When life happens……
Sunday -OFF
Monday – 3 miles of walk/run intervals
Tuesday – 2 miles walking
Wednesday – 3 miles walk/run intervals
Thursday – OFF baby woke up with a fever
Friday – OFF baby had diarrhea all day with some blood, ended up in the ER with her
Saturday – baby sick and wanted mommy all day. No long run.
Thank goodness she seems to be on the mend. I was starting to get a little worried. Hopefully the upward trend continues and everything can get back to normal this coming week.
I skipped through a lot of this book. Just sort of reading some of the section headings and a few sentences here and there. I thought it was pretty dry. But that could be because a lot of the information I feel like I already read in “There’s no such thing as bad weather”.
But there was a lot of good information and some very interesting things. I found it really interesting where they talked about how many teachers now have to tell kids no to so many things on the playground that they can’t do anything during recess. There was a teacher in New Zealand who decided to get rid of all the rules for recess and just let the kids go wild like they used to and they saw a bullying go down, concentration go up, etc
Another thing that was really interesting and I saw translated to our real life is talking about how kids used to play in the early 1900s and even late 90s and how strong the kids were because they weren’t restricted to what they could do on playgrounds or at recess and they were climbing on top of things, around things, swinging, and going crazy. I actually had a mom in my son’s gymnastics class, be somewhat amazed at how strong my son is. And how his gross motor skills are so well developed for a two and a half year old. And I think that’s because we don’t restrict his play. We let him climb on things we let him run around. We let him be crazy. We try and do it as safely as possible but we do not restrict or overly helicopter parent.
I do see how in America we have become more and more restrictive on what we deem safe for our children. And as a mom, I absolutely understand that it’s a balance between raining in my own fear and keeping them safe. We’ve also become a very litigious society which makes it so difficult for caregivers to give children that freedom to be children and run around and climb and jump and bounce and be crazy.
It’s overall I found it to be a very dry book and I skipped and jumped through a lot of it. But I think it’s definitely worth parents taking a peek at it and maybe doing the same kind of skipping, jumping, and stopping and reading where you are interested and skipping the parts that you find boring or redundant.
How is my baby 1 year old today???????
This has been the fastest year of my life and I know it’s just going to get faster.
Some days can test my sanity and wear me down but every day there are wonderful moments and no matter how crazy the day gets I wouldn’t trade this life for anything.
I absolutely will take a vacation when they get a little older but I love my babies more than words could ever express.
This little girl is wild! She climbs and runs and gets into EVERYTHING! She is learning to communicate what she wants and man is she stubborn! Hmmm I wonder where she gets that from??? HAHAHAHA
I cannot wait to see what this next year holds for us.
My little man is now 2.25 years old and my little girl is 11.5 months old. Life is crazy over here. Wonderful and exhausting all at once.
We just finished having back to back stomach bugs and colds. But my daughter’s sleep is still super screwed up and my husband and I are TIRED! But, I just tell myself ‘it won’t be like this for long’, and ‘you’re gonna miss this’. Both of those are songs lol, pull them up I YouTube when you feel overwhelmed, I do.
We are full swing into muddy spring days over here and go through 2+ outfits a day hahaha. I am currently nap trapped under a baby and love it so I thought I’d update you. More soon!!
Yes, my favorite season in Fall for its beautiful colors and crisp weather.
However, as I now have a baby and and am growing food and raising chickens I find myself looking more and more forward to the end of fall and the beginning of winter.
Don’t get me wrong, I know I am so lucky to be able to grow food and raise chickens and feed my family good, whole food…..but from spring planting through to fall harvesting there aren’t many days where I don’t give up a minimum of 30 minutes to the yard. 30 minutes doesn’t seem like much but when you have a little one 30 minutes out of your day can be a lot.
That 30 minutes doesn’t include the days that I am actually preparing beds, planting, harvesting and preserving; that is just daily maintenance. That takes up a lot more time.
Again, I love pulling out homemade and homegrown food in the middle of winter and early spring when everything in the grocery store is shipped from who knows where and harvested who knows when; so, I am most definitely not complaining, but the slow season of winter is absolutely calling me.
I love watching the rain fall while I drink a cup of coffee before everyone else wakes up. Make it snowfall and I love it even more.
Reality vs. fantasy: Fantasy (or should I say my pre-baby reality) in the slow winter months I read more, slept in more, relaxed more and sort of hibernated. My new reality: I am guessing winter will also have its challenges such as where do I put the baby when it is raining out and I need to change the chickens food and water? What do I do when the baby is grumpy and its raining and this is when we normally go for a walk to settle him down? We live in the Pacific Northwest so rain is a big factor for us in the winter hahahahaha.
We will see how reality and fantasy hammer out this winter.
Ok first off, yes, my baby is only 8.5 months old. I fully understand I am not REALLY starting homeschooling him. However, I am lucky enough to be a stay at home mom right now so I want to make the most of it. I simply want to make sure that I am giving him opportunities to learn as much as possible. Most of it will all be through play and exploration.
I have done a very rough layout of the next 3 years. Basically I picked a theme each week of the year, with a few no theme more relaxed ‘off weeks’ thrown in. I had a weekly calendar page that i spilt each day into 3 parts. The first section is year 1, its a lot of reading (me to him hahahaha) ABCs, sensory bins, fun on topic movie nights, learning to color things like that. Year 2 builds on that by adding in tracing and more emphasis on counting and matching small adjustments like that. And year 3 we add in more counting/math a few fun basic age appropriate science experiments etc. Here is a basic example
I also purchased ‘Exploring Nature with Children‘ which I am very excited about. Again the first year or two will just be me pointing things out and talking a little more and each year we can build on it. There is also a weekly poem and art piece to look at and study.
I love the BrainQuest workbooks and other items so as he advances we will add some of that in.
I am also looking at The Good and Beautiful curriculum and will slowly order some of that and as he advances ncorporate that. I also want to slowly incorporate lots of farm study material. Those kind of things will be very relevant as he is feeding our chickens and gathering eggs one day. And asking how plants make a lot of the food we eat and things like that.
Tomorrow we start our first week of ‘official’ not official homeschooling hahahah. Our theme is the ocean as well as totally different theme of seeds from the exploring nature curriculum. I am going to document this week and I will update you next weekend with how it went!!
My baby boy turned 8 months yesterday!!! So crazy!
This is how are days generally go currently.
Woke up at 6am, diaper change.
Today is…. we do the month, date, year, day of the week, season and weather…I made this so it is not perfect ahahahah but it gets the job done.
Bottle time!!!!
Play time with some reading basics….and coffee for me
Breakfast!!! Or if you are a hobbit, 2nd breakfast……did i get that reference right? Hahaha
Little man hangs out on a blanket while I water the backyard and take care of the chicken coop. During this time he loves watching the dog and the chickens as they waddle all over the yard. It usually takes about 20-25 min to get it all done and he usually lasts that long just watching the dog and chickens but not always.
After yard work he runs around in his walker while I try and clean as much as possible. Sometimes he chases the dog, sometimes he chases the robot vacuum hahahahaah how long he lasts varies some days its 15 min and some days its 30+ min.
Once he gets sick of his walker we head into his room to play before his first nap.
Nap time is about 3 hours after he wakes up. We do a diaper change, put him in his sleep sack, drink a bottle and into the crib he goes. Today he was asleep by 8:55ish
During this time I clean or food prep or workout or shower or anything on my list that I need to do that day.
When he wakes up its another diaper change. Activity for a few minutes then lunch.
Then daddy does bedtime. He was asleep by 7pm. I relaxed for about 20 min then I head back outside to check the chickens food and water before bed. Currently i do a little bit of homeschool research at night as well and I prep his bottles for the next day before i head to bed. My goal is to be in bed before 10.
To show you the full 24 hours I woke up today at 610 to him chatting to himself. he was content so i got up, warmed his bottle and started my coffee. he was still content so i sat down to enjoy my coffee for a few minutes and he fell back asleep! i will let him sleep until about 730 if he doesn’t wake up on his own. Any later than that and we would have to move his bedtime later.
Trailing the blonde 