A Day in the Life of a Peanut

I realized I only took pictures of Peanut today, so this one is all about him.

This boy has been going to bed late, and getting up late most days. In hopes of getting him back on a slightly better schedule (one where he goes to bed before I need to), Daddy-o woke him up at 8:30 today. And that meant we had time to go for a puddle walk before we had classes today.

We thought the rain was over for the year, but this is just the first of a couple different showers we may get in the next week or so.

We had time to do our read-alouds when we got back, which are The Vanderbeekers to the Rescue and What We See in the Stars. We've been reading in the backyard most mornings and Peanut has decided his favorite place is in his new hammock. That means Bug and I have to drag over camping chairs, but we're going with it for now. Maybe someday we'll go back to the big hammock so I can lay down, too. :)

 Then, while Bug had his virtual classes, Peanut and I did math, some more reading, handwriting, and then he got the constellation rocks out again.

His newest creation: Eques the Cowboy. The brightest star in this the one at the top of the lasso. Part of the homework assignment was to identify what types of stars make up the constellations they create. I think someone is liking the stars :) I love it when one of our topics inspires someone.

Lunch was mac'n'cheese (Peanut's pick) while watching the last episode of the Space Probes documentary we've been watching. We've loved learning more about how NASA explores space.

After lunch, he had Virtual Park Day and then read for a couple hours. He's making progress on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

The boys and I headed out for a bike ride after dinner,

and when we got home, we played 3 rounds of Nerts and Peanut got his first Nerts! He also finished the night with his highest score yet. We used to just celebrate with him if he had a round with a positive score, but he's been getting faster and faster over the past 2 months.

He read some more before bed, and lights out came way too late again, but what can I say? It's hard to stop him when he's happily reading.

And that's a wrap! Pretty much a typical day for our newly turned 9 year old.

Life Got a Little Crazy

We are still adjusting to the scheduling and life changes that having 2 kids at school has brought to us this year. And of course it is complicated by the fact that Bug is still homeschooling, so it's not just that we have 3 kids at three different places.
This last Thursday was about as crazy as it gets for us these days. I'm so grateful that this isn't every day, but here it goes:

6:00 Wake up at the house I was dog-sitting at. Let the dogs out in the backyard for a few minutes.
6:20 Rush home to pick up Bean who has a church class before school. Daddy-o had to go into work early so he couldn't take her today.
6:40 Back home. Start making breakfast, packing lunch for Peanut, picking up the kitchen.
7:30 Wake up the boys and begin the battle to get Peanut ready for school. He isn't loving school so this isn't fun for any of us.
8:15 Take Peanut to school. I wait with him in line and while he unpacks his backpack, turns in his homework, and does his attendance check. He gives me a dozen kisses and several hugs before he walks in to the class with his chin quivering (and I walk away fighting back tears pretty much every day.) I hate that this has been so hard.
8:45 Drop the car at the shop to have an oil leak looked at. Since I didn't have time to take a walk this morning, I just walk the 2 miles home.
9:15 Time to battle with Bug, who typically has gotten side tracked and didn't really do anything during the 60 minutes I was gone. I spend the next 1.5 hours picking up the house and prepping for my science class while prompting him to get his piano practice done and get ready for the day. Upside to all this--he does get a lot of reading done during the day because it's usually books that are distracting him.
10:40 Bug and I bike to his piano lesson.
11:00 I bike to the dog-sitting house to feed them their long-overdue breakfast. I have to sit with them while they eat, and they take awhile, so I couldn't feed them earlier. While I'm waiting, I return a phone call from someone from church who had some questions for me.
11:30 Bug and I bike home. I'm trying to help him fit in physical activity and outside time every day, so we usually do this even when I do have a car.
11:45 Quick lunch and shower because I haven't managed to get dressed in real clothes yet.
12:25 First biology class kids show up. They're 20 minutes early, and I'm not even dressed yet so I hurry to get ready and then try to finish last minute class prep, which I thought Bug would be able to help with, but he's totally distracted by friends now.
12:45 Biology Class! One of the highlights of my week. This one felt a little rushed; I'm still learning exactly how much we can squeeze into a 90 minute class.
2:20 Get a phone call about the car, and the $2000 of repairs that it needs sometime in the near future. :P
2:30 I realize that I am not going to make it to Peanut's school in time for pick-up if I walk so I have a friend who's helping with my biology class drop me off on their way home.
2:40 Peanut and I walk home. He's surprisingly okay with it and just talks the whole 20 minutes instead of complaining about how far it is.
3:15 I'm lying on the couch for a minute, trying to gear up for biking over to the community center for Bean's water polo game and then to get my car when a friend texts to let me know she's dropping her daughter off at the game to watch, and I realize she can give me a ride to pick up my car. It's 90 degrees out and I'm done with biking and walking.
3:45 Friend picks me up and we drop her daughter off to watch Bean, and then me to get my van. All fluids have been topped off so it's "okay" to drive (although my car guy warned me that there is always a chance of fire when you have oil dripping on hot engine parts--great.)
4:10 I make it to Bean's game only a few minutes late and get to watch them win their second game this week! Go Granada water polo!
5:00 Home, grab the boys, and go back to the dog house to feed them dinner.
5:30 Boys and I head to the farmer's market to quickly grab pluots from our favorite stand and a few other fruits and veggies.
6:10 Back home, fix a quick dinner, Daddy-o and Bean come home.
6:40 Dinner time. This keeps getting pushed closer to 7, which makes it impossible to get Peanut to bed by 7:30, even though he really needs 12 hours of sleep to wake up on his own in the a.m.
The rest of the evening was that mad rush to do dishes, read with Peanut, start lunch packing, make sure everyone has clothes for the next day, pack up backpacks, work on the laundry, and finally, when I'm ready for bed, I head back to the dogs for one last night at their house.

Luckily, not every day involves so much running back and forth. Thursdays are our busiest day, and there were even some extras in there, but we've had more of this rushing around than I'd like. Kids just mean lots of activities, even if you don't have them sign up for that many things at once.

I like having a record of what our days look like every now and then. I look back at a couple posts I did like this 10 or 11 years ago and it's apparent how different life is now. I can't say which sounds more exhausting. I didn't have to drive back and forth 20 times a day back then, but I got woken up every 30 minutes by a baby some nights. I think it's a toss up.

A Day Off

Bug went to work with Daddy-o today, and with the other two in school this year, that meant I had almost 6 hours in a row(!) to take care of my stuff, without kid interruptions, without staying home from any fun family activities. I haven't had a day like this since we moved here.

And what did I discover? I need a lot more than 6 hours to catch up with everything, haha. I kind of already knew that as I was making my list of things I could do today. It had about 20 different things on it, and that was a conservative list compared to what was running through my head.

Of course, everything took longer than I hoped, but I did take care of a few emails, scheduled a few things like field trips and dr. appointments, worked on the next two weeks of the science class I'm teaching this year (more on that later when I manage to catch up on blogging, which did NOT occur today), ate 2 meals in peace, did four loads of laundry, and took a walk. And then I had the rest of the afternoon with Peanut for a mama date to get ice cream and go to the STEM class at the library (and tackle a couple errands as well, which he didn't mind too much.)

I didn't get any laundry folded (and just added four more loads to the pile, haha), or cleaning or organizing done; I have a dozen blog posts I want to write with hundreds of pictures to go through and had hoped to have some time for reading and/or watching a tv show, but those things will have to be squeezed in on a normal day. I wonder if I my kids were all in school every day, if I would ever feel "caught up". I kind of doubt it (and am sure plenty of people who do have their kids gone all day every day could confirm that.)

But I'm grateful for what felt like a break and a chance to tackle some of the things that are always racing through my mind throughout the day.

Homeschool Life

I feel like I need to document a good homeschool day. It's been a challenge developing any sort of routine, and the new schedule I put up a couple weeks ago has never actually been followed, but I do feel like we've had some better days lately. Having the schedule helps us to actually get things done, even if we are constantly making adjustments.

Here was yesterday:

7:45 Woke the kids up. This almost never happens at this time, for one reason or another, but we actually got up at a decent hour today!

8:10 Breakfast. Only 10 min. behind schedule at this point, but breakfast was fast.

8:30 Morning Meeting--we have a scripture and song we're learning each month that we do here, as well as whatever we're reading aloud at the time. And any discussion about our day's plans.

9:00 Older 2 do chores while I spend 30 minutes one on one with Peanut. The goal is to get his bucket of mom-time filled up early so maybe I can work with the other two. We did am active 100 song, online counting, and then he read the next Bob book to me.

9:45 Bean and Peanut went outside to work on part of her Native American project while Bug and I worked on his, and then he started his math and I did some dishes and laundry. Somewhere in here, Bean read a spanish book to Peanut.

10:30 Kids took a break to jump on trampoline and have a snack, I walked the dog and listened to my Happier podcast

11:00 Bean came in for math help while Bug and Peanut worked on Peanut's writing.

12:00 Lunch time. Kids ate outside--have to take advantage of the good weather!

12:40 Quiet reading time, I had to run an errand so I missed out.

1:10 Watched a video on the 3 branches of government while I dealt with the pest control guy who came to investigate our rat problem (Yikes!)

2:00 Realized that the rat guy was gone early enough for us to catch the end of our homeschool park day, so we shifted our afternoon plans. While we drove, we talked a little about the checks and balances in the government, and compared them with that of the Iroquois village that we had just read a book about. Bug stayed in the car long enough to write the paragraph I was planning at home--I think this may be the fastest he's ever written anything and we may have to use this strategy more often. (Note--I didn't make him do this, but he didn't want to have to do it when we got home.)

2:15 Kids played at the park while I talked with the other parents. This park day has been so good for us. I've gotten a lot of help getting our homeschool going, and the kids are starting to make friends. We connected with another family with same age kids last week and Bean was so happy to see her new friend again today.

4:15 Finally left the park. I was completely frozen. Kids would have stayed forever.

4:30  Bean did her writing, Bug worked on his cake design for the Cub Scout Blue and Gold Dinner this week.

5:30 Early dinner. Bug and I had a movie date planned, and Daddy-o was coming home late, so we ate early. Kids are always hungry anyway.

That's a pretty good day for us. We're still working out the kinks, and I'm trying to get the kids a little more independent with some of their work so they can all be getting things done at once and not have to wait for me so much, but for now, this seems to be working. And being flexible is key. I was planning on doing some science this afternoon since I didn't think we'd be going to the park, but with all the rain we're getting this year, it's better to be outside when we can. We'll be inside all Thurday and Friday and have plenty of time to do science then. I like that we can make those calls as they come up.

The List

I feel the need to make a list of what I did today. It was one of those days that I felt like I was running around like a mildly crazy person, but not really getting anywhere. Maybe it will make me feel better to list everything out so I can see where the hours went.

packed lunches
made breakfast
drop kids at schools
3 loads of laundry
remade two beds
weekly trip to Trader Joes
monthly trip to Costco
picked kids up from school
homemade chicken noodle soup
short run
finish a small knitting project
tutored for a half hour
read to the kids
watched swimming videos with kids
made three phone calls

So, yeah, that makes me feel a little better. There were a few of those things I'd forgotten about until I sat down to do this, and since most of these things weren't listed on a to do list anywhere, it isn't like I got to cross all these items off.

And now, I think I'm going to read, or watch mindless Netflix before bedtime. Even though those three loads of laundry haven't been folded. (My streak ended with the end of the month--it was a nice run while it lasted.)

A Day in The Life: Post Christmas Edition

 Post Christmas, our days are pretty lazy. No school, no work, and not too many plans of any sort. Here's what today looked like:

7:13--Birds wake me up, but everyone else is still asleep, so I stay in bed, reading.

7:45--Stirrings from the boys' room. Escalates in volume within minutes.

8:15--Bean gets up, various people in and out of our bed for the next half hour.

9:00--We finally get some breakfast on the table. This morning, it's oatmeal. We need something healthy before the sugar comes out.

9:30--Kids are busy crafting and playing, being loud, as always. We remind them that they have to actually put on clothing today because they're going to meet up with friends for the day.

10:15 Everyone is dressed and heading out the door. Steve takes the older two to see the Penguins of Madagascar with friends, Peanut and I head to Target to see if they have any good Christmas clearance.

11:30--Peanut and I finished our errands and come home to play Legos and have lunch.

1:00--Peanut is down for a nap and I spend the next hour surfing the web.

2:00--Steve comes home after leaving the kids to go home with their friends to play at their farm.

3:00--Steve and I head out to the garage. It's a relatively warm day and the garage has needed cleaning for awhile now.

3:30--Peanut wakes up and comes out to play. Not as much work is happening, but we slowly get things sorted back into their places as Peanut builds forts and obstacle courses and gets bikes out.

5:30--I go back inside to start making dinner.

6:00--Big kids come home after hours of running wild, playing magic games, and sword fighting. They're going to sleep good tonight!

7:00--Dinner is finally ready. Meals tend to all be later than normal without the school schedule to keep us on track. Bean soup, with ham, because we still have a LOT of ham left from Christmas.

7:30--Kids all run off, trying to sneak more play time out of the day before we wrangle them into bed. I run to Redbox to get a movie.

8:00--Finally get everyone headed to bed. Steve reads to Peanut while I read How to Eat Fried Worms to the older two.

8:30--Everyone's in bed. Bean is reading (and will forget to turn off her light if we don't go back up in half an hour to stop her.) Steve and I watch the latest X-Men movie. We used to be good at keeping up with movies as they come out, but it's gotten harder and harder to fit one in between when the kids go to bed and when I fall asleep.

11:30--I'm still awake, scanning Facebook and reading, which is not normal, but knowing that no one should be waking up before 7 makes me feel like I can afford to stay up. It's going to be hard to get back to normal next week!

Short and to the point

Here's today by the numbers:

2 dozen screams, "I don't want Bugaboo to mess up my stuff!"

2 dozen baby yells for, "Help!"

8 seperate meals

5 Craigslist responses

1 wet bed (6 layers!)

4 loads of laundry

3 naps, but none for mama

2 poopy diapers

1 new case of pink eye

1 babygate fall, with baby

about 5 dozen dishes washed (or waiting to be washed)

dozens of small toys put back over and over and over

and 1 nightwaking as of 9:15 p.m.

BUT,

they're still stinking cute kids. (These are all the BYU intern babies out here).

And I got to sneak away this evening to see Harry Potter at the IMAX (Pretty cool, but the 3-D glasses always make my eyes feel a bit wonky--and watching Harry Potter makes me speak a bit British). If only the kids hadn't both been awake when I got home. . .

We interrupt this program. . .

I want to keep going with the stories from this past trip, but had to tell about our ridiculous day today. I'll try to keep it short, but I tend to get caught up in the details.

My ear has still been hurting and the ER doctor had told me to come back if things weren't clearing up in 3 days, so this morning I decided it was time to go get it checked out. I looked up a few doctors covered by our insurance out here and started making the calls. But no one could see me today since I would be a new patient and they won't work new patients in, so they kept telling me I'd need to go to urgent care.

So plan B--I found the closest urgent care center to us--13 miles away--packed up the kids things and loaded everyone into the car for what turned into an all day adventure. First, I got on the wrong freeway and it took me a few miles to realize my mistake, so I backtracked, only the entrance to the freeway I wanted was closed of course, so finally, almost an hour later, we made it to the center.

After waiting for 30 minutes, the receptionist informs me that they don't take my insurance. Interesting since my insurance assures me that they do. I tried to push the issue but she was pretty insistant so I left and after a long phone call to Daddy-o, I got the name of the next closest place, 20 miles in the opposite direction of where I was. This time I called my insurance company to verify that there wouldn't be any problems and they assured me that it should be fine.

So I drove up there with only a couple incidents--one of the freeways was closed for about 25 miles, and I got a tour of Detroit I didn't need, so once again it was an hour long trip. Right as we got there, it started to pour, so I hurried to unload the kids, got completely soaked in the process, and then, we rushed up to the door to find that it was locked! The signs all said the clinic was open 7 days a week, 7 a.m. - 10 p.m., but there was no one there.

At that point, I either had to start crying or laughing. I wish I had the camera because we were definately good photo material at that moment. Since I'd already been crying today, I decided it was time to laugh. And finally gave up--for some reason, I don't think I was supposed to get my ear looked at today.

I took the kids to Olive Garden for a very late lunch (which they both LOVED--breadsticks were a hit all around) and then we wandered in the toy aisles at Target until it was time to pick up Daddy-o.

And you know, my ear doesn't hurt as much tonight so maybe it is going to clear up after all.

Changes

Well, my favorite critic informed me that the black background on this site was just too dark and dismal, so I'm playing with it yet again. Someday I'll figure out what I like.

I'm not sure if it was the tooth coming or just another night in the nutty family home, but Friday night was not one of our best. Here's the play-by-play for anyone who has ever wondered if I'm exaggerating when I say our kids do not sleep through the night:

After a rough afternoon nap-wise
6:20--Bugaboo is in bed
7:00--Bean is in bed
9:00--I'm conked out
9:20--My lovely deep sleep is interrupted intermittently by crying, but Daddy-o is still awake so I try to ignore it.
10:30--Daddy-o finally gives up and brings Bugaboo to me to feed.
11:00--Buggy is back in his bed and asleep
12:30--Bugaboo needs a paci replug--twice.
1:09--We hear this little sweet voice, "I want cake, Dada". Not sure why Bean thought we were going to give her cake--we may not be the best at teaching our kids to sleep, but we do NOT give them cake in the middle of the night.
1:30--Bugaboo awake, paci replug and patting seems to help
2:00--Buggy is crying again--I give up and feed him again and we both pass out in the bed where we finally get a little sleep.
5:35--Bugaboo is fidgeting so I do everything I can for the next hour to keep him still and asleep.
6:45--Buggy is up
7:00--Bean is up, and so another day begins.

This is why even the nights that I go to bed early, I can spend 10 hours trying to sleep, but only get about 5 hours of sleep.

And Saturday got even better--Daddy-o is sick, the post on the car battery broke off (killing the battery) so I got to have a lovely chat with a AAA tow truck driver who reminded me of a very dirty leprechaun. He did manage to get the car started so I could drive home and send Daddy-o out to get a new battery while I fed, bathed and put a couple cranky kids to bed.

What happened to our weekends?