Sickness and Tears

 Oh how I'd like to cry today.  This past week was a crazy week, filled with events that didn't follow the routine I had in mind.  Monday went fine, it was a beautiful day.  After school while driving home I longed to stop and unload the kids to play in leaves at the park.  I wished I had my camera with me to capture the beautiful colors of the changing trees and to capture the smiles and dancing eyes of my kids as they oowed and awwed over autumns arrival.  Unfortunately I didn't stop and we didn't partake in the beautiful day.  Instead we raced home, got overly busy in life at home, tried to race to dance only to realize by the time we arrived and paid to park it would be time to leave so we skipped that.  That evening my oldest complained of a tummy ache, the night was filled with kids waking at all hours and by the next morning my oldest was throwing up.  We spent the day using our many homeopathic treatments. like a compress with ginger, and coconut oil on her tummy another with activated charcoal and coconut oil and peppermint oil.  I gave her arsenicum album and then called the herbalist and gave her pyrogenium which made her stop throwing up.  Her sickness lasted about 11 hours all together, but wow did it wear me out.  The other two never got sick, but school was canceled the rest of the week.

The days got colder very quickly and the wind came up so strong that all the pretty changing leaves have now dropped. We tried to go take pictures and instead of the beautiful fun event I envisioned it was a freezing, quick event.  I piled up some leaves said jump to each kid quick took a picture and got them re-bundled up in multiple layers, then with freezing hands and faces we got back in the car and blasted the heater. So much for owing and awing.

We tried to do school at home and visit with my mother in law who came in for a couple of days.  It was busy and crazy and I noticed my kids acting up more and more.  Bedtime has become harder and harder.  We read, we pray, we turn off the lights and sing and rub backs, and then we leave the room, used to be fine, but it's not anymore, now there are fits and tears and jumping over the baby gate and getting hurt...it wears me out to the point of exhaustion.  We try laying by them, we try more songs, apparently I'm the only one that they want.  I'm with them all day, and they only want me.  Daddy tries to sing, to rub backs and all he gets is screaming and tears.  I don't get it.  I should feel blessed I know that I'm so loved but right now I just want to cry myself and say no.  I want time to myself, to blog, to read to pee alone.  In the moments I have to remind myself I'm not the only mom going through this.  I have to remind myself that they will grow so fast and before I know it they will be sleeping through the night.  OH please let that come quickly.  A whole nights sleep and sleeping in on top would be a dream come true.  Then I also think what if they're not feeling well, maybe they are getting sick too, or maybe the total change in routine threw them for a loop or maybe....  I analyze too much.  I think do I let them scream it out, do I co-sleep, do I lay by them until their out, although when I do that the minute I get up they wake up and we start all over again.  You'd think by this time I'd know what I'm doing, I mean I did it twice before, but apparently your third doesn't follow any of the rules the others followed. 

So I'm off, off to rub more backs and wipe more tears and pray diligently that they sleep tonight. 

Homeschooling

This year we are in a daily co-op.  I teach Spelling to Write and Read to my preschooler and others in his class.  I teach Math using Singapore Math to my son's class and to my first grade daughter's class.  I also teach poetry to all the kids.  I sit in with my toddler and do preschool with her as well.  All the teachers are moms and we are working together with the Classical approach to home schooling.  It is so exciting to see my kids learning and growing daily.  Last year I met with a co-op one day a week and tried to do things on my own the rest of the week.  It didn't work well for me.  I was distracted by food, and dishes and laundry and I didn't feel like my daughter was getting all she needed.  I still desired to home school her but I wanted more structure so this is exactly what we needed.  We go in the morning from 8 to noon and then we're done with SWR, math, science, history, Bible, poetry, art and music.  We come home and can play and learn in other fun ways. 

With the preschoolers I'm trying to "Prep their Senses" to help them to hear words and sounds differently.  We have been working on rhyming and syllable counting. I made a file folder game.  It has 4 animals attached to the file folder, you then have a bunch of food cards and you feed the animals the foods that have the same number of syllables.  The kids LOVE it. It's great to hear them chatter like a monkey as they feed it ice cream and then count out the 2 syllables.  I'll be attaching it soon.