The night before--I fell into bed after a long day at the pool with the kids, wiped out, and begged God for help in getting up on time in the morning. My watch was in the diaper bag downstairs and I didn't want to go down and get it to set the alarm...and John already had the alarm set for him.
6:37- I wake up, feeling pretty good, and look at the clock. I whisper a quick "Thank you Lord" and I get up and get ready to head downstairs. Once up and good and awake, I look at the clock again and see it's *5:40*, not *6:40*. Oh, that God. What a sense of humor. I spend the hour talking to John, at least as close as I can come to intelligent conversation that early in the morning, making coffee, toasting John a bagel (the closest he'll come to a hot breakfast this early), unloading the dishwasher, and gathering the massive laundry waiting to be folded. Then I head upstairs to shower.
6:45, for real- Back downstairs, I give a "preliminary wake-up" to Maria and Kain, i.e., I turn on their bedroom lights and rub their backs. Kain is extremely irritated. That promises a good day. Generally the mood he starts out in is the mood that sticks. I go and start hot cocoa and oatmeal, put out fruit and milk, and start sorting the aforementioned laundry for folding.
7:00-ish- Jack is awake and I go change and dress him quickly. I notice when I go into his room how dark it is...it's very cloudy and gloomy looking. Everyone is finally at the table for breakfast. The kids love the hot cocoa..."Get up, your cocoa is getting cold" is a good motivator for getting them out of bed. After breakfast, everyone clears their place at the table. We also say our Morning Offering with Grace.
7:30- I send the kids off to do their morning lists while I fold some of the laundry. I nag after Kain and smile at Jack sitting on the dining room floor with a pile of board books. I wash some backed-up dishes and make a mental note to call someone to come fix the dishwasher.
8:00- Maria starts her typing, Kain plays in the playroom with the train set, Jack is playing in the living room with his alphabet blocks. I start beef stroganoff in the crockpot and love the fact that it's 8:00 and I'm practically done cooking dinner! I wanted to make something homemade for tea later, but no such luck...maybe later. Lots of thunder outside...storm coming.
8:30- Maria starts some cursive and map book pages. Kain has computer time. Jack and I go into the playroom for his "school" time, which is pretty much just play time with Mom at this point. We stack Lauri pegs and roll roll-arounds mostly. I fight the urge to let him play while I do other stuff and concentrate on being present with him. Kain wanders into the playroom about 15 minutes later and I lose my time with Jack because Kain wants to give me a play by play of what he is doing with the train set. I make a mental note to tell him gently tomorrow to leave Jack and me by ourselves during this time.
9:00- I put Jack at the dining room table with play dough while Kain and I start his school work. During the summer, this is just a reading lesson from "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons", a page of printing in Handwriting Without Tears kindergarten book, and a couple of easy math sheets. We plan on accelerating him through 2nd grade this year because it bothers him so to be a year behind, and I think he'll be able to handle it,,,except for handwriting. No way he's ready to start cursive this year. Even printing is difficult and tedious. He struggles still just to hold a pencil properly. We work slowly on it and I work with him to take his time and properly form each letter. The lessons in this book are short and I go for quality over quantity. We practice with the slate board first and then the book. In the end, he has painfully made a few decent "F's". Kain does pretty well at first and then starts to get restless halfway through. But he does ok. Jack is demanding that I make ice cream cones with the playdough..."Make purple ice cream! Make green ice cream!" He doesn't really do a whole lot with it himself. Maria is at the table too and very distracted. I tell her tomorrow to work in the schoolroom or in her bedroom. At 9:30 it's Maria's time to entertain Jack. She sits and does playdough with him for a while and then they go into the playroom.
10:00- The kids pick a quick snack and then Maria and Kain go to pick up their zones. I make some pasta salad for lunch.
10:30- Maria sets Jack up to play Jumpstart Toddler. Maria and I sit to do school, which at this point in the summer is pretty much playing catch up with math. Kain is supposed to play in the playroom, but he's irritable and wants to play outside...now. Then he wants to go to the store and spend his allowance. I tell him we will go after Jack's nap and he throws a fit. His attitude has been pretty lousy since we finished his school work. He ends up going for a timeout. I'm pretty irritated myself and remind myself that this is standard. Any behavior problems a kid has are magnified when you start homeschooling. You have to root out all the bad attitude stuff. He comes out and we talk it out and make nice and go on.
11:00- It's Kain's turn to entertain Jack. He does this for a few minutes before complaining about being bored and wanting to play pacman. He's just lovely today. I finish folding laundry while Maria does her lesson practice problems. Kain starts whining about going to the store again, and I tell him I'm going to start taking ten cents back from his allowance for every time he nags me.
11:45- The kids are outside playing in the rain. They insist it's "barely sprinkling". I go into the playroom with Jack and work on some piles on the school table.
12:30- Lunch, pasta salad, veggies and dip. Kain has a cow about what's offered and after three "thank-you bites" he eats peanut butter. Jack eats peanut butter too. He had peanut butter for breakfast also, with a banana. Jack's hopeless, even worse than Kain with the food thing. I lose my temper, finally, with Kain. He is griping and moaning about the food, something I don't allow, making a huge episode over each minute bite, and I finally lose it and then regret it.
1:00- I change Jack and lay him down and tell the kids to get something to read. Then we have reading and rest time for 30 minutes, my favorite time of the day. The house is completely quiet for 30 minutes...what bliss! I lay down on the couch for a few minutes, then my mom calls and I chat with her.
1:40- The kids are done with R and R and we sit to say the rosary. Kain is quickly learning the prayers. He doesn't sit and hold a rosary...instead he looks through the box of holy cards and medals. This works better for him. He does remarkably well for sitting still for so long!
2:15- I get Jack up..he has been fussing off and on this whole time and is obviously not going to sleep. I'd planned to spend this hour working on the piles in the laundry room...it badly needs a purging and organizing. This is his second day in a row with no nap. He does this every so often lately, and just when I start to worry that he's going to quit napping altogether he starts sleeping well again. I put away some laundry while Jack watches Signing Time, and then I check some emails, wash some dishes...
3:00- Tea time...I never did make anything, so I break out some Chips Ahoy that John has stashed. We read Pascual and the Kitchen Angels, finally...been meaning to read it for a week!
3:30- off to the store, finally. I have a migraine and take some ibuprofen on my way out the door. Kain and Maria go off to decide what to spend their money on while Jack and I get milk and a couple other things. Jack has brought his three favorite trains and carefully holds all three at once, refusing to put any in the diaper bag. I take my time...this will be Jack's outing for the day. The afternoon is hot and humid after the storms and I don't want to go outside to play anyway!
4:30- We are home after careful deliberation. Kain bought some transformer toy and Maria bought a jigsaw puzzle. I sit and read with Jack a bit and just feel lazy and tired for a bit. Headache is gone now at least. We read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and Chicka Chicka 1,2,3,,,these are his favorites and he knows them by heart. He then brings me a few more...Spot Can Count, Thomas and Friends Colors...he loves to be read to, sweet boy.
5:00- To the kitchen to soak some more dishes, start a load of laundry, and get dinner on. I also pick up the playroom a bit. It's Maria's job today, but Jack has trashed it so much that I feel bad about leaving her with the whole mess! I make some egg noodles and some frozen broccoli/cauliflower/carrot mix. Kain plays video games, at least what passes for them in our house...we have a couple of those joysticks that plug into the TV and have pac man and pole position..that kind of thing. Jack loves to watch and does for a bit, then goes back into the playroom to play. Maria works on her new puzzle and then watches Even Stevens when Kain is done with the tv. Apparently no interest in neighborhood kids today.
6:00- Time for dinner...Kain eats mostly plain noodles and bread with butter after the obligatory Thank You Bites. Jack eats plain noodles and rolls a carrot around on his plate. Darn kids. I ignore it. Not gonna do this battle again. After dinner we clean up, Maria clears and sweeps, Kain and I clean the kitchen.
6:45- Starting the tub for Kain, and I'm fading fast and trying to keep from being irritable. Maria is having a cow. She has sunburn and poison ivy and doesn't want to take a shower, but I insist. I really am not entirely sure when she had one last, and she looks like a greaseball. I can hear her wailing and moaning upstairs in the shower. What a drama queen that one is! When she comes downstairs, she tells me she took an ice cold shower because she was afraid any warmth at all would make her poison ivy itch worse.
7:30- Kain is still marinating in the tub. I've decided to go ahead and put Jack to bed since he didn't have a nap. I can tell he's beat...he just lays still and limp on me while we rock and sing. I snuggle him and smooch on him and wish I could just sit and rock him for a long time, but not tonight...bigger kids yet to fry.
8:00- finally done with Kain's bath. We sit and read Owl Moon and That's Not My Dinosaur...the later is a baby book, really, but he likes dinosaurs and wants to read it. It's also very short, so I'm not arguing. We say our evening prayers and I find out that Kain hasn't brushed his teeth yet, and I haven't given him his meds either.
8:40- Finally Kain's in bed after his nightly singing of Over in the Meadow, only 25 minutes late, haha. I sit to blog this. John calls and says he's on his way home.
9:20- John is home and I realize how late it is! I shoo Maria to her room, put John's dinner in the microwave, reboot laundry, and go tuck Maria in. Then I sit and talk with John, and we watch a MASH rerun. I just want to finish this entry and go to bed, but I know he'll be going to bed as soon as he's done eating and so I sit with him instead.
10:00- John goes up to bed and I finish blogging. After this I will reboot laundry again and throw a roast and some sauce in the crockpot for BBQ beef sandwiches for lunch tomorrow. Then I'm off to bed too. I'm wiped out and won't even read this before posting, so I hope it makes sense!! Lord, help me wake up again tomorrow!!
1 comment:
IT MAKES SENSE!!!! You try so hard Mel and do such a great job with everyone.....you are terrifiC!!
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