Resuming School

I feel like we're close to being solidly back on track with homeschooling after our slower pace for Advent (because we focused on more religious activities) and vacation for Christmas and subsequent birth of Joseph. We just completed our first full week back at schooling.

Margaret (23 months), Mary (4), Joseph (5 weeks), Grampa Neil, John (6)

Of course, I still have Grampa Neil here to help! We'll see what a "hiccup" I experience when he is no longer here to occupy the children who aren't having a lesson, take a toddler to the potty, and generally fill in the gaps.

I am--once again--going to try to remember how much better school time goes when I start with a proper Circle Time. It gives attention to the littlest ones, so they don't feel so deprived when the oldest is having a lesson, and it starts everybody off having fun. Ideally, I start with:

1. Prayer ("Come Holy Spirit")
2. Pledge of Allegiance
3. Sing a fun song (usually what the children are learning at Catholic Schoolhouse)
4. Do a fun activity (their gold standard remains these fun instruction cards I throw on the ground that say things like, "Leap like a gazelle" or "Freeze like an iguana")
5. Read a Bible story

The morning goes so much better if I begin with the above instead of when I'm already feeling stressed out and begin by asking them instantly to stop playing and get moving on their subjects. Not a way to start our day!

We do Circle Time, then pause for morning snack, before doing our academic work. We're back to our core academic subjects (having paused or dropped Nature and History for this year):

John's catechism from "Chats with God's Little Ones," plus he has begun studying "Know Your Mass" because our parish will be offering a Sunday Latin Mass weekly! Both John and Mary are doing Holy Heroes Lenten Adventure for the season and they are working through "Leading Little Ones to Mary."

An example of Mary's spelling dictation (why can't I rotate these pictures?): I say a word or phrase to the children and they must figure out how to spell it, then write it out 

An example of John's spelling dictation

John and Mary continue to work through All About Reading and All About Spelling. (John is almost done with AAR for the year, so I need to figure out what to do for the rest of this school year--move into AAR 2 or read other things until next fall.

John continues with Rightstart Math and Mary sometimes sits with us, sometimes does math games with me.

For handwriting, John continues to work through the Zaner-Bloser book (plus he and Mary now write dictations for AAS--one of their favorite activities, actually!). Mary has stolen his book enough times in order to fill out the pages herself that this week I rewarded her rascally determined behavior by ordering her the same book to be her very own.

This week I plan to lead the children through a special study about the papal conclave in anticipation of our beloved Pope Benedict retiring on Wednesday. I obtained ideas from the inimitable Elizabeth Foss at her blog.

Joseph Gains on his Own

Joseph at 5-1/2 weeks

"What's that, you ask?"

"Why, yes, in fact, I haven't needed a bottle in seven days!"

"Let me calculate how much I've gained from nursing alone, all by my big boy self . . ."

"Wow! Seven ounces in seven days!"

Dropping Eggs

Today the children at co-op got to do the classic kids' experiment of an egg drop. John (with Mary as his stalwart assistant cutting pieces of tape) tried to construct something that would protect a raw egg from breaking when dropped.

Explaining his contraption to the class

 Dropping the egg

Cutting open his device to discover that his egg did break

School Adaptations

Doing school time in bed as Mama recovers from fever-and-aches that she hopes proves to have been a one-day bug 

One way in which little boys read books--they also do somersaults, headstands, and flips while reading!

Meditation of the day:

“Large families can foster holiness for a variety of reasons.  For the parents, here are three: less sleep, higher costs, and more work. Three great reasons, some might say, for willfully avoiding children altogether.  And many do.  But not if your aim is heaven.  Indeed, the fruits of conjugal love produce the conditions by nature that monks and nuns have to impose upon themselves by grace (i.e., by accepting the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience).  Along these lines there is a famous story from St. Thérèse of Lisieux’s life at Carmel.  Then, as now, within a monastery a bell is the common call to prayer.  So prompt was Thérèse’s obedience that at its first ring she would throw down her pen, leaving behind a half formed word on the page.  Well, in the domestic church, the cry of a child is like St. Thérèse’s bell; it often tolls.” --Dr. Ryan Topping (Thomas More College)

Maple Syrup Snow Candy

I felt badly for the children that they almost entirely missed out on playing in the snow: on Sunday we were gone all day at Mass, lunch, and the baptism. By the time we got home, there was hardly any snow left. So on Monday when we were dressed for the day and starting school time and the children begged first to make maple syrup snow candy (as learned from Laura Ingalls Wilder), I aquiesced. We made an exception to their Lenten no-desserts sacrifice because it's been two years since we had snow and who knows when we'll have it again.

 Heating maple syrup and butter to 220 degrees

 Drizzling over snow

Twirling a popsicle stick in the candy

Baptism of Joseph Anthony

Deo Gratias! Our son Joseph Anthony has been made a child of God, had original sin wiped from his soul, and been infused with sanctifying grace!

The churching of women

Joseph Nurses

Today was Joseph's baptismal day and in the shadow of the great gift of sanctifying grace in his soul, I am joyfully basking in the gift of having a successfully nursing baby!

Joseph had his tongue tie corrected on Thursday afternoon. After that, he needed only two more bottles. I had every expectation that this transition to exclusive nursing would take weeks and maybe a couple of months. I began doing as many "intake weighs" as I could, during which I'd weigh him on the intake scale, nurse him, and weigh him again to see if he needed any supplementation by bottle. Suddenly on Friday he was nursing so much better, transfering at least an ounce and a half each time!

Friday into Saturday marked an unexpected milestone of his first overnight without any bottles at all! Preparing and warming bottles in the night is so tiring--it is not something I'd ever want to choose.

I went into Saturday feeling very startled and cautiously hopeful about this rapid improvement. I watched Joseph nurse all day, waiting for when he'd need a bottle, and he never did.

Sunday morning marked 36 hours without a single bottle--when he had been consistently taking two thirds or more of his calories from bottles. When I weighed him today--the day of his upcoming baptism--he had reached eight pounds.

He had gained two ounces in the prior 24 hours of nursing alone. All week he'd been gaining one ounce per day, so gaining two ounces without bottles was like he was just showing off.

I shed tears of joy. I think that most of this challenging one-month journey is behind us now! All that remains is to ensure he is a strong-enough nurser to maintain my supply on his own.

Thank you to my friends for all your encouragement and prayers! Thank you to those who let me break down and cry to you. Thank you to the professionals who helped us! Thank you to my husband for unfailing support and his stance that my helping Joseph learn to nurse was of top priority for our entire family, even if that meant (many) other things had to be neglected. Thank you to Our Lady of La Leche!

Snowstorm!

Godmother meeting Joseph Anthony for the first time

These are the requisite photos that Southerners must post when there is any snow.

It was a pretty exciting snow storm for us, especially in light of the fact that we've had two very mild winters without snow.

A winter wonderland Sunday morning 

The story of the great Charlotte snowstorm of 2013 couldn't be told without a little anecdote about a certain mischievous four-year-old girl. When the snow was first falling in the late afternoon, the sky was becoming a dim grey. Grampa Neil and John were chatting in the kitchen while I was peacefully nursing Joseph in the den. I thought Mary had gone upstairs to play in her room when I heard John shouting, "Mary is outside!" I shouted back that he was wrong--I mean, obviously. There was no adult with her, there was a snow storm occurring, and it was just a ridiculous thought. John reiterated that Mary was outside, at which point I ran to the front of the house and found the front door ajar.

This certain little girl had decided to venture out the front door to experience the snow storm for herself, but she hadn't been able to return back through our front screen door which is sticky. Thus she felt forced--wearing only a thin dress and being barefoot--to run through the snow storm to the side entrance by the kitchen. There she was too overcome by emotion even to ring the bell but hid like a scraggly wet cat under shelter of our porch--probably hoping very much to be seen and not to be seen. Her fat tears and quivering lip revealed that she had quite scared herself without me having to put too much of the fear of God into her, although she still got a lecture about a litany of all the bad things that could happen to her if she left the house by herself--at which point the old, confident Mary was back and she assured me that she could outrun any dog that might be on the loose and trying to bite her.



Week in Review

Week in Review: Joseph one-month-old!

This week I felt like I was getting my sea legs--with all the slipping, falling on my face, and "sea sickness" that entails!

Chris was back to work and even took his first two-day, one-overnight business trip. I started the children back on almost the normal load of homeschooling and taught four days of it, plus Chris took them to their afternoon co-op. And I kept up with laundry.

Margaret (22 months) began formal potty training . . . because that seems like a good idea when one has a four-week-old baby, right?! My thinking was that I've been putting off Margaret for two to three months as she is eager to be like the big kids and I'm afraid the "window of opportunity" will close if I don't act soon. Three days into it and Margaret is doing great, wearing a diaper only at sleeping times and outings, and doing all her own initiating!

It is so wonderful to have a second adult available full-time in the house so I can say, "Would you play Old Maid with the kids to buy me 15 minutes while I wash dishes?"

I continue to learn spiritual lessons about accepting help (being small, humble, inept), as I was able to accomplish what I did only because I have a husband who works from home, and we had hired a babysitter for three mornings, then my stepdad arrived so helped me with the final two days of the week. I am in awe of mothers who do this kind of work with even less assistance.

As of this week, sometimes Joseph will be calmly happy if a sister or brother lies down next to him, which lets me have hands free for a few minutes so I can do luxuries like brush my teeth!

Incredible thankfulness is what I feel toward the women are making meals for us. Really, I'd be keeping the baby alive through feeding and the children alive through not killing each other and that's about all I'd be doing if I had to put thought into meal-planning, grocery-shopping, and cooking. The breakfasts I am preparing on my own are about the level of toast, and lunches are extremely simple, like peanuts, raisins, crackers, and cheese thrown on a plate.

The only way I know how to get anywhere on time right now is to sketch it out on the whiteboard like a battle plan. And I simply don't yet know how to get anywhere in the morning before about 9:00 or 10:00.

I went on not one but two outings to the doctor--even with extra kids in tow, out of necessity--for Joseph to have a frenotomy: he was diagnosed with a tongue tie (the IBCLC said type 4, the pediatrician said type 3). Given John's history (see here!), I was suspicious of a posterior tongue tie by the time Joseph was three days old. Did you know that tongue ties run in families and are twice as common in boys as in girls? Interesting. Now we will keep up the routine of nursing, pumping, bottle-feeding, logging, and obsessing over ounces while adding in tongue exercises for Joseph and observing to see if his nursing improves. I am learning so much--about being in relationship with a baby through a piece of plastic, about judgment, expectations, control and lack thereof, God's providence, vulnerability, dependence, gratitude--through this challenging experience that I would not have chosen for myself!

This week I worked hard to implement a more formal schedule for our hours in the day. If I can just keep us to it, life will move more smoothly and should be more pleasant even for the children. In the meanwhile, I felt all this week like I was running from one urgent need to another, almost without ceasing from morning till bedtime. I felt that every human under my care and each domestic chore was screaming at me, "Now me! Now my need! You're late!" But this leads me to ask myself: Isn't it very disordered that in the modern culture, we consider what is essentially a state of relaxation and leisure to be the norm and having to work steadily and productively is considered onerous to the point of being "unhealthy" emotionally and perhaps "impossible"?

On the bright side, I am learning much about organization, thoughtfulness, order, diligence, and that the challenges of irritations (from children, from unexpected trouble, such as a van that won't start or spilling food on myself) are not an acceptable excuse for me to fail in virtue but are, in fact, an opportunity for me to exercise virtue. I'm certainly not practicing patience when my entire world is calm, quiet, and under my control, now am I? I read about a woman who suffered deeply for years with depression and anger, but had an epiphany and felt deeply convicted about what the Lord says in the Bible about anger, such that she has not yelled at her eight children in fifteen years now. I am meditating much on that. (And I'm not saying to be a wimp: actually I feel that exercising discipline--discipleship-- and maintaining standards and order is more critical than ever the more children in a family. But flying off the handle and shouting or using that too-familiar ugly tone of voice is simply un-Godly and not something I want to model for our children.)

Last night I went on my first night-time outing with Joseph in tow! The Charlotte Catholic Women's Group hosted one of its excellent reflections for women, this one with national speakers Fr. Larry Richards and Dr. Ray Guarendi. The event was edifying and deeply enjoyable! And can anyone guess how I ended the evening? Ten points if you guessed that I slept through most of Fr. Larry's concluding talk, despite the fact that he literally shouts in a deep voice into the microphone through his entire delivery!

Lent Planning 2013

The holy season of Lent begins tomorrow!

I am hanging on by my fingernails now, just trying to take back my duties in the house and bring some order to the chaos that keeps trying to erupt. My Lenten planning this year has been minimal--more along the lines of "Oh, Lent starts in a few days?" compared to detailed planning for a few weeks. If you want to look for Lenten ideas--usually from smarter people than me--you can check out my past posts about Lent. Click here for my most comprehensive post on planning Lent for your family.

This year, my minimal planning has consisted of the below chart, which I think is simple but actually quite a helpful snapshot. For Daddy's row, the main thing I need to be informed of is if he is fasting from any food that would affect my meal-planning. I still chuckle thinking about a girlfriend of mine whose husband decided to give up for Lent something major (like sugar or meat, I forget) and forgot to tell her, which required major short-notice revision of how she did meal-planning!

Then I dash down what extra prayers I'm going to do--and also there I include any extra holy reading I am doing, which this year includes some audio listening, such as the 2013 Lenten mission that was held at my parish last week and which I was unable to attend: it should be soon available at Audio Sancto. I write down my goal for alms and for fasting--keeping in mind that a newly postpartum mother like me might choose not to fast from food but from something else (e.g., television, wasteful pursuits, extra Internet time). Or one could get creative and fast from food not in terms of calories but something pleasurable like salt.

Lastly, I plan for the children. This year we will do the Holy Heroes Lenten Adventure again, plus I bought the Adventure Books, which will provide us an activity per day if I cannot manage to put anything else together due to newborn chaos. My children have particularly enjoyed doing the crown of thorns, but I don't know if I can get it together this year, so we might do some simpler version of beans in a jar to count sacrifices.

For alms, the children will be doing extra chores to earn money to donate to the poor. For their fasting, they will be giving up desserts except on high feast days. John at age six is also choosing something (e.g., a toy, an activity) that he will be giving up for God.

	PRAYERS	ALMS	FASTING
DADDY
MAMA
KIDS

Apparently Too Tired

 Margaret (22 months), Mary (4), and Joseph (3-1/2 weeks)

Today I went back to Mass for the first time, but I think it might have been too soon. Chris and I split Masses because I just couldn't get the family ready in time for an eight o'clock Mass with Joseph's routine added in yet. Chris and John went to the early Mass and I was exhausted before even meeting them there for the next Mass. (Chris later astutely asked why I hadn't recognized my fatigue and decided to stay home!) Chris drove the three children home and I attended Mass with Joseph--although "attended" might be too strong of a word considering that I promptly fell asleep in my seat surrounded on all sides by parishioners--who were apparently polite enough or sympathetic of me not to wake me! Add in that I had to sit in the car feeding Joseph for 30 minutes after Mass (because he takes so long) and then he cried for the whole drive home and I think it might have been precipitous that I tried such a "big" adventure.

First Outing with Two Boys

On Friday I made my first foray to a school event . . . baby steps! Our week with my mother-in-law's help in the house ended, so while Chris was driving her back home--he took the little girls with him--I took the boys to our Friday afternoon homeschooling co-op. (I really enjoy now being able to say "the girls" and "the boys"!) The children participated in a St. Valentine's day activity of making cards for our parishioner shut-ins and eating sweet treats.

John requested to light two candles and pray

Then any interesting girls were welcome to meet with the Poor Clare nuns and any interested boys met with our priest to hear talks about vocations. This was a great and more intimate opportunity for the younger children to augment the annual diocesan-wide Vocations Day for high-school boys (I don't think there is any such day for girls).

I felt the new confidence that comes with those early outings after a baby is born. Joseph slept happily in my sling for two hours. He nursed once and was successful at that, so I didn't need to use the back-up bottle I had packed. (The prior two days, Joseph got more of his calories from nursing than from bottle!!! Go, baby, go!) During the boys' talk, I waited in the church cry room, where I promptly fell asleep since I am bleary-eyed with fatigue these days. I wonder if the priest and young men got a chuckle looking back through the window at me, probably slack-jawed and snoring.

Then I got home, bodily tuckered out, and was very grateful for another meal delivered from a fellow parishioner!

I don't anticipate going out with all four children till co-op next Friday (when Joseph will be 4-1/2 weeks old!), by which time I should have my stepdad with me to help.

Mother-Daughter Date

A certain four-year-old cherub with big and volatile emotions seems to be having the most difficult reaction to the new baby, to not being the center of attention. I decided to take her on a Mommy-Daughter (and Newborn) Date today, making it the third time I'd gone out of the house since having Joseph. We went to lunch at Chik-Fil-A and shopping for some baby supplies at BuyBuy Baby. I hope that the one-on-one time and giving her opportunity to chatter at me for two hours has good effect. Look at how thrilled she was (above photo)!

This is a reminder to me that it is increasingly hard to give each child individual attention. Obviously we don't fall in the camp of thinking children need so much individual attention that a family should limit themselves to having one or two children (a common belief these days), but I do see that children enjoy basking in attention. Chris is able to have special outings with individual children throughout the week because he can do errands on his own and is very thoughtful about always taking a child with him. But the mama is going to tend to be the one at home with the children, so when I go on errands, it is very often with all the children. I can't just leave children at home with Chris during his work day so I can take one child with me as a special treat, of course. Therefore, I'm seeking for how I can give some individual attention from within the confines of the home. Any ideas, fellow mothers?

One tactic I plan to implement as soon as I'm the one cooking my own dinners again is having a Dinner Helper each night, with John and Mary alternating nights: one is the Dinner Helper, the other is assigned to Playing With Margaret. I've already done it twice and it worked beautifully, keeping the big kids apart and unable to fight, keeping the toddler out of my hair, and letting me have one-on-one time with a big kid.

I've heard of some mothers who take an evening walk each night and rotate taking one child with them every evening. Of course, that means I'd have to exercise . . . 

What are some other ideas (inexpensive or free and easy to implement) to have one-on-one time with each child without having to do extra special outings (like lunch at a restaurant) every time?