Tuesday, October 1st

Tuesday was an eventful day for us around the house.  We had school, and I had really, really planned for the kids to take a nap since I knew not much napping/resting would be happening over the next several days.  However, when I gave them the twenty minute countdown-til-nap alert, they started playing extra well together.  I think that when they have the "threat" of nap time looming over them they nonverbally come to an agreement to play awesomely in the hopes that I will just let play time continue.  And it totally worked ;-)  They basically played outside - with a few minor breaks - from 1:30 until 7:30 p.m.! 

I was doing a bit of one-one-one work with Lincoln, and Waverly was being extremely loud and verbal as an almost-four-month old should, so Scarlett came out of her room and asked if I would put the baby in her bed and let her be "in charge" of her.  When I finished up with Linc shortly thereafter, I went in to retrieve the baby and found Scarlett doing a wonderful job talking to her and receiving huge smiles and laughs :-)  

At tea & story time, we read "Down Buttermilk Lane" and "Too Many Pumpkins" - I'd read that book to Lincoln the previous day, but he was riveted again.  Since the Buttermilk Lane book features an Amish family, I had to stop and take the time to explain about who the Amish are, what they believe, and why they believe the way they do.  The kids were just open-mouthed, horrified! Hahaha  "But, but mommy!  WHY WOULD THEY DO THAT?"  I think Scarlett's question sums up how I feel as well, but I tried to be neutral and explain their point of view.  They were just genuinely baffled. 

As we continued our History studies on Ancient Egypt, we learned about the myths that the Egyptian people used to help them explain events in their world - things such as the flooding of the Nile, etc.  We read the myth of Osiris and Set, and the kids were fairly riveted since it plays out like a darker version of a Disney story.  After we discussed all that we'd read and played Skittle Review (it's everything it sounds like it is), the kids colored their Osiris and Set coloring pages while we listed to a couple tracks from the audio book "Egyptian Treasures: Mummies and Myths" by Jim Weiss.  I cannot rave enough about his awesome storytelling!  We will definitely be downloading more of his work for car trips!!

Next, we opened up our new Little Passports packet and started our adventure of learning about RUSSIA!  We found the country and put a pin sticker on it, placed the flag sticker in our passport, then we had Observation Time wherein they try to tell me as many things as they can about the country just from looking at it on the map ("it's really big!" or "it's way at the top of the map, I bet its really cold there!" or "it touches lots of oceans" and so forth).  We also read through "Look What Came From Russia" - a really neat book that does a good job of giving a super brief synopsis on several things Russia is famous for. 

The library had a wealth of kid's books for Russia - really my ideal mix of folk tales, city/country facts, and cultural/lifestyle information.  There's even a video on the daily family life in Russia, which is pretty cool!.  Because I'm hosting October's Passport Club meeting, I'll be trying to work through all of our material in the next week and a half, giving us another week after to pick presentation topics and practice, which will leave me the last few days to finalize plans (by which I mostly mean, you know, clean the house!) and put activities together. 

The kids highlighted the outline of Russia, then we drew a line to divide the country into two rough sections - main Russia and Siberia.  They also tried to draw, in the correct location, the slender crescent moon shape of Lake Blaikal (with varying degrees of success! haha).  We also found and circled Moscow.

Finished maps - Scarlett on top, Lincoln in the middle (I wrote Siberia for him), and Victoria on the bottom.

We also applied our Russian tattoos - Lincoln was definitely happy to see a big bear included in the mix and selected that one first thing ;-)

At this point, we had been working on Russia for an hour and the kids had done awesomely.  I should have saved this video for another day, because they were getting antsy and ready for lunch; however, I decided to put this on while I was fixing their food, and they had a very hard time sitting still.  The information was great and told from a few different kids perspectives on their daily lives, but the pacing was slow and the kids were hungry.  I ended up cutting it a bit short (it's only 20-30 minutes long) and we'll try to watch it again next week.

Thanks to the Government Shutdown, Nana was home and free to play!  She spent quite a while at various points throughout the day chatting with, holding or playing with Waverly :-)

After lunch, the kids were playing so great outside and doing a good job of making me change my mind about naps.  About an hour into their fun, we had The Chipmunk Situation of 2013.  Pixie either found a nest/burrow of chipmunks OR has been chasing this same chipmunk for a few days.  Either way is sad.  But the cat chased this tiny chipmunk until it just stopped.  Lincoln ran up to it in the yard and *picked it up* at which point it promptly nipped him. Awesome.  I was envisioning an imminent trip to the ER for rabies shots! haha  Fortunately it didn't break the skin.  The kids were frantic for me to agree to them keeping it as a pet (a request I staunchly refused), and when I agreed they could stare at it for a few minutes they all huddled around to watch it playing dead (it was definitely not dead).  Eventually I tried to catch it with gloves on and was unsuccessful, so Grammie got it and heaved it over the fence, which made Lincoln burst into tears despite our explanations that it landed on soft leaves and was happier to be back there than to end up a nice little snack for Pixie.  He has such a soft heart!

However, Lincoln had a good cry about it for a couple of minutes, then listened to reason and pretty much moved on with life and went to ride his bike.  Scarlett didn't seem that upset at first, but then came inside with red rimmed eyes and sat down and started writing.  She must have made 10 pages of drawings and writings.  Here is a page that says (with her spelling), "I am sad abawt the gipmunc" and she said it's a picture of a chipmunk flying toward a tree.  It was hard not to laugh out loud, but she was so heartbroken, and I had to treat it with all the seriousness of a major drama.

Another sheet, after I tried telling her how to spell chipmunk... "I wontid the chipmuc [almost got the spelling, hehe]. Now that the chimunc is gone I am sad even thoe the chimunc is happy to by [be] hom."  She was so tired and despondent and so after a while she came and just sat in my lap and we looked up chipmunk facts on Wikipedia and read through everything there, and even found a website on keeping chipmunks as pets.  As I read through all the FAQs on there, she realized it would not have made an ideal pet and would never have been cuddly like she was imagining.

At this point, Waverly woke up from a little nap and WAS cuddly :-)  Scarlett played pat-a-cake with her for a few minutes and feeling cheered, ran outdoors to join the other kids in riding bikes.

Our good little friend Charlotte came over to play in the late afternoon, and wound up staying for dinner!  The girls were so geeked :-)  Two funny things: 1) With Charlotte joining us at the table, the kids were sitting in slightly different spots than they almost always do, and as both I and my mom took turns holding Waverly, she could not stop looking back and forth at the kids with these huge saucer eyes like, "This is not how things usually are!!" haha 2) For the past couple of weeks we have been doing Roses and Thorns at dinner - we go around the table and each person tells a Rose about their day (a particular good or favorite element) and a Thorn (a challenge they had or something they didn't like).  It's been so fun and the kids love doing it!  However, all three kids' Thorns were variations of, "The worst part of my day was when Grammie threw the chipmunk over the fence." lol

After dinner, I went to the gym and the girls played outside a bit longer while Jim and Lincoln went Barnes & Noble for a bit and then to get haircuts.  It was a long, full, good day!