A mother's daybook

Reading - Watership Down. It's the only book that survived the first trimester. Everything else got dropped but I was reading this at such a slow pace with the  ao forum group and their thoughts were so great, I managed to keep up. I hit my library's renewal limit and just turned it in but I'll check it out again and keep going. I'm also very close to finishing the first (the hard?) half of Norms and Nobility so I'll love to finish that soon but not sure when it will happen. It's still really hard for me to read much other than magazines when I don't feel good. But I also feel my brain atrophying from all the tv so I'd really like to get back to reading.

Watching - So much tv. I've spent so much time in bed my body is in pain. Literally, my hips and neck are killing me but at my worst, I'd move to the couch to try and sit in a different position and end up slumped back because I didn't have the energy to hold myself up. But now I'm getting up and around in the mornings and watching tv in the afternoon. A couple k-dramas, old episodes of bones and gilmore girls and getting caught up on call the midwife.

Eating - A limited number of foods. But I am drinking water again! Which is good because last week I would have guessed I was 60% red gatorade as that was literally the only beverage I would tolerate. Water is so refreshing for a change!

Thinking - This is why people like ultrasounds! We only did one early one with Lucy where all you could see was a blob with a heartbeat. I was very glad to see that heartbeat but still. None with Jonah. But since I'm working with a doctor for now because of my hyperemesis and he requested one, we went ahead and did one last weekend. And even at 11 weeks, my baby is so adorable! It was a huge mental pick-me up because hg really breaks you down. I'm generally a positive person. I showed the kids the printouts and they were so excited. The fought over who got to keep it until I found a frame and put in one top of their dresser where they could both see "their baby" from their beds. Oh the cuteness!

Planning and Preparing - Kindergarten. How did we get here so fast? Our big local homeschool conference was last weekend too and while I was originally really excited to go, I made peace with the fact that my body couldn't handle it. And we are planning a pretty light year academically so I didn't really NEED to go. I'm not doing a curriculum but I've stared ordering some books as I find them at good prices (used, mostly from abe books) and I think we'll have a lot of fun.

Doing - Not a lot. But two weeks ago I did manage to get out of the house to go listen to Leila Lawler. She is one of my absolute favorite bloggers over at Like Mother Like Daughter. She had a bigger event that morning that I really wanted to go but it was going to be to early and too long for me which almost had me in tears but then I found out she was also coming to the catholic church 5 miles down the road to give a lenten supper talk. Praise the Lord! It was a really small event, maybe 20 people? And her talk did not disappoint. I had to listen to the second half with my head on the table but everyone else there was catholic so once they found out I was pregnant, they were super nice about it all. And when someone's testimony and talk includes 1) fairy tales 2) quotes from C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton and 3) inspiration for mothers and fathers about their crucial role is passing down their faith to their children, how could I not be inspired? God must have known it was just what I needed.

So yeah, there's a baby coming

Sorry to leave you all hanging here. I really meant to follow up that last post with some info right away but it just didn't happen. For those of you who've been around here, the pregnancy might not have come as a shock because I always tend to drop off the face of the earth during the first trimester as hyperemesis kicks my bum and this has been no exception. And it's not just that I'm tired and sick and find it hard to write, but I don't want to write when I'm sick because I hate for the wonderful news of a new baby to be overshadowed by my writing about being sick. At least online. It tends to be that way in real life though, which really stinks.

How I want to announce my pregnancy:
Me: We're pregnant! Other person: Congratulations!
Me: Thanks, we're really excited!

How it actually happens:
Other person: Are you okay? Do you need something? (Implied - Like to take your germs and go home?)Me: Yeah, I'm okay. I'm just pregnant.
Other person: Oh, congratulationsMe: Yep, just 5 more weeks of this.

I AM excited. Really excited. We've been praying for this baby for a long time and because of my hormone issues, we weren't sure it was in God's plans for us. So inside, very very happy! Outside, not so much.

But telling people does have one big advantage - help. Our friends and family have really gone above and beyond with helping us get through this and I really don't know how we would have done it without them. The day I found out, my friend was willing to change her plans to sit in the parking lot between our two cars to watch the kids while I got some blood tests done and then come back over to my house that afternoon to give me a shot in the butt and all she got out of it was the privilege of knowing I was pregnant even before Craig.* That's a true friend! Craig's mom flew down on a moments notice to help for a week, my family is coming in today to help for a week, and friends have dropped by during the day to help me feed the kid's lunch and load my dishwasher or start laundry or bring food. Even our 7 year old neighbor is helping by letting our chickens out of their coop each morning. We have truly been blessed these past 5 weeks.

And I'll be 11 weeks tomorrow so I really should start to feel better soon and hopefully even be able to stop taking any medication so I can start to feel like myself again. Tomorrow is an ultrasound and while we don't normally do those, since I'm seeing an ob-gyn for the hyperemesis anyway, I've decided to do one this time for the mental pick-me up that I think hearing a little heartbeart will provide. We've been busy interviewing midwives since the one that delivered Lucy and Jonah has retired and I think we've found a good fit. So the fun part is coming!

*I my defense, I wasn't keeping it from him. He was gone on a business trip and in a building where he couldn't have his cell phone. I think he had about 12 missed calls by the time I finally got a hold of him later that day!

Lucy's Next Lesson For Jonah

Final Exam expected around mid-October

Classics Challenge - Middlemarch

I gave this 4 stars on goodreads. But that's really an average of my two ratings. Objectively, this is a 5 star book. It's very well written, long but not unnecessarily so. There are many characters but that doesn't mean they aren't well developed. And while the plot is very interwoven and complex, it never veers to the unbelievably coincidental level. I didn't realize it has the sub-title "A Study in Provincial Life" until I first picked it up to read it but that is actually a great description. It really is a story form of a study of characters and life. Which I normally love. And I did spend quite a bit of time while reading it, pondering other relationships (some real but mostly fictional) and comparing them to the ones in Middlemarch so it obviously stuck with me as I read it. So in one sense, I will acknowledge it is wonderful and everything I was told it was but, I still was, personally, underwhelmed.

I say that admitting that the fault lies with myself. For starters, I like happy endings. Big fat happy endings with bows and bells and sparkles and sunshine. It's just who I am. And at about the half way point, I could tell that I just wasn't going to get that. I understand why. So much of the book dealt with an inability to see reality, in others and in oneself; add in an emphasis on bad choices and Eliot could hardly have had everyone end up living under a rainbow. But I still missed it, And what's worse, I think I had a hard time caring about many of the characters because I didn't think they would get that happy ending. In the end, I really only cared about one or two characters - and not necessarily the ones that ended up together!

I didn't dislike reading it but I never feel in love with it. I read my daily goal's worth and enjoyed it, but rarely read more than that. Unlike when my beloved Austen, I just always felt like Eliot was trying to teach me something about humanity by using a story. But with Austen (and another favorite author Gaskell), they offer up social commentary as well as timeless character study opportunities, but the point is the story and the people. So it's a good book and I'm glad I read it, but I don't think I'll be re-reading it anytime soon. Still, one of my lifetime goals achieved!

Middlemarch is my back to the classics long novel selection.

Bob For The Win!

So when last I left you all with the learning to read stuff, we were using The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Reading. But despite knowing that lots of mom/child dyads have done well with it, we had to drop it. I think it would be much better for a 6-7 year old reader but for a 4 year old, well, it's boring. Then I tried the Charlotte Mason style reading lessons and while I think those probably work well, I still don't have a good grasp on what you do day to day with that. So we tried Bob books. And she loved them! It's probably the opposite of what I said about OPG though -if you have a 6-7 year old, they might they these are boring and childish. But they were perfect for Lucy, she found the stories really amusing - and she has enough imagination to fill in the details of what exactly Mag was playing with the rag.

So how do I use them? I'm glad you asked! Oh, you didn't. Well, pretend you did :-)

I do basically the same thing I was doing in The Ordinary Parent's Guide except I'm introducing things in a slightly different order. I started this on my own but then found Brandy's Teaching with Bob page and that was very helpful. I suggest taking a look at it if you are using the Bob Books even if you change things up like I am.

I pick up the next book in the series and look though it for any new sight words or sounds (blends, digraphs, etc). Brandy's sight has a post for each book that explains what sounds/words she choose. I didn't always use quite the same (sometimes I added a sound earlier than her to avoid as many sight words, sometimes the opposite) but its a great start. Those I write on a 3x5 card. I use blue and green for sight words, pink for sounds but that's just because I had those on hand and I'm cheap. Brandi has a whole neat binder system but I'm not that organized. She also writes a few words as examples for the sounds while I just write the sound/word.

I started out thinking I'd do it in advance and type them up so they'd look all pretty and quickly realized that was silly. This takes about 2 minutes of my time and I just keep the sharpie is our basket so I can add them in a second if I accidentally miss one, which has been known to happen.

My basket of gear - the opposite of complicated

Then I'd call Lucy. We'd talk about the new sight words and/or sounds. Sometimes we'd practice building a few rules with the new sounds and magnetic letter tiles but not usually. And very rarely I made a fun coloring sheet or activity. By very rarely I mean twice. I did it twice. This time I talked about here and once when the book was all about colors, I wrote the colors on one side of the paper, colored a rectangle on the other and she got to draw lines to match them. So I'm not going crazy here with activities and worksheets is what I'm saying. I've seen Bob book printable freebies online and they just seem like a lot of busywork. But they are out there if that's your thing. It's just not mine.

After we learned any new sounds, we'd do a bit of review. Lucy prefered to review exactly seven from each category so I would pull the front seven green/blues and the first seven pink. Instead of using Brandy's neat binder system, I put them back up in a way that facilitates needed review. It's not as fancy as it sounds - if she got it right quickly, it went to the back of the pile. If she hesitated, guessed or gots it wrong, I put it back at the front of the pile so it got included in the next day's "seven." This was all done without her even knowing it so she didn't feel penalized if she got it wrong, I just keep my finger between the stack in my hand. Every once in a while I would go through and pull the ones I knew she really had down so our pile was never huge and we could work through them all in 3-4 days. That way we never went too long between reviewing any one word or sound.

Then we read the new book for 5-8 minutes. If we finished it, great. If we didn't, we stopped. If she ever asked to stop or seemed tired, we stopped. We probably averaged 2 days/book but that really varies. Set 3 is a big jump as is Set 5, both in new sounds and in number of words per page. The sight word books contain more new words but are pretty short sentences so those go fast. I think mixing the sight word books with Sets 3-5 works well. When we finished a book, we add it to our Hundred Books List, another idea I stole from Brandy.

We just finished Set 5 about a month ago and honestly, that last book was a bit of a struggle. It's an odd book (she clanged the clong? Really?)  and I could tell Lucy just didn't care about the story so it took us 4 days . But in other books, she took off. She went from sounding out almost every word to just, well, reading! So for now, we've dropped the index cards and are just reading for about 10 minutes a day, either from the Treadwell primer (free online) or the Pathway Reader Primer (passed down to me by my mom). Since I have and like both sets, we are skipping back and forth. She's also started to enjoy easy readers from the library and some of our picture books (although those are a bit harder for me to gauge her on since she has a lot of them memorized already!).

I did look though the Ordinary Parent's Guide to see what rules we've covered and which we haven't. Between the Bob books and my pointing out other rules as we see them, she's knows most of them. And I have a good idea of the ones I need to keep an eye out for so I can explain them if we run into them during our reading practice time. But for now, I think we're done!