One night as we were getting ready for bed I was pitching my idea to Tyler for how we would FINALLY get our lives in control. I do this every 6 weeks or so, come up with some radical idea that I hope will teach the children gratitude/ teach the house to clean itself etc etc. This term's idea consisted of stripping the toy room and bedrooms of basically everything not required for life, thereby showing the kids that most of the things they "need" are not needs at all and making them earn these things back one at a time through good behavior. Tyler talked me down from the ledge and we started discussing the behaviors that we were trying to get rid of, this led us to the realization that it was time Alex got her own room. Tyler had been suggesting this for months actually but our spare "office" is the room we affectionately call the deep freeze in the winter and I had deemed it uninhabitable for human life. But bedtime was getting that bad.
I took a day and dejunked the office. It was nice throwing things away and finding things and organizing our lives a little more. Everything had to be moved to either our overflowing room/Tyler's office or the dungeon and this meant a LOT of trips up and down stairs. So far things are grand. Alex LOVES having her own tiny room and bookshelf. Every night she sits on her bed (mattress on the floor) with her bathrobe on to keep out the cold and reads books to herself until she gets sleepy. She has started reading simple chapter books and loves Amelia Bedelia so in the mornings I usually find her sitting in bed finishing a book she started the night before. We go to the library a lot now. She is good at keeping her own space clean and the contention that we are avoiding by keeping the "pickys" and "slobbys" apart is amazing!
Heidi is absolutely thriving in her own space. She is pretty good at tuning just about everything out all the time, so most of the time I don't think she really notices that Quinn is even in the room now that she has the top bunk, unless Heidi is bored and wants to keep Quinn awake that is. When Heidi was on the bottom she had a space between her bed and the dresser that was about 3 inches wide and 12 inches long that she called "the treasury." She would keep all her tiny treasures there and Quinn knew just where to go to make Heidi mad. For now at least Heidi can keep all her treasures and books and animals and even herself up out of Quinn's reach and she feels like a Queen. I anticipate Heidi and Quinn being roommates for quite awhile as they both seem to need constant social interaction, whereas Alex needs time to herself daily.
Quinn doesn't seem to care about the change except the introduction of a big girl bed for herself. She taunts us from time to time by getting in and laying under the covers at bed time, but that child isn't going to sleep-train to a big girl bed easily, I'm not up to the task, and our house is a death trap for night waking Quinn. I love how effortlessly clean the room looks now that we have moved out a dresser and plenty of stuffed animals and blankets. I would never have thought we could pull off 3 kids in a room for as long as we did!
Tyler's truck is having transmission problems and so for the past week we have found ourselves once again a one car family. It's amazing that we lived this way for 8 years and now after 2 months of having a car per adult and then being thrust back to sharing a vehicle again life seems so difficult! Since there is no way I can even fathom being his taxi driver with 3 kids in tow, it leaves us homebound once again. We've taken some freezing walks to avoid cabin fever and were able to enjoy a few snow days- Alex thinks it's her responsibility to shovel the old neighbor lady's walk- only I'm not even sure if she still lives there as we haven't seen her at all since we got back! I think she is probably making someone happy though and it makes me very proud. I think we would wander the neighborhood more if Quinn would only keep her mittens on. You really need to cover every inch of skin in order to be even a little warm out here, and even in a snowsuit I can't seem to keep Quinn dressed for very long before she is mostly undone. This happens in the crib at bed time as well, we have to safety pin her zipper up on her footy PJ's or without fail she has stripped and taken her diaper off before falling to sleep. I'm tired of changing wet sheets.
This week I made cookies AND muffins AND dinner every night. I didn't think such a thing would ever be possible again the way I felt a month ago and it's so nice to be able to compare and SEE that I'm feeling better. I can feel the little guy kicking a lot of the time and it's still the sweet little thumps instead of the uncomfortable thuds I know will come later. My hips have started their deterioration but I usually only notice when getting out of bed. My belly button is officially now a nose. I feel so huge and super pregnant and then I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and am almost shocked at how not pregnant I look in comparison to how I feel. It's a long road yet.
Next week Tyler starts his internal medicine rotation which is located fairly close so hopefully even if the hours are bad it shouldn't be a long commute. Unfortunately the only parking available is street parking where he would have to feed the meter all day, or a $10 a day parking garage. It baffles me how these rotations are required and yet how unaccommodating a lot of these places are to the PA students! On the bright side, Tyler has been treated to lunch daily this month by his current cardiology Doctor. I told him he is basically living my dream, eating out every day for free at a new place (and these are sit down joints not fast food!) Sometimes I tease that the best part of my day is hearing what he ate for lunch.
Homeschool is going well, Heidi is inspired by Alex's sudden jump into reading (it's all she wants to do anymore) and I've caught her sounding out words in books and teaching Quinn the ABC's on the chalkboard. If she weren't so distractible I think she would a lot further by now, but she is still only preschool age so I'm not worried. Everything comes so easily for Alex that the real trouble is teaching her not to be discouraged when she doesn't get something the first time it's explained. As we get into more complex math concepts it's fun watching her brain have to stretch to figure things out- she doesn't think it's very fun though. The kids have decided to teach Quinn the Alphabet and it's signs and sounds and it's just adorable to hear little Quinn saying "A, Ahhhhhh, A" and trying to do the sign. While I love having my girls home with me and teaching them all of these important basics, in the back of my head I already find myself worried about next year and what we will do. There is so much more that I want to teach my kids, but being the Mom to 3 as well as the Preschool and First grade teacher makes it very difficult to do well at any of it. Or at least not 'Pinterest' well. I've learned to let go of a lot of things but I've also learned that the kids are old enough to pick up a lot of slack and we've made daily chores a part of our school routine which has really helped out. I really do enjoy homeschool and it is something that I want to continue for the foreseeable future but I'm also starting to see that it will depend a LOT on our situation in 6 months. Wherever we are I refuse to send Heidi to an all day Kindergarten although I think she would probably enjoy the social interaction and constant entertainment. I think public school would cause Alex more stress than it would be worth at this age although I can see that in the right school she would excel and learn a lot. She is very aware when children around her are making bad choices and being inappropriate and it bothers her. I'm glad she is developing a good moral compass and it gives me hope that she will be less of a sponge if put into the school system. Quinn is a tornado to put it nicely. She likes throwing play dough and dumping crayons and coloring on the wall. She won't play alone and needs constant attention from someone. She loves destroying the older girl's school work. We love her and she makes us laugh a lot, but we all really enjoy nap time.
The other day Alex picked up a calendar we had of Jesus and started reading the scriptures passages written on the various days. She was so excited about this that we gave her a Book of Mormon of her very own and she has treasured it. She reads a verse a day to the family which has gotten Heidi excited as well and so now she wants to read us our scriptures at night. Each morning after breakfast we read a chapter in the BOM and talk about what is being said. While the girls might start out bored or upset that we are doing scriptures, by the end they are always squished one on each side as we talk about what is going on. These are the best moments of my day. Alex has also added a subject to her folder regimen every day on her own accord. She reads a chapter in the children's Book of Mormon stories comic type book and then does a corresponding page in a 'Discovering the scriptures' workbook I got last year. Yesterday we had a discussion about who was a better leader Zeniff or Kind Benjamin and today she announced out of the blue that Abinadi was her favorite prophet! It's these moments that lay aside all my doubts about whether homeschool is right for our family. The freedom to choose writing assignments and spelling words from the scriptures, or take an hour and talk about how Nephi saw a vision of the founding of America and how God had a hand in the pilgrims and Columbus coming across the ocean. It offsets the bad days for sure.
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