Do I need one?
My blog life, though spotty, is well ahead of my sex life. Sigh...
So here was tonight's big project. I bunked the previously unbunked beds on my own. Lots of squeezing into tight corners and lots of trying to get a GatorGrip wrench around and around while Rutledge invaded my personal space. But the boys were pretty excited, and Walter likes the secret nook around the back of the bed where I couldn't push it flush up against the wall because the ceilings slope. Maybe this will assauge Ollie's desire for an HGTV "Design on a Dime" makeover for a while. I even managed to get the Rokenbok table into the room, thus paving the way for more consolidation of functional groups (and, in my wildest dreams, a more organized and consistently clean house).
Today we had Junior Great Books here. So the house was clean. Amend that: The downstairs was clean. Or tidy. It took more work than I care to discuss. Oh, the crumbs. Oh, the desire to not use consumable paper towels or toxic products. I'm struggling there. And what a freaky story it was. Carl Sandburg's "Three Boys with Molasses and Secret Ambitions" or something like that. It was out there, and I think we'll have to revisit it a few more times this week to tease out what is going on, what it might mean, to delve into the vocabulary, and to straighten out what I'm sure must be confusion. I was confused, therefore they must be confused. Or maybe I'm not giving them enough credit. JGB is one of the highlights of the week, both for the actual session itself and the Yu-Gi-Oh trading that goes on after.
There's talk of a possible co-op next year. It's an interesting little nugget to toss around. I'm attracted to the idea on one hand, since it would decentralize myself, thus making some less cooperative subject matter potentially more palatable. I'm wondering how it would work in the more core subjects, like math, though that might not be something anyone else is even considering. I'm trying to figure out which Latin program we might use next year. Latin's Not So Tough sounds about our speed, but I'm not liking the focus of the first book, and yet I feel like one must start with a first book. But perhaps not, from what I'm reading about the progression. I can see the yawns already if we worked primarily with letter sound and pronunciation and didn't really gain any vocabulary. We might not be ready to read Cicero, but months of prep-work with no feeling of accomplishment and contact with the actual language could really kill enthusiasm, especially my own.
Finally the weather seems to be turning, and I don't have a migraine to go with it. Spring could truly be here. We started various pepper seeds, chives, and something else that I'm forgetting. Frances's pumpkin has sprouted, though she is still having a rough time accepting that it will take months before we will have anything resembling a pumpkin (if we ever do...I haven't shared that cold, hard reality with her). She's in a rough place right now. Very much with the silent treatment, the withdrawal, the dogged insistence on the veracity of something that isn't...true. She'll argue and argue, and it's no use trying to counter or make sense. It wears me right out. Today it was about sand. She wanted me to snap my fingers and make more sand appear in the sandbox. Only...I didn't have any. But she was ready to punch me over it. A little diversion eventually ended the standoff, but this is so typical of what I've been going through lately with her. Thank goodness for the timely arrival of a much-awaited movie from Blockbuster. Mermaidia had two showings tonight while Kerry and the boys were swimming.
Nothing like last minute prep, but we need to get our acts together, so to speak, for the talent and display on Friday at Jenn's. Walter and Ollie are going to demonstrate some wrestling moves, preferably outdoors. We'll run through the standard half nelson, cross face, post the elbow, walk the elbow to the knee, roll him into your lap. Frances is saying now that she is going to sing "Good Ship Lollipop," but we'll see how things go and how cooperative she is feeling. The fallback would be for her to dance to "Steppy Time" (Step in Time) from Mary Poppins. Her dancing is really coming along. Today was a pretty good day at ballet. She has more or less mastered the two age-appropriate tap moves that were the goal for the year, and though she has been more distracted lately with the newer members of the class, she is becoming more expressive with her ballet. She's always a balance of extreme concentration and barely bridled excitement.
Tomorrow is our intensive gymnastics day. We have an early morning with babysitting Olivia and David, then Frances's class, then Ollie's in the late afternoon. I miss our park day Thursdays from the French era, but we did get to see Christi and Asa and Isaac and Charlotte yesterday and talk to a potential LA. I felt like the size of the crowd I brought was a little distracting, but it was a nice day overall, and the weather was halfway pleasant for once. Rut is such a little participant now, all into everything and creating that usual toddler annoyance to the three and four year olds, who tend to find toddlers quite obstructive to their plans. Walter was fascinated to the point of not being able to keep his hands off of a huge cache of chicken eggs under the root ball of a fallen tree. Guess that explained why the egg output lately had seemed down. Ollie deepened his love of chili and helped Asa over a hairy section of Lego Island 2. Charlotte gave me a hug! Which is huge! And the big event was taking Hokie along. I have been wondering whether it is possible to fall in love with a pet again after a long period of basic neglect mixed with a spot of abhorrence. He was really quite a gem playing with Brody.
I'm still working out the details on how I'm going to get to the Leader Enrichment Workshop in Chesapeake in May. The juggling is just not pretty, and if I was Kerry, I wouldn't want to be without a vehicle hours from home with 3 kids. But I'll broach the subject tomorrow and see if I can get it all hammered out. I wonder if I sign up for two workshops if I'll get the multi-leader discount ;)
So there's a whole slew of quotidian babble. I wish I had something more fascinating to write about. Deep thoughts, interesting moments. Maybe I need to work harder at seeing the blogworthy in the everyday. Which might be easier to make habitual if I actually made a habit of writing more often.
So here was tonight's big project. I bunked the previously unbunked beds on my own. Lots of squeezing into tight corners and lots of trying to get a GatorGrip wrench around and around while Rutledge invaded my personal space. But the boys were pretty excited, and Walter likes the secret nook around the back of the bed where I couldn't push it flush up against the wall because the ceilings slope. Maybe this will assauge Ollie's desire for an HGTV "Design on a Dime" makeover for a while. I even managed to get the Rokenbok table into the room, thus paving the way for more consolidation of functional groups (and, in my wildest dreams, a more organized and consistently clean house).
Today we had Junior Great Books here. So the house was clean. Amend that: The downstairs was clean. Or tidy. It took more work than I care to discuss. Oh, the crumbs. Oh, the desire to not use consumable paper towels or toxic products. I'm struggling there. And what a freaky story it was. Carl Sandburg's "Three Boys with Molasses and Secret Ambitions" or something like that. It was out there, and I think we'll have to revisit it a few more times this week to tease out what is going on, what it might mean, to delve into the vocabulary, and to straighten out what I'm sure must be confusion. I was confused, therefore they must be confused. Or maybe I'm not giving them enough credit. JGB is one of the highlights of the week, both for the actual session itself and the Yu-Gi-Oh trading that goes on after.
There's talk of a possible co-op next year. It's an interesting little nugget to toss around. I'm attracted to the idea on one hand, since it would decentralize myself, thus making some less cooperative subject matter potentially more palatable. I'm wondering how it would work in the more core subjects, like math, though that might not be something anyone else is even considering. I'm trying to figure out which Latin program we might use next year. Latin's Not So Tough sounds about our speed, but I'm not liking the focus of the first book, and yet I feel like one must start with a first book. But perhaps not, from what I'm reading about the progression. I can see the yawns already if we worked primarily with letter sound and pronunciation and didn't really gain any vocabulary. We might not be ready to read Cicero, but months of prep-work with no feeling of accomplishment and contact with the actual language could really kill enthusiasm, especially my own.
Finally the weather seems to be turning, and I don't have a migraine to go with it. Spring could truly be here. We started various pepper seeds, chives, and something else that I'm forgetting. Frances's pumpkin has sprouted, though she is still having a rough time accepting that it will take months before we will have anything resembling a pumpkin (if we ever do...I haven't shared that cold, hard reality with her). She's in a rough place right now. Very much with the silent treatment, the withdrawal, the dogged insistence on the veracity of something that isn't...true. She'll argue and argue, and it's no use trying to counter or make sense. It wears me right out. Today it was about sand. She wanted me to snap my fingers and make more sand appear in the sandbox. Only...I didn't have any. But she was ready to punch me over it. A little diversion eventually ended the standoff, but this is so typical of what I've been going through lately with her. Thank goodness for the timely arrival of a much-awaited movie from Blockbuster. Mermaidia had two showings tonight while Kerry and the boys were swimming.
Nothing like last minute prep, but we need to get our acts together, so to speak, for the talent and display on Friday at Jenn's. Walter and Ollie are going to demonstrate some wrestling moves, preferably outdoors. We'll run through the standard half nelson, cross face, post the elbow, walk the elbow to the knee, roll him into your lap. Frances is saying now that she is going to sing "Good Ship Lollipop," but we'll see how things go and how cooperative she is feeling. The fallback would be for her to dance to "Steppy Time" (Step in Time) from Mary Poppins. Her dancing is really coming along. Today was a pretty good day at ballet. She has more or less mastered the two age-appropriate tap moves that were the goal for the year, and though she has been more distracted lately with the newer members of the class, she is becoming more expressive with her ballet. She's always a balance of extreme concentration and barely bridled excitement.
Tomorrow is our intensive gymnastics day. We have an early morning with babysitting Olivia and David, then Frances's class, then Ollie's in the late afternoon. I miss our park day Thursdays from the French era, but we did get to see Christi and Asa and Isaac and Charlotte yesterday and talk to a potential LA. I felt like the size of the crowd I brought was a little distracting, but it was a nice day overall, and the weather was halfway pleasant for once. Rut is such a little participant now, all into everything and creating that usual toddler annoyance to the three and four year olds, who tend to find toddlers quite obstructive to their plans. Walter was fascinated to the point of not being able to keep his hands off of a huge cache of chicken eggs under the root ball of a fallen tree. Guess that explained why the egg output lately had seemed down. Ollie deepened his love of chili and helped Asa over a hairy section of Lego Island 2. Charlotte gave me a hug! Which is huge! And the big event was taking Hokie along. I have been wondering whether it is possible to fall in love with a pet again after a long period of basic neglect mixed with a spot of abhorrence. He was really quite a gem playing with Brody.
I'm still working out the details on how I'm going to get to the Leader Enrichment Workshop in Chesapeake in May. The juggling is just not pretty, and if I was Kerry, I wouldn't want to be without a vehicle hours from home with 3 kids. But I'll broach the subject tomorrow and see if I can get it all hammered out. I wonder if I sign up for two workshops if I'll get the multi-leader discount ;)
So there's a whole slew of quotidian babble. I wish I had something more fascinating to write about. Deep thoughts, interesting moments. Maybe I need to work harder at seeing the blogworthy in the everyday. Which might be easier to make habitual if I actually made a habit of writing more often.
posted by Nancy | 7:13 PM
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