These are the days

To say that things are not easy right now would be an understatement.

I homeschool.

My husband is working out of town nearly every week.

I'm with the kids all the time.

I don't have time for myself.

I can't get enough sleep.

But, these are the days.

Big Daddy was home for 36 hours. He arrived at 10pm on Friday night and left while I was at church with the girls. He slept in a little on Saturday morning and then we all just hung out in, on and around the bed for a few hours. It was nice. He did two days worth of Bible study with Maggie. (She's doing the children's challenge for reading your Bible everyday for 2012) He watched Betsy's Kindergarten Adventure with Ellie. (She LOVES Betsy!)

These are the days of mostly single parenting.

Maggie and I picked Ellie up from her class and I carried her until we were in the parking lot. Then I just couldn't carry her another step. Of course, I was carrying my purse, her bag and her art. Ellie took two steps and then she grabbed onto my leg. I dragged her a couple of steps before she let go. She would NOT get up. I put our bags in the car and went back to get her. She cried the entire 20 minute drive home and then for another 30 minutes on top of that.

These are the days of two year old tantrums.

Since Big Daddy was only home for a short time. I only completed his laundry. I washed, dried, folded or put it on hangers and then packed his bag. After that, we went out to dinner. That left three loads of laundry that had been washed and dried, but not folded or put away. I've had a headache for the past 8 days and wasn't feeling very well, but decided to force myself to fold the laundry before bed on Sunday night. As I was folding, I found that Maggie had taken it upon herself to fold all of the towels, washcloths, cloth napkins and cleaning cloths. that left me with only two loads of laundry to fold! She was already asleep, so I wrote her a thank you card and left it in her bathroom. She should get it first thing in the morning.

These are the days.

I had such a highly productive day today!!

I cleaned bathrooms, washed two loads of laundry, cleaned the kitchen counter tops with granite cleaner (Method) and purged the THREE cabinets that had Maggie & Ellie stuff in them.

Our kitchen has plenty of cabinets, so there's plenty of room for extra stuff. I have one area where most of my actual cooking supplies are and then there's an area where all of the plates and glasses are. Then there's a whole lotta other stuff every where else!

We have a counter where our laptops sit while they are charging and underneath there is what we call the "Art Cabinet". There's a large canvas bin where we put "important" art that will get thrown away when the bin is full. Maggie and Ellie also have their wooden train track and the plastic train track in that cabinet. They love to take everything out so that they can both get in there. And then they whisper!

This is now my homeschool cabinet!!! I had a drawer in my desk that was full of math manipulatives and a wooden bin next to my desk that housed homeschool curriculum that I use weekly to make our lesson plans, as well as a big binder for record-keeping and past lesson plans. Maggie and I each have a binder that we use as we do school work and then there are three or four (depending on the day) books that we use daily.

On the other side of the kitchen...

We have always called this upper cabinet the "Art Supply Cabinet". It houses puzzles, art supplies, and things that need permission before they can be taken out (pop beads, lacing beads, gluepaint). The lower cabinet had our tea set, cups and containers full of seashells and marbles that the girls love to play with. I moved all of that to the upper cabinet and put the art bin and train set in the lower cabinet.

We also had a container in the foyer coat closet with drawers that had boxes of crayons, markers, colored pencils, construction paper, plain paper and magazines for collages. I was able to move all of that to the storage bins connected to the new easel. (For me.) I'm going to put the container with drawers back into the closet with our two toy bins. I'm going to try to sort some of the smaller things (like those darn Little People) into the drawers and then label them.

Quite exciting! Things like this make me feel so accomplished and happy! And I managed to homeschool Maggie, play quite a bit of "Pet Shop" and get the cleaning taken care of. Unfortunately, there's four loads of laundry waiting to be folded and put away.

And one last look at the refrigerator:

This is only a season and one day it will be nice and clean!!

Week 2

• This is week 2 of having Big Daddy home! I think this is the first time that he has been home for two consecutive weeks since the end of July or the first part of August.
• Maggie and Ellie have already gotten used to having Daddy at home every night.
• Cousin Callie is out of school (again) on Friday, so I'm taking her and Maggie to see Beauty and the Beast. Ellie loves the movie, but we don't think that she would enjoy it in 3D since she will not wear the glasses. She'll be having a "Nana Day" and is already excited about it.
• I haven't weighed myself lately, but the diet is still going along. Today is day 18.
  
• I have felt like I was getting sick and had lots of asthma issues the past week or so.
• Maggie is thrilled that sign language classes have started back. I already miss having free Tuesdays.
• I still want a sewing machine. Bad.
• I have lots of crafty ideas in my head (and on pinterest) but really don't want to spend the money on project supplies.
• We *need* a new rug for the living room. The one I found that would be perfect is quite expensive. Big Daddy's eyes almost popped out of his head.
  
• I feel like the living, dining, kitchen and hallways of our house need to be painted. I repainted everything in our old house except for the bathroom and master bedroom when Maggie was about 2.5. Now I know why. Even though our kids are not what I would call "rough", our walls have quite a few marks at Maggie & Ellie height. I think I'll wait a couple of years since our house is not even three years old yet.
  

The Year So Far

I feel like the first week of the new year was so busy, yet so lazy. Big Daddy was out of town, so the girls and I watched a few movies in the middle of the day...while wearing our pajamas. We jumped back into schoolwork and I would say that it took most of last week to get our groove back.

My diet efforts resulted in a loss of five pounds. I am beyond thrilled! It comes from finding a plan that is restrictive, but easy to follow, I think. I sort of feel good when I deprive myself of things. At the end of the day it feels nice to know that I've stuck with my plan for another day. I still have a lot that I'd like to lose, but I am on the way.

I have started planning for Maggie's second grade year. I must say that we are moving a little faster through first grade than I want to. I want to follow Maggie's lead, but we're not moving into second grade until I'm ready too. Homeschooling is not about getting ahead for us. We only did a month of kindergarten work (which is satisfactory for our state) and that was due to the fact that she could read well, write, was very good at phonics and had completed an entire year of kindergarten math. I get excited, nervous and worried when looking at new curriculum, so we'll be sticking with what we have liked for another year.

We are slowly saying goodbye to so many "baby" things. Diapers, sippy cups and all that stuff. I thought I would be sad and while I am just a little, I am more excited about where we are and where we are going. Maggie & Ellie are at ages where they have so much fun with each other and they want to be together most of the time. It won't be this way forever, so I think we are really enjoying it.

I'm feeling the need to do some sort of family album starting with this year. I feel overwhelmed if I think about trying to dig through thousands of pictures from the past. If I start something now, I think it's still early enough in the girls' lives that it would be very special to look at as they grow up.