Laundry and Groceries

This entry goes in the category of "if I don’t write it down, I’ll forget it", and I don’t want to forget little things like this . . .

There are some things you never expect to find yourself rooting around for in the laundry.  Hannah has taken a rather strange liking recently to a most unexpected object.  She likes bullets.  Now we always keep our guns locked up, out of reach, etc.  But bullets, being harmless in and of themselves, are different.  There is usually a bullet or two to be found on daddy’s nightstand, and Hannah likes them.  This is the girl who once became obsessed with putting things in her "pocket", whether she has a pocket or not.  So she asked me a few days ago if she could put one of daddy’s bullets in her pocket.  I told her to ask daddy.  She did.  And ever since then, when I do laundry, I have to hunt for the bullet in the toe of Hannah’s tights.  This is the "pocket" in which bullets ought to reside, according to her little thoughts.  I asked her why she liked them, and she said because they remind her of wedding rings.  So if you come to our home for lunch, don’t be surprised if my two year old makes a clunking sound with each step of her left foot!  It’s just her wedding ring bullet.

Isabelle is growing up so much, and loves being told that she will run a lovely house someday.  She glows when I tell her what a good mommy/wife she’ll make, and how I can tell because of what a help she is to me.  Today’s evidence was the groceries.  It was a late shopping trip, so everything stayed on the floor while we ate.  She finished lunch first as I was talking to daddy.  I didn’t notice at first, but she had sweetly taken the liberty of putting the groceries away for me.  It only took me ten minutes or so to "rearrange" the yogurts in the fruit crisper drawer and such!

Tracing Letters

Here’s the link to the tracing font I mentioned in my last post:  http://www.billybear4kids.com/fonts/fonts.htm . The one we use is "Zyia Learns Letters".There are others available – a few more free ones if you do a google search (actually I found all sorts of free pre-k and k stuff online with just changing the search terms), and then of course plenty you can buy.  But this one suits our needs perfectly.  After you download it (which was very tricky for me to figure out – thankfully my mom knew how to get a file unzipper online for free also, so you might need that like I did), you have to add it into your fonts in the control panel (the Help menu should tell you how).  Then you can just use it like any other font in Word or your writing program. I always use it in a pretty large size since Isabelle’s just learning.  But of course it’s really nice to be able to make it smaller as her writing improves. One thing I realized after I started using this is that I could have accomplished basically the same thing by using any normal font, but making it light grey instead of black (kind of like the light crayon strokes to trace in the early Handwriting Without Tears books).  But in any case, Isabelle loves it, and she particularly likes "dots" as I made them for her by hand for awhile.  The font saves me a lot of time! Some things we use it for are:

I print out a "letter practice" page for whatever letter(s) we’re working on, or for any she needs particular practice on. It’s amazing – she could not seem to make an "s" before tracing, now she’s a pro at them even without the tracing letters.

Isabelle likes to write letters to her grandmas, aunties, etc.  She dictates  to me what she’d like to say to them, I type it for her and then she actually gets to write the whole letter herself (this works great for her, as she doesn’t tire of writing things, so she’ll write decently lengthy ones)

Thank you letters – this worked great for these letters after Christmas; once she finished writing all the letters, she got to decorate them how she pleased with stickers, "art" markers, etc.

Helping her learn her name and her sisters’ names, or recognize simple phrases like "I love you"

I make up little stories (very simple, like the first BOB books set, but shorter) that I know Isabelle can read the words in.  Then she can write them and read them.  I started this when I realized Isabelle could read the words in a sentence, but didn’t realize they went together to form a (miniature) story.  The first one I did was: Cat and dog ran fast.  She wrote it, then read it, then I asked her all these questions to help her see that it was a story: what did cat and dog do?  who ran fast? how did they run?  The light bulb went on for her after that, which was very fun to see! Of course she didn’t have to write on tracing letters to figure out the concept of reading a story, but it worked!

You can make any kind of worksheet you’d like with these letters.  Maybe paste on pictures (or have the little ones draw the pictures, if they’re the artistic sort), then print the letters for the word.  Or print a big "A" and a bunch of words which start with "a". Capitals and lowercase, numbers, etc. I don’t really have any pre-k worksheets that fit what Isabelle’s doing letter-wise (they’re either too easy, or not quite what we’re working on, etc) and I didn’t worry about it as I had no plans to use worksheets in pre-k.  But as I have a daughter who LOVES to write and would practically do it all day if I let her, this font is great fun for us!

Tagged

Well, I lack the energy to make any real post, as I’ve been in bed with a horrid case of influenza all week.  Thankfully, in spite of a few days of high fevers (and a tepid bath which certainly made me understand better what little Isabelle goes through when she gets high fevers) the baby’s heartbeat is still strong at 170! Anyway, my sweet husband brought me his laptop so I could check my email, and I saw that Baptist Mommy has tagged me.  I think I have the mental energy for this. . .

1) ONE HOMESCHOOLING BOOK YOU HAVE ENJOYED 

Teaching The Trivium

2) ONE RESOURCE YOU WOULDN’T BE WITHOUT
My Bible

3) ONE RESOURCE YOU WISH YOU HAD NEVER BOUGHT

Dick and Jane books

4) ONE RESOURCE YOU ENJOYED LAST YEAR
Well, I’ll justify picking three since I only have preschoolers and thus these are just little books and such.  The girls all LOVE Animal Babies In Ponds And Rivers, and I love the short intro to a few different animals, and the photographs. We all love My Mommy, My Teacher by Johannah Bluedorn.  Lastly, I LOVE the free downloadable tracing/dot font I found – Isabelle loves practicing her letters this way, and it’s amazing how much she’s learned to write.

5) ONE RESOURCE YOU WILL BE USING NEXT YEAR

Winter Promise "Animals And Their Worlds" pre-k/k package – we’re excited about it!

6) ONE RESOURCE YOU WOULD LIKE TO BUY
I’ll pick a couple.  Someday I’d like to look more into Tapestry Of Grace or Mystery Of History.  I’d like to get Our Young Folk’s Josephus in the next few years.  And eventually I’d like to get the Beautiful Feet horses unit study, as I love horses and Hannah seems to be following me in this.

7) ONE RESOURCE YOU WISH EXISTED
The absolutely *perfect* curriculum-in-a-box. One with a classical style in the Bluedorn vein, every resource which would end up being my personal favorite, every day’s lesson planned out for me in a way that I could use, etc . . . It never hurts to dream .  . .

8) TAG ANOTHER HOMESCHOOLER, OR A FEW . . .

youngmommy

 

Now I have to cut and paste a funny story that my mom sent me today – it gave me a much needed smile:

 

A farmer named Clyde had a car accident. In court, the trucking company’s fancy lawyer was questioning Clyde. "Didn’t you say, at the scene of the accident, ‘I’m fine,’" asked the lawyer.

 Clyde responded, "Well, I’ll tell you what happened. I had just loaded my favorite mule, Bessie, into the…"

 "I didn’t ask for any details," the lawyer interrupted. "Just answer the question?  Did you not say, at the scene of the accident, ‘I’m fine!’?

Clyde said, "Well, I had just got Bessie into the trailer and I was driving down the road…."

 The lawyer interrupted again and said, "Judge, I am trying to establish the fact that, at the scene of the accident, this man told the Highway Patrolman on the scene that he was just fine. Now several weeks after the accident he is trying to sue my client. I believe he is a fraud. Please tell him to simply answer the question."

By this time, the Judge was fairly interested in Clyde’s answer and said tothe lawyer, "I’d like to hear what he has to say about his favorite mule, Bessie."

Clyde thanked the Judge and proceeded, "Well as I was saying, I had just loaded Bessie, my favorite mule, into the trailer and was driving her down the highway when this huge semi-truck and trailer ran the stop sign and smacked my truck right in the side. I was thrown into one ditch and Bessie was thrown into the other. I was hurting, real bad, and didn’t want to move. However, I could hear ole Bessie moaning and groaning. I knew she was in terrible shape just by her groans. Shortly after the accident a Highway Patrolman came on the scene. He could hear Bessie moaning and groaning so he went over to her. After he looked at her, he took out his gun and shot her between the eyes. Then the Patrolman came across the road, gun in hand, looked at me, and said How are you feeling?"

"Now what would you say?"

 

 

 

On Can Openers And Peaches

Here’s a fun analogy for you:  I was recently reading Joy At The End Of The Tether, by Doug Wilson, which is a little book study on Ecclesiastes (one of my favorite books of the Bible, so I was pretty excited to read this study on it).  One thing that stuck out to me and so opened my eyes was an analogy he used.  There are many things in our lives which from an outside view seem completely not enjoyable.  Heck – there are many things in our lives which from our inside view are not enjoyable. These can be small like cleaning toilets, to things like having a painful terminal illness, to simply living a life of utter poverty!  We all have things (sometimes many things) in our lives which are difficult – that is the world in which we live. Yet somehow, some of the poorest people I’ve met in my life, with the fewest earthly enjoyments (in Romania, Mexico,  and Cuba specifically), have exhibited the most visible joy – and especially the most visible joy in worshiping our God!  I’ve often wondered at this, and been convicted in the times I’ve lacked that visible joy which I ought to be characterized by.  But I got off track.  Back to the analogy (which helped me to understand this ‘joy regardless of circumstances’ thing).  Doug compared our earthly blessings to cans of peaches.  One man could have two cans of peaces, while a ‘rich’ man could have ten thousand cans of peaches.  But the difference is that the ability to enjoy our blessings is also a blessing bestowed upon us by God.  So you might meet many a ‘rich’ man who is far from happy, but know a poor man who lives in joy. God bestows upon His people the blessing of a can opener. So look at the man with two cans of peaches who is blessed with a can opener. He is able to enjoy the sweet goodness of the blessing of those peaches because of the further blessing of the can opener.  That ‘rich’ man with thousands of cans of peaches may have no can opener – he can’t enjoy his riches!  So the conclusion of the matter is that we fear God; thus we can eat, drink and be merry here in this world where there is nothing new under then sun, where everything is vanity, where we are surrounded by many difficulties that could make it seem impossible to find enjoyment, and where the world might look at our life and think it’s the opposite of enjoyable. . . because we are God’s beloved. He has gifted us with a can opener.  So pondering all this made my prayer that God would bless me with the can opener – that He would grant me enjoyment in this life, even when it is wearying work.  He has promised strength for the weary, rest for the weary, and encouraged us not to grow weary in well-doing.  I find His burden is light (as He promised) when I am abiding in His love, for He graces me with the ability to enjoy this life far more than those who may have many more “eartly enjoyments” might be able to.  I want to enjoy the cans of peaches He’s blessed me with, few or many!

Conversations With Hannah

I have a habit of sometimes “numbering” my conversations, to help me remember all three (or however many) things I need to tell Matt (ie.  “Hi honey, number one: court is cancelled for tomorrow; number two: Isabelle would like you to bless her; number three: I hope you sleep well, etc).  Isabelle has picked up this habit, and it does sound rather goofy to have “numbered” questions from a four year old.  But tonight Hannah tried it, and we were laughing so hard that I realized I had to write it down . . .  

Hannah raises her hand at the dinner table (we have them do this till they’ve finished their food, so they don’t get too distracted by talking and not eat; keeps the table orderly, too).

Mommy: “Yes, Hannah?”

 Hannah: “Mommy, number one: why is my pink phone on the table?”

 Mommy: “I picked it up off the floor for you, so you wouldn’t lose it, honey.”

 Hannah: “Oh. . . Number five, are there any more broccoli trees left? (this said with a giddy grin as she LOVES broccoli!)

Mommy and daddy: “Yep, there are so many trees left it’s like a forest!  When you finish your rice you may have some more.”

Hannah, a few minutes later: “Hey mommy, number thirty, may I please look at the broccoli trees forest??????” (looking at the yummy food she could have helps her to be motivated to eat the stuff she’s not so fond of.)

So I thought her version of numbered questions was funny enough.  Later I stood corrected . . .

Hannah, ten minutes after dinner, in a rather sad and pathetic voice: “Mommy, my tummy hurts; I ate too much broccoli trees and I have a bellyache.  Would you please kiss my poor little tummy?” (yes, these were her words)  So I kissed it, and said she could get a kiss from daddy too, and two kisses would surely make it feel better.

Hannah, overheard talking to daddy: “My tummy hurts, would you please kiss it?” 

Daddy: “Oh, why does your tummy hurt?”

Hannah: “There’s a big, bad dragon eating it!”

 I LOVE two year olds!!!!!

Hugs And Snuggles

Aren’t hugs wonderful? I love hugs from Matt, and all my girls of course, but I’ve come to realize recently what a wonderful hugger Naomi is.  The other day I was feeling down, and she came up and hugged me.  The funny thing about her is you can rarely hug only once.  After I happily thanked her for the hug, she leaned in for another one.  Then she smiled and leaned in and gave me another big squeeze. . . And another . . . yet another.  This went on for ten minutes or so! That’ll give you a boost in the spirit!

 Since I’ve felt so scattered and hectic lately, and haven’t even been keeping up well with our reading aloud/cuddle times, I’ve been trying to snuggle and rock with each of my daughters for a minute before I put them down for a nap.  I sing a favorite song and look in their little eyes. Though it’s only a few moments with each, I do so love it, and highly recommend it.  What a sweet way to get off my feet for a moment, give some special  and much needed one-on-one time to my little ones, receive sweet snuggles myself, and get to look in their lovely little faces, being reminded how lovely they really are (a fact which can be far too easy to forget when one is weary!).  I suppose it’s the little things like this that can make each day (even difficult ones) sweet.

And it’s nice, too, when one of my little ones seems to be needing some extra love and attention, to just keep them up an hour or so later than all the other ones.  We did that last night with one girly who seemed a bit off.  She snuggled with us in our big, pluffy bed for awhile, then went to bed with a smile on her face!

Aslan's Feast

The other day I was feeling very stressed out (this seems to be a common theme for me lately – hopefully it will pass soon!), and I was telling Matt that I think my life would have been much easier had I simply become a nurse, bought myself a cute little cottage on some beach, and a horse to ride.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always dreamed of being a wife and a mother, and I know I would have struggled with dreadful loneliness had God not provided these wonderful things (He sets the lonely in families, after all).  And I am incredibly thankful for my husband, and for the high (if sometimes scary) calling of raising my girls up into godly womanhood.  But it certainly cannot be called an easy task, and I was feeling particularly exhausted and overwhelmed by it on this day. I will admit that there are plenty of times a life of ease and pleasure seems so much more appealing. After all, what would have been so inherently sinful about my little dream cottage and horse on the beach?  Not that I would ever want to give up my family, but I did so long for the though of rest and ease! Well, my brilliant husband responded perfectly, giving me much to think about without in any way lording it over me how much more logical and wise he is (though I’m certain he is!).  He said “Would you rather have the witch’s Turkish delight or Aslan’s feast?”  That pretty much stopped me in my tracks. I couldn’t think of anything to say to that.  Of course I’d rather have Aslan’s feast!  And of course the Bible teaches us how the man shall be blessed who fears the Lord – we are amazingly blessed!  But sometimes (I suppose most times – to whom much is given, much shall be required of him) those blessings have much attendant work.  And Matt reminded me that the world’s idea of a life of rest and pleasure is a lie.  It is not fulfilling the way it may seem to be. He reminded me that this is our season for work, not yet our season for rest and ease. But that season WILL come, and how I do long for it!  So while there are days (more than usual right now) in which I fight against coveting that little cottage and horse on the beach, God has placed me in a blessed season of work for today.  I only pray He will give me the grace and strength to truly LOVE that work and do it with joy for Him.  And one day, He will bring all of us, His children, into that perfect, perfect feast and rest – our perfect home with Him! Glory be!

Agent Arnez

I’ve discovered a marvelous invention.  I was playing around with the screen saver on my computer and found I could set it to display a slide show of My Pictures.  It’s perfect, as the computer is usually on screensaver, and the girls LOVE wandering into the yellow room and finding pictures of all of us randomly displaying on the screen.  It used to be that if I was switching the laundry and all became quiet, that some mischief was afoot.  Not so now . . . now it usually just means that one or more of the girls have found and become mesmerized by the pictures.  They love them, and so do I because it enforces the fact that they are not to touch the computer – if you touch anything the screen saver stops.  They desperately don’t want it to stop, so they’re especially careful now not to touch anything.  The other day I was changing Juliette’s diaper in the bathroom, and Isabelle was watching the pictures.  She started excitedly calling to me “Mommy, look!  It’s Agent Arnez! It’s Agent Arnez!” Now I’m sure I was tired, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out who Agent Arnez was.  I assumed it was a coworker of Matt’s, but he doesn’t work with any agents, just officers.  Some of his coworkers have left to be agents, but I didn’t think Isabelle would know that. So I kept asking her who Agent Arnez was, and how she knew him.  She kept saying “You don’t understand, it’s Agent Arnez, it’s Agent Arnez!  Come see mommy, it’s Agent Arnez!”  At this point I was fully confused, because even if she had met a friend named Agent Arnez, I had no idea how he’d made such an impression on her for her to be so excited at the picture. Then she started saying strange things like “No mommy, it’s Agent Arnez; they’re blue, they’re blue, and the mommy . . . !”  After thinking for a moment that one of us was insane, the lightbulb came on and I tentatively asked “do you mean you are seeing ‘eggs in our nest’, Isabelle?”  “Yes, mommy, come see, it’s eggs in our nest!”  Mystery solved: the elusive Agent Arnez was nothing more than the lovely blue eggs a little robin laid in a nest outside our house last year!

On Angels And Babies

Isabelle’s newest fascination is angels.  This fascination in no way compares with her previous ones, as I’ve never seen her so fixated on one thing.  Every day (and I do mean every day), she tells me of her dreams from the night before (thought sometimes I think they’re daydreams, as she has them at naps too – naps in which she never actually sleeps).  They always involve some sort of angel vs. danger activity, and she’s usually an angel herself. 

Throughout the day, I’ll hear her seemingly talking to herself while she plays.  When I ask her what she said, she will reply something like this: “Oh, I was just talking to Gabriel and the other angels”. 

Any time a song has a line in it that uses the word angel, her little head perks up, and she informs everyone within hearing distance that it’s her favorite part of the song because it said “angel”.

When she’s buckled in the car, she often asks me if I can see how she tucked her “angel wings” above her buckle.

She loves to “fly” around the house doing “angel things” (usually fighting some sort of un-named danger).  Though when I consent to fly with her, she always corrects how I fly – apparently I don’t fly in proper angel form.

I think she likes to use this fascination to get around the girl factor.  Let me explain.  Since her daddy is a cop, and she is a little daddy’s girl, she often wants to go help daddy at work, or be a little warrior and fight in some imaginary war.  Now she knows it’s usually rather silly (to put it mildly for the purposes of this story) for ladies to be cops or go to war (yes, this is my firm opinion on the matter!), but she can’t fully erase the desire to fight danger and protect those she loves (a very good desire indeed!).  So now when she tells me how she was the one to rescue, for example, a rather large, strong, marine friend of ours in one of her random dreams, she has the perfect excuse:  “It’s because I’m an angel, and the danger was lions and wolves, and since I was an angel I could shut their mouths and rescue everyone from the danger.” The whole day after this dream she’d walk around the house, and every so often put out her hand making the “no” sign with her fingers.  Then she’d look up with a coy smile to see if anyone noticed.  If she caught anyone’s eye, without fail she’d say, “Do you know what I was just doing?  I was closing the lion’s mouth so he wouldn’t be a danger”.

Hmmm . . . I really need to do a good little Bible study with her about what is actually taught about angels.  Wonderful though they are, I’m pretty sure she has a fairly skewed view of them –  ladies who fly around in lovely dresses doesn’t seem to be quite the Biblical picture we’re given, endearing though it may be in my little four year old J

In other happenings we tried to hear the baby’s heartbeat, but it was a little too early.  For a second we got a blippit of 130 (which would make my midwife guess it’s a boy if it is that rate . . . hmmm. . .)  We’ll have to try again in a week or so.  Tonight I’m going to try Irish Dance class if I can keep from collapsing from exhaustion!  Ooh, and thanks to Christine I found the pregnancy tickers, so I can always see (approximately) how big my littlest one is!  I must say it is fun always being pregnant with my dear friend!  EVERY time I call to tell her I’m pregnant, she inevitably is too!  Well, we still can’t catch up with them, since they had twins before we were married, but in any case it’s fun!

New News

Shall I let you in on a little secret?  Well the secret is that I am terrible at keeping my own secrets!  I bought Matt a really neat medieval chess set for Christmas, and I SO wanted to tell him what it was a million times before the day came.  He loved it, and I’m glad I was able to actually surprise him, but still I had desperately wanted to tell him.  So now you know that I have a hard time keeping my own secrets (others’ are different, I should think). Thus I shall tell you a little surprise we discovered recently.  We have a little bun in the oven!  While we weren’t quite expecting this just yet (as I wrote about recently), it is such a blessing from our Father, and we rejoice in the continued fruitfulness He’s given us.  I must admit this is part of the reason for my scarcity in blogging lately (and if there is future scarcity on my part, I do apologize, but it can’t easily be helped!)  For some reason things that take me twenty minutes or so when I’m not pregnant (like eating or doing dishes) take me about forty-five minutes when I am pregnant!  I’m not sure why this is, but if I try to speed up to normal pace, I usually end up breaking something!  I would appreciate your prayers over the next few weeks, as I am feeling rather sick most of the time, and exhausted pretty much all of the time – funny how I forget pregnancy does that!  I’ve also been thrown for a loop emotionally lately, and I’m assuming it’s all part and parcel as well.  I don’t want to excuse poor attitudes in myself, calling them hormones, but at the same time there was such a distinct change in my emotional state right around the time the baby was conceived that I can’t discount it.  I took great comfort in rereading Kendra’s blog on this from a few months ago – somehow it’s nice to remember that we ladies can go through a difficult phase of pregnancy and still remember that it too shall pass.  Sometimes I feel like I’m in survival mode, getting through each day, keeping us fed, in clean clothes and a tidy house (not necessarily a deep-cleaned one at the moment, but tidy nonetheless). Though I was quite convicted and encouraged to realize days in which I take the time to pray (even giving up some sleep) I tend to have much more peace over my day! Nonetheless, as I’d been feeling overwhelmed and weary,  Matt sweetly told me tonight that I was taking the evening off. Directly after dinner he sent me out of the house to Starbucks for a decaf carmel macchiato, and some reading time, or as I ended up doing, writing time.  He’s so sweet! Hopefully he’s having a fun night with the girls, and I know I’m loving some quiet time.  It’s funny, a few years ago I heard the suggestion of a husband sending a wife off for a day on her own, and I thought it sounded terribly lonesome to go without him.  Yet a few years (and children) later, I’ve come to realize what a rare gift quiet solitude is, and I am cherishing some at the moment.  So that is our new news, and we are excited to see who this new little person is.  Hannah’s prayer earlier this week: “I pray for the baby in mommy’s tummy.  I pray the baby is a boy, and he is Christina (one of our favorite girl names)!”  Hmm, well, we’ll have to see.  I did the ring test for fun, and though it did show both boy and girl, it showed boy more.  Wouldn’t that be a change around here!