Homeschooling made easier

I was tagged to share 5 things that make homeschooling easier for me.

1. Our curriculum. Wow, I can't say enough about how simplified my life is this year compared to last, thanks to this one. No more lesson planning the night before for me, which is pretty awesome since I've been falling asleep (no joke) around 8:30pm each night. It's easy to work with, too, meaning I can tweak and adjust and add and slash as I feel fits our needs/interests best.

2. Losing the classroom mentality, as Mom would say. It's a huge blessing that we're not subject to a bell, rigid periods, a pick-up-and-move-on-even-if-your-student-is-totally-enthralled-schedule-- and I find that we not only accomplish so much more when we take advantage of what's really piquing our interest on a particular day, but we enjoy learning so very, very much.

3. Having dinner planned at least by the time lunch rolls around, if not the day before (or whenever I might do thorough menu planning). 'Nough said.

4. CFA. This is a big one. Can I just say how nice it is to have an email arrive in my Inbox telling me a quarterly report is due vs. having to remember on my own? Or that it's really convenient to just write out the curriculum plans for each subject and have someone else type it all out in IHIP form and mail it in? Or how much simpler my life is because Friday Program includes choir, gym, art, etc.? So great.

5. Keeping our priorities streamlined and straight-forward. In this season of life, with four children under age 7 and another due any day, the simpler I keep our week, the better off I am-- and that trickles down to everyone. (If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy, right???) Sometimes I start to wonder if I'm not exposing my kids to enough or giving them adequate opportunities, but then I remember that children thrived for decades with the simple pleasures and adventures of being outdoors, listening to their mother read aloud, enjoying games as a family, spending hours engaging in imaginative play, etc. There will be a season all too soon when music lessons, sports, historical society events, book clubs, and more will be an appropriate and wise use of our time and energy, but for now I am savoring this season of being a young family and not needing to be out and about a whole lot.

Aubrey's birthday celebration

Full term

I'm almost 37 weeks pregnant now; full term, for all intents and purposes. I can't believe we're already here.

I have to say, I'm more prepared than I've ever been at this point in a prior pregnancy. The diapers, blankets, burp cloths, and gender-neutral baby clothes have been washed, and I've rearranged books in order to free up a bookshelf for storing it all. The infant car seat was vacuumed and scrubbed and is now sitting in the back of the van (not quite installed, but close!). Daniel assembled the bouncy seat while I prepared the bassinet the other day. I even have the majority of the baby's things and my things collected for the hospital.

In the past, I always thought I ought to wait until the last minute for such preparations so that I wouldn't get overly anxious for the baby's arrival. Unfortunately, this resulted in not being quite ready the past two times I've delivered! This time I figured I'd better not put it off as long as I usually do. By Tuesday evening, all the critical things were taken care of. (Of course, there's still the list of things I'd like to do, like getting a couple bushels of apples and canning applesauce/freezing apples, etc., but all the necessary stuff is done.)

And now I'm finding that, quite contrary to what I'd always thought, I just feel ready-- not at all anxious. While I am very excited for this baby's arrival, I also love our family right now, and instead of having what I need to do hanging over my head, I feel free to really enjoy these last weeks.

I do ask that if you think of us, you pray. Yesterday I found out that I have fairly low levels of amniotic fluid, and it was confirmed today. On the amniotic fluid index, my fluid measured at 6.7 (generally it seems that 10-18 is "normal," 6-10 or 22-25 is "concerning," below 5 or above 25 is "dangerous," to give you a frame of reference). Unless my levels increase, I will be having bi-weekly non-stress tests and weekly ultrasounds from now until the baby is born. If my levels decrease to 5 or less, doctors will most likely want to deliver the baby since I am full term anyway, which is less than ideal in any situation but especially in light of my desire to VBAC.

Oh, and it's not too late to vote if you haven't yet! I'm waffling more than I have the whole pregnancy about whether this baby is a boy or girl. I almost gave in yesterday at the ultrasound, but I knew the lecture I'd get from Daniel simply wouldn't be worth it!

Food preservation

Today my project was to get the bushel of pears that's been sitting on my counter (since Wednesday!) canned. I figured I'd make a huge batch of pear sauce rather than canning pear halves since my kids like it much better. I didn't figure on the peeling and coring and quartering taking me almost 2 hours.

A bushel is a lot of pears, let me tell you.

(I'm not complaining, though: I got the whole thing for just $14, thanks to a friend's connections!)

I had to borrow my mom's stockpot because none of my pots were going to come close to what I needed for this endeavor!

Several hours of simmering later, the house smelled amazing and I was ready to get the pear-sauce processed. I've only canned jam so far, so this was all trial and error.

The bad news was that I overfilled my canning pot and when I submerged the first batch of quart-sized jars, I overflowed boiling water all over my stove. Yes, I got burned. But fortunately nobody died and nothing was lost in the process.

And the good news?

Every single jar came out looking beautiful and with the instantaneous (and lovely-- to this ear, anyway!) "popping" sound that says the job is done.

Ahhhh...

Silly girl

Two!

Aubrey is two today!

We sure had no idea what to expect when she made her dramatic entrance into the world two years ago, but we knew we could count on God's faithfulness-- and He has been oh so very faithful. I can't even begin to express how blessed we feel as we consider the demonstrated keeping power of the Holy Spirit in Aubrey's life: she has had no long sicknesses, no extended hospitalizations (other than her first few weeks in the NICU), no surgeries, no interventions. Not only that, one would never know anything is different about her heart from watching her: she is active, feisty, developmentally on track, talkative, a busy-body, full of opinions, strong-willed, a good eater, and lively.

Today we not only celebrate the precious, strawberry-blond, spitfire of a little person that Aubrey is, but also the constant and very present reminder she is to us that nothing is impossible with God.

Happy Birthday to an amazing and wonderful girl!

Preparations

About a week ago, I was taking a shower and suddenly it hit me: I'm having a baby. I almost threw up from the panic attack right there and then.

Not because things have to be done around our home to prepare for the baby, but because at the end of the day, the baby has to be born. And as much as I mostly think that is just amazing and miraculous, there's a part of me that is absolutely dreading it.

How the baby arrives is, I suppose, technically up for debate. But not really. I'm 99.9% certain of my VBAC. Something really unexpected would have to happen for me to not get it.

My doctor is actually talking more and more positively about the VBAC the closer we get (as opposed to dropping hints about a repeat c-section, which my cynical self had been rather prepared for) and today he went so far as to say that he's feeling okay with me possibly going to 42 weeks, whereas when I first signed on with him he was saying he wouldn't be comfortable waiting more than 41 weeks. I'm feeling surprisingly healthy and strong (I guess my fresh commitment as of about 6 weeks ago to exercise pretty much daily has paid bigger dividends than I'd anticipated). The baby's head is engaged, which I was pretty sure happened within hours of my chiropractic adjustment on Tuesday afternoon and was confirmed at today's appointment.

Last week my order of End Game supplements arrived: 5-W and Evening Primrose Oil. I'll let you know if I think they make any difference. (I took 5-W the last couple weeks with Aubrey, but since she arrived via c-section I didn't really get a chance to see if it helped the labor or not.) I also have at least one more chiropractic adjustment lined up before the Big Day, which I'm really looking forward to since this past one left me feeling 100x improved (I hadn't realized how off-balance my hips actually were until she put them back where they belong!).

Every Tuesday (Daniel's day off) between now and October 18th has a special project lined up. The goal is to not only have some loose ends around the house tied up before the baby's arrival, but to even go so far as getting the infant car seat washed and ready before we leave for the hospital, which I'm embarrassed to admit was sadly neglected prior to both Jackson and Aubrey's births. And, hey, if I do well, I might actually get some sort of dresser or shelving unit emptied so that there is a place besides my bedroom floor to put baby clothes and cloth diapers. I'm not too worried about that... though perhaps I should be???

We've so far finished 6 units of our homeschooling curriculum and I hope to be done with 12 of the 34 units by mid-October. That should give us a nice cushion of time so that I can sit and stare at and smell the new baby to my heart's content.

Daniel's planning on coming to my doctor's appointment in 2 weeks so he can meet the man who will be delivering our baby. (He technically met him right before he delivered Aubrey, but I don't know that Daniel could even pick him out of a crowd since we were both rather preoccupied and misty-eyed at that time.) I've started thinking about the delivery itself and who I should call about being ready to watch the other kids. I'm going to try talking the CPH L&D staff into overlooking their 2 attendants rule so that some of my sisters can attend the birth (what do you think, Liz: can it be done?). I'm trying not to think too much about the fact that no matter how much I want the VBAC, it's still gonna hurt.

So, yeah, I've begun preparing. And I have to say, I'm starting to get very excited!

Labor Day

Yesterday we said no to routine, school, house projects, and other various duties and took off to the adirondacks for a fun family outing. We've done bits of hiking here and there with the kids and they love it; we thought we'd try their first mountain.

Azure it was.

We had a great time!

I didn't take any pictures on the way up or down-- my hands were a bit preoccupied with kids and stuff-- but here are the ones we took at the top:

eating lunch


Aubrey rode on Daniel's back up and down, but apparently she hadn't had enough of him because she sat on his lap almost the entire time we were at the top


Daniel took the 2 big kids up the fire tower for a truly amazing view


the picture Daniel wanted to record the 34w pregnant belly at the top

Stirring up gratitude

I know the ups and downs of life take their toll on all of us.

It just seems like lately there have been some pretty major roller coasters happening around here (take my word for it: the pneumonia is just the tip of the iceberg), and there have been a few times in the past week that I've just wanted to run away from it all.

But instead of running away, I've decided to record ten things that I'm awfully thankful for:

1. Tomorrow we'll finish Week 4 of our official homeschooling year, and we are having so much fun!
   
2. Although Gabriel and Jackson aren't recovering from pneumonia the way they should (which means another doctor's appointment this afternoon *sigh*), you would never know that Aubrey was one of the four of us who was sick. She was the least effected (affected?-- I don't think I'll ever know!) by the illness, which is just... miraculous, really.
3. We keep getting amazingly delicious tomatoes from our garden. Considering the fact that we had to pull half our tomato plants out due to blight, this is pretty awesome.
4. I love our house. No, really. I can't think of any other place on earth I would want to be stuck for 2 weeks with a sick family. It's our haven.
   
5. Online shopping is fantastic. I did all the birthday shopping for the months of September and October without buckling and unbuckling a single car seat.
   
6. I've had a steady stream of visitors this week, people I know are thinking of me and wanting to make sure I'm okay: Louissa, Lore, Mom, Nancy, Camilla, Liana. It doesn't get much better than that sort of kindness.
   
7. The sun is shining and the grass is green, green, green. Just like yesterday. And the day before that. And the day before that. The best part? The forecast is the same for tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that. No wonder I love the North Country in the late summer and fall.
8. My husband doesn't care that our Independence Day decorations are still out, 2 months later. Better yet, I don't care. I'm finally learning to chill out a teeny bit.
   
9. I can have a miserable late afternoon (like yesterday) only to realize halfway into the evening (like yesterday) that everything is going okay and the kids and I are actually enjoying one another. Sometimes I'm too busy to notice the grace of God, but it's all over my life in a million little ways like that.
10. I'm saved. Nothing can change that, and nothing can separate me from His love.

Oh, and one more:

11. Getting to listen to a great message while I plan out the next 6 weeks of school. (It really is worth your time.)