Rutabaga Dreams

Still here, still no baby.  :-)  I was unfortunately feeling closer earlier in the week than I do now, but I suppose that perception is not based on anything real.  I do hope I have this baby soon though, because I am outgrowing all my maternity clothes and on Tuesday I  measured at 41 cm.  (For the uninitiated, the measurement should be about 1 cm/week of pregnancy, which means I’m measuring about 2 cm ahead)  I’ve also gained (*gack*) almost 50 lbs.  I’m sure it will come off quickly like it has in the past, but still I dislike weighing more than my husband.  And at least I can console myself with the knowledge that I still weigh about 35 lbs less than I did when I had Emma.

I’ve been trying to keep things quiet, peaceful, and restful this week, and I’ve largely been succeeding.  I’ve spent a lot of time reading to the kids, and they’ve spent a lot of time playing with Legos, reading/looking at books, and playing with dolls and stuffed animals.  Emma and Gregory are very good at keeping each other entertained without too much drama, thank goodness!  I’ve been reading, napping, and doing lots of homeschool planning.  I’ve about finished up my planning for next year, the main thing that remains is to get a little more detailed about what we’ll be doing week by week and figuring out what resources I need to get from the library and when.  I also need to type up all my notes so that I don’t run the risk of losing them when we move sometime in July.  

I finally received my 2nd edition copy of Latin Centered Curriculum and I spent a couple hours with it last night.  I was gratified to see that his new approach to studying history is now just about the same as what I’ve decided to do.  I really like how he is recommending more living books to balance out, augment or even replace some of the workbook recommendations.  On the whole I really like his revisions to his plan, and I think this 2nd edition is a big improvement over something that I already thought was quite good.  I’m somewhat less enthused about how he has scaled back the K-2 curriculum, although I think the streamlining he’s undertaken in the whole program is a much needed improvement.   I’m also not entirely won over by his schedules in the third part of his book (40 weeks of instruction - yikes) but as he says in the introduction to that part, “Work the curriculum; don’t let it work you.  I hope that I’ve made it clear that I want you to make the Latin-centered curriculum your own.  It is not holy writ; it is meant to be adapted to your family and your needs.”  This is excellent advice about approaching anyone’s curriculum, methodology, or resources and I hope I’m experienced enough at this point to do just that.

Oh, and speaking of curriculum, Elizabeth Foss recently linked to an excellent Catholic Charlotte Mason curriculum called Mater Amabilis.  I’m not sure if it is useful to anyone who reads my blog, but I’m finding it particularly helpful in fleshing out my religious studies plans as well as my art and music lesson ideas.  It is, unfortunately, a work in progress, but there are still a lot of good recommendations there.  I like how they consider themselves a Charlotte Mason Structured Education, I think that’s at least part of what makes it fit quite well with the Latin-centered curriculum.

Just when we got all set and ready to go out to the park it started to rain.  Literally.  As in we walked out the door and the first drops fell.

*sigh*

Now what shall I do with these rambunctious children?  Preferably something that requires very little energy  on my part…  Hmm.

I posted earlier this month wondering about giving Emma an allowance and I thought I would write a follow-up post.  I was reminded about this by an interesting post about their Family Bank over at ThadenPierce School (which in turn also reminded me about a bank I tried to start up with my sister when I was about eleven or so and she was around seven, but that’s another story…  suffice to say it didn’t prove particularly successful because she didn’t find even my rather generous interest terms enough of an enticement to give me her money - I guess she couldn’t quite see the beauty of compounding interest at that age.  *grin*) in which they lay out their plan for handling money with their children.  I really like what they have set up, and I’ll have to keep that in mind for future reference.  

We, however, have decided to skip an allowance for now though.  We are doing a cash for jobs scheme, where half of the money is for short-term savings/spending, a quarter for charity, and a quarter for long-term savings.  The long-term savings would go into her Ing Direct account (where some portion of her cash presents have been going since she was born) and would be for her use later in life.  Matt and I have come up with a list of jobs she could do over at the property but so far she’s decided playing is more interesting than trying to earn money.  She talks about it occasionally, but as she told me last week, “Christmas isn’t that far away, and if I don’t get that Playmobil set I want then, or for my birthday, then maybe I’ll try to earn some money to get it.”  Granted, I think her sense of time is a little off (as evidenced in the last post as well) but all in all I think she’s not a particularly motivated child in this direction.  And really, that’s fine.  Essentially, she wants the new Playmobil set if someone else will pay for it, but not if she has to earn it, and she’s accepted this and isn’t complaining about the situation.  It perhaps isn’t ideal from the whole teaching your child about money perspective, but at least there seems to be some connection between not earning the money and not getting what you want.     

There’s obviously a lot more to money management than this point, but this seems to be a good start.  I think holding off on a passive income is a good idea in her case, and we’ll just have to keep re-evaluating the situation occasionally as she gets older.  

Or at least not yet…  because this baby has to be born at some point!  Emma was asking this morning if the baby would be here by Christmas and we reassured her that the baby would be here a lot sooner than that.  *grin*  Yesterday we ended up going out to the property not too long after my post as it seemed better than sitting around and wondering if something was going to happen or not.  Today seems like more of the same.  I’m tired and feeling more sensitive to noise and child chaos than usual, and more inwardly focused.  Matt asked me if he should stay home today rather than go work on the house, but I said that I would rather have him make more progress on the house than ride herd on the kids.  That’s one of the unfortunate aspects of where we are in life right now - pretty much any help he can give comes at the expense of either work (which is bad, since he’s hourly) or the house (which is also bad, since we’d like to move in someday…  sooner rather than later!).  The kids seem particularly rambunctious today, which does not bode particularly well.  If the rain holds off I think I’ll have to take them to the park or the property so they can run around for awhile.

Gregory is starting to realize that there is a baby coming.  He’s quite interested in the baby clothes (which I still haven’t found a place for other than the top of our small bookshelf in our room *sigh*) and if you ask him where the baby is he will pat my belly.  Whenever we talk about the baby Gregory tells me that he will bring toys for the baby.  It is pretty cute.  I think it helps that there are so many babies at church right now that I can point to and say “look, Gregory, soon we’ll have a little baby like that of our own in our family!”  Strangely enough, all the babies that have been born recently are all girls.  I wonder if we’ll have the first boy of the year, or if we’ll just add to the trend.

Emma has just informed me that Gregory needs a diaper change.  Perhaps I should go attend to that!  (And go investigate all the crashes I’m hearing coming from their room…)

*sigh*  patience, patience, patience.

During Mass today - actually during the Consecration, shortly after gazing at the newborn a few rows ahead of me and praying that I would get to meet our little one very soon - I started feeling rather strange.  First I was just a little teary and nauseous, then I started having an occasional contraction.  (Be careful what you pray for, I suppose!) The contractions continued as we headed home and as my dear husband made lunch.  I really wasn’t interested in lunch, but I made myself eat anyway

.  It has been about two hours now, and I’m still having contractions semi-regularly.  They are reasonably long, but not super strong or nicely spaced…  so I’m rather wondering what’s going on here.  We had planned on going up to the property this afternoon (as usual) to discuss light placement and work on electrical, but now I’m not quite sure what to do.  Humph.

It is rather funny to be blogging about this and watching the clock to kind of keep and eye on the contraction timing - it makes me think of a website that the company I worked for ages ago was contracted to do.  Someone wanted to put together a site that would essentially act as a stopwatch and record contraction length and timing so that they would have a record of what was happening and would be better able to judge when to call the doctor, go to the hospital, or whatever.  I remember thinking seven years ago or so, “now who on earth would want to sit in front of a computer while she was in labor??”  *grin*

Does “please go pick up your room” sound like “please go shove everything on the floor and the bed into the corners and onto shelves in no apparent order” to anyone else?

Just checking.

*sigh*

What I find strange about this is that I remember doing this as a child too…  even though I knew it wasn’t quite right.  I guess I hoped I would get away with it, although I seldom did.  And there is a certain adult member of this household who still pick up in this fashion - although he says he does it because he doesn’t know where things go.  *grin*  Oh well, I knew what I was getting into - I saw his bedroom and apartment in college.  :-D

But seriously though - how many more years will it take to impress the point that picking up does not equal shoving helter-skelter?  

I read a good suggestion on a Charlotte Mason site awhile back, but I haven’t tried it.  The author suggested taking a picture of how each area (bookshelf, bed, drawer, table, etc) is supposed to look, laminating it, and hanging it on or near the area in question.  That way the child could see what the area is supposed to look like and theoretically it will be easier for the child to put things back where they belong.  If I wasn’t moving in the next 6-8 weeks I think I would probably be taking pictures right now to try it out!

I just went through and read my posts from this same period of my pregnancy with Gregory and I managed to make myself cry.  :-)  I liked how how I had a post early on the 16th saying that not much was happening, and then one the next day announcing the birth of our son.  I also particularly liked this sentence, “At this point I am in the odd position of feeling like the baby’s birth is both imminent and impossible.”  That sounds just about right.  The baby is very low, but otherwise I’m not feeling particularly close.  In the last week or so of my pregnancy with Gregory, I was having fairly regular contractions in the evening that would peter out sometime between 10 and midnight.  I haven’t had any of that yet, only sporadic, but fairly strong contractions occasionally during the day.  I am going by the assumption that going into labor this time will be like last time, but I also realize that it seems rather foolish to make this assumption based on only one other data point.  (I was induced with Emma, so that one doesn’t count)

I am doing pretty well, energy-wise, and I had hoped to take the kids to Mass at 8:30 this morning then on to the park, like we did last week.  However, the kids were exhausted this morning so I opted not to wake them and try to force food into them so we could run out the door.  I think it would not be a good idea to try to go to a small weekday Mass with tired and cranky children in tow.  Why oh why can’t we have a midday Mass like so many other parishes?  I guess I wore them out yesterday by dragging them all over Roseville and Auburn running errands.  I think today will be a laundry and cleaning day, then we’ll head out to the property in the afternoon to run around and feed the dog.  Tomorrow morning we’re going to go to a ranch that some friends from church are caretakers for and we’ll get to feed chickens, meet the cows and horses, and visit.  It should be a lot of fun.  We’ve been to a potluck there, but it was drizzling the whole time so we didn’t get to explore much.  There’s another potluck there on the 7th, but I have no idea whether we’ll be able to make it to that one or not!  

During our errand running yesterday I stopped in at Jo-Ann’s and bought some denim to make a gathering apron for Emma.  She loves to wear dresses where ever we go, and she also loves to use her skirt to carry all her treasures from place to place.  As I’m sure you can imagine, carrying rocks, sticks, and leaves is not the greatest thing for her dresses so I thought I would make her some sort of apron to use instead.  The trouble is that I can’t quite get a good enough picture in my head of what this should look like to be brave enough to make the first cuts.  I bought some muslin as well, and I think I may end up doing a mock-up first.  I’ve been doing Google searches for apron tutorials, but so far what I’m finding isn’t really full skirted enough to work for what I want.  I’m thinking more along the lines of farmwife than 50’s housewife and unfortunately I’m largely finding the later.  I hadn’t realized just how trendy aprons are in certain circles though - there’s quite an  apron renaissance going on out there!  Once I get it figured out I’ll have to post pictures.  I should post some pictures too of the everyday dresses I’ve been making for Emma.  They are very easy and she adores them.

Someday when we’re no longer living somewhere temporarily I hope my school room can be something like this.  Ah, I love organization…  Come to think of it, back before we moved (and moved and moved) I used to have cupboards something like that.  It will be a lot of fun to get all that out of storage again and set it up.  I’m particularly looking forward to being able to use the stuff with the kids somewhere other than the kitchen table!

Matt was able to find all the baby stuff in storage over the weekend, so I’ve been busy sorting and washing in my spare moments.  He was also able to find my summer maternity clothes (yay!) and some more summer stuff for the kids but his shorts seem to have disappeared.  Unfortunately all my summer clothes were bought for my pregnancy with Gregory (who was due in December) so they are all early-mid pregnancy rather than absolutely gigantically huge as I am now.  But I did find a few things I can wear now, and at least I’ll have lots of summer post-partum clothes already out and available.

The kids really enjoyed looking at all the baby clothes with me and were both incredulous that they once wore things that small.  I’m always particularly taken by those little baby undershirts.  They are so tiny!  It was fun to point out to Emma the outfit she came home from the hospital in, although Gregory started asking, “Where Gregory’s outfit?  What Gregory wear home from hospital?”  Alas, there was no such thing and I couldn’t even appease him by telling him what his first outfit was.  Ah, the poor second child, no one remembers those details quite so well the second time around.

I’m 14 days from my due date at this point, but I’m not allowed to give birth this week.  My mom is in New York until Thursday, one of my midwives is on a week long field trip with her daughter, and my mother-in-law (who will take the kids when I go into labor) will be gone Thursday and Friday.  Good thing I don’t feel particularly close!

I just realized that we do have air conditioning!!  I feel so civilized.  :-)

Granted, we don’t have A/C at the house, but so far the combination of good windows and lots of insulation is keeping the house quite reasonable.  But this little 35-40 yr old apartment with single pane windows and poor insulation really heats up during the day, reaching the low to mid 80’s even if I do manage the windows and blinds well.  Ah, what a happy discovery.