What our days look like
heartofthematteronline is doing a blog hop this week where families post “A Day in the Life” and I thought I would join in on the fun.
*Disclaimer- This is only the 3rd day we’ve been doing this. A year from now I’m going to look back on this and laugh*
First of all, let me introduce you to my biggest challenge when it comes to homeschooling:
Cute, blue-eyed babe, soaking with drool, toddler who thinks that everything that he spies is his and all he needs to do to claim it is to shriek long and loud! He naps once a day and for much the rest of the time that he is awake, he’s frustrated and cranky because he wants something he can’t have or is trying to do something that isn’t working the way he wants it to. Schooling presents a bit of a problem for Isaac because Ethan and Audrey get to use things that he would love to get his hands (and mouth) on. Today I pulled out some Easter eggs to distract him! It ended up working pretty well.
I’m trying to work our routine to cause the least amount of Isaac melt-downs.
6:45- Kids get up, eat breakfast, clear their dishes from the table, get dressed, make their beds and wave, “goodbye” to Daddy.
We do morning chores. I start laundry and load the dishwasher. Ethan washes and dries the table. Audrey washes the bathroom countertop.
8:00- Ethan, Audrey and I do a reading from the Children’s Bible and we pray together.
Once that is done our official “school work” begins:
Update our calendar and days of the week and do our weather chart.
Table Time in the kitchen for Ethan and Audrey. They think they get to do whatever they want, but I fill their little craft bins in the evening with cutting and pasting projects. They spend a good amount of time on this because they love it and it helps with their fine motor skills.
While that is going on, I play with Isaac. We do puzzles, read books or I pull out something like the Easter eggs pictured above!
9:00- Snack time. While they are eating and Isaac is locked in his booster seat I introduce the number of the day and then I hide some printout of that number throughout the Living Room and have the kids look for them.
If the weather is nice, we take some time to play outside for a while. Some days I let them make up whatever they want to do and some days we play hot potato or variations on other kindergarten level games that we can do with the three of us.
11:00- Lunch/Clean Up
Isaac goes down for a nap after lunch. During that time we’ve been working on our ABC’s: singing, using flashcards, other fun letter games and do work through our Math-U-See Primer book. Then we all grab a pillow and blanket and find a comfortable spot for story time. I’m working through a list of fun read out loud books.
2 evenings a week, Nathan does more in-depth science with Ethan.
By Labor Day, we’ll have finished 10 days of basic alphabet fun and we’ll be ready to add to our routine working on writing the letter and number each week and focusing on letter sounds and starting to put letters together. Reading! Yeah!
We’ve got rythm, We’ve got music
Thanks to Jesse Wagner from Crown, we scored ourselves some free Higher Ground passes. I spent the day scrapbooking with Kimberely, but when I got home this evening, we all headed over to the Higher Ground Music Festival here in Winsted, MN.
Since the tickets to get in didn’t cost our family anything, we decided we would spend a little money so that the kids (and me) could play in the inflatables area.
Waiting to climb the dragon:
Climbing through the last obstacle at the end:
And then I made it through and pointed at the camera:
And then it was time for music. One of Ethan’s favorite groups was there to perform. Audrey and I were excited too.
This is the look of a boy who is at his very first concert:
Guess who else has rythm? He was jigging, clapping and kicking his feet the whole time.
A good time was had by all. It was, afterall, music our kids like that wont drive us crazy 
.
School Supplies, Snuggles, and Slobber
What our days have been full of this week:
School Supplies. The kids are obsessed with the new crayons. A bargain at 25 cents a box. I must admit I’m a sucker for brand new crayons, newly sharpened pencils and pristine notebooks with blank pages.
Snuggles. I mentioned earlier that we’ve been reading the Little House in the Big Woods book. This is what it looks like at our house. Notice the spot that’s just waiting for me!
Slobber. That would be Isaac. I pondered out loud, the other day, that Isaac’s diapers should be more wet with the amount of water and milk he drinks. Then I remembered that he’s been teething. We have three molars and an eye-tooth that have cut through in the last month. It has turned him into a puddle of drool. I changed his shirt 4 times today because of how wet it was. This picture doesn’t adequately capture the drool, but it’s a cute one of Isaac.
Walking!
I’m declaring Isaac a “walker” now. He’s transitioned to more than 50% walking and though he still wobbles, he is able to steady himself much better. No more baby in the house. We have a toddler.
He is also officially attached to his blanket, ducky and his pacifier. Every time we go to get him when he wakes in the morning or from a nap, he hands us all of his items and then raises his arms to be picked up. This is our third child that has slept with this ducky. Ethan and Audrey moved on to better (in their opinion) stuffed animals, but I think Isaac will stick with Ducky for longer. Nathan has always wanted a child to love this duck!
This morning we went to the beach in Waverly with some friends. The kids had a great time. Audrey waded in the water, Ethan played in the sand and Isaac destroyed everyone’s sand castles and sand creations. Fun was had by all.
Today was my last run before the race on Saturday! I really didn’t want to do my speedwork today, but I did it anyway. I did 5 miles total and I achieved my goal pace for my intervals and was happy about that. Now, I get to rest from running until Saturday.
It’s dangerous being a toddler
Isaac was pulling himself up on the computer chair and fell face-first onto it. A big crash and then a loud cry brought me running. I was only a few steps away, but Isaac moves fast and they is no way to protect him from every injury.
What a sad face! Other than that, we did have a nice day. Laundry done, menu made, grocery shopping done, and I ran this morning. It’s nice to have Ethan and Audrey home. They keep calling me “Nana” though!
Unexpected results
Isaac has been FUSSY lately. Teething at least 3 teeth right now. I know I mentioned it before and I sound like a broken record, but I’m just setting the stage for this post. I was not really looking forward to today. I thought that with Ethan and Audrey gone and not around to distract Isaac that I would be spending all day trying to keep him happy.
It ended up so much better than I feared! After we waved goodbye to Nathan, I went downstairs and pulled the play kitchen out of the storage room and brought it upstairs. I set it up in the corner of the kitchen. It was a new toy to Isaac. He had no memory of it and he played with it nonstop for over a half hour. During that time, I was able to scrub down the kitchen table and chairs (do you know how dirty chairs get when you have a toddler and a 3 and 5 year old?), clean the sinks, Windex the kitchen windows and scrub the kitchen walls! Did you know that having three young children can make your kitchen walls rather dirty at about toddler/preschool height level? It never occurred to me before having children of my own that this would be a task that I would have to do. Isaac played happily the entire time I did those tasks.
A little while later, he was tired so I laid him down. Because I didn’t have any other children to worry about in regards to schedules, I didn’t mess with waking him at a certain time to make sure he would nap when I wanted him to later. I figured that if he didn’t sleep, I would keep him up until lunch time and if he did sleep, I would let him sleep as long as he wanted. He needed it. He slept for about 2 1/2 hours. I couldn’t believe it. I was able to finish a few more tasks and relax a little. When he got up it was time for lunch and then I had time to run some errands with him since he wasn’t tired. When we got home from doing errands, I decided to take a walk. He fell asleep at the end of my hour long walk and stayed sleeping when I put him in his crib when we got home. He didn’t sleep long, but he had slept enough that he wasn’t cranky!
Day one of Isaac being an only child was a success! We’ll see what tomorrow brings.
It’s going to be lonely here
Ethan and Audrey are with Nana and Grandpa Fritz for a few days. They were so excited this morning. As soon as they got out of bed they wanted to leave. We weren’t planning to leaving until after lunch time. They were a little disappointed that they had to wait. I’m sure they will have a lot of fun! Sherlock, Nana’s dog, will have some excitement.
I’ve been trying to figure out what Isaac and I are going to do to occupy ourselves. I think we’ll take a walk tomorrow. I can’t do long walks during the day anymore because Ethan and Audrey don’t walk that fast and aren’t interested in going for a walk for the sake of getting exercise! I may take advantage of that option tomorrow. I’m a tiny bit tempted to round up all the kid/baby stuff we don’t need anymore and have an impromptu garage sale on Friday while I don’t have kids crying about getting rid of their things. That would be way more work than it would be worth for one day though. Another time, I guess.
Ethan and Audrey, I know you’re having a good time! I love you!
Isaac is keeping my company while you are gone.
Things I heard today . . .
“I’m about to say something I never thought I would say. I’m going to need more than one pair of exercise shorts because I’ve been working out EVERY day.” – Nathan
“That’s very convenient.” – Ethan using the work “convenient incorrectly. He uses it when he means to say clever.
“Can we go to the dumping bucket place?”- Audrey asking me every day about going back to the Dells.
“I know who your most favorite in the whole world is. It’s Daddy”. – Ethan to me.
“Hi.”- Isaac
“I need to tell you something.” – Audrey trying to get the attention of random strangers to tell them that she goes to swimming lessons or that she wants to go the “dumping bucket place”.
“If you poop in my pool, I’ll swim in your toilet.” – Not heard today, but Ethan and Audrey both say this because they heard the swimming instructor say it and they thought it was very funny.
“Nathan, will you please explain something about going to the bathroom to Ethan. There are certain things that his daddy would be able to explain better than his mommy. ” – from my own mouth.
“Da-deeeee”- Isaac when he’s feeling happy and talkative.
“Don’t go in there! It’s the kitchen!”- Audrey while watching the end of Beauty and the Beast. She was warning the townsfolk that came to besiege the castle that the knives would come after them.
Speedwork Wednesday
Another exciting post in which I discuss running. Woohoo! Don’t worry. I’m including cute kid photos to keep everyone entertained.
Once a week I do some sort of speed work run. Today was that day. I set up the workout in my Garmin Forerunner so I would be ready to go this morning. This is one thing that makes the Garmin awesome. I can program a workout into it so that I don’t need to be paying attention to exactly where the distances are that I need to switch my speed. My plan was to do a 1 mile warm-up run. After that, I repeated this 4 times: a half mile in 4:38 (9:15/mile pace) followed by a quarter mile recovery jog. Then I set it to finish up with a 1 mile cool down jog. That’s a total of 5 miles. I also programmed the Garmin to tell me if I was below my goal pace for my half mile intervals.
It worked like a charm. When my warm-up mile was about done, my watch warned me that I would be switching gears soon. It would do that each time I switched from my fast running to recovery or to my cool down as well. Super-duper!
I got up at 5:20 and started out. I was a little apprehensive about whether I would be able to actually accomplish my goal pace. The warm-up was easy. No surprise there! Then it came time to kick it into high gear for my first half mile interval. It was hard, but I did it! I finished in 4:33. I was happy to be able to slow down for the next quarter mile. Each new interval felt harder than the last, but I pushed hard. I was also determined to do my best to hit my goal pace and to run the entire 5 miles even though I knew I would feel like falling over at the end of my last fast run. The challenging thing about speedwork like this is that you work really hard for the middle 3 miles, but you also have a mile on the front end and the back end. You need to have something left to finish that last mile.
Yes, I did feel like dying at the end of my last half mile interval, but it was for good reason! I completed my half mile intervals in 4:33, 4:30, 4:36, and 4:34. And then I finished my last recovery jog and cool down mile. I’m still a little high from the feeling of accomplishment.
Now, how about some cute photos?
Isaac is not a full-time walker yet, but he did walk across the kitchen by himself yesterday. Crawling will be a thing of the past soon. His vocabulary is slowly growing. I heard him say, “Audrey” today. Poor Ethan. His name is harder to say. Audrey’s name sounds kind of like Daddy and Isaac says that all the time. It’s his favorite word. Speaking of vocabulary, Ethan used the phrase, “No Siree”, in a sentence yesterday. It made me laugh out loud!
And so begins our Staycation
Nathan is using up the last of his vacation from this last year and he’ll be home all week next week. Woohoo! Nathan’s only request was that it be a “low-key” week. I think I can handle that.
I took the kids to Hyland Park in Bloomington today. We had fun, but it would have been more fun if I had a big person along to go with Ethan so he could do all the big chutes and ladders that I couldn’t do while taking care of Isaac. We’ll definitely go back and bring along more helpers. There are three different play structures: one for babies/toddlers, one for Audrey/Ethan’s age and one big one with higher climbing things and bigger tubes for bigger kids. Ethan just wasn’t ready to brave it all on his own. There was also a spray area. That was a huge hit! Ethan and Audrey spent about 30 minutes running around in the water.
How about a cute photo of our big kids? I took this while we were checking out the the demolition of old Holy Trinity Elementary school. It was just a block from our house and that made it easy to pop over and see the progress up close.
amy
