7 Quick Takes Friday

1.

I was positively fêted this week! First our anniversary, then my birthday--what fun!

A final anniversary surprise from Chris was that he sponsored the flowers at both the church where we married and our current parish on Sunday in honor of our anniversary.

My birthday was darling, with doughnuts in the morning, and various friends sending well wishes, flowers, and a balloon! Chris and my/his parents showed such thoughtful attentiveness through their gifts to me.

Flowers and a balloon from girlfriends

My dad--an inveterate bread baker himself--knows that I'm a couple of months into my latest 'streak' of trying to bake all our own bread. He gave me The Bread Pal: a most excellent guide for slicing homemade bread in thin and even slices.

Now I can entrust my kids to cut their own toast in the morning without hacking off a three-times too wide slices of bread.

2.

One day the girls asked me to print out some color-by-number princess pages from online for them. I had a few moments, so searched on Google Images, but, in a streak of bad luck, the first five or six I clicked on were for purchase instead of for free. I was flustered and hurried, so I said the girls would just have to do without as I wasn't finding any free printables quickly enough.

To my delight, I heard one say to the other, "I know! Let's go make our own!" They raced off and later, the four-year-old returned with a Princess color-by-number sheet for me to color. She had coded her numbers so I would know which color was which. Then I was supposed to color in the 'gemstones' on the princess' gown.

Margaret's story, written all by herself

Having an emerging writer means learning great deciphering skills concerning both spelling, (lack of) punctuation, word order, and word placement on the page. The above reads: "Super Girl. Once there was a girl and a cat. The cat ran away but Super Girl came and saved the cat. The End."

3.

How quickly Mama takes for granted having a Big Helper to take everywhere with her, such as taking 7-year-old big sister to help me with the baby at my doctor's appointment.

4.

Milestone alert! Thomas is officially crawling at 6-1/2 months old. One week ago, I could leave him sitting on the floor, and the next week, I can't leave him in a room with an ungated stairway down--saved him just in time!--or near the bathroom, where he can crawl in the wink of an eye to retrieve the toilet brush from behind the bowl--didn't save him in time from those germs!

Thomas can go from sitting to crawling to tummy time and push back up on all fours and back into the sitting position. He can even pull himself up almost all the way to standing! However, the big lug cannot roll over anymore.

He learned how to roll over both ways at an age-appropriate time, but then grew so fat that, at 22 pounds, he can't roll himself. Now, if I want to leave him for a moment and know he won't crawl away, I lay him on his back and he is stuck there like a happy beetle, chubby limbs flying akimbo in the air.

In other baby news, he took even more to solids this week and went from eating 1/2 teaspoon in a sitting to eating 2 oz in a sitting, crying more for every bite. Today he tried a muffin and liked that too!

5.

The Laundry Update

As my friends saw on Facebook, a few weeks ago I posed a question about the various ways parents teach children to do laundry. Does Mom just do it all, teaching the kids in a crash course before they fly the nest? Do all the kids pitch in with Mom for a laundry folding party? Does Mom hand off laundry formally to the children, and, if so, do the children have ownership of their own basket or do they "take a day" of the family laundry?

We had a very fruitful and active Facebook thread conversation with something like fifty contributions! I learned that many different ways work for different families.

We are now several weeks into our new laundry experiment.

The boys' room has a new laundry hamper and the girls' room has a new laundry hamper. John is 9, so I've given him ownership of doing all the boys' laundry. He is actually quite enjoying and taking pride in his new responsibility . . . until it comes time to put the laundry away. He struggles with that last aspect of the chore, as do so many adults, but I'm not too worried about his transition.

Mary is 7 and expressed interest in taking over the girls' laundry, so I'm letting her try. She is showing two years' less maturity in it all, with erratic interest in actually doing the laundry when the hamper is full. If she isn't ready, I'm just going to take it back over due to her youth. In the meanwhile, I have been engaging her to fold the rest of laundry with me and that change is going very well.

Overall, now I'm doing clothing laundry only two days per week instead of six days per week. I am delighted about this!!!

6.

More thoughts on how I love the flexibility of homeschooling . . . I still enjoy Right Start Math very much, and John is moving along through it well.  I noticed that Right Start was dabbling in introducing multiplication, so I paused those daily lessons and diverted John to doing Math-It's "Timz It" program in order to learn and then memorize his times tables. I just love how Math It teaches these things that must eventually be memorized so very much . . .

7.

In your charity, please pray for our Mary (7) who is having her First Confession on Saturday morning.


Check out more 7 Quick Takes Friday over at This Ain't the Lyceum.