Christmas is coming

The Fab Five!

The kids pose with new baby Annabel (here about 2 months old).  She is now almost 4 months old.  It's been a crazy, tiring, wonderful adventure so far.  Maybe I will be able to start posting regularly again after Christmas.  We shall see....

July Fourth

Okay, I know it's already two weeks ago.  But I thought I would post some pictures of our July Fourth weekend.  I was actually able to get out and do some stuff, thanks to Ray doing all the driving and lots of child minding.  Originally I had hoped to get down to North Carolina to see my family.  The way I've been feeling lately, that wasn't happening.  Instead, we drove north to a great pick-your-own farm for blueberries.

It was pretty hot and I didn't do much picking.  We ended up with about 11 pounds of blueberries.  Not as many as I had hoped.  We had fun, though.  We also picked raspberries...or I should say M and C picked raspberries with Daddy's help.  The rest of us stayed in the car and rested. 

On the way home we convinced the kids to try a more traditional style Japanese restaurant.  Until then they had only been to the teppanyaki type Japanese restaurants which I don't really consider to be real Japanese food.  There was no kids menu so they each got a bento box lunch.  Ray got Yaki Soba which was really good.  And I ordered Teriyaki Chicken, mainly so that if any of the kids didn't like what they had I would have some food to give them.  I didn't need to worry!  They loved the bento boxes with tempura, gyoza, miso soup, sushi, a salad, and of course, rice.  I was really wishing that I had ordered a bento box, too.  Next time we go to the farm we are definitely stopping by there for lunch again!

Summer plans derailed

I had it all planned out how we would spend our summer.  We were going to keep forging ahead with the school work in the mornings and spend the afternoons relaxing at the pool.  We would all have a quiet time after the pool and then the kids could play while I got dinner ready.  I didn't sign them up for any classes or camps this year, knowing that I would be too big and uncomfortable to bother with any of that.  It was supposed to be a nice relaxing summer while we waited for Baby to arrive.

Unfortunately I didn't count on one thing.  Morning sickness.  Again.  It's back now in the third trimester.  It's not quite the same as it was in the beginning.  But it's almost as debilitating.  I'm so tired and feel so sick almost every morning (and many afternoons) that we haven't been getting the kids' school work done.  The few times I've tried to take them to the pool it wore me out so much that I spent the rest of the day bed-ridden unable to do anything.  Dinners have been sub-standard.  Ray has had to help out a lot more than he normally already does.  The kids have been handling it pretty well.  They haven't been sorry to see our morning lessons not happen.  They have been very good for weeks about entertaining themselves while I lay on the couch or in bed.   But lately I can tell that it is wearing on them.  There have been more arguments, more cries of boredom, and just more attitude than usual.  They are suffering from to much free-time.

Even though I was determined to not sign them up for anything this summer.  Last week I caved and signed up J and C for Vacation Bible School.  They are there every morning this week and I can already tell that things are running a little more smoothly at home again.  (I wanted M to sign up, too, but he absolutely refused.  J and C are having such a good time that M is now really regretting staying home.)  It has been hard getting them up and ready and out the door by 8:00.  But I'm realizing that some structure and some out-of-the-house activities are necessary for their mental health...and mine as well.  Lesson learned!  I'm just going to have to figure out a way to push though this last month of pregnancy even with the fatigue and morning sickness.  And I definitely need to remember this lesson during those first few months with a newborn.  Yes, we will take some time at home where we won't try to do much of anything other than adjust to life with a baby again.  But, I will make sure I don't neglect the older kids' needs.  If I need to call on friends to come pick them up and take them out, so be it.

Yarn Along

Yarn Along with Ginny @ small things

I'm working on a blanket for the new baby.  It's organic cotton and I quite like how it's turning out so far.  I really hope I'll be able to finish it before the new baby arrives.  I'm (re-)reading A Mother's Rule of Life and Sidetracked Home Executives in a sort of desperate attempt to bring complete order and peace to our home before we have to adjust to life with an infant again.  I've read A Mother's Rule of Life many times.  My copy is all marked up and highlighted.  I like the author's philosophy and her emphasis on having the proper priorities and motivations in life.  I just don't know if her "system" for getting there works for me.  I've tried it several times and failed.  So, on the recommendation of a friend, I'm trying out the Sidetracked Home Executive way.  This book is very goofy and not spiritual at all.  But it does offer another system for organization and staying on track that might work for me.  I'm hoping I can take the best from both books and  figure this homemaking thing out once and for all.

Eight Weeks

Eight weeks to go.  It sounds like such a short time, yet it feels like forever.  Sigh.

I mentioned that I finished the summer tops for the girls not too long ago.  (Ravelry link here.)  Here are a couple of pictures, as promised:

And I finished the Baby Surprise Jacket (all except the buttons.)

That tiny foot you can just see in the background belongs to J.  She's sewing another doll for herself.  I can't seem to interest her in knitting right now.  But she loves to sew.

Homeschooling and other things

Last week was all about finishing up our homeschool year.  I had my county review on Friday so I spent the week getting the kids' portfolios ready and making sure I had all my ducks in a row.  The last two years I only had to do a phone interview for my end-of-year review so I was a little extra nervous this time.  I needn't have been.  The reviewer was very easy going and said everything looked great.  Yay!  Now we can "officially" move into our summer schedule of light school work in the morning and playtime and pool time in the afternoon. 

On Saturday I went to the IHM Homeschool Conference in DC.  It was a nice day out for me without the kids.  I really didn't need to go.  I know what we are planning on doing for school in the Fall.  I've already purchased most of our books.  I guess I've been doing this long enough now that I feel like I know what works for our family.  And not quite so long that I feel burnt out and need to make changes.  So we are in a pretty good spot right now.  Although there is that slight worry in the back of my mind that everything is going to change in a couple of months with the arrival of the new baby.  But we just wont dwell on that now.

In other news... we checked on the nest by the front door today after several days of leaving it be and we found this:

I think there are three little baby birds there, but the kids are convinced that one didn't make it.  It's hard to be sure.  We will keep checking on them and hopefully will be able to tell for certain soon.  It's amazing to think that just a few days ago they were curled up in those tiny blue eggs!

Front yard nature

Yesterday evening we discovered that a robin has chosen the bush right next to our front door as the place to raise her babies.  For a couple of days I've noticed her flying away as soon as we open the front door.  Yesterday, the kids and I finally took a little time to investigate the bush.  And sure enough, this is what we found:

I hope we haven't scared the mother robin away permanently.  The kids were so excited to find this so close to our house.

I often lament the fact that we live in a "sterile" sub-urban neighborhood instead of further out in the country where nature is all around.  This is a good reminder that if we just take a little time and are quiet and observant, then we can find nature here, too.

Summer is here

I'm not participating in Ginny's Yarn Along this week.  Mainly because I have nothing new to report.  My Baby Surprise Jacket is on hold until someone can explain to me how to pick up stitches.  And I haven't even made much progress on any of my other little projects.  I have started reading a new book.  I borrowed Sidetracked Home Executives from a friend.  It describes me to a "tee."  But I'm leery of trying their solution which involves writing everything (and I mean everything!) that you have to do to keep your home running smoothly on individual 3x5 index cards.  Then you somehow organize these cards in a way that you pull a stack for each day and do what the cards say.  And then your house will be neat, clean, and organized.   I'm tempted to try it.  I just have this feeling that after the initial excitement of trying a new system I will be right back to where I am now.  Only with the added disappointment that yet another system failed to help me figure out how to get my house neat, clean, and organized (and keep it that way.)  I did swing by the office supply store yesterday while we were out and I picked up a card file and a bunch of index cards...just in case I decide to try it.

This weekend summer really arrived here in Southern Maryland.  We are still in the middle of a heat advisory.  We didn't let that stop us from spending Memorial Day at our favorite park.  The kids really wanted to take the canoes out on the lake and have a cook out.

Ray is not the type of guy that enjoys cooking out.  As he says, "We have a whole room in our house dedicated to preparing and consuming food.  Why would we want to pack everything up, haul it to the park, cook and eat in inconvenience, and then haul it all home again?"  Once a year, though, he does just this because the kids love it.

When we got home from our Memorial Day activities we discovered that our A/C wasn't working.  It was 93 degrees upstairs in our bedrooms!  The main floor was 89 degrees.  Thank goodness the basement was still cool.  We had to sleep down there for two days.  I am happy to report that we were able to get the A/C repaired fairly quickly and inexpensively.  And now I am planning on spending a day indoors enjoying the cool and possibly trying to get caught up on some knitting and reading so that next Wednesday I will have something to share with the Yarn Along.  (Although, you may notice that my girls are all wearing the summer knitted tops that I finally finished.  Yay!)

Painting with friends

Today we had a nice afternoon catching up with some friends that we haven't seen in a while.  And the kids (well, the girls, at least) created some artwork a la Jackson Pollock.  Lovely way to spend an almost-summer afternoon.

This one is my favorite:

Yarn Along

Yarn Along with Ginny @ small things

I finished J's summer top that I spoke of last week!  Well, almost.  I finished the knitting.  Now I just need to sew up the sides and weave in the ends.  I'll get that done today or tomorrow.  Pictures to follow.  I'm still working on the Baby Surprise Jacket along with a bunch of other ladies in this knit along.  It was going along fairly quickly but then I got to a part in the pattern that I just couldn't figure out and had to wait a few days for further instructions.  I kind of lost my momentum, but hopefully now that I think I know what I'm doing I will get back into it.

I tend to get bored with knitting projects pretty quickly.  So I've found that if I have a bunch of different things to work on at the same time I actually do much better.  I can just switch to a different project  when I start getting tired of one.  So I am also working on a Five Hour Baby Sweater with Patons Classic Wool in winter white.  I know this will take me way, way longer than five hours.  But that's okay.  I still have at least two months before baby comes.  And I doubt baby will be needing it for a least two months after that.  I have time.

We are still really enjoying The Little White Horse.  I'm also still reading Simplicity Parenting.  Great book!  And we are reading some character development stories out of Everyday Graces ed. by Karen Santorum and The Children's Book of Virtues ed. by William Bennet.  My kids have been rather restless lately and common courtesy is a bit lacking around here.  I find that reading stories about other kids behaving or misbehaving helps get my own kids back on track much better than me harping on them and nagging at them. And it's much more fun for me.

Peaceful Morning

It's 8:00 and the kids are all still sound asleep after a very busy day yesterday.  And I don't think they will wake anytime soon.  We had an early morning and a late night with a lot stuffed into the middle.  It's days like this that I'm so glad we don't send our kids to school.  I love that we can let them sleep in on a Tuesday and catch up on some much needed rest.  I also LOVE that it gives me a couple of unexpected (and also much needed) hours of solitude.  Ahhhh.

Weekend

We spent this past weekend picking strawberries (30 lbs!) and making jam.  I think I was able to make almost enough to last us the year.  When I count the blackberry jam that I'll make later this summer, we should have more than enough to support my kids' pbj habit.

While the kids and I were making jam, my husband was in the city at the final interview and tryouts for Jeopardy.  So sometime in the next 18 months he may (or may not) get called to be on the show.  Whether he gets the call or not, at least he didn't leave empty handed.  He won the mock game at the tryout and won the Wii Jeopardy game.

She can pump!

T can pump herself on the swings!  M taught her.  I feel happy for her and proud of her, and also a little guilty.  My older two kids didn't learn how to pump on the swings until they were seven, or eight even.  They didn't need to know how.  I was always there pushing them when they needed it.  C, my third child, learned a little younger.  She was maybe five years old.  I just assumed that she was just keeping up with her older siblings.  Maybe that is what it was.  Or maybe it's that I just didn't spend much time with her out on the swings.  Maybe she learned because she had to.  After all,  I was busy with T by then.  And now, my little just-turned-three-year-old T has been so neglected in the swing pushing, that she has had to learn to pump for herself already.  She seems happy enough, though.

National Colonial Farm trip

Yesterday we braved the rainy weather and headed over to the National Colonial Farm.  They were having a "green" homeschool day.  There the kids learned a little about recycling, planting native trees, grasses, and flowers, and worm composting. 

J and C weaving coasters out of "plarn" (strips of old plastics bags.)

C getting as close as she dares to the worm colony.  Believe it or not there are about 4,000 red wigglers in there!

Unfortunately, the sky opened up before we were able to get to the far end of the farm.  That's the one place they all wanted to go.  At the far end are some old mulberry trees that they remember climbing and harvesting berries from.  Since we just planted a mulberry tree in our backyard, they were very excited to go see these old trees again to help them imagine what our tree might look like someday.  I could be wrong, but I don't think the mulberries are quite ready yet.  So maybe it is just as well that we didn't see them yesterday.  We will plan to go back sometime in the next couple of weeks (maybe with Daddy) on a sunny day to really explore the farm again and visit those wonderful old mulberry trees.

Yarn Along

Yarn Along with Ginny @ small things

I'm still working on the Baby Surprise Jacket and I think it's coming along pretty well.  I am worried that I've made some fatal error somewhere along the way and I won't discover it until I'm trying to fold up the finished product.  But for now I'm taking Elizabeth's Zimmermann's words to heart:  "Knit, and keep calm."

I'm also trying to finish up a little summer top for J that has been kind of a thorn in my side.  The very first garment that I ever knitted was this exact pattern for T a couple of years ago.  When I started it, I promised all the girls that I would make them one.  Big mistake!  The pattern is not that interesting and I've gotten so bored with it.  The first one wasn't too bad...it was very small and fairly quick.  C's took a lot longer and J's is taking forever!  Not because it's so hard or even that big.  It's mainly that I am so tired of working on it that I rarely do.  If I don't finish up soon, though, J will be too big for it and C will have two.  So, I've promised myself to work on this little summer top every day until it's finished.

I'm reading The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge as a read-aloud to the kids.  Sometime last year I saw a preview for a movie that is supposed to be based on this book.  I thought the kids would want to see it and I wanted them to read the book first.  J received it for Christmas, but the print is a little small and it's just a bit above her reading level.  She wasn't interested.  M could probably read it to himself easily.  He still likes to listen to me read, though.  We are only a few chapters in and already I have to stop myself from reading ahead on my own.