Year 3, August 27th-29th, 2018: Gearing Up

****I thought this post had been published.  I don't have time to go through it and figure out why I didn't.  Maybe I needed to add something to it.  But now that we are back, I have other posts to write and a very short, hard week ahead.  So I apologize in advance if something is missing.  Thanks for understanding.****

I almost wish we had started back to full time school earlier, because I'm feeling the pressure of being gone for the Labor Day holiday and then starting school the Tuesday after that.  Monday was an overwhelmingly frustrating day because the kids were fighting all day long and I had a long to do list.  I don't do well with multiple interruptions because I lose my train of thought.  I know that's pretty common, but at the same time, I know fibromyalgia and brain fog makes it worse. Did I make progress?  Yes, the school prep is coming along, but did I do it with anxiety and raising my voice?  Yes, I did.  I should try to remember that the kids also have long days on Sundays and are still grouchy and tired on Mondays.  They get tired of all the people time, too.  I just felt the pressure of many projects and not enough progress.

Plus, we had to go see the doctor again because Abishai's lesion/wound/abscess go worse.  There was a ring of infection around it and it had broken open on it's on.  The doctor did switch up his antibiotics to something stronger and more specific to the type of infection he most likely has, which is staph/strep.   He had been on the broad spectrum antibiotic, so we just stopped that and started the new kind.  No big deal.  I can understand that when we went in last week, not all the symptoms were fully present yet.  And usually in our family, the first round of broad spectrum antibiotics is fine.  There's nothing wrong with stepping it up a notch.  I wouldn't call it a misdiagnosis, at least not on purpose.  Abishai didn't have other symptoms like a fever or feeling overly tired, so we did catch it early on.  He has to take a greater volume of medicine each dose and the pharmacy had to add flavoring to it because it tastes gross.  But, he 's handling it like the boss he is.  We actually have him lie down and swallow the liquid from the syringe so that it doesn't dribble out of his mouth and down his chin.  I'm also applying tea tree oil, 100% pure, Young Living brand of course, as often as he's getting his medication.  24 hrs after the first application/dose and the wound looks much, much better.  I am grateful that I got the Young Living brand of Tea Tree oil as a freebie in a recent month's order.  When I received it I thought, "I don't use this very often, but I'm glad to have it from a brand I trust."  I have some that I bought at a grocery store and it's just not the same.  There's no guarantee that it's not pure.  So, I'm glad I do have it on hand and pure oils don't have an expiration date so I can keep this bottle for a long, long time without it losing it's potency.  Score for us!

This is Abishai's boo boo on Monday morning.  It was just a raised bump from when the paci clip nicked him 6 months ago.  It was the same color and hadn't changed until last Wednesday when it started to pus up and look angry.  The doctor lanced it then, but there wasn't any pus.  Then on Monday, it looked like it had burst on it's own overnight and this red ring appeared.  Definitely a sign of infection.  I did ask my nurse friends on Facebook and they were all over the place on answers including bug bites, spider bites, and ticks.  I reassured them that this is not that, it's from an injury 6 month ago, that somehow got opened and infected.  I'll try to take a follow up picture on Wednesday to show you how much better it is doing now.

Abishai saw this old game in my desk drawer and wanted to play it.  Yes, I have the original packaging to my 25 year old game.  It still works fine!  A tad less responsive, but yeah, it's 25 years old!  These were the handheld devices of that age! One simple game.  That's it!

Mushrooms, mushrooms everywhere!  The grass has been so wet with rain and humidity that we can't get these under control.  We have about 12 patches near the tire swing, another 3-4 patches near the boy's bedroom window and another 3-4 patches near our bedroom window.  We never had this issue in our Beech Grove house, which is only 7 miles away.  Ugh!  So Jared keeps spraying chemicals and I'm afraid of sending the kids and dog out because of it.  Not a good way to end the summer.  Plus, how do you mow over or around these things?  You don't want to smash them because the spores will go everywhere.  It's crazy disgusting.  Jared believes that they are evil and they evolved after sin/the Fall of Genesis 3.  "Mushroms mentioned in Gen 3:25, not before (& not inferred), " he said on Twitter.  True that.

Doctor's waiting room.  Cute kids' exam table!  Abishai did look around for monkeys on the trees, so maybe he does associate hippos with monkeys or something.

Jared was doing stuff outside and Abishai wanted to be him.  Well, Abishai wasn't much help.  Somehow, unbeknowest to us, he took out his big RC cars, green dump truck, green tractor, and his tow track to play in the dirt.  30 minutes of fun and a wickedly dirty face!  That's our boy!

Proud of his dirt smudges.

So that's why Monday was pretty frustrating.  Tuesday, we all were much happier and the day went a whole lot smoother.  I got everything done that I wanted to and I'm much more calm as I go into a busy Wednesday. And we are half packed for a fun weekend.  And school is mostly prepped for Tuesday.  Next week, we are adding in our individual subjects like math, grammar and writing to what they've been doing all summer which has been memory work and map work.  Then I'll take this next week and finish preparing for the three subjects we are doing together, history, science and Latin.  And by us, I mean Keturah, Justin and I.  I do need to clean out and reorganize Abishai's stuff and encourage him a bit more to do things with me, especially read alouds.  For the first two years of his life, I would read to him during and after nursing him.  But since we have that bedtime routine with Daddy reading to him, he prefers Daddy to me.  And that would be fine, but they read the same two books every night.  I hope to include Abishai in some "morning time/basket" where we read some fun books with Justin and Keturah, saving the weightier, actual lesson material for the afternoon during our together time.  Things like poems, the awesome history read aloud I started in May and kept all summer, and continued to renew from the library.  There's apparently no limit on renewals if no one else wants it.  Fables, short stories, picture books.  That sort of thing and less than 15 minutes.  Then I'll "work" with him while the other two start independent work and then I'll go one on one with them, then lunch, then together time while Abishai has the TV and then each of them can have TV time.  I think I explained some of this in the last blog post, too.  Hopefully this will all work out.

It's tricky, sometimes, especially when you can't get it all planned in one day.  But on the other hand, having that time in between prepping one subject and another, my brain has thought more creatively subconsciously and I've been able to come up with a clear plan almost immediately as I sat down to tackle it.  I don't really make lesson plans like other teachers might do.  I feel more like an administrator of a curriculum or textbook.  I don't write the lessons, I just execute them.  And once I learned how each curriculum works, it's a cinch to do it again the next year.  That's why I try not to change too much at once.  This year, I'm taking a deeper look at Keturah's math and I might be switching curriculum for a few years if she likes this different approach.  The Latin is a big one because I bought the whole set this time for the first year of it, and it's much more involved than the intro lessons we had last year.  Science is where I'm most stuck because I just use what I have on my shelf and I'm uncertain as to what topics we need to cover this year.  I think it's going to be more on the weather, water cycle, air perhaps?  And maybe they can read more about the different kinds of animals since that shelf is now available to them.  Oh, biomes! I was thinking of doing an in depth study of biomes, so plants and animals of a region.  It seems like we've hit every topic, but I have to remember that I need to repeat the topics, especially for Keturah who was much younger for some of them.  This is the subject that I "unschool" or rather just let them read a bunch of books on their own and they glean what they glean from them.  But I'll need to buckle down a bit more next year when Justin is a freshman.  I'll start looking at what I want his high school years to look come January so I can buy books in March if I need to.  There's a certain science curriculum I want to take a better look at specifically.  So we'll see.

Playing on Mommy's old video game.  Beep, boop, beep, boop.

Nice hang time.

This was on Aunt Stefanie's time hop part of her Facebook page.  Aren't they adorable?  Benaiah was probably 6, Justin was 3 and Keturah was a few months old. This was taken at our Beech Grove house.

Justin and Abishai had haircuts tonight.  Abishai has become so familiar with the salon that he knows where to get the stools from next to the hair washing sinks.  We know the owner well and there were no other customers, so we just let him have his fun.  Oi!

I forgot to ask for window cleaner because he used his grubby feet on the glass to get up there.  Then he would drop down and kick the door with his knees and it would open slightly.  He thought it was hilarious!  He also wanted someone to pull the stool away when he was hanging.

Jared's never been with us for haircuts, so this is a treat.  Abishai is still shy sometimes, so he prefers to sit on our lap.  He's getting too big to do that with me, though.  Jennae and Jared were in band during high school together.  So they've know of each other for years.  She was even saying that Gary spoke at her bacherolette (sp?) and she had no clue who he was because they weren't going to the Creek at the time.  Anyways, now she cuts our hair and her kids hang out with our kids at church.

We had to make a quick stop at the big box store for a few things.  Well, they have a few Halloween things out as they phase out the school and garden supplies.  Abishai wanted to do the shopping, pushing the cart around.  He also saw this big posable skeleton that he wanted to have a conversation with.  One reason I want to wean him off of the tablet is that he knows how to navigate to all kinds of kids videos, including Halloween and Christmas ones.  The Christmas ones make him want toys and we don't do Halloween.  So, he's become familiar with the decor of those holidays, too, and can identify them apparently.  It was kind of cute seeing him try to say hi to the skeleton.

This guy keeps knocking at the sliding glass door wanting to come in to the light!  He's two inches long!  Sorry, buddy, but you need to stay out there.  But I'll go all "nature study" on you and watch you on this side of the glass!

I am giving away some office supplies and had this older, harder to use 3 hold puncher and look what it has on it! An old label that doesn't even include Abishai!  I forget who I got these from, maybe Vistaprints?  And I'm sure I have more of these somewhere.  I don't tend to throw this type of thing out.  Sweet!

Wednesday was an ok day.  I left a lot of margin in the day because I didn't know how traffic was going to be on the northside of Indy where we were going to a new vet for Socks' annual checkup.  But we ended up getting up there and back in record time, so I had a lot of time to kill before going to church for Bible Bowl and volunteering in nursery for a class called Rooted.  The staff have gone through this program, and now there's some other ministry leaders and spouses taking it as pilot groups.  And if all goes well, it will be opened up to the congregation at large.  I actually don't know what it all entails, but I think it's a newer approach to small groups?  I don't know.  We weren't asked to be part of the pilot program, and that's fine.  I'm overseeing the babies and toddlers, so ages 1-3 and we had 8 kids and 5 adults tonight.  I had a lot of downtime and tried to stay off of my phone, but it's hard.  I don't get down and play with our kids, never mind other people's kids.  I just let them go off and do their own thing.  Everybody seemed happy though.  I guess I'll keep trying.

We also learned that a 16 yr old boy we knew died suddenly this week.  The family has been friends of ours for years.  I even taught the boy and his brother piano lessons back in the day.  Benaiah and I are pretty shaken by this news.  Maybe that's why I didn't have much joy in the nursery tonight.  It goes back to the changes in our own family's schedule, too, and not seeing Benaiah much anymore.  I really don't have words for all I'm feeling right now.  And you know that doesn't happen very much.  Thankfully, it will not affect our Labor Day plans much, but it does put a different perspective on it.  My biggest question is an age old question, "Why do bad things happen to good people? Why is there so much devastation and sickness and pain in the world?  Why, God, why?"  I just don't know.  And I don't like not knowing.  Not one bit.

And as far as Socks' appointment went, he is a very healthy for a senior aged dog.  Even his joints are healthier than most dogs his age and breed size.  That's great to hear!  Unfortunately, he does have a growth in his mouth that we might have to get biopsied if it gets worse.  I'm pretty scared about that.  I wasn't expecting something like that at all today.  I wanted to get bloodwork done to get a baseline of his organ functions like thyroid, blood counts, kidney, liver, etc. so we would have something to go by if he did get sick.  They did draw the blood, but we are going to have to do it again because we don't have the funds right now.  This new vet is normally priced, but I didn't budget well enough for all of it at once.  And that's ok.  We can go back and pay a minimal fee to draw more blood.  So, I leave you with some sad news and downtrodden hearts.  It's been quite the week so far and it's not over yet.  Here's to having an awesome holiday weekend with family and praying for no more bad news!

Here's Abishai's boo boo two days later after stronger antibiotics and tea tree essential oil.  The ring of infection is gone and it's healing quite nicely!  Now, I just need to keep a shirt on him so he doesn't scratch it open!

Abishai has been taking the cushions off of the couch lately, and today, Socks decided to get up there because it wasn't as high or squishy.  Well, Abishai thought it was cute and wanted to snuggle.  These two (and Justin) have a special bond and I'm scared of what this growth in Socks' mouth is.  Really scared because we won't do cancer treatments if it ends up being more than just a growth.

I think he's a bit possessive of his vanilla wafers, which are just one of his breakfast entrees. 

I'm going to have to prepare and study for this class.  I bought the whole set second hand including teacher editions and DVD lessons because I don't have a clue.  I'm excited and scared that I won't be able to catch up.  My goal is to get us as far as we can in it, and if we get to read the classics in Latin, great, if not, we have a solid base for other languages.  But I want to try.

I don't know if they will always have music at Rooted, but Benaiah didn't have small group tonight, so he got to play for it instead.  And wow, I haven't seen that stained glass for a long while.  The youth group usually has it covered up.  It's not in it's original location when we got married, but I'm glad they saved it from the remodeling of this room.  The stage used to be closer to these doors I'm looking through and there were pews and a baptistry as well.  If you leaf through my wedding album you'll see the difference.  The cubby hole of a room to the left side of this entrance used to be Gary's office and the current offices used to be ALL the Sunday School and kids' rooms.  My how far the Creek has come!

Not sure what the whole context of this conversation was but it is the kind of things Abishai says now.  He was very involved at the vet's and even got to hear Socks' heartbeat!  He's a people/animal lover and remembers so much from the places we go now that he can tell the stories in great detail and it's all true!  I wonder at what age do they lose that because the big kids can't remember their Sunday School lessons 10 minutes after class.  Hm,....

Speaking of, check out this video of this voice recording we have when Benaiah was 11 months old.  We thought for sure we had lost the device and the recording, but I unearthed it when I was going through the old electronics this month.  Out of all the scrapbooks I've made, pictures and videos I've taken and organized, and the blog posts I've written, this recording is one of the only things that Jared has cared about over the years.  I'm so grateful that we have it again!  I had put new batteries in the device, but it wouldn't turn on for me.  Keturah said she had been listening to it and then all of a sudden when I was at my computer, it turned on and started playing.  Yes, sometimes it feels like it takes a long time for kids to grow up and then you blink, and they are 16 years old, and you never see them because they are too busy.  Life is so very hard sometimes with these changes.  Sigh.

Benaiah cooing at 11 months old

You know your daddy works in the same nursery room you're in when he writes the times that you go to service in military time.  This is a list of who's ready to move up this week, which is promotion Sunday!  We won't be here, but we will move him up the week after.  They promote them from nursery to preschool quarterly and then they promote the preschool through 5th graders yearly in June.  We've waited a long time for this promotion!  Yeah!

Abishai almost fell asleep on the way to the haircuts on Tuesday.  We don't usually do them in the evening, but she was working late and it worked for us.  I prefer doing errands in the evening anyway because then my day at home isn't interrupted.  And often times, my brain can't function well enough to problem solve on projects or handle anything emotionally, so something physical to do works well.  But Abishai's words are cute.  He also has much more detailed sentences and stories with really big words.  It's adorable, of course!