6:30 - Norah's up. We play one of her favorite games which consists of her shoving a farm animal in my face until I say its sound. Repeat until box is empty.
7:00 - Big kids are up. I make breakfast while they play with Norah. They kids remind me that I forgot poems yesterday at lunch so I read them during breakfast. They are anxious to get outside so I don't have to nag about our morning routine today. By 8, chores are done, they are dressed with teeth and hair brushed! Once they are outside, I get myself and Norah ready for the day and do some chores. This week has a lot of doctor's appointments and field trips so today I have got to get all caught up with laundry so we can coast a bit. Despite being a homeschool mom and homebody, I refuse to let us be pajamas all day long people. But I may or may not admit that, knowing I'd be home all day today and that I really needed to get my one pair of non-yoga pants clean, I decided to put on clean clothes instead of pajamas last night so I didn't have to change this morning. I've ordered new pants and I really hope at least one pair fits because the situation is desperate. But such is life when you gain and lose 60 pounds with a pregnancy. It takes a good bit of time, and several transition sizes, to get it all off. I'm done now though and ready to stay one size for a while.
8:15 Norah and I join Lucy and Jonah outside. Craig is almost done with the treehouse he is building the kids. It's not even finished but already they are loving it and since it is at the back of the yard, they are spending a lot more time exploring over there instead of hanging out on the driveway like they often do. They are up there making "a fire" (a pile of sticks and rocks) and exploring the woods and calling me to see every bug they find. This is fun except I try to use this time for Bible reading and prayer since Norah is normally happy to play by herself outside. It takes a while but eventually I get it all done.
9:00 - I head inside to switch laundry. A few minutes later the kids join me and Lucy and I do piano lessons (finishing book A! It took us over a year but we started moving along a lot faster once she could practice on her own and she's doing great so no worries, we'll just keep going).
We then do phonics with a lesson from The Ordinary Parent's guide to Teaching Reading.
10:00 Norah goes down for her first nap. She took two really long naps yesterday and knowing her, that means today's will be short. I gather the kids quickly and we start Table Time. We get done:
Bible Memory: Psalm 23
Hymn: Ancient Words
Folk: Blow the Man Down
Poems: Learning There was an Old Person who Habits and reviewing a Shakespeare passage. Both kids are really excited about all our song and poem choices lately which makes it easy to get started with school. We struggled last term a bit with actually learning the songs and that made it less fun because they can't read so it was my singing but I decided to have us review the lyrics more and so far, its helping a lot! Jonah's even singing along!
Jonah then does a bit of MEP Reception and a page of a Rod and Staff workbook before I say that's enough and send him off to build a couch pillow fort (he asked earlier but it wasn't a good time then so he was happy with this suggestion). Lucy works on copywork then when I'm free, she and I read/narrate a Blue Fairy Tale story, do math and go to start the next reading when...
10:35 - Norah's up already. Boo! She eats crayons and then Cheerios while I read about Black-capped Chickadees from the Burgess Bird Book. Once she's out of Cheerios she starts to complain about the lack of attention so but Jonah starts playing a weird game with her that makes her laugh. It involves his taking her things and then screaming at her and I don't really understand why she thinks its fun but she's laughing so hard she's falling over so I won't complain as long as no one ends up crying.
11:15 The kids color their birds and then move on to other free choice coloring/drawing/writing while I try to print homeschool field trip form that I need sent in for tomorrow's field trip, feed the hungry cranky baby and make lunch for the rest of us. I've recently started to change my lunch diet and include more nutrient dense foods - high protein salads, homemade broth, etc. Which makes lunch a bit more chaotic than when I just make some pb&js for everyone but eventually everyone is sitting quietly and eating and I catch my breathe and look at my school to-do list for the day. Oops, we forgot French. Luckily Norah is a slow eater so Lucy and I are able to do that while she's happily finishing up.
12:15 - Lucy's wants to work on her American Heritage Girls Pet Care badge and we do for a few minutes while Jonah and Norah are playing in his fort but he's quickly getting too "energetic" for baby play so finally I say "enough, everyone outside!" Lucy and I can keep working on her badge work though because she needs to take pictures of her chickens. The hardest part of this seems to be avoiding butts. Both chicken's "Mom, I don't want a chicken butt in the picture. Make them turn around" (have you ever tried to make six chickens stay in one spot and face a certain direction. Uhm, yeah, that's not gonna happen) and Jonah's because he isn't wearing pants - again.
Here's a nice single chicken shot she got but then she decided she wants them all together.
No, not a chicken butt!
More butts!
Eventually Lucy takes my suggestion of taking a picture of her holding a chicken.
Then they play more while I do a bit of reading. I don't make a whole lot of progress because Norah just wants to climb the cement stairs over and over again and my attention is divided but at least I tried.
1:15 - Inside again and time for nap stories - Maybelle the Cable Car, a handful of Nursery Rhymes from our favorite Mother Goose book and two chapters of Pinocchio that ended on a very suspenseful note. After fighting off "No! One more chapter! You can't stop there!" I left them with Librovox's Uncle Wiggly's Adventures playing. Norah isn't ready for a nap (I did try!) so she and I hang out in the living room. I watch a little Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries while she goes around the room taking things out and not playing with them at all.
2:25:00 - Norah falls asleep.
2:35:30 - Big kids are up. They are good about getting up and playing quietly but alas, the speaker for their tablet that plays the audiobook makes a incredible awful and loud honking noise when it runs low on battery power so I have to get up and turn it off. I get them a snack, answer a few questions (Jonah - "But what is pineapple MADE OF?"), thank them for coloring quietly and let them know they can play outside if they want before I try to go back for a nap. After a minute I realize a nap is a lost cause so I go back out.
2:45 - Kids are eating and coloring while telling each other about the laws of mermaid and sea serpent world still and I try and get some work done on the computer. Jonah noticed my productivity and asks me to play a game with him. Since its much harder to play a game when Norah is awake, I agree and we begin a rousing round of Sneaky Snacky Squirrel. We get half way done (perhaps, SSS is a very time varied game. Sometimes it lasts 2 minutes, sometimes it lasts for hours) when Norah wakes up.
Weird angle but it was another pantsless situation. I'd work on this issue but I figure the cold weather is coming and that should do the trick ;-)
3:30 - Everyone is playing happily without me! I ponder dinner. This is pretty easy because Craig is stopping by Costco on the way home which means he can bring home a rotisserie chicken. I love Costco day but I just found out my potatoes were not in, uhm, optimum condition, so my side dishes need to be switched up. I'd say Pinterest to the rescue and partly so but I'm not sure Jonah is going to be pleased with my switching his request of mashed potatoes for cheesy garlic spaghetti squash. While on the computer I also try some new playlists of Spotify in an attempt to add new music to my non-school playlists but not finding much. Any suggestions of new artists/albums to try?
3:45 - I shoo everyone outside now that I have a dinner plan. The kids play and I watch for a little while before Norah and I head inside to start the squash. "We" pick up everything she took out, sweep, vacuum and fold all three loads of laundry before the big kids join us. This is what her "help" looks like:
4:45 - Lucy and I do her last school of the day - reading practice. We read two pages of Owl at Home. She is loving this book. She told me that she doesn't like reading to herself but she has to keep reading it because she just has to know what will happen because its always so funny, She's a little upset that there are only two more pages in her current chapter.
5:00 - Daddy's home! A quick dinner then I grab a shower while Craig plays a game with the kids. When I'm done, I keep Norah away from their game by playing magnatiles. She hands me tiles, a build a box, she puts the lid on the box and then smashes it. Repeat until I hate the sight of magnatiles.
6:15 - Craig leaves for a meeting. That was not a long enough break. Kids run around while I watch from the couch and when they have worked themselves up into a frenzy I yell out "pajamas!" Norah's overly tired so I speed read to kids, tuck them in and try to put her down but neighbor is setting off fireworks. Yes, fireworks. In October! This is the second time this week and its driving me crazy.
7:15 - Craig's home from his meeting early (it got canceled) and wondering why the big kids are already in bed. I hand him Norah and go back to read the Bible to the kids and then since Craig is still occupied, a bit more of Pinocchio. He puts Norah down and then goes to kiss kids goodnight and they somehow manage to convince him he needs to read his chapter book as well. Those kids, they can be quite persuasive. And here they thought they might not get any! But how can you say no to a request for more Narnia? While he reads, I finish up kitchen clean-up.
8:00 - Kids are asleep. Craig gives me a progesterone shot - fun times! Not sure what is worse, the shot in the butt or the fact that I was forced to listen to the VP debate while enduring that shot. Once I'm done, I go out of ear shot of debate again. Ahh, peace. I'm so over politics right now.
9:00 - Bedtime. I had plans to do more reading and maybe some knitting but I know the Progesterone will make me very sleepy tomorrow so I'm calling it a day early. Just kidding. I end up reading in bed on my phone. What can I say, I've got priorities :-)
