walking!

The baby took her first steps a couple of days ago.  First she took two steps, just from one chair to the next.  But the following day she stood up in the middle of the living room, and was looking back at me to make sure I was watching.  I thought she might try to walk, so I got Jomo's attention.  She took three or so steps!  It's still so exciting to watch a baby grow and develop. Hopefully I still have a couple more weeks of peace before she's running all around, slipping on our wood floors, and wrecking havoc.  Maybe I'll invest in some of those socks with the no-slip tread on the bottom.  Hmm.  

before and after

Our landlord called a couple of weeks ago to tell us to clean up our yard so that he would not get fined.  Yikes!  How embarrassing.  So I went out and bought a fifteen dollar pair of shears and went to work.  It took a couple of weeks.  And the backyard is still a bit jungle-ish, but I'm mostly done.  Here are some before and after pictures of our front yard.

lentil soup

What can I say?  I'm in the mood to blog.  My hubby is working late tonight and dinner is already cooked.  Here's what we're having: crock pot lentil soup from this site.  I occasionally try new lentil recipes because I'm determined to find one that we all like.  Here's the thing about lentils. They're super foods which is always good, they are one of the few beans you don't have to soak overnight, and I don't know, I just like them.  This one in the crock pot tastes pretty good to me, though my family didn't rave.  (Our new motto is: You don't have to like it, you just have to eat it! We're pretty mean, huh.)  They did eat it, mostly without complaining.  It uses ham hocks, which are not for the faint of heart since they're basically pig legs.  But they make it taste good!  I'd recommend it if you don't mind your food a little bland, want dinner to be easy to make, and are trying to figure out how to get lentils into your diet.

beauty and mess

Our lives are really filled with both.  We have three beautiful children who are always having moments of both beauty and mess.  Recently I cleaned up a puddle of urine from our Wii balance board, as an example.  But seeing our kids doing yoga, though I'm not the yoga type really, is quite a sight.  Here's a little beauty and mess for you to see.

Jomo has become quite the connoisseur of this Japanese udon noodle dish.  We all love this meal, fish cakes and all.  He's been experimenting over the past couple of years with different add-ons to the basic noodles.  This one here has fish cakes, fried tofu, another kind of fish cake whose name I don't remember, homemade nori/tempura crackers, fried eggs, chives, and I think that's it.  Isn't it beautiful?  He made this maybe three times a week back when I was pregnant and very sick all day.  I couldn't tolerate much food or cooking, but this tasted really good.  It still does.

Of course the classic and messy carving of the pumpkin.  We didn't buy a pumpkin until this past Sunday evening, and since the store was having a special, this was the last one left.  He's about the lumpiest, most misshapenest pumpkin I've ever bought.  But he's big and he's ours. I'll post a picture of the finished product once we light a candle inside of him and take a picture!

No, L is not dressing up as Hitler this Halloween.  He's just taken some bites of his chocolate apple that he made at a birthday party on Monday.  There's nothing like the sight (and sound!) of a roomful of chocolate-covered preschoolers!  I knew I shouldn't have had Z wear white!  

Thanks for touring our beautiful mess!

i found my cord!

So here are some recent pictures.

The diapers "drying" in the rain.  Oops.

 I'm very excited about this long-term project we're doing.  I got this idea from this blog.

We learned about what these different habitats were like, then made a poster using watercolors for each one.  As we learn about each animal throughout the year, we'll put up its sticker on that particular habitat poster.  I'm looking forward to filling them up.  

And these pastel/glue landscapes we got from this wonderful blog called Art Projects for Kids.  If you have kids you should really check it out because it has some wonderful, fairly easy and inexpensive ideas.  A friend told me about this, and I'm so thankful because it's just the thing we need to spice up our Artistic Pursuits curriculum.  Z's is actually a seascape, as you can see, with a man in a boat.  And L's I'm not really sure, but there may be a volcano in there somewhere.  I think they're beautiful!

ready

Now I'm really ready for a break.  That's all.  Just really ready.  And I still haven't found my cord.

strange week

It's been kind of a strange week.  With the baby sick, and with me not very motivated, we have been doing school "lite."  It's actually been good, though.  We've skipped all phonics and grammar lessons and tea times, and instead are trying to catch up on all those things I've been wanting to do.  Like starting a tree album.  We did some tree identification at a cool new (to us) park, and collected leaves and did wax leaf pressings with them.   And I want to get to some art projects I've been meaning to do.  Fun stuff!

I think part of the problem for me is that we're coming up on week ten of school, and we've been slowly degrading.  I'm not having the kids do their chores the way we started out.  We've been out running around a lot more.  And my school planning isn't really up to par, which means that we don't get done the things I want during school time, and I'm playing catch up all week.  So we're coming up on our first planned break.  We intend to do school all year around, taking 2-3 week breaks every 9-10 weeks.  The breaks coincide with Jomo's braks, when he has them.  I'm looking forward to having two low-key weeks, and a fresh start thereafter.  I'm going to start a new list on my sidebar of my ideas of things to do during our break.  I think it'll be more refreshing if we use this opportunity to do a few things, rather than sit around watching TV all day.  In fact, I'm thinking of keeping the no TV rule (during the week) for our break. Or some version of it.  Ok, that's it.  I'll have some more pics when I find my camera cord thing.  

Wow!

The kids are having their "rest time" in their rooms, and I was just overhearing L playing by himself.  He loves to chatter.  Here's what he just said:

"Wow.....wow.....wow.  I'm just gonna say it one more time: WOW, WOW, WOW!"

Or three.  So cute.

a new language

Ok, here's my opinion on this new-fangled computer/text/chat language that I'm finally discovering.  (I know it's been around for awhile, but I'm kinda late to the game.)  I just can't do it.  I just can't.  I spent way too many years of my life memorizing spelling lists and learning the difference between "your" and "you're," and "their," "there," and "they're" to chuck it all and write "ur" and "gr8."  Ok, "luv" is a little more natural, I suppose, but that's only because I used it all the time when I was eight (along with dotting my "i" with a heart!).  Besides, it takes me much longer to try to figure out the alternative, cool spelling of a word than to just write the word.  So it doesn't really save me time.  Now, abbreviations I can get behind.  A good "LOL" gets across a sentiment that's difficult to convey in written communication without hearing tone and seeing someone's face.  Though, I still feel a little weird using them.  I must be getting old.

P.S. I don't mean to sound snotty, and if you are an avid text/chat language user, then I actually admire you.  You must be successfully fighting the aging process!  LOL!

sick day

We're taking a sick day today.  It's the baby who is sick, and we'll try to take her in to the doc.  But I had a really hard time waking up this morning, which is a little unusual for me.  I didn't take my customary nap this past weekend, so I think I'm behind on my sleep. And on top of that, even though I spent much of the weekend cleaning, I woke up to a messy house.  Sigh. So sick day will involve getting everyone over to the doctor with their backpacks of activities to do while we wait (I'm sure it'll be busy as most mondays are).  Followed by a trip to the pharmacy most likely.  I will also be catching up on cleaning, rocking a sick, sad baby, allowing the kids to watch videos, and drinking plenty of coffee.  Yay for monday!

saturday to do list

This is my attempt to have sunday off.  It hasn't worked yet, but it's my goal.  

1. get Z ready for ballet

2. load of laundry

3. iron Jomo's clothes for the week

4. plan school for the week, get all supplies ready

5. plan sunday school activity

6. short grocery store trip

7. finish cleaning school room/rearranging with Jomo

8. help kids clean their room

9. pack a lunch for after church

10. clean up piles of stuff in living room

11. put the chicken in the crock pot

12.  change sheets

13. take a load of things to attic

14.  living room floors

15. rework schedule 

That's probably not everything, but it's most.  I also need to work on trimming the bushes in the yard, but I don't think it's gonna happen today.  We'll see.  Ok, I'm off to it!

field trip!

My mother was in town yesterday, so we met her at the train station for lunch, then went to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.  They have a new oceans exhibit that we enjoyed, as well as the IMAX movie, "Deep Sea 3D" that was a lot of fun.  This all worked out quite well since we're learning about sea creatures right now, and my mom's kind of an ocean nut these days.  

I can't remember the name of it, but these are the teeth from the ancestor of the great white shark.

L was excited to find this "sword" fish skeleton (he loves swords!).

The kids are trying to pose like the monkey skeleton.  They like monkeys.

Playing on the mall.

All in all it was a good field trip.  I think that maybe their interest in sea life was piqued, and we're excited to find some stickers of the animals we're learning about to add to our habitat posters.  They, of course, loved seeing "Didi" too.  But I'm feeling kind of bad because towards the end of our trip, the baby was getting very cranky due to no naptime, and the kids were starting to whine a bit, and I got frustrated with them.  Which I regret.  Later in the evening, I asked Z if she had a good time, to which she replied "Yes" at first, but then corrected herself and said that I was rushed and angry the whole time.  I apologized, and I'm hoping that I'll relax a bit more in the future.  But today we're having a peaceful day at home (fingers crossed!).

fun with the baby

Z and the baby playing.

S started standing on her own this past week.  She likes to do this bobbing dance move.

My big girls.

history

Here's a new book we're using for history.  Z loves it and asks for more.  I think that's so interesting since the language is quite difficult, I think, for first grade, but it tells history like a story, unlike our history text.  It's called On the Shores of the Great Sea, by M.B. Synge, and it's book 1 of the Story of the World series.  It's old enough that's it's in the public domain, and free online.  

beethoven and taco bell

The baby's starting early on her phonics lessons!

(this is her break from chewing on the shoes)

Jomo and I went to a concert at his school saturday night.  It was a musician playing four of Beethoven's piano sonatas, and she played beautifully.  We hope to be able to attend her next performance of the cycle in the spring.  This concert got me thinking.  I really wish I knew more about music.  I've been enjoying studying Bach with the kids this "term," but I still know very little about his music.  (I do know that he had 20 kids!)  So I went to the library and got a book on cd about the history of music, and I got a course on cd about Beethoven's piano sonatas.  So, hopefully I can figure out how to fit in these courses and have a better background.  

Thanks, honey, for the wonderful date!  (I like our new taco bell run routine. )

friday

Yesterday was quite a busy day.  In the morning, since I knew we were planning to do a lot, I let the kids play, which they did happily for quite some time.  Then we went to a friend's house where said friend taught a group of seven kids to make calzones, which they did and ate afterwards for lunch.  After playing with the friends, we took Z to her piano lesson.  L and baby and I did the rest of the weeks shopping at Trader Joe's during the lesson.  Then everyone was getting cranky, so instead of going to the library, which I had planned, we went home to unwind for a couple of hours.  Besides, we needed to put the soy ice cream in the freezer.  (It's for Jomo who is now off dairy and currently eating soft foods after a fall on his bike and almost, but not, knocking his teeth out.)  Then we took L to his karate class, followed up by a quick dinner and family movie night.  We watched "The Incredibles" and even now I still feel like saving the world! But first I have to figure out how to do fridays since I didn't even get any "school" done.  Hmm.

working it out

So now that we've been doing school for awhile, I'm re-evaluating some of our curricula and how it's working for us.  SSR&W is going well.  I don't do any of it that seems like busywork or unnecessary, so it's going quickly.  We're really enjoying our Ambleside Online selections.  Artistic Pursuits is fine so far.  It's very doable.  First Language Lessons is also fine, though it doesn't blow me away.  It's very quick, sometimes just a couple of minutes, so I'll keep doing it. We like the poetry memorization particularly.  Window on the World is good.  It's hit or miss with L in terms of his interest level, but I'm pleased with all the neat things we're learning about different people groups.  We also really like Christian Liberty Nature Reader.

Math is ok.  I think I figured out what I don't like about Lifepac Math, which is that it's boring!  Z could sit for a long time doing a Disney Princess adding workbook, because the pictures and the puzzles make it fun.  Even though it's the same adding work, her math book is just a page of problems, for the most part.  We did do a week of Miquon Math, and she liked that.  So we're alternating.

Now for the more complicated part.  We're enjoying life science, and I think I've decided to slow down and stretch it out over two years.  I was feeling rushed and stressed about getting through all the topics I came up with, when we really just need to enjoy what we're working on. Which we are when I'm not trying to catch up.  Plus, I'd like to incorporate more nature study, and it's just not happening because we don't have the time (and it's not in our schedule).  So I'm not going to worry about what we get through, but if we're exploring and learning about something, the I'll continue until it feels done.  

And lastly, I'm disappointed with Mystery of History.  I really like the scope, and I also like the activity suggestions.  But the text is not engaging for Z.  It could be that she's just too young for it, or it could be that it's going through topics too quickly.  I knew this was a risk when I ordered it.  But I'm thinking I'll have to do something differently.  Here's what I've noticed that the kids have really enjoyed: 

Usborne Book of World History- the illustrations are great and both kids are really drawn in.

Supplemental reading from the library- the egypt books we read were especially good.

Hands-on activities- of course, but I'm actually thinking of doing less for my own stress level.

Historical Fiction- Z loves stories.

Bible- Z actually seems to prefer reading the real thing, rather than the text that explains it, when it applies of course.

Sometimes notebooking pages- we're doing these, sometimes she likes it, sometimes not, but we're going to continue anyway.

I know it's not all about Z enjoying school.  I do believe that the kids need to work even when they don't want to.  But I really want her to enjoy both history and science, especially since they aren't the most necessary of things at this point, in my opinion. I don't want it to be a drudge, when I know there are fun ways of learning these topics.  So here's what I'm thinking.  And any feedback would be much appreciated.  I think I'll use MOH as a basic outline, and info for me, making notes of what I want them to learn from it, then use the Bible, library books, and the book of world history for reading aloud.  I'll continue notebooking pages, timeline, map activities, etc.  And then next year, I'll plan to follow Ambleside Online Year 1/2 history books, since I think that's really more our style.

Sorry for all the boring curricula talk.  I think it helps me process to write it out.