A Sunday in April- John's birthday too!

5:07- Jack wakes me up over the baby monitor. He is now sleeping through the night in his OWN CRIB,,,wow, and only 2 years old! :) But he has started waking up sooo early. Ideally he would sleep until 6-6:30. He might be ready for a later bedtime, but experience has taught me not to be too quick to assume that kids need less sleep...very often they have a glitch like this for a few weeks and then go back happily to their previous schedule. I trudge downstairs and across the house to get him. The downside of being in our new master bedroom is this early morning hike. I bring him upstairs and nurse him, hoping for a little more sleep. This is the only time he nurses anymore, so I figure once he starts sleeping a bit later he will be weaned!

5:15- I hear John quietly get out of bed. I squeeze his hand and want to tell him Happy Birthday, but I'm hoping Jack will go back to sleep and don't want to talk.

5:50- Jack is really up. He nursed and dozed a bit, but there's no going back now. I give up and head downstairs with him. I have been sorting piles of toys in our old playroom turned new master bedroom and I don't want him undoing my sorting. We find John downstairs and officially wish him Happy Birthday. I put on coffee and soak some dishes sitting on the counter. They got backlogged yesterday when Maria was baking and dumped some flour into my soaking sink of dishes, effectively coating them with paste. Yuck.

6:15- John is leaves for work. I change Jack but leave him for now in his warm pajamas. It turned cold last night! There's no PSR this week so we can have a slower start this morning. I pour some coffee and sit at the computer to check my email and read some blogs. I find a friend's email coaching me on how to put links on my blogs and experiment with that for a while. Jack is happy to play with a basket of toys in the living room and watch Baby Doolittle.

7:15- Jack is no longer happy. I pour some more coffee and get him a banana and some milk and we sit to watch Elmo's World. Too much TV? Yeah well...it's a day of rest, after all, and I'm not up for much else yet. :)

I spend the next couple of hours slowly getting everyone fed, taking a shower, getting Jack dressed,,,,it's nice not to have to rush around. Usually I only have an hour or so to do all of this, and three kids instead of two! It does have the disadvantage that everyone *knows* we have more time and I have to kind of kick Maria in the rear to get her finally moving through her morning list...getting dressed, making her bed, cleaning up her bathroom.

9:40- We leave for mass...it starts at 10 but is just a couple of miles away. Maria runs ahead of me and Jack on the way in, hoping as always to get to serve. She's not scheduled to, but she likes to check in case someone didn't show. Today it pays off and she gets to serve so it's me and Jack in the pew. They have the children process through the church during the entrance hymn with palm branches, weaving through the ailes, lead by the altar servers. It was very cute. At the end Father, Maria and the other servers went onto the altar and left the children disoriented and searching for familiar faces in the pews. Jack is restless for a while, then falls asleep on my shoulder until the sign of peace when Maria comes over and plants a kiss on his head and wakes him up. Grrrr. Even when he wakes again he is content to lay on my shoulder quietly. I am grateful for this even though my back aches from holding all 37 pounds of him during the hour and a half mass.

11:30- Home again,,,lunch of leftovers accumulated during the week. Jack gets changed and I optimistically put him down for a nap, hoping he will still sleep even though he catnapped in mass. Maria mixes up cake batter for a Welcome Home cake for Kain while I do this. I come into the kitchen and find that the oven is not working!! The stovetop is working but the oven won't heat up. While I'm trying to figure out what to do with this information, my brother calls and wants to know if I've heard anything from Kain's mom about his arrival home today. I call Kain's mom's cell phone and she doesn't answer. This causes a flurry of phone calls between my brother, my mother and me. I'm all in a fit about this development and trying to figure out what is going on. Is she on her way or not? If not, is she just being flaky or pulling something? In the meantime I dump the cake batter down the sink and figure I'll just have to pick up a cake from a bakery and add the oven to the list of things to get repaired.

1:45- Still haven't heard from Kain's mom. I'm freaking out. Jack isn't napping either, although he has been quitely playing this whole time. We had an interesting moment of nursing intervention when the teenager acrossed the street wreaked his bike and I found him lying in the road screaming his head off. I helped him off to the ER with his mom and then came back inside to fold laundry and stew some more about the whole Kain situation. Also trying to decide what to do about our afternoon plans of going up to the hospital to say hi to John and bringing some birthday goodies...afraid to leave without knowing what is going on with Kain.

2:30- We go ahead and leave for the hopsital and leave a note for Kain's mom taped to the door. I stew the whole way there and back about all the possible things that can go wrong with the whole situation. A quick visit with John and we are heading back home again.

4:00- Still no Kain. Still no answer on his mom's cell phone. Jack is playing in the playroom and I am pacing around, venting via the phone with my mother and grandmother and starting to plan what I will do if she just doesn't bring him back. What possible reason could she have not to even call and let me know when to expect her? She said she would bring him back early in the day, and I don't even know if she's on her way at all!

5:00- I start fixing brinner...waffles, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage...Maria helps a bit with the eggs. I make bacon on my new handy dandy griddle and it is a good thing. I want another, one for bacon and one for pancakes. I half expect Kain to stomp into the kitchen at any time demanding the first piece of bacon. I could just throw up from the knot in my stomach.

6:00- Dinner is served. Jack actually eats, even tries a bite of sausage. He loves the waffles.

6:30- Kain finally shows! His grandmother brings him with a some guy friend of hers....blows in the door and talks talks talks for 10 minutes about how his mother's ride flaked on her and plus she's sick and she left his sneakers at her house but bought him an outfit and Kain is doing really well here and is obviously happy and she's really not ever been a prostitute no matter what I've heard about her and yes she's had problems with drugs before but that was a long time ago and she doesn't even drink and her family tells everyone she's been in the Betty Ford Center and she doesn't even know where the Betty Ford Center is and she has her life together and Joy has her life together and, by the way, I didn't send enough Adderall for Kain because he ran out halfway through the week.....wow. Think she doth protest too much? I've never even spoken to the woman before, how many of you have the urge to spend 10 minutes convincing someone you just met that you are not a drug addict? I paste a grin on my face and nod my head and don't mention the fact that Kain is wheezing and his hair smells like cigarettes and I sent exactly 8 Adderall pills...I counted them three times...so someone is swiping them. I just want her to leave. Finally, she does. Kain wants to play with Maria and the boy across the street, so I send him off to play for a bit. It's late, but he hasn't had his medication and he's been stuck in the car for hours...I know he needs to blow off steam.

7:00- Time to get serious about getting these boys down. Kain tells me he hasn't had dinner so I dish him up some waffles et al...he has two servings of everything with a ton of milk...probably the first non-fast food since he left a week ago. I asked him what kind of stuff he ate at his mom's and he says "McDonald's". I pick up the playroom and get Jack ready for bed. I snuggle briefly with Jack in the rocking chair and read Goodnight Moon, fighting off the overwhelming fatigue that is setting in. Kain, Maria and I say evening prayers...candles are lit, Act of Contrition, Guardian Angel Prayer, Prayer to St. Michael, everyone invokes their patron saints. I pass out jelly beans for their jelly bean jars and we pluck a "thorn" from our salt dough crown of thorns. I then put Kain in bed and we read the dinosaur book Kain brought back with him. He cries because he misses his mom. Kain is not a crier and he looks embarassed and hides his head under the covers. I dig him out and hug him and tell him it's ok and he'll feel better in a couple of days once he gets used to being here again. He looks very tired and tells me he stayed up late a lot, once until midnight. I hug him and listen to him wheeze. I ask him if he's been getting his asthma meds while he's been at his mom's and he says no, his mom forgets a a lot,,,he says it hesitatingly,,,and then says he didn't want to tell me that because he doesn't want me to keep him from visiting his mom again. I wonder who planted that seed in his head. I sing Hush Little Baby and tell him I'm so glad he's back. I plan to let him sleep as late as he needs to in the morning, even if that means he'll be late for school. He needs to catch up and I'm worried about him getting sick if he doesn't get some rest. In spite of his big size, he is a rather delicate thing healthwise. I knew without a doubt he would come back wheezing and probably sick. He cannot handle being without his meds, bad sleep, bad diet, around cigarettes..... I wonder how many weeks it will take for me to get his lungs well again now.

8:30- John is home and steps in to say good night to Kain. I plow on, unpacking Kain's bags, washing dishes...Maria give John a card she made for him and she picks up the living room. Then we watch a bit of Jesus of Nazareth and I send Maria off to bed. We watch it together every Lent. We skipped her reading tonight since I let her stay up a bit late to watch more of the movie.

9:30- Hanging out with John even though I'm tired tired tired. It's hard to make myself go to bed when he's home and not working the next day.

10:45- Finally going to bed. I haul the rest of the clean laundry upstairs to fold tomorrow. I read very briefly from "What Went Wrong with Vatican 2" while John is getting ready for bed, then light's out, finally! I'm blessed to have all of my chickens under my roof again.

Changes at the diner

Always tweaking...
I had been using cereal as a bedtime snack around here...but this isn't working so well anymore. The boys don't eat dinner half the time and fill up on cereal when it is served an hour later at bedtime. So we have decided to do away with the bedtime snack, especially for the boys that go to bed so soon after dinner. Instead I will serve up oatmeal and cold cereal for breakfast with fruit and delete bedtime snack all together except for special occasions and sundaes on Sunday. Cuz I'm mean. (insert evil laugh here)

day in the life postings

There will be one tomorrow on my other blog, smallthingswithgreatlove.blogspot.com if you are interested in all the lovely details of life. Post one on your blog too! :)

a day in the life

I love these postings. I love to read them on other people's blogs and see a little window into how they work the day to day juggling act that is homeschooling, and I love to post them because I like to look back and see a detailed picture of what our life was like at that point in time. Someday, when my kids are grown, it will be very cool to read in detail about what it was like when they were 10, 7, and 2. However, these posts are lengthy to read and time consuming to write. Then there's the whole "picking the perfect day to write about" thing....do we pick a day that we are home all day "doing school", a day with an interesting field trip, a fun Sunday with family? They are all worth remembering. So, I decided to try and do these kinds of posts on the first day of each month. That will let me post about different days of the week, and the choice will be completely random thereby tempting fate to have say, every child get a stomach virus that day....which I'm sure will be riotously funny to read about in 20 years. "Remember that time all three of you were puking in the car on the way back from the doctor's office? haha! Good times!"

The paper tiger

Some of you will be surprised to learn this...so prepare yourselves....but I struggle with organization. No, no,,,,it's really true. And when we started homeschooling over four years ago, well, this just opened up whole new doors of disorganization to me....piles of books, lesson plans, answer keys, art study cards, flashcards, math manipulatives,,,,I've been sorting through them in the effort to move the school room downstairs, and the piles are quite impressive and rather like an archaeological dig...especially the papers- math worksheets, spelling tests, cursive workbooks, pages of narration and copywork. My preferred method of paper storage has been to pile the papers into this giant rubbermaid container to deal with "later"....and when I don't feel like getting out the rubbermaid box, I just pile the papers on the nearest....well, the nearest pile. I had visions of making scrapbooks someday of papers I really wanted to save, maybe combining them with photos of science projects and souvenirs from field trips....ambitious, yes? Well, someone clued me in on way to control the paper tiger, and get this, I've been doing it *all year* with practically no effort at all. It's fabulous, and I wish I had discovered it a long time ago. I bought one of those folding accordion files and I keep it right at our school table. The folders are labeled with the months of the year....all 12 for us, since we school year round. At the end of every day, I take whatever papers we are done with and just drop it in the folder for that month. Wait, it gets easier. I have *another* accordion file, this one is labeled with grades preschool-12th. At the end of this year I will pull out all the papers, one month at a time, and put any that I truly want to save into the "4th grade" section. Then I put the that whole accordion file in a rubbermaid box along with any 3D projects we want to save. My daughter wants to save them *all*, forever and ever, but I leave them on display in the schoolroom for a while and once some time passes she is often satisfied to have me take a picture of the project to save instead. I do plan to save a few small 3d projects forever of course,,,whatever I can fit in the box!! So, that's it,,,,my paper tiger plan. Very simple, and we are actually *using* it.

The paper tiger

Some of you will be surprised to learn this...so prepare yourselves....but I struggle with organization. No, no,,,,it's really true. And when we started homeschooling over four years ago, well, this just opened up whole new doors of disorganization to me....piles of books, lesson plans, answer keys, art study cards, flashcards, math manipulatives,,,,I've been sorting through them in the effort to move the school room downstairs, and the piles are quite impressive and rather like an archaeological dig...especially the papers- math worksheets, spelling tests, cursive workbooks, pages of narration and copywork. My preferred method of paper storage has been to pile the papers into this giant rubbermaid container to deal with "later"....and when I don't feel like getting out the rubbermaid box, I just pile the papers on the nearest....well, the nearest pile. I had visions of making scrapbooks someday of papers I really wanted to save, maybe combining them with photos of science projects and souvenirs from field trips....ambitious, yes? Well, someone clued me in on way to control the paper tiger, and get this, I've been doing it *all year* with practically no effort at all. It's fabulous, and I wish I had discovered it a long time ago. I bought one of those folding accordion files and I keep it right at our school table. The folders are labeled with the months of the year....all 12 for us, since we school year round. At the end of every day, I take whatever papers we are done with and just drop it in the folder for that month. Wait, it gets easier. I have *another* accordion file, this one is labeled with grades preschool-12th. At the end of this year I will pull out all the papers, one month at a time, and put any that I truly want to save into the "4th grade" section. Then I put the that whole accordion file in a rubbermaid box along with any 3D projects we want to save. My daughter wants to save them *all*, forever and ever, but I leave them on display in the schoolroom for a while and once some time passes she is often satisfied to have me take a picture of the project to save instead. I do plan to save a few small 3d projects forever of course,,,whatever I can fit in the box!! So, that's it,,,,my paper tiger plan. Very simple, and we are actually *using* it.

detachment parenting

I've been praying over my pain, over the open sore in my heart that is our situation with Kain. I think I am finding some measure of peace. I think, for me, it is a matter of control, of learning to let go. I control things pretty tightly around here. The world is not a safe place for my children. I firmly believe that. Not in a "mix up a batch of cyanide Kool-aid and wait for the next comet" kind of way that people often associate with homeschoolers, but the world is a scary place in which to release your kids, and I'll admit, it's part of why I like homeschooling. Am I overprotective? You betcha. And because my kids spend most of their time with me, I control what kind of literature they are exposed to, what kind of clothing they are allowed to wear, what kind of music they even know exists, what kind of TV shows they may watch, what kind of math book they use. I have very strong reasons for the choices I have made. I am a conscious parent...every choice I make has thought behind it,,,sometimes a lot of thought. With Kain, I have lost control. During the week, he lives with my kids in a pretty sheltered environment where saying, "Oh God" and "That sucks!" is not allowed, video games are shunned for outside play, tv is shunned for books and legos, granola bars and pretzels are the junkiest snacks you'll find after school and prayers are said every night before bed. I hand him over to his father every weekend where he watches South Park, eats McDonald's every day, plays video games for hours at a time, sees heavy drinking/partying/fornication firsthand, and religion is openly mocked. Then I have to send him to his mother's at her whim, where not only does all of the above happen in spades but I can't even be certain of his physical safety. It drives me *crazy*. I am going crazy! I am constantly finding "what if's" circling around in my head, especially this week while Kain is gone. What if she doesn't bring him back on time and I have to rush him off to bed because he'll have school on Monday? What if she hasn't given him his asthma meds and he's sick? What if she's been smoking around him all week? What if she doesn't bring him back Sunday? What if she doesn't bring him back at all? What will I do when she wants to take him over the summer? What if she won't sign guardianship papers? What happens when he is 12 years old and starts sneaking his dads cigarettes and booze, starts imitating his crazy Goth lifestyle? How can I protect my children from these things of the world I have chosen to reject if they start creeping in the back door with Kain? What should I do if he starts insisting that he live with his mom or dad when he gets older? You'd think deep down he'd rather stay here where life is sane and happy, but let me tell you, the boy would go live with Charles Manson if he had a Nintendo.

It comes down to control, doesn't it? I have an illusion on control over my own children. It *is* an illusion,isn't it? We all know that God holds the cards here. He could take one of my children away at any time. Because I know, deep down, they aren't *my* children at all, they are His, just as Kain is his, and just as with Kain I am at best a poor image of God for them all. The saints and scriptures often speak of detachment, even detachment from our own families. Jesus asked Peter to leave his WIFE and KIDS to go be his disciple, something I've never quite gotten over realizing. Why? How can Christ tell us to love one another as we love ourselves and yet expect us to be detached from them? Aren't those two sentiments at odds with each other, to both be detached and yet to love? Does Christ really expect us to be *detached* from our own children?? Because I'm not. I feel so attached to my own children, and to Kain, that it makes my heart hurt. But yes, we are called to be detached, even from our children. Detachment, gospel detachment, is not the antithesis of love. It is the highest, most Christ-like form of love. It is a complete resignation and acceptance of God's will for me and for them, a complete trust that God loves my children in a far more pure and perfect way than I could ever achieve, that he alone knows the big picture and knows what is necessary to lead them to salvation. That is what Kain is teaching me. I must be mindful of my place, my role. I want to take over and "fix" Kain, I want his parents and their messy problems to go away so that I can fold Kain neatly into our lives and we can all live happily ever after. I must learn to resign myself to God's plan, to God's timing, and trust Him to know what is truly best for all of us. It is incredibly difficult to do. I find myself, with utmost arrogance, to keep trying to coach God along. I think, not quite in the front of my brain but maybe back in the corner, that *I* know what is best and that my prayers to God are more just a petition for Him to get with the program already. With typical human self-importance I think that *I* am responsible for my their salvation. That is simply untrue. I was not given to my children, and maybe especially Kain, to save them. It is the other way around. They are *my* vocation. They are the path that God has chosen to lead *me* down the path to salvation. I cannot do anything to ensure my children's salvation other than form them in the faith the best way I know how. For Kain, all I can do is the best I can for the time that I have him. In the end, they must all chose salvation for themselves. They must find the vocation God has chosen for them.

"Love consists not in feeling great things but in having great detachment and in suffering for the Beloved."--St. John of the Cross

It's kind of quiet around here....

My big kids are gone. Maria has gone to visit my parents for a few days. And Kain...Kain has gone to visit his mother for a week. That's right. His mother. No, I am not happy. Yes, I have cried many tears. People often tell us what a wonderful thing we are doing for Kain, and when they say that they usually mean things related to taking in a such a difficult child with so many problems and trying to make a difference for him. And yeah, that has brought forth some blood, sweat and tears. But by far, by *way, way, way* far, the hardest and most painful part of having Kain is dealing with his parents. It is so frustrating to deal with, and continue to have to deal with, the effects of someone else's lousy parenting. The more we love Kain and the more we want to raise him as one of our own the more painful this is.....because the reality is that he is *not* ours and we are always at the mercy of the whims of his parents.

The kid's got a point.

This morning-

Maria- What are those little purple flowers under that tree?

Me- I think those are phlox.

Maria. laughing- As in flocks of sheep?

Me- Well, yeah, but it's spelled differently. The flowers are "phlox", p-h-l-o-x. The sheep are "flocks", f-l-o-c-k-s.

Maria, rolling her eyes sideways at me- So, you really don't think spelling is stupid?

The kid's got a point.

This morning-

Maria- What are those little purple flowers under that tree?

Me- I think those are phlox.

Maria. laughing- As in flocks of sheep?

Me- Well, yeah, but it's spelled differently. The flowers are "phlox", p-h-l-o-x. The sheep are "flocks", f-l-o-c-k-s.

Maria, rolling her eyes sideways at me- So, you really don't think spelling is stupid?

looking for answers

Today I took Maria for an eye exam. Maria, as those close to us know, has always struggled with reading/spelling/writing. In fact, these struggles are what gave us the final push into homeschooling. Her reading and writing skills have slowly improved, but her spelling is still pretty darned bad. I would say that her spelling is probably on about a 2nd grade level. Her reading is at least on grade level, maybe even a bit higher now, but reading is still difficult for her in spite of this and her comprehension is not always very good, especially in something that is packed with a bunch of unfamiliar words and details like a history or science text. And she *hates, hates, hates* to read. Anyway, we have talked off and on about having her evaluated for dyslexia...she has some of the symptoms, but not many of them. She still has some letter reversals, and she will often leave out small words when reading aloud, that kind of thing, and she has some of the past history of someone with dyslexia, like taking a long time to learn to read, having trouble learning left from right, etc. But she does read well now, and I feel like dyslexia is a less likely possibility. A few people have recommend having her evaluated for "vision therapy". Apparently there's other vision problems you can have other than needing glasses. Someone sent me an email detailing their experience with vision therapy and the problems her son had been having sounded very familiar, so we decided to check into this therapy. The first step was today, the eye exam. She had a normal one a couple of years ago, but she's due for another and they want to rule out any other problems. The doctor said she was a bit far-sided and might benefit from some reading glasses, but she wants us to come back for the actual vision therapy evaluation. She did some preliminary checks, things I've never seen before...having her look through prisms and back and forth at different points, I guess looking to see how well her eyes coordinate together, and she said that she did see that she had some problems relaxing her eyes outward to look through the prisms and with focusing her eyes on a point. I have no idea what any of this means, lol....I guess we'll find out more at the next appointment. Anyway, she wanted to wait on the reading glasses to see what she finds out at the evaluation. She said if she doesn't find anything to point to her needing this vision therapy that she would recommend us to someone else for testing for other kinds of disabilities (including dyslexia). It's a little intimidating, and you find yourself a little defensive as a homeschooler when you seek help for these kinds of things. I find myself fighting the "we are really trying the best we can" kind of attitude. I don't know *why*, because the school system wouldn't have done this for her anyway....I mean, here we have Kain with 2 doctors saying he needs speech and occupational therapies, but we can't get the school to do *anything* for him. Anyway, the doctor was very sweet and put us at ease and we are looking forward to finding out if we can do something to help Maria.

Movin' On Up

John was home today, so I put him to work. We moved some more furniture around...a big ugly olive green dresser that was in Kain's room found a new home at the curb, a smaller dresser from our old master bedroom/new playroom went into Kain's room, the bookcase in Kain's room went into the old master bedroom/new playroom, the school table from the new master bedroom/old playroom went into the old master bedroom/new playroom...confusing anyone yet? And I continued to work a bit on moving our clothing and other assorted bedroom items upstairs. We really like our new bedroom! It feels very cozy up there. John calls it the "love loft", haha. This is a bit of wishful thinking on his part. Our first night up there, we found all three kids in our room over the course of the night, including Jack in our bed for the night by 11pm. But, two nights later he slept in his crib until 3am, and last night he SLEPT THROUGH THE NIGHT in this crib! Wahoooo!!

it has a nice ring to it, yes?

Your Irish Name Is...

Juverna Murphy

What's" your Irish Name?

This is again a holiday where I wish I could say I made fabulous, educational, memory-making plans for my kids. Alas...I was flying by the seat of my pants last night trying to come up with something do-able at the last minute. We will be making Corned Beef and Cabbage for dinner, some green-sugar cookies, and I have a quickie shamrock craft planned that I'll post pictures of later. And I'm planning to pick up a pot of shamrocks while at the store to put on the altar. Tomorrow, instead of our usual sundaes on Sunday I'll offer some green milkshakes. We will watch our CCC St. Patrick video while doing this coloring page at some point over the weekend...

http://www.hillsideeducation.com/stpatrickcoloring.pdf

I had ordered a lovely picture book to read today and it has not come, THANKS AMAZON!
:)

Ready to stay home....

Well, I was so beat last night that I am posting the next morning, so details are a little faded already. I had a bit of wasted time in the morning. Took Kain to his appointment with the psychiatrist and found out I had put the wrong day in my planner and he didn't have an appointment after all. After I dropped Kain off, I decided to have a "girl's day out" with Maria. We do this periodically and she has been asking for one for a few weeks now. These are easy to put off. I feel like I spend a *lot* of time with Maria! But it's not the same thing to her as this special, set aside time. It pained me to give up the afternoon. I have a lot to do around the house, and it would mean missing most of our school day, but it was as good a day as any to do it. After all, there is always schoolwork and cleaning to do. :)

So, I had Maria do a lesson on the DIVE cd-rom about square roots for a little review and read a chapter out of her St. Bernadette book. After returning home I did a little paperwork. I am working on having four menus to rotate during the year. Each menu will have about three weeks worth of meals and I will rotate those meals for a season, then switch them for another menus. Nifty, yes? Then I took Jack outside to play in the yard while Maria practiced soccer. Then we left for our day out while Jack stayed with Daddy. I took Maria to soccer practice...not a formal team, this is more like informal soccer "lessons" set up at a local gym with our homeschool group. Then we went to our favorite Chinese place for lunch, to our favorite thrift store for a little poking around, and to Walmart for groceries and to finish up buying spring/summer clothes for the kids. When we got home, I was just worn out. John was out running an errand at dinner time and Kain was just starving to death. I hadn't even started anything for dinner at that point, so I decided to just scavenge for dinner, offering everyone a choice of sandwiches, leftover spaghetti, and bean burritos. John and I worked together to get the boys done,another nice thing about having him home....most nights I am on my own! Maria went down at nine, and John and I stayed up too late watching re-runs and chatting. It was nice though...but I'm feeling it this morning!

Monday, Monday

Today, we got the day off to a rip-roaring start by oversleeping. I asked John to wake me at 6, and I guess his light pat on the arm was supposed to wake me up. I thought he was just saying good morning! haha! So, Jack and I woke up at 7. I immediately began to freak out,and then made a decision to reign it in and let it go. We were going to be late, nothing I could do to fix it, might as well not make everyone crazy over it. I managed to get Kain off to school on time, then worked on getting the rest of the gang together. Today was picture day at the co-op, so I had to clean em up nice. We managed a quick swing by Walmart on the way to get a few essentials, including lunch for that day. Still chasing that elusive grocery shopping trip.

Went to co-op. This is the second week of the last term. Maria is taking Life Scienc, Math Lit., a literature class, a PE games class, ancient Egypt, and acting. They got their picture taken and that was a bit of a freak show as Jack did not want to cooperate...he wanted to play with the bunnies and chicks that were part of the scene.

Left the co-op during Maria's last class to pick up Kain, back to co-op to pick up Maria, take the kids to get dinner, then Kain to therapy. Then home. Tired, tired, tired. Mondays just wipe me out. The kids were all cranky and snarky with each other. Jack went into overtired destructo-boy mode and was hell bent on destroying the house, so I put him in bed as soon as I got Kain in the tub. Maria helped me finish up Kain's bath and got him his bedtime snack. SHe's my right hand, that girl. Boys in bed, Maria and I watched Extreme Home Makeover tvo'd from last night. I cried through the whole dang thing as usual. John just got home so I'm going to go visit with him and relax for a bit!

menus-all you never wanted to know

Entropy asks at my smallthingswithgreatlove blog

"Hey, so do you plan a menu ahead of time?"

Yes, I do. It is *so* necessary for me. On the weeks that I don't we are too often doomed to the fast food thing. Planning menus saves me so much time and money. I am still perfecting what works best for me though. I have subscribed to different menus, like menu mailer, I have tried using other mom's menus, I have done once a month cooking...nothing has fit just right, so like so many things in life I am left trying to tweak my own thing. Either the menus use too many foods that I consider unhealthy (convenience foods, cream of ____ soups, etc.), have too many meals that my husband won't like (too sprouty, too many soup/salad dinners), or take too much time to prepare, etc. Part of the issue is that we pretty much eat all meals from home. My kids are home, I'm home, even when John is at work he takes lunch from home. And with the exception of occasional "Mom needs a light week so we are going to subside on convenience foods" weeks, I make most meals from scratch. My husband is extremely spoiled rotten when it comes to meals. It's ok. He reads my blog, and he knows I think he is spoiled rotten. But, he is a wonderful guy and this is important to him. He will regularly pretend not to notice my slipshod housekeeping, but he can only take so many meals from a box, so I make an effort. I feel like I spend a *lot* of time on meals- planning them, shopping for them, cooking them, cleaning them up...it gets a little....old. :) And this is coming from someone that generally *does* like to cook! But cooking three meals a day, seven days a week, at least 75% of the time with a toddler wrapped around your knees...it does lose it's charm.

I like to use mostly actual ingredients with few convenience foods, fresh foods when possible, cook with the seasons, have quick and easy things for lunch and breakfast, have at least one crockpot recipe a week for crazy, crazy Monday, and the rest of the week have dinners that will not take me more than 45 minutes to prepare from start to finish. A tall order for any menu, yes? A few things I have accomplished-

--I have a list of just a few meals for breakfast- oatmeal, eggs, and muffins/breads, that I switch around depending on whether John will be getting breakfast on his own (he has to leave the house at 6:15 on days he works) or will be home to have breakfast with us. I pass around the fruit bowl and milk/juice/or yogurt with breakfast too.

--Snacks-- For morning snack we pass around the "green bowl", a large bowl I keep some packaged things in, like granola bars, fruit snacks, graham crackers, etc. For afternoon snack we have started having "tea time"- a bit of homemade goodie (when it's not Lent! right now it's usually toast or bagels), hot tea, and a passing around of the fruit bowl . For bedtime snack I encourage cold cereal- it is quick to make, quick to eat, and filling for the picky eater who didn't get much dinner. Sometimes the kids will want popcorn instead. On Sundays we have sundaes for dessert. :)

--Lunches-- Lunch needs to be quick---like, on the table in 15 minutes, although I can do a little prep in the morning if needed. A person can only eat so many sandwiches. I have tried, with varying success, to have a type of meal assigned to each day. This helps narrow down my planning and streamlines things a bit and avoids too much repetition. We generally have salads on Monday, sandwiches on Tuesday, soup on Wednesday, spaghetti or raviolis on Thursdays, fish sticks or mac and cheese on Friday, quesadillas on Saturday, and clean out the fridge leftovers on Sunday. I have been trying really hard to remember to put out a plate of raw veggies and dip with whatever we are having for lunch as well.

Dinners- My favorite cookbook by far is Saving Dinner. It has a great variety of healthy but not too sprouty, seasonal, and relatively quick to prepare meals. I am in the process of weeding out my favorite ones for each season and making my own collection of dinner meals that I can rotate through and change out each season. The menus in this book also give a meatless meal for each week, a crockpot meal for each week, and often have a soup, sandwich, or salad recipe I can try for lunch. So, dinner changes up a lot, but we do have a few things set down- Friday, of course, is meatless. Saturday is pizza night. I make my own, which sounds really impressive but is actually scary-easy. I make the crust in the bread maker and everyone just tops their own. Sunday is breakfast-for-dinner, or "brinner" as we call it around here- this is when I will make the more time-consuming breakfast stuff like pancakes, waffles, etc., and I try to make enough to have leftovers for Monday's breakfast. Monday is crazy, crazy co-op day and I usually have a crockpot meal for that night. I also keep a "meal in a box" of some kind up in the pantry for those "everything has gone horribly wrong" days.

So, that's it, all you never wanted to know about meal planning. I post all of this because it took me a long time to get this system down,,,,and maybe something here will be of use to someone.

And least you bop on over to smallthingswithgreatlove to check out tomorrow's menu with great anticipation, you should know that I couldn't make my regular grocery shopping trip yesterday with Jack being sick and John working all weekend, so it'll be a "scramble for food" day for sure. :)

fun with blogs

I have made some changes, especially at my secondary homeschool blog, smallchangeswithgreatlove, so check it out, I'm quite proud. I am nearly computer illiterate, so it has taken me a couple of hours to figure out how to do this, haha!! :) I've added some daily lists just fun. I will *try* to update these in the evening for the next day.

high aspirations/and the Room Upstairs

On the way to school yesterday---

Kain- Aunt Mel, I'm going to be an army guy when I grow up. I want to be the army sergeant guy that's in charge of the WHOLE army.

Me- So you want to be a soldier?

Kain- Yeah, the one that's in CHARGE.

Me- That would be a really special job to have.

Kain- Yeah, and I'd finally get to shoot a GUN!

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My mom said once that my motto is "Anything worth doing is worth overdoing." In true me-fashion, the project of reorganizing the upstairs school/playroom has morphed into this HUGE project. John and I have decided to move our bedroom to that upstairs room and move the playroom downstairs where our bedroom currently is. This is an enormous undertaking. Both room are very cluttered and overpacked with STUFF. I have so far purged and packed up the school stuff, shoved all the mounds of toys into the large bathroom up there, and now we are in the process of painting. That's right, painting. We have been slowly working on painting our fixer upper, and both of these rooms still need painting...what better time to do it, right? I picked out a spiffy golden yellow yesterday and Maria and I have been hard at work. Most people cringe at the thought of letting a 10yo help paint their house. Talk about a learning experience! But she's actually a great help and loves to paint,,,she's also small enough to get easily into the weird little crawl space areas of this finished attic room. After painting, we will move our essential bedroom stuff uptstairs and I will start the enormous job of sorting through all the junk in the former master bedroom. Oh, the fun that awaits...piles of outgrown baby clothes, all the junkity junk junk I have stashed there when company is coming...my housekeeping style is a little, um, creative...Then I will paint *that* room in a yet undetermined color and organize our school stuff down there. This was not an easy decision. I'm not particularly fond of being further away from the kids at night. But the upstairs room has such a peaceful atmosphere to it, and our current bedroom is so right in the middle of everything. There's a small balcony off the upstairs room, and I have visions of putting a couple of comfy outdoor chairs and some plants and having a lovely little private sitting room. Private, you know, except for the fact that it's completely visable to all the neighbors. :) Plus, it will give our homeschooling more flexibility if I am in the main part of the house. So, we are making the jump!

"Cashew!"

Heard tonight from our bedroom while I was putting Kain to bed-

"MEL- WHAT'S 'CASHEW' MEAN? "

"UM----OK, I'M NOT SURE, HOLD ON."

I finished with Kain and joined John in the bedroom where John was getting Jack ready for bed. Jack was demanding "CASHEW". I frantically searched my brain to figure out what he could mean, the remembered his latest favorite story, "Because a Little Bug Went Kachoo". Some quick searching through piles in the bedroom unearthed the book for a happy Jack.

Some other Jack-ese to know---

"Hahv-row" ==Peanut Butter. Don't ask me where that one came from, but it's critical to know because the kid lives on the stuff.

"Hahn-gee"== Hungry. Probably he wants Hahv-row.

"Dense"==Dance....i.e.- he wants to watch his Baby Mozart dvd.

"Fah Fahse"==Thomas, as in Thomas the Tank Engine, the love of his life. He is crazy about all things Thomas. You must figure it out in the context it is used. If he is bouncing up and down in front of the TV and hollering "Fah Fahse", this means, "Please put on my Thomas dvd." If he is crying it in his crib when you put him down for bed, this means,"Please find my trains, I simply cannot bear to sleep without one in each hand."

"Mess" ==Mess. As in, "I made one, and you'd better come see what I did. Bring a broom."

How I am spending my weekend....

Last night found me in very rare circumstances. I was *alone*. Alone, I say! I was almost giddy with this! I am rarely even alone in the bathroom, so a whole evening....wow! Maria was at a slumber party, Kain was at his dad's house, John was at work and didn't get home until after 10pm....I had Jack with me, but he was in bed early. I, of course, spent the time doing what most mothers would do if they found themselves with a couple of free hours...I cleaned! Our upstairs school/play room is in absolutely horrifying condition. It is a secret nightmare of mine that someone will have a significant injury up there (given the mess, that's entirely possible) and I will have to endure the embarrassment of having paramedics see the messiest room in my house (trust me, that's saying something). Yesterday morning my daughter had her Little Flowers meeting. It was my turn to lead the meeting and the virtue was, haha, orderliness. So I guess I was feeling all motivated when I got home. See, in my defense, it's very difficult to clean this room once it gets really bad. The kids are always using it! You can't go in and clean a bit, then come back later and do a bit more because they will quickly undo anything that you've done. No, no, you must do this all in one swoop. I dowloaded some Catholic radio podcasts onto John's Ipod took up a few trashbags, and went to work. No, I'm not finished. I'm not even close! But John has said he will help me make sure I get some more time up there this weekend, and in the meantime the kids are banned from the room. Oh, the angst! Oh, the wailing and gnashing of teeth! They should be glad they weren't here last night to see how much I threw away, haha! My goal is to have it done before the weekend is over. I have this vision of a school room that is a delight to walk into each day, with our school table (actually an old dinette) cleared of piles, two small desks under the windows for Kain and Maria to use for their independent work (haven't actually bought those yet), a couple of small bookshelves and beanbag chairs to form a comfy reading corner, a small preschool table for Jack with some shelves to start filling with Montessori lessons, and most importantly, couple of toys shelves with a minimum of toys out at one time! I thought about posting before and after pictures, but honestly, I was too embarrassed. :) I might post an after picture though!