Today I am thankful for….the fact that the bug that has hit our house isn't too awful. Claire got it the worst, and Vlad and I have both had 1/2 days of nausea and needing to lie on the couch and do pretty much nothing, but it really hasn't been as awful as stomach flus can really be.
I'm listening to…Spencer, Claire, and Katya playing somewhere in the house. I'm not sure if they're upstairs or downstairs. But they're fairly quiet - always a bad sign. Spencer is being exceptionally patient and sweet to them, and it's a joy to my mothering ears.
Looking forward to…going to our Little Town this weekend. We're hoping the renter has finally moved out.
Missing…most of my dishes. We now have five or six plates of three different sets. Where have all the others gone? Have we really broken that many dishes? Have the kids carried them out to the yard? I'm just not sure what to make of it, but one thing is for certain: the next dish set I buy will be the absolute most generic white set I can buy. That way I won't be sad when it breaks, and it will be easy to buy new ones to match. I remember that hundreds of years ago I had a very "beautiful kitchen" as my mother called it. It meant my dishes were pretty, and when the table was set it was actually attractive. Well, not so much anymore… *Wistful sigh*…..Okay, back to reality and the things that actually matter:
Praying for... direction with the adoption process. We are hung up about finances at the moment. There are many people who step out in great faith and on a limb and jump into the adoption process without the faintest idea where their finances will come from. But $35k is a lot of money, and my husband's brain is waaaaay too logical to jump in without a plan. So we're praying for direction, provision, and that we can know exactly how to proceed with moving, and with getting the finances in order.
What's for dinner….I wish I had a gourmet answer to this question. The answer lies closer to a rice casserole with pork chops. Yes, I said pork chops. Vlad did the strangest thing and actually bought them the other day. I don't know why because I've never cooked pork chops when they actually tasted good afterward and didn't make me sick to my stomach. One time we actually got food poisoning from pork chops. But he still bought them, and I'm still going to make them. Wish us luck - those who cook, and those who eat. :)
Burning question of the week…what is up with this little man?:
This kid is going to be the end of my illustrious career as home-schooling mom, I tell ya! This little dreamer boy of mine is really quite something. I cannot for the life of me figure out what's going through his little brain. The best I can come up with is that he is so distracted by his animals and his full-throttle imagination, that he just can't concentrate or doesn't want to concentrate on his schoolwork. It's sort of unbelievable, and at times just hilarious.
Take those two bottom pictures, for example. These are from yesterday's schoolwork. See the six and the four written in orange crayon under the donuts? Oh, yes, those are a six and a four….but as Collin put it while he was scribbling them sideways (and backwards) "they're having gravity problems." The six over on the right that is scribbled backward, was also endowed with bug eyes and a tongue that is spitting raspberries. This is how Collin does his schoolwork - always full of imagination, especially in anything that has to do with drawing or writing.
But he also has strange little mental blackouts each day. They seem selective. This morning he couldn't for the life of him remember which number came after 10. So he counted to twenty every time he couldn't come up with it. It took us quite a while to do an addition worksheet.
The other blackout he always has is the letter "i". He can't remember the sound or the letter. Why "i"? So strange. I finally found a way to give him a clue each time (EVERY time) he comes to the letter "i" in his reading. He hits the letter, squiggles his nose, looks at me for help, and I say, "Iguana in an igloo." And then he keeps going….until the next "i".
He also doesn't seem to remember letters, words, or ANYTHING from one second to the next. He will write the word "me" for one sentence, adn then not remember how to spell it the next second. The list could go on and one, but what I really think is happening is that he just doesn't really care too much about his schoolwork yet. He's much too distracted by his stuffed animals.
Have you ever known a kid to have a stuffed lemur? Well, he has one. In fact, his first one was so loved that he now has a second one. He is the proud papa to two stuffed lemurs. And, of course, he knows their personalities, habitats, and mating patterns. :) This morning he wouldn't do his schoolwork until he had the "Daddy" ginormous stuffed dog all tucked in with puppy stuffed animals under his ears. They slept next to him while he wrestled with his addition.
I really don't think it's a lack of IQ that I'm dealing with. This morning he came to me and said, "Mom, I had a scary dream last night that was evern scarier than the night before! Last nigh there were alien invaders coming to invade our planet! And so I took out a tommy gun and shot them, and the bullets went right through…."
Maybe if I have him add the number of bullets that came from his tommy gun we'll get past the number 11….
Here is a little bit of sweet nothing from our Fall 2011. These are the four little girls who roam our collective four acres all day, every day. This particular day, a dump truck delivering compost to the neighbor was the thrill of the season!
And this was the view (and still is, at 11:00am) from our windows today. Foggy fog. I love the fog, and this one was/is particularly heavy. When we started school at 6:30am, the street lamplight was glowing in the mist. I'm looking forward to the daylight savings time change, so we might have a bit more light in the early morning.
Happy Thursday!
