The Speed of Life

I'm sure you're all assuming that since I haven't updated recently that we haven't done anything. Although that is usually the case, it is not this time. Life has just seemed to have gotten in the way whenever I wanted to blog. In fact, at this very moment, I am typing one-handedly whilst holding Mr. Cranks on my hip. Mr. I-Am-Going-to-Scream-if-You-Even-THINK-of-Putting-Me-Down. Mr. Working-on-Tooth-Number-Three-and-a-Cold-at-the-Same-Time. Mr. Giant-Baby-Hugs.

But on to business... Monday, we did, in fact, end up playing that geography game. Cameron loved it. I wish it had an audio option so that I didn't have to sit and massacre every foreign place name for my little non-readers, but I think we all are learning a lot from it. I am following Globalmania's recommendations and only working on one continent per month - I guess I should add that to our curriculum list then, shouldn't I. But if we keep moving forward with this, we will have all of our geography down just in time to start History in the fall.

Tuesday, I spent most of the day working on our tax return so school got put off until the evening again and patience was in short supply. See a trend here? Cassia worked on drawing the numbers 5 through 8 and somewhere along the line decided that she couldn't do it unless I drew dotted lines for her to trace every single time. Yeah. It shouldn't be a big surprise to find out that we didn't end up doing very many pages of that. ;)

Cameron did three-quarters of a page of math but the fact that he couldn't remember any of his basic addition facts was really hindering the lesson. I decided to back off of the workbook for a little while and just work on some drill type things until those facts are a little more firmly set. I guess that worksheet generator that I downloaded the other day will come in handy! He also read a review page on long vowel words. It was like pulling teeth, I'm telling you. And yet when he drops all the drama he can read so well. I had intended on doing some science too but after the ridiculously long time spent trying to get through phonics, I didn't have the patience to attempt any more school than that.

And then Greyson developed a 102 fever that wasn't responding to Tylenol and was coughing and breathing really rapidly. A breathing treatment and a two hour nap in my arms thankfully seemed to fix the worst of that - but that's where my blog time went Tuesday!

Wednesday I tried to get school started early but it was one of those days when C&C were playing together SO nicely that I just didn't have the heart to disrupt their play. Besides, my frozen baby food stash was dwindling so I needed to spend some time making that anyway. Somewhere around noon we played a couple games of Pyramid for math (thank you to whomever it was who suggested that! Mary?) which went really well. By the end of the third game, Cameron didn't even have to count the number pairs he was just remembering 9&1, 8&2, 7&3, etc. I think that a week or so of that will do wonders. I had bread rising that I had to get shaped into a loaf, so I told him to take a quick LEGO break while I did that but couldn't manage to get him back to work to do his reading until almost 4:00. It was another page of long vowel review and another long ordeal with a lot of whining.

Halfway through the story that he was supposed to be reading, he started saying that his tummy hurt. It seemed like the same "tummy ache" that he gets when he doesn't like what I made for dinner. But I was kind and let him go lay down until he felt better. He came back about 10 minutes later, read one more sentence (veerrrryyyyy slowly) and then went to go lay down again. At this point, I knew that it was a real stomach ache but I thought that he was just stressing so badly about having to read that he was giving himself an anxiety stomach ache (DH is famous for those!). He said that sitting up to read made his tummy hurt and so I told him that he could take the book to the couch and read there. He did and finally made it through the whole thing.

About fifteen minutes later he comes running in from the living room saying, "Hey Mommy, I know why my tummy was hurt...." and then wretched all over the dining room carpet. Yeah. I know why his tummy was hurting too! So that combined with lots of mopping, carpet shampooing, and laundry was our evening. Poor guy was miserable all night long and couldn't even hold down water but seems to be doing much better today. Cassia had had a similar thing on Saturday so apparently this thing has a really long incubation period. I'm expecting Greyson to start puking on Friday or Saturday. No, he'll probably wait until Sunday when we're at a birthday party. ;)

I'd still like to get some schoolwork in today, but maybe only a game or two of pyramid and a couple of stories. That all depends on Mr. Cranks though. Excuse me, King Cranks-a-lot. ;) (Don't worry, I'm much more sympathetic to their faces.)