It has been mostly quiet the past two days. Ok, yesterday was hard. The weather turned colder here, and my body decided to throw a fit. I took the 4 kids with me to the grocery store during the day so we could have some family time in the evening because Jared was going to be gone all day on Saturday. Well, they behaved better than I expected, including Benaiah pretty calmly showing Keturah how to bag groceries. But I just couldn't handle walking through Aldi's and Meijer for some reason. We weren't in Meijer very long, but it took the rest of my energy "spoons" to finish putting away the groceries. That hasn't happened in long time. We still had some school to finish, but even my mind was done. It's hard having a chronic illness sometimes because you don't know when you are just not going to feel up to doing much.
Fast forward to today, and I feel a lot better and we had a quiet day at home. We finished up our schoolwork, I cleaned some extra spots today, we even sorted Benaiah's books and reboxed them for proper storage. We had leftovers for dinner, so I didn't even have to cook. Justin ended up with a headache, and it was hard for him to rest because unless Abishai is watching TV, Abishai is noisily running up and down the hallways. The rest of us took turns watching him and cleaning up after him. If you don't clean as you go, then wow, the mess is humongous! Abishai will help if you tell him to. Jared came home just in time for bedtime, and since he had a very early morning, he's probably asleep with Abishai in our bed. Plus, it's "spring forward" with the clocks tonight. Jared was with Gary at an e2 event 2 hrs away in Cincinnati. Yes, they drove there, did their thing and drove back. That's what they do, no big deal. Me? Well, Justin and I will drive 2 hrs north to Ft. Wayne next Sunday, and we'll be spending the night because I don't trust myself to drive back after a long day. It's a good thing it's spring break next week for Jared and Benaiah so they can be home with the other two.
Anyway, the kids had some great sibling playtime this week playing board games and building forts. It warms my heart that maybe, just maybe, we (with God leading the way) are doing something right. Most days don't feel like that, so it's a beautiful thing to witness it when it happens. The new "three strikes and your out" chart is working I think. They both had 3 strikes today, but it's making them more conscious of their yelling, too. I'm giving them a lot of grace, too. For example, it has to be a big grumble or persistant complaint or scream in order to have a strike. If they start, but catch themselves, or I see them restraining themselves, then I give them a warning. It's the conscious effort of knowing that their behavior is not helpful is what I want to see. So far so good.
I was in bed nice and "early" last night, and I'm hoping I will again tonight. I do feel better when I do. Early is between 11:30 and midnight. I'm still not ready to go to bed at 10 pm yet. But with Abishai going to bed at 8 pm because he doesn't take a nap, it helps me to get a jump start on my inwinding process, too. The others are quiet and winding down during that last hour as well. It's all the little tweaks to the routine that makes a big impact.
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| But the room looks clean to me! It does, for a brief second. I had brought the slide inside because we had let it out and we had a ton of wind with that little bit of snow we had and I was afraid the slide was going to jump a fence again. It's dirty and cracked and will probably be thrown away soon, but for now, it provided a perfect nesting spot and a start to something new. (see below) |
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| Nothing to do, so I thought I'd play a game by myself. Like mother, like son. I used to do this all the time because my siblings were busy or didn't want to play with me. |
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| Look, mom, I hide in tiny space! |
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| Keeping big brother in good spirits. |
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| And the shenanigans! He wanted to turn off the canned lighting and the switches are behind the toaster oven. Don't worry, the toaster oven wasn't on. |
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| Then he sat on the counter. This was after the pulled the chair around from the other side of the counter, and then he used it to turn off all the kitchen lights just because he can. |
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| He asked me to pull down the games from the very top of the bookshelf that I had forgotten that was up there. I put some other games that are still fun, but are in bad shape up there instead. My sisters and I loved these peg boards. I haven't seen anything like it in the toy stores. And Abishai did try the perfection game to his left. You try to fit all the pieces in before the timer goes off and the board pops up. I let him put pieces in without the timer though and he tried really hard to find all those odd shapes! |
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| Fine motor skills! He loved it! |
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| Justin finally found a partner to play with him and they have left it out all day and have come back to it several times. I think Keturah is winning because she has hotels (castles?) on the Park Place and whatever it's called spaces right before you get to Go. It's the Lord of the Rings version anyway, so the names are quite different of course. |
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| Benaiah in his new, harder to get in and out of, furniture arrangement. I think he's going to get tired of climbing over his stuff, so who knows how long it will last. We looked at folding tables at Meijer, but to be honest, I think it would look even more cumbersome in this room unless he could lower the table's height. |
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| And yet another game to dump out and just leave all over the place. Scrabble Apple. Although I did spell out "Blippi" for him. He recognized the "i" so I tried a few others but he's not ready yet. |
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| Stacking the Scrabble Apple pieces. |
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| No, of course this isn't Abishai, but I saw this on my Facebook wall today. It was taken 5 years ago when Justin was 7 at the Central Christian Church in Charlottetown. But you can definitely see the resemblance between the two. |
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| Monkeys hiding under the bed just because they can. And Justin managed to still be connected to his phone under there! |
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| Another monkey in a another hideaway spot. In her pjs. Because my kids only get dressed when they leave the house. #homeschoolproblems |
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| I definitely needed my afternooon ritual of full strength coffee, half of a mugful of unsweetened almond milk, with a tablespoon of hazelnut nutpods creamer. No sugar or sweetener needed! And when I use the frother, the milk comes all the way to the top! |
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| Abishai saw the truck and said, "I climb Daddy's truck!" So he did! Lol! In his pj's, in 40 degree weather, with no shoes or socks. "Savage" (as they say on Instragram, it's a young person saying). I started to weed the front flower beds and Jared even noticed when he came home (probably because I left a little bit on the sidewalk.) I'm still not sure how to go about making the flower beds all neat and tidy without digging up everything that is there, so I'll be calling on my friend, who is an expert, soon for help. |
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| Flowers, growing in the grass, and not the flower bed, oh my! And I cleared away the dead stuff in the bottom right of the picture. Perhaps I'll transfer those bulbs to another spot after they bloom or in the fall, whenver it's best to move them. Who knew? Not me! |
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| Nighttime. |
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| OOO, look! There's a car on your head! (We've been home too much lately, can you tell?) |
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| Justin is finding all kinds of ways to do things one handed. He did have an awfully itchy arm today. So I put a drop of both lavender and peppermint essential oil way up on his arm, nowhere near the cotton on his cast, hoping that his body will take them to his itchy spots, and it did! He didn't complain about it the rest of the day. Yeah! |
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| Dady's home! Time for cuddles and nighttime reading! |
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