Life

Life just moves right along, doesn't it?

I'm currently in between 34 and 35 weeks along in this pregnancy and feel like I have so much more to do than I have time to do it in.  I guess that's what I get for my first experience of "nesting" ever!  ahwell...  I mean, I've felt that I wanted/needed to get some crocheting done before a new baby... but nothing like I've been feeling in this last trimester of this pregnancy.

The other day I pulled up this annoying short fence in my side yard.  Yeah, I just pulled it up.  Exhaling whilst pulling REALLY adds some strength - even in this preggie belly!  I was so super tired after that lame exertion, though, that I didn't get much at all done the next day.  Unbelievable!

I DID finish this baby's blanket, but have not made a jacket, shoes OR doll yet.  :(  I figure I'll aim at having the doll done by the time s/he is 18 months old... my girls haven't really noticed their's until around then.  Hopefully that'll hold.  I can't afford to get the yard right now anyway.

I'm working toward a goal of completely writing 12 Lessons of Life for this year.  I figure if I can get 8 done before the baby comes, I should be able to manage 4 in the 8 months after... at least, I think I will.  And I can be a bit like the Little Engine That Could when I put my mind to it.  So far...  dum-da-da-duuuumm... I've completely written 5 (or 6... I think it's 6, but if it is I didn't write down the title of the last one so I can - some day - print them out at the library or somewhere else).

New Year's resolutions and I don't do well together.  However, I do have a tendancy to start new things all year long... if I find something that I want to tackle, I go ahead and try.  If I find something in December of that sort, I make a point to begin on the tast/challenge/goal BEFORE the new year because I know how averse my psyche is to long-term effort on "New Year's" goals.  So... I started working on something I have long been very NOT good at doing with consistency.  Housekeeping.  I consider myself a homemaker and most of my homemaking efforts have, historically, been in making, not keeping things.  heeheehee  So, I'm striving to continue in the making (as much as possible) whilst adding in some keeping.

This week has been a bugger-boo, but I've still been doing all right.  Today I had to catch up on my schedule for sweeping (that's my single biggest job with the square footage of this house and all).  I think I've shared that I'm been maintaining well with laundry.  While there have been a few hiccups (laundry piling ridiculously - especially around the time the washer died and we took laundry to the mat... but even so, I was able to catch that mess up inside a week and I've kept it up really pretty well since then.  I've NOTHING to brag about considering I'm 35, I've been responsible for doing this (solely) for the last 5 years (or a little more) and it's only now that I'm even beginning to get a handle on it.  My point in sharing is this: if TORI can get it under some sort of control, I can tell you that ANYone can... and I mean anyone!!!  Seriously.

One thing that has helped me is my TJEd planning.  I haven't really mentioned that here.  A Thomas Jefferson Education has seriously rocked my world.  My paradigm for homeschooling (education in general) has been significantly ordered.  I say ordered because the principles in A TJEd are things I've been learning and feeling for some time, but didn't have a whole "system" in place to incorporate it any synthesize all that I believed.  Now I do and going through the process of getting it going is a sort of world rocking experience.  I'm glad.  It is what it is.  And it has been difficult, but glorious.  And I'm sure I will continue to experience the rocking for quite a while as the changes necessary are being implemented bit by bit... line upon line... and as I'm able.  It's SO liberating to be forgiving of oneself!

So, I've got a planner.  And in my planner I have a schedule for the basics of my day.  I have it written in through Feb and into March.  The basics include: morning and evening Devotionals, laundry (almost daily), dishes (daily; though they have YET to get completely done by me on a given day... my back starts screaming after washing about 1/4 of the dishes waiting for me on most days), FHE on Mondays, FGN on Sundays, Family Reading Time (daily), feed the chickens, piano practice (daily and, yes, for me... Ria has been doing HER practices MUCH more willingly since I started to catch up to her in skill!... I'm not happy that she's so very HIGHLY competative, but I'm trying to use what I know to inspire rather than require (with yelling too often in the requiring, at that) as TJEd suggests!!), and an area of my home to sweep each day.  The days that the area is smaller, I also have BIG MESSES right in there, so I can't give myself an excuse to leave those alone until the particular area rolls around the following week.  I know FLY LADY has some really great info on home maintenance... I did try her way... it just didn't work for me.  Perhaps jumping in to that program was a bit of going from 0-60mph in 2 seconds for an old Ford Pickup... (the pickup being me, of course).  I could do it, but then I'd fall apart after trying to maintain 60mph for a really unreasonably short amount of time.  So, I'm doing what I can do.  :)  And it's working for me, which is REALLY the key, afterall!

I did have to play catch up today, but I did almost catch up (dishes still not staying done... must work on that...).  It feels really quite good.  Oh, and I've decided to take trash back.  I'm not putting it by the door for Jess anymore.  Why should he be greeted by trash?  I mean, I can empty it and have the girls walk it out.  They may not love it, but neither do I... so we can do something we don't love together!  ;)

Obviously, I'm really happy about this subject... and, really, who IRL is interested?  Probably you aren't either... but if you've made it this far... THANK YOU!  :)  I appreciate your kind interest and care in/of me!

The baby is lovely.  S/he is a good mover and that is ALWAYS a comfort.  Baby also doesn't seem to ride in my lungs this time around.  NICE!  I'm curious to see if this is another girl after Kat's mold (I think she did  not ride in my lungs) or a boy - who would likely be a lot like Kat.  My midwife, when preggie with Tea (we do have the same midwife now, YEAY!) came to our home for a visit toward the end, as homebirth midwives do so they know where you live... and saw Kat REALLY as she is and told me, "You don't need a boy, you have HER!"  And that was after teasing me incessantly about needing a boy.  So, I bet, when we do have a boy, those two will be PEAS in a POD!  It should be interesting to see.  Kat just LOVES boys!!!

Ria is doing well.  She's getting tall.  I know it's inevitable, but it just feels like she's SO much taller lately.  I know her height does not compare to others her age, but it's all relative!  Her self-education is going well.  I'm planning out some ways to teach her better.  She loves Botony (we use Apologia for science and it ROCKS), which is the branch (pun intended) she's been studying this year.  She's read the book at least 9 times now... and it's not a teeny tiny book, either.  She is NOT hating piano currently, though she does try to complain here and there.  But then I point out that I'm doing _____ better than her and she needs to practice to catch up and she gets right to it.  hehehe  I know... not the best motivator.  I'm NEW to this whole inspire not require.  It's a WHOLE new paradigm for me... it's gunna take some time!

Kat is doing well.  She's more than half-way done reading the books listed at the end of How to Teach Your Child to Read In 100 Easy Lessons.  She LOVES to read and is doing well with it.  I'm excited for her to get into chapter books, which will probably happen by the end of next month!  She's still stumbling a lot and guessing a lot, but we just remind her that she's a GREAT reader, but a bad guesser and she works on sounding-out again.  Thankfully.  She loves handwriting class and has begun piano (with Mama).  I'm hoping to get up the guts to ask Ria's piano teacher to take Kat on some day... but I can at least get the really slow and painful stuff done since I can remember how Ria did it and work through it with Kat.  Kat definitely has more initiative and gets to work without a word from Mama.  Actually, she asks for permission and I often as not tell her no... I think this increases her desire.  I'm cool with using reverse psychology.  SO nice that it works!  :)  Especially since most of the time I say no it's really because my head or brain cannot handle another background sound.

My little follower is also a good leader.  Tea is a very good example of choosing the right, most of the time.  She does tend to follow her sisters' bad examples more than I would like, but for a 2 year old, she really does choose better than they do more often than not.  Prayer time is the exception lately.  We're working on that.  Tea LOVES to work.  She asks for piano practice almost every single day (which, in her case, means getting the book that she identifies as "her lesson book" out for her and putting it in place so she can gently pound the keys with a book in front of her), she also must work on handwriting and/or planning (in her planner) on a daily basis... especially if we are sitting down to do any of it.  Tea loves to read and if I sit down to do a reading lesson with Kat, I must also make sure to have the time to do a lesson with Tea.  So far we are on lesson 13 in the 100 Lessons book.  She is NOT reading that well, but I'm going to keep going for a bit longer before I start the book over with her.  We'll see what happens.  :)  She's had a LOT of peepee accidents lately.  I'm not sure if it's a behavioral, physically caused regression or emotional... I haven't been acting all that much differently, so I don't think it's emotional (at least not with me as the cause)... she's very good when we're out of the house, but has a tendancy to pee on herself a LOT when we're at home.  So much more laundry when she's as accident prone as she has been.  ahwell

Must run for now.  If you made it through all that, let me know!  ;)