Good day on the homefront

We all went to bed early last night (I fell asleep on the couch at 9:30!) which meant that everyone woke up in a good mood. You'd think that would also mean that we got to our schoolwork nice and early, but we didn't, lol. We started around noonish.

Phonics and math both went by in a breeze. Cameron read SO well. I think he might finally be getting the hang of this. Math was more money counting and I can tell Monopoly has paid off.

Next came History. We read the spread on The First Settlers in the Usborne Book of World History and then tried to make the "simple" loom described there. LOL. I should've followed Maria's advice regarding trying crafts yourself first. Now that I think about it, she was lamenting a woven project too. They seem simple, but there's a reason that it was the adult women who would do the weaving, not the children. I made our loom out of card stock and wound it with cooking twine since I'm probably the only woman in the world to not own a single skein of yarn. I did the first row in demonstration and then passed the loom to Cameron. He did one over-under pass and then said he was done. I made him try one more, but there were twine tangles all over the place, lol. Next was Cassia's turn and she only did one too before her patience with it wore out. I finished out the row and promised to work on it tonight so that they could see what a piece of hand-woven "fabric" looks like.

I was ready to call it quits at that point. Cameron and Cassia had dissolved into some game somewhere when all of a sudden I hear, "Sorry Cassie, I've got to go finish my History!" OK, we can do more! So I grabbed SOTW and started to read the second story in Chapter One when all of a sudden I realized that there was a map that was supposed to go with this. I hadn't looked at my master schedule coordinating all the map work and such for this story yet since I hadn't planned on reading it until Friday. I had to then call a quick time-out to scan in and print the map and coloring pages for the chapter. I almost skipped it, but am so glad I didn't. I read the story of how The First Nomads Become Farmers while they colored pictures of a farmer using an ancient irrigation tool called a shaduf. Then they found the cities of Jericho and Catal Huyuk; traced the Tigres and Euphrates Rivers; colored the Black, Caspian, Mediterranean, and Red Seas and the Persian Gulf blue; and finally colored the land between the two rivers, Mesopotamia, green. Then we located the area on our globe. The maps and pictures were fun and you can see them if you click on Our History Studies in the Nuts and Bolts sidebar.

In other news, finding a medical professional to oversee my pregnancy is proving more difficult than I imagined! First of all, there's only one OB (that I am willing to go to) in my town that is covered by our insurance. I can't get through on their phone lines. I just get a message that says where to go if you need a copy of your medical records and to not leave a message there because no one will hear it. No office hours. No alternate phone number. Nothing. Fine, I didn't really want an OB anyway. My first choice would actually be a midwife but the only ones are about 20 miles from here. DH says that's too far to go for routine appointments. Well if the OB won't answer his phone, what am I to do otherwise? So (secretly thankful) I call the midwives' office and get another message, but at least they said to leave a message and they would get back as soon as possible. I called this morning and am still waiting for a call back. Hopefully, they'll call tomorrow. I'm getting anxious since I'm pretty sure I'm approaching nine weeks here and still have no doctor. I really need to get my dates verified since the whole thing has been a bit of a fuzzy area for me. Anyway, wish me luck.