Tales of a Fulltime Mom: Yard Sale

Twice a year our community has a community wide yard sale and we decided to get on board this past Sunday. We did this a year and a half ago and despite the fact that I'm pretty good at getting stuff to Goodwill every few months, we still had a bunch of stuff I wanted to get rid of. The kids were very excited when I made the announcement and immediately set off to find toys to sell. I was a little surprised they were so anxious to sell their stuff but then I realized what they were thinking...they would actually be keeping the money for whatever they sold. I didn't have the heart to say no.

Our last attempt at a sale didn't turn out that great, partly because it was crummy weather but also because I'm sure Sundays are a lot slower than Saturdays. Nevertheless, we were undeterred and had quite a big set up of stuff including lemonade and muffins that the girls wanted to be in charge of. I wouldn't say the turnout was spectacular or anything but we did sell about $250 worth of stuff and I had a really good time (but then again, I do love yard sales and handling money so that's no surprise!). Allen and Tangie came over with the kids to make us pancakes and Jennifer and Evan came over too as well as my friend Stephanie (on business from Texas) which added to our fun. I did quite a bit of advertising but when I noticed a lull at about 11:00 am, I knew I needed to kick things into gear and posted the ad again on Faceback on-line yard sale for the Ocoee area. Indeed, that got a lot of attention and we got some more people who came to buy some of the bigger stuff. All and all I call it a success and the girls are already asking when we will do the next one. The only down side is that it meant I didn't get to go to the other yard sales going on in the neighborhood. Oh, and the thing I found interesting is that it had occured to me that I should put out some of my stockpile of toothpaste, toothbrushes, shampoo, pads, etc that I have gotten virtually free mostly from CVS. I slapped a $1 price tag on each thing and I sold almost all of it. Good to know!

In kid news, it appears that Colby is on the cusp of getting at least one of his upper front teeth. Calaubra never had any teething problems but I said to myself "Self, it would totally figure that it would be THIS kid who would have problems." Sure enough, a few nights ago we had a few middle of the night wake ups and I had to bring him in bed with me in the guest room for a bit to calm him down. Fortunately I gave him some Advil in advance the next night which seemed to nip it in the bud and we've been good since then. Why was I in the guest room you ask? Well, I had the baby monitor in the school room one afternoon and I went to get Brady out of his crib. The girls stayed behind and when I got back to the school room, Calleigh informed me there had been an accident. And this is what I saw:

Oops

That's a baby monitor for those who don't know. Unfortunately they don't make cases for baby monitors like they do for cell phones...at least I assume they don't. Aubree had bumped it into something and this was the result. Honestly, I'm surprised it took this many years to have this happen. Needless to say, it's no longer functioning. The big downside is that these monitors are quite pricey. I told Duncan that I really didn't need a video monitor at this point. A regular old monitor that you can just hear through would do fine. But somehow, there doesn't seem to be any system we can find that allows you to have multiple units set up in the kids room with just one monitor (we need three units for the three rooms). The only kind to do it is this one. There seems to be a gap here if anyone is interested in a business idea! I know, maybe it seems silly that we want a monitor for the girls' room since they are obviously older but I don't like the idea that I'm so far away I can't hear what's happening in their room during the night. The fact that we run a noisemaker in our own room doesn't help either. Anyway, we may be forced to by the same expensive one again (I'm afraid if we bought three separate "cheap" systems that they wouldn't work because they only have two channels. Would they interfere with each other?). The point of all this is that I'm sleeping in the guest room across from Colby because I don't have a monitor for him (I do actually have one simple monitor that I'm using in Brady's room). Stay tuned. We will have to resolve it by tomorrow because we have company coming for the weekend.

It's been awhile since I wrote on here but I really can't think of much more to write about besides school which seems to be the focus of my life these days really. This week has been the tale of two halves. Our school day starts at 9:30 am when Colby goes down for his morning nap and goes until about 11:15. On Mondays, however, we stop about 10:30 to go to gymnastics so things are a little more rushed (I try to do as much as possible with Colby sleeping). I don't know if it was because it was Monday or we felt rushed or what but Calleigh was just in a terrible mood with doing school. The same thing happened Tuesday morning. We didn't get to everything on Monday so I decided we would start with the subjects we hadn't finished Monday, the first being English. It was the simplest of assignments. She had to write her full name and then the names of her family (this was a section on the use of capital letters in names). It would have taken maybe five minutes and instead it took more than 30 because of the whining, complaining, delay tactics, etc. I'm like, really? She declares that she hates school and I said "Okay, you're excused. I'm just going to do school with people that care about it.' But she refused to go and still just sat there. I wrote down the names "Corey" and "Duncan" (although I'm pretty sure she knew how to spell them) on a piece of paper so she could start writing but no luck. Finally, Aubree, who was watching it all very intently, comes over, grabs the paper and starts writing "Corey" and "Duncan." After about 60 seconds she says "See? There. It's easy." I think she finally begrudgingly wrote it.

About this time, Colby woke up and I took him downstairs to get his milk and Calleigh followed me downstairs and was sitting on the bottom stair. I looked over and noticed she was crying. I went to her and she gave me a really tight squeeze and said she was sorry. That made me feel a whole lot better.

Later in the day, I was talking to Camille (a former teacher) and as we were talking, something clicked in my brain. The last few weeks I've been writing all the subjects on the board and letting her pick what order we go in and she gets to erase if off when we're done. I didn't let her pick on Monday (we were rushing) and Tuesday (we went right into what we missed Monday) and I wondered if that made a difference. Sure enough, Wednesday and today were so much better. I let her pick what came next and there was barely a complaint. So there you go. Maybe she just needs to have some control.

But for every episode of crying and complaining, there are also those moments that occur when you say to yourself "THIS is why I homeschool." So I can be there for all those times when the light bulb goes on and you can see it in your kid's eyes. I had one of those last week. Calleigh was doing her math (Math-You-See which I'm very happy with) and when she finished her worksheet, she brought it to me for correction. We watch a short video at the beginning of the lesson and then she's able to work mostly independently on the assignments so I wasn't aware of the last question on the page. It was a word problem and to solve it, you had to add like 32 and 46. She has never done addition on two digit numbers before (it wasn't even what the lesson had been about) so when she brought it to me and the answer was right, I was stunned. I heaped praise on her and her eyes were just shining. Honestly, that moment there made my whole week.

Aubree, of course, is just as enthusiastic as ever. We had school this morning and then I was suffering from a severe headache this afternoon and decided we would cancel school so I could lie down and try to recover. At one point, the girls came downstairs and Aubree asked when school was going to be and I told her I didn't think it was going to happen. And Aubree says "But, but, we HAVE to have school! I need to do my Bible book and art, and, and, if we don't, then we'll be behind!" I think real tears might have been about to fall too but then I told her she could use her tablet to play Stack the States (fantastic app to learn all about the states) and that made it better. We had gotten the kids tablets a few months ago for travelling and they are never used except for long trips (of which there has been only Nova Scotia since then) and I do let them use them on Fridays when we are out yard sale-ing since the DVD player is broken in the van. However, I've been reading lately about some great apps and decided to let them try them on the tablets...hence, Stack the States and also a math one that Aubree was using yesterday. We will continue to restrict the tablet use heavily though as I don't want them getting hooked on those things.

Doing an experiment to see if you put oil on a piece of paper does light shine through it more easily? This is what the early settlers did because they didn't have glass.

Sure enough. The paper on the left has the oil on it.

For art class we had to draw a clown (they gave us a picture to follow). I absolutely hate drawing mostly because I stink at it. But I've decided to draw along side the girls and was actually pretty pleased with how my clown came out. Mine is on the right, Aubree on the left, and Calleigh in the middle.

Art project for Bible. These say "Jesus is the light of the world."

How the classroom looks like at the end of the day...mostly thanks to Brady.

Before I close off, I have several conversations with the kids that I wanted to share.

A few weeks ago we finished the last part of Anne of Green Gables when we had a Saturday night movie night. The closing scene of the movie is Anne and Gilbert standing on the bridge, kissing. The first time they kissed in the movie...

Calleigh: "Well, I guess they got married."

Me: "Yes, they did. I know there's some other movie that they made that might have the wedding in it."

Calleigh: "No, they're already married."

Me: "No, not in this movie."
Calleigh: "Yes, they are. Look, they were kissing."

Me: "Ahh, yeah."

Hey, if she wants to think you have to be married to kiss, far be it from me to say differently.

Awhile back, Calleigh had told me about this boy, Elijah, in her Sabbath School class that she was in love with and thought she would marry (granted, who she will marry changes all the time). I had never met Elijah until a recent Sabbath.

Me (walking in to pick Calleigh up): "Okay, Calleigh, time to go."

Boy (sitting next to Calleigh, referring to something that happened before I walk in): "I'm going to put that on Facebook and then do hashtag on Twitter."

Calleigh: Giggles.

Okay, then. I'm now making a list of people I don't want her to marry and Elijah has gone to the top of the list. Seriously, he can't be more than eight. Please tell me he isn't actually on Facebook or Twitter.

The kids like to have frozen yogurt tubes for breakfast or a snack and I usually stick it in the microwave for 10 - 15 seconds to slightly thaw it. Brady always says it's too cold and has me put a napkin on it. So instead of going through all that, I started just giving him one of out the fridge. But he would still insist it go in the microwave. To appease him, I would put it in there but never turn the microwave on and just open the door after a few seconds and hand it to him. So this is what happened:

Brady: "Put this in the microwave."

Me (put it in and notice Calleigh has seen the whole thing unfold: "(whispering) Do you think that I'm lying by doing this? I think maybe I should just tell him what I'm doing."

Calleigh: "Well, he did say to put it in the microwave and that's what you did."

Makes sense!

One night Calleigh had a bad dream so I was awakened in the middle of the night by her shaking me awake. She said she had a dream and proceeded to tell me about it. I managed to keep awake and talk coherently enough to say that Jesus was with her and she didn't have to be afraid and all this other stuff. I was actually quite proud of myself for being able to do so well considering it was the middle of the night. I then asked if she was okay to go back to bed. She immediately responded that she was and I was then even more impressed with my skills to put her mind at ease. And then I saw that she had already brought a sleeping bag and pillow down with her ahead of time and that "going back to bed" meant that she was camping out on my floor. So it wasn't that I had done a good job it was that she already had planned to sleep with me for the rest of the night!

Brady has been a real challenge for Duncan at Sabbath School. He really doesn't like to participate in any of the class stuff (like bringing felts up or pretending to sweep the floor or whatever.). I have no idea why although he's pretty much always been like that. But this was our discussion this past week:

Me: "Brady, so how was Sabbath School? Did you participate?"

Brady: "No."

Me: "Why not?
Brady: "I don't like to."

Me: "But you really should. It would make Jesus happy."
Brady: "Okay, okay. Next time I'm going to dissipate."

Me (laughing): "Dissipate, huh?"

Brady: "I mean, darpissitate."

On Monday when we were having our bad school morning, I had attempted to have Calleigh do her reading (which she does out loud) but she was being so incredibly whiny:

Me: "Come on, Calleigh. Let's just get this done so we have it out of the way."

Calleigh: "I don't want to. I can't."

Me: "Why not?"

Calleigh: "Because I don't like the sound of my voice and I don't want to change it."

On Tuesday, we somehow got talking about how things that I had when I was a kid were things that are considered old now and things that would be invented in the future that we couldn't even think of now.

Calleigh: "So what did you have when you were a girl that's old now?

Me: "Oh, we had something called cassette tapes. Yeah, you probably don't even know what this is."

A little bit later...
Calleigh: "Mom, mom! Look at this stapler. I bet that in like twenty years, they'll have a stapler where you can like just put the paper in, and it will just automatically staple it. You won't even need to press down on it or anything."

Me: "They actually have those now but that was really good that you thought of that."

Calleigh: (in wonder): "Wow! They do??"

Duncan meant to take a video of himself using his automatic stapler at work and send it to her but hasn't yet. That should blow her mind!

A few more pictures...

Finally started using the apple peeler I got for Christmas and let me just say that it's awesome! It peels an apple in about 3 seconds and now the kids want to eat apples all the time. Set up and cleaning is super easy.

Last Friday we ran out of yard sales so we made a quick stop at a playground and I had to get a shot of Brady on this slide because I remember getting one in the same spot when he was a baby.

7 months old.

Colby just HAD to get on the seesaw with them.

We came out Sabbath morning to find Duncan had a flat tire. Unfortunately it couldn't be repaired so he had to put on the donut until he could buy a new tire.