October 2: Annalie’s been doing a lot of drawing on her easel chalkboard lately. I thought this one, of a pear on a branch, was particularly good.

October 3: Class in in session. (Homeschooling can be kind of awesome. In our dress code, pajamas and bedhead are perfectly acceptable attire.)

I looked out the window of Elliora’s room and saw four deer across the street in our neighbor’s yard. (One of the deer is just to the left of frame, behind a bush, so I didn’t bother trying to get it in the shot.)

October 4: I couldn’t get Elliora to lie on the couch for our monthly photo session; she kept rolling away. I tried to sneak some photos in one day when Katy happened to be in her bedroom while we were in there playing, but I couldn’t get Elliora to look at me for a single photo. Oh well. This is very representative of 10 months.

We got a new chair from our neighbors who were getting rid of it after it didn’t sell at their garage sale. Elliora loves it and has already figured out how to push it up against the couch and use it to climb up.

October 5: Troy had to come home on a lunch break. I grabbed the opportunity to take a photo of him and the girls. (He normally wears civilian clothes on his commute and changes into his uniform at work, so we don’t see him in uniform very often.)

Elliora, just reading in her chair.

October 6: My friend Carrie, who is married to a Swede and used to live in Sweden, mentioned that October 4th is National Cinnamon Bun Day in Sweden, which inspired me to try making some tasty Swedish cinnamon buns, also called Kanelbullar. I knew that Swedish pearl sugar I bought just because it was pretty would come in handy someday.

I went painting pottery with both girls, and all things considered, I won’t be doing that again anytime soon. I managed to keep Elliora entertained and paint at the same time but it was exhausting.

I painted this sign (“NO WHINING. Kthx.“) for my friend Katie as an unbirthday gift for her to hang in her high-school English classroom.

October 7: Elliora decided that her toy basket looked like a comfortable place to sit.

October 8: We were invited over to our neighbors’ for pizza and the last swim of the summer in their pool. I was sitting in their living room when I glanced out the window and saw they had “Live long and prosper” painted along the inside of the fascia on their front porch, so you’d see it as you walk out the door. I’ve been over there a half-dozen times and never noticed it before.

Elliora on the left at 10 months; Annalie on the right at 17 months, in 2005.

October 10: Elliora has discovered a love of being underneath tables. We’ve discovered how many gross things and choking hazards normally live underneath our tables.

October 11: Elliora has also discovered the basket by our fireplace where we keep firewood and old newspapers. She takes her job of spreading every last sheet of newspaper around the room at least once a day very seriously.

Speaking of Trekkies, Elliora looks adorable in her ThinkGeek Starfleet Academy Cadet onesie, don’t you agree?

October 12: It’s really hard to make mashed-potato casserole look pretty.

October 13: I love it when geeky friends come bearing geeky gifts. Well, technically Laura painted the bowl on the left for me because I painted a dottery bowl for her with a BBT quote (which I never got a photo of, I just realized). And Sonja mailed the bowl (with quotes from the song Friends Forever in the Scrubs episode “My Musical”) to me, she didn’t give it to me in person. But the point stands.

October 14: These apple-pie cookies (via smitten kitchen) were extremely delicious. I kind of want to go make another complicated, time-consuming batch right this very second.

October 15: Elliora getting a taste of fall. (Har har.)

October 17: Rainbow sparkly fingernails! The polish (Rainbow Connection, natch) is from the OPI Muppet collection. It made me happy every time I glanced at my hands. Too bad it chipped and peeled so easily. But I’ve been told I should try a base coat next time and that might help.

October 18: Elliora is a climbing fool.

October 19: We went on a leaf walk for science, collecting red and gold leaves and talking about why trees change color in the fall. Annalie copied a list of words for handwriting practice and just to help her learn the words. I threw a couple of pictures in there and told her to write the words for the pictures. The picture for #6 was a tree, and I had to laugh when I saw how Annalie had spelled it. When I pointed her mistake out to her, Annalie thought it was pretty funny too. She said, “I don’t know what I was thinking. I know how to spell ‘tree!’”

Look at me, blogging about something the same day it happened. It’s almost like I have a 10-month old now instead of a newborn.

Oh, right. I do have a 10-month-old! As of today, in fact. I do believe she’s going to be walking before she’s another month older.

Anyway. Today we had a fun visit with Carrie and her kids! We were originally planning to meet at a park between our two towns, but it rained last night and we weren’t enthused about the idea of trying to keep two babies entertained at a wet, muddy park. So we scrapped that plan and decided to just meet at Carrie’s house.

Annalie and Erik didn’t care much. When we got there, they immediately headed to the playroom in the basement and must’ve had fun because we didn’t see them again until we told them it was time to go get lunch.

We could walk to the Amish market from Carrie’s house, so that’s what we did. It was a pretty nice day, despite the drizzle we ended up walking through on the way home. The big kids ran ahead of us and got some of their wiggles out, while we pushed the babies in the strollers and enjoyed the mild weather and the fall colors that are just starting to show.

The market itself was quite interesting. There were a bunch of different stalls, selling all kinds of delicious things to eat—cheese, baked goods, produce, preserves and baking supplies like flour and nuts, candy, soft pretzels—as well as a restaurant, a meat counter, and a furniture showcasing a variety of beautiful wood tables, chairs, dressers, beds, and bookcases.

It seemed a little incongruous to me see all these men and women in plain dress (the women in long, modest dresses with their hair parted in the middle and pulled back under crisp white caps; the men in plain pants and button-down shirts with suspenders, most of them with beards and a fringe of hair cut straight across their foreheads), which is usually adopted by those who forsake the modern world and its conveniences, blithely using electronic scales and credit-card readers and cash registers. Carrie said it’s even funnier to see them outside on a break, using their cell phones.

We stopped at the deli counter and bought fried chicken, potato salad, and cucumber salad. We also bought half of a chocolate cake for dessert, then took it all back to Carrie’s house to eat. It probably won’t surprise you to hear that it was all completely, utterly delicious. I’m already plotting when I can go back and get more of that fried chicken.

After lunch Annalie and Erik went to the little neighborhood park to play, and Carrie and I hung out in the living room with Elliora and Elsa. It was probably a lot more fun for them that we were in a house full of toys instead of at the park, where Elliora probably wouldn’t have been able to crawl on the wet ground and Elsa would have been continually frustrated at not being able to keep up with the big kids. They are a bit too young to play together yet, but they got along pretty well, considering.

Elliora seemed to look at the living room full of toys she’d never played with and think, Right. I have a lot of work to do before we leave here! Then she set out to play with as many of them as she could.

Well, with as many as she could before Elsa grabbed them out of her hands, that is. I don’t blame Elsa one bit, though. Who was this young upstart coming into HER house and playing with HER toys!? At least Elliora took it good-naturedly. She just moved on to the next toy. By the time we left she was grabbing toys right back out of Elsa’s hands.

Then Elliora did something that kind of startled me: she imitated Elsa. Elsa had put a pillow on the floor and laid down with her head on it. When she got up, Elliora crawled over to the pillow and looked at it, looked over at Elsa, looked back at the pillow, and then laid down in the same position Elsa had just been in, with her head on the pillow. She sat up and grinned at me and Elsa, then laid back down and patted the pillow, just like she pats my chest when she’s snuggling with me, clearly quite pleased with herself. She’s growing up at the speed of light, that one. She’s got a big sister to keep up with!

We left not long after lunch, since it was naptime for the littles, waving good-bye and promising not to wait so long between visits next time. Thanks again for having us over and taking us to the Amish market, Carrie!

Today it’s raining and chilly here. But up till today, this week had been fairly warm with summer-like temps and sunshine. To Annalie, that means one thing: swimming.

She was pretty upset with me when I told her that we weren’t going to get the kiddie pool out just yet. I tried explaining that since it’s only April, there’s no guarantee the weather will stay warm. And besides, we’re going to Omaha in a few days and no one will be here to use the pool. It makes more sense to wait till we get back to clean it out and set it up.

Annalie got all that, but she didn’t care. She wanted to swim. I placated her with running through the sprinkler after a particularly sweaty walk home from the park on Wednesday and told her, No matter how much you beg, we are not taking the pool out till after we get home from Omaha.

That didn’t stop her from pleading with me yesterday to set up the pool, however. She WANTED TO SWIM. I told her that wasn’t happening, and asked what else she wanted to do.

“I only want to swim! That’s what I most want to do.”

“Well, what’s the second thing you want to do most of all? Maybe we can do that.”

Annalie crossed her arms and lowered her eyebrows. “Fly a kite.”

I’m pretty sure she said that to be difficult, because this has come up before, and she knows there are too many trees and power lines in our neighborhood to fly a kite. But instead of reminding her of that fact, I said, “We could probably make a little kite, it just wouldn’t be able to go up high. You’d have to run to make your own wind. Wanna do that?”

Her eyes lit up. “Yeah! Let’s do that!”

I did a quick online search and found exactly the kind of kite I wanted to make. Annalie chose a piece of paper (the directions call for printer/copier paper; we used IKEA craft paper which worked perfectly) and decorated it with her markers while I found clear packing tape, a straw, yarn, scissors, and a plastic bag.

In five minutes we’d followed the instructions on how to fold and tape the paper into a kite shape and tape a straw across the top for stability. I cut an eight-foot long spiral out of a plastic grocery bag and Annalie taped it to the bottom for a tail. I punched a hole in the fin and tied the yarn on. Annalie wound the other end of the yarn around a piece of cardboard she’d cut off a box in the basement, and voila! She had a kite.

And she was happy.

Want to make a kite? Video and step-by-step illustrated instructions:
20 kids * 20 kites * 20 minutes.

Of course we had a much better day today. That’s the way it usually seems to go. Storms are swept away by sunshine. Literally, in this case, since we had gorgeous sunny weather today. It will be followed with rainstorms tonight and tomorrow, but that’s okay. We like rain too.

I somehow didn’t manage to take any photos of Annalie playing outside in her tent or painting all over the driveway with homemade sidewalk paint. But I did snap the above photo for posterity, since Annalie had just helped deliver a kitten. After bustling around, gathering a laundry basket and some of my winter gloves (“It’s important to wear gloves so we don’t pass on harmful germs to the babies!”) and an old baby-bath pillow, while telling me how she needed to go to the animal hospital to help a mama cat deliver her first kitten. A little while later she called me to the bedroom to proudly present the mama (her stuffed Siamese cat Fluffy) and her kitten (her white kitty Sparkle) to me.

Sometimes I wish I could have had Annalie for a playmate when I was a kid.

Also, today we tried out Time4Learning. When I told Annalie about the site and how she could do lessons on it, she said, “Oh, cool! So if you’re busy with Elliora, I could still do school stuff on my own, right?” The site isn’t the prettiest, the navigation isn’t the most elegant, but the lessons seem fun and easy for Annalie to do with minimal help from me, and I love the way I can set up minimum lesson times and log in to check on which lessons Annalie’s completed and print out progress reports. I think she’ll find some of the first-grade lessons a bit on the easy side at first, but that’s okay. I think it’s going to be a helpful addition to our homeschool right now. (If anyone out there decides to subscribe to Time4Learning on the basis of my recommendation, feel free to tell them I sent you—it would mean a credit to my account.)

It wasn’t a spectacular day, but it was a good day. A calm, quiet, no-one-lost-their-temper, the-baby-got-good-naps, we-even-managed-to-clean-Annalie’s-room day. I say that’s a big improvement.

P.S. Thank you for all your supportive comments and emails! At the suggestion of several of you, we’ve decided that from now on we’re going to leave it up to Annalie whether or not she needs something covering her legs, as long as it’s above freezing. We reserve the right to tell her she has to bring a coat, but we’re not going to fight with her about clothes anymore. We were kind of on the verge of that anyway. I remember my mom used to have to fight with my brother about similar weather/clothing issues, and when he was about Annalie’s age she said, FINE, wear what you want, but don’t complain to me about being cold. And you know what, he’s 34 years old and he still never wears long sleeves and rarely wears a coat heavier than a sweatshirt. Yet another way my older daughter is so much like her Unky Ben it’s a little scary.

P.P.S. New banner, this one appropriately Eastery. Thanks, Brenda!

It’s ironic (or is it?! I’m always fuzzy on the definition of irony, thanks to Alanis Morissette) that the day after writing a post about how much easier our lives could be if I just remember to be more playful, I am writing a post about how my parenting report card today would be stamped with a great big FAIL.

Today I lost my temper at Annalie over something kind of stupid. She threw a fit over having to leave the house for dinner, then got mad because she had to put on long pants (a fight I have with her EVERY SINGLE DAY, every time we need to leave the house, oh my goodness does this kid ever need to live in Southern California). Then it went even further downhill, probably largely because she was hungry, which was why we were leaving the house to get some dinner.

I was hungry too, and I have the same tendency to be 300% more irritated by life when I’m hungry, so it took a lot of effort for me to stay calm. But by golly, I did. I spent 20 minutes patiently, calmly talking to Annalie. I reminded her she was hungry. I pointed out that 45F isn’t warm enough to go outside in a skirt and tank top. She was not entirely happy but had simmered down and even put on tights and was ready to leave.

And then she changed her mind. I don’t even know exactly what it was, but something set her back to square one and she told me, in that hmmph-so-there voice that is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me, that she wasn’t leaving the house ever again and I couldn’t make her. Then she laid down on her bed and grabbed the headboard like I was going to have to pry her off.

I saw red. I yelled at her. I pushed her down the hall towards Troy and stomped into my room to count to 100. I rested my forehead on the wall and took deep, shaky breaths. I listened to Annalie wailing, to Troy talking to her, to poor Elliora strapped into the infant seat, crying her head off. I hated myself just a little bit.

I pulled myself together and joined my family. I took Elliora out of the seat and comforted her. I hugged Annalie and asked her how much better she thought I felt now that I’d yelled at her. She said she didn’t know. I told her, “Not better at all. I feel worse. How do you feel?” She admitted she felt worse too. We all calmed down and talked and apologized and forgave. We went to dinner and came home and Annalie went to bed happy and serene while I laid on the couch and nursed Elliora and had a good cry.

I think what’s going on right now, mainly, is that Annalie is dealing with not having me to herself anymore. She is understandably frustrated at having to share my time, and that it often seems like the lion’s share of that is going to Elliora these days. Lately Annalie has been unusually snippy with me and angry at me. I know it’s all part of the process of learning to deal, and I’m glad she is taking it out on me and not the baby (with whom she is unfailingly gentle and loving), but it’s still trying. And today we were both hungry and I was tired and breastfeeding hormones probably played a part and just arrrrrgggghhhh.

On top of that, school has been challenging. I’ve been trying hard for the last month to get back into a routine with school, and Annalie is fighting me every step of the way. For every hour of school we do, I spend easily another hour convincing her. It’s exhausting.

Part of me thinks it’s no big deal. She is in first grade; putting the curriculum on hold and unschooling for another month or so won’t hurt her. We still read books every day, and she reads and writes plenty on her own. We talk about time and dates and prices and measurements every day, in real-life situations at the store, while cooking, while planning a trip. Now that the weather is warming up, and Elliora is a bit older and doesn’t hate the car quite as much, we can start going to the library regularly and hitting the museums again. We can keep plugging away at our year’s curriculum right through summer if we want to. We’re going to start using Time4Learning as a supplement (thanks, Yara!) and I’m hopeful that it will be a good fit for Annalie’s learning style and our needs right now.

[I am a bit apprehensive leaving the negative stuff about homeschooling in this post because I've gotten some pretty negative responses from people about this kind of thing in the past. Please know that I am not saying homeschooling is too hard for us, because I'm not; I'm saying that right now homeschooling is challenging but we are persevering because I want to teach my kids about perseverance and flexibility just as much as I want to teach them how to read and write. If I honestly thought homeschooling wasn't working for us anymore we wouldn't be doing it. It's as simple as that. And I want to be honest about our struggles because if someone else is struggling in their homeschool at least they won't read my blog under the erroneous impression that homeschooling comes easily to everyone else in the world but them.]

On top of everything else Troy’s job is crazy busy right now and he’s basically leaving for work before we get up and getting home just in time to tuck Annalie in at night. As you can imagine this is stressing all of us out for various reasons.

I’m truly okay now. I talked to Troy and my mom and Brenda and Madge. Brenda and Madge both told me that when I lose my temper at my kid, it’s an opportunity for me to help her learn how to deal with anger and angry people, and also a chance to teach her about how even her parents aren’t perfect. (Gasp! Shocking but true.) My mom and Troy both had good ideas for ways to help Annalie learn to deal with her frustration. They all reminded me that things will get easier and I know they are right. I am stretched pretty thin right now, with nursing a baby and homeschooling a first-grader and attempting to keep the house in some kind of order on days that are too cold for Annalie to play outside, and I need to be as kind to myself as I would to anyone else in this situation. So I’m trying.

Sarah commented on the last post that Annalie’s vocabulary is so good for her age that it’s easy to forget she’s just a little kid. I confess I have the same problem sometimes. Annalie is so mature and smart and empathetic in some ways, but in other ways she is still very much six-going-on-seven. I am guilty of expecting too much of her at times. Especially since Elliora was born, I think, since in comparison with a four-month-old Annalie seems impossibly grown-up. But she’s not. She’s still a kid in need of snuggles and silliness and reassurance and guidance and tons of patience and understanding and love. Though really, what adult doesn’t need those things too?

Tomorrow is another day. It might bring more temper tantrums, it might not. Either way, we’ll handle it and I will attempt to remain calm and remember that we’re all doing the best we can under the circumstances, knowing it will get easier eventually. Or I’ll get stronger in the process. Probably both.

How are you today?

Annalie reading The Slick Sled from bethany actually on Vimeo.

It’s been a while since we did one of these reading videos…the last one was done the week before Elliora was born, when Brenda and Bug were still here, almost three months ago. Waitwaitwait…that means my baby is almost three months old. How the heck did that happen?!

Even though we have not been sitting down every day and doing lessons from our curriculum for the past couple of months, we have been reading every day. Annalie will occasionally volunteer to read a story to us at bedtime, or to read a book to her sister. And I’ve even caught her sitting at her table, reading a book silently to herself a time or two. She still doesn’t read for fun like I did when I was her age, but she’s getting there. I can hardly wait for that world to open up to her!

Eight thank-you notes.

Less than two hours.

For comparison, it took three weeks for Annalie to write her birthday thank-you notes last May. What was the difference this time? Incentive.

I came up with a plan to offer Annalie a reward for getting her thank-you notes done: a trip to Build-A-Bear. And the quicker she got them done, the bigger her reward would be. Of course, she would have to write the thank-you notes no matter what, but the reward might motivate her to write them with a minimum of complaining and stalling.

I ran this plan by Troy, and he thought it was a good idea. So I drew up a couple of sticker charts and explained the plan to Annalie. If she got all her thank-you notes written by Friday, she’d get a Build-A-Bear. If she could get them done more quickly than that, she could earn an outfit, maybe some shoes, an accessory or two.

“What if I get all my thank-you notes done today? Do I get to go to Build-A-Bear today?” I said we could probably arrange that, but she didn’t have to get them done that fast. She could still get the biggest reward if she got them done by Monday.

Annalie nodded. “Yeah, but will you take me today if I get them done?” I said if she could manage to get all her thank-you notes done in one day, we could certainly go to Build-A-Bear tonight.

I thought there was no way on earth she’d get them all done today, considering how long it’s taken her to get them done in the past, and the drama we had just yesterday over her writing one measly sentence during school.

Annalie was so worried about getting to Build-A-Bear tonight she nearly made herself sick, even though she was working her little heart out and had plenty of time to finish. My mom and I kept telling her we were so amazed at what a great job she was doing, and reassuring her that we could go right after dinner.

Two hours. Eight thank you notes. Fourteen dollars of her own money to buy her new bear some extras. One extremely proud and happy girl.

Annalie reading: A Fox in the Tent from bethany actually on Vimeo.

Another story video guest-starring Bug. Also, we’re outside on our deck in the rain just for fun.

Annalie reading: Don and Jill Camp from bethany actually on Vimeo.

This week, the story is perhaps a bit more disjointed than usual, but also more entertaining…special guest stars include Bug, our cat Katy, and Brenda in the background!

Annalie reading: Pals’ Pets from bethany actually on Vimeo.

Annalie found it quite hilarious that there was yet another character in this story with the same name as a good friend of mine. She makes a point of mentioning it before she even starts reading. She also thought it was kind of funny that there are characters with the same names as my brother and OMSH‘s Kenny. After the video, she tacks on a little message—unprompted by me—for Bug, whom we will be picking up at the airport tonight along with her mom. Yay!