Two blog entries in one day???

I know, don't pass out from the shock of it. I seem to have suddenly found my energy (knock on wood) or else those people (and you know who you are!) who keep trying to claim that we're involved in too many activities are right and just having two days at home has done wonders. I will admit that I try to plan to have at least two days a week at home without anything to do, but it just doesn't always work out that way. It will be nice when 4-H is over for the year and I will have my Tuesdays open every week instead of just half of them. But then again there's this Tuesday park day that I've been itching to go to... ;)

Anyway, school didn't start until 1:00 today, but unlike yesterday when it still seemed early, today it seemed so late. Probably because I had to say it about 400 times before anyone got the message. It's time for school now. Let's get started on that schoolwork! OK, put... the... Game... AWAY!! See the problem was that yesterday's Monopoly game just ignited a flame in Cameron and he woke up itching to play it again. I've stated multiple times that one game of Monopoly uses up all my gaming motivation for at least three days, so don't even ask me. Cameron always seems to forget that but today he decided to just play himself. One of his personas had a ton of money and the other one he only gave a couple of hundred to. I guess he wanted to make sure he won.

Cassia and I decided to play a game of Senet while we waited for him to finish up. I like that she's finally at an age where we can play real games together. We did use simplified rules but it was still fun. Unfortunately, she then brought out another game that she wanted to play and while I declined it because Cameron had finally gotten his Monopoly cleaned up and I was ready (still) to start schoolwork, Cameron swooped down and began to play with her. It was an animal alphabet game - phonics and zoology! - so I let them play for a while before finally putting my foot down.

At last the books came out. Actually they were still out but in a very nice way. Since Monday when I took them on the road, I've had the schoolbooks in a big canvas bag. It's so much easier to just leave the bag sitting next to an end table with the books neatly inside than to leave them on the counter where they look and feel messy or to put them away in a cabinet only to drag them out again the next day. Kind of makes me long for my old Holly Hobby book bag from 1977. ;) But back to the books - we started out with phonics for Cassia today. She did very well reading three letter words like cat, sat, and hat and by the end of the list of words I think she was really getting the hang of it instead of just copying what I was saying. Yeah Cassie! Next was phonics for Cameron where we read multisyllabic words ending in y: July, lullaby, supply. He did ok. Not as well as yesterday because he kept forgetting the lesson words just moments after he read them, but he was reading the smaller words effortlessly. Grammar was reviewing nouns, verbs, and the four sentence types. There are only two lessons left in the first grade section of our Grammar book! I'd say we could take a break with it until we start our new year (which I think may end up being only a month from now) but it's one of their favorite subjects! That would just be mean to take it away when they enjoy it so much. ;) The really funny thing though is that if you ask him, Cam will say that math is his favorite subject but I know he wouldn't mind one little tiny bit if we took several months off from doing that!

Speaking of math, that was next and I did what I had previously thought was impossible. I had both Cameron and Cassia doing math at the same time. It was a really good time to do that because she was doing some pages where she really understood the concept (circling groups of ten, counting the leftovers, and then writing it as a number like 18) and he was doing a review section. Well, you'd think a review section would be easy but it was all multiplication problems and he conveniently forgot them all. I think he got really, really tired of hearing me say, "Well count by __s if you've forgotten what it is!" when he really just wanted me to tell him all the answers. I have a feeling that he thinks I don't really know my times tables either and I just want him to do all the work for both of us. ;)

I'll skip the details of the little spat that landed Cameron is my room doing his math while Cassia watched Barbie as Rapunzel and just move on to History. (Oh, I should also mention that while Cameron was taking eons doing his math she also did several pages of ETC.) Anyway, Cassie was done with school by then and chose not to listen in on history so Cameron and I just made ourselves comfortable on my bed and read about the Greek alphabet (note to self: print out some Greek alphabet worksheets tonight!), Homer's story of Odysseus and the Cyclops, and the history of the Olympic games. When the Cyclops story started out with a god wanting revenge on someone Cameron wasn't so sure he wanted to hear it, lol, but he was very pleasantly surprised to find that Odysseus actually survived to the end. In fact, he was downright shocked, lol. I think I've jaded his innocent world view. ;) But the good news is that he was truly enthralled with what we were reading. He kept interrupting me to tell me different tidbits that he knew from other shows like Time Warp Trio and was quite impressed with himself that he already knew that women could not compete in the Olympics. I really should dig through our collection of books on Greece because I probably have some good ones that I could strew about just for fun.

The only bad news of the day is that poor Greyson had a nasty fever all day. I gave him some Tylenol at around 11:30 when it was 99.5 and then found him an hour later dozing with a toy in his hand. I put him to bed and five hours later he finally woke up. His fever had climbed to 101.4 so I gave him some more Tylenol and he stayed awake for another 15 minutes before heading to my room to crawl into my bed. I guess the medicine kicked in because he came out again a half hour later but for the rest of the night he really couldn't muster the energy to do anything more than hold his eyes open (mostly) while watching a Thomas video. The fever went up to 101.7 a couple hours later before finally heading down to 101 exactly. Poor guy fell asleep in my arms in front of Thomas and is now dreaming away again. At least he could keep some food down today. Hopefully the fever will break in the night and he'll be back to his rambunctious self tomorrow. I'll admit that I've been enjoying his quiet cuddles, but I hate to see the poor little guy looking so miserable.