Family News

A dear friend called me last week to give me more time on my book.

Ahem.

To have the children over. (Actually she did couch it in terms of giving me more time on my book.)

And today I finished the book, so I have to decide how to use the time (assuming I can track down a vehicle to get the kids to her house).

The options:

• Come home and clean house for a few hours
• Prepare the homeschooling materials that have finally come together (and come in the mail)
• Visit the Thrift stores kidless (read: efficiently and without exposing them to the gross October displays)
• Visit the used-book stores (I’m still looking for the “perfect” math book)
• Grocery shop to fill in the fresh-produce holes of our menu
• Go walk at the Big Dipper (the only free indoor-walking venue I’ve been able to find in Fbx, that I now am banned from coming with my children, since I have to make them walk with me the whole time if I am to walk (Pbthth!)
  • I was walking there a couple times a week and it was great– the kids sat on their blankets with snacks and projects while I passed every 1.5 to 2.5 minutes.  No. problems.  –This is more regular check-ins than they probably get at home (and I can see them the whole time I’m walking the 1/16-mile loop).  Ahem.
  • Anyway, I haven’t been exercising for over a week now and I do feel off-kilter.

So I have decisions to make… because I am blessed.  So really I’m not complaining.

I’m just always sure what to do with my blessings.

I’ve said before— more than once, but maybe not here– that I derive peace from “open spaces.”

By this I do not mean the great plains (though that’s never been tried), but rather clear floors in the rooms I frequent.

Currently, because of the book-project, the playroom floor is strewn with books and I’ve spent just about all my free moments working through piles and boxing books.  So far this has resulted in less school prep, and I get the impression we could do more with our time.

Nevertheless, I figure this won’t last all year and am most interested in just “clearing the floor” so I can get on with our lives.

Current tally:

• Five boxes
• 252 books

All entered, with location, in the new book database.

I’ve boxed all the middle-grade horse and dog books I grew up on, clearing shelf space for the copious amounts of picture books I’ve collected.

It is my goal at present to stay mostly with picture books at least until Natasha hits second or third grade.  I have plenty that are at 2nd-6th grade reading level, so she can be consistently challenged without making such a distinction between her read-alouds and the younger children’s.

We are dropping grammar and spelling for now.

I’ve decided it’s too soon to really push those for Natasha, and I expect regular copy work to open those topics in a more complete and natural way than I’ve yet come up with on my own.

Math continues to be insanely easy for Natasha, but has just begun to be a bit of a challenge for Melody.  It’s interesting: I decided to use one book for both girls, thinking it would simplify my (teaching) life to have them at the same level, but even in the same book they are clearly not at the same level.

I really am teaching everything twice.

But it was really neat to watch Melody *get* something this evening.  That was delightful.  And Natasha’s enjoying her sense of mastery, and the feeling (different from summer) that this is *real* school now.

I’ve tried to tell her that all our reading is part of school, but she wants *math.*  “It’s exciting,” she said, with her I’m-being-so-honest-I’m-embarrassed laugh.

At home our current issues are self-control and deciding whether my not-planning-enough-ahead absolves certain poor behaviors, and, if so, how much.

~

We’ve started school now, and the kids love it so far.  The challenging thing there is figuring out the right amount of stuff to fill each slot, and denying myself (so completely) to stay on-track with the schedule God game me to balance the children.

They love the regular change of activity and increased interaction with Mama.  I grow weary of my continual-on, but am trying to think less of me.

It’s a slow process, but Lord-willing I’ll mature.

Now I’m using my new laptop.

Just now I’m actually using in the children’s room, with the illuminated keyboard (*yes* it’s everything I hoped!).

Starting to input my library, starting with the books I want to pack away– so that I can reclaim the playroom as a tangible mark of my progress.

I’m going soon to have to decide how much poetry to hang on to, and where to put it. For me it’s always been more about browsing than anything purposeful, so till now I’ve always kept it out, knowing it will be out of mind as soon as it’s out of sight…

Had a successful visit to FMN’s 1/2-off children’s sale.  Got a stack of historical novels that (once these kids are asleep) I plan to divide by years of the cycling 4-years of history plan.

I also picked up a number of YA and folktales for my own purposes, and I’m less sure how best to use/access them.  I’ll tackle that one once the school books are entered and packed away.

Natasha: I practiced letters. Last year it was very harder to practice letters, but this year I just chomped through it. I felt good about being able to practice my letters easier. I ate a cookie and some milk as a snack.

We expect to do the second half of this “first day” on Monday afternoon.

The children were all three very responsive to the changes in activity as directed by the timers.  I think we all enjoyed having the level of direction and surety of “next thing” it offered.

Started a day early I didn’t yet have a couple worksheets I meant to, so I expect I’ll be biking over to Office Max or Kinkos before Monday, and rectify that.

Natasha got her first glasses less than 6 month ago.

Back at that appointment the eye doctor said to watch her and bring her back in 6 months if we noticed her vision deteriorating.

I ranked at this idea for a number of reasons.  First, it just seemed like a way to get extra business, so there was an automatic conflict of interest.  Second I wasn’t sure I could notice “a deterioration of her vision.”

Well, I did.

She started squinting about a month ago, and then sitting on the chair in fron of the movie rather than on the couch.

I called and made a new appointment.

She needs new lenses.

But (and this was the part I didn’t know to expect) our insurance will cover the cost of the new lenses because the replacement/correction is happening less than 6-months later.

This morning Melody didn’t want to get dressed right away.  I told her to make her bed and we had a fuss-fest the whole time.

When the bed was done I thanked her and she continued to fuss.  I asked and told her several times to stop and finally reached my fill and snapped at her

“Fussing is Ugly! You are beautiful and precious and don’t need to waste your time on ugly things!”

And she was quiet.

Untangling Elementary School

For Elisha we call it Untangling Preschool.

I’d been trying to decide on a name for our homeschool that both wasn’t cliché and that Jay could agree with.

I wanted to have something I could put on a little ID card for each of the girls, and to back up my request for a teacher’s discount, if they wouldn’t take my word for it–though this latter issue seems less-applicable so far; no one has asked for an ID yet.

So this was fun– being both a name and an image and an action.  Not to mention sort of my trademark (in a small way).

Anyway, it’s fun to have an identity of sorts for this growing project called school.

Elisha was stung today: five times.

A group of children were playing outside the church after services today and they ran into a wasp nest. Elisha was stung between fingers on both hands (one each) the thumb and bicep of his right arm.

Natasha was stung too, on her leg under her skirt.  Melody came down with a freaking attack of the I’m-hurt-too-notice-me-mores (she’d scraped her heel somewhere) but Natasha took the wet teabag I gave her and went off out of the way while we worked on Elisha.

The church didn’t have any baking soda (the first thing I was looking for) but I saw a gallon ziplock of Lipton teabags, and wet those to use as poultices on each sting as we found them.

Lots of people hovered (thankfully outside the kitchen), but there weren’t many ways to be useful; we were all a little stuck for “next steps.”

At the beginning of the incident, one child offered me some leaves “to chew up and put on the sting, to draw out the poison.”

I didn’t think about whether or not she knew what she was talking about.

“I have a firm policy of not putting things in my mouth when I don’t know what they are, ” I told her.

I remember trying to be careful with my tone, but feeling disgusted at the idea. Even when an adult confirmed the idea, I couldn’t stand it.  Especially since, by then, the tea had already eliminated the swelling on the first sting we applied it too and the need no longer existed as it had.

~

I ended up asking one family to bring Melody home behind us so I could sit in the back in between the needy-wounded.  It wasn’t till later it occurred to me I could have just ignored the under-12 rule and gotten us all home in one car, but I’m thankful no one tried to point this out to me at the time.

~

Once home (and only a cheese-stick’s worth of silence later) I asked mom to keep the girls a while and she came to get them.

Elisha moaned and cried through the rest of the afternoon, asking for more water on his teabags when they dried out (the swelling was gone from all the stings, but he kept the last two bags on the stings between his fingers.  He indicated more than once that those were the most painful.

Finally– almost 6 hours after his first dose when we got home, Jay and I decided it was close enough and re-dosed Elisha with the (nurse-suggested) larger dose of Ibuprofen.  Jay took a shift of snuggling him while I ate, and maybe 15-minutes later Elisha perked up in the lap and said distinctly,

“I don’t hurt anymore!”

We all cheered and praised Jesus while I watched him adjusting to this new pain-free state.  Jay talked Elisha into a glass of milk and set the boy at the table across from me.  Elisha sat there, a smile spreading on his face. “I don’t hurt any more!”

Then a connection was made.

“God healed me!”

“Yes!” I answered. “We thank God for healing you!”

“God healed me!” he said again, the delight splitting his face into a grin.

The girls came home, everybody went to bed and to sleep.  I responded to a few calls of concern that came in during bedtime, delighted to tell the story of Elisha’s revelation.

His Sunday school teacher filled in the missing piece for me.

All this month (the 2-3 year-olds do the same story every week for a month) his class has been reviewing the story of Naaman (who asked the prophet Elisha for help), talking about how Naaman was so sick his mama couldn’t help him, his papa couldn’t the doctors couldn’t.  Only God could heal him.

And I just marveled at the perfection of God’s timing– that Elisha would be prepared to praise, and be prepared with the words to use.

If Elisha doesn’t remember this on his own, I know this is a story I’ll be telling him: Even when Mama and Daddy can’t fix it, God can.

The current list of praises:

• The quick reduction of swelling: the nurse said swelling could last up to 2-3 days
• No threatening reaction despite the number of stings.
  • The nurse said if something *bad* was going to happen it would happen within the first two hours
• Elisha was wearing long pants and long sleeves, protecting most of his body.
• He wasn’t stung more.  The grandma watching everybody when it happened said he was swarmed.  A couple wasps even followed him into the church when he was brought to find me.
• The nest was found by investigating adults who know what to do about it.
• The teabags were there and they worked so well.
• Everyone was so respectful and responsive– helping us manage, but not trying to manage us.
• All the children were asleep by 9 p.m.

“All praise to God who reigns above.”