School Begins...and a Quick Trip to Urgent Care

Week 1 of school complete.  What should have been a cake walk of a first day, turned into a complaining sort of a day.  The kids all met the teacher (they were quite familiar with her), and we went over how school was going to run this year.  We have certain subjects in the morning, we take a 45 minute break outside, eat lunch, and finish off the remaining subjects in the afternoon.  They were all gung-ho for the 45 minutes outside.  Unfortunately, that first day Josiah had to take a math readiness evaluation because we were starting a new curriculum.  It was four pages long and he was not a fan.  Then we took his first spelling pretest.  I never mentioned the word, "test," it was more of a "let's see where you're at" type thing.  He wasn't keen on doing either.

But, after the first day, it got a lot better.  We've been sticking to this new schedule and it has really been working for us.  Josiah likes his new math book a lot.  He's even asked to do more work than I had scheduled, which has never even remotely happened before.  This new book is very colorful, which makes a big difference with him.  It's fun looking.  Henry's been doing well, despite not wanting to be in Kindergarten.  All summer he was upset he wasn't going into first grade.  Now he's upset that he's no longer in pre-K.  Even Caroline has been getting into it.  She sticks around when we review our CC material (using an app, which I love).  Caroline can now name the seven types of biomes with hand motions.  She's going to be hot stuff in that nursery at CC.

 We also had our first day at our new CC group.  This was the day I decided to take pictures of the kids beforehand.
Josiah, nervous, but excited.

Caroline, happy.

Henry, "I don't want to go.  I'm not going to do it. I don't want to hold this silly sign"

He said he was upset because it was a new group and he didn't know if I could stay in his room.  I didn't know either because our leader was going to assign the parents to a room for the next six weeks to have some consistency.  It didn't help him that it was up in the air.  He warmed up considerably when I was in his room.

Then after lunch, the boys were playing on the playground and Caroline was swinging.  At one point, our boys, with two others, came running up to me.  One boy, the leader, told me that he had finished training our boys and they were fully certified for their Spy Club. He then pinned imaginary badges on their shirts.  Our boys have played Spy Club at home in the past, so this was awesome to have other kids do the same.  They had a good first day.

The boys have been doing well in their karate class.  I don't always get to watch their whole class because I'm hanging out with a napping girl in the car.  She's fallen asleep every time we've gone.  But they're enjoying it.  Both boys earned their white stripes on their belts this week.  Henry's a little upset that he cannot earn his blue stripe because they ran out of blue tape and he thinks they'll never get any more blue tape ever again.


And as upset as Henry can get about some things, he's also quite entertaining and funny in others.  We've been watching two different magic shows for a couple of weeks now.  The kids love them.  Caroline always says she wants to be one of the model girls who helps the magicians.  After the shows are over, the boys will start in on trying to do tricks.  Henry likes to make things disappear, but in order for the trick to work well, he asks us, the audience, to close our eyes.  One time he had Legos assemble themselves.  We had to close our eyes and cover our ears for that one, but there was some amazement when we opened them again.

Another day, Todd left a sign on our cookies that said, "Okra and Brussel Sprout cookies" so the boys wouldn't eat them while he was at work.  Henry, after checking with me that it wasn't true, ripped the sign off and put up his own one.  "Todd loves banana cookies."  (Todd's allergic to bananas.)

Todd didn't eat banana cookies this week, but he did end up in the Urgent Care ER.  He asked us to pick him up from work because he wasn't feeling well.  On the drive home he asked that we make a detour at an Urgent Care.  He was quite pale and in a lot of pain when we got there.  They briefly checked him out before giving him a pain med, and he perked up a lot once that started doing its magic.  He ended up having a kidney stone.  The most unfortunate part of this whole event was that he spoke to a co-worker a few days later about it.  She mentioned that she had had one as well, and that it was worse than giving birth.  My next question to Todd was, "Did she have an epidural?"  I'm pretty sure he'll be bringing that up fairly often for the next 20-40 years.  (He's all better from the kidney stone.)

The kids all built the Hulk at Lowes' on Saturday.  Once we left the store, Henry discovered he lost his Hulk patch.  We walked the store twice looking for it, but never spotted it.  He was quite mature about the whole thing and didn't fall apart.  In the car Josiah even offered his to Henry, which Henry politely declined!  It was a sweet moment and it was so nice to see Josiah offer up something I know he really wanted.

The rest of our weekend was filled with building things from old boxes, attempting to wash our cars, building new Lego kits, and the always necessary, Costco trip.  We're looking forward to Homeschool Week 2.

Summer Vacation Ends

Well, our last week of summer vacation didn't exactly go as planned.  Our final tour of school playgrounds was thwarted by daily downpours, which were really a blessing because we needed the rain.  Plus, Henry and Caroline have been sick for most of the week with a pretty rough-sounding cough.  Sometimes I thought their coughs wouldn't have been so bad if they could have just blown their noses.  Henry could do it a little, but Caroline just hasn't figured out the blowing through the nose, not the mouth, bit.  This meant that Caroline had a lot of mucus, which would cause her to gag, so she would cart around our green throw-up bowl "just in case."  There were many close calls, but the bowl always remained empty.  (Yay!)  And then we drove to the library and that was when the poor thing no longer had a close call, she no longer had the green bowl, she just had a car seat to fill up with all that mucus-y goodness.  The drive home was a bit apprehensive with lots of "Are you okay?" and looking in the rear-view mirror.  It didn't help that when I would ask her if she felt better that she weakly said, "No."

On Friday, she was still coughing, which no doubt wore her out.  She fell asleep on our drive home from karate, at about 4:30 p.m.  She wouldn't wake for dinner, so we moved her from the couch to her bed.  And then I tried to get to bed early because with a 4:30 p.m. bedtime, there was going to be an early wake-up.  And she did not disappoint on that front.  She woke up at 1:30 a.m. and she was awake.  We finally went downstairs where she enjoyed her breakfast and a show.

2:25 a.m.

At 2:30 a.m. we went back up to bed.  She wanted to sleep with Todd and I and at that hour I was just happy to go back to bed.  Unfortunately, she moved around trying to get comfortable until 4:00 A.M.  By 4 a.m. I was no longer sympathetic/empathetic/motherly.  I think my final words were, "Lay down.  Do not move.  I need to sleep."  No one wants a crabby mother, right?

She had been waking us up most every night it seems.  Coming in our room during a coughing fit at midnight or 1.  It has usually been a fairly quick coughing fit before falling back asleep.  So, having been woken up nearly every night, I've been a bit crankier than usual (though polls may differ on that front).  One day, I was already sleep-deprived and feeling somewhat annoyed by the day's occurrences, when I noticed that our new couch in the playroom already had two loose arms. I sharply told the kids I wasn't getting them any Christmas presents because they couldn't take care of the things they had.  I'm sure that is on the "what not to say to your kids" in all the parenting books.

By Saturday I noticed Caroline's inhaler in the back of our cabinet and we've been doing it every four hours since.  I think she's finally getting some relief from her cough.

Josiah spent his week making Lowes' Ninjago kits.  He drew out the directions (what we had to color) and had all the pieces in a Ziploc bag.  After coloring them we had to tape them together.  He made four kits total over four different days.  He even blocked off our breakfast room in the mornings and gave me a liability waiver form to turn in.  When he told me to stand in line, I did, and he called out, "Five more minutes." just like the real Lowes' workers do when we go to the Build & Grows.

The kits even came with a patch.

Henry's pocket of happiness this week was that he lost a tooth (on the bottom).

He also crafted another volcano.  He gets very excited when he makes volcanoes because he likes to color the fire on a paper towel.

Otherwise, he has been a bit anxious which often manifested itself in the form of anger.  Earlier in the week, he went with me to our CC Orientation meeting at our new campus.  When we got to his classroom, he firmly stood against the wall, refusing to sit at the table with the rest of the boys.  He seemed sullen the whole time, which is how he tends to be with new things that make him nervous.  It wasn't very encouraging, but then when we got home, he got animated and told Todd all about it like he was excited.  He is definitely the type of child that needs to visit the classroom before the first day.  He doesn't like the unknown.  He gets that from one of his parents....

We got through CC Orientation, but then this Sunday was promotion Sunday at church.  Josiah told me he was scared to go to his new room, which was perfectly valid.  I knew both boys were scared and Henry has not done well with promotion Sunday in previous years.  So we talked about it.  Yes, it's scary, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try new things, and they can still enjoy their new rooms.  Well, Josiah went in fine because he always does.  I left Henry crying on the floor after the teacher helped peel him off my legs.  I always want to tell the teachers, that I promise he's a good kid.  Just give him a few weeks and he'll be fine.  I feel so bad for both him and the teachers just leaving him there in that state.  Of course, he was just fine at pick-up.

Meanwhile, while we were at church, Todd (who by now had picked up the cold) went to the store with Caroline and bought her seven containers of soy milk and a bag of her special organic, gluten-free, almost $6.00 Cheerios (but not Cheerios).  They were going to keep it a surprise for me to save me a trip to the store.  But, I decided to go with the boys after church, buying five more containers of soy milk and two bags of her special Cheerios (but not Cheerios) because she has asked for them every day this week.  We now have enough soy milk and not-Cheerios to last for probably the next six months.  

I spent this afternoon at another CC meeting for the moms.  It was very helpful and definitely will help shape how we run our school days at home.  Because school starts TOMORROW!  This evening Josiah prayed for Henry to have more work and for him to have less.

Tomorrow we'll have a "Meet the Teacher" and classroom rules kind of a day.  That and a math assessment for Josiah since we're starting a new curriculum.  I'm praying that this year we really work on good attitudes and that I set the example with that.  It can be easy to get frustrated/impatient/overwhelmed and I really want to focus more on character building this year.

Oh, and Todd got his picture taken at work this past week.  A few years ago we watched a baking championship on t.v. and there was this very Southern lady who freaked out about one of the judges.  Paul Hollywood was a highly acclaimed, distinguished looking English baker and this woman excitedly exclaimed, "Ahhhhh.  He's the George Clooney of the baking world!"  Hence, Todd's meme.

Dish Soap...Not for Dishwashers

Our summer felt that it was officially coming to an end this week.  I spent all day Monday going through all of our curriculum and scheduling out our school days.

It is our goal to keep a much more consistent/predictable and tighter schedule this year.  The boys are both getting new subjects added to their previous years, so we have more to accomplish each day.  I even scheduled a 45 minute break so they can play outside midway through our subjects.  Even Caroline gets to start her curriculum.  With her, we take one book a week and read it, do art projects from it, look at colors/shapes/numbers in it, etc.  Just a little something to get her started.  The boys both liked it when they were 3, so hopefully she'll fall in line and enjoy it, too.

We did take a break from all the school prep to watch the Olympics.  I was excited to show the kids rowing.  I got to share all my 20-year-old rowing knowledge and got them pumped up about it.  The boys were really getting into the races and cheering on the Americans.  Then, as the German men pulled ahead of the U.S. men's boat during a race, Henry spit at the Germans.  So, that just gave us the opportunity to talk about sportsmanlike conduct.  Water polo elicited some chuckles because Henry thought the men were playing in their underwear.

The Olympics inspired the boys to give me another school lesson.  So, Henry drew up all the sports on the white board and planned to tell me how the U.S. was doing in each.  I was glad to see he had a crew team in there.

Water polo up top, rowing at the bottom, you guess the middle.

After the lesson, the school room got shut down.  I hung a "Do Not Enter" sign on the door.  I spent some time in there rearranging the furniture and Todd helped to hang up the white boards and a cursive letter chart.  I want it to be a surprise to them when we begin on the 22nd.  What is amazing is that they will obey these signs.  We have days when it seems like the kids just don't listen at all, but when we pause to think about it, they listen a lot.  If I tell them they can't go in a room, they don't do it.  If I tell them to sit on the stairs (time-out), they do, and they don't get up until I tell them (usually).  If I say they can't eat a certain food (dessert) for whatever reason, they don't eat it.  It's amazing how much they do listen.  Then when I think about if I had to be in their position and not have control over where I could go or what I could eat or anything really, I would be very frustrated.  Yet they do it.

And then there are days where their freedoms increase either because I need them to step up or because they have seized the reins.  Mid-week I was sick.  I spent most of Wednesday in bed, only coming downstairs to quickly make the kids something resembling breakfast/lunch/or dinner and then quickly going back to bed.  When I came down to get Caroline something for breakfast, I saw that the boys had made themselves waffles.  What I really saw was some sort of solid object doused in chocolate syrup.  I looked at it, and in my sick state, thought, "At least I don't have to make them anything.  Their bellies will be full for a little while."  Josiah was very helpful this way.  He was capable of getting food for Henry and himself for the most part.  They weren't going to starve.  Mostly, I had to only care for Caroline.

And then Saturday, Josiah, seizing those reins of independence, came up at 6:30 a.m. to tell me he had done the dishes.  I had heard a lot of clattering down there and figured he had hand-washed some dishes and put them in the drying rack.  That's what it sounded like he was doing.  But Todd got up a few minutes later, went downstairs, and I heard, "Josiah!  What did you do?!!"  He had started the dishwasher.  He had filled it with dish soap and started it.  It had been going long enough for the cup to open and all the soap to fill the dishwasher.  Fortunately, Todd was very good with Josiah and thanked him for trying to be helpful, but dear child, you know not to fill it with dish soap.  This was in fact his third time of filling it with dish soap.  He actually knew it was the wrong soap, but he couldn't open the Cascade, so he filled it anyway.  The dish soap has now been removed from below our kitchen sink.  Hopefully he doesn't feel particularly helpful in the future and use the hand soap.  Meanwhile, Henry was walking behind him saying, "I told him it was the wrong soap."

The boys had their first karate class this week.  Both Henry and Caroline fell asleep on the drive to class.  Henry often doesn't wake up from car ride naps in particularly happy or cooperative moods, so I was a bit worried that he would not want to participate.  We ended up being early that first class, so he was able to wake up a bit slower which helped.  Then he just went right in the gym area.  They loved it.  They both did really well and showed a lot of interest and self-control.  They already knew most of the kids in the class as well as the instructor, which no doubt helped.  At the end of their second class they had to show five perfect punches and they already got a yellow stripe on their belts.  I didn't even realize that was what the instructor was doing or I would have taken a picture.  I just thought he was showing them how to do it correctly since they were new.  I saw him with the tape and just assumed he was showing them what the tape was for.  They were quite taken with the fact that they had a stripe on their belts.  It is a good motivator.

Caroline did well during karate, too, because another little boy from CC was there.  It was Henry's old buddy, Ezra.  He talked to us the whole time and showed us clips from movies on his mom's phone.  We saw about fifty 3-second clips.    

Three seconds tends to be the attention span of little ones at times.  For Bible time one night this week, Caroline was just moving all around the room, climbing all over the boys' beds, looking and touching many things, appearing to all of us around her that she was not paying a bit of attention to the story.  At the end of it, Todd asked her, "Caroline, what did you like best about the Bible story?"  And Caroline, in all of her three-year old wisdom, paused, and then answered, "God."  She shut us down.

The boys spent some time this week making their own Lego kits.  They are always creating new kits, but in the past they would just tell me what the picture on the box would look like.  This time, they actually got a box and drew its cover.

Then they put their kit in bags marked, "1" and "2."

Then they put them together for me.  Josiah would explain what he was doing in between making noises with his mouth the entire time.  He really has a thing with his mouth.  He is always talking, whistling, doing a grunting-tic thing, humming, or making some noise.  Always.  It's his thing.

When Henry explains his Lego kits, he always says, "here's a good safety tip."  It's not necessarily a safety tip, but it is a good tip.

Henry and Caroline have picked up my cold.  I tried to warn them to stay away from me, but they like to snuggle too much.  We've been trying to do calmer, quieter things that don't cause them to cough as much.  So, we dusted off the old Battleship game.  The first game was Caroline against myself.  I begged the boys to help her and Henry finally helped a bit.  After a while the confusion was too great and I had to look at the boards.  As you can see, my board is on the right with the battleship I sunk at the top of the board in the horizontal position, in row E.  Caroline and Henry's board was on the left, with the same battleship now vertical in column 10.  After I sunk the ships, they would pick them up to show me and then move them off to the side.

Then later Josiah and I played, and great minds think alike.  We had both picked our initials.  <Insert Todd rolling his eyes.>  I won because Josiah kept asking me if I had figured out his pattern.

This is our last week of summer break.  Hopefully the kids will feel well enough to have some school playground fun before the public school kids go back and reclaim them.

Trophies and Teeth

We exhausted ourselves last Sunday.  We spent a lot of time cleaning up the front yard - trimming bushes, pulling many, many weeds, and cleaning it up just in general.  The kids wanted to help pick up all the trimmings and the boys help really well.  Caroline didn't totally understand, because after the boys filled the bucket up with trimmings, she dumped it on the driveway so she could fill it up with trimmings in a different area.


While we did the work, we noticed three dead birds in various areas of the yard.  Unfortunately, this isn't an unusual thing to see, but what made it a bit interesting this time, is that earlier in the day we saw a very big bird in our backyard.  It was guarding a bird that it had just killed, and was plucking its feathers out while other birds swooped down at it.  It was a bit grotesque, but at the same time, our eyes were peeled to the window watching what would happen.  Eventually it flew off with the bird in its claws.  So, the kids got a quick lesson in the food chain.  (Although, they did dissect owl pellets last year, so we reminded them of that.  Birds do eat other birds.)

At church earlier that day, I was part of "preview day" in Henry's classroom.  Basically, I was to observe how they do things to see if I wanted to teach a class come fall.  (Although, really, we all know I just want to be a helper.  I'm a good assistant.)  What I did preview though, was that our child Henry is not shy.  He will still say he doesn't want to go to church, it's not fun, etc.  But what I saw was quite different.  He got the class's attention and had them all count while he balanced on one foot (seeing how long he could go).  He danced for them and his teacher informed me that he liked to dance for them a lot.  He talked to all the boys and was quite boisterous with them.  A little bit crazy if you will.  So, as long as he's in this class, I will never believe him when he says he doesn't like it.

Caroline began her week well.  She earned her library summer reading program trophy.  (Really, all she had to have was 20 books read to her, which we probably could have redeemed for her trophy back in June.  However, it required me entering each of the books in the computer, and therein laid the delay.)  The libraries here do not open until noon on Mondays, so she had to wait til then for us to go.  In the meantime, Josiah did not want to be outdone by his little sister because he had still not read all 20 of his books (I didn't let him read little small books for the program, I wanted him to read harder/longer books.)  So, after whining and complaining that Henry and Caroline got to read easy little books, he hunkered down and read a lot of books, completing his 20.  Then Caroline got mad because she did not want to share in the glory of her trophy day.  But, when the trophies were given, all was forgotten, and both were very happy.


Caroline had another big day this week.  Her first visit to the dentist.  I think it may be a love-hate relationship with her.  She got right up in the chair and did exactly what they asked.  She loved that they gave her a new toothbrush and she got to pick a cheap toy out of the toy basket.  But then the dentist looked at her teeth and asked if she was a thumbsucker.  She told her that she needed to stop sucking and to keep her thumb busy doing other things.  Well, we've reminded Caroline since then not to suck her thumb and she gets angry with us.  "No!  I want to suck my fumb."  So, I have a feeling we're going to have to pony-up and get her some braces down the road.  

After the dentist, we met up with some friends at Chick-fil-a.  The boys got to play with their friend, Bobby, at the playground there.  And I got a little adult time with Bobby's mom.  While, we never considered the name "Bobby" for our boys, I almost wish we did, because Caroline always calls him, "Be-bop" and it cracks me up.  We say Bobby, she says, Be-bop.

Later in the week, we went back to the place where we did our homeschool PE class, but this time we observed the homeschool karate class.  It was merely a formality, because we had already planned to sign the boys up.  And, of course, we had to get all the gear that went with it.  One of the instructors told the boys that they were not allowed to play with the equipment at home until they learned how to use it properly.  At the price it cost, I concurred.  But, we had to get it out to show Todd that evening.  Then it all went back.

The boys all of a sudden decided that they wanted their beds bunked again.  They asked me if I could just do it while Todd was at work.  I took it as a compliment that they thought I was so super beast that I could just hoist Josiah's bed on top of Henry's.  I did wait for my super-beast partner and we got it up fairly easily.  Then we watched the kids just run all around, up and down, just crazy excited to be up high again.  Their room looks huge now, too.

We have now been in this house for a full year and we still have one box just sitting in our living room.  It is full of all the stuff we had on our walls two houses ago.  I've looked through it off and on this past year, but now we're finally getting more on the wall.  Caroline finally got some cute pictures on her wall.  I love getting the pictures hung up.

Caroline finished off her week with another "first."  She saw her first movie in the theater.  We all went to see The Secret Life of Pets.  She did pretty well overall.  Every time a scary looking animal was on the screen, she would ask me, "Are they going to come here?"  I don't know when kids learn that cartoon characters aren't real and certainly are not going to pop out of the screen and into the theater.  But she had fun.  The lighting was horrible in the theater, so we had to get a picture of her at home with her ticket.

The kids have watched a bit of the Olympics so far.  Water polo elicited some interest.  We'll see if they show interest in any of the other sports this week.

Henry being oh, so funny.