Friday Fatigue

Margaret (aka Miss Fussbudget today) is 3-1/2 months old and now wearing size 6-month and 9-month clothing. She knows how to grow well and how to scream for a couple of hours daily, but she doesn't know how to sleep! Mama is a Walking Zombie.

. . . which is why today I boiled the potatoes and cut up all the green crunchy things to make potato salad before discovering that I had about one tablespoon of mayonnaise remaining. And when my husband found me nearly asleep with the baby cooing and squealing next to me, he offered to order us pizza and I said 'yes.'

And how irritated can I get when I step away to nurse the baby and return to the kitchen to discover that the two-year-old is happily eating through my bowl of cut up green crunchy things for said potato salad (before I had discovered that I couldn't make the potato salad anyway)? I'm just thrilled that she likes celery, snap peas, green onions, and pickles.

Today was the historic last launch of the 30-year-old American rocket program. We watched in Daddy's office on his big computer screens. I was surprised to feel tears brimming with patriotism at watching the launch and regret that it would be our country's last for the timebeing.

Some of you have asked for an update on John's reading lessons using "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons."

* It has been a fascinating change for me to keep John on a scholastic routine for the first time. We've done many educational activities over the years, but if he lost interest, I put them away. This is the first time that I see all his reading readiness signs, he said he wanted to learn, and so I am pushing him ever so gently to achieve a long-term goal even if on this particular day or at this particular moment he doesn't want to do his lesson. Also, it's one of the first times when I really must correct his mistakes because it creates bad reading habits to let a child perpetuate in mistakes.

* The phonics lessons are tedious. The baby steps of learning an infinitesimal, the review is frequent, and the speed is slow. However, the learning is thorough and these lessons are ensuring that the child learns every step for how to sound out words phonetically. No gaps, no guessing, no missed steps. (As a reward for doing a lesson, John may read a Bob Book, which helps make up for the tedium and makes him feel confident.)

* Lesson learned: When the day has gotten away from me and it's four o'clock before I'm asking my wiggly four-year-old who hasn't napped to do a reading lesson, I think next time it's better to skip it for the day!

* John is doing fantastically. He has become more driven to learn letters and words. As we drive down the road, he's trying to sound out words on buses and signs.

He also makes me laugh and laugh when we do our lessons because sometimes he goofs off in a smart way because of the repetition. The other day I was sticking with the teacher's script of the lesson, slowly going through each word to have him sound them out. He sighed, sounded out the word I was pointing to, then said what the word was, then leapt ahead and did the same for all the words on the page without letting me read my boring script. And when I started laughing, he went back and sounded out each word backwards, which had me in stitches.

Or we'll be practicing blending sounds and he comes up with something silly or a humorous sentence for each word.

Today when we sat down to do our lesson, John grabbed the book, said, "What's this word?" and proceeded to sound out the word LESSONS. My big boy!

*****

Well, it has been 45 minutes and the baby is crying again since she has decided not to sleep longer than a 45-minute stretch all day and night. Mama Zombie will tromp upstairs with stiff limbs and glassy eyes to retrieve Miss Fussbudget . . .