Rutabaga Dreams

Gregory has come down with his first real cold, poor little guy.  He has a cough, his nose is drippy, and you can tell he feels run down.  When he woke up from his nap this afternoon his fussing sounded exactly like the baby version of “Mommy, I don’t feel good!”.  This evening while I was updating my blog template he was puttering around my desk so I put him on my lap to keep him getting at the cords.  He then sat there quietly in my lap for at least fifteen minutes, not trying to touch the keyboard, not lunging for the mouse, not trying to get down, just sitting there until he started to nod off.  Definitely not normal behavior for him!

Matt updated my blog software this evening, so I decided to give my blg a new look to celebrate.  I like my new template very much - I think it is a big improvement.  It is also a lot easier to work with, so I’m better off all around!

I sync’ed our camera today and realized I had not downloaded pictures since before Christmas. Yikes, where does the time go??? Here’s a smattering of pictures from the last month or so, I hope you all enjoy them.

First off, we have Emma the flower girl at Sarah and Nathan’s wedding. Isn’t she cute?

Then we have speedy Emma, racing through Erie clutching her beloved sidekick, Sarah, tightly in her arm.

Then we move to Emma cooking - I’m not sure what the binoculars were for, but I’m sure they were important for something.

And here’s Emma demonstrating her fine crayon work to her brother. Gregory already likes to scribble, and he even holds the pencil or crayon in the correct position. It is really cute to seem him try to hold it ever so carefully in his chubby little fingers!

And here’s Gregory trying to get those ever so wonderful Math-U-See blocks. Emma really does quite well with his, umm, “assistance”

And here’s Gregory the climber - he does this without even quite realizing what he’s doing, then generally can’t get down by himself. It is pretty funny.

And this is what I call “Gregory the Prairie Dog”. He’s not walking yet, but he can stand unassisted as well as crawl, scoot, and cruise. He is fully mobile, but just not particulary fast. (Yet!)

And here’s two pictures of my cuties, just hanging out in our front yard.

So see, I still do have two lovely children! Can you believe that Emma is going to be five next week though? I can hardly believe it myself.

Come to think of it, there really isn’t a typical day, because something always happens to throw things off a bit, but this is what things generally look like around here.

6:30 - my alarm goes off, and I lay there groggily for about 10 to 15 minutes, trying to summon the will power needed to emerge from my cozy down comforter and flannel sheets.

6:50ish - I head out the door to walk/run. I’ve been doing this for about a month now and I am really enjoying it. It has been a good practice for me, because I spend the first part while walking in prayer, then I run and listen to my music lecture series I bought with my Christmas money. I’ve been trying to figure out for awhile how to work in some focused prayer time when we live somewhere where I have no private corner to retreat to, and this has worked out perfectly.

7:15ish - Emma wakes up and looks at books or otherwise amuses herself quietly while Matt works in the office

7:30 - I’m back, and we’re dishing out some sort of hot cereal that was cooked overnight in the small crockpot. Emma is asking for an egg instead, and we’re enticing with the promise of granola and raisins on her oatmeal.

7:50ish - Emma is still eating, but I hop on the computer to try to respond to some emails and to check Emily’s blog to see if Thomas has arrived yet.

8:15ish - Emma is finally done with breakfast (it isn’t that we make her eat everything, it just takes her a long time to eat her fill because she keeps talking and talking and talking…) Gregory also wakes up around now. Once Gregory is awake and Emma is done, we go upstairs to do our morning chores - brush teeth, get dressed, make our beds and pick up our rooms. This goes pretty smoothly, usually. I have a sign in Emma’s room to help her to remember just what her morning chores are, but she doesn’t really need it anymore. Emma also puts a sticker on her calendar to mark the day, and I ask her what day and date it is. Just my sneaky way of trying to teach Emma the days of the week, months of the year, etc. It involves stickers and her very own calendar, so of course she loves it.

9:00 - We start our homeschool block. We do math, then handwriting, then we get a snack. Then we move onto a saint story (with minor narration), then an Old Testament and a New Testament Bible story with full narration. Then she practices the Sign of the Cross and reciting the Our Father, and then we do a reading lesson. Gregory cruises around playing with toys and eating Cheerios or other snacks I strategically place around the living room (as far away from the Math-U-See blocks as possible without raising suspicion on his part that I’m trying to keep him away from something) then attempts to poach on Emma’s snack once she has hers. I usually nurse him during the Bible stories, and sometimes during the reading lesson as well.

10:15ish - Once we finish all this up, I collapse on the floor for a bit because of the exertion it takes to keep everything progressing… oh, wait, that’s just what I want to do. Instead Emma and I pick up everything that’s been used and I write my notes about what we did today. I then go into the kitchen and clean up from breakfast, and then try to do some sort of other cleaning or cooking, depending on the day.

11:30ish - The small things that run around the house making loud noises generally let it be known that they are absolutely STARVING at this point, so I throw together some lunch for all of us and we sit and eat together. We usually just have leftovers or perhaps a sandwich and fruit or yogurt - nothing too exciting.

Noonish - Emma goes upstairs for quiet time, and I attempt to get Gregory down for a nap. Generally this works, but sometimes it takes a little longer than it seems like it should.

12:15ish - I come back downstairs, and I do my “lessons” (this is what I call them when I talk about them with Emma, so as to try to make the whole lifelong learning point. I have no idea if this is successful or not). Right now I’m reading the day’s Bible reading from the St. James Daily Devotional Guide (because I am way too intimidated by the whole Liturgy of the Hours thing to try and start it, although it does sound really neat), and then reading and doing a written narration of Aristotle for Everybody by Mortimer Adler and the same with The Catechism of the Catholic Church.

1:00ish - I finish my studies, and I release Emma from her imprisonment. We do something quiet together (play a game, read a book) for a bit until Gregory wakes up, or I attempt to buy some computer time with promises of stories “in just a little bit”

1:30ish - Gregory wakes up and there is great rejoicing. He gets his diaper changed, then go clean up from lunch a bit.
1:45ish - We either go run errands, go to the park play day, cook, clean or do some other planned activity, depending on the day.

3:30ish - We get some things together for tea time. Generally this consists of some sort of cut up raw vegetables, something to dip or spread on them, a cookie or muffin, and some herbal tea. Emma drinks her tea out of an espresso cup with a saucer. I read from our tea time read aloud book (currently The Story of King Arthur).

4:00ish - We finish up with tea, and the munchkins go play while I do some tidying up in the kitchen. Sometimes I then read more to the kids, sometimes I do some other chores, and sometimes I get sucked into my computer for a bit at this point.

4:45ish - I start doing some dinner prep.

5:00 - Emma has to feed the cats and start picking up downstairs. I usually put Gregory in the backpack at this point so that he doesn’t try to eat the cat food too. After Emma does these things, she sets the table.

6:00 - We have dinner. I usually try to hit 6:00 for dinner, but my timing is not always the greatest. I’m usually about 5-15 minutes late.

Somewhere between 6:45 and 7:15 - After dinner, we all clean up a bit and if I wasn’t too late with dinner, the kids play for a bit more while I do some dishes and such. If dinner was late or if Emma really dragged her feet while eating, then she might just go right up to get her PJs on while Matt gets Gregory ready for bed.

7:30 - Family story-time, Matt and I take turns reading. We’re currently reading Classic Myths to Read Aloud.

8:00 - I take Emma up to brush her teeth and cuddle with her for a few minutes before leaving her to fall asleep. Then I take Gregory and attempt to nurse him to sleep. (Usually this works well, but the last couple nights have been rough - he hasn’t gone to sleep before 9:30 since mid last week) If Matt is really busy at work he goes back up to work more at this point, otherwise he might do some dishes if needed.

8:30 - Kids are in bed, and I am either helping finish the dishes or doing them by myself.

9:00 - I start cereal for the morning (if needed, we usually make enough for two mornings), tidy things up yet again (I really spend a lot of time doing that, don’t I) then either collapse with a book or get sucked into the computer. I would like to do some sewing or knitting or something at this point in the evening, but so far I have been lacking the will power to actually get something out and start in on it.

10:30 - I should be in bed, trying to fall asleep. Guess that won’t be happening tonight (since it is already 10:40 and I haven’t even proofed this post at all)

Well, there you have it. This is amazingly long I’m sure, but I hope it was at least somewhat interesting/informative/sleep-inducing for the sleep deprived…

Next up - A short post with lots of cute pictures of Emma and/or Gregory. Enough of my blathering for a bit, I promise!

I’ve been thinking about various routines and rhythms for awhile now, and I’ve tried a few things and discarded a few things along the way (as it should be!). I find that having a set order of tasks and a schedule of what we’re doing each day really helps the flow and peacefulness of my household. It gives us time for education, time for taking care of the house and ourselves, time for the family, and time for prayer. Doing all of these things in the same general order and at the same general times greatly improves our satisfaction with the day and keeps us focused on what we should be doing, rather than spinning off into sloth or mere amusement. (Not that there’s anything wrong with amusement - it just shouldn’t be the foundation of the day!) As I started all thinking about all this again recently, I realized that I had a copy of A Mother’s Rule of Life which I had not read. I moved that to the top of my reading list, and I found that it helped solidify some of my thinking in this area. She also provides some useful advice about how to analyze your life and situation so as to figure out what would work best for you and your family. I particularly like how she breaks down her thoughts into a framework of five different priorities - Prayer, Person, Partner, Parent, and Provider. She calls these her “Five Priorities of the Married Vocation” and proceeds to examine each one in detail over the next five chapters of her book.

Last fall I went through a process of simplifying our schedule a bit so that we were sure to be focusing on what is really important to us - our family, our commitment to God and our intellectual and emotional growth. I decided that Emma’s gymnastics, while entertaining for the most part, did nothing to further these goals. She was not being particularly challenged, and several girls had joined the class who were not good influences (one girl in particular was straight out of middle school - each week she would pick a new “best friend” for the sole purpose of telling all the other little girls who were not the chosen that they were “not her best friend like so-and-so”. Scary.). I also decided to remove the library story-time from our schedule. It was usually moderately entertaining, but the story-teller had no control over the room. The moms yakked loudly, the younger siblings wandered here and there, and the story-teller just tried to muddle through it all, changing activities every three to five minutes in a vain attempt to hold everyone’s attention. This was not something that I felt was cultivating the habit of attention or offering much of a positive model for anything, so I let it go.

With this newfound space in our mornings, I am now able to have us do the same things each morning, without having to rush so that we can get out the door by 10 or 11. This alone has made a huge difference, because if the morning can progress the same way each day without being too rushed, it helps the rest of the day run more smoothly.

The other part of this is that I am trying to do better at clearly stating what Emma’s responsibilities are while also verbalizing what my responsibilities are. I do have to make sure I’m not implying (or overtly saying!), “look, I do all this and you only have to do x, y and z” but rather, “see, I need to make my bed, brush my teeth, and pick up my room each morning too”. This has helped more than I anticipated. Hand in hand with this is absolute and complete consistency. Morning chores are always the same morning chores (although I do let her pick the order she wants to do them in) and when it is time to do other tasks, it is time to do them. This was more of a struggle for some things than others but now things generally happen as they ought to happen. She still needs little nudges now and then to keep her on track (after all, she is only not-quite-five and her attention span isn’t exactly spectacular) but she does know what she should be doing and the amount of nudging is steadily decreasing.

I think the most important lesson I’ve learned is how discipline on my part - discipline to guide the day how I’ve set out to guide the day - has really reaped rewards not only in my own behavior but even more so in Emma’s behavior. It has also created a happier, calmer, and more peaceful home, where it feels like we are focusing on what is really important - God, our family, and our growth into the people God has given us the potential to become.

Next up… the nitty-gritty - because it is always fun to take a peek into the flow of someone else’s home!

I’m sorry I haven’t been posting much recently.  I suppose I haven’t posted regularly for several months now, and I’m not exactly sure what to make of this.  I don’t really feel the same drive to blog as I used to, and I can’t quite figure out why I should continue to blog.  But that being said, I also don’t feel that I want to completely close up shop and forget the whole thing.

I’ve been trying to put some more routines in place around here - some of them are new things and some of them are making more formal things we were already doing.  I’m trying to get some things in motion that I hope we can continue through all the tulmult that is to come in the next year or so.  I think if I can keep these things going it will lend stability and comfort for all of us, even as our living situation and other patterns alter.  I’m also trying to think of easy, fun little ways to involve Matt in our routines, so that even once he’s working from an office and spending a lot of time on the house we’ll still have things that will bring him back into the rest of the family.

All this takes a lot of work and thought though, and I have to be very mindful of my time and my activities!  Right now the two biggest sloth inducing parts of my life are my nice warm bedcovers and this computer.  I’m not about to give up my down comforter and cozy mattress for a board and a haircloth (I’m hoping I can build up my will power to help here!) but I am trying to cut back on my computer time.  Not only that, I’m trying to make sure my computer time is well spent - rather than just reading endlessly, I’m trying to make sure I am answering emails, commenting on blogs and interacting with the world - trying to take an active approach rather than a passive one.  I suppose my blog can count as interaction too, now that I think about it! 

I’d like to put together a few posts over the next week where I write about some of these routines in hopes that it might be interesting or perhaps even helpful.  I’d also like to do a post on Emma and on Gregory because I’m sure some new pictures and such would be appreciated!  I’d also like to do a homeschooling update and a house update as well as a post on RCIA…  but that’s a lot of blogging right there!  We’ll just have to see how it goes.  Well, quiet time is now over, so I should probably re-engage.