A Week, Briefly (2/1/21)

This life-size picture was a collaborative effort completed by the girls' church youth group.  Each girl was given paint and a coded sheet that told them what dot of paint to put where.  They had no idea what the finished product would be.  This year's theme for the youth is A Great Work.  The project was to show them that their little dots added to other little dots could make something beautiful.  It was revealed at their youth group meeting this week, and it will be put on display at the Independence, MO church visitor's center.

 

 I tried to show my kids the pattern in the date for the first day of this month.  (I get a kick out of dates that make patterns.)

Not one of my kids was interested!

Oh, well.  I can still enjoy the patterns all by myself. :)

 

Last year we purchased flowers for our garden.  It was expensive.  This year we purchased seeds and seed starting kits, and we're growing tons of our own flowers that will be ready to plant in our garden in the spring.  So far we have snowball marigolds, candy box impatiens, and a variety of zinnias.  

 

Thinking we had room in the budget for replacing the revolting carpet in our dining room (really, who carpets a dining room!?!?), I tore it all out.  Before we headed to pick up the new flooring, Sir Walter 

Scott did a double check on our banking site and found we'd made a mistake in our figuring . . . actually it was my mistake because I'd checked the current balance instead of the balance with pending transactions.

Now the carpet was out, and we had particle board subfloors, (Why did we buy a house built in the 70s?) and no money to buy new flooring.

There was no way to eat or school in that room (we spill constantly), so we squeezed into the kitchen for the week.

I thought it would be no big deal.

It was a big deal.

(First world problem, I know.  But we live in the first world.)

Making and counting play money was a hit this week.   They played store, buying and selling library books!

 

Bickering rose to a high level for the week as kid argued over seats (we had to change seating often depending on who was present for meals), argued over bumping elbows, argued over being too tall or too short for the provided seating, argued over . . . everything.

Then, too, we had psych appointments for both Brother and Beowulf, and they both had med changes.  The changes will be blessings (working toward simplification of med regimens for both), but the adjustment periods are always hard.  Beowulf seems to be very sensitive to med changes, and he alternated between chair-throwing tantrums and curling up in fetal position in hidey holes.

It hurts my heart to see that happen to him and know it is being caused by the meds he takes, but the meds do work, and I know that in a week or two, he'll be thriving again.

We've also begun the process of "fading" for ABA therapy.  Brother has met all of his goals, and he's functioning the best we've ever seen, so we're doing new things in his therapy that will help make a permanent transfer of awareness from the therapist to Brother and me.  I know it is time to do this, but Brother and I are both grieving the end of something that has been such a blessing, and Brother's behaviors have reflected that grief.

Through it all, we've done our best to have Morning Meetings, individual school time, geography and nature studies, and evening reading.

Nature and Courage-themed books we read this week. Some of them worked for both themes.

We really finished up Thailand and re-started India.  Books about India were still pending on our library account, so we streamed The Blue Umbrella.  It was very interesting and very different from what we're used to in movies.  It was a great introduction to India for us all.

Sitting still during the movie offered me the privilege of holding a tired baby until he fell asleep in my arms.  Double win!

 

And I have a correction to make in last week's post!  I accidentally included Once a Mouse in our Thailand book photo; it should have been saved for India.

We even managed a walk this week!

This picture is so delightfully fake!  Just seconds before I shouted, "Smile and look at the camera!" kids had been crying, stomping, pouting, and generally being miserable at being forced outdoors.

But nature worked its magic, and we all felt better (if not completely ourselves) by the time we headed home.  This is jelly lichen.

 

The next day we managed an afternoon at the park!

 

Then we had days of mucky, wet snow that fell and melted, turning our yard into a mud pit.

Thank goodness for Legos and Rummikub and Kiwi Crates this week!

Admittedly, Rummikub is more easily played without a toddler "helping."

This is the only crate we got a picture of--a combination science/art project about capillary action.  But the kids did 3 of them (left over from a couple Christmases ago).

I got paid for babysitting at the end of the week, and I ran out immediately to buy and install our dining room flooring!

It's gorgeous, and it is easy to clean.

With the next check will come more finishing, and in the next month or two we'll be able to call our dining room/school room complete!