On the verge of week three
And um...heres where I catch up, presumably.
Two weeks down, on the verge of a third. First week was introducing the kindergardener to school, along with the normative years for the second grader and fifth grader. This was especially interesting since Dream is the excessively detail-oriented child in our house, who has elaborate rituals (most of them in her head) for mundane things, and the vast majority of her life is spent mitigating her heightened sense of spatial understanding and her rigid expectations of the world. Catastrophic at first in regards to school, but after a few days of rolling around in a tantrum on the floor over not liking phonics, not being able to write the "D" in her name (heh, there is a d in her non-internet name too, lol), she sorted herself out, and as long as we keep her laughing she is the most enthusiastic student ever to grace the halls of our homeschool.
Hershaw and Muse settled into the school year much easier, and my establishment of both a system of responsibility charts and a rigid school day helped us all transition nicely. Hershaw is doing almost entirely self led work, which gives me the hope that he won't get to college and wonder why the professors don't write the notes on the board in outline form for him anymore.
The second week was comprised of a) Mr. K and I heading out to our university studies, introducing a whole new schedule involving the taking of buses and approximately 2.5 less hours of sleep a night, b) the start of the ballet term, and c) the beginning of my mother actually being responsible for the kids for more than a grocery store trip. A and B are running relatively smoothly, although Bean dropped ballet once he realized he wasn't going to watch his brother dance (yup, he actually believed we signed him up to watch Hershaw grand jete around the room).
C.....well...C has me stressed out to the point of vomiting and/or throwing myself before a slow moving train. My mother has a problem with following the basic constructs that hold our house together on a day to day basis, meaning she does whatever project she damn well pleases under the guise of "helping" us.
This worked fine when it was just the first week...I could fix whatever hair-brained scheme she had undertaken usually by the end of the day, and I still had time to unleash my domestic goddess on the rest of the house at regular intervals, ensuring that we had clean floors, clean countertops, fresh food, and clean laundry. But ooohh-wah-oh that second week was quite a dropping of the other shoe, no?
Now I have less time to manage it all, and between Mr K and myself, we expect the third adult in the household to, at bare minimun, maintain things to a semblance of order when we leave the household in her care. The smooth functioning of things here (and my effing sanity, people!) relies on basic standards being met, things being done in the relatively normal fashion, etc. With one kid, you can change it up I guess, and do whatever. Two, sure. Once you get to three, scheduling becomes a bit more of a necessity, at four, you cling to your lists and planners as a lifeline, and at five, total chaos breaks out when you wreck the system.
My mother is the wrench in my gears, apparently.
I won't go into all the grisly details, but suffice it to say I have arrived home to tiny children who have been allowed to nap for half an hour, with no attempts to coax them back to sleep, meaning they are miserable at dinnertime, and in O's case, usually fall asleep around or before then, ensuring they will not go to sleep until 2 AM. I have found my pajamas and undershirts hung on hangers while my mother complains that we are running out of things to hang clothes up with. She has handed stacks of laundry to small children to put away unsupervised, meaning that I will find them in the dirty clothes hamper or crammed under a shelf somewhere. Hershaw capitalizes on her historic inattentiveness, playing Runescape or surfing the internet unobserved (not realizing that his sisters or the history will tattle on him, heh). And yesterday.....I came back from the grocery store to find our 20 month old playing next to the street while the other kids were playing up the street by their friends house, and she was sitting up the stairs, on the porch, in a chair, and she moves slow, being old and all, so O could have been a hood ornament before she even got past the first concrete step.
We have argued so bad she almost had to go home, which was actually impossible since we are double booked on classes, and her being there for overlap times is vital. I just....gah. I am stuck with her here, nailed into this school quarter, and nothing is changing anytime soon.
So when you see me not writing or calling or returning e-mails, it is probably because I am trying to make up for all the stuff that is being screwed all to hell around here, or I have finally snapped and am in a corner somewhere, drooling on myself.
Two weeks down, on the verge of a third. First week was introducing the kindergardener to school, along with the normative years for the second grader and fifth grader. This was especially interesting since Dream is the excessively detail-oriented child in our house, who has elaborate rituals (most of them in her head) for mundane things, and the vast majority of her life is spent mitigating her heightened sense of spatial understanding and her rigid expectations of the world. Catastrophic at first in regards to school, but after a few days of rolling around in a tantrum on the floor over not liking phonics, not being able to write the "D" in her name (heh, there is a d in her non-internet name too, lol), she sorted herself out, and as long as we keep her laughing she is the most enthusiastic student ever to grace the halls of our homeschool.
Hershaw and Muse settled into the school year much easier, and my establishment of both a system of responsibility charts and a rigid school day helped us all transition nicely. Hershaw is doing almost entirely self led work, which gives me the hope that he won't get to college and wonder why the professors don't write the notes on the board in outline form for him anymore.
The second week was comprised of a) Mr. K and I heading out to our university studies, introducing a whole new schedule involving the taking of buses and approximately 2.5 less hours of sleep a night, b) the start of the ballet term, and c) the beginning of my mother actually being responsible for the kids for more than a grocery store trip. A and B are running relatively smoothly, although Bean dropped ballet once he realized he wasn't going to watch his brother dance (yup, he actually believed we signed him up to watch Hershaw grand jete around the room).
C.....well...C has me stressed out to the point of vomiting and/or throwing myself before a slow moving train. My mother has a problem with following the basic constructs that hold our house together on a day to day basis, meaning she does whatever project she damn well pleases under the guise of "helping" us.
This worked fine when it was just the first week...I could fix whatever hair-brained scheme she had undertaken usually by the end of the day, and I still had time to unleash my domestic goddess on the rest of the house at regular intervals, ensuring that we had clean floors, clean countertops, fresh food, and clean laundry. But ooohh-wah-oh that second week was quite a dropping of the other shoe, no?
Now I have less time to manage it all, and between Mr K and myself, we expect the third adult in the household to, at bare minimun, maintain things to a semblance of order when we leave the household in her care. The smooth functioning of things here (and my effing sanity, people!) relies on basic standards being met, things being done in the relatively normal fashion, etc. With one kid, you can change it up I guess, and do whatever. Two, sure. Once you get to three, scheduling becomes a bit more of a necessity, at four, you cling to your lists and planners as a lifeline, and at five, total chaos breaks out when you wreck the system.
My mother is the wrench in my gears, apparently.
I won't go into all the grisly details, but suffice it to say I have arrived home to tiny children who have been allowed to nap for half an hour, with no attempts to coax them back to sleep, meaning they are miserable at dinnertime, and in O's case, usually fall asleep around or before then, ensuring they will not go to sleep until 2 AM. I have found my pajamas and undershirts hung on hangers while my mother complains that we are running out of things to hang clothes up with. She has handed stacks of laundry to small children to put away unsupervised, meaning that I will find them in the dirty clothes hamper or crammed under a shelf somewhere. Hershaw capitalizes on her historic inattentiveness, playing Runescape or surfing the internet unobserved (not realizing that his sisters or the history will tattle on him, heh). And yesterday.....I came back from the grocery store to find our 20 month old playing next to the street while the other kids were playing up the street by their friends house, and she was sitting up the stairs, on the porch, in a chair, and she moves slow, being old and all, so O could have been a hood ornament before she even got past the first concrete step.
We have argued so bad she almost had to go home, which was actually impossible since we are double booked on classes, and her being there for overlap times is vital. I just....gah. I am stuck with her here, nailed into this school quarter, and nothing is changing anytime soon.
So when you see me not writing or calling or returning e-mails, it is probably because I am trying to make up for all the stuff that is being screwed all to hell around here, or I have finally snapped and am in a corner somewhere, drooling on myself.