A New Adventure

So, we've decided to try homeschooling our daughter this year. This is one of those things that sounds so much fun when you conceptualize it, but the reality is much more, well, reality. I love my kiddo. She's smart, fun to be with, incredibly sweet, and very creative. But she's alot like her mommy (no surprise there) and when she has a hard time with something, she REALLY digs her heels in! And unfortunately, the thing she's having a hard time with is handwriting, and handwriting is part of EVERYTHING when it comes to school! It's not so much math that she doesn't like, it's writing the numbers. And it's not that she doesn't like phonics, she doesn't like writing the letters. And I have to drag her kicking and screaming through handwriting itself. Sigh...and this is only the first week! Now, I know, there's transition time that I have to take into consideration, and getting on a schedule that helps her be rested and ready to learn, but really, if it was just that, then I would think we'd have a hard time with all kinds of learning. But she can sit for hours and let me read book after book. She likes phonics and math, until she has to write. So we're going to go over to school early today (I'm a school bus driver, if I hadn't mentioned that before) and see if the school has the Handwriting Without Tears program. And I might even pop in to talk to the teacher she was supposed to have, who has generously offered to help any time we need it.

I have to say, one stroke of genius I had today was that when I'm in teacher-mode, I put on my glasses (that I don't REALLY need) and asked my dd to call me "Mrs. Mommy". Later, after I sent her upstairs to lay down after a handwriting meltdown, I took off my glasses and followed her up with our kids Bible to read and pray, and she started telling me how her teacher had been mean to her today, and we talked about it as if Mrs. Mommy was a different person. We'll see if this works for long, or if it's just novel and she's having fun with it, but maybe it will help her clarify when we are in school mode. It was good to really open up the communication about how things are going though!

So, I needed to start with the challenges we're facing because I'm really feeling it today. But maybe I can get on soon and post about some of the fun and success we've had this first week too! I think I've finally found something worth putting in the effort of writing about regularly.

Have a great day, and enjoy learning something new!

Do you believe it? Two posts in the same year!!!

Anyway, we're in the middle of a maelstrom in our house. We've decided that 8 years in a 200+ year-old farmhouse is enough. It's beautiful, but it's too big for three people (2400 sq ft), it's expensive to heat (we keep it at 55 degrees all winter...no wonder I get nothing done!), and we'd like something square! ;) And though we love our little Vermont town, we'd like to live closer to our best friends, so we're looking in a couple of other beautiful little Vermont towns. We pay for living here though. It's April 2 and we just had snow yesterday. Sigh... But summer is glorious, and I'm learning to enjoy winter too!

So the house...we're renovating the upstairs bathroom, finally. It started as all old house projects do...I got sick of the wallpaper. I ripped it off the walls, but whoever put it up thought it would be a good idea to put the wallpaper behind the sink, the toilet and the molding around the floor, the window and the door. Once we had removed all of those, my husband thought it would be a good time to replace the old plumbing, then the laundry closet wall came down, and, well, the rest, as they say, is history. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, in that bathroom is now new. New paint, new floor (to protect the beautiful old 2 foot wide pine floors), new sink, tub and toilet and new washer and dryer. It's kind of nice, but now we've spent more than we should have. Gotta love renovations! We're learning as we go, so it's taking a while to get it all done, but we're hoping to install the tub today!

We're also moving our bedroom from the back of the house to the front, which is a challenge, just because we have a queen bed in the back room, a futon in the front room and a cast iron bathtub in the room in between! It's kind of like a slidey puzzle or a game of chess. We have to think about 4 moves ahead to make sure we don't get stuck in the middle! We're almost done with the move; only our bed and the futon are left to swap. We'll do that today, then I'll get the back room set up, since the realtor comes on Monday. Our hope is that she'll tell us we don't have to do much more than clean, purge and do a little painting and that she'll be able to sell our house quickly and for what we'd like to get for it! Haha!!! Hope is a good thing! :)

We're excited for spring to come, and I love that, in spite of the snow, our daffodils and day lilies are sprouting up with a vengence! The containers for our veggies are just about thawed, so I might move them to a sheltered spot and try to get some of the cold weather veggies in. This year's big garden project is to dig up the strawberry bed and sort the berry plants from the weeds. The grass got so firmly established last year that we could barely see the strawberry plants. We got very few berries, and no one looking to buy our house would be impressed by that! I also need to dig the grass out of the asparagus bed. But I WILL invest in mulch hay this year. I love gardening, but digging out huge clumps of grass is pretty low on my "this is so much fun" list.

Enjoy your Saturday and the coming spring! Maybe I'll get some pictures together so you can see the bathroom progression...

Only a year this time...or so...

So yeah, it's been, like, a million years since I last posted anything. I'm just not a good blogger! But I figured today might be a good day to write since I'm stuck at home, in bed, with the flu. I'm getting sick of being sick, gotta say! It's been a month now of cycling through different viruses. I finally got antibiotics yesterday and am heading to the doctor in a bit to make sure I don't have pneumonia or anything else on top of what we already suspect. Sigh. Cooties BEGONE!

So to catch up on our lives...

Adara is in kindergarten now, and loving it! She has her challenges, like everyone, but is doing well for the most part. Interestingly, she struggles with many of the same things I did in school. She's nowhere near as shy as I was as a kid, so she's much more vocal about her emotional outbursts in school, but I can relate to her struggles with daydreaming and difficulty completing tasks. I'm going to have to do a little research to see what I can find to help her. Any suggestions are welcome!

We have decided that our house, while beautiful and full of character, is too big for us. There are more bedrooms than people! So we're doing some work to get it ready to put on the market, ideally this spring. The bathrooms are the biggest issue right now. We've gutted the upstairs bath and Rob has done a lot of work, replaced plumbing, put in a new subfloor, and we're waiting on new flooring and then for a new tub! Maybe once I get better I can get the thing painted. Green, I think...

I'm challenged by my friend Jenny. She's decided to be a full-time stay at home mom and is putting first things first. I have let my relationship with God take a backseat, and have replaced Bible study time with mediocre substitutes. But I need His help to do the things around here that I'm overwhelmed by, and He has to fill me up so that I can take care of others. Without being filled up by God's spirit, I don't have much to give to other people. I bet if I can get that on straight, I'll be more of the wife, mother and friend that I hope to be!

In spite of being sick, today's sunshine is motivating me to get up and be productive! We get so little of it here, in the winter, that even when I'm ill, it gets me moving!

Eagerly awaiting spring...

A new adventure

So I'm trying my hand at a new activity...quilting. I've had an idea for a quilt in mind for my niece since before she was born (a year and 1/2 ago) and finally talked to my friend/relative Melanie who is a professional quilter. She was very sweet and didn't laugh at me when I described what I want to do. My idea is for something pretty complicated and yet I have no experience quilting, and very little sewing experience. So she suggested that I start with some basic patterns in order to get the foundational techniques down.

A couple weeks later I had the opportunity to volunteer in my daughter's preschool classroom. Omigosh!!! I don't know how her teacher does it. The kids are adorable and sweet, but in my daughter's class are three VERY active three-year-old boys! They aren't malicious in the slightest, but boy can they get into trouble! I left the class that day thinking "God bless Mrs. Mitchell!!!" I also thought that I wanted to do something special for her, so we have been working on a quilt with the kids' handprints on it. It's been super fun! I love the way the quilt is turning out, I just hope we can keep it a surprise until next week!

Anyways, truthfully, the real reason for this post is so I can put up some photos of the quilt for the other parents to check out. But feel free to let me know what you think!

Happy Holidays!

Only a year and a half...

Sorry, for those who actually read my blog. I'd have given up by now, but Doug has motivated me to actually get my rear in gear and write!

Where to start...

I love Vermont, but I gotta say, winter's WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too long. It's Groundhog Day today (which, by the way, only means that it's the halfway point between the first day of winter and the first day of spring. Whether a rodent can see his shadow or not has absolutely no impact on the weather.) I'm glad we're on the downside of the Mountain of Shivering Misery. I can't wait to smell that mud!

Life is an adventure. I am now the mother of a preschooler! She's hilarious! We recently watched Kung Fu Panda as a family, and now Adara wants to take Kung Fu. I would gladly enroll her, but as with so many families right now, we have no money to do it. Dance or gymnastics would also be great options since she has such innate body awareness. The discipline would certainly do her good, even at 4!

So continuing on the stream of random thoughts...Simon, our big, beautiful, white German Shepard mix is going downhill. He's had digestive problems for a year now. He's gotten so thin that you can see his ribs and his leg bones. You'd think we were starving him, but NO, his condition is the result of some REALLY EVIL people who starved him as a puppy! Can you imagine starving any kind of animal, but especially a puppy, not once, but TWICE??? My amazing friend Sheila McGregor is a devoted dog rescuer. (And when I say devoted, I mean she's given her life to this - sacrificing human relationships, jobs, her own home, etc. for the well being of the dogs she has rescued.) I'll have to get her to verify the details, but this is the story as I recall it:

Sheila lived in West Virginia for a while several years ago. One day, on her way out, she noticed a large, white dog laying in the ditch at the side of the dirt road she lived on. A few hours later, she came back through and saw that the dog had pulled himself into the road. She pulled over and got out of her van. When she walked over, he cowered and submissive urinated there on the road. But the tip of his tail wagged just slightly. She said it was almost like he was asking for her to be kind to him, that he hadn't completely given up hope in the human race. He was so thin that you could see every bone. He had no strength to stand, and had maggot infestations inside and out.

She called her friend Hope and together they lifted the dog into Sheila's van. They then drove to the local veterinarian, who happened to be Hope's father. He recognized the (by this time) unconscious, 11 month-old dog that they brought in to him. White German Shepard/Wolf mixes are not very common. He had seen him before when neighbors of the family who owned him had brought the dog in for malnutrition. When confronted, the owners claimed that they had asked someone to feed him while they were on vacation and that person had failed to do so. They paid $100 of the $400 vet bill and took him home, only for Sheila to find him dumped in a ditch, almost dead, a couple of months later. He recommended that she have the dog put to sleep because he was in such bad condition, but Sheila couldn't do it. The trust he had shown her, and the hope, made her believe that he could make it.

For the next several weeks it was touch and go with Spirit (Sheila's name for the dog). After three weeks of recovery, they almost lost him again. But her patient devotion and love pulled him through. He stayed with Sheila for many months. Because the bouts of starvation had left his digestive system barely functional, he had a strict diet and frequent episodes of diarrhea and just wasn't ready to be placed with a family. Eventually, however, his body healed. His mind and spirit have never healed completely, but his body was achieving a level of normal operation.

Sheila ended up placing him with a Burlington family. She had returned to Vermont and had met Spirit's new family and thought they would be a good fit, as they already had another large dog and were looking for a companion for him. Unfortunately, at least for Simon (which the family renamed him), they also adopted twin girls. They were only able to keep Simon for several months before it got to be too much for them to care for twin toddlers and two large dogs in a city where they had virtually no yard. At the time I worked with Sheila and heard about the situation. We were able to work it out to adopt Simon and have had him since February of 2002.

I remember the first time he saw her after at least a year. We had gone to the Starr Farm dog park in Burlington to meet her. Because of what he had been through, Simon was terrified of people. Even when he first came to live with us he was very skittish. It took a couple of months before he would go near Rob. But he loved other dogs, and, therefore, the dog park. It was tough to catch him so that we could go home, so Rob, Sheila and I came at him from three sides. He wouldn't come to me voluntarily, but if there was someone who frightened him, I was his refuge, so when Sheila approached, he hid behind me. Now mind you, this dog's head is at my waist when he sits, so he's no little dog, but he would do his best to hide behind me! I held him by the collar as she approached and held out her hand for him to catch her scent. I encouraged him, but he would still scarcely approach her. But once he caught a whiff of her scent, his face lit up and his tail started to wag like crazy! He recognized her immediately and was incredibly excited to see her. Since then it has always been the same. As much as Simon loves us, his true devotion is to Sheila.

Because of the bond that they have, and her desire to spend some more time with him before he dies, we let her take him home on January 24. We all miss him, especially Rob and Molly, our Australian Shepard. I've only seen my husband cry three or four times in the seven+ years that we've been married, and the day that Simon left was one of them. Molly is still moping around the house, even though she gets extra treats and alot more attention now. We'll miss our boy. We will still, hopefully, see him again over the next few months; and if anyone can extend his life, it is Sheila. But this relationship, this dog, has made me realize the impact of our actions, for good or ill. Sheila will never make it on the national news for her heroism, but her acts of kindness, her love and generosity, her sacrifice, made it possible for us to love and nurture these special kids of ours.

So today my feathered kids decided to cheer me up with their crazy antics. I have half a dozen Buff Orpinton chickens that I have raised from day old balls of fluff. They've been through their trauma, but they are fabulous birds.

About 6 weeks ago, our town was hit by a wicked thunderstorm with 70 mph winds and hail that destroyed corn crops, stripped paint off of houses, and injured my babies. Two of them were trapped under my daughter's climber. It's a slide/climbing wall/fort combination made of heavy plastic that probably weighs at least 150 pounds all assembled. The wind blew it 12 feet, sideways, to land on their legs. One's leg was broken, the other's had a gash clear to the bone. Another chicken had a broken leg from getting pelted by the hail, and I found a fourth hiding under a pile of lumber. Initially she seemed ok, but I realized later that she must have gotten beaned by the hail and had a concussion of sorts. Without going through the details of our bathtub hospital, I will say that they've all recovered nicely! I was told that I'd probably have to put them all to sleep, but these guys are more pets than livestock, and there was no way I was going to do that unless I absolutely had to!

Anyway, to return the favor, I had a rough day, so my kids decided to cheer me up. My daughter and I were out in the garden picking some of the last of the carrots, when one of the birds snuck over and grabbed her pacifier. She ran off with it and when I gave chase, she dropped it and ran. In the meantime, another bird picked up the pacifier and ran for it. You should have seen my daughter and I, chasing this bird around the garden with a pacifier in it's mouth! I wish I had pictures; it was the funniest thing I've seen in a long time!

I'm glad those birds are still around...

Feelin' it

So, had two toddlers all weekend... REALLY not sure that I want to have another child after that!! I could really use a vacation now. But THAT's not going to happen!!

I think one of the hardest things for me about being a "stay-at-home" mom is feeling isolated. I'm sure it's the same for all moms in my position. Someday I hope to lick my health issues so that I have the energy to get done all of the things that I have in my head. My brain has much more energy than my body! Besides eliminating the junk in my house (of which we have copious amounts) and organizing what we keep, I want to start my own mini-farm (details to follow), sew clothes for my daughter, build corner cabinets in both the dining room and the sitting room, recane half a dozen chairs, paint two of the bedrooms, completely renovate both the bathrooms, make all gifts from now on and learn to play the recorder! In addition to driving a school bus and raising a child. Oh, and overseeing the children's ministry in our church with my husband, and, by the way, maintaining our relationship! I'm sure there are several hundred things I've forgotten in my list of things to do eventually, since I can't seem to maintain a continuous thought. Maybe blogging will help that. At least it's all down in writing and I can go back and see what I've forgotten. Imagine what I'm like in conversation...

Anyway, off to give Adara another cookie so that I might have 5 minutes to work on the anarchy in my bedroom. I'm not a great leader, but I'd prefer not to be deposed by my laundry...