Right Wing Mom

My little guy turns 5 today. I can’t believe it. It has all been one big blur with him! Jake has taught me the most about being a parent. He is the first child to make my heart ache. I always doubted when people would comment about the bond between a mother and her son. I thought the about what I had with Kaitie and Mandy and I though I had it all figured out. Boy… was I wrong!

I love you Jake! Happy Birthday knucklehead

Just a few minutes old

Around 8 months old

1st Birthday

2nd Birthday

Christmas 06

4th Birthday

I should have some “today” birthday pics up tomorrow

Also wishing a Happy Birthday to Joshua! How old are you now 11? Yikes!!!

How sad… a weekly update?

On a good note, the lack of posting here is from a whole bunch of things getting done at home! That is always a good thing

School is going well, for Kaitie and Mandy at least. Jake? Oh boy… I was telling Marc this morning that is Jake makes it to his 5th birthday, it will be a miracle (btw - tomorrow is his birthday!)

Seriously - he amazes me with his intelligence, when he decides to use it. Our days usually go something like this:

Mommy : “Time to start school Jake”
Jake: “ok, what are we doing?”
M: “Reading first, than we can do some fun stuff!”
J: “How about fun stuff first?”
M: “Nope, reading first than fun stuff”
J: “No”
I usually ignore this and start anyway, he will follow along for about 5 minutes, then he crosses his arms, clenches his jaw and shakes is head no. I try to urge him on, with him not budging. I don’t know where he gets his stubbornness from.

The rule is then, Jake doesn’t get to do anything (except looking/reading books) until he finishes reading.

How long does this go on? Well, today, we are working on close to 3 hrs. Can you see my eyes rolling?

Now - before you start rolling your eyes and thinking I am just pushing the poor dear to hard and that he isn’t ready, let me clue you in on what happens when he finally gives in a decides to do his reading. He will finish all his words (5-20 depending on review) and 3-5 sentences in about 5 minutes. He flies through them, almost so fast that it seems to easy for him.

Sigh… why are boys so different from girls?

Oh, and the other day in the car, Jake says to me “Mommy, I know what 4+4 is” I reply “Really, what?” Not knowing what what in the world he is going to come up with. He, of course, says 8. Well, I decided to push it a little and start asking him his double math facts. Do you know that little butthead knew his double facts from 1-5? Hmmm - I guess I need to bump up the math a bit… I am still trying to teach him counting and number recognition.

Teaching Jake is making me take all I have learned with Kaitie and Mandy, crunch it up into a little ball and chuck it out the window.

Sigh… Lets see if I can get him to do his reading before lunch.

Lots of pictures on Friday!!!

Hmmm? I need to keep this short - Momma needs a nap or at least some quite time. So… to be brief (rare for me, I know!) I will share with you why I haven’t been blogging lately:

Teething baby
Cranky Jake
Awesome Jake
Sick Marc
Starting our school year
Having 3 kids to school now
A birthday party for a couple of 10 year olds I know, that was only a month late

But - to be serious, my lack of blogging can be summed up in just a few words:

Nastia, Shawn and Michael

What can I say, I have always been been addicted to the Olympics and this go round is now different! This 1am stuff is killing me though

More words and pics to come later.

Yep - it’s that time of year again - school’s about to start. In my little world this time of year is filled with stress and anxiety, even more so this year!

Why all the stress and worrying? Well, its about this time every year that I start questioning everything. It usually starts with curriculum choices: Is there something bigger and better? Should I really be using this (or that) curriculum. Is this really working?

Then we move to doubting: Oh, man - are my kids learning anything? Am I make them stupid? Should I even be doing this? Why am I doing this?

Then it moves to stress: ACCCK! How far “behind” are we now!?! What are you going to do for (insert subject here) this year!?! Are they learning anything?

This year it got a little worse. Jake is “officially” starting school. Now, let me say, that this is our, ummm… 6th official year of home schooling(that sounds about right.) Which, let me say is really sad, cause I still feel like I have no clue what I’m doing have the time. Anyway.. I digress. The problem here is that We didn’t really find out what worked for us till 1st grade. Poor Kaitie and Mandy went through at least 3 different curriculum choices during Kindergarten - and yet I still taught them to read! (small miracle there.)

So… here I am with a Kindergartner and looking in a few different directions. On a good note I do know 2 curriculums that I will not be using. Abeka (ewwww! sorry if you are an Abeka family) and KONOS (I really wanted to love KONOS - but a unit study Mom, I am not.)

I think we are probably going to wind up with Sonlight (which is what we used for 1st grade with the girls) Its great, its pretty simple, its all there and it has a schedule! I like that.

Interested in what we will be doing this year?

Here’s what’s planned for for Kaitie and Mandy:

History - Story of the World (Great books!) We will be finishing up Volume 2 and hopefully getting all the way through Volume 3

Language Arts - Rod and Staff 4

Latin - Prima Latina We tried doing Latin last year, but the curriculum was just too darn hard and went too fast - so we are giving this one a whirl!

Writing - Institute for Excellence in Writing I have heard such good things about this program and can’t wait to try it out!

Science - Considering God’s Creation. I really love this book. But, sadly science always seems to get out on the back burner. So - hopefully we will finish this book sometime this year!

Math - Math-U-See

And here’s what we are planning on doing with Jake:

Math - Math-U-See

Reading - continuing with learning to read with a combo of Hooked on Phonics, The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading, and The McGuffey Eclectic Readers.

Language Arts - Language and Thinking for Young Children

Writing - Worksheets for somewhere on the internet Just working on strokes and hand-eye coordination

History - Sonlight ( hopefully)

And lots and lots and lots of reading

I am going to put up a little schedule on the blog somewhere to talk about what we are studying that week and what everyone is reading.

Let me know if you have any questions or any suggestions!

I thought I would take a little time today to catch up a bit. I haven’t really been up for blogging lately. Tiredness, busyness and just general madness and mayhem have taken over.

Edouward is visiting today. It really cracks me up how, still in the wake of Katrina, the local news is just salivating over an impending hurricane. Its just another rainy day here. Just like any other rainy day, but you wouldn’t know that watching the news tis morning. They had an anchor-person, standing in full “hurricane-garb” commenting on the lack of traffic and showing the puddles that had accumulated on the road… yep I said puddles. Is there seriously nothing else to talk about this morning but puddles?

On the kid front

Kaitie and Mandy are gearing up for meet season. We are still not sure they will competing this year. Kaitie is a little closer to getting her skills down, but Mandy is not far behind. They have an “in house” meet this Friday. The coaches will use that to kind of gauge where the girls to see if they are ready.

The girls and I (Marc helped a bit too) built a practice beam this past week! It was super cheap and relatively easy to make. The girls are using it to practice their cartwheels and leaps ans jumps. I am so proud and amazed of what they can accomplish on that 4″ piece of wood!

Jake is doing well. We have been trying some new stuff with him to help him with his food and behavior issus (I hat eto put it that way, but I don’t know how else to put it) and it really seems to be helping! Yesterday, we actually gave him an apple, blueberries and almonds, all foods that in the past, were big no-no’s, He had no problem! Very exciting times!!!

He is starting to read now too. He has learned his “at” words and his “an” words. The bad thing is: he wants to learn too fast! I am having to pull back the reins with him. He gets some words down then he’s like “ok, what next?” There is a part of me that wants to let him go and start pouring it in, but the other part really, really wants to make sure that everything is soolid before moving on. Hmmm, what to do?

Emma is cute as always and getting so big! She surprised me the other day, I went to go get her out of her crib, and there she was… standing up. Little stinker. She’s still not digging on the food that much. Some days she eats ok, but most days she is just really content drinking up the breastmilk. Again - what a stinker!

Thats all the updating for now, I guess. I will try to get back in gear with blogging and get some new pictures up for ya’ll!