How is my baby John already 7. Yeah, I know he's the second of four kids, but he is my itty bitty baby!!! He is sweet as can be too. I love that kid. His eyes just dance with life. He soothes my soul a lot. VERY much like his dad. He is learning to read right now. We put science and history on hold to do reading and math hard core until the year ends. He is finishing up the BOB books, set 2 now and it is going well. I was nervous at Christmas that I was neglecting him. But he's pushing through. They all do learn, when the time is right.

Stats:

Height: 48 inches
Weight 57 lbs.
Clothes size: 6-7 pant, small or 6-7 some 8 shirts
shoes: 2.5


Favorite things to do: Play!!! Use his Nabi 2, help me around the house, do laudry (weirdo!), wash dishes (Even weirder!), ride his bike and play baseball.

He loves Gym/Swim class for our homeschool group and attends CCD weekly at church. He is on the "Cardinals" for Little League and his coach is Mr. Bill Assid. He loves to go to practice. He did real well the first week when I went, or so I think. Joe took him last week and said he did "Eh, okay, I guess". My husband is so damn pessimistic. :)

John loves to laugh! Oh he has an infectious laugh!! I love it.

He does get his butt in trouble, he and Patrick are cranky at each other often. They share a room, sit by each other in the van, etc. We are working hard on getting ALL the boys to speak softly, but with me as their mom, oh it is an uphill battle. I am fiery enough to make any 'speak softly' comment come out wrong! LOL!

We had John's birthday on his actual birthday, Feb. 12, which was a Wednesday. I gave him school off and he actually went to my moms until dinner. Only my brother and parents came to dinner, then our neighbor came over for dessert. He wanted a snowman cake. SO we got ballons and I made a Wilton Snowman cake and he was the happiest kid ever.

I sit down every night and think, I'm going to post to LJ. And I never do. Are you all my 'friends' on facebook? If not, I'm there: Rita Ditch. I know Linda and Sarah are and Bridget, so find me the rest of you, Okay??

So last post was a sob fest in May or March or something. I'm kind of over that now. We completed out first year of homeschooling. It wasn't what I thought it would be, good and bad, but it was, so that doesn't matter. :) We started Year 2 in July and we've logged 79 days already. I am so tempted to submit a letter saying that we believe that learning occurs everyday and there for we have logged 365 days of schooling. But no one that I know has ever done that, so I'm chicken-shit. ;)

Edward is doing better this year but he is still fighting me on language arts. It's not going to be his strength. He loves Science and mostly loves Math (our program is very repetitive and he hates that, but I can see the progress and keep showing him, in the hopes that he sees it too). Writing is what is killing us both. He hates it. Anything that involves writing, aside from Cursive, puts him in a bad mood. Finally, this week, I gave him one week to write anything and everything about his favorite team. He is enjoying it much more. My only rubric is that he capitalize correctly and use proper punctuation. He hates Spelling and it shows. I don't know what to do for him. The program I'm looking at that MIGHT help is over $200. :( I have a friend that has it, I may ask her to borrow it in January or Feb. Otherwise, we are having a much better year this year. A lot less temper tantrums. A lot less "I'm stupid". He's either holding it in or getting over it. I have no idea which. :( Crappy mom, here. He just finished reading The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Tonight we watched the movie. Joe wants me to find the BBC version. He likes it better. Edward has also read through Book 3 of Harry Potter. Book 4's movie scared him. So we put a stop to the books for the moment. Hence CS Lewis. I also found Edward's incentive this year. Art Class at our local Art Institute. It's only three blocks away and they offer 4 day a week FREE art classes from 3-5:15 during the school year! He loves them and the art he is bringing home is so neat. They are focusing on The Wizard of Oz this Fall. He has done so many things. They made a game, they did stencils, they did pictures using scraps of fabric of the Tin Man and the Scarecrow (my personal favorite). This is the incentive that gets E done with his work by 1:30. Last year, school dragged from 10-4. It was crazy. This year, with three more subjects (Latin, Bible and memorization), we start at 9:30 and most days he is done by 1, sometimes 2 if he lags on math or his writing. But he is always done in time. The deal was, do the work and you can go. If the school work is not done, you don't go. He took it seriously. I am soooo glad.

John is finally starting to read. He was a struggle to get rolling. He is still reading basic books, things with sentences like "Vic must run fast." But he's doing really well getting the words figured out. He is doing really well in Math, he is reading the directions pretty well, though I still have to sit with him to make sure he read them right. He doesn't miss anything in math. Mostly his curriculum is Math and Language arts. His handwriting is coming along. He still asks all the time how to make the letters. I finally put up letter strips all over the room, his desk, the table we use, the wall. Hopefully that will cut down on the asking.

They do History and Science together. We did Magnetism July through September and we are doing electricity now. We are going to do Astronomy in the spring. It's been a lot of fun and John is really enjoying the science. History has been US History. We have covered from French and Indian War to the Constitution. I don't know if they are retaining it or not some days and then I hear them chatting with each other and realize they are retaining more than I thought they were. THis is the first of three times they will each go through US History, so the basics are all they need to retain for now. We are working on memorizing the Presidents starting next week, then we will do the States and Capitals. We just finished "Here Comes the Flag" by Henry Holcomb Bennett. Beautiful poem, highly recommend at least reading it to kids.

We added in a lot more Catholic religion to our day. We are starting with the Prayer to St. Michael and a Bible Story. It's been great fun to read the Bible with the boys. Another place that I think, Hmmm...are they listening and then boom, they say something about a story and I realize they are retaining. Like in church when we read the Old Testament about Namaan and his leprosy. We had just read the same story that previous week and Edward caught it. It was cool. He also said to me recently, "My favorite part of Mass is the Readings and the Homily, but mostly the Old Testament. I know it should be receiving the Eucharist, but I'll take ANY love of Mass from a 9 year old!

Patrick is tagging along in our school. He is doing preschool work. He goes to my mom's two or so days a week and does school there, more focused. He sometimes does Science with us. Mostly he and Nicholas play and he does ABCMouse.com. I can't say I LOVE the program, but it's something. :) This summer I'm going to get him caught up. Until then, I need to get John reading and Edward progressing for portfolio.

Nicholas is 17 months tomorrow! I can't believe it. He's so stinking cute and sooooooo fun. He gets into everything of course. But you can see the hamster wheels turning. He started walking just after he turned one. Just went from crawling to walking. He has 10 teeth. The latest two are making him miserable. I firmly believe in amber teething necklaces, even if the evidence does not support their claims. He is less cranky with it on than without. He mostly plays all day with Patrick in our school room. They really are a cute pair.

Joe is doing better than he was a year ago. He is swamped at work and still hates work, but he is finding a groove with life after severe depression. He is on a thyroid pill and a happy pill and lots of Vitamin D. All of that seems to help. I need to work a lot on not projecting my irritation and frustrations at him. I know that weighs on him a lot. He is John's Tiger Scout Den Leader!! I'm so glad he chose to do this. It's been a slow start, but he seems to be enjoying it. John sure does. He also still takes E to Webelos I meetings. We have done more this year with Scouts and the group is really nice to get to know. This is our second group. We were with Pack 718 and now we are with 743. You aren't supposed to hop Packs, but this group is made up of a lot of our friends and people we see. The other group is more boys local to us, but we don't see them since the boys are homeschooled, so this works better.

Me. I'm okay. I am figuring out how to be a mom of four boys finally. Homeschooling makes me happy even when it annoys me. I just need to figure out how to clean this house. We are buried in clutter right now. Everytime I attack a pile, four more crop up and it's mostly things that need filed or thrown out. Probably most of the things I'm filing need thrown out too. :) I'm working on it though. One small step at a time I guess.

The boys are uber excited about Halloween tomorrow. They are going as an Ewok (Nick), Yoda (Patrick), Anakin Skywalker (John), and Darth Vader (Edward). I made all their costumes (three flat sheets from Walmart and a sewing machine!) and I love the costumes. John and Patrick LOVE dress up so I believe they will get lots of use out of the costumes.

I have so much to do this week, we are having Edward's eighth and Patrick's third birthday party on Saturday. So I have to clean this house. I really haven't touched it since right before Nicholas was born. A few hurried clean ups before company, but really cleaning? Nope.  And I had it all figured out how to do one room a day and not stress myself out. One room each day. Simple. Not crazy deep cleaning, but clutter removal, dust and sweep. Well, yesterday I had to go visit friends who we were supposed to see last week, but due to kid illness, couldn't. Today, I have two sets of friends who were supposed to come visit. One got too late a start and can't. Whew. The other, got a late start and that will allow me the time to finish some basic cleaning that I missed yesterday and that I needed to do today. So, from 10 pm to now, I got done:

- made John's bed
-put books away in their room
-cleared off E's dresser
-flipped chair in their room and cleaned up stuff under there
-one bag of garbage out of their room
- cleaned the alcove that the litter box is in
-cleaned downstairs bathroom
-mopped the bathroom floor
-washed mirrors in bathroom
-swept kitchen floor
-made tea for me and Patrick
-swept back porch
-swept dinning room
-swept playroom
-swept living room (forgot about front porch, oh well, tomorrow)
-swept upstairs bathroom
-gathered trash from bathrooms, back porch, and living room (4 bags of trash either in trash cans or on various surfaces
-cleaned cat mess from back porch (belch)
-cleaned upstairs bathroom sink and toilet.
-washed dishes in kitchen
-unloaded and reloaded dishwasher
-swept kitchen floor again
-wiped counter off
-hung diapers outside to dry/sunbleach
-stripped my bedsheets
-bathed two kids
-washed marker off one who I had bathed already. (sigh).

Oh all this and a walk this morning with the neighbor and her daughter. We walk 1. 4 miles I think it is.

I had a shower this morning, but am in dire need of another one.  All that from 10 am to 1 pm. *collapse*

Still pregnant. Which, for me, is fine. Everyone else wants this baby to come.  Doctor appointment tomorrow. We'll see what he says. 

I need to dump some thoughts. I''m not sure if this will be all in one post or end up multiple posts....we'll see how much time I can devote now before dinner time.

I WANT to homeschool Edward and by default, John too. My heart keeps telling me it's the right choice. And that is hard to actually articulate. You know, out loud. To people whose opinions truly matter to me. 

But I have a lot of things holding me back from it.
 I think bullets will work best for the moment. I may expand more later.


- I'm scared of people's opinions. I grew up being told that "those people who homeschool are (insert any number of negative words)" from my mother. She never had a high opinion of those that homeschool. She thought they were not progressive, they held their children back and they had  'weird' kids. I think that, at times, is still true...but I hate the judgement. Each of those parents made the choice. She thought it MADE kids weird. My honest opinion is that those parents realized their child, who had tendencies that weren't maybe "normal", recognized that 'away school' would be detremental to their child and so they chose a different route.

- I'm afraid I would fail my child. It's easier to blame a broken school system than to accept that I can't do something right

- I'm afraid I will not provide the structure we all would need to do well at home schooling.

-I'm afraid I'm creating this option as a way to hide from the problems Edward is having in school, not as a solution for them.

-I'm afraid I would use the issues he has at school as the reason to home school but the issues will still be there.

- I fear the socialization he gets in school would be limited. Though this one goes the other way to- the negative socialization would be more controlled. 

- I fear I would not get the household stuff done too.

- I fear I would try to over do home school in an attempt to 'do it the best'. I tend to obsess over one thing to the mutual exclusion of other things that are important, burn out and stop.

- I am afraid to do this with a new baby at home. Baby #4 would be 2-3 months old if I aim to start in August, though I could start sooner.  Or later.

- I don't know how I will continue what I do throughout the day while also homeschooling. Groceries, LLL, Storytime with Patrick, all seem harder if I have all four kids with me all the time.

- Burn out. I LOVE my family. I adore them. But I do burn out if it's a bad day. And there won't be anyone to hand them off to for 6 something hours a day.

-I'd have to give up my Facebook time. Okay, totally ridiculous. But again it goes back to how I do things now and how those would need to change.

- The amount of work to keep us all on task. Literally, the keeping all the subjects straight and covered because they still would need tested like regular school kids. And I'd have to be organized. Did I mention, that is hard for me.

- Space. We would need classroom type space. Our downstairs is not suited currently for that. Though the attic might work. And be free of distractions if Joe and I worked on it a bit to make it so.

- The cost of materials. I don't know what that would be.  Less than private school I would assume. LOL!

- Discipline. Would there be discipline issues? This leads to my burn out.

-Everyone keeps telling me to slowdown, not do as much, that I'm doing too much already.  Would this add to or eliminate that? I do not know. 

- Would Edward be bored? Would he need more stimulation than I could provide?


So reasons that I like the idea:

- I like the flexibility it offers. There is nothing flexible about having to have one on the bus at 8:30 and one in school by 9:15.  And to ability to take weekends off that start on a Friday or end on a Monday? Without guilt of having to write an excuse. 

- I get more time with my children to help develop their character.

- I get to be the influence.

- I can control their friends a bit longer but still have them exposed to all types of people though the local homeschoolers and extra activties like baseball and swim team.

- I can accelerate Edward. He won't need to wait for the other kids to be finished before he moves on to another subject. When he's done, we move on. 

- I can slow down when he needs more help.

- I can add more enrichement activites. We can do the Children's Museum during the week. We can go to the zoo on a warm November day and use it in lessons we are working on, for both children.

- I can start Patrick on preschool next year while I work with the other two. 

- I can acknowledge what my heart is telling me is right.

- I can use Edward's enthusiasm for a particular subject as a launching pad for discovery. When I was teaching, or preparing to teach I suppose is more accurate, this was my goal. Not to teach strictly from a book but to use the book as the reference point for learning.

- We can go all year. I don't like traditional school giving summer off, because I think kids lose too much. But I also like to enjoy  the beautiful weather. We can do both if I homeschool. We can have outdoor class time. We can measure speed of our bikes. We can count butterflies at the part. We can do so many things.

- We can take family trips any time of year. I think I kind of said this. But they can include educational things too. Planning that would be fun.

- I could teach Edward in a way he can do better (maybe) because it would be more tailored to him.

-  My heart wants to protect my boys from negative influences, not forever but until they can understand better how to cope with them. The world is not what it used to be.

- My hearts wants it.

- http://www.giftedguru.com/?p=494  This. Nothing more to say.

- I don't know that the gifted program that the school district has is going to be enough for Edward. It's not every day. It's not accelerated pace for things. It is what it is. One day a week enrichment. Not going to help his behaviors that are there, I believe, because of boredeom.

- No more stupid PTA. ;) As VP at E's school - it sucks.



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I want what is best. I don't know, intellectually, what that is right now. I know what my heart says. And each point has counterpoints and further explainations that can go with it. I don't want to mess him up. I have high expectations and high demands. 

I think I need to think more about what I want to write.