A Week, Briefly (11/2/20)

photo credit:  Little Princess

 

What a crazy week!

 

Voting was far easier than predicted.  I was in and out in 15 minutes.  And it was not empty--a ton of people were voting.  It was just exceedingly well run.  Kudos to the volunteers who set up and ran such an efficient polling place!

In the afternoon, Sir Walter Scott took 8 of the kids on a bike ride . . . 7 of them rode bikes, and Lola rode on Sir Walter Scott's back.  The Ergo carrier is good for up to 45 lbs, and Lola is 38 lbs. :)

They rode nearly 6 miles, coming home happy and hungry!

Pixie fractured an "extra bone" (???) in her foot during a dance class.  She received marginal care at the urgent care center that the student health center recommended, and she now has an appointment with a podiatrist to see what needs to be done.

Stolen from Pixie's Instagram story

 

Surgery is quite likely.

I've got a thousand questions for the podiatrist, and I've been encouraging Pixie to please, please, please ask them all.

The good news on the dance front is that Pixie's mid-term evaluation in one of her classes (I mix them up) resulted in the teacher telling her that not only has she made dramatic strides in her technique, she is a natural dancer--that her body seems to know beyond the practice and drills how to express itself through dance.

Could there be a more beautiful compliment for an aspiring dancer?

At any rate, calls with and concern for Pixie have been an important part of the week.

Super Star continues to work full-time at Freddy's, and she is also slowly completing the prep work for starting work as a phlebotomist for Community Blood Center.  She passed the drug test (we weren't worried) and health screening with flying colors.  

And she finally let me take a picture of her with her certificate!

Her current concern is obtaining the right kind of driver's license because she's been hired to the traveling team.

For the rest of the kids, the week was just as interrupted as I thought it would be, though we did complete quite a bit of school.

 

In particular we did very well with daily readings from Our Star Spangled Story.  We read a few of Aesop's Fables, and we read a delightful book about Japanese haiku.  The kids were thrilled to count the syllables in each poem.  When we composed our own haiku as a group, they were so excited!!!

Autumn leaves falling

Red, orange, yellow, and brown

Crunching under feet

Beowulf was not able to do any work except listen to stories and participate in discussions.  His behaviors are getting more extreme, and he struggles to even sit in a chair or hold a pencil.  The good news is that we did have a great meeting with his new psychiatrist (who is also Brother's psychiatrist.)  She proposed a reasonable 2-phase treatment plan, but, for the first time, we fought Medicaid and lost.  We had a good team on our side, and I am grateful for every phone call Dr. K--'s nurse made on our behalf.  It just wasn't enough.  It's a blessing we can turn to phase 2 of this plan that should be easy to implement in the new week.

Poor Beowulf is tired of feeling incompetent.  "Mom, please get me some meds," he asks.  

My heart aches for him.

Little Mister Frog woke up from his nap one day and decide to help Nature Angel with her school work.

We finally wrote thank you letters to our neighbor who led us in the tree identification field trip.  She also brought over some of her older field guides, and we are having such fun with them. 

Ladybug finished her 2nd of 5 literature units for the year!

We started a new bedtime reading system this week.

I'm worn out from the multiple reading/multiple tucking-in sessions each night.  We are now gathering all together.  

And Belle is included.

After a couple of years of being out of that loop, reading with me during the school day, she's a little bit peeved to lose her evenings to herself, but I am deeply concerned about her screen time, and I want to connect with her at the end of the day, so she's joining us.

We're reading Little Britches and The Singing Tree right now.  The reading is somewhat above the littlest ones' abilities to really comprehend, but I'm letting them bring a pillow and a blankie to the living room floor.  I also give them their bedtime meds before we start reading, and if they drift off to sleep to the sound of my voice, that's as much of a blessing as listening to the stories.

 

It's kind of knocked the personal prayer routine askew for the kids who fall asleep, but everyone gets turns to pray aloud over meals or at family prayer time, so I think they'll still grow up with the habit of prayer, and as they get older, they're more likely to stay awake and have personal prayers.

I feel like this is right for this season.

And I so love only having one round of tucking-in at the end of the evening.

The weather was to-die-for lovely all week.  I wanted to just dump everything and go play in the wild outdoors . . .

but we had commitments that needed to be honored.

(Homeschooling is not always about freedom.)

However, we took 3 good neighborhood walks earning us Hike #41 of 52.

87.96 miles +3.15 = 91.11 miles

 

It was lovely to be out each day!

 

And as we walked home on one of these walks, I realized how they are more than P.E. or even nature study.  They are really good exercises in self-control.  The kids are required to stop at corners and ask permission before running to designated landmarks.  It was when Brother asked, "May I run to the fire hydrant?" that I noticed he was having to control his impulses enough to ask before running and then to control himself enough to stop at the right place.  Then he had to control himself enough to either wait politely there or run back to me even when he wanted to keep running ahead. 

I knew these walks were important, but my eyes are opening more and more to just how important they are.

For Hike #42 of 52, we were able to get out and have a good 3 mile hike at James A Reed Wildlife Preserve on Friday morning.

It was cloudy and damp, but invigorating and satisfying as well.  We took a lot of photos . . . this is only a fraction of them. :)

91.11 miles + 3 = 94.11 miles

On Thursday morning, we were settled into a really good school rhythm when we realized there were a couple of really big dogs camped out in our yard.

This is Bear.

This is Poppy.

It's a very long story, but to sum it up, we spent 3 1/2 hours dealing with these dogs before we were finally able to reunite them with their owner via our local Pet Project organization.  They were both friendly and skittish, and they would not leave.  We could not bring Theo out of our house (poor doggie had to go potty sooooooo badly) with them around because he has terrible manners around other dogs, and they would not go away!  Neither would animal control help us at all.  The dogs were scary and sweet; they also seemed so in need of help.

We laid our books aside and threw ourselves into this project.

Super awesome thing?  Mr. S-- loves big dogs, and he was happy to help us with them, and he agreed with me that it was a great therapeutic experience for Brother to be involved in helping to serve the dogs and their owner.  

When their owner pulled up at our house, I suddenly realized why they might have chosen our house as their saving grace . . . we have a big white van, and so does he. :)

 

Another super awesome thing?  The owner tried to pay us for our time and help.  We refused outright, citing the times when others have kindly helped us.  We were just happy to pay it forward.  How grateful I am the kids were all part of that moment! 

Belle caught the kids soaking up the sun while they ate their snack one afternoon.

Baymax finished book B!!!  He's working on book C, doing a great job.

Brother had been reading the book to the babies just seconds before, but something happened between me picking up my phone and actually taking the picture.  Either way, it's an illustration of busy babies, busy Nature Angel, and Brother and Beowulf's sincere desire to help.

Little Mister Frog is learning too . . . this week he worked on self-feeding and spoon management. (I totally forgot his bib!)

The kids also watched Muzzy or Whistlefritz for Spanish lessons 4 days this week.  They're using and experimenting with Spanish more and more as the weeks pass, so the guilt I feel over that 20-30 daily minutes of screen time is somewhat assuaged.

Little Princess and Nature Angel work hard at all of their individual school.  We managed a week's worth of Mystery of History lessons covering Homer and other ancient figures in that same time period. 

 

Morning Meeting marches along without fail.  We've discovered a delightful resource by Refuge Church.  Their YouTube channel is not organized in any way I can understand, but they've made wonderful overviews of many (if not all) of the books of the Bible.  We used a few of them last week for Colloquium, and we so enjoyed the presentation on Isaiah (which tied in to one of our Morning Meeting lessons).

It really did feel like a crazy, interrupted week, but in writing, I can see how more good happened than I felt in the moment.

I'm really grateful, though, that I got our dinners prepped and frozen for the week ahead!  It was hard to not have them done this week (Halloween threw me off my groove.)