Posts from — March 2007

I went on an excursion to Wal-Mart tonight.  Jared had a lot of schoolwork to do and I prefer doing things like Wal-Mart without the boys.  I walked through the clothes section, actually planning on buying something new, rather than from Goodwill.  I found myself thinking quite a lot of the clothes were really ugly.   There was a time not that long ago (at least it seems that it wasn’t) that I would have liked all of the new styles.  It seems that I’ve been noticing that I like fewer and fewer of them.  I ran into a friend and immediately asked what time it was, because it felt like it was midnight.  I was exhausted.  She told me it was 9:41.  Good grief, what has happened?  Then I found myself telling the cashier as I was checking out (by this time it was 10:30) that I was surprised to see so many people out so late at night.  As soon as it came out of my mouth I realized how weird that sounded.  It really wasn’t that late.  I mean, really.  Then I stopped at Walgreens to buy the one thing I couldn’t find at Wal-Mart, a little screw driver kit for glasses.  As I come up to the register, the man asks me how I’m doing and I tell him I’m really tired.  He says, “Well, why are you so tired?  It’s not that late.”  And then it hits me, I have two boys.  That’s why I’m tired.  And that’s also why I need to go to bed before 12:00!  Wow, times have changed for me!

This was Shea’s reaction to the carwash.  Gage has always loved going through carwashes.  I don’t think his brother is going to follow in his footsteps!

So, here’s how my day went.

Slept until almost 9.

Awoke to Gage telling the neighbor kid that he couldn’t come to the playground to play b/c his Mom was in bed and he had to watch his brother in the mornings.  That definitely won me the “lazy homeschool mom” award.  Sleeping that late is not the norm, but kids sure have a way of wording things, don’t they?!

Then, Gage realized the school kids on campus were out of school b/c it’s Spring Break for them.  Therefore,  I spent the entire half of my day battling with Gage over why he had to do school before he could go out.  It took us 3 hrs to do what would normally take us 1 1/2 hours.  Gage doesn’t do well with taking a whole week off at a time from school.  So, when the other kids are out, we still have school.  I just try to finish it as quickly as possible so that he has a good amount of time to play.  And, having school year- round allows us the flexibility to plan trips or take random days off.  I’m hoping that he will begin to understand this soon.  We’ll see.

Once Gage was done with school, he went outside and I was really relieved to have some time on my own.  Shea was napping, the house was quiet.  Ahhhhhh…..really nice for a little while.  Then, Shea wakes up and I hear him in his crib playing.  I decide to let him play for a while as long as he’s happy.  After about 30 minutes of hearing him play, I went in to get him.  As soon as I opened the door, the stench overtook me.  He’s sitting in his crib with poop in his hair, under his nails, and smeared on the sheet!  Wonderful!  I instantly went to the bathtub and started running the water.  When I went back in to get Shea, he was saying “uh-oh”, and he continued saying that all afternoon.  Anyway, that was my day.  My plan is to get up early tomorrow so that I can avoid some of the issues I faced today.  Sleeping late just isn’t worth it.  Not sure when I’ll learn that!

Okay, so I’m really struggling with naming my blog.  I’m brainstorming, but it may take a while for it to hit me.  Don’t be surprised if it changes, maybe more than once!  I’m so bad at this!

Well, now that I’ve spent the past 30 minutes listing the fun things to do here in St. Louis, my brain is wanting to shut down and go to sleep.  Although I was sleep deprived at the beginning of the week b/c of a weird antibiotic prescribed to me(never knew antibiotics could have that effect until looking on the web), I’m rested now and have been enjoying these past few days.  Jared is on spring break, so he’s had a little more time to spend with us.  Tuesday, we went to Powder Valley Nature Center where Gage attended a homeschool class called “The Life of a Seed”.  Afterwards we took a walk and had a picnic.  Both boys loved it, especially because we were all together.  Then, today, the boys and I picked Jared up from work at 6 and went to the science center to see an Omnimax movie called, “Mummies:  Secrets of the Pharaohs”.  It was so awesome because Gage and I have spent the past few weeks studying Ancient Egypt and this tied it all together for us.  They even had a child (actually 7-8 months old) mummy on display that we were able to see up close.  I’m really enjoying learning all of this with Gage, and I think he is enjoying it, too.  We’ve been studying Africa since the beginning of August and after finishing up Egypt, we’ll move on to South Africa and then be done with Africa.  So, I guess you could say we have spent the entire school year studying Africa.  Gage says it’s his dream to move there.  He wants to live in the grasslands in a hut and he told me that if I don’t want to do that, then he and his Dad can live there and I can go somewhere with electricity!  I’m so loved!