Tuesday, October 22nd

The day started off so promising and careened sharply downhill and burrowed underground sometime around dinner.  I guess it was just one of those days! 
:-p

We started off really nicely after breakfast - the kids wanted to write letters (the girls to Aunt Kari and Lincoln to our cousin Meredith) and decorate envelopes, so we spent an hour doing just that.  I even let them bundle up in rain gear and go put the mail in the box by themselves.

After our one-on-one school time, I had Scarlett and Victoria work on their presentations for the upcoming Passport Club meeting (which we would be hosting).  Scarlett always likes to put hers together and then read through it all a few times by herself first.

Next, she did a read aloud to me (and Waverly, who was in her wrap on me and BEAMING at Scarlett, who she assumed was speaking exclusively to her; Scarlett found this immensely hilarious and distracting) and then practiced while trying not to glance at the board - but sometimes she would need to.

During tea & story time, we read "Very Last First Time" (I can't recall if this was the first reading or second or third - the kids really enjoyed this book) and "Lighthouse Family: The Storm."

Victoria's board - she is presenting on the Karakurt Spiders of Russia; also known as the Asian Black Widow.  Basically, they're everything my nightmares are made of, and I had to have Jim find pictures to print off because I couldn't even look at the images.

Scarlett's board - she is going to discuss ballet in Russia, specifically "The Nutcracker."  She has several difficult Russian names (Diaghilev, Tchaikovsky, etc.) but is doing really well.

The big kids were having rest time, and I needed to make a cup of tea.  Waverly has been so grabby that I'm always worried she is going to make a break for my cup of boiling water so I try to set her down some place safe while I quickly make up my cup of wonderfulness. Well... seems like I won't be able to leave her unattended on the floor for much longer!  I left her on the floor near the white burp cloth in the foreground of the picture and came back in after a couple of minutes and found her waaayyy on the other side of the room, smiling at her accomplishment!

Victoria decided when they got up from rest time that she wanted to Be In Charge of Waverly.  She drug her into the fort that she stole from Scarlett and sang sweet songs to her, read her books, and otherwise entertained the baby for almost 45 minutes!  Every time Waverly rolled away, Victoria would gently roll her back onto the "safe" zone of the blue blanket ;-)

Forts, forts everywhere!  They each had their own forts going with blankets everywhere!!  A fun way to spend a rainy afternoon.

It was at this point that they began arguing about everything and nothing.  Of course my kids squabble, but when you are together day in and day out, all day every day, you learn to work it out pretty quickly - so they get hot about something but its resolved within five minutes and you move on.  However, this was the tit-for-tat, non-stop, make-mama-want-to-hide-in-the-bathroom kind of contrariness.  They got several warnings, did better for a spell and their friend from next door came to play and have fun in the forts... but when she left they picked it right back up.  I'm generally not a yeller - I want for my kids to know it's life or death if I'm yelling (or that I've temporarily lost sanity and they really better pay attention! lol), so instead of getting on them or giving any more warnings, they had to go to bed right after dinner.  You would have thought I told them to go and pick a switch off the tree or something - they were incredulous! haha  And amazingly, it worked - the next day their attitudes had greatly improved and we were back on track ;-)

Monday, October 21st

Monday was a relaxed-paced day, with school and karate but otherwise lots of time for the important stuff (for kids) - playing!

Scarlett woke up and right away went to get her notebook and sketched out a design for a fort and how everything would be set up on the interior.  I helped her move chairs out from the dining room to behind the sofa and she worked on making her drawing a reality!

Meanwhile, Lincoln and Victoria were playing some sort of store game in the playroom - Victoria had swindled a couple of handfuls of change from Grammie and had a sack she carried it around in all day.

When it was finally time to get around to school, the kids did Bible, practiced reciting their memory verses, had individual math and reading, and of course we had tea & story time!  One of their favorite school-related activities for the day was in our History time - we had already discussed the development of written language, and now they were going to try their hand at writing in both hieroglyphics and cuneiform.

First I had them roll out modeling clay - they thought it was way tougher to do than play dough and I had to help a bit.  They were already seeing that this was not as easy as they'd assumed!  Then they used a worksheet from the Story of the World book and tried to write their translated name in hieroglyphs.

It's hard to see!  Scarlett did pretty well not tearing her clay and making the symbols as clearly as she could - Victoria did well, too and Lincoln ended up just carving his up into many pieces ;-)

We rolled his pieces back up and tried again and he was pretty pleased with himself once he'd copied the a few of the symbols.

Next I had my home made scrolls (three pieces of computer paper taped together with a wooden dowel at each end - fancy!) and they worked together to copy a message down in cuneiform.

Our two stories for the day - "Cranberry Thanksgiving" which was a huge, huge hit and we read it twice, and "Always Room for One More."  This book is done with Scottish vocabulary thrown in and Scarlett really enjoyed it, although it didn't hold Lincoln's attention at all.  Victoria listened politely but I could tell she wasn't feeling it either!  I'm sure my amazing take on a Scottish accent (always end up sounding Indian + low-class British) didn't help the story along! lol

Wednesday, October 9th

For some reason, the kids are always after me to let them switch up their bed arrangements.  I agreed that they could swap beds occasionally, and that is always fun for them, however Wednesday morning first thing Scarlett and Victoria asked me if they could set up their blankets and pillows on the floor and sleep on the floor. Um... okay?  I really wanted to say No, but I couldn't actually think of a good reason, haha.  So in the end, they spent over an hour setting everything up before we started our school day.  We had tea & story time, map work and folk tales on Russia, plus one-on-one time for math and reading.  In the afternoon, Jim took took the kids to karate and then out for a special surprise afterward - to Hobby Lobby to pick out a new Boo!  However, only Scarlett actually picked a Boo - the other two opted for different items at the same price point.  A fun day!

Waverly barely slept at all on Tuesday night - we have no idea why!  She was sweet as could be all through the night, but would only sleep in 30-45 minute bursts and then be up-up-up.  Naturally, she was a little crankier than her usual joyful self come Wednesday morning.  The girls offered to play with her in their room for a while as they set up their floor area for sleeping.

For tea & story time we read "The Lonely Scarecrow" and "Ox-Cart Man."

Working on locating and highlighting Russia on the globe-style map. 

Scarlett's map~

I read them snippets from the book "Food in Russia," which is actually quite outdated in it's terminology.  The kids really loved the story/folk tale "That Apple is Mine!" and "The Language of Birds," but we were all a little baffled by "The Sea King," lol.  I don't know if it's a poor translation or we all just collectively missed an element, but it seemed like three stories stitched together oddly.  I was just like, "Well, kids... Russia." haha

Waverly has always been very orally fixated, but now that she can grab at stuff she is more mouthy than ever!  She had been dilligently studying my tea cup as I took sips and set it back down.  So when it was empty, I moved it closer to her and sure enough she had it snatched up in no time.

Nom nom nom! :-)

Jim's crazy crew on the way to karate.

Warm ups~

I'm pretty sure he's completely unaware of the fact that he's the youngest and smallest in his class... by a lot! In his mind he's huge, and at least ten years old ;-)

After their karate class, Jim took them out for their surprise - to get new Boos!  Here's Jim's awesome "stand and stare directly at the sun and smile" shot, lol.

At first they were all going to pick a Boo...

... and Scarlett did - a new monkey named Coconut.  But the other two had their sights on other items.  Lincoln found this cool (foam) shield at the same price point, while Victoria found an awesome create your own storybook craft project.  It was almost double the price of the other kids' items, but Jim was savvy and remembered that Hobby Lobby often has a 40% coupon on regularly priced items.  So he was able to pull it up on his phone and get it for nearly the same price as a Boo. These were three happy kiddos! :-)

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!