A Fly On My Homeschool Wall

  Everyone but Pixie--and she watched the live stream. That's Grandma in the front--Grandpa was in California taking care of a rental property. The graduation was long and lovely.   Six musical or dance numbers and three speeches. The presentation of 36 graduates individually with slide shows and personal bios read aloud as parents presented the diplomas. Tributes to military family members. Tributes to the graduation coordination committee. Tributes to two "graduating mothers" who were presenting diplomas to their youngest children after having homeschooled 40 years and 25 years respectively. It made me do some math . . . by the time I graduate Baymax and Lola, I will have homeschooled for 30 years. Pretty cool. We had about a bajillion photos taken, but we're waiting for the photographer to edit and release them, so they will have to be posted sometime in the future. In the meantime, Nature Angel had her last day of homeschool on Thursday of this week. We were going...

 In many ways, it was a regular week of school.   Morning Meetings, bedtime reading, history with the high schoolers, history and literature with the younger kids, math for all of those still finishing, copywork for those still finishing, various independent work for the high schoolers. And another one is done!  Mister Man finished Pre-Algebra. We did go to the psychiatrist for both blood work and a follow-up appointment.  Brother is very stable, so we're not messing with his meds, but Beowulf is still struggling, so we tweaked one med and are hoping for good results in the coming weeks. These two boys are now readers!  They read the whole time we were at the lab and in the psychatrist's office.  So many people commented on how cool it is that they can and do read so intently. Lola is a pretty big concern right now because she's so angry and so easily provoked that she's spending too much time away from us all in order to calm down.  I totally app...

Our week was absolutely hijacked by medical needs and working with our new insurance.   The learning curve is real. I'm not going post pictures or tell the whole story, but it was hard work. (One day reduced me to tears.) Baymax had an eczema flare-up that was so bad he actually said, "If I have to live like this, I don't want to live."  He couldn't sleep; he couldn't eat; he couldn't function.   I found him in bed one morning, body lifted off the mattress because he was arched so tightly in pain, tears falling back into his pillow. How grateful I am that we have medicines that give him relief.  He's healing nicely now, and he's glad to be alive--as any 10-year-old child should be. Then Ladybug was doing gymnastics in the church gym, and she fell . . . hard on her right arm. She was in so much pain, and her arm was so swollen that I suspected it was broken.  I splinted it overnight and gave her pain meds.  In the morning we got x-rays at urgent ca...