Eliana loves me again

Eliana has declared "I Love Moms now" then  "I Love Dads" followed by...."I love cups" maybe I'm not that special after all.

Eliana's mad at me.

I mistakenly cut Eliana's toast in half.  She bursts into tears then ran upstairs to her bedroom.
Then she called me upstairs.  When I got there, she looked at me and said "No Mommy. I want Daddy"
Now she's ignoring me.  If I talk to her she glares and walks away.

She's 3.  going on 13?

Baking and Cooking

OMG. Just how much to I detest those two activities?

Can someone explain to me how anyone can enjoy cooking or baking? It's got to be the most frustrating experience in my life. Maybe it's my helpers. Or my wonderful lack of counter space. I just want to scream after doing half of any recipe. And my helpers just don't understand why I'm frustrated. 
I hate hate hate baking.  Maybe muffins might skip the hatred, but everything else, forget it.
I cook out of necessity. Never anything spectacular. 
I bake when asked by cute children.

I really think it's the lack of space.  Mixed with 3 year old hijinx.  She dumped left over flour into the sugar bin.

Hiding

Sometimes, when my kids are screaming and crying, I just want to hide under the dining room table. Where they're least likely to look for me. In a tiny ball, sheltered by the chairs.  No one would thing to look there. Quietly sitting, undisturbed until they quit screaming at each other.

Visual disturbances

Just a personal note to remember this for next time. I started experiencing visual disturbances around 4pm today. Last time I remember having one, it was followed by a migraine a few hours later.  I can feel a headache creeping in allready.  I thought the disturbance was over, however I think it's still lingering, only milder.  Everything just doesn't seem right now, a little hazy. It's 4:30pm.

Gotta go, Calla wants the computer to play online games with her friend.

Rowan and Reading

Rowan has started reading.  He's slowing progressing through the first set of phonics readers. Slowly. Many times he doesn't remember a word that was just read in the previous sentence.  He still needs to sound out 'it' 'is' 'in' 'on' but finally knows 'the' and 'and'  His motivation to continue is building a LEGO kit.  For every 2 readers he gets to put another 8-10 pieces on his LEGO RV kit that he really really wants.  Unfortunately for me, I have endured 6 or 8 phonics readers today alone, with words like Pat and Pam being repeatedly sounded out, even though they are the main characters in every book.  Even tougher for me to take is how sounding out S-A-W gets pronounced 'was'  'no' and 'on' are regularly interchanged.

Soon this will be a slight bump on our path to fluent reading, but right now it's a hill.

The benefit to homeschooling is that we don't have anyone to impress, no one to say 'Mrs. Wilson, he's not reading at level blahblah yet'   He will read. Fluently. When he is ready.  The LEGO goal seems to be a good reward for him and best of all, a motivator to continue trying. 

I'm being called to read another book...

Asleep then.. wha...?

Huh? Wha....? Vader's helmet...huh? You WOKE ME FOR WHAT? I was asleep. Eyes shut, sleeping.

This is the who knows what number of times my darling 6 and 7 year olds have come racing into my room, or elsewhere to tell me something completely pointless while I was asleep.  I've had a cough with aches for almost 2 weeks now (started as a flu) and need more rest.  I've told them I'm napping, they can SEE that I'm sleeping.  The rules are "If you're hurt, someone else is hurt, or something really bad is happening, wake me, otherwise my alarm is set, give me 30 mins"  Inevitably someone comes in, saying "mom... can I read this book" or something else they could decide for themselves.  This morning was the last straw.  7:30 Sunday morning, "Mooomm! She lost Darth Vader's helmet" "No I didn't"

I'm going to add a lock to my bedroom door. With added soundproofing.

Trusting our kids

A big part of homeschooling is trusting our kids.  Trusting that when they're ready to learn something, they will.  Trusting that even though we didn't hit the books much the past month, they haven't stopped learning.  Today my son is copying a Dora book into a plain paper book he made.  He cannot fully read the book yet, hasn't had much instruction in printing.  He's a lefty but switches as the need requires (the right pages are easier with his right hand, no book spine)  I'm proud of his initiative.  He's being creative in his way, practicing his printing without rows of AAAA aaaaa and deep down, he's learning to read, too. He's also found a way to fill the time without ever saying "Mom, what can I do now?"