I had a wonderful conversation with Annie this morning.  As we were planning her birthday slumber party, and looking over a catalog she’d been given (for a popular mall store for girls her age), she commented that next to the girls in the catalog, she was pretty boring.

Now, boring is definitely not a word I would use to describe Annie.  Playful, silly, creative, compassionate, insightful…yes.  Boring?  Not remotely.  So I asked her why she thought that.

Annie: “Look at their clothes!  Mine are just t-shirts and shorts.”

Me: “Yes, but do you like those clothes?  I think they’re a bit much, and definitely not something I would be comfortable wearing.”

Annie: “I know!  I don’t think they’re very pretty, but they’re different from how I dress.”

She then asked me if she was normal.  All her friends like to listen to the latest pop music (Justin Beiber and Lady Gaga are favorites) and they like to wear the latest fashions, and talk about boys.  Annie just isn’t interested in those things.

I was so excited about this conversation!  One of my goals in homeschooling is to help my children become the individual that they were meant to be.  So many children are a product of a system–everyone is supposed to like and do the same things.  I don’t want that for my kids.   I told her that there is no such thing as normal.  No one is normal!   Just because her friends like something does not mean she needs to force herself to like them too.    She was still unconvinced, and certain that she is somehow “weird.”

So I told her about a girl I used to be friends with–she was one of my best friends back in high school.  Back then, I was a boy crazy, wild, silly and desperate-to-fit-in typical teen–as were most of my friends.  But not Audra.  She was unique.  She wasn’t interested in dating, or fashion, or sneaking around behind her parents back, or being “cool.”  She knew what she liked and that was that.  She was into musical theater, books and figure skating.  She had decided that she didn’t need to date in high school–which I thought was insane.   She actually got along with her little brother–not only that, she loved him!   (I did not get along with my little brother AT ALL and was always taken aback by how well Audra got along with hers).   She was her own person and she was popular!   Annie asked me what Audra was like now.  ”She’s a professional stage actress.”

Annie’s eyes lit up.   I think I’ve given her a new hero.    She then pondered quietly for a bit, and said, “You know, I really like who I am!”

If I do nothing else right…I at least know that I’ve shown Annie that she’s a wonderful person just the way she is. It’s taken me years to learn that about myself–I am so thrilled that she knows it now.   I can’t wait to see the wonderful, confident, intelligent woman she becomes.

It’s not that I don’t have  anything to blog about, there’s plenty going on.  I guess I just get too busy this time of year.  That seems ridiculous.  How could I be busier in the summer than during the school year?  I think I try to take advantage of less school and throw myself into projects–the garden, cleaning/reorganizing the house…I forget sometimes I even have a blog.

So what have we been up to?

Annie went to Jazzercise camp last week and preformed “Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile” for their Jazzercise Idol.  She did an amazing job, especially considering that just a few years ago she was so painfully shy that she couldn’t talk in front of people–now she can get on stage and sing and dance!

We finished up scouts for the year–the twins are now going to be Bear cubs and Annie is a Cadette.   They don’t meet much in the summer, so we can just relax until the fall.  Rob is going to be taking over the Bears next year, so he needs the break!

Cutie has been doing weekly therapy, and it seems to be going well.  She’s still not walking more than a step or two here and there, and still no words, though she is babbling like crazy.  She also does this really cute thing where if she sees a flower or you say the word flower she’ll do her fake sneeze–basically she’ll just say, “ah ah ah ah ah!”  Very cute.  We saw a butterfly yesterday and she did her fake sneeze–apparently butterflies are very similar to flowers.

I’ve been on a mission to get the house in order before we start school in the fall.  I really want to redo the kitchen, but there are no funds for a full on makeover.  So I’m hoping to at least paint.  And I can definitely declutter!  I’ve already purged the arts and crafts bins and moved all of them to a large cabinet that was full of junk.  It felt good to get that mess taken care of.  I’d also like to repaint the living room, but that would require Rob to take down all the shelving he’s built on the walls, and I don’t think he’s up for that.

I’ve been doing lots of reading–so far this summer, I’ve read:

The Book of William: How Shakespeare’s First Folio Conquered the World by Paul Collins

The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart

Definitely Dead by Charlaine Harris

The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis (this was a read aloud)

The Boleyn Inheritance by Philippa Gregory

Q & A by Vikus Swarup

Prairie Tale: A Memoir by Melissa Gilbert

Poison: A Novel of the Renaissance by Sarah Poole

I went to the Used Book Superstore a few weeks ago when they were having their big kids book sale (all kids books for 69 cents!!!) and I got a ton of great stuff.  I managed to get 4 Prentice Hall Science books for Annie.  We now have middle school science covered for at least 2 years.  I have a 50% off coupon I need to use so I’m hoping to find the rest of the books we need for Sonlight Core 1+2 and 6.   I got the IG’s and about 70% of the books so far.

Our garden is doing pretty well–we’ve got several tomatoes, cukes and zucchini come in, and everything else seems to be growing nicely, except for the strawberries–I don’t know what went wrong there, but after the initial 7 or 8 berries we got, the plants just stopped growing fruit.  Maybe they’ll do better next year.   I’m hoping we can make some homemade pickles this year–we messed it up last year because we waited to long and the cukes were over ripe.  I’m hoping this year goes better.  We love pickles here and the kids are really excited to try making their own.

And that’s been our summer so far!  We’re looking forward to going to the beach in a couple of weeks, as well as the zoo, and next month my father will be in town for a visit, and we’re going to go to the Dinosaur State Park in CT.   And of course just lots of relaxing, reading, soaking up some sun, running through sprinklers, and hopefully some swimming (I’m planning to teach the kids how to swim this summer).

I hope everyone has a great summer!  I’ll try to blog more often, promise!

It was a busy weekend, and a busy start to the week as well.  Thursday was meant to be the last game of the season for the twin’s baseball team, but it rained.  So then it was Friday instead.  This was a blessing in disguise, because now I was able to go to the game along with my mother-in-law who had been out of town.  They won that game, and therefore made it to the rookie league championship game the next day.  That game unfortunately was at the same time as Cutie’s naptime, and it is a cardinal sin to mess up her nap schedule.  So I had to miss the big game.  But all is well, because they won!  I’ve never been prouder of all my boys (Rob was the coach again this season).

The twins with their trophies and medals

Two weeks ago, I received the twins test scores.  I thought it was weird that I didn’t get Annie’s too, but it was close to the weekend, so I figured hers would come Monday.  They didn’t.  Days passed, and still hers didn’t come.   So finally I called Seton and apparently, they somehow lost her test.   I’ve been using Seton for 5 years for testing and this is the first time I’ve ever had any issues.  So, they sent me a new test and refunded me the money for the one they lost.  Poor Annie had to take it again (she was not pleased, as you can imagine) but since it was the exact same test, she breezed through.  I finally got it back in the mail today, and I just pray I get the scores back well before July 1, so I can get everything sent to the school in plenty of time.

Today was Cutie’s weekly therapy session, and it was an interesting one.  The therapist asked for Cutie to wear shoes during therapy, to help her with balance.  No easy feat–baby hates shoes.  She’s gotten better about it, but she still gives me a bit of a dirty look when she sees me bringing her shoes over.  Well, her left shoe never stays on, and today it just kept coming off.  Finally we decide to just let her be barefoot and see how she does.  Now, I’ve noticed before that her feet are long and skinny, a bit flat and her toes curl over each other, but the therapist thinks that it could be what is causing her to not walk, since it affects her balance.  It makes sense, but I don’t know what that means for the long term.  I suppose it will be a wait-and-see kind of deal.    In good news, Cutie signed “all done” for the first time. I’ve never done sign language with any of the older kids, but they were all extremely verbal, so it was never necessary.  Cutie definitely likes to challenge me in all things.

The rest of the week is looking to be a bit more relaxed, and we’ll all be home in the evenings now that baseball and scouts are all over for the summer (until the bridging/crossover ceremonies next week).   If the weather cooperates, I’d like to do some nature study down at the pond again, and I definitely need to devote some time to the weed-fest that once was the vegetable garden.  I love having a garden, but man do I hate weeding.

Well happy Monday everyone!

In case anyone wondered…this is exactly why I do what I do.

HT to Theresa at LaPaz Home Learning

I just realized that I haven’t posted a single thing since Easter!   I guess I’ve been so busy around here, I just forgot all about my blog for a while.   My father was in town visiting the week after Easter, and then this past week Cutie started getting her molars in, which means my once happy, sweet, content baby is now extremely cranky and won’t sleep at night.  So far I can only see she has one molar in–I’m hoping the rest come in quickly so we can get back to sleeping at night.

We’re getting to the end of our study of the American Revolution–it took us 2 months, but I feel like we were able to cover it pretty well.   I’m pleased with the Time Traveler’s kit I bought.  I like having little projects for the kids to do to go with our studies, and I really like not having to come up with them on my own.  Annie is really enjoying it–the twins are ready to move on to something else though.  Gamerboy really wants to do oceans next.  I’m thinking we’ll have to fit in reading Pagoo. Other than that, I haven’t planned at all yet.

It’s also getting to be the time of year when I need to order our tests from Seton.  I always dread it–which is silly, really.  The kids always do really well and they all actually enjoy taking the test.   But it always makes me nervous just the same.   I try to do our testing in early May, so that I can get everything in well before the deadline, which I think is July 1.  The sooner it’s done and out of the way, the sooner I can relax and enjoy the summer.

You may have noticed my blog has been very quiet lately.  Let’s see…Wednesday night, Annie and Cutie both started throwing up.  That’s when my panic attacks started.  You see, I have a major vomit phobia.  I don’t want to see/hear/smell anything to do with it, and I absolutely don’t want to be the one vomiting.   You would think with 4 kids, I’d relax a bit about that…not so much.  So anyways, I have 2 girls barfing, and then around midnight, both boys decided it might be fun to join in…can’t leave anyone out, right?   Of course, Dinoboy is sleeping in the top bunk and can’t get down fast enough…we’ve washed his bedding about 6 times now…it’s possible we should just stop and buy him a new set.

Thursday everyone was still feverish, but no throwing up.  I tried to relax, but it was hard because Cutie literally would not let me put her down.  She wouldn’t nap, wouldn’t play, I had to carry her little 18lbs self ALL DAY.  By the end of the day, the boys were feeling almost great, Cutie, while still clingy, wasn’t feverish anymore, however, Annie had refused to eat or drink all day and was becoming dehydrated.  She does this Every. Single. Time.  No amount of cajoling, yelling, force feeding, etc. will get her to just sip some water.  So she took a little longer to recover.  Amazingly, the next day when she talked herself into drinking, she smiled at me after finishing a glass of water and said, “I feel so much better!”  Sometimes all you can do is roll your eyes.

But wait…it gets better!  Thursday night, Rob and I go to bed early because we’re completely exhausted after dealing with sick kids (and Rob was under the weather as well).  We are awakened around 11PM by our pellet stove filling the house with smoke.  There was a major wind storm outside which knocked the power out.  So we had to get up, rush downstairs and air out the house.  The baby woke up, and I had to calm her down, Gamerboy is deathly afraid of the dark and went into panic mode when he realized his nightlight wasn’t on.   We found him a flashlight (which he of course left on the entire night, thereby running out the batteries) and went to bed, praying that the power would be back on in the morning.  

Not so much.  Rob went to work and left me with a cooler full of the ice left in the freezer to keep a few drinks and formula cold for the kids.  We went ahead and did some school work, cause what else are you going to do when the power is out?  I had to bundle everyone up since there was no heat, but thankfully it wasn’t freezing outside.  I had to endure a litany of “I’m bored, there’s nothing to do!” While reminding them that 100 years ago no one had any video games/tv/internet and they got along just fine!

We decided to go sleep over at Rob’s parents since they had a generator (which I’m thinking we really ought to have).  We packed for 2 days just in case (and with a baby, that means we appeared to be moving out of our house we packed so much stuff) and got over there around 5pm.  An hour later their power came back on.  Rob quickly went home (we only live a mile away) to see if ours was back…nope.  So we figured, since we’re so close, it’ll be back in the morning.  Again…no.  

I was supposed to go to the Boston Catholic Woman’s Conference on Saturday.  I had really, really, REALLY been looking forward to a day “off”.  I really needed it after dealing with 4 sick kids.  However, I knew I couldn’t leave Rob with 4 kids at his parents house, which isn’t baby proofed, with a baby who still was anti-nap, and with kids who still didn’t have their video games/books/art supplies.  It just wouldn’t be right.  See, right here I should win the wife of the year award.  So my mother in law went to the conference and I stayed home and didn’t get my day off.  Rather I spent it chasing a baby around and saying no a lot.   I did get to go to Cracker Barrel for breakfast, which was the first real meal I’d eaten since Wednesday.  

So by the end of Saturday we figured, the power HAD to come on by the next morning.  NO.  It didn’t.  Cutie had a speech evaluation scheduled for Monday afternoon.  They come out to your house, which is fantastic, unless you have no power.  I really didn’t want to reschedule, but if the power didn’t come back on soon, we’d have to.  So I kept on praying, and finally around noon, the power returned!  Rob and I went home and cleaned out the fridge…because it reeked and we had to throw out EVERYTHING except some produce.  I now have a sparkly clean fridge and freezer though, so it wasn’t all for naught.  I even managed to clean the melted-then-refrozen Edy’s All Fruit popsicles from last year’s power outage.   So we went back to their house for dinner, and Rob went to the store to restock the kitchen.  We finally go home and breath a sigh of relief.   We were home, we had power, no one was sick, and all was well with the world.

Wait.  Scratch that.  I woke up at 2 in the morning feeling like I was going to die. Crap.   Of course, Cutie woke up about 4 times that night, and I had to go help her, cause she will ONLY go to sleep if I go in…which sucks when you feel like moving will make you vomit.   I am proud to say though, that no matter how much my body might have wanted to, I convinced my stomach to behave itself.   I paid for it though, cause I felt like I’d been hit by a truck and then severely beaten by the truck driver all day yesterday.  But at least I didn’t throw up.  Which means that I had to call and reschedule Cutie’s evaluation anyways.  

But the good news is that today, I’m feeling tons better!  We’re mostly back to normal.  We’re taking this week to finish things up that didn’t happen last week, and clean the house, cause I have about 40 loads of laundry to get done.

And that was my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad long weekend.  If only moving to Australia had been an option…

We jumped into our Russia study!  

We read A Symphony of Whales (what a neat book!)

We started The Night Journey (Annie is loving it, but the twins aren’t sure yet–it might be a little over their heads)

We also started reading SovieTrek  (so far it’s a huge hit–my kids love the idea of bike riding across an entire country or continent)

Annie is reading Angel on the Square .

Here’s a few pics of our Russia Map/Poster

Dinoboy drew a Beluga whale to go on the map for A Symphony of Whales

Annie is now officially a Girl Scout.  She had her first service project this week helping at the local food pantry, sorting food and discarding expired stuff.  She is so excited.  

We took Cutie to the children’s hospital for follow up’s with neurology (no real problems there but they want to see her in 6 months anyways–hopefully that will be the last time!) and hematology.  Hematology was much more interesting.  It seems that her Thalassemia, which we new was rare, is so rare that she is in fact the first ever case.  They’re even going to name it after her.  Thankfully it’s mild enough that we don’t need to worry now, but it looks like we’ll be back every 3 months to have her blood checked.   I’ve also set up an appt. for her to be evaluated by early intervention to see if she needs any speech therapy.  And of course, she said mama for the first time immediately after.  I figure, if she suddenly begins babbling/talking over the next month, I can always cancel the appt., Murphy’s Law and all.

Also, Cutie has suddenly started eating real food, and keeping it down.  It would seem that she’s finally learned to swallow without gagging.  Now if I could get her to eat something other than banana, we’d be in business.

Yesterday we finally got a chance to go to the library, and I was  psyched to see several copies of Carpe Demon available for check out.  It’s apparently the book of the month.  I had heard about it months ago at The Homeschool Library and it’s been on my to-read list ever since.  Basically the idea is what would happen if Buffy the Vampire Slayer grew up, and  became a soccer mom?   I’m only a third of the way through, but it’s really good!  

Phew…February got off to a busy start, and I don’t think it intends to let up anytime soon.

I can’t imagine a better actor to play Bilbo Baggins!  Honestly, I actually squealed when I saw his name being batted around to play the lead in The Hobbit.   Now if they would just hurry up and cast it and film it already!

This morning we took Cutie for her 9 month physical (though she’s actually 10 months-somehow we ended up scheduling it a month late).  She’s growing very well–she’s 17lbs and 27 inches now!  Considering her start (5 weeks in the NICU with feeding issues)–that’s awesome.  But the ped was concerned that she’s still gagging and vomiting with solids and still isn’t babbling or making any sounds besides squeals, coos and “happy growly sounds.”  So she said she’d send a referral for early intervention.  She said it could take weeks to months to go through, but they called me this afternoon to set up the appointment.  Yay!  And they come to my house so we don’t have to drag all 4 kids out for the evaluation. Double yay!

The exhausting part of my day was phone tag with the Children’s hospital (where Cutie has a follow up with both neurology and hematology next week).  Oh my goodness.  I had been trying to get through to hematology for months to set up the appt.  All we had to do was have some lab work done to see if her Thalassemia is going to continue to be a problem.  But for whatever reason, we just couldn’t seem to get anything set up.  They kept saying they’d call back and never did.  I called again today and was told, again, they’d call me back.   Finally the doctor called to see what was going on.  Voila!  Appointment scheduled.  

I think I spent a record amount of time on the phone today–and I really don’t like talking on the phone. And in the middle of all that phone tag, I managed to actually accomplish some school work with the kids. I’m totally exhausted and just want to curl up with a book and some tea and hide.  Unfortunately my family is expecting dinner tonight, and I have a mountain of paper work to start working on for the early intervention visit next week, not to mention a house to clean before anyone can come for the evaluation.  Sigh…maybe once they’re all in bed I can finally have my calgon moment?