Everything I did one Wednesday

A few months after I had a baby I was feeling better, but like I wasn't accomplishing anything. I mentioned it to my mom and she gave me an order/suggestion (isn't that the same thing when it comes from a mom?). "Write down one day everything you do, not what you want to do--and you'll see you are doing a lot."
So I did. It was such a validation of my efforts that I repeat the exercise whenever I need a pick me up. For example here's everything I did one

Wednesday:

• Night before: bed 10pm
• 5am alarm goes off.
• 5:10 get out of bed. Dress for the day.
• 5:20 My time-writing, and a chance to laugh at my own jokes.
• 7 grocery store before husband leaves for work because we need milk & eggs
• 7:15 back. Awake kids, start a load of diapers in the washer. change and dress Canary.
• 7:30 My husband leaves for work. Cold cereal breakfast for me, empty dishwasher awake kids again. Remind them to do their Top Row. Toy bin of cars out for Kingfisher & Canary.
• 8am Circle time on couch. I read the Aiken Drum story, we look at Scotland and Canada on the map & watch the YouTube version of this folksong. From our Gospel Picture Art Kit I pull out a picture and we talk about the 2000 stripling warriors from the Book of Mormon while someone cried about the cereal being gone, because they woke up late. We open our Memory Binders,  and practice our parts for the children's Primary Program in church coming up. I text a teacher and my sister.
• 8:30 Puzzles bin out for Canary. Bowery Bird is reading science experiment book...telling me her next plan. Mockingbird is doing her copywork & 4 spelling words at the kitchen table. I remind her, "No drawing our letters into faces and people." Kingfisher practices writing H's & does some gingerbread man tracing from a cookie cutter. Bowery Bird practices piano-have to help her with left hand. Easel and washable markers come out for Canary. Pass off Bowery Bird's Faith in God booklet goal for seeing a play last week.
• 9am Lego bin out for Canary. Mockingbird does independent reading for her Book It Pizza Hut chart. Bowery Bird does her cursive copywork (for dictation on Friday) & spells 5 words.
• 9:30 Bowery Bird starts a terrarium she found in the science book by getting dirt & rocks for our empty fishbowl. I switch laundry to start whites, check email, print Book It reading chart for the month, pick up toys, and we all go outside for our morning break.
• 10 In, H has a friend over to play. Star Wars bin out (reminders to be quiet in hallway). Print Connecticut  line map for Bowery Bird to do map work/notebooking of  This Country of Ours on. She uses the Kindle to review names.
• 10:30 Tried to read aloud with Mockingbird, but she's tired of reading. I read Literature to her: Uundertood Besty while she drew our Halloween costumes. Bowery Bird wants to listen in. Puppets bin out for Canary. Little friend's mom came to take him home. Tell children to stop drawing on the windows with the new white board markers--especially in front of Canary who might get ideas. Started garden tomatoes, scalding. Prepped- 
• 11 Lunch of sandwiches, mangoes, applesauce, and chocolate milk. (on an even better day they'd make their own after breakfast) Pulled out term board, with new Mary Cassatt picture, let them look at it. Did picture study, where I took it down and they each took turns remembering things in the pictures as I prompted. Mockingbird was surprisingly good.
• 11:30 Clean up chores: Mockingbird peeled tomatoes from ice water then did dishes while Kingfisher picked up toys & dusted. Bowery Bird did a science experiment with water, dish soap, and paper triangle she read about in the aforementioned science experiment book (that has been in our home at least 3 years and gone unnoticed till now), then showed us. Reminded Bowery Bird to sweep, clean up stuff, and clear the table. I filled in.
• 12 noon I changed baby, washed baby. Set up Little Duke audio book for Mockingbird in my bedroom, Starfall on the computer for Kingfisher in his top bunk, after ordering Bowery Bird to stop studying face painting on the computer for upcoming Entrepreneur Day. Had her read Poor Richard to herself in the living room as I  read stories to Canary, sang a song, and put her down for a nap
• 12:30 read with Bowery Bird from Age of Fable. 
•  Mockingbird does some reading on Starfall. I spend time with Kingfisher while Bowery Bird sets up art with him. (She initiated these little "art classes" with him once a week.) He and I read The Ladies Who Stopped the Wind, he retold it to me. We two went outside, talked about feeling and seeing the wind and how it moves. We played then I carried him home.
• 130 Bowery Bird and Kingfisher did art. They made houses out of crackers, frosting she made of water & sugar, beans, spaghetti, and trail mix (the last of it). She had directions written in pictographs on a white board. Math with Mockingbird. She feels left out. Canary won't sleep. (She wouldn't eat lunch). I feed her cereal facing away from the few M&Ms in the trail mix project. Put her back to bed. Mockingbird & I drink chocolate milk outside for love. We come up and do math (place value) she does a worksheet independently after. 
•  Canary won't sleep, is up. Bowery Bird and Kingfisher clean up. Kingfisher is bored. Doorbell from neighbor about lost item; not ours. But a package! Give Bowery Bird her math assignment & negotiate when it will be done; 5pm on graph paper.
• 2:30  We open package-home school phonics books from Usborne. This is a day they can watch 30 min of TV. Martha Speaks, all agree on and watch.
• 3 We tidy up house, load dishwasher, prep dinner pots, leave for a friend's house
• 4 The kids play with 8 kids ages 12-2y/o in their new play fort. I visit with a friend. She shares vegetables. I start home.
• 5 We are all home. We are all cleaning-vacuum, clean bedroom (sort of), lip sync to Rapunzel soundtrack, I'm getting snacks for baby and making dinner. Kids run out to play. Oh hi husband you surprised me home at 5:30! I know you've only been working this schedule for a year and a half... I read mail. I ask kids to set table
• 6:20 we sit down to a candlelight dinner. (The better to not see your food by.)
• 7 I leave for a home school meeting about my umbrella charter school.
• 9:10 home-- head spinning with changes. Exhausted.
• 10 bed.

This ended up being a typical "Good Day"; a day when we are progressing, our house is functional, the kids cooperative (relative term), I have patience to handle what comes, and we are learning even if its not exactly what I planned.

To some this may set heads spinning--and it does mine if I don't have that time to myself in the morning. But you get rhythms and habits and it starts to work. We've been at it for 4 years now and I see this being a turning point for us in terms of things actually coming together.
To others this may seem like not much is being accomplished--and yet it is. It's little bits here and there that add up over time.

FYI- Note, none of the laundry got folded for 2 days, and I slept in the next morning till 8am, which is kind of typical too.

Karma Counter-September

Sept 23-OUT
by 2 Kiwi's and a hug, arrived by freecycle : 4 drawer metal filing cabinet (good riddance ye hoarder of space!)

Sept 25-IN
from family- owl pellets, Miracle berries, MadMen dress, short hipster dress, several books, 2 Old Navy dresses, clothes for Kingfisher, 2 formal dresses for Mockingbird & Bowery Bird, new Grandma handmade dress for Bowery Bird--needed.
Sept 25-OUT
for family; 6 handmade lavendar sachets for the dryer out by plane (so sad to see them go-of course I'm talking about the family, Sheesh!)

Sept 27-IN
keyboard for Bowery Bird's piano practice--arrived by silver Honda (this is a loan, but so generous I break the rules to include it)

Sept 28-OUT
1 large garbage bag of misc. toys, Avent baby bottles, binders, women's and children's clothing to my favorite Vintage Charity Donation Boutique (Deseret Industries thrift store).

Sept 29-IN
4 lovely autumn-colored skirts--I'd previously admired-- arrived by doorbell with friend attached! (is this good karma already or what!)

The Man Who Planted Trees

We recently went to a unique play done by the Puppet State Theater Company of Scotland.

The Man Who Planted Trees is based on a children's book of the same title, and while not a true tale, you wish it was. Essentially, it is the biography of a man whose mission is to reforest an area by personally planting each seed, with no other motive than just doing what needs to be done.

This 2-man (and minimal puppets) show masterfully and repeatedly broke through the fourth wall at the onset continuing intermittently throughout the performance to an audience of 307 school children & chaperons. An adept actor took us unnoticeably from a witty repartee with Dog his real name), to the subtle narration of his hut's host, then bridge to the next scene. With the aid of Dog playing the straight man, each participant was immediately drawn in by not only the punch lines, but also the expert timing as we all awaited what we delightfully knew was coming.

With muted palette for both background and costumes, a tone was immediately set for this thought-provoking and unconventional hero's story. By its  contrast, the colorful birds swinging above, wafting scents of a lavender field, and actual spritzing of a forest's rain left all us literally reaching for more.

Habit Cards for the Refined

I got the idea from Our Learning Journey: A Journal for habit cards made with images from works of art and laminated.
If I were really cool, I'd have mine up on Google docs too. But i don't. Maybe someday.

So I scoured the Internet for pictures our family would like, my thinking being that if it's something we like to look at, we'll look at it...more.

So, the first day they were up the kids were very interested in reading the artist and titles. I still am.

Albrecht Durer was someone we had studied, and his detailed Praying Hands work perfectly here. Personally, I love his Rhinoceros more, but couldn't find a way to fit it into our day...

The Last of the Mohicans by N.C. Wyeth was a family favorite because we are part Mohawk (but those of us over 2 don't normally dress like this.)

Vincent Van Gogh makes a tidy Bedroom at Arles--even if his life was not.

We had recently read a children's version of Hamlet and found Ophelia's imminent death hilarious when paired with personal grooming. (insert carefree humming) And I wanted a Waterhouse...that wasn't topless.

Cezanne's Still Life with Compotier is a skewed and disheveled table--not still at all-- and appropriately, needing clean up.

The Wreck of the Covenant by N.C. Wyeth (from Kidnapped) makes bathing seem a delightful option, especially if you are recently shipwrecked.



Jessie Wilcox Smith of course, found her way into the mix more than once.

"But why do you have the Mona Lisa for 'Brush Teeth', mom? She isn't showing any teeth."

"And why not?...Because she didn't brush them and they look terrible--Let that be a lesson to you!"

In-A-Godda-Da-Vidda, Baby

 

"An expectant hush fellover the crowd. Strong men stared and shook their heads in wonderment that any rational person would so tempt fate as to eat something everyone knw was poisonous. Women held their breath; tehy say one faitnted. A medical doctor stood by. He had already advised both the crwd and his client that this mad act would result in frothing and foaming at the mouth, acute appendicitis, brain fever, possible stomach cancer, and , in all likelihood, certian suicide. The date was September 26, 1820; the place, the courthouse steps in Salem, New Jersey; teh principal actor, the eccentric Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson; the mad act, eating a basketful of raw tomatoes."

--from You Say Tomato, (quoted from The American Magazine and Historial Chronicle, Winter 1987-88)

Love IT. This year we planted our first garden.

Lest you think this is one of those deals on a drip system out back that I can shew the children in the general direction of for an afternoon snack--think again. This is our city's community garden. Nestled in a neighborhood that boasts it's own police outpost, cozied up against the tracks (116 cars in 8 min one day, Bowery Bird filmed it), within a padlocked, chain-linked fence--is our little haven of a garden. I know, pretty idyllic.

But it really has been. The fence means both I don't have to worry about animals and can let my children run free to make forts in the untamed areas once we are safely locked in. We've harvested much more than I thought possible from two 4x16' plots and really minimal effort aside from planting and watering. That's the nice thing about the high desert I guess--even weeds don't grow much here.

This little place has reminded me how much I love the smell of tomato plants. My parents tell of when I wasn't old enough to talk and crawled over our deck railing, and down a 7' 4x4 support to eat green tomatoes from our garden, then walk around to the front door and knock so my baffled mother could open the door and let me in.





My children, who have seen a lot more manicured lawns than I ever experienced, find it a place they can get filthy and dig and dump and let loose. I don't know who loves that more--me or them. It's a good place for us to be.

So I am pretty proud that this summer I've been able to follow-through with my first full-on garden. In all honesty, my Visiting Teacher (a.k.a. The Best Babysitter Ever, because she made root beer with my kids, took them to a pet store, told them to choose their favorite spool of ribbon to keep, and let them chase her cat) suggested I join her in doing a garden and really showed me how. She moved in August, leaving me literally to reap the rewards. She  became a friend and I truly miss her.