A Fly On My Homeschool Wall

 The kids were so excited for Monday evening because Dad was coming home from work to take them to the park for an evening of playing baseball.  They even got to pick up their favorite friends along the way.  We don't have any pictures because Sir Walter Scott forgot his phone, but that just means he was able to participate fully without stopping to frame a photo. Everyone came home sweaty, tired, hungry, and happy.   I had our usual Monday night huge pot of pasta ready and waiting for them as they walked in the door. Earlier in the day, our case manager made his weekly visit, but this time he had a nurse with him because she did some digging into files and found that we'd not had a nurse visit at any time in our history with this service, so she started fixing that lack with Brother.  He got weighed and measured in various ways, and we spent a good part of the afternoon answering questions about health habits and history.   I am delighted to repo...

Baymax threw a huge tantrum--1 hour 40 minutes long--this week over having to try to do something new. When he actually used words, I listened to his concerns. I validated everything he said. I acknowledged that he would "be bad at it" at first and reassured him that the goal was not being good, but just trying. And I ignored everything that wasn't rational. He screamed. He sulked. He hit me.  (At which point I got Sir Walter Scott involved.) He said many rude things. He sulked some more. He screamed some more. He finally settled down, tried it, did it perfectly in under 2 minutes, and he was free. That's kind of what the whole week felt like. We accomplished a lot, and we were good at it!  It just seemed to take a phenomenal amount of wasted energy to get to the good stuff. Monday Sir Walter Scott took the youngest 6 on a field trip into downtown Kansas City.  (I stayed home with Nature Angel, Little Princess, and the daycare babies.) They rode the streetcar all over...