mudpies and paint

Maybe the planets are aligned just right. Or, the gods could be smiling on me. Whatever it is - I like it. If this keeps up, I think that I might just be able to deal with K's sudden dip into obstinancy (her 1/2 birthday is next month, so that is what I keep telling myself).

Yesterday morning I had to take a shower. I had stayed up way too late Monday night watching Anna and the King and had to do research on the Anna in the story after it was over - so no shower for me. The girls were warmly snuggled down in the family room & junior was sleeping and I took the opportunity for a quick 5, 10, 15 minute shower.

As I was stepping out MB poked her head into the bathroom to ask if we could go ahead and do her HOP work for the day. After I picked myself up off the floor, I got dressed checked on everyone else and then MB and I snuggled in my bed and did 3 lessons. We only stopped because the other two started coming in and wondering when I might actually feed them.

After breakfast MB came to me again, this time holding her daily list, and asked if it was time for her writing. I got her squared away on the computer and then went to work with the other two. A little later she came into the family room looking sad and asked if I could help her - that her spelling didn't look right. I had told her that for creative writing exercises I did not worry about spelling, but she wanted my help - she wasn't getting frustrated and giving up. So I helped her clean it up then went through the steps of saving, printing and attaching to an email as she wanted to send it to her Mamaw.

I wish I could have just kept going this morning, but we needed to actually dress everybody and get to Choir.

Home again at 2:00 and after a quick, late lunch MB sat down with her math book and quickly worked through the lesson of the day. And then asked if I could go ahead and do the History reading. I was so giddy by this time I really thought I was on Candid Camera.

We finished the work and I sent her out to play. Only for her to come home an hour earlier than normal so that she could help me make dinner. We got the spaghetti sauce simmering and she wanted to bake a cake while the sauce was cooking. And, she did do the cake, by herself. The only thing I had to do was turn on the mixer. Since we were using a silicon form I had not used in awhile we needed to keep checking the cooking time. Apparently EM did not think it was cooking fast enough, so the last time the timer went off MB ran in to check it and started screaming my name as she had been enveloped in a cloud of smoke. EM had cranked the oven to 500*. Ahhhhh - burnt cake anyone.

Honestly, I really expected a meltdown from MB at this point. She just doesn't generally take it all that well when something she has worked so hard on is ruined by someone else. But, she said she understood and she knew we couldn't make another one until Thursday with our schedule.

After dinner I decided MB needed a reward and took her out with me to run errands. She had been wanting to go by the library for a few days, ever since I had told her there was a book that could tell her the answers to all those questions that I don't know like, "What's the record for eating chicken nuggets?" So we tried to find a copy of the Guiness Book of World Records - no dice for the big one, but the juvenile section had a number of the smaller topical ones in so we checked out a few.

I was also able to grab some Fairy Tale books for our new literature unit. I finally decided on Fairy Tales, and have a fun companion of fractured fairy tale plays for us to do along with it.

We did the errand running and came home about bedtime. She asked for Bruce Colville's A Midsummer Nights Dream since we were reading about Greece earlier. It has been at least nine months since we had read this story, but proceeded to give me an extremely detailed summary of the entire story before I even opened the book.

This morning I am still waiting for MB & K to wake up. I have to go to an appointment this morning and a friend of mine is coming over with her kids and they are going to do 'school' together. MB actually has a 'math test' in her workbook to complete - it is just review of review of work she did in last year's book - so I am not expecting any problems there.

We also have K's Piano, Science Club and MB's soccer practice all this afternoon. So, I believe it will be a rather abbreviated day.

Peace,

Amy