Year 2, Days 259 & 260: The Start of the Week

First of all, if you want to check to see if my day count is correct, more power to you.  I'm too tired to care.  We have had a decent start of the week.  I've been more on the kids to keep tweaking their schedule and stop dwadling, and I think they are seeing the benefit.  But we are still having some issues of disobedience and policing each other.  Today (Tuesday, September 19th), I lectured them on how to rephrase and use a different tone of voice if they see the need to correct each other.  I got it from a podcast I think.  So, instead of screaming, "Justin, get back to your homework!" Keturah could say in a normal voice, "Justin, I think you better get to your homework before Mom sees you playing with the dog."  I explained to them that the first way of saying it is mean, controlling, manipulative, and the whole purpose of saying it is to get Mom to come in and get the other one into trouble.  The second way of saying it is a gentle reminder because you do NOT want your sibling to get into trouble.  We'll see how long it takes to change this bad habit.

We've also been working on stopping Abishai from also yelling "Stop it! Go away!" in a mean voice and instead, again in a quieter, more neutral way, "Please stop."  And because he's younger, I think he's catching onto it a bit faster because we caught it sooner.  But we have to retrain the older ones to listen and immediately obey that command as a reward to him for saying it correctly and to respect his wishes.  And I would expect if the older kids would say it "Please stop" nicely, then we all need to listen to and back off immediately, too.

You see, I've failed as a mother, especially a homeschooling mother, if I have kids who can recite a timeline, or even Scripture, but leave the nest without any integrity and respect for each other and others outside of the home.  For example, I was embarrassed when Abishai was being pretty aggressive with Justin while playing with puppets at the library yesterday.  Justin was putting on a "nice" puppet show and Abishai still attacked.  Then this other preschool boy came over and tried to see what was going on, but I think the dad was afraid that Abishai might hurt the boy in his aggressive attacks with Justin, so he steered his son away from my sons.  I totally get the whole boy wrestling and attacking and playing with guns thing.  Totally.  But, Abishai has been crossing that line that I am not comfortable with.  And even superheroes get it.  Some comics and TV shows in that genre show the superhero killing the big villians or their entourages, but a lot of the stories revolve around finding a way just to stop them buy injuring them of locking them up, not killing them.  Yes, that's a plot point so the villian can come back, but the fact that the superhero takes time to weigh that consequences, especially with having the guilt of killing someone follow them the rest of their lives, speaks volumes to me that there is a line and it doesn't need to be crossed when playing as little and big boys do.  Kind of like using the stun feature on a phaser from Star Trek instead of setting it to "kill" if you know what I mean.  So, we've had to correct Abishai and tell him, no, we don't want the other person to die and you don't want to kill them, but we can certainly stop them by say, shooting them in the leg and slowing them down. 

And after all that, what do I do but take all the kids to see Wonder Woman at the Greenwood Public Library.  Whoops! At first it was just Justin, Keturah, Abishai and I, but then Jared and Benaiah joined us when they were finished at church, so they could play with Abishai when he got restless.  Honestly, I just wanted to see it again myself.  And I knew Justin would appreciate it with it's references to Greek mythology.  He even said, "If Wonder Woman is the brother of Ares, then which Greek God is she?" because they don't name a Greek god equivalent in the movie or the comic books (at least I don't think so).  But when I did have Abishai by myself, during some of the first scenes of just the Amazon women practicing their fighting skills, Abishai leaned over to me for a hug, and even tried to hold my hand like he was scared.  And then when Jared was holding him for 5-10 minutes before they left the room completely, he said, "bad guys, owie."  So, I'm glad Jared was there to take him.  I could have taken him to church but then Jared wouldn't have been able to get him home because the truck doesn't have enough room.  As I said on Facebook, Keturah wasn't very interested and kept begging for more popcorn, but I'm hoping to talk with Justin about the implications of some of those thought provoking dialogues about both sides being evil/having sin, but we have to fight for our beliefs and do what we can to better the situation.  So, the jury is out as to whether tonight was a good outing or not because Jared and Benaiah could have been doing other things, like getting Benaiah a haircut for his school pictures tomorrow.  (Whoops!)  Jared spent 1 1/2 hrs outside on the nearby playground in the 78 degree muggy heat swinging Abishai.  Justin couldn't hear everything.  But we tried.  And because the crowd was small, like less than 20 people including us, we had room to spread out and change seating arrangements without issue.   We will have to go back to fully explore the library though.  It was my first time there and I've heard that the kid areas are incredible.  I would think they would be when they had a totally separate closed off room labeled "Teens."  Awesome!  And the drive down there during rush hour was fairly straight forward.  Thompson to 5 Points Rd to County Line to Meridian and you're there.  That means you miss Southport and Franklin Rds and US 31 and I-65 which are all so very busy during rush hour.  I was pleased.

Ah! What a salad is supposed to look like!  Lots of veggies with just a hint of lettuce, or in our case, romaine lettuce and spinach/kale, etc. mix.

"Little A in (has) a box. What is in his box?" That's the start of a series of books we have about the letters and it focuses on early reading skills.  But this was all Abishai's idea to curl up in the box.

Abishai also wanted the lid on.

And this is how you pick up a child, in a box, with the lid on, which was immediately taken off after this picture.

See, said child is now having fun pushing a tower of stacking balls off Daddy's head.

Earlier in the day, Abishai made a nest in his box.

And watched some Super Trucks from that position.

Hilarious!  So, Abishai would poke Jared's ears until Jared squirmed and then the stacked tower would fall off and Jared would catch it.  It was the best non violent game ever!

This kid loves to ride on Daddy's shoulders, unlike the others who would get really frightened up there.  And Abishai knows when to duck at the right times to go through a doorway.

When we were at toddler time, we saw the local train pull through!  How convenient to have a direct view of the tracks from inside the library!  It was a short train, but that's ok.

We actually didn't go to the toddler time because there were a few others milling about that weren't participating.  I know we will be back every week and didn't want to force Abishai to sit through another long 30-45 minutes storytime.  And we are here to practice our sccial skills, so here we are socializing.  Abishai ran around with another little guy, but he was also extremely fascinated with the boy's baby sister who was about 7 months old.  We had to leave soon after that because Abishai was being unruly. 

Nice play about some animals.

Animals going after the humans, oh no!

Finding Justin, and Justin trying to keep the play time positive.

Yes, he's planking!  He calls it superman though!

1 extra big load of laundry done from start to finish in 90 minutes.  I have my large capacity machines and efficient and effective features they have.

Cooking fail!  It's a good thing I went for a cup of coffee at about 2 pm.  I went to stir the stew and realized I hadn't put any potatoes in it!  Whoops!  They did cook in time.  I added rosemary this time forgetting that it's usually flavored by the bay leaves but the combination of the two was perfect.  Plus the right amount of salt and a bit of pepper.  Yum!

Waiting for Wonder Woman to start.

Playing with cars while the movie plays in the backyard.  Eventually these two left and hung out at the playground.

Of course, more cars lined up.  Benaiah was busy looking at YouTube videos and playing his rubix cube the whole time the movie was playing. 

And that's it.  I'm tired. We have gymnastics in the morning and Plexxus to sign up for in the afternoon.  And we have a very busy Sunday coming up, too, that we need to prepare for.  Stay tuned!