A Week, Briefly (3/25/19)

Sunday morning before breakfast . . . I did do Lola's hair up cute before leaving the house. :)

I had a hard week.

Anxiety reared its ugly head.

But good things did happen all around me.

Monday morning Ladybug and I headed out the door as soon as Morning Meeting was over, and her psychiatrist prescribed the same medication for her that Brother is taking.

It is NOT the right medication.

While it does organize her thoughts so that she can do a math assignment in 10 minutes with no doodling and no mistakes instead of an hour with much doodling and countless mistakes, it lulls her into a too-passive state when she's not actively playing or working.

She wants to sleep all day (I won't let her), and then she can't sleep at night (she's never been a good sleeper anyway, but it seems worse now).

She also says it makes her stomach hurt (but it's hard to know if that's the truth--for a lot of reasons).


I did some research, and I found a general consensus that side effects may lessen/increase with time, so it is important to give the meds a good test run before changing them.

Our next appointment is in 3 weeks, so we're hanging in there . . . for now.

While this mis-fit medication experience is disappointing, we can at least know we're gathering evidence for finding the right fit eventually.

We had a good Academy session--over the course of the week we read Fair Play by Munro Leaf--and the kids worked hard on their history drawings.

(This picture is actually from Wednesday, but it showskids working again on history drawings, so it works here, too--other than the fact that our little friend in the background didn't visit us until Wednesday.)

The rest of the day was filled with outdoor play, individual school, and a bit of digging in the garden so that we can plant someday soon.

On Tuesday, the teens and I dove into our first Symposium in over a week.  We started Unit 9 for Language Arts, completed History lesson 81, and worked through another page of Spanish translation and reading.

When that was over, I packed up the young ones and headed to the zoo.

We stopped at the park on our way into the zoo.

Branches knocked out of trees in recent storms were a source of work/play/fun.

We meandered very slowly through the zoo, lingering long at various exhibits.  We hardly ever see the flamingos because they are tucked in a far corner, but we enjoyed watching them on Tuesday.

The best part of the day was arriving at the chimp habitat just in time for a keeper chat.  The chimps are usually hard to see because their exhibit is several acres in size, and they hide in the trees, but the keepers lured them to the observation window with snacks, and a 3-year-old chimp was in the mood to play with my kids.  She jumped and flirted and demonstrated for them for a full half an hour. 

When we got home, we did a little bit of individual school just to get ourselves settled and focused.  Then the kids scattered outside for unstructured outdoor play.

Brother was very proud of his dirt road and house.

One of our little babysittees joined us for the day on Wednesday, and a box of art/science "crates" arrived.  Once organized school activities were over, Nature Angel and Little Princess dove into their crates with alacrity.

Little Princess experimented with hydraulics.

Nature Angel designed and built a set of paper lanterns.

Belle worked at the farm.

Youth activities consisted of team-building games that were dreaded by my crew but turned out to be super-fun.

The teens and I finished our last formal History lesson on Thursday!  Only the quarter review and semester exam to go!

Then we danced A LOT.

Thunderstorms and driving rain kept us indoors during free time, so the kids watched a couple of episodes of Liberty's Kids and played games and read books.

I can't tell if it's the rain, the fact that this week marked the anniversary of the kids' adoption (we did not celebrate or even talk about it, but memories are deep and often incomprehensible), or side effects to the med Brother is on, but he had many meltdowns.  It was almost the same as being off the med, except that the duration of the tantrums was shorter.


I've realized that our schedule for school is going to have to change dramatically because his usual individual school time with me takes place after his med has worn off.  I'm pretty sure he either needs a higher dose, or he needs a supplemental short-acting med for the afternoons.  His follow-up appointment is still 2 1/2 weeks away, so I've got time for further observation.

He's also not sleeping very well.

My initial gushings and happy-warm-fuzzies that I wrote about last week are fading with time and experience.

I'm feeling cautious and watchful, and I'm trying to be patient in order to understand long-term ramification.

On Friday, the teens and I completed the History 4th quarter review.

We do these "game-show" style--I read questions, and the girls answer on white boards and reveal their answers on cue.  It's so fun!

After Academy, Brother and I headed off to therapy where I did an intake session for Ladybug to get her on the waiting list.

Brother likes the waiting room almost as much as he likes his sessions.

In the late afternoon, we kept busy with individual school because thunderstorms kept coming and going, making outdoor play too challenging for us.

I worked with Pixie on finishing up the final details of getting her prom dress ready and helped her with a set of American History essay questions (her teacher is not on our good list right now for a variety of reasons, but it's good experience for her to have to deal with difficult people . . . at least she got an A on her mid-term exam!).

Church prom is Saturday night--only Pixie and Super Star are of age to attend, and Pixie has organized a set of 6 couples to do pictures, have dinner, and attend prom together with Sir Walter Scott acting as chauffeur in our van.