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Gosh, I should really blog more often, shouldn’t I? We are doing well, just busy. Hannah weighed 8 pounds and 5 ounces a week and a half ago. Still not quite what Emily weighed at birth, but I imagine she’s passed that by now. We’re getting ready for Nathan’s 3rd birthday in just a few days. We found a bike for him today and he’s so excited about it. It’s outside in the shed now – we’re making him wait at least until the weekend before he gets to ride it.

So what have we been doing these past 2 weeks? Homeschool. After taking off the week after Hannah’s birth, George needed to get back to some sort of routine where he could be in his home office for longer periods of (mostly) uninterrupted time. I wanted to help the kids get into some sort of routine as well, so we just decided to start our ‘school’ at the same time. We started out real slow (so much for all my big “1st Day of Homeschool” plans!) and worked up from there. We just finished up day 9 of homeschooling and it’s gone fairly well. We’re still fairly unstructured about it though. Here’s what our typical days are looking like:

George helps get the kids dressed and ready while I get myself and Hannah ready and fed. Then George heads to the home office at 8 while the kids and I either take a walk or they play in the backyard. Then we come inside and they each get to pick a book from the school shelf. I pick a couple school books myself (otherwise we’d read nothing but Cinderella and the Berenstain Bear’s Science Book) and we read those on the couch together. Then we have a box of more educational toys that the kids get to play with for 30 minutes or so. They can do this on their own, so it’s my chance to run in the office and check my email, feed and/or change Hannah, and figure out what we’re going to do for a craft that day. After the toy time, the kids work on their workbooks for 15 minutes. Nathan pretty much makes up his own activities with his workbook. He circles things or draws lines to connect different objects. It would be fine with me if he didn’t do a workbook, but he wants to be like his big sister. Then it’s craft time. Emily thinks it’s not school unless she does a craft. Usually it’s a simple craft involving crayons and a blank piece of paper. I decided I can manage painting one day a week, so Friday is painting day. And that’s it. It’s usually 11 by now so for the past several days they have been watching a movie at this point until lunch. We borrowed some Magic School Bus movies from the library so it’s still educational, right?

It’s not quite the way I want it, but it’s working well so far. Hannah usually sleeps through the walk and most of the reading time. I usually have her in the sling for the walk so it’s pretty easy to just sit on the couch with her still asleep. If she wakes up during the reading time, she’s content to simply eat until we’re done. She’s usually back asleep again by workbook/craft time which is really nice. I know it won’t stay this easy, but I’m enjoying it while I can.

George usually takes a lunch break at noon and often he’ll eat lunch with the kids while I run back in the office and check my email. Then it’s rest time – wohoo!! (My favorite part of the day – but no, I’m not the one doing the resting.) Now I just have to figure out what to do with the time from 3-5 after all the kiddos are up from rest time and I’m quite ready for some rest!

And that’s what we’ve been doing the past 2 weeks. Not terribly exciting, but it’s kept us busy. We’ll try to get some updated pictures of Hannah up. I’ve also been informed that we don’t have any photos of Nathan and Hannah on the web. We’ll try to get some of those up soon as well.

Filed under: Family on September 21st, 2006