Her Last Day

Things have been particularly stressful lately. It's our first week well from a cold, we ate all the leftovers and there are some foods in the fridge that need to be thrown out. So much needs to be done! My house is neat but the deep cleaning I do every week needs to be done and I have no energy. Next week is our last week of school and wow is everyone ready to be done, including the teacher! Summer break, here we come! 

Brian has been working a lot and I think the stress of work is getting to him. I wish I knew how to help him manage it. He won't pack his lunch when he's stressed, and even when I make his lunch and put it in the fridge he won't take it! It's like I have to make it, pack it, and put it in his lunchbox by the door with his keys attached so he won't forget it, and sometimes I am not even awake when he leaves. It depends on how much I nursed with Esther Rose the night before. And it's not like he will just go out to eat if he forgets his lunch--he will skip lunch which I think adds to his stress and moods when he gets home. 

We have a lot of work to do with owning a house--so many things need addressing and he is the main one that does things like changes high lightbulbs and puts siding on, fixes cars, mows the lawn...in the winter the lawn isn't an issue but in the spring and summer our yard is a long messy grassy tundra. I always feel so defeated by our lawn. Husband is so exhausted on the weekends sometimes he can't mow, or sometimes he is sick and then we get behind and once we get behind it's like we never catch up! 

I can't mow with a baby and honestly I don't even know if I could start the mower since it's extremely old and ornery. Even my husband struggles with starting it. Anyway, he has been unhappy and in a bad mood for awhile and I am not sure if it's work, or turning 40, or something I am doing.  Pray for him, and for me, because I am tired too.

I'm volunteering as a mentor for the month of May. When I signed up things were going smoothly and of course now I feel stressed, but it will be okay. I am excited to meet the lady I will be mentoring. It always goes two ways--I learn so much from them as they learn from me. It is pregnancy resource mentoring--the girl I mentor is expecting a baby! You are supposed to support them emotionally and offer friendship and encouragement. Most of the ladies who join are low income or single moms. At the end of the month of mentoring you throw them a baby shower. It's going to be so much fun. I love people and I hope I can be a help to this mother in whatever way she needs.

Esther Rose turns two tomorrow. I am thunderstruck as to how fast the two years since her birth have gone. I am a little sad that her little brother or sister didn't make it. I really wanted her to be a big sister, but I am trusting God and know he knows what is best for our family. God has been so good to us in so many ways! 

I want to find a pool to join for the summer. I'd like to live there all summer long. The kids love swimming and need practice. Any lakes/rivers are too far away (closest one is 45 minutes) and I'd love to swim as much as possible. I also need to sign them up for swim lessons, hopefully there are still some available. 

Today is Esther Rose's last day to be one. I made an amazing fried rice for lunch, the best I ever made. We had sausage and eggs for breakfast with a keifer smoothie and I have a chuck of beef in the crock pot for lunch.  We have to go out at 4 to pick up our Azure order so I want something prepared for when we come back. I'm prepared, unlike yesterday when I was too tired to cook so Reuben made brownies and we all ate that with ice cream. The kids were thrilled, I felt some mom guilt but we all lived and here we are with the veggies and the rice! 

I'm "redoing" our bedroom. I have never really decorated it or painted and I really want to jazz it up. The idea is to have a theme (our sheets/ curtains are all over the place, red a blue!! a nightmare) and I gave myself a budget of 400, spending 100 a week to split it up for budgeting. I am going to order a new duvet in a brown color, and a desk for the kids computer because it's been on a side table forever annoying me with copious plugs and wires...I also ordered a bed skirt to hide all the stuff under the bed as well as new sheets that match and new curtains, and artwork for the walls. I'm so excited for something fresh and new! Half the stuff is ordered and the other half will have to wait until next paycheck. 

How are you all?

Paper Modelling: Barn, Rabbit Hutch, Trough

Here are three more paper modeling tutorials for those taking their kids through Paper Modelling by M. Swannell. Enjoy! Do you do paper sloyd at home in your homeschool? We love it here-- though it is very hard and frustrating at times. Good luck! 

Enjoy the Barn, Rabbit Hutch and Trough from year one. 

Ambleside Year 4, Year 1 Thoughts

I am about to finish my first year homeschooling two children with a toddler! We have three weeks left, but I am going to squish it into two. I deserve a reward. Like a large bar of dark chocolate! Hahah! And so do the kids! We really all have worked so hard. 

Well, what a whirlwind. I was reading my blog about my thoughts when I did year 1 last time and wow do I feel (mostly) differently! My favorite book to read with Becky was the animal stories from James Herriot's Treasury for Children. My least favorite book this time around was the Burgess Bird Book. If I have to read about Peter Rabbit going lippity lippity around the woods and taking to birds one more time I might go insane. 

Becky said her favorite book was Aesop's Fables. 

Year one went smoothly. Becky is a natural narrator who can give very good narrations when she pays attention. Her attention is the key thing! She started school with gusto and was loving every day, until something switched and she lost interest. I started giving her Fridays off and doing her work just Monday-Thursday and that seemed to help. Her favorite subject is drawing and she's still doing piano. She's just amazing. She has a little bit of dysgraphia and a whole lot of gumption and one fiery attitude. She's perfect. And I hope after the summer break she will head into year two with a smile. 

She's reading simple words. After hunting around for a good curriculum (the one I used with Reuben was not working with her dysgraphia) we are on lesson 38 of Teach your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. I told her we will have to do some of that through the summer so she doesn't forget everything. She understood but wasn't thrilled. 

Unlike Reuben's first year where I gave up and we ended school with 5 or 6 weeks of Ambleside left (I had planned to do a few readings in the summer but never did) we finished the entire curriculum with Becky. It feels great to know what I am doing and what to expect going forward. Homeschooling has grown with me, and I've grown into it. First children are trial children, right? I'm laughing, are you laughing?

Reuben is doing January to January school term right now, so he just finished Terms 1 and 2 of Year 4 and will finish up year 4 in August and start year 5 right after. My favorite book hands down with him has been Abigail Adams. I think I will adore that book for the rest of my life. It's perfect and I never knew how amazing Abigail and John Adams really were, and how much a part of history. Reuben loved Robinson Crusoe--though the readings were long and at first it was quite a slog. He also loves Minn of the Mississippi. Really, all the year four books are so good, I've only heard him complain about Plutarch's Lives. And I complain about Plutarch too. What is he? Why is he? I don't know, but we are doing it. Perhaps it will make sense later.

We started written narrations in the second term of year 4 and he's doing great. He can do a bible reading here and there by himself and he's reading great, but not able to do his readings by himself yet which suits me just fine. I need this education just as much as him and it is nice to read it together. I love the new subjects too. We read A Midsummer's Night's Dream in the first term and he picked Romeo and Juliet for the second term. I enjoy latin immensely and grammar has been hard (because of my dyslexia) but fun. He enjoys it all. 

Next year we are dropping Spanish for sign language. I also rarely make it to music study. It is what it is. Life is going and so is school and it's all intermixed and interesting. 

How are you all? How was your year? 

I'm already adding a year five book to my amazon orders here and there...getting excited about new books and new stories! 

Paper Modelling (Box and Lid, The Basket, Coal Scuttle)

Some more delightful handicraft videos for your homeschool! These are from the book "Paper Modelling" by M. Swannell. Enjoy these Year One tutorials--I will post them three at a time to the blog. 

I am about to do these over again with Becky this summer and I am also teaching a paper sloyd class to kids at a local camp this fall. Beyond excited! 

 

Fingerless Gloves

I made these nice and cozy warm fingerless gloves with leftover wool in my stash. I love them, and was able to wear them to Reuben's second football game this Saturday! I wish I had worn more layers--it was so cold! But fun to see him play and grow. 

a hodgepodge of everything

Esther hasn't been sleeping well so that means I haven't been sleeping well. Mother of a toddler. I miss sleep. The years of sleep deprivation have been more than the blessed years of sleep since I started having kids. I've been counting. And crying.  It is pitiful. 

Perhaps that is what is wrong with me. I know sleep affects your hormones so much! I hope Esther starts sleeping through the night one day. Then I can sleep. Oh, sleep. How I miss thee. 

We are crazy. We started trying for another baby? I don't know, the time feels right. Besides not sleeping, my health is better and it's not like we have a lot of time for, uhm, marital relations, so I wonder what will happen. Brian works a lot, and the weekends are full of dishes and house chores and someone always seems to be sick. Not much time for personal husband and wife time. Though I try to make time for it. ITs one of a million things I stress over--I'm behind on this, and dishes. Oh, and laundry. What should take precedent today? 

Life is a lovely crazy and sometimes I try to fight it and sometimes I just embrace it. It's two sides of the same person, the calm mom and the one who doesn't know what's for dinner and hides in the closet to have a good cry. Which one are you today? I'm both.

We are trying to do less media this spring and summer. We do a lot of video games and movies here in the Markey household but I think it goes in cycles. And it is how I get a break. I am trying to send them outside and also to go outside myself, but the balance of nature verses my own personal mental health is on delicate scales and no one is perfect. That's what I tell myself when I feel guilty on our second hour of screen time. 

I am buying the kids supplies to make clay earrings for Esther. I am perhaps more excited about this than they are. But that is what they asked for. It is a favorite hobby of ours to do together once a week and I need to take pictures sometime! 

Becky wants to cut her hair. I am making her wait a week or two to make sure she really wants to. I'm not sure--she hates tangles and that is what is making her want to pull out the scissors, but she loves her long hair and has started wearing bows in her hair and it's just beautiful. 

I got down to 10 items for the spring wardrobe!!! I'm sooooo in love with the 10 item wardrobe. I think I will keep doing it forever. It's so easy and everything goes with everything. I feel like I have more clothes than I did before I decluttered three bags!!! I don't know how that is possible but it's been a dream. I saw a picture of my old closet I posted on here 10 years ago and I was shocked at how many clothes I had. It was pre kids I think and bursting to the seams. I was appalled. Poor me, LOL! I remember wondering how anyone could be a minimalist but the thing is I didn't have kids yet and 100 percent of my brain was free to think about my stuff and now I have less than 1 percent to devote to stuff and it has to go. Because  I don't have time for that and it doesn't spark any joy anymore.

It has been years since I updated the pictures on this blog and I have plans to do that...soon. Very soon. Yay to a new blog look!