Is It Naptime Yet

Wednesday we had Lilah’s class. Lilah knows so much that I sometimes have a hard time reading each day with her and having learning time.
Since Beth’s my mentor, and I can call her that since she called herself my mentor, we had a talk and my goal was to set a time to have “school time”. This is kinda against unschooling, but I’m not going for complete unschooling. The thought is if we have a routine we can guarantee some learning everyday or a time to stimulate learning. I have a box of special school things that I’m taking out at our “school time” and I let the girls do what they want.

Beth also gave me lots of cool things so the girls have loved it. One thing Lilah discovered was there are four ways to add six. Beth gave us a set of domino’s. Lilah was counting the dots and drawing pictures and she brought me some domino’s and asked how they could all have six dots when they where so different. So we had a lesson on adding six and the different ways you could add it. I thought it was fun.

So my school time is after lunch. We’re usually running around and doing things in the morning but home by lunch. So after lunch is our school time. It also goes with my reading a story or two before putting Eden down for her nap but I haven’t read to them in days. We go through cycles. All I do is read, read, read and then we go weeks with just reading once or twice. I should be better about that.

I figure we might be gone some days after lunch, but those are usually days we go to the park for the unschooling group, so that can count as “school time” too.

After lunch we went to the park for the unschooling group, or Life learners which I will now refer to them as. On the discussion board our coordinator, or Tara, was sick and a few others said they would still be there, but when I showed up at the park only one other person was there, and this was her first time. She has a daughter who is 6, so that makes me happy, and her daughter, Sarahphina which I’m guessing how to spell, played really well with Lilah and Eden. The mom was really easy to talk to and we had a good discussion which just got better when one other mom showed up. This mom has a teen aged son, he actually stayed home, and had just returned from living in Hollywood while her son was pursuing an acting career.
We left the park around 4 o’clock, and had a regular night.

Thursday was my busy doctor’s appointment day. Sam was kind enough to watch the girls all morning for me. She had them from 8:40 am till 12:45 pm so I could attend my dermatologist appointment and eye appointment.
I had a mole removed on my arm in July, and it too was precancerous, but does not need suturing. This makes 4 moles precancerous, one normal, for the five I’ve had removed. She removed another mole in my right shoulder, so if she doesn’t call sooner to say it needs suturing we’ll find out in six months if it too is precancerous.

My eyes are the same. They haven’t changed since before I had Eden. It seems amazing to me to keep the same prescription. For so much of my youth my eyes changed drastically each year. I was so relieved to learn that your eyes come to a plateau and stay the same. If we didn’t have so many other things to worry about I would so do laser eye surgery, but atlas we do.

I went to a new doctor and he seemed perplexed that I only wear my contacts part time and my glasses most of the time. I don’t think he understood that glasses are a necessity and contacts are a luxury in my life. He mentioned my children pulling on my glasses, but since they’re older they’re obviously past that stage, plus they learned fairly quickly not to pull on glasses since Jon and I both wore them. My doctor is all about contacts and being to the most “natural state”. I guess glasses don’t bother me, though I like the way I look with contacts.
I am getting new frames this year. My current frames are getting too old and breaking in different places, plus I’m looking forward to getting something a little more up to date.

Friday we stayed home. I sewed a blanket for a baby shower I went to today. I didn’t take any pictures though. (If you could Emilie it would be appreciated and just e-mail me one.)
Today we got a leotard for Eden and Lilah and Jon’s date was to the dollar store to choose gifts for Eden and me. Last week Lilah was obsessed with giving me a gift but she had to wait till her date with Daddy.

I had a baby shower this afternoon and then tonight I took the girls to a carnival that was at Anna’s church. They had a small ferris wheel, which the girls loved, a “train”, and a couple jumper things. One was a regular bouncy thing for kinds to jump in and the other was an obstacle course type thing.
Lilah loved it and Eden had fun watching her, since she was just a little to little for the obstacle course. It was a fun night.

Now it’s time for bed, and if you read all of this you must have nothing else to do.

I realized I hadn’t done any posts about what we’ve been up to this week, and it’s Friday…wait now it’s Saturday.

Monday I cleaned all day long. It was mostly de-cluttering and getting places for random things. I even organized my hall closet. It looks really nice in there now, maybe I’ll post an after picture since you’ve seen the before. After the girls were in bed I swept and mopped.

Tuesday morning I folded clothes, washed sheets, and did the regular kitchen chores.

Why did I go through every room and make them presentable, along with cleaning my dirty floors? It’s really quite simple.

We had our house sprayed by our bug guy and he goes in every room, thus every room had to be presentable, or at least clean enough that he could actually do his job and spray in them. I’d hate for him to get caught on the boxes for Jon’s solar oven or our shred pile.

We don’t regularly have the bug guy out. In fact this is may be the fourth time we’ve had them come out in three years. All the previous visits were for invasions of ants. We’re also not big fans of pesticide in our home, but now that the kids are older and I don’t have infants I feel a little more comfortable, though we don’t have a big bug problem in the house.

I wanted to mop only the day before he came to make sure I didn’t need to mop for at least a week, probably more with my track record, and  mop around pesticide.

I haven’t seen any dead bugs in the house, but we had a roach die by our front porch doormat and the spider that was making webs in our front dirt area was a black widow that died right next to our front door. I mean right next to it. And it was big. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate black widows?

It makes me want to have him spray the outside once a month to prevent these lovely creatures from coming into my house. Which is likely since we don’t have an airtight seal on the bottom of our front door.

I also had Britta Tuesday morning so Sam could study. Then Sam came over at lunch time and we made granola. I have a very easy recipe and she likes it so she may continue to use it if I were to e-mail it to her.

The girls were fascinated with the bug guy and silently followed him around. Well, they were silent until they got outside and Lilah started chatting about our cat cage. (We had another one pooping in our yard and caught it Sunday night.)

I clean for visitors and apparently our bug guy.

Who do you clean for?

Today we had one full day without any accidents. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m talking about potty training Eden.

I think we have success.

I may also have to completely cut out pull-ups, we use them at night and nap time and when we go out. Eden wants to still wear pull-ups during the day in case of an accident, but I’ve noticed she just uses the pull-ups and has less motivation to use the toilet. She still needs them at nighttime half the time, or when she sleeps past 7:30, so I want to keep them around, but I’m torn.

I’m so happy, and so is she, ’cause now she can take dance when it starts on Monday. Tomorrow we’re going to go pick out a leotard and get new dance shoes for Lilah.

I’m excited. It’s clicked and I’ve been able to have patience and gain a belief in her abilities to know her body.

Now all I have to carry around is a change of pants and panties with wipes that can probably stay in my trunk. I’m almost free of a diaper bag.

The real test will be Sundays, to see if she tells her nursery leaders when she has to go and I’ll probably check in on her to help with the transition.

I’m so happy for her and for me.