Homeschooling Honesty.

All day I've had these ideas of what I could blog about, none of them overtly inspirational or positive.

 Earlier this week I found myself so overwhelmed with the weight of homeschooling.  The responsibility of homeschooling.  All the questions came flooding over me.  What am I doing?  Is this really the right thing for our family?  Am I supposed to be doing this?  Is it supposed to be this hard?  Will she ever learn diligence and good work ethic and how to make and stick to a schedule?  Will she be educated enough to go to college?  Be a doctor or a chemist?  Will I have succeeded in educating her to be whatever she wants to be?

And then all those things that I hold over my head came rushing back.  I'm not very organized (I used to be, but not anymore.  Not with three kids).  I'm not very diligent.  I don't have a good work ethic.  I hate doing the dishes.  and the laundry. And I don't like to clean.  {This is where my mom would say she didn't do a good job teaching me, but it isn't that at all.}

All of the sudden I realized that if I screw up at home, there won't be a school either to pick up my broken pieces and teach my children what it means to turn in an assignment on time and completed.  There won't ever by bells and time constraints.  There won't ever by deadlines or directional plotting to make sure you can make it to your locker, the bathroom, and your class on the fourth floor in 3 very short minutes.

And it weighed on me.  All of it.  All week.  All week as we barely got our school work accomplished while I snuggled a healing boy, tried to keep him calm but the other two busy.  A difficult week when I tried so hard to show my struggling three year old just how important she is, but I hurt the way her eyes say she feels looked over.

Today I sat in the ballet waiting area, unshowered with pony-tailed hair, my eyes revealing my weariness,  I turned to the seasoned mom next to me and asked "Do you ever feel like 'what am I doing??"  Her response was just what a weary mom needed.  "Oh yah, all the time.  I've felt like that since the beginning."  -- solidarity.

We got in the car and drove home.  As Amariss belted out the sound of music and Doron somehow fell asleep through it all, I drifted in my own thoughts.  I saw a man on a corner, holding two different sodas in each hand, waiting for the lights to change.  And I thought briefly "I wish I could just sit on the couch and drink two different sodas and binge watch Netflix for like 2 days."  But then I shook my head, no, not really.  I would want to clean the house first... and by the time I finished that I would want to be with my kids again.

But I reminded myself of why we're in this.  Why we homeschool.  Public schools are great, I think they have fantastic teachers who work so hard to make a difference in the lives of kids.  I'm so thankful for all the friends I have who pour so much of themselves into teaching little ones.  I cannot imagine how difficult this is.

I just read through our vision statement.  We wrote this before we started homeschooling Am in Kindergarten.  And I don't know that I have read it since.  But another seasoned homeschool mom told me 'Write out a vision statement and read it often, because you will need to remember why you are doing this'.  Despite all of Am's advancements and achievements just in this past quarter of school, the hard days make you want to throw it all away in an instant.  And while I haven't read our vision statement in 3 years, I can see that by reading it we are still holding to it.  And I am so thankful for that.

I am so thankful that this really hard job of educating our children is worth it.  I am so thankful that on really hard days, really hard weeks, and sometimes really hard months; there is still purpose in all of this.  And I am thankful that for this time and this season, God has shown us time and time again that we are doing what he has called us to do right now.

Blessings my friends.

Brie

Mixed Medias and Non-Newtonian Fluids

This was a difficult week.  I find it incredibly frustrating that you can have 5 great days and 1 rough one and it feels like you are ready to throw in the towel and that it takes 3 more days to pull yourself out of the rut.  It is easy to forget all the good when you are knee deep in muck.

I took today as a rejuvenation day.  I didn't worry about the laundry or the dishes, or the miriad of responsibilities I sometimes fail.  Today was about enjoying the day and enjoying my kids.  We started with crafts outside working with different mediums. We made pictures from pencil, marker, beads, and construction paper.  (I don't have pictures because I was making pictures too!  When I am trying to operate a camera I spend too much time trying to capture the perfect picture and not enough time experiencing life with my children.  A picture or two that captures moments similar to these will spark a lifetime of memories.)

After crafting and playing and messes and a lunch only one child enjoyed... The littles were down for naps, the big was settled with a book.  I had about 20 minutes to get half of a project finished and D woke up.  Every once in awhile he'll take a great nap, usually I can bank on 45min-1hr followed by 30-40 minutes of hysterical crying.  I don't know what it is that wakes him up, or what it is that makes him scream for so long but I wish I did.  It is his hard time of day.  After the crying ends there is cuddling, rocking, or strollering for another 30 minutes... and then he is ready for a snack.  By then Z wakes up...  I haven't yet been able to accomplish anything during naptime.  And it has become quite clear that we won't be able to use naptime for school time anymore.  Although I am presuming the we could possibly still do most of our work in the morning and allow naptime for seatwork...

I am being completely honest when I say that I am nervous about home schooling this year.  Kind of like when we first started with Kindergarten and I had a one year old.  I just took the plunge and said if it was terrible I could send her at semester to public school.  We made it through Kindergarten, and thoroughly enjoyed First Grade.  And here we are entering Second, and another new one in the home and the question looms - 'How am I going to do this??'  But, we will jump in with both feet and give it a go.  My guess is, we'll figure this out too.

After all of our littles were awake today we played with cornstarch and water, a non-Newtonian fluid.  Aaron and I were sitting outside with two littles and a big playing with cornstarch and water, throwing it on the concrete and picking it up to see it liquify again...  It was so much fun.  Again, no pictures.  I love participating!  I love getting messy and having a good time!

I think that we'll be okay with homeschooling this year as long as I stop caring about absolutely everything else.  Anyone want to spend their days doing my laundry and dishes?

Language, Comprehension, Interaction

Just a little over a week ago Doron had 5 English words; as of yesterday and today I've counted 15!  He is constantly repeating what we say.  Last night Zemirah came into the kitchen and whined an exasperated "oohhh, Why????"  and instantly in the exact tone and volume Doron repeated her, several times over.  Sometimes I'm not certain he's learning the best of manners but he is certainly learning.

Yesterday we were heading out the door for a family outing and I said "Now, where are your shoes?" and he promptly stood up and pointed at his shoe basket.  I replied "Ah yes, but I was wondering about your sandals." He turned around and pointed across the room to where his sandals lay.  I was shocked!  Not only is he mimicking but he is understanding!

He is also interacting!  So far this week Doron has bitten Zemirah once a day.  Not the best of practices, but we have been told that this is a great sign because it means that he is comfortable with us.  So - Yay!  Zemirah is handling it quite well, while she doesn't enjoy being bitten by her brother she is quick to forgive and accepts his hugs and kisses of apology.  I can tell that he feels bad for hurting her after he bites so that is also a good sign.

Am, Z, and Doron have been playing together really really well.  I am actually quite surprised at how well everything has been going at just 2.5 weeks home.  Aaron is working half days now so my mornings are full.  I appreciate having a seven year old so much though.  She is able to keep an eye on Doron for a few minutes at a time while I throw in a load of laundry or quick start a load of dishes.
Naptime is still a struggle.  Doron is taking 30 min - 1 hr naps, which leave him clinging and tired for the rest of the evening.  However, when he sleeps longer bed time can drag on as late as 10:30pm, which doesn't make anyone happy.  I am thankful that Aaron is still around in the afternoons to help me figure out the napping situation with 2 nappers.  I'm also thankful that Zemirah is still a good napper.

While we were in China Z went from being nearly 100% potty trained to "These pull-ups are the coolest thing ever!" and "Look Mom, I can change my own pull-up!"  I haven't yet decided how to retrain her.  Doron is about as potty trained as Z at this point so I'm considering just working with them both at once but before we go there I'd like to get more settled at home with both of them.

Our homeschool curriculum arrived today!  I was very excited to open up the box but found out I'd made a mistake in my order, so I spent about 2 hours of my afternoon trying to figure out if it was easily fixable.  I can work with the mistake I made.  It's not perfect, but it will be fine.  I believe I am going to set our school start date at August 1 (of course, I see now that that's a Saturday) so August 3.  I usually start mid-July but with all the changes in our lives this year, I want to take an extra two weeks of summer break.  I have been requiring Am to do a little bit of school during nap time, she is not a fan.  Hopefully starting up again and getting back into our routine will make things better.  I'm really looking forward to our new curriculum.  We are doing Sonlight this year and it already looks like a great fit for us.  Am has already read a few of the books in our package.

My thoughts are jumbled today.  I started drinking a second cup of coffee at 4 pm but then worried I wouldn't be able to fall asleep at 10pm.  So I have a half cup of coffee sitting in the kitchen.  I gave Doron a sip thinking he would hate coffee (just like the girls) but I was so wrong.  Now I have a very angry toddler that really wants some coffee.  If it's true that coffee stunts your growth we should keep it far far away from our tiny little dude.

Good night folks, enjoy these amazing summer days.  Hopefully no more rain for awhile and we can head back to the parks soon.  :)

Brie

Screen Free Time

Screen Free Time is something most people are familiar with.  (and I know I should not end that sentence with a preposition.)  Here in our house SFT usually comes when I just can't take the screens anymore.

Many of you know that we homeschool - if you didn't, now you know - we homeschool.  (Which by the way is one word even though spell check is constantly trying to correct me. click here)  There are so many reasons a family chooses to homeschool, and ours, like many families is a combination of reasons.  I won't go into them right now, but I just wanted to throw that out there.  This post is actually about Screen Free Time.

It seems when we start out the school year I'm usually "super-mom".  I am on top of school.  I am on top of the house.  I am on top of everything.  We follow our schedules.  I prepare things the week before and then the night before, and I feel great!  And then about two weeks in I start to stumble, we let a couple of things slide.  Then three weeks in some more things slide, and by week six - we're in a bad spot.

Well, week six was last week for us and let me tell you, by the end of the week I was about to sign my daughter up for public school.  The problem was not my first grader.  No, she's great!  Doing her assignments, not complaining, enjoying school - the problem was ME!

Our schedule is gone.  My organization is gone.  My house is a mess and climbing back up the ladder of success seems like such a long hard climb.

So, we made a new rule for school days.  All school days are screen free from 8 am - 3 pm unless it is an educational website that has to do with our math, science, or some other assignment.  This eliminates two BIG problems we have - the constant whining and asking to watch a movie or play a computer game and then me losing track of time and letting them watch another movie and play another game... which can wrap into more time than we intended.

Today is our first day screen free.  (I also said that this rule does not apply to me, because much of my other home activities involve some sort of screen) Although, right now this blog writing is just therapy.

Can I be honest though, so far today has been awesome!  I feel like super mom again, even though the house is still a big mess.

Another thing I did today that I'm going to try and keep up with is keeping a bowl of healthy snack food out on the table.  This morning I cut up a melon and left it out with a plastic wrap over it.  Every time the girls whine that they're hungry I send them to the table for a bite of melon.  It has been awesome!  They just go and eat it - and they stop whining.

Today I also mandated that we spend time outside running around.  So we got out the soccer ball and set up some goals and played a rudimentary game of soccer.  And I officially lost.  We ran around and got hot and sweaty and tired for an hour!

After lunch we sat and Amariss read to me while I picked through her hair and then we switched and she picked through mine.  We were pretending we were monkeys looking for bugs.

I know that not all days (infact, most days) will not be like this, but today it feels pretty nice to have a good day and remember that its okay that we had a bad week last week.  It won't be our last one, but it wasn't our first - this is just a part of life.

I'll let you know how we feel at the end of the week.

Any other homeschooling parents have bad weeks?  How do you handle them?

Moving along, like a turtle. And other random thoughts...

I had every intention of being a great blogger - one of those awesome webpages that is graphically appealing and is updated every evening with beautiful photos and words depicting a wonderful life.  

In truth, our life is wonderful - for the most part.  I mean nobody has a perfect day every day.

But I want to formally offer my apologies for any broad claims I've made about "keeping my blog updated" or "posting often".  

It's just not gonna happen.

Also, my blog isn't going to look cool.  I'm not a photographer, and I spend more time cleaning up the mess of the moment and worrying about how my messy fingers, or someone else's, might ruin the camera.  I tried today, though.  We made moonsand together - me and the girls.  And I took a couple pictures of it too!  I even wanted to upload them, but our computer is running really slow tonight (which means I’m actually uploading this post 3 days after writing it).  So, it's going to be a boring picture-less blog.  And I got moonsand on the camera.  And the driveway has a lot on it too.

A lot of people have been asking how our adoption is coming along and get really excited when I say "It's coming along!"  or "We're in process!" or "We're waiting on our USCIS paperwork right now!"  They follow this up with "Does that mean you get to bring your little boy home soon?!"  or "So where is your son right now?"

I think I disappoint them a little with my answer.  So, for clarification -   

This isn't a speedy process.  

However, we are moving along and that is VERY exciting news for us!  One thing we have learned and are continuing to learn, and will continue to learn even more - is patience.  This is a waiting game.  

We completed our home study at the beginning of August (YAY!!!) and then mailed our I800-A to the USCIS a little over a week ago and today I received confirmation that they received it.  Lead times here can be up to 12 weeks.  The I800-A is the governments pre-approval for us to travel overseas to adopt a child.  Getting this pre-approval (the 797) will get us much closer to submitting our dossier (paperwork) to the Chinese Consulate in the U.S. and then it will go to China.  At any point we could be assigned our child, but this isn't likely to happen before our dossier is submitted to China.  There are a lot more documents to be filed and wait for before we get to travel and bring home our son.  But at this point each small step is a step in the right direction.  

Thank you for praying for us and with us!  Thank you for being excited with us!  

We are still selling raffle tickets for our fundraiser until September 25!  So if you'd like to purchase raffle tickets for our freezer full adoption fundraiser let me know!!  Tickets are $5/1 or $20/5   and if you'd like to help by selling raffle tickets to your friends/neighbors/coworkers let me know and I will mail you several!  I just need all money and tickets returned to me by September 25.  Again, this is limited to the QCA area.  

A quick update!

It has to be a quick update because I'm pretty sure if I blink my life will fly past me!

Homeschooling:

My daughter doing a numbers puzzle.

We have been so busy this week with our first week of homeschooling and to top it off I got a cold.  So, in between trying to modify lesson plans or prepare for the next day, I was trying to catch sleep where I could and continue to keep up with our regular activities.  To say this week has been crazy would be an understatement.

But, my 5 year old is really enjoying Kindergarten at home and my 1 year old hates it.  But we'll figure things out with her, it might mean postponing school until her afternoon nap time.  Which is what I'm going to try and do today since yesterday was so awful.

On the reproductive front:  
After a little bit of office mix-up at my midwife's office (really who can blame them they have a ton of patients) and maybe a misunderstanding on my part, after 3 weeks I finally got my blood tests ordered and drawn on Tuesday afternoon.  I haven't heard back yet what the results were.  I called yesterday but something tells me I probably won't know until Monday and even then I'll need to schedule an appointment with my midwife to discuss our options from here.

So that is where we sit right now.  We are still waiting for answers, and I feel like I'm right on the precipice of major decision making.  The outcome of these tests will make a lot of decisions for us right off the top, which is encouraging, but I know that they will also spark more discussion, more planning, and maybe even a little more confusion as we now have to take the next step.

In the meantime I am going to enjoy the weekend coming up.  We finally have very little on our agenda and I'm looking forward to enjoying family time and hopefully cleaning the house.  (Betya never thought you'd hear me say that, eh?)

Happy Friday!

Homeschooling

A few years ago we approached the idea of homeschooling our children.  We tried it for a few weeks when our daughter was just 3 and things didn't go so smoothly.  She didn't enjoy the sitting and working worksheets.  2 years have passed since then, and it seemed that overnight our vision completely changed.  We went from "We can't homeschool"  to  "This is something we might be able to do".

And here we are -

We begin homeschooling Noodle tomorrow!  I can't believe Kindergarten is already here, and as I spend this afternoon cutting out calendars and letters and other activities we have planned for this week I just can't help but think about how 5 years has flown by too fast.  This next year is certainly going to be a busy one, but hopefully a very enjoyable and fruitful year for us too.  Our Noodle Doodle is excited and so am I!


I am no photographer but I hope to be taking regular pictures of our homeschool adventures so that at the end of the year I can put together a little yearbook for Noodle.

Here we goooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!

Type-A Mothering.

I am not a Type-A personality.  My ducks are most certainly usually not in rows, although I very much so wish them to be.....

Okay, nevermind.  I looked up the "characteristics of a Type-A personality"  and well... 

I am a Type-A personality. 

So maybe my ducks are in a row, I just want them in a straighter row. 

Well, where I was going with this is. 

Being a Mom is hard work.

I am usually wondering if I'm doing a good job and raising our child.  She's beautiful, talented, funny, sweet, and a direct reflection of myself.

Today I noticed something about my daughter that is painfully close to my own behavior. 

She refuses (and I mean out right refuses) to do anything she thinks she isn't good at.  (My husband mentioned to me - after I claimed I'm not competitive - that I'm actually very competitive, so much so, that I won't play something unless I'm certain I have a good chance at winning.)

For instance:  We recently started homeschooling her (she's 3 - ding ding ding, Type A mother).  I'm using 3pre-k curriculum, so don't worry it is age appropriate, and I'm supplementing it with Handwriting Without Tears curriculum for writing.  I read through part of the parent's manual that accompanied it, but then we started school so I just started in and haven't finished it yet.

However, one week in I'm realizing that this curriculum is intended for 4 yr old pre-k.  Our little one is probably not really ready for this yet, even though she can in fact do it, she is too intimidated by it.

So, I'm giving up the workbooks and worksheets for awhile. 

Part of my brain tells me that if I don't make her do it she'll never have to do things she doesn't want to. 

The other part tells me that I'm going to make her hate school before she even had a chance to love it. 

So, for now, I somehow have to lay down my Type-A and let things be a little less perfect. 

I'm still a good mom and she's most certainly a great kid. 

First Day Of Preschool

Ever since Am was born my husband and I have gone back and forth on what to do about her education. 

We knew that we wanted her to either be homeschooled or attend a private christian school throughout gradeschool age, but we had a hard time deciding which was best.  My husband always gave the opinion that we would only homeschool if we had more than one child, because he wanted her to be socialized. 

But here we are, our daughter is 3, and with out any other children around we had to make a decision.  There is an excellent christian preschool in town but we decided that since Am is only 3, this year for sure we will homeschool and we'll take next year however it comes.  Am is already a pretty social butterfly.

So today was the day!  We started preschool and it went really well!

Here are some pictures:

Her first day of school picture!  She was very excited to get started and was holding her case with her books to read that day and worksheets inside!

Here she is working on her How Many Dancers? game from 1+1+1=1 an excellent resource for homeschooling parents! 

coloring 1 red gingerbread, 1 green gingerbread, and 1 blue gingerbread from the Everything for Early Learning book.

took a break in the middle to burn off some energy riding her bike!

We drew a ladder with sidewalk chalk and played balancing games with it.  Then she rode her bike up the ladder. 

All in all it was a fun morning for us and we will have our next homeschooling morning on Wednesday.