More Seizures

 I was ready to post last week, but Ladybug had seizures--4 of them in 17 hours--and that rather rocked our world.

She's now on an anti-seizure med, and hopefully it will work without negative side effects.

I have a camera set up in her room that broadcasts to my phone that I keep on all night, so that I can be aware of her while she sleeps.  It is motion-sensitive, sending me an alert every time she moves enough to set it off.  (Thank goodness it's sensitive, but not TOO sensitive!)

In addition, we're doing a mental health therapy intake appointment this week; Ladybug has an EEG scheduled; we have our usual case management appointment; we're taking the last set of two kids into the PCP to establish care; and I've got to do a pre-intake interview for a comprehensive neurodevelopmental assessment for Lola.

Oh!  And we've got 7 prescriptions ready for pick-up.

Through it all, I'm doing my level best to do school with the kids each day.

These three have spent hours each day playing imaginary scenarios with their Mags and Lego mini-figures.

We are making good progress in high school literature.  We've finished Otto of the Silver Hand and we've read the first 3 acts of Julius Caesar.  

In Eastern Hemisphere, we're making progress through the text and the read alouds.  I did want to be done with the China unit by now, but with a whole week of illness two weeks ago, we're "behind" a little, but I think we're okay overall.  I switched things up so that only the high schoolers are part of the text/lecture/narrations, but all of the kids listen to the read alouds.  

We've just about finished up our unit on the skeletal system in human anatomy.  The kids have been coloring in their anatomy pages, and the high schoolers have written narrations.  Again, we're behind my plan, but we're making forward progress, and that's what counts.  One day we played "Name That Bone" for a few minutes, and everyone but Baymax cooperated with learning the scientific names of about 20 bones.  

Me:  pointing behind shoulder

Kids: Scapula!

Baymax: Shoulder blade.

M:  pointing to upper arm

Kids:  Humerus!

Baymax:  Arm bone.

And so on and so forth.

Honestly, all I could do was laugh and ignore him because he was actually having to work harder to say what he wanted to say than he would have been if he'd just joined in with everyone.  With any luck, he's learning underneath all of his bad attitude.

I am very grateful, though, that his bad attitude toward cursive has lifted!!!  He's now doing good work each day, and he's developing lovely cursive.

I really do think the key is not to fight him . . . to require the work and to require that it be done well in assessments, but not to fight him in the moment.

He eventually comes around when there's no wall to hit his head against.

Church youth activity one night was a Back-to-School party

In our Loop Rotation we are:

*up to 11 presidents in our US Presidents memorization project.

*working on a video of 150 common signs for ASL.  We're watching and practicing the same signs every day.

*finished with the first 4 Studio Art lessons from Under the Home.  The fourth lesson was really fun--drawing actual soccer balls on our table.

*working on chapter 2 of our book about mapmaking.

*still reading about insects in The Golden Treasury of Natural History.

All of the kids are moving forward in math.  Lola has skipped a few lessons, though.  And Little Princess says, "Pre-Calc is harder than I expected."  So I'm monitoring, motivating, and encouraging where I can.

Ladybug's seizures are hurting her cognitive function--at least for the short term.  She's having to fight pretty hard to get her skills back, and I'm having to practice patience (instead of indulging in panic) about watching and waiting for them to come back.  She's happier with her CLE Math 5 now than she was a couple of weeks ago (crying and saying she was stupid), and I feel like we're working together as a team to help her learn rather than me as enforcer and her as helpless victim.

Brother is now working on CLE Language Arts 5 because he's stable and able to work and this is his weakest area.  He gets pretty frustrated sometimes, but he wants to learn the spelling, grammar, and language arts skills.  

He's a miracle.

The other day, he got upset because he couldn't understand a grammar rule.  

He closed his book.

He went outside.

He shot some hoops.

He came back in.

He asked for help.

He completed the assignment.

A year ago, he couldn't have done that.

Two years ago, he would have torn the book up and run away.

A year before that, we wouldn't have gotten to the bookwork because he'd have been too dysregulated to even try.

Seriously.

A miracle.

Mister Man and Ladybug are also doing grammar lessons with Fix-It Grammar.  They just started this past week on Tuesday, and they are both getting to know how the lessons work.  

I think we're all grateful, they're short and sweet lessons.

Mister Man, Brother, and Beowulf have officially joined Civil Air Patrol!  Uniforms are still forthcoming, but they're attending meetings, have paid dues, and filled out forms.  Brother walks around the house practicing drill most of the time. :)

At a meeting

Little Princess and I set up a timeline/plan for her to get her next promotion, but we found out after the fact that the officer-level promotions are harder to do than we thought, requiring project with leader approval and the locating of mentors for each one!  I don't know how kids get through the promotions the way some of them do!  Fortunately, we have ideas for working on a couple of them at once, so that even though there are required 8 week gaps between promotions, she can have some projects completed ahead of time and ready to submit in each 8 week period. 

It's hard work!

Back on Labor Day, we did the Temple Run 5K!!

And then 10 of my kids went to the local amusement park together!

It was the first time for at least half a dozen of them, and they had so much fun!  The big girls were wonderful guardians, and I made a ton of food for them, and everyone watched out for everyone else, making sure of safety, comfort, and joy.

(I fell asleep for much of the day. Then Sir Walter Scott and I watched movies together while eating bowls of cold cereal.)

We had a sweet visitor one day.

I can't remember what I said I would call him!  
I'm going to have to go back through my past posts and find his blog name.

We also had some family come into town, so we had some extended family get togethers.  I didn't get any swimming photos (as usual), but I did take a few while we were hiking together.

We ate a lot of good food, laughed at a lot of old stories, played a lot of games, and generally strengthened family ties.

In the past two weeks, we also had two birthdays in the family, so we baked/decorated cakes, shopped, budgeted money, wrapped presents, and celebrated to the best of our ability.

Library days continue to be a favorite.

Dance is busy right now!  I'm sewing, organizing costumes, teaching, still choreographing, and hauling kids to and from practices.

It is a crazy combination of stress and joy.

I know the work is worthwhile, so I keep going.

And I think that catches us up to the present.  It truly is my goal to write each week, but life has been throwing me curveballs that I've struggled to catch.  We're definitely in that part of homeschooling when I wonder if I'm good enough for my kids.

My mom tells me I am.

And I did need to hear her say that to me.

Thanks, Mom.