Emily in so many roles

Tonight Emily and I are just sitting at home watching some news clips and hoping to sit and watch at least part of a movie to just relax. Emily was a mom, a kindergarten teacher, a piano instructor, and a high school math tutor today. I spent 8 hours as a therapist and 2.5 hours as a commuter. (I would say I was a dad for three hours or so this evening while Emily was gone, but I don't feel like I really focused on the kids very well. Nathan pestered Hayley and Matthew--who now have a cut lip and a bump, respectively--and Matthew managed to sneak into the bathroom and play with a cup in the toilet twice, so I couldn't have been watching closely enough.) Hayley was actually pretty good - or at least she didn't get caught doing anything that was a problem. Overall they are good kids and I had to hug Nathan near pajama time and remind him (and myself) that most of the choices he made this evening were good ones and that most of the time he was behaving.

I don't know if you are reading our updates on our websites, but I have focused on mainly uploading a LOT of pictures rather than writing much lately. I've also been typing up my old journal entries online but I've got them in a passworded blog thing so it doesn't look like I'm doing any updating. I was just going to update you on the rest of our day but the movie is starting and Emily has a headache, so waiting until I write more is not an option. I'll probably post an update a little later. I wish we had video clips. I could post OLD video, but none of our new stuff is digitized...

So we've talked a lot about us - but we know more about us. :) Still - how are you? Leave a comment or send an email.

...a little later...

Snapshot Notes from Emily’s verbal summary to me of two just of her roles--mom and teacher—today.

We were at the doctors ‘till ten—checkups for all three and shots for Matthew. We got home and did at least the spelling lesson - Hayley remembers the words really well! That was language arts. Hayley was refusing to do things. In handwriting practice, she copies complete sentences to get used to how they are written - so we did what was in the grammar lesson for today and she said her hand was hurting. So I suggested she do reading first and get back to it, which she agreed to. Then when she returned and wrote her first sentence, it was really sloppy--so she had to do another to make up for it. Nathan didn’t want to do his reading. He kicked and screamed and after a while he said he was going to do it “in 30 minutes.” That was enough time to finish with Hayley. She wanted to do clocks for math. She is getting really good at that; she looked at the clock and knew the right time. I said, “I think you know how to tell time, so why don't you do your math facts.” She didn’t want tot do that. Nathan’s reading lesson was the book “Sam the Duck,”--that I wrote and did the little illustrations--he did it really well. If he’s really concentrating, he reads really well. It’s a concentration thing. It was a review. He has done the exercise with all the short vowel sounds - six or 8 lines… I made them both do that before we had lunch. When I went up to start school again after lunch, Hayley was reading Black Beauty and she was laying on her blankets which she had spread all out and her pillow in the office and said "Black Beauty got sold again" And Hayley was better after lunch – Science. The science lesson was from the computer from a website called kidsbiology.something - before animals and plants and human body, I want them to do a basic biology overview--so she can get a broader view of what we're doing. It’s not really in the Developing Mind Curriculum; I just think she's advanced enough. So we did a little discussion about cells on Thursday last week and today we went through the same website. The lesson today was “What living things need” The website had pictures and everything and so that was good. I’ll go over that maybe two more times with her so she can learn first about how a living thing is organized - cells, tissues, systems, body - then how biologists have used the characteristics of different life forms to classify them - by the type of cell--some have nuclei and some don’t--and then after that we can start the text book when we get it. I did get a letter from Amazon today—they sent the letter saying that they sent the stuff. Oh! And I’ve got to make the copies! When am I going to do that? Can you make the copies at work, Dave? I keep forgetting. I was going to go to Staples and make the first ten lessons for history. I don’t want to buy the book again and I want Nathan to be able to do the maps and stuff. I don’t know if we'll do much school again tomorrow. This week is kind of a wash--Today we were at the doctors from ten to noon. Tomorrow is Nathan’s preschool from 10 to 11:45 here. Friday at 10am is the Idea Valentine’s Day party. Friday, at least, is a normal day--followed by a date for “mom and dad” (at Macaroni Grill – Yay!) and Saturday Dave works all day right until he has to meet us all at Zack's birthday party in Boise.