1. Last Weekend
Saturday was a Big Work Day coming off vacation and before everything began anew on Sunday.Chris ran errands for me as usual (thanks, honey!) and took John to his new, 8-week ice skating class, a series of which is required before the possibility of starting recreational ice hockey team next fall.
I've watched three episodes of that Konmari show "Tidying Up" and love the woman's folding technique. I've spent this week converting all our drawers and we've gone from drawers that could hardly shut to having extra space! Just like she said, the children immediately loved it and began copying the technique.
On Saturday evening, Chris took the older kids to an Epiphany blessing of salt, chalk, and water, followed by the Vigil Mass. Then the children spent Sunday in our family's Epiphany tradition of assembling all the house blessing kits for our parish. The children truly do this corporal work of mercy on their own now, just with Chris laying out the supplies. As a mom of a big family, I find it important to find ways to volunteer and serve that keep us together as a family and that children can do (e.g., not having dad take the kids to serve at a soup kitchen while mom and little ones are left at home, or mom ditching the family at home with dad to go teach classes at church). I got that concept from watching the Duggar show years ago when Michelle talked about this and said that their family would pick up trash on the church grounds every Sunday because even a mom and 19 children could do that service.
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| The three-year-old really did help. This year the seven-year-old led the whole project. |
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| House Blessing table at Mass on Sunday |
2. New Morning Routine: An Experiment!
Having the sixth baby while simultaneously learning how to teach middle school has knocked me flat. I have tried every which way to find a way to exercise and not succeeded. (Guilty Mom Feelings)Now, we are trying a new morning routine but only time will tell if it can work.
Mama wakes up between 5:30 and 6:00 with the three littlest boys. This is the same-old routine for the four of us early birds.
New will be that I actually cook hot breakfast for myself and them, bright and early! Normally I give them cold cereal to hold them off from eating hot breakfast with everyone as a family.
At 6:45, I will take the little boys upstairs for them and I to get dressed. The older kids' alarms will have gone off, but it helps to have me upstairs to supervise them all getting dressed instead of falling back to sleep.
By 7:15 at the latest, I should have David strapped in his kitchen high chair, the two littlest boys watching a TV show (not something previously allowed on school mornings), and the oldest three dressed and making their own hot breakfasts. This is all the new experiment.
This should allow me to hop on the elliptical for half an hour while they eat and supervise.
Ideally, we will be able to start school by 8:00, as usual. Is this a pipe dream or a good change?
Back-to-School Changes
Monday meant we were back to school after three weeks off!
I made changes to our schedule to try, increasing even more the concept that for every half hour shift, somebody is supervising the littlest boys. Sometimes I have to face that this means that the children can accomplish less academic book work because they are putting in a shift of babysitting, but surely--please, God--there are lessons in that as well.
I'll share a simplified look at our general morning schedule:
8:00 Start school by gathering for prayer and catechism
8:30 A half-hour slot for my teaching the whole group. Normally year-round this is Spelling and Penmanship, but for the next six weeks or so, it will probably be devoted half the time to intense Music Theory studies before music competition season.
9:00 I go lay down the baby for nap while Mary takes a half-hour shift with Joseph and Thomas and actually teaches them assigned Kindergarten academics. John and Margaret are doing their math assignments.
9:30 I lead exercise for the whole group.
10:00 Mary serves snack to all of us while I teach History to five kids (Sixth grader is independent).
10:30 I teach Joseph Kindergarten for 45 minutes (the core subjects of math, phonics, and catechism). Margaret babysits Thomas and David. Mary practices music till noon. John is doing independent work.
At 11:15, I switch to teaching Margaret for 45 minutes. Joseph (5) will be "in charge" of playing with Thomas (3) and David (1), but right next to me.
John then practices his piano for 45 minutes before 11:45 when he teaches Joseph piano for 15 minutes.
Lunch is at noon and my supervising the older children's quiet studies resumes at 1:00 while the younger ones are in Quiet or Nap Time. We are experimenting with Margaret doing her music practice in the afternoons because she works better then. Depending on the students, studies usually are completed by 2:00, 3:00, or 4:00.
3. Monday
Report: The school day went fairly well.In the midst of it all, we were picking up the entire house to prepare for cleaning it, all in anticipation of our Epiphany house blessing.
The kids have been all about playing football this week . . .
Below is the photo I took of Thomas lovingly fawning over his newfound slug (see the black dot) right before I stood up, walked forward, and squished the slug to death before I'd noticed. Tom was horrified and while there will be other slugs, there will never be this one I accidentally snuffed out.
Monday night concluded with Mary making dinner: homemade chicken soup! She did a fabulous job and served it with rolls and broccoli (love those Steamables bags!).
John went to CCE and Fraternus, so Chris was gone and I ran bedtime routine on my own. I wished I could read aloud to my older kids at night, but rarely can anymore (Guilty Mom Feelings).
4. Tuesday
The night before, John had been hit in the ear by a dodge ball at Big Teenager Speed, so he had diminished hearing and ringing in the ear even the next day. I decided it was worthwhile to have him checked for a ruptured eardrum, so, after racing around for a final hour of picking up the house, I took him and five kids to the CVS Minute Clinic, as my husband was gone on a business trip and could not help.
As I arrived, my three-year-old had to go potty, even though he had gone at the house five minutes earlier. One does not make a preschooler wait, and by the time we got back from the potty, I saw yet another person checking in at the computer kiosk. Ultimately, we were told our wait would be 90 minutes.
My children were sitting sweetly reading books in the chairs, but I knew that I could not make this last for 90 minutes. Plus the baby was missing his nap to be there and was already showing wear.
We bought junk food snacks at the CVS (Guilty Mom Feelings) and went to sat in the car, where we ate snacks and the kids bickered, but at least there was not a store full of patrons witnessing it all.
Ultimately, the outing to CVS lasted two and a half long hours, and John did not have a ruptured eardrum. On the bright side, a fellow patron came up to me to ask about how many children I had and compliment them on their behavior (which just showed that she had not been in the car with us).
We missed half a day of school (no small matter for my two oldest ones) and got home with minutes to spare before their music teachers arrived (Guilty Mom Feelings).
Thomas has re-discovered this magnetized pattern toy this week and at 3-1/2 has figured out how to make the images. He loves it!
We squeezed in more school after the music teachers left and my next generation of little bakers helped me make muffins.
Mary taught her piano student at 3:30, as she's been doing all semester, and we skittered over to tennis at 4:30 . . . where no tennis coach showed up. The littles were at least happy to play on the playground and at 5:00 we discovered from the coach who arrived that the class time had been moved. It pays to read the newsletter he sends out!
I went home and served frozen pizza (Guilty Mom Feelings), ran bedtime routine by myself with Chris out of town, and wished I could read aloud to my kids at night (Guilty Mom Feelings). I tried to stay up and write out school lists for the next day, but the baby woke ten times in the first hour and a half, so I finally waved the white flag and just went to bed with him, leaving work undone (Guilty Mom Feelings).
5. Wednesday
Everyone woke up slowly, and they were so late that I fed them all stupid cold cereal (Guilty Mom Feelings), I did not get to exercise (Guilty Mom Feelings), and our school day was proceeding poorly. I declared that we were going to Confession at our local cathedral. This has been an idea my husband and I have been considering: that I could regularly take the kids to Confession on Wednesdays before the mid-day Mass. It is so hard to get to Confession, as the two other parishes have it on Saturdays at 3:00 (a busy time), and our own parish also has it Thursday evenings, when we are at Scottish Dance.So, I diligently stopped school early, loaded up six kids, and off we went . . . except that I forgot that it always takes approximately double the amount of time to get anywhere with six kids and that there would be major rush hour traffic during the mid-day, especially because it was apparently a half-day at county schools, so there were 30 buses on our thoroughfare alone.
We were running pell-mell, the baby flopping on my hip, up the street as the noon bell chimed at the parish, and I knew we were not likely to make it in time before Confession ended. I was able to rush in as the last person, the priest gave me absolution and nothing else, letting me have two minutes with him. When I asked him if he had time to hear confession of my three children, he did not hide his irritation when informing me that "Mass starts in six minutes!" I felt like a worm and a bad mother and a lame Catholic. My kids were so disappointed not to be able to get to Confession themselves (Guilty Mom Feelings).
We walked more slowly back to the car, where my three-year-old then had to go potty. I took care of him, and then two others had to go potty, so I sent them in alone. Then we were all famished and I decided to get us fast food instead of wait till we got home in rush hour traffic. But fast-food drive-through joints have rush hour too, and it took 30 minutes to get through the line. We weren't even home till 1:30, so our outing took 2.5 hours out of our school day, only one person got the sacrament, we ate a junky lunch, and my littles were late for nap (Guilty Mom Feelings).
Once we got home, the pain my son had been complaining about in his jaw for two hours became acute and I realized the whole side of his face was swollen up! I called the doctor and made an appointment for 4:00, realizing we'd lose even more of our school day (Guilty Mom Feelings), and I arranged a neighbor to babysit three of my six kids, my still being traumatized from yesterday at the Minute Clinic. He had an unexplained case of TMJ that went away on its own: it was so weird!
Mary really stepped up in my absence. She kept the boys calm and happy, then she looked around for ways to help me: she cleaned the kitchen, emptied the dishwasher, and assembled two more dining room chairs for our new table. Then she gathered up the daily laundry and took it upstairs, and folded it!
Rushing out the door and realizing I would completely miss the dinner prep hour, I had ordered pizza for delivery online. (Guilty Mom Feelings)
I ran bedtime routine, read to the littles, and wished I could read to my bigs (Guilty Mom Feelings).
6. Thursday
Thursday dawned bright and early with last-minute preparations for a priest coming to our house at eight in the very early morning to give an Epiphany House Blessing. The priest is one of the most respected persons a Catholic knows, and for the blessing he enters every room and every closet--even the garage and attic--to bless with holy water, so other Catholic Housewives reading this will know with what Frenetic Energy I was bustling about! God forgive me for barking at my children. (Guilty Mom Feelings)
John woke at six to bake coffee cakes and Chris dashed out to buy a continental breakfast at the bagel shop, so we all had a lovely meal with the priest.
The rest of the day was yet another shortened day of school (Guilty Mom Feelings) and Scottish Dance class.
7. Friday
On Friday, I will be teaching my elementary kids while John goes to CCE, and then we are all heading off to a Whole Family play date of outdoor play, Airsoft, remote-controlled truck four-wheeling, and two moms talk-talk-talking while the two dads do what they do, followed by a family pizza dinner on the hour-long drive home.
And, yes, folks, that will make pizza dinner three times this week. (GUILTY MOM FEELINGS!!!)
I'm just keeping it as authentic as I can!
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