Preschool Update

I am still very excited about my decision to homeschool Bella, and later Abbigail. I began doing some preschool work with her in the fall and she did really well with it. This spring we have been a lot less structured, mostly because I have been very busy! I practice dental hygiene Mon-Wed in a general dentistry office, and I am an adjunct faculty in the ETSU Dental Hygiene Clinic on Thursdays for the Spring semester. On Friday mornins we do attend our Homeschool Co-op, which we both enjoy very much.

Despite the fact that we are a little more unstructured at this time, Bella is learning by leaps and bounds, as all children do at this age. My mother and I have both been working with her on math skills and pre-reading. She has preschool workbooks that she really enjoys, and in the past couple of days she has started doing simple addition problems! I can ask her to tell me what five and four is, and she will count it out on her fingers and tell me nine! I am super proud of her, especially since math is definately NOT a strong point for me.

She has also learned to recognize all the upper case and most of the lower case alphabet, and we are working on some of the sounds. I'm not pushing it, she isn't even four yet. She is also practicing her handwriting, and can write her name. My goal for the summer is to have her learn all her lower case alphabet, and do lots of reading aloud. She loves to be read to, and right now she is very interested in volcanoes, thanks to a Discovery channel program she watched with her daddy. We have checked out several books on volcanoes from the library and now she can tell you all about them! We are also working hard on obedience and manners.

My plans for fall ("Man plans. God laughs!") are to begin Saxon MathK and also a reading program. I am still looking into reading programs and talking to other homeschool moms.

Now, I'm sure some people are wondering (because I didn't know much about it until I became interested!) about homeschooling, if it is legal, how expensive it is, etc. Homeschooling is legal in all fifty states, with varying degrees of regulation. For example, Pennslyvania is one of the strictest states to homeschool in, with lots of accountability and documentation required. Other states just require you to notify your local school district. For more information and to see the homeschooling laws for every state, you can visit http://hslda.org/ .

As far as expense, homeschooling is about like anything else in life: you can get the cadillac or the used Honda! Both will get you where you are going! There are many, many resources available for free online and in local libraries. You can buy used curriculum on ebay or craigslist. Just google "homeschool curriculum" and you'll see just how many products there are to choose from. You can choose a "boxed" curriculum, which is pretty much everything your child would need for a particular grade, or you can pick and choose different subjects from different publishers.

I have been researching homeschooling for over a year now, and am still learning a lot! I am out of time for now, but maybe in another post I will list some books / websites / resources that have been helpful to me.

Hodge Podge

As usual, I am woefully behind on my blog posting. However, I am happy to report that my laundry is (mostly) caught up, the house is clean, the children have been fed and watered, and in general things are pretty quiet!

As some of you may recall, we went through a difficult period with Bella when Abby was born. (I've taken to referring to it privately as The Slough of Despond) Anyhoo, we have recently had a recurrence of "the uglies". We had several bad episodes and a couple of very diffucult bedtimes. One meltdown occured smack in the middle of the Johnson City Mall. I had never experienced the uglies in public before and let me tell you, I never want to again! We got a lot of stares, some sympathetic and some not, as I pulled a screeching daughter through the mall by her hand. I found the best thing to do was just smile at everyone like nothing was wrong. It was so bad a one point, a sweet little grandmother saw fit to intervene on my behalf. Now, normally this would annoy me to no end, but at the time I thought, "Lady, if you can do something with her, be my guest!" She walked up to Bella and said something to the effect of, "You're an awfully pretty little girl to be acting like that. I'd take you home with me, but I don't let little girls who act ugly come to my house." It actually worked for about 3.5 minutes, then the uglies reared their heads again.

I'm happy to report that the past few days have been much, much better. We have learned to intervene when we see the uglies coming, and steer her attention in a different direction. We went to visit friends with a new baby just yesterday, and the new baby's grandma actually complimented Bella for being so polite. I just smiled sweetly and thought, "Lady, if you coulda seen her ten days ago...

As for Abbigail, she is 15 months old now, which I can hardly believe. She is not incredibly verbose at this time, but she definately gets her point across nonetheless. She says " mama", "dada", "Bye bye", and "bite". She also can point to her hair, tummy, toes, nose, etc. She also screeches ,"neeneeneenee" whenever I am doing something she doesn't like, such as washing her face. She started walking at just over 10 months, so by now she has graduated to bigger and better things, like climbing on top of the kitchen table. I'm so proud.

I really love this age, because her personality is really coming out. But she is still my baby. My favorite time of day is after bath time. I lay her on her changing table and smother her in baby lotion, then the games begin. She has learned how to unfasten her diaper, so as soon as i get one side on she will start giggling and wiggling and kicking and trying to take her diaper back off. This game ends only when I have managed to corral her into her jammies.

Is there anything better?

Isn't it romantic...

This weekend me and K celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary! Our wedding anniversary is my favorite holiday (except maybe Christmas) because it means we have successfully put up with each other for 365 more days....I'm just kidding. But it is really important to me.

This year I decided we should have an anniversary getaway, so (as he usually does) K went along with it and booked us a cabin in Pigeon Forge called "Eagles View". So we drove down on Thursday as soon as I got off work at ETSU.

Oh, and in case you are wondering, no we did not take Punkin and Precious with us.

Our cabin was definately well named. What a beautiful view from our front deck! It was sooo nice to go out in the chilly mountain air and jump into a luke-warm hot tub. (That dripping sound you hear is my sarcasm). Let me rephrase: Once we called the maintenance people to come adjust the hidden thermostat in the hot tub, it was sooo nice to go out in the chilly mountain air and jump in to a hot tub! The cabin also had a small sauna room that was lots of fun.

We did some shopping, too. I had been saving up my spending money for quite a while, and of course spent the majority of it on the girls. We had a wonderful time, but in the end decided that two nights was just too long to be away from our girls. At least twice an hour one of us said, "Bella would love that", or "Abby would have so much fun doing that".

I think "grown up" time alone is very important, though, so you can reconnect. But our children are an important part of what connects us! One of my very favorite things about being married to K and having children is when they do/say something funny and we just look at each other and smile.

Happy Fifth Anniversary, Sweetheart.