My Life as a Novel

This chapter would be titled, "Mom! Caroline just did a huge poop!"

Subtitles to choose from could be:

• Life with a 4-month-old
• Wow. I guess I need to get a larger size diaper.
• Complete wardrobe changes
• I guess I will be washing diapers today

In other news, I'm feeling very productive today. It helps that Caroline took 2 3-hour naps today. That kid is a champ. Here's a partial list of things I did today (most of them in the morning):

• homeschooled Luke
• washed all the dishes from the weekend
• 2 loads of laundry (including the diapers mentioned before)
• used up 8 brown bananas in some bread
• went to Costco
• cleaned the bathroom

I'm also feeling another post coming on about New Year's Resolutions. We'll see if it gets written today or not.

Anthophyta and Angiosperms

The science curriculum I am using for Luke can be used for a variety of grade school aged kids so there is some vocabulary that is pretty advanced. I like it! He has already learned about binomial nomenclature, taxonomy and vascular/non-vascular plants. Today we learned about the phylum "anthophyta" (flowering plants that produce seeds) and the word "angiosperm" (literally seed container). Then we talked about non-vascular plants and found some moss in the front yard to draw in his notebook.



An added bonus was finding a millipede for his bug box.


Yesterday Erin was doing some letter practice on Starfall. I thought it was funny that she concentrates the same way Luke does!

School - and sand

Home school has been going pretty well, except for this week. It's hard to keep a schedule when one kid is sick. Erin is back at school today and Luke is working on his science notebook so I am using the time to post a quick update.


Here are a few pictures of last Friday. I have a CD of preschool "school" papers that a friend recommended to me. I'm not entirely thrilled with it, but there are some things that I can print out for Erin to work on while I do some things with Luke. We're working on getting her to recognize letters - she knows the alphabet song but she can't tell you all the letters when she sees them. So far she has learned about 10-12 using the "Fridge Phonics" and foamy bathtub letters. She gets stuck on R, D, and B so I printed out those papers and she happily colored them while loudly saying their sounds.


Here's Luke working on some dot to dots. We figured out that he can orally count quite high but can't recognize written numerals any higher than 12. It's hard to read the teens - they don't follow the rules for other written numbers - and dot to dots are a fun way to practice. Notice the pencil sharpener, his current favorite tool.

The other night Erin wanted to "write" on Luke's practice white board. She colored while I did the dishes and then we laughed when she said, "Mommy, my face is all covered with chocolate!" I'd never seen her draw a face before and this was a funny twist that is so Erin.


After that, Luke and Erin sat on the couch while Luke "taught" her some things from his library book. Guess what he was teaching her about?


Star Wars characters, of course! It's funny to hear Erin try to say "C3PO."


And finally, yesterday. Lately Erin has been a total grouchy, screaming bear. I think most of it is because she's 3 and 3-year-olds are generally terrible, especially in the last half of the year (in my experience). However, that excuse made for her doesn't escape the fact that she has been really difficult to live with, to put it mildly. She often screams/cries for 30-45 minutes for no apparent reason. My latest solution is to ignore it since nothing else really helps, but that's hard on Luke. He has been mostly good about it - we leave her in her room with the door closed and go downstairs to do something else. Yesterday when she finally decided to quit and act human again we had a snack and then they went out to play while I got supper started. Wow. You wouldn't know it was the same person. They played so nicely in the sandbox for about an hour. When I knew that Alec was on his way home I went out to get them and this is what I found:

Cute, right? Now look closer:

Now look past the tongue sticking out:

And that's just her face! They were both covered with sand. I told them we were going to take the world's fastest bath - you should have seen the gross, dirty water when we were done. I don't care, though. I'd rather have dirty kids than screaming, fighting kids. And it was nice to have them bathed before supper.

Alright, that's it for today. Here's what Luke produced while I was typing - a cover for his botany notebook. In case you can't read, those are Sweet Gum Seedpods, Buttercups, Tulips, Pine Tree, Flower, Crocuses, and Ivy with Squirrels (apparently it's just their eyeballs peeping up).


Now he's having "recess" - watching Dinosaur Train on PBS. I've got a load of laundry done already and bread in the oven. We've done science, reading, and handwriting. I'd say it's been a productive day already, even if nothing else gets finished!

Back to School

I love back to school time. The routine of a normal schedule helps me function so much better.

This morning was the first day of Erin's 3-year-old preschool at the same school Luke went to last year. She'll go 2 mornings a week and we'll use that time to do kindergarten at home with Luke.

Here's Erin just before we left the house. Typical goofy pose.


She did really well at the drop off time. We got there just on time and didn't have to wait around getting nervous. Mrs. Baker was there with her name tag and a hug for Luke. It was especially nice that Erin already knew her teachers and was excited to see them again.


We went inside and hung up backpacks and jackets (yes, we truly needed a jacket this morning which helped it feel more like school time). Before we even got to the hooks, Erin spied her name on a carpet square - "Mommy! Erin!" She proudly went over after hanging up her things and sat down like a big girl.


Luke and I gave her hugs and kisses so we could slip out when things got started. Mrs. Baker got out her bean bag to do a tossing game for the kids to tell her their names and get a little acquainted. She asked the kids, "Does anyone know what this is?" Erin says, "That's an O!" Sure enough, there was a capital O on one side of the bag! That's my girl!

Remember how she cried last year when we dropped off Luke on his first day? Well, Luke didn't cry and he really didn't ask about her during the morning, but when we got home after picking her up I noticed something interesting. He excitedly brought her upstairs to show her how we had cleaned her room and found some things she had squirreled away and couldn't find, how we had changed her sheets and put on new ones she hadn't seen before, and he made me sit in a different spot at lunch so he could sit next to her.


And they've been playing nicely pretty much all afternoon!

Preschool Parade

Apparently part of preschool is the Christmas program. Not having been to preschool myself, and being new to this school, I wasn't sure what to expect. Neither was Luke. He was excited that Mom & Erin got to come to school with him, but he was surprised that he would have to wear an old-fashioned choir boy outfit with a big red bow. So was I. A friend who was helping the kids get ready told me that he fussed about putting it on - said he thought he would be embarrassed. I'm glad he wore it because he would really have been embarrassed if he were the only one not wearing one.

Here he is coming into the room. They walked around the room once ringing their bells. I think they were supposed to be singing, too, but the tape player made up for their lack. Four-year-olds can really only do one thing at a time. Ringing a bell and walking was pushing it without adding in the singing.


Getting up on the stage. He is right smack in the middle in this picture.

I was also surprised by how many entire families were there. Alec didn't come and I think he was maybe the only dad that wasn't there. Oops.

Clapping to "Go Tell it on the Mountain." I was surprised by how much they packed into this little half hour. Songs, rhymes, verses - all kinds of things they had been learning. Next time he tells me he doesn't want to go to school anymore because he doesn't learn anything there (yes, he has used that excuse on me several times) I'll have to refer him back to this program.

Well, we got that out of the way. Next year we'll start homeschool, but he'll still be able to say someday that he was in a school Christmas program. Goody.

School Days, School Days, Good old Golden Rule Days

Or something like that.

Today was Luke's first day of pre-school. He was not too excited when I woke him up at 7 this morning, especially since he had a hard time falling asleep last night and he is NOT a morning person. He told me he didn't want to go to school and he wanted more sleep. However, after getting dressed and waking up Erin and getting her dressed, he was ready. In the car on the way he said more than once that he was "SO excited!"

Here are the requisite "First Day of School" pictures. Goofy, as usual. And very excited.

Erin had to wear her "packpack" too - it's really a leash, which ended up being a good idea.



When we got to school, we were about 10 minutes early. All the preschoolers line up by their door until it's time to go in. Mrs. Baker (she's the one in the purple shirt) was there with a sheet of nametags and Luke was pretty subdued and nervous. At this point I was hoping we weren't going to have a problem and was feeling kind of misty myself. Then the 3 boys he knows in his class started trickling in and he warmed up enough to talk and smile a bit so I started feeling better, too.


Once inside, the kids hung up their backpacks and then found their names on the floor. They started playing a little name game and, wouldn't you know it, Erin plopped herself down between 2 kids she knew. When the teacher skipped over her, she began to say her own name while glaring at the teacher, "Ewin, Ewin, EWIN!" I figured it was a good time to leave then.


She pitched the hugest fit. I had to practically sling her over my shoulder to get her out of there since she was fighting me and doing the whole limp baby thing. I got a few looks in the parking lot, but mostly they were sympathetic.

Since Monday is our usual grocery store day I figured it would be good to stick with the routine and keep her busy. She pretty much cried the whole way to the store, pointing out Luke's empty seat and asking where he was. She was calmed down by the time we got there, but the store we shop at has 2-seater carts and she kept saying to me while pointing at the empty seat next to her, "Lukie sit here!"

She did OK overall. Once we got home I got out some new Play-Doh jars I'd been saving and she played with that while I put groceries away. By the time we were done it was time to go pick up Luke again.

When we picked him up, the teacher commented on Luke being left-handed, said he had a good morning and that he was very observant and smart. I smiled and nodded. What do you say? "Oh, I know. I taught him everything he knows. He has good genes." It does make one feel good, though.

Oh, and he had a good time. In the hall walking out, not more than 10 feet from the classroom door, he said, "I like school!" Hooray!