Tuesday, week 3

Baby Charlie
Protein breakfast
French Toast Fort Day

Painting with forks!
Special bunny fort
Burying Casey in the toys!

Well, today is Tuesday, and I haven't written in a while. Not because we haven't gotten anything accomplished, but because we have been really busy.

We didn't go back to the Waldorf co-op last week, but we do plan on going October 3rd. I think I am going to have Mickey go to our good friend's house. I don't know how he will react to this decision, but I really need to figure out if this is something we want to stick with or not. It doesn't appear to be something we can pop in and out of, as the children have ongoing activities such as a play that they would need to keep up on. I was thinking maybe if Greta didn't have to police Mickey, and if I just had to deal with Casey and Charlie, then maybe that would change the dynamic enough for me to be able to think more clearly. It's all so strange, because Mickey certainly isn't "bad", but after some careful thought, I think he might be the one catalyst that was making it not really work for us. We'll see.

We have been working with Casey on ABC's and he knows all of them except "P". Cool! He can count and we have been reading lots of counting books, with Charlie close by pretending to count and saying "A, 2, A, 2, A, 2, O!" So sweet.

Greta and Mickey have been working through the Five In A Row book, with our latest literary pic being a book called Owl Moon. It is a nice little story about a father and daughter who go out into the woods at night to go "owling", which we discover, is to be extremely quiet and to happen upon an owl and observe him. The illustrations are great and it is a Caldecott medal winner so we talked about that. We did a bit more "depth of field" drawing, and talked about how an illustrator can tell us so much about the setting of a place by the kinds of things they draw. We also did this with a book called One Morning In Maine--we talked about how the deciduous trees and evergreens and the way the characters were dressed told us so much about the climate and era and location of the story (Northeast America, 1950's, fall or springtime).

Awesome news--my mom has paid for our entire order of Singapore Math AND science, including manipulatives and teacher's guides. When this package comes in the mail (soon! soon!) I am going to feel an enormous amount of relief and excitement, as my role of floundering math teacher will soon be over, and we will have a nice solid thing to work with everyday. THANK YOU NANNY FRAN!!!!!!!!! I will be blogging about this as soon as it comes, promise!

We have a gorgeous book called Look What I Did With a Leaf, in which there are some amazing art projects to do with leaves you gather. Of course, being early autumn in Michigan, we will have some colored ones to use, which you don't have to do, but it will be nice. I was intrigued at the lengthy process in which the author described the best way to press the leaves for best usage--it takes a WEEK to do! All I ever did with leaves was to stick them in a big old book, and then find them dry and dull a day later. Supposedly this new way will preserve them well. More details to come as we apply this technique!

Things still have a long way to go as far as "running the household". Even before me and Steve got new jobs, it was very hit or miss. I can't even pinpoint what it is, exactly, that seems to throw us "off" every single flippin' day! I really don't know how we can be thrown off of something we are so rarely "on", to be honest.

We follow our schedule, as much as humanly possible. We have the kids cleaning and helping ALOT. Steve and I are still up till 10 at least cleaning and setting up for the next day--but I feel like it is all a quicksand pit by 9 am more often than I'd care to.

The weather is buggin me, I will freely admit. I HATE that it is hot and sticky, with mosquitoes and air conditioners and sunscreen still a big part of our days--and I also hate when people feel it is their duty to tell me what kind of weather I should enjoy--didn't the clouds care that my little calendar has leaves on it? Doesn't Earth care that I have absolutely NO good looking clothes for hot weather? That one week of 61 degrees with a breeze was just the teaser, and I got really, really disappointed when it got back to hot and has stayed. We took down our pool, and now there is just stinking, rotten dead leaves and grass under it that smell like a manure farm, with flies buzzing all over it. Casey stepped on that dead grass area the other morning and I was like a crazy woman, sniffing and sniffing--who has poo? Do you smell poo? It wasn't until I pinpointed it as his little shoes that I realized how bad that dead grass and leaf pile was. I don't remember that from the other years.

Charlie is talking SO much, and that has been bad and good. He gets extremely angry when we don't know what he is saying, but he also is succeeding at communicating more, too--so now we know that for the past year of "Ungh! Ungh!" he was really trying to tell us that he wanted candy and markers and scotch tape and to go outside! :)

Greta had her first girl scout meeting, and she loved it. There were a few new girls, and all her old favorite pals, too. She was well prepared for her meeting thanks to our friend Julia giving us her old Junior Girl Scout badgebook AND handbook--expensive! She also gave Greta a Junior girl scout hat, sweatshirt, T-shirt, and pants. Too cool.

With Daddy working his new job, our evenings are going to be weird, but I am going to be really cheerful about it. It might even be better, if I have it in my head that he will only be home for about an hour, from 530 to 630, I will have dinner ready, and then he will go to his cleaning job, I will get the 2 "babies" put to bed, and then maybe have some special time with just Greta and Mickey in the evenings. Depending on how long this jib takes Steve, he could play a game with Greta and Mickey when he got home, or they could already be in bed and he could play a game with me! Called "lets clean"! I'm kidding. Partially.