My brother and his wife recently found out they are expecting their second daughter. This will make five granddaughters for my parents, and no grandsons yet! It must be payback, because on my dad's side of the family, there were 10 of us cousins, and eight of them were boys! Yes, I had only one girl cousin on that side, and she is about nine years younger than me. If you look at the children of all the cousins combined, so far the boys have all together had (or have on the way) four sons and six daughters, and then me, I have three daughters. So among the cousins, so far there are four sons and nine daughters. Apparently everything goes in phases...
I had another lovely day in the waiting room, sitting in between two people having conversations about their adult son who has to go for paternity testing on a three year old that he recently found out about, making Facebook pages for a two year old child in which the mother wrote an "about me" section as if her child had written it saying he has no use for deadbeat dads (the term "sperm donor" was used loudly and repeatedly at this point), and of course, their birth control. And one of these women, upon hearing my response when she asked the gender of my baby, was, "Three girls, oh, poor you." Yeah, poor me, but it is because I have to sit between you people who are having such bizarrely personal and inappropriate conversations! Yay me that I get to have the daughters and can teach them what is and is not socially accepted discussion matter in a public waiting room! Do you really want to tell everyone how your brother-in-law pretended to be the father of one of your children and made threatening calls to you as a joke?? Or how the mother of the father of one of your children is your friend on Facebook even though you refuse to acknowledge her as his grandmother? Had to listen to another mother say, in front of her ten year old, "Yeah, I wish he was about 14 - I'd be that much closer to him being outta my house!" Ugh. What is wrong with people? I think I need to go down the street to the coffee shop to hang out while waiting instead!
So I have decided that homeschooling moms need planning days! I used to teach 3rd and 4th grades in schools, and a whole, uninterrupted day in which to get motivated and really focus on working was always helpful. I have a whole list of things to get accomplished in the next few weeks... and the Spring Cleaning has been slow going as well. But hey, it's still spring, right? ;) Among other things for school planning, I need to select and type in 40 verses from the Old Testament... every time I get ready to start, I realize it is already 11:00 and that I should head for the bed instead! Other homeschool moms: how do you get planning time if you design a lot of your own materials and curriculum? Even going with a set, prepackaged curriculum involves planning of a schedule and tweaking things for your own homeschool!
Speaking of the next few weeks, we have a summer to enjoy as well! Among the plans: trips to the fountains downtown, trip(s) to the lake, trip(s) to Atlanta to my parents' neighborhood swimming pool (and to Trader Joe's and Target, of course!), perhaps a trip to an indoor inflatable place, backyard swimming pool, library summer reading program, Vacation Bible School...
Among the summer fun, we have appointments to fit in as well. I have to have my gestational diabetes test done on Tuesday, where I drink a super-sweet drink and they test my blood... I never have understood that test. At least the drink isn't nasty - some moms say theirs is gross, but the one they give me tastes like Sprite. Then Caroline, in addition to her regular OT appointments, has to go for a PT evaluation now. She had been complaining of pain in her thighs, so we saw her pediatrician, and she pointed out that Caroline's left leg is more muscular than her right... by looking closely, you can see that the muscles in her left leg are a bit bigger/more defined. So we need to figure out why that is and whether she needs to do specific exercises to strengthen her right leg. She is riding her bike now without training wheels, so that works those muscles. She can balance pretty well and just needs work on steering, stopping, and endurance. That is hard with this heat, and with our street not being the greatest place to ride, being at the top of a hill where some neighbors top the hill a bit too fast for comfort!
This post has been sitting for awhile, so I'd best wrap it up and post it... La Leche League tomorrow, so i should be getting to bed soon!
I do a LOT of my planning in the summer. With my kids being elementary and middle school, I use a program called Homeschool Tracker Plus, which lets me put all my lesson plans in place over the summer, and then I just have daily assignments to pull from the lesson plans. I do that weekly, every Sunday night. I have been using this for 3 years and love it!
ReplyDeleteI plan for nine weeks at a time. We usually take a full week off every nine weeks, so I either take the second half of the last day or one of the days we are off and pull everything and write everything out for the next 9 weeks. It is such a help! I use a notebook with pocket page protectors that I put all the sheets I need for each child for each of the nine weeks and it's ready to go! A true lifesaver while pregnant last school year and I'm sure will still be with a newborn this year!
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