Mother's Day

 Mother's Day 2015. E made me a picture with 2 hearts on it. I slept in till 7:30, which threw off the morning and landed me at church flustered and frizzy.  E was wearing boots (forecast: 23* celcius), and KA was wearing a small green hat that kept sliding up on her head and making her look like a smurf.
I fought off a bad attitude for most of the afternoon, and was late getting ready for evening church.    O fell down the steps at church and scraped his face, and then I lost Kevin somewhere for a half an hour after the service.
We came home. I fed everyone again, and it took longer than usual. I put the kids in bed, but O wouldn't go to sleep. I had discovered molars and other teeth in his mouth earlier, so I assumed he was having trouble because he was teething.
It didn't surprise me. What a day.
 I asked Kevin to hold him for me, and he finally did, setting O beside him in bed. O obligingly went to sleep, straightaway.
I checked on KA. She had fallen asleep in less than a minute after giving up her fight to be up. E was snuggled down on my pillow, sucking her fingers, wearing KA's nightgown. O was snuggled next to his daddy, 2 big, orange bandaids on his head, soother in his mouth... so small; so tough, so tired!
I was, at that moment, overwhelmed with how beautiful life is.
 I am so grateful to God for blessing me with these babies. They are so precious to me!!
I know. Precious is a Hallmark word. I'm sorry. 
They just are.

moms love spring

I experienced a completely new emotion the other day. I call it, "Moms LOVE spring!" It's hard to describe the feeling. Part of it was relief at being done with "the worst winter in 75 years," as the Times and Transcript called it. Part of it was love that welled up in my heart as I saw my children's glee; playing outside without their coats. Part was gratitude to God, who sends the seasons. Part was surprise; I hadn't realized how much I wanted this!

CM E-Course

I've recently been thinking that I don't know enough about Charlotte Mason's educational philosophy. Oh, I know enough to teach my children, but not enough to impress people, when I talk about my homeschooling!
So, in order to become more articulate on the subject, I am taking a free Charlotte Mason E-Course. 
On the one hand, I wish this wasn't necessary, but on the other hand, having done one lesson already, I am finding that it has already improved our school time!
Katherine wasn't ready for math, but I was doing a bit with her anyway. This course reminded me of what was important in these early years (lots of time outside), and inspired me to completely drop the math and spend that energy on nature time!

Math

Last week, in order to reassure kevin that we are do kindergarten right, I printed off a summary of what kids usually know by the end of kindergarten.
We are doing well in reading, using progressive phonics,  but had a little ways to go in math and in writing. The list didn't mention art, but I'm sure we have reached greater heights in that area than the average kindergartener.
Thinking it over, I decided to look up math curriculum. Nelleke at Education is a Life pointed me towards free MEP math, and we have begun our spiralling journey towards an understanding of maths.
 Somehow, however, between printing the standards for kindergarten and printing out the first bit of MEP, I found that Katherine could do simple addition and subtraction. Which was all I needed for kevin, anyways.

on (not) sleeping through the night.

I'm tired today. As I was yesterday. And the day before that. You see, I'm trying to teach O to sleep through the night. He's almost 1, and it's about time.
I remember doing this much earlier with my girls; there's something about having a third child makes me delay tackling the issues. I'll have to be careful to be aware of his character training. Sleeping through the night is not a big deal, but it would be terrible to delay tackling, say, an unkindness problem he could have.
Charlotte Mason managed character training with whole schools of children. I wonder... I expect she was just very organized.

I'm praying that he'll stay asleep (and not need rocking) soon!

Drawing Monday

I really like these kids. God is good.

Our drawing, using the Monart Method, has been progressing wonderfully.  We've been getting together with Nanny and her home-care worker every Monday and enjoying a drawing time.
Today, Katherine drew a fabulous parrot. Unfortunately for me, she gave it to Daddy to take to work.

The 'drawing tip' of the day was "Use the whole paper," because it looks more like art if you do that.

Es.

She's fascinated by biology. Skin, blood, teeth, what's inside your bones, where babies come from, and lately, milk bottles. Last week she told me that she "couldn't sleep well, because when people have small milk bottles they can't sleep well."