Family News

Watch me rearrange.
Ayup. Rearranged the front room again. Just for fun; wanted a change.
Jay says he likes it, so it’ll probably stay this way for a while.
Don’t have any pictures to share (an “after” feels weird with no “before”), but I guess if you can remember the way the room used to look [...]

Natasha (commenting on the shape of the syrup she just poured): Look, it’s like octopus tentacles grouped above its head!
Interesting that a girl who still says “muquis” instead of “music” can articulate “Octopus tentacles.”
Melody (at breakfast): Mommy, can you scoot me in the proper way?
And when I went down the hall to learn what Elisha [...]

So I did my first “concurrent” lessons today.
One thing I’ve wondered as I think/plan for this new job (homeschooling) is how I will prepare different things for different needs.
While the girls were napping today I read some more of a homeschooling book and took a couple ideas from there to make some “Language Arts” [...]

Well that was a total shot in the dark.
Our girls have been staying awake more than an hour after being put to bed. Whenever they are put to bed.
Granted, we haven’t put them down before 8 p.m. (and one book I have says you have to have littles down by 7:30 or they [...]

Dude. I am going with Option 1. (PDF)
Talk about simplifying my life.
I found some more teaching materials yesterday (reference and textbooks were half-off at Forget-Me-Not this week). Just went through that and what I’ve already collected, organizing them into an Excel sheet so I can find and keep track of what I’ve [...]

Natasha wrote her first Thank-you notes today.
She and I practiced the letters in “THANK YOU” (She only wanted to do caps) until I felt they were recognizable, then I drew a straight line in a blank card and she wrote her thank-you on it. Then she decorated all the rest of the inside with [...]

So, mainly from recognizing the influence that goals had on me as a foster parent, I’ve decided I need to set goals for my own kids. And these are going to be basic, realistic goals here.
“Independently using the potty” is too big a goal for Melody just now. We’re going to start with [...]

She combed out her own hair after a shower, and use the ‘Y’ in yellow for the first time.
In the “Cinderella dressed in Yella” rhyme.  Only, when the girls do it it’s a non-distorted “true” word.
They were still asking for “The Sound of Muquis” (sounds almost like mucus) instead of The Sound of Music just [...]

I play EverQuest II, and Jay practices piano.

Like I mentioned earlier, I spent most of January 1st working on books.
The girls and I traded bookshelves in our bedrooms. These pictures are the girls washing their “new” kid-sized bookshelf.

And then I saw Elisha in his little rocking chair, sitting with “Where the Wild Things Are” [...]