Homeschool 2018

So, looking back at my pins on Pinterest, it seems like I've always had a deep interest in Montessori.

Two days into workbooks and Bubbles was saying she hated school. Luckily for her, homeschool can be fliud so here I am, prepping to drop a bunch of money at https://www.montessoribymom.com in a few months.

For now, however, I need to make due with what we have.

Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.
      -Arthur Ashe

She's enjoying the Prodigy app for math so far.

So, I started out introducing Bubbles to the letter A because it's first in her workbooks, but I think a more logical starting place would be ETOAIN.

Beings as Etoain is a collection of the most common letters, I figure word recognition should be easiest if you know the easiest letters first.

We'll do a letter a week. This week is apparently A. Next week we'll tackle E

Simple Goals Part 2

Well, didn't go so well.
Admittedly, last week was rough. We visited two separate family members in the hospital, decided not to buy a car and poor Daddy had to stay up late (he works at night) and watch the girls twice while I went to meetings.


My 4 yr old girl has suddenly become very anti-pants, and none of us have been waking up together.

They are putting their socks on themselves though, so win!

Simple Goals

    So I'm really working on a schedule with my kiddos.

    I have these very lofty goals, which includes a lot more independence than we currently have.

    To start the day off, eventually, I'd like everyone to wake up together. I dream of cozy mornings where we all cuddle, sipping cocoa and coffee while we gradually wake up.
    Further down the list of a perfect morning, my girls would get themselves dressed.

    This is where I'm concentrating for next week.

    I've broken down my goals into mini-pieces and this week I'm working on two pieces.

   Goal 1. By next Monday, the girls all peacefully wake up together at nine.
   Goal 2. By next Monday, my 2yr old puts her shirt on by herself when asked. I'm working on my 2 yr old instead of my 4 yr old because the littler one likes clothes. I think she'll be easier to start with. I feel like the only way to keep clothes on my bigger one would be to glue them on.

    Wish me luck! I'll report back next week.

Schedual

    My childhood was utter chaos, so it's so hard for me to stick to a schedule and I desperately, desperately want to.

    I don't know what it is, but I just can't seem to keep on track.

    Sometimes I can't even wake up to my alarm every day for weeks.

    I don't know how people manage to keep on schedule. I'm trying to just get "all the stuff" done in a day and that seems to work a bit better than when I try 'dinner at five!" "AT FIVE I SAY!"

    Sometimes it's procrastination, but more often then not it goes like this;

   Wake planning on cooking eggs before I wake up my brood.
    Someone wakes up mid-scramble needing an urgent bottle/diaper change/cuddle/muffin? Really? You woke up screaming from a lack-of-muffin nightmare?

    Next, I hope to finish cooking before I have to take my oldest to school.
    Oldest wakes up and goes into detail about her dream where the world is made out of regenerating food, like, the car is a gumdrop and so on.

    I make myself some coffee, dread driving in this March snow and pack the baby into her adorable knitted snowsuit, coat, thing while reminding Oldest that she needs to brush her teeth and hair.

    The muffin-dreamer is back to sleep on the couch or kitchen floor, so I guess she's staying with Daddy while Oldest, Baby and I go to school.

    The eggs remain partly-scrambled, forgotten and abandoned in the pan while I go about my daily journey.

    Sometimes I remember them about noon, when it's lunch time.

    Oh boy! What to do!

Awesome Days

    When I homeschooled my oldest, she was 9 at the time. We used IXL and it wasn't what she needed. I'm sure it works wonders for some kids, but it just stressed mine out and made her cry.
    I personally worked out a curriculum for science, history, we threw in yoga, emotional recognition, recess/organized sports play. That half hour of IXL math and half hour of IXL reading completely ruined the rest of the fun we'd had all day. Eventually, I felt like I was failing her even more than public school, so she went back to public school.
   Ever since then I've been quietly, and waaaaay too slowly, developing a fun online curriculum that hopefully won't stress her out. It's hard to code websites when you have helpers pawing at your legs all day.

    ALL DAY! EVEN WHEN I TRY TO PEE! They're always there. They're always watching... They're always calling "Momma!" 

    My little ones are too little for school. I mean, I suppose we could pay for Preschool, but it just feels like sacrificing my precious mommy-babies time. I suppose maybe two 15 minute blocks of Preschool would be nice, ya know, so I can go potty.

    Anyway. I've been trying to teach them at home. Basically Preschool Homeschool.

    When I homeschooled, I had a schedule I tried to follow. For the first four months it worked out, but mostly, in reality, most of the day seemed to slip chaotically through my fingers.

    Today, though. Today has been one of those elusive "good days" where everything falls into place without a hitch and you feel confident. Today I feel like I could homeschool all my kids, all the time.

Ruthless Kid's Clothes Apocolypse

    We have way, way, way too many clothes.


    Granted, I have a family of 6. However, if I assume each of us has 40 articles of clothes (this is more generous than the standard 37 I see online) there should only be 240 articles of clothes in the house.

    . . . There is probably 20 garbage bags FILLED with clothes, and two very large boxes full.


    So, I went through and pared my own wardrobe down to 40 about this time last year. Mischief and Mayhem, my two middle girls, have minimal clothes. Most of those are up here, not in bags. Teeny Tiny Baby just got a huge box of clothes that I need to pick through, but she has about 30 clothes currently.
    This means that majority of the clothes and clothes and clothes down stairs in those bags and bags and bags are . . . (drum roll please) My husband's and my oldest daughter's!

    Oh, my, dear, god. OMDG.

    It does make sense. I have most of my clothes up here. I have the smallest threes' up here. That leaves Hubby and Oldest.

    20is bags, of two people's clothes.


   GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Slackin Redefined

   Holy crap I've been slacking. Well, slacking on blogging.

    It's probably because we moved into our new house about a month and a quarter ago, and I have a baby who turned 6 months old, three days ago, and my oldest daughter just started a whole lot of counseling and OT for her recent Aspie diagnoses, oh, and my husband is working the night shift now so I've been toting all four of my girls around in the day alone.
    Boy, I need to figure out a way to blog more!

    So here is how my beloved bipolars are doing:
      Sweet husband and I miss each other terribly! He comes home about a half hour before I have to take my oldest to school. Team Tiny wakes up after that and they wind down for bed as he is showering and getting his work clothes on.
    I see him Friday and Saturday. It's kind of lame, but this house is amazing, my husband is already in line for a huge promotion, and this is the first time since about pre-school that my oldest hasn't been complaining about school weekly.


    Overall, I think life is improving for us and it's on an uphill climb!

woo!

Still super tired though.

Considering Gameschooling

    Next year, my oldest daughter is destined for middle school.

    I have honestly never met anyone who was like, "Yeah, middle school was fine."

    Everyone I know had an awful time in middle school. After her diagnoses as gifted and Aspie, she's gotten a lot of help and this is the first year she's been enjoying school.

    I'm so lost. I really don't know whether I should homeschool her again, now that I know more about her and how she learns, or potentially fight with a new school.

    I've been fighting her school for six years. This is the first year they are listening to me and it's the last year she's there.

    Ug. It's a gamble either way.

    I'm not a gambler. I hate gambling.

New Home

We are settling into a new home. It has such a yard! I'm quite excited for the room these kiddos will be able to frolic in! We have room for a nice wooden playset, a sandbox AND a "jumpoline" (Bubble speak for trampoline) AND a sizeable veggie garden, roses, bees and even chickens!

    It's amazing! But it buried under about 3 and a half feet of snow!

    My oldest is excited about the yard because she's old enough to know it'll be accessible soon. The littles however. They find it to be an impenetrable cold tundra of doom.


    I set up a tiny hill and we've been sledging, so they are beginning to like "outside."


    I never thought I'd have to train kids how to outside.

Holiday Headache

    I realized, last Halloween, that Halloween is my favorite holiday because it's one of the few that doesn't require being around my extended family for hours.
    It became my favorite holiday when I was quite young. Kindergarten.

    Now that I'm an adult, I almost take joy in missing holidays.
    We decided to have our own Thanksgiving again this year. It was a relaxing day.
    Christmas however, is still up in the air.

    I don't want to deny my kids the opportunity if they want to go to family events.
    I also will never, ever ever again leave any of my children with those people unsupervised, so, this means that if they do want to go up there, it's the same stress that I've lived through in my childhood.
    Lame.

    I also have a deep resentment for the winter holidays, which I'm sure my kids can feel.
    I get exciting ideas about cutting snowflakes or frosting cookies, and then when the time comes around, I'm cursing up a storm in my head about my mother and grandparents. Instead of doing fun, together things, I have a grumpy day.

    I don't know how to fix it.

    I've been trying to celebrate alternative holidays. Obscure holidays that my family doesn't celebrate, or care about. Like Wintereenmas, a video game playing week. Or pi day, a day to celebrate the math idea of pi, by eating pie!
 

    I'm not sure how to alleviate this stress.

    One very stressful solution would be to give those that stress me out a list of "What I need in order to continue our relationship."
    Like "I don't feel comfortable leaving my children with you without me present. If you want to continue to have a relationship with me, don't ever tell my kids that they are staying the night with you, ESPECIALLY before asking me. Unsupervised time with them is not an option. In return, we can all go to public places together, like the carousel and parks."

    It seems very aggressive, but I doubt it's any more aggressive than trying to remove myself from the family and not talking to them ever again. That's what I've been doing so far and despite my stubborn intervals of silence and grumbly hatered, they still as me to holidays.

Something New

    It seems like, I'm happiest when I get outside every day. So, I'm thinking about trying to wake up all the babies and get them dressed before 7 am. That way, we can all go to our little park in the morning to drop the oldest off at school.

    I'm hoping that playing in the morning will wear them out and they'll be more willing to sleep at bedtime. Maybe even nap time to.

     I believe step 1 is to get them dressed and out the door as soon as they wake up at 9.
     I'll do that for a while, timing how long it takes them to get dressed when they have the promise of park. Once they can get dressed on time, I'll start waking them up at 8, and then 7.

    Today is an early day, so I'm off to try right now at 8.

    Wish me luck!

Alligator in the Bathroom

    Well, my husband jumped out of bed, prepared to save a lizard.

    He rushed past me with the lizard on his chest and started the bath with lukewarm water.
    I called our park manager and asked if anyone had reported a missing iguana. She said no, so I told her to pass on my number if someone did.
    She recommended I check Craigslist for their lost and found, and I did, finding nothing.

    Eventually I had to head off to work.

    He might have been dead when we brought him in. The water didn't ripple at all. He didn't seem to be breathing.

    After the mind-draining work, I came home and had completely forgotten about the lizard in the bath tub.

    Well, the next day, my animal-loving baby-child, Lulu needed to potty. She has a little kiddo potty that she uses in the living room, but she wanted to go "to the big potty."
    So I took her, and she noticed.

    She gasped in delight, and remembered.
    "Momma!" She gushed excitedly. "There's a alligator sleepin' in the bathtub!"
    Oh! My sweet little girl! I thought. My heart ached for her. She had discovered a new pet, and it was already gone.
    "Oh, it's sleeping?" I whispered to her. "We better be quiet then."

    "Yeah," She whispered back. "Gotta be quiet. He's sleepin."

    At this point, we'd had the lizard in our bathtub for a day and a half. We had to forgo tubbys for a night, and I was getting really antsy about bleaching it.
    I made one last vain attempt to find an owner before I snuck the lizard out the back door when Lulu couldn't see.

    Well, she remembered, and a few hours later, she insists on checking on him.

    I hadn't bleached the tub out, or thrown out the bottle he was resting on. I did wrap him up in the towel he was on.

    She peeked into the tub.
    "He's gone!" She whispered.

    "Oh goodness!" I said. "Where do you think he went?"

    She thought for a bit.

    "The window!" She was still whispering. "He go outside."

    "Ah! I bet you're right." I whispered back.

    "Let's go look for him." She had such impressive conviction. "Alligator," She called through out the house.

    At some point of getting her outside clothes on, Daddy had asked her if he went outside and found his family.

    So we headed outside and looked for the alligator and his family.


    It's been a week and when we walk to the park, she still looks for him.
   

Surprise Neighbor Attack

   Once upon a time, about last Saturday, our neighbor came knocking on the door.

    It was morning so I was still in my jammie pants, and I'm paranoid, so naturally, I hissed at the closed door.
    It was a day I was letting my fantastic husband sleep in, so I answered the door all morning looking.

    "Did you guys lose an iguana?" He asked.

    "N-no, why? What's up?" I stammered.

    "There's one out back on the rose bush, and as far as I know, they're not indigenous-" He goes on a bit and I'm processing that it is currently 29 degrees Ferienheight (that's about 4 degrees below freezing). I happen to know that that will easily kill our cold-blooded friend.
    I mentioned bringing him inside.
    "They bite, don't they? I don't want to grab it if it's gonna bite me." He said.

    "Well alright," I said. "Let me put this baby down and then you can show me where it is."
    I bustled into the bedroom, which woke up my husband.
    "Sorry Love! I didn't mean to wake you. We have to save an iguana."

    Having had iguanas in his youth, my husband jumped up, jumped into clothes and jumped outside to rescue the iguana.

    . . . to be continued . . .
 

Rolling with the Punches

    I love holidays.
    Well, I love some holidays.

    I love Halloween and the Day of the Dead. October is very much my favorite month.
    Every year, on November 3rd, I think about starting on next year's Halloween projects.

    "If I start now," I explain to myself, "our costumes will be SOOO AWESOME!"
    Or, "I can start knitting right now and have a garland of tiny scarecrows to hang up next Halloween!"

    It seems like a lack of money always prevents me from my goals. I'm going to try again though!

    Knitting scarecrows, autumn leaves, and pumpkins! Here I go!

    Two of the little ones fell asleep right before trick-or-treat time, so me and the two oldest ones went around our neighborhood.

    It was fun. They wore themselves out.
    On our way home, I was asking them if they wanted to hit the houses with lights on.
    My oldest was complaining that her legs hurt from going up and down the apartment stairs, but every time we were about to pass a house;
    "Just one more." She'd say. So cute.
    My 3yr old was dragging her bag of candy, but she'd point to the houses as well. They weren't done until we were home.

    I love Halloween. I love autumn. I love the cool air at night and I love the lack of Christmas songs.

Redefining Holidays

    Holidays are usually so stressful. I end up thinking too much and complaining about how far out of our way we'll have to go to cater to all the grandparents.
   This year, the two tiniest babies fell asleep, and our car died about four days ago. Since my car died I've been needing rides to work  and it's really draining to think about. With a family that doesn't fit in the standard car, getting a ride for Halloween was just about impossible.
   It really pushes your limits to be put on the spot like that. And stressed. It really pushes your limits to be stressed all the time.

    Given what we could at the time, I ended up taking the two oldest girls out while Daddy watched the two smallest ones sleep at home.
    We didn't visit each and every grandparent to show off costumes. We didn't drive to each end of town, and we didn't find "all the best houses." We just went and discovered who lives in our own area.

    You know what? It's was incredibly nice!

    I really don't like the area I'm living in. Leaving is my motivation that keeps me blogging every day. However, there are a lot of nice people who live around here and I'm glad I know that now. Had I not been forced to look past the loud, obnoxious people I see every day, I probably wouldn't have known we had anything else.

    I get the feeling that exploring your own space during Halloween used to be more community. I expect before cars, playing around in your neighborhood was more common.
    I can't wait to find a place where we can fit in. A place with lots of parents who have done parenting classes and CARE about their little ones.

    I can imagine wandering around my own neighborhood on Halloween, where everyone is an understanding parent, and it sounds amazing!

Halloween!

    Halloween! I'm so excited!

    My oldest is a kangaroo. Next is Remi the rat. Next is a bear and the littlest is a flower.

    Our only car broke last Thursday, so we won't be able to explore as much as I was planning on, but that's fine. We'll figure it out.

    Halloween was always my favorite holiday. Not because of the candy, or the parties, or dressing up, or all the scary stuff. It's always been my favorite holiday because it wasn't one where I had to dress up all uncomfortably in scratchy, lacy dresses and eat around my mother's family.

Repition

    I'm not really sure why kids want to watch their favorite movie over and over and over again, but I'm going to be honest, I never grew out of it. There are a few songs I could literally listen to all day without getting bored of them.
    I generally dislike using the T.V as a crutch, but I do.
    At 4 am, when one of my girls just decides to be awake, and it's too early for coffee, because I'd really like to go back to sleep, but I'm for realsies too tired to open my eyes properly, I turn on a movie.
    Don't get me wrong, I'd love to continue watching our weekend movie. We make popcorn and assemble on the couch for cuddles together.
    It's a refreshing, end-of-the-week treat.

    We were doing so good for a while. We'd set a "one movie a day" limit and we stuck with it for a few weeks.
 
   Inertia; something in motion will remain in motion, unless something stops it.
   It seems like, as soon as it comes on, it stays on. It's like it's so much easier to walk over, change a disk, wait through the previews to press play than it is to walk over and press the three power buttons. (For those curious out there, one for the DVD player, one for the T.V and one for the sound system).
    When it comes on before I'm awake, I feel like I've lost the battle.

    I've kept the sink clear of dirty dishes for the past two days. I've kept Lulu's teef brushed every night for the past two weeks and I've managed to give our teeny tiniest her K drops nearly ever day since she was born.
    It's my Monday today, but next week, I think I'll add the one movie goal back in.
    I seem to have the hardest time keeping with a routine or schedule, but I'm going to keep working at it until something sticks.

Breezy's Babies today

    Babies are crazy.

    The past few months, I think I've been holding a child 95% of the time I spend at home, and so has my husband.
    It's hard to clean the eternal pile of stuffies on the floor, or do dishes while babies are awake, but it's amazing.
    I love bringing my daughter's monkey to life. There is hardly anything more fun than chasing one around on all fours growling, and then to have another growl back at you.

    I love playing with my kids. It's amazing that I have that opportunity, nearly every moment of every day.
    To have the four little faces and my husband all looking at me lovingly, it's just awesome!

Baby Blues

    I've been sleeping on the couch quite a lot more than I usually would lately, because of our new little addition.

    I can't say it's harder having a new baby for those who are mentally different because I don't have many families of neurotypical people that I know to compare against.

    I think we're doing pretty good. We are generally happy, yes sleep deprived, but we are more compassionate and understanding with our kids than most people I see out and about our town.
    I do miss my husband though.

    I miss cuddling him and smelling him while I sleep.

Consistency is hard.

    I love it when we get through a week or two where we go to the park, eat healthy dinners together, get all the hair brushed and get all the dishes cleaned in the same day, and limit ourselves to one movie a day.
    That feels great.

    It's lasted for 2 months before! BUT, there is always one day where four cups get left in the sink. A baby gets sick so we watch Peep all day and eat chicken soup. Maybe it's stormy or 6 degrees outside so we don't end up at the park. It seems like all it takes is one misstep and then we have bored, naked babies watching T.V all day with messy hair, refusing all forms of dinner and staying up in bed until midnight.
    It really bothers me that this phase will last longer than our "put-together" phase.

    I'm really trying to figure out what we do differently when things are going well, but I don't know.

    Hopefully, someday, we'll get it figured out and our "put-together" phase will last longer than anything else.