So we went through a few questions with me framing it in terms of cookies, and she answered them all correctly. Then I had her figure out how to express it in cookies, and she figured them all out and came to the right answer. Phew! She was so proud. I left her in bed, doing more questions, and as I was picking up laundry upstairs I could hear her talking to herself about cookies.

It reminded me of the recent WSJ essay "Why Chinese Mothers are Superior." The author tells a story of her seven-year-old daughter who was struggling with a difficult piano piece. She felt her daughter could manage it if she tried and worked enough. The girl was at the piano for hours, frustrated, unable to get her hands to play the piece correctly. The mother threatened to take away birthday and other gifts and celebrations and didn't allow the girl to have dinner, drink water, or go to the bathroom. She told the girl that she was just working herself into a frenzy and if she calmed down, she would get it. Late into the evening, the girl suddenly played the piece correctly. And then did it again, and again. She had it. The mother felt vindicated, that her daughter wouldn't have figured it out if she had just given up on the girl.

I find with my kids, they hit similar road blocks. Something just doesn't click, and if I try to push it, they get frustrated and we get nowhere fast. My tendency is to back off and bring it up later. Generally, either they figure it out on their own before I bring it up again, or they catch on with my help later on. Like M and the subtraction. If I had pushed, she might have figured it out sooner, but I really doubt that she would still beg to stay up late at bedtime, doing math problems. She still loves it because she wasn't pushed or forced, and she figured it out without it turning into a power struggle between us.

I even find with myself with the piano, I hit similar roadblocks. No matter how many times I try to play something tricky, my fingers won't do it, and the more I try, the worse it gets, and the more frustrated I become. Often, if I just walk away, and come back to it later -- the next day seems to work well -- suddenly, I can do it. Like magic. Similar to how the mom described the little girl catching on to the difficult piece. It's like my brain just needs a break to process it. I can walk away from the piano and get that break by doing other things.... or I can sit there and force myself to keep practicing until my brain has had enough time, and get frustrated and learn to hate playing.

I read the advice recently (in the TJEd Leadership Education in the Home book, I think) to be type A with yourself and type B with your kids. I think I have a good grasp on being type B with my kids; I just have to work on being type A with myself!

ETA: I talked with M a bit more about the math. It turned out that one of the first subtraction questions I tried walking through with her was 5-2. I was explaining that the minus sign means take away two. So she had gone through all those questions and subtracted two from the second number. So for 5-3, she took 2 from the 3 and answered 1. If it was 3-2, she took 2 away from the 2 and answered 0. So that's where her weird numbers were coming from! She's still struggling with remembering to notice whether it is a plus or a minus sign, but she always gets the right answer for whatever question she thinks she's answering.

Thurs Jan 13

2011-01-14T07:59:00.002-05:00

M's final dentist appointment today. I thought it would be the easiest, but it ended up being the worst. They did fillings on the top and a crown on the bottom on the same side. She came home swollen and miserable. N had said he could take her out for some fast food after her appointment, because she couldn't eat beforehand (they were using nitrous oxide) and was starving before they even left for the appointment. But she was too sore to eat and just wanted to come home. But she really needed something to take her mind off of it.

I ended up calling my parents to see if they could come and watch the kids while I ran out to the grocery store. They came and my dad hung out with the kids while my mom and I went to the store I brought her some little yogurt cups and chocolate syrup to make chocolate milk and an activity book to keep her busy and a dvd of a season of Bewitched. I may have gone overboard, but she was much happier in the afternoon.

M was feeling well enough to go to her piano lesson this afternoon, which is good because she and D have a recital on Sat.

Wed Jan 12

2011-01-12T22:35:00.003-05:00

I played catch-up today after being out on Mon and Tues. There are some exercise dvds coming in the mail, so hopefully we'll have something a bit more exciting to do than my boring little routine I have cobbled together from exercises my Dr. recommended when I was pregnant with D. I did some one-on-one work with the kids throughout the day. M's reading is coming along well; it helps that we found her glasses after her being without them for two days.

D and S went out to the library in the afternoon and M worked on math here. She's good with numbers, but unfortunately, she often doesn't notice if a problem has a minus sign. She usually assumes it's a plus sign. So she'll do a whole page, get to the end, and then be super mad because they were supposed to be minus, and not plus.

We had Danish homefries for dinner tonight. I don't know if anyone in Denmark actually eats this dish, but it's based on the fact that it seems like half the Danish recipes I've seen end with "and top with fried eggs." You take a pan of homefries (I make them by dicing baked potatoes -- preferably cold ones -- and cooking them in butter), break a few (or several) eggs on them, and top with grated cheese. Put the lid on the pan and cook over lowish heat until the whites are cooked but the yolks are still runny. So very yummy. Also very yummy if you cook up some onion in the butter before you make the homefries. It takes a lot of butter to cook this up and keep it from sticking to the pan, but I'm happy to say that I'm up to the challenge and have never had it stick.

D had skating tonight; he was evaluated for the first semester of lessons, and passed the second level requirements. He was pretty happy with that. I'm glad that he is able to learn different skating techniques; he will be a much more confident skater than either N or I.

One of our family Christmas gifts was a Go Fish for Art card game. I know it was unwrapped here, but I haven't seen it since Christmas, and I've really wanted to play it. I purchased the Renaissance one several months ago, only to discover that many of the paintings had nudity. My kids would be way too distracted making silly comments about it to play the game. So for Christmas, I got Van Gogh and Friends. The artwork is so pretty. But the game is nowhere to be found. So this evening, I decided to look through the couches to see if it made its way into one of them. No luck. One of our couches is a sectional with footrest thingies at either end. Lots of stuff ends up trapped underneath and inside of the couch. I ended up tipping each section up on its end, so all the stuff in the couch fell down towards the end with the footrest, and then tipping the section forward so it all fell towards the opening behind the footrest. The stuff that came out was almost enough to fill up a 1 gallon ice cream container, and it included a Thomas train I have been looking for since before we moved here, but alas, no card game. Lots of vacuuming, though.

Life of Fred

2011-01-12T15:00:00.002-05:00

We've just started using a couple of "Life of Fred" math books. I really like how they are laid out, how easy it is for the student to use in a self-guided manner, and the engaging writing style. They are meant for students who have the basics down -- adding/subtracting, multiplication tables, long division. Starting in on them has helped me see where D needs more work, and where his strengths are.

Here is the author's main site for the books; you can view sample pages and get a feel for the series. In Canada, you can order them from www.sahss.com and www.canadianhomeeducation.com .

Tues, Jan 11

2011-01-12T11:17:00.003-05:00

Another kind of off-kilter day. We switched French to today because of M's appointment yesterday. We did some reading in the morning -- NT; CHOW, about the first Christian Roman emperor; and Our Island Story, about William the Red.

I dropped off M and R with my mom, and the kids were super happy to find out that Grandpa was there, too. I ran errands while the boys were at French. I picked up a bunch of clothes I hope D and M will grow into next winter, as they are all on clearance now, bought some more storage bins, and picked up some groceries. I was amazed to learn that at Loblaws, a 2kg bag of chocolate chips only costs $2 more than a 1kg bag.

We hurried home to make dinner before the boys had to leave for scout-type activities. Traditionally, M gets to choose a movie once the boys have left (just the older boys, the younger two are still home with me) and she's ready for bed on Tuesday nights. But the dvd drive in our computer isn't working, and shortly after we managed to hook a dvd player up to our computer, it stopped working. It's a good thing we have a laptop. I think the Universe is sending me a message about how much screen time we have been getting. I tried hooking up the monitor & speakers to the laptop, but the power supply is coming loose (again) and so it hibernates whenever I close the lid. We ended up watching Monsters Inc. in stereo and dual screen -- with the laptop open beside the computer monitor. Take that, Universe.

Civilization of the Middle Ages is coming along slowly; it doesn't help that I'm reading The Fourth Turning at the same time. They're both interesting and difficult to read while looking after kids.

Monday, Jan 10

2011-01-11T08:44:00.002-05:00

Our day was a little thrown off by a big dental appointment for M. My MIL came to look after D, S, and R while I took M and A to the city. She had a couple of bad cavities on her molars; she had a crown and a mini root canal just after Christmas, and this appointment was supposed to be the same. He did a min root canal, but was able to use white fillings for the cavities instead of a crown. M was disappointed that she didn't get another silver tooth, although what she really wanted was a gold one.

We went to the grocery store to get her a book and some yogurt for her recovery. After the crown, N took her to see a movie so she could rest and not be bothered by all the noise of excited post-Christmas fun at home. I couldn't do that, but we did pick up a dvd as well as a Tinkerbell colouring/painting book. It was nice hanging out with M.

I made mashed potatoes for the third time in my new mixer. I've only used it for baking once; I made a double batch of chocolate chip cookies in it. But it's been awesome for mashed potatoes.

D and S's French lessons are moved to tomorrow, so we'll have another weird day, but we should have more time for school in the morning before we all have to head out.

Fri, Jan 7

2011-01-07T19:37:00.002-05:00

N had the day off today, so we took the day off, too. D helped out N working on the renovations, and S helped me out un-decorating the tree and getting the mail and various other things like that. M and R and A played and bugged each other and then played more.

S pulled out his piano book today -- he stopped taking lessons about a month ago -- and was working on the last songs he was learning. He asked for help a few times, but mostly just worked on it on his own. I hope he decides to take up lessons again.

My dad came by in the afternoon to help out with the renovations. He was parked in front of our house; we're right on a corner. A school bus was turning left through the intersection and the back end of it hit the driver's side of his truck. It's pretty banged up; I saw the bus hit it and the truck really rocked. The door doesn't open and the side mirror is gone. I felt so badly that he had come out to help us and ended up with that happening.

I have been keeping on top of the housework, which is awesome, but it takes up so much of my time. I constantly find more stuff to do. And then, late in the afternoon, I'm on top of stuff so there is little to do while I make dinner, and I find myself dragging my feet and moving so slowly. If I have lots to do, I can hustle and get a lot done, but if the dishes are all clean and the toys are all out of the kitchen and the counters are wiped down and the microwave is clean and the leftovers aren't overflowing in the fridge, I just kind of putter around and the stuff I do ends up taking just as long as it used to take to do that stuff and all the cleaning.

I think I just have to figure out how to adjust and use my time more effectively. It's just so frustrating to be putting in the effort, and I am seeing some results, but I feel like I'm putting in all the effort I can and it's not getting me very far, I guess.

I'm hoping to make time for studying in the afternoon again. I just don't know how I'll manage it. If the kids would just happily play for an hour or so every afternoon and not need managing or help from me, it would be no problem. Or if A would go to sleep when the other kids do instead of being awake and cranky for two more hours. Or if I could manage to get to sleep before midnight and not wake up 2, 3, 4 times a night with A or R, I could get up early and study then.

I started reading a history book, The Civilization of the Middle Ages, recently. I'm still on the first few pages and I've read the same paragraph about four times today; I sit down to read and that's as far as I get before something else comes up. Somehow, things don't come up so often when I'm goofing around online, but if I have an actual book in my hand, everyone needs me. I wonder if an ebook reader would solve that problem...

Thurs Jan 6

2011-01-07T10:18:00.002-05:00

We had a bit of a late start this morning, due to a cranky baby. Then, during breakfast, the boys' friend L knocked on the door, wanting to know if they were free to play. Apparently, his school doesn't go back until next week. So the boys played Catan while I did some cleaning and organizing and relaxing.

D and M had piano this afternoon; they have a recital in a week and a half. D worked on some spelling this afternoon, but we ended up taking the day off so that was about it.

M's reading is really improving. When we read the Book of Mormon at bedtime, she read her whole verse on her own, with just a bit of help with names.

This week has been helpful to me in getting back into the swing of things with housework and planning and such. As long as we can start getting the kids up earlier so they go to sleep earlier at night, we'll have a good routine down. D has really been improving in terms of how cooperative he is with housework and schoolwork, and it makes a big difference. S is getting a bit more digging-in-heelsly about it, though. He says that's what happens when you turn 9.

I want to go buy curriculum and books and such again. But I know we should just make better use of the stuff we already have. D was asking for math problems yesterday; Life of Fred only has a handful of practice questions at the end of each chapter. I've been thinking that something like Saxon might be helpful, but I think he's near the end of it. Math Mammoth looks like a better bet in terms of flexibility and price.

"Importing" old blog

2011-01-06T08:47:00.001-05:00

I recently remembered the blog I had on homeschoolblogger. I tried importing it to this blog, but I just keep getting an error, so I'm slogging through it, post by post. I've decided to see it as a nice opportunity to have a walk down memory lane. I don't know if I'll mess up stuff here by doing it; so far, it seems to be going smoothly.

Wed Jan 5

2011-01-05T19:11:00.002-05:00

We managed to start a bit earlier this morning... before 11:30. We read another chapter from the NT story book, a chapter from CHOW, and started Famous Men of the Middle Ages. I did more math work with D and some with M.

D and S each read a chapter from the Christian Liberty Nature Reader for their grade. This is the first time we've used them, and I'm not sure about them yet. I like having something in our science reading that ties the natural world to the Creator, but these seem to really be going out of their way to constantly remind the reader of it. I also have the answer key, and it was nice to have comprehension questions all ready to ask them.

D and I played a couple of Professor Noggin games. He was given Medieval History for Christmas, so we played that. We were both doing the hard questions, and we tied. So I suggested he choose another Professor Noggin game to be our tie breaker; he chose Canadian history. We both did much more poorly. About halfway through, he asked whether I was asking him the hard or easy questions, and I realized I had been asking him the hard ones. I switched to easy, and he did a bit better. We need to work on our Canadian history, apparently.

The afternoon was taken up with chores and playing and minecraft and trips to the library and post office and making messes and helping me make dinner.

Tue Jan 4

2011-01-05T14:37:00.002-05:00

We took so long getting ready this morning; it was our first day back in our normal routine. I'm focusing on getting the kids used to the routine, including chores, instead of on getting it done quickly. Since we usually only use the morning for school, it doesn't make a big difference for now if we start at 9 or 11... or 12:30, as we did today. Yikes. But the kids did all of their morning chores and the house was nice and tidy for school time.

We are studying medieval history this year; we're just playing a little catch up with A Child's History of the World (we're in early AD). We also read Our Island Story for our British/Canadian history -- we're at the death of William the Conqueror. We're all studying the New Testament in our Sunday school classes, so we are reading a children's story version to start off our school time.

I did some reading in a Life of Fred book (the first one, fractions) with D and we figured out a few weak areas he has with fractions, and spent a while on practice questions.

After a very late lunch, the kids did their housework chores for the day and then took their turns on the computer. The boys are playing Minecraft; it has been a great game for them to have in common, as they have their own separate saved files and can do what they want in there, and they can figure things out and share information. M spent a long time writing up signs for all of the doors upstairs and taping them up. Hers said "Come In." The one she put on the boys' door said "Do Not Disturb;" the one for our room said "Please Do Not Come In. :) "

October 15

2010-10-16T13:20:00.002-04:00

It was a take-it-easy Friday today. Reading and playing in the morning, and then I did groceries with the baby in the afternoon while S, M, and R were at Grandma's and D stayed home and baked brownies.

I spent some time looking around at home schooling curricula and books at SAHSS. I could spend a small fortune on school books. Sigh. But we have plenty of books here that we aren't using much, or as much as we could, so I should focus on those. I am planning to buy a Medieval bundle from LTH Magazine, but that will be in January, I think. Have I mentioned how much I love these magazines?

October 14

2010-10-15T10:18:00.004-04:00

Well, it didn't take me long to fall behind with the blog. We've been keeping on with school here. More Child's History of the World, Famous Men of Rome, Sibir, Learning Through History magazine (we've started the Ancient Near East issue), Our Island Story, and stuff like that. More piano playing -- today, the kids (M, S, and D) had their first piano lessons. Well, D took lessons a couple of years ago, but today was his first day taking lessons here. S and D can walk, and I drop off and pick up M. It seemed to go really well. I was worried that S would be resistant, since he tends to withdraw and not really try if he doesn't completely get it. I asked him how his lesson was when he came home, and he walked away and didn't answer. But then, I heard him playing the piano. Turned out, he was playing from D's piano book from when he first took lessons. I was so impressed! He had caught on to so many things in one lesson.

I tried out "Learning Language Arts through Literature" with D. I purchased it last year, but hadn't tried it out yet. The first book study was for Farmer Boy, which D read not too long ago. He did not want to do anything that involved writing stuff out, and I wasn't sure how to proceed, but I decided to just read the questions to him and have him answer orally instead of writing it all out. It was a good discussion. I have the 5th grade book for D; I think he could have started in on the 6th grade book, but we'll go through this one first. I have the 3rd grade book for S, but haven't started it with him yet. It will definitely be done through discussion rather than writing.

I do want to start a daily journal exercise with the kids. Nothing too involved, just a daily journal time. We'll see where it goes from there.

We had a nice day at a local orchard recently, going on a kid's haunted wagon ride and then hanging out in the play and maze area. We had a fire in the back yard and toasted marshmallows. We've been reading bedtime stories under a blanket with a flashlight.

M's reading is improving. I packed her reader in the church bag, and she pulled it out during the meeting. She managed to read a new lesson almost completely on her own, quietly to herself.

D baked us a cake recently. I think I have to say yes more often when he asks to bake or cook. He really enjoys it, it keeps him busy, and everyone benefits from the results.

September 29

2010-09-30T08:48:00.003-04:00

We started late today; I decided to catch up on dishes and ended up cleaning the microwave and the toaster and folding a bunch of laundry. Whoops. We read
-a Book of Mormon story
-a couple of Rudyard Kipling poems
-a Map Book entry -- ancient world map by Ptolemy
-a chapter from Archimedes and the Door of Science

I played an addition dice game with M; D worked on the French programme that N just put on our laptop. I'm going to get started on it, too. The kids did some solo reading and piano playing, and S went out to work on his dribbling.

After lunch, there was more reading -- M found The Monster at the End of This Book, so we read that several times -- and playing an astronaut game. I read some more of Sibir, the Farley Mowat book we are inching our way through, to D. I really want to finish it and get on to something else. Reading out loud has been a problem for me lately; I'm stuffy with allergies and a cold on top of that. We need more audio books.

The older boys went out and played basketball and wii with a friend while the younger ones were stuck at home playing at http://www.starfall.com/ while I made dinner. N loaded up the little Jetta with bags and boxes for the thrift store. Ahhhhhh. Now I need to start going through things again and do another culling.

September 28

2010-09-28T19:48:00.002-04:00

Rainy morning. We read Our Island Story and some more of the Ancient Egypt LTHM. We read an "interview" with a pharaoh and an article about the role of scribes. That ended with a hieroglyphics key; D and S were figuring out how to write their names and stuff. D did some grammar from a workbook and everyone had piano time.

After the usual afternoon activities like basketball, bike riding, drawing, and tv, D and S headed out to scouts and cubs. It's S's first time at cubs, and he was not happy about going. I hope he has a good time.

September 27

2010-09-28T08:47:00.002-04:00

We had a busy weekend; it was nice to be back to school this morning. For our sit-down school time, we
-read our world history book, A Child's History of the World
-read an OT story
-read from Famous Men of Rome
and then the kids went off and played piano and made up games until it was time to scramble and get ready to head in to the city for French lessons. Then we scrambled to return clothes that didn't fit and find ones that did to replace them and pick up some groceries while S was in his lesson. While D had his lesson, the rest of the kids and I went to the great playground that the French tutor's house backs on to. It has a huge hill that will be great for sliding down in the winter.

S has been interested in basketball lately; we have a basketball, and a friend a couple of doors down has a hoop in his driveway. That's where S heads every afternoon. If the friend isn't home, S practices dribbling in our driveway, or goes over to the school playground if it's after school hours.

September 24

2010-09-25T20:27:00.002-04:00

We tend to take it easy on Fridays. The morning was spent free reading & playing; R, M, and S were playing a game where their toy puppies were real pets and they were caring for them.

D had his first swimming lesson at a new-to-him pool; friends who take lessons there picked him up and brought him home. It sounds like it went well. He got the hang of a kneeling dive after hearing it explained a different way from a new teacher.

While D was out, the other kids and I went to the park by the local swimming pool to meet up with another homeschooling family from our town. We met up with them when I was pregnant with A, and haven't seen them since then. The kids are the ages of our younger kids; around 6, 4, and 2. The kids seemed to have fun, and it was nice to chat.

We arrived back home just as D was being dropped off. All three of the boys in that family ended up hanging out at our place for a while, which was great. All of my kids like them, and M and S especially were disappointed that only D would be hanging out with them.

September 22

2010-09-22T21:06:00.003-04:00

Today was a wonderful first day of fall, though we didn't do anything to celebrate it. D was out late last night at Scouts, so he slept in while the younger kids "camped" in the living room. When we got around to school time, we
-read a bit of Gospel Principles
-read an excerpt from the Just So story about camel humps
-read a quiz about living in ancient Egypt, from a Learning Through History magazine
-looked at the next map in The Map Book, which was a Roman coin depicting a new harbour built by Nero
-read the next chapter in Famous Men of Rome, which happened to talk about the building of the harbour at Ostia, which was later replaced by the one on the coin

At that point, we had to stop to eat lunch, pack a snack, and head out to a get-together with a homeschooling group we just joined. It was a games-and-snack-potluck. We had never been to any of their activities, but the group is based in our town; we could have walked there, easily. There were more kids there than I was expecting -- about 35. D joined right in to a game of Life; M made friends with a girl her age after I said she looked like she needed a friend; S sulked and frowned and said it would be the most boring hour of his life while I tried to convince him to join a group and talk to them while they played, and then join in the next game. Then one of the boys came and invited S to play. He went along after being reassured that they boy was teaching anyone who didn't know the rules. S was fine after that and had a great time.

I went out to do some shopping after dinner while N stayed with the kids. I was called 'miss' -- I guess he didn't notice all of my grey hair! The lady at the local thrift store recognized me, though, and commented that I was out without the little ones.

September 21

2010-09-21T21:15:00.004-04:00

Much slower day today. I woke up not feeling well & got worse as the day went on. The kids and I watched some OK, Go videos on YouTube, and then D put on a Marx Bros. movie. We had some sit-down-on-the-couch school time:

-read a Book of Mormon story
-re-read "The Benefactors," discussed it more
-read a few chapters from our British history book, "Our Island Story"
-D played piano
-S practised dribbling a basketball (outside)
-M & S played with a marble track toy while D had his turn with the basketball
And.... that was pretty much the end of school-y stuff. We had a late lunch, and I spent the afternoon baking and cooking and making a mess while the kids played on the computer or played outside with a friend or played with the marble track some more. And D had his first Scouts meeting tonight.

I'm in the process of putting away summer clothes and taking out winter clothes. I've been doing it haphazardly since we moved here, so this time I decided to take out everything and reorganize it. It takes surprisingly long, though; I'm remembering why I always do it haphazardly. I'm weeding out a lot, though, which helps.

September 20

2010-09-21T07:19:00.002-04:00

We're slowly getting back into the swing of things with school. The weather is so beautiful now; I hope to spend more time outside, but the mornings are chilly enough that it's nice to hang out on the couch and read together.

A quick summary of today:
-read about & discussed Elijah and Elisha
-read a Kipling poem, "The Benefactors," and discussed a little bit. I think we'll come back to this one.
-read about Philip and Alexander and Greece in our world history book
-read about the Horiatii and Curiatii in our Roman history book
-helped D and then S with French homework; talked about why a word like kiwi isn't in the old French-English dictionary we have
-had M read a lesson to me from her beginner reader book; found out that she's having a much easier time with reading now that her eyes are adjusting to her glasses
-D practised on the piano and then fiddled around on it for a while; I practised; M fiddled around on it for a while
-played an adding game with dice with M
-looked at a book about spiders & insects with M, and then S came over and showed her stuff in it
-packed up a lunch and dropped off M and R at my mom's
-took D and S to their French tutoring. S was tutored for an hour while D (and the baby) and I went clothes shopping for D, then D went for an hour while S (and the baby) and I went grocery shopping
-picked the younger kids up, headed home for the evening

And that was the end of anything very school-y that we did. Oh, we practised a few French words at dinner; I asked the boys how their lessons went and what words they were learning.

The boys are signed up for an hour of French tutoring each pretty much every week from now until the end of June. D is enjoying it a lot so far; S isn't so sure. He's more of a perfectionist and is much less likely to want to do something if he doesn't think he can do it right the first time. D is enjoying the lesson time more, and enjoying working at learning the vocab and starting to learn sentences.

'Tis the season for signing kids up for stuff: D has swimming on Fridays and skating on Wednesdays; M and S have gymnastics on Saturdays; S and D have Cubs and Scouts on Tuesdays. Next, we're looking for piano lessons for D, and maybe art classes for M and S. I've also joined a local homeschooling group, which does activities every Wednesday; skating every other Wed. and other activities on the Weds. that aren't skating. The first is a "season opener" picnic at a big playground in the city.

Thurs, Oct 8

2009-10-09T06:38:00.003-04:00

We had another off day today, as I had a prenatal appointment right in the middle of it. We ended up just having time to get ready and go; the older kids stayed with Gma H while I took R along with me. My appointments are in the city; I stayed in after to do some shopping and ended up at Value Village getting Hallowe'en costumes. D wants to be Harpo Marx; I thought I was doing well with what I found (a kind of a top-hat but not as tall, a curly blond wig, and a clown horn), but apparently everything isn't quite right to D. I should have told him beforehand that the costume doesn't have to be perfect, and that I likely wouldn't be able to find anything exactly like what Harpo wears.

After I picked up the kids, we went outside for a while. S played with a math wrap I found at Value Village; M and I played Go Fish; the kids rode their bikes around. My appointment and the subsequent shopping were, apparently, just too much for me, and the house was a mess after our hasty departure in the morning and then return with groceries in tow followed by another trip outside. The kids watched tv while I cleaned up, slowly, and then we had dinner late. I'm looking forward to staying home tomorrow.

Wed, Oct 7

2009-10-08T07:13:00.002-04:00

We finished reading the bio of Christopher Columbus today; I'm finding it useful to have an atlas handy while we read from Famous Men of Modern Times. We also did some reading & discussing of Everything I want to Do is Illegal. We had a snack; the kids played a bit; I did some piano practice; D worked in a "How to Write Persuasively" workbook (the title intrigued him but the work was boring quickly); S did some math (word problems, shockingly) and M practised writing & played Go Fish with me.

We did more reading after lunch, and then got all bundled up to go outside just as it started raining. :P It lightened up quickly, though, and we went out and did yard work for a while, until the rain started again in earnest. The kids were supposed to clean up before they could play video games etc. while I made dinner, but R kept on undoing everything they did.

We ended up being done dinner fairly early, and settled in for a nice evening of reading. Except that M was either overtired or cranky or something, and R was definitely overtired, and so there was a lot of bouncing around and noisy distractions. I don't mind her bouncing around while I read, if she does it at the far end of the livingroom, where we have a trampoline set up for it. But she insists on bouncing on the couch right next to the reader or listeners. Arg. Or she plays with R, makes him laugh, and then goes completely overboard trying to make him laugh more and just makes him upset. Arg again.

Tuesday, Oct 6

2009-10-06T23:22:00.002-04:00

We had lego this morning; it was just nice enough towards the end that we spent some time at the playground. It seems that the group has decided to research hovercraft. D had a better time this week and seems more enthusiastic about it.

Our afternoon was rather lazy; R fell asleep on the ride home, so instead of getting him out of the van and having him all cranky while I tried to make lunch, I left him in to nap and did some yard work. So the rest of the afternoon was kind of thrown off; it was mostly spent making food, putting away groceries, reading, and playing. I managed a little more Spinoza; I really wanted to figure out what he was saying, but I almost always fall asleep when I read now. Ugh.

D has been working through a "Daily Math" book; I was surprised, as he has expressed very little interest in actually doing math work for quite a while. He was at loose ends one day last week and getting on everyone's nerves instead of finding something to do, so I pulled out this book and told him to choose a day and do it. He's about 6 weeks in now, and we've talked about a lot of math concepts that we hadn't touched on before, and I've made note of a few things to go over with him and maybe find a different way of explaining.

Monday, Oct 5

2009-10-06T14:17:00.003-04:00

This morning, D did some research on how horses are used for transportation for his lego league. They've narrowed the mode of transportations to choose from down to two: horses and hovercrafts. There are eight kids in the group, and they are split evenly into the two groups, but they'll have to choose just one.

Lego league was in the afternoon; M stayed with Gma H, since she has been sick with a sore throat and bad cough. R fell asleep on the way to lego, so S played DS while I went back to read more of the Spinoza for the Great Book reading. We spent the rest of the meeting either out at the playground or inside the arena with the other younger siblings. Two of the boys played chess; S asked if I would play with him, but we had to put it off since it was time to go.

S and I played after dinner. I'm not great at chess; there were a few occasions where it was discovered that one of us was in check after our turn ended, and we had to go back and re-do our turns. Oops. And the game took a long time. (I did have three other kids distracting me, though.) I was proud of S; he generally doesn't like win/lose games and doesn't take it well once he starts losing, but he stuck with it to the end and wasn't upset when he lost.

Friday, Oct 2

2009-10-06T14:08:00.002-04:00

We didn't have to be out anywhere today, which was nice. I've discovered that S loves hangman. I always thought of him as a mathy kid, but lately, he says all he likes is adding. I also thought that language/reading was a weak area for him because he doesn't enjoy reading (other than comic books), but he's really strong with spelling. We had a fun time with hangman; S started using the dictionary near the end to check his spelling, and then quickly discovered that he could use it to find super tricky words. He had a long one -- two long words, actually -- and from the way it was filling out, I was worried it was some obscure medical term. It turned out it was from the cover: "Encyclopedic Dictionary."

We spent part of the afternoon outside cleaning up the garden; the kids also rode bikes and watched the construction going on behind us. The rest was spent cleaning up inside to get ready for Gma S to come and watch the kids while N and I went to a movie. (The Invention of Lying. It didn't live up to the hype.)

Thursday, Oct 1

2009-10-02T08:42:00.002-04:00

It was a rainy, cozy day today. We started well, though M had a hard time quieting down for the reading. D had lots of questions. M and S had some kind of pretend game going on and they took off to the toy area to play once our opener was over, so I read D the first bio from Famous Men of Modern Times -- Lorenzo de Medici. It was really interesting (though I discovered that this book was considering "modern times" to be anything after the Middle Ages, so it started at the beginning of the renaissance). We discussed guilds and unions, the printing press, republics and city-states, and some geography related to the Medici family's commerce.

School time ended earlier than usual because D had a book club at noon. My mom came to watch the three younger kids while I took him; I had planned to do a quick stop for groceries and spend the rest of the time with Samson Agonistes, but as usual, I took longer at the grocery store than expected and only read for about 15 mins. I'm enjoying it, though, and I think I'll manage to finish it on time this week. D and I had some good chatting time in the car on the way home; he talked about their discussion of Tom Sawyer, and I told him that I had done some reading for my book club. I explained how the group works, what the Great Books are, and told him a bit about this week's reading. He seemed interested enough, but I think it went on a bit too long and turned into a lecture instead of a discussion.

I managed a bit more reading at home during quiet time after lunch and tidying up; R's napping schedule is all weird right now, and he ended up just falling asleep and then waking up when I put him down. Which was fine, since he woke up happy instead of cranky, and it meant an early bedtime for him tonight.

D helped me make dinner (it was a pasta dish he loves and wants to learn how to make) and we had some more nice chatting time. We managed to eat and finish cleaning up by 7, which left lots of time for reading before bed. D and I started Everything I Want to Do is Illegal, a book about small-scale farming in the US, where laws and regulations are written for factory-style farms. N taught the kids how to stand on their heads while I was reading.

Wednesday, Sept 30

2009-09-30T23:17:00.002-04:00

I was doing so well with keeping up. Sigh.

It has been rainy and grey here for a few days; we went out to lego on Monday and that's been about it, other than the library. Lots of reading and playing. I sat down with D for a "six month inventory." He told me what he was interested in learning and doing and anything he was worried about, etc. He's not crazy about lego (it isn't what he was expecting, and I think he feels like his ideas are never used, when in a group with that many kids, that probably happens a lot) but he does want piano and swimming lessons, and he wants dh to teach him French. He's also interested in doing cub badges and some Adult Skills classes (from the TJEd Home Companion). He wants to start with Grocery Shopping. That should be interesting.

Our family work times (mostly in the morning, before school) are mostly going more smoothly. S has done an about face with his attitude to chores; it used to be like pulling teeth, but now, he's almost always the first one to head off when I give out assignments and the first one done. I think it has helped that I have a wider variety of tasks to give out now; he was pretty sick of unloading the dishwasher.

This week, my Great Books group is reading Samson Agonistes, and I'm enjoying it. It is still tricky getting time in the afternoon for that sort of thing; I thought for sure it would work out well today, since we ate lunch at noon and dinner wasn't until 6:00. But R was cranky and didn't nap well (again), and I read some of Tom Sawyer to keep up with the books for D's book club, and I thought dinner would be easy, but I ended up doing a lot of kitchen stuff (baking pumpkins and raisin cake since I had baked beans in the oven, and cooking carrots to go with dinner). I also did birthday gift pics for great grandparents and did some recipe searching and did some printing. I don't know how I managed to use up the whole afternoon, though. Arg.

Thursday, Sept 24

2009-09-25T07:09:00.002-04:00

Around the time we were ready to start school this morning, my dad showed up at the door to say he would be taking down a tree at the neighbour's place behind us. The kids watched the big snaffler truck take down the tree and the branches get fed into a chipper. They then went and took down a tree about half a block down the road in front of our house. It was an exciting morning (though they did spend a lot of time playing with lego stuff while watching).

After some reading and piano, we had an early lunch; D had a book club meeting at noon. It was kind of a pre-meeting; they were teaching/reviewing the story chart they use to analyze the books, using Peter Rabbit as the story. He seemed to enjoy it. It's at the same community center as lego, and the other kids were happy to be back at the playground again. This book club is monthly; weekly, at 1:00, there is a free skate for homeschoolers (and I suppose anyone else who wanted to show up). We watched the zamboni clean the ice, and then my kids excitedly bounced around and got in the way of the people trying to put on skates etc. while we waited for D to be done, and then we watched the kids skate for a bit. I would like to bring the boys for skating, at least when D has book club, but I'm not sure how that will work with the younger two.

When we arrived back home, R was sound asleep, so I opened up the doors to the van and worked in the front flower beds while he napped. I pulled out a bunch of dead stuff and realized that there were seed heads that looked ready to harvest, so I put them into some ziploc baggies I had in my gardening bag. I'll have to take them out and figure out how best to keep them.

The other kids went inside and pigged out on cookies and watched Popeye cartoons. Our afternoons are never quite what I want them to be; the rest of our day doesn't seem rigidly structured to me, but the freedom of "OK, now do whatever" seems to encourage them to want to eat only treats and play video games and watch tv/dvds. I'm fine with that for now; I'm more concerned about working on our morning, school, and evening routines. Once those are more firmly established, I'll try and figure out afternoons. I like how afternoons are outlined in Leadership Education; a time for kids to play and older kids to work on projects or studying, and for mom to study or work on projects; occasional field trips and library trips and such things go in the afternoon, too.

The boys played outside with a friend and then came in to all play lego together while I made dinner. I had a kid-free errand night; one of the things I had on my list was the thrift store, as I had birthday money for R from grandparents. They were going to buy clothes for him, but didn't know what we needed. I picked up lots of cute tops and some nice pants and pjs, and then spent a long time looking through the books. At this thrift store, they have so many books, often they are two deep on the shelves. I never look past the first layer when I'm there with the kids, but I couldn't resist when I had the evening there on my own. I discovered that most of those shelves are actually three deep in books. I didn't find too much, but I did pick up a couple of cute board books for R, a Dr. Seuss and an Edward Lear, a "complete works of Shakespeare" book (sadly, with no footnotes or much of an introduction to speak of and no index at all, but it is at least all there), an encyclopaedic dictionary and an etymological dictionary. D has been into dictionaries lately.

I came home from my errands to a clean and tidy house and kids just about ready for bed; they were just at the point of starting bedtime reading. Ah. It was very nice.

Wednesday, Sept 23

2009-09-24T16:07:00.002-04:00

First stay-at-home day of the week. It was grey and rainy. The kids were ready for school in time and then started playing with lego while I finished up to be ready for school. Since they were playing so nicely and R was still cranky with his cough, I just let them be. I cuddled R and did some reading and practiced the piano. We did a bit of reading together, eventually, and D and I played Pirates vs. Ninjas.

Things stayed mellow after lunch; the kids helped tidy up and they did some drawing and reading and then video games when they were allowed. M did a lot of cutting up magazines and organizing the pictures she cut out. Neighbour came over when his school was over, and they all got into the lego again; the boys ended up over at his house, so it was a quiet dinner prep time.

We read from Farmer Boy before bed, about cutting ice in the winter to save for the summer. I ended up drawing a diagram to explain what they were doing, and then S was more interested in how to draw a cube than in the story.

Tuesday, Sept 22

2009-09-22T23:31:00.002-04:00

We were late for lego this morning; R woke up quite cranky and stuffy and not wanting to be put down. I debated not going at all, but he seemed to be feeling better and we were able to get there for the second hour (of two). We went for groceries while D was at lego, and did a quick stop at another store on the way home. R was fine at the beginning, but he just kept looking more and more miserable and leaking more and more from his face. He napped after lunch and woke up with a fever and a croupy-sounding cough. Poor guy.

So, the rest of our afternoon was basically quiet activity time instead of shifted-to-the-afternoon school time, as R wanted to be carried around for quite a while. The kids mostly played with lego, or cut out pictures from a magazine for crafts (that was M), or made up games, or read.

We have driven across or along the river near here a few times since we discussed it on Monday morning, and D notices it each time. I think this could turn into a fun geography unit.