Today.

Today is a good day.

I'm reminding myself of that a little more than usual today. Today i have 2 sick 2 year olds, 10 am appt. for my 13 year old to get braces. (which meant NO BSF for me! again... :( ) A 2:30 appt for my 7yo for vision therapy, and 5:45 appts for Asher and Leif, Leif for wart removal, and Asher for an ear recheck- (which i'm actually really glad is today since ever since the weekend he's been acting like the ear infection is BACK.) So inbetween appointments i'm trying to get the house cleaned up, BLOG :), check email, and tie up any loose ends with Leif's registration for MP3 and Nik's curriculum order, both of which we are trying to get pushed through ASAP. Its much easier to do school with the intended curriculum! Regardless, we are getting on just fine without it. The only major thing Nik is missing is his language arts, so he's working on time-4-learning until that comes and doing misc. stuff we have around.

Anyway, its days like these that tend to stress me out. But today, i'm taking it in stride. Maybe its because I just had a good long talk with Nik, as he agonized about his new braces. I keep trying to convince him he's SUPER handsome in them! See?? isn't he handsome?




We talked about how its under pressure that we really have the chance to grow and learn and develop our character. And if we never had trials, we'd never develop into who God wants us to be. And i TOTALLY feel authorized to tell him that, since i'm far from a stranger to trials! He knows that too and takes it well for me. We had a good, fruitful discussion, and then went home to have our emerald city smoothies and the little guys had a subway sub. I love that I have such a great relationship with my children, especially the big ones. There's something really great about watching them each grow into such diversely different people and to have that bond with them. I still can't believe i'm old enough to have teenagers!

Today i'm hanging on by little more than the promise that He's provided us, that:

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28

And its pretty obvious in our lives to who's purpose we've been called. I still have to stop what i'm doing every once in a while and say "I can't believe i have TEENAGERS!" "I can't believe I have TWINS" "I can't believe i have 7 CHILDREN!" "I can't believe I've been married nearly half my life!" Its so strange and cool. I wish I had better vocabulary to articulate that, but i can attest to this- God REALLY does work for the good of those who love Him! and He really does give us what we NEED and want, but don't know we want! I'm so GLAD He knows what I wanted better than I did. Because being a high powered trial lawyer would have been fun, no doubt. But i'd not trade THIS life for that, If i could go back, i'd do things differently for sure, but there's 8 people in my life that I wouldn't change for the world.

wow...

Ok, so I am feeling really guilty, because I jump to conclusions, and then, in typical Rebecca-style blaaaabbed all over my blog. The thing about my blogs are, they are a picture of what's going on on the inside of my head. I'm a very auditory processer... i talk and type and then i'm able to think things through and hopefully finally come to a conclusion.

In fact, when dh and I were in college, We were both on the newspaper staff, and I was the opinions editor (HAHAHA!) shocker there, huh? And Andy was the general editor of the whole paper. It frustrated me to no end that he had final say over MY articles. He'd always take the spiciest, the most verbally exquisitely precise parts OUT. That seemed ridiculous to me. But ever since then he's declared on various occasions "you need an editor" And today, sadly, is no exception.

Its really easy to compartmentalize life, there's school, internet, local friends, etc. and really, does anyone really READ my blog? (other than my 700 closest facebook friends???) I don't think so, its not a really visible one with giveaways and exciting useful articles (though I DO hope to get there someday, right now i'm mainly focused on the highlights of our school experience) but it turns out that sometimes my different life circles really DO intersect and someone who read my blog was hurt by something really insensitive that i had posted, in my own anger and frustration, and called me on it. I honestly didn't remember what I had said, having been posting a lot lately, and having been crazy crazy busy with all the changes we've been going through and piecing curricula together till our REAL curricula arrives for the boys and evaluations and stuff.

So, after my autism class today, (need to post about that!) I ran over to the school and worked some things out. In doing so, i was able to get a better picture of the situation with Annabeth, and as is almost always the case, my immediately jumped-to conclusion assumption was that any "niceness" shown to me clearly had to be a facade, and really, it was ME against THEM. Certainly its human nature to assume YOU have the best intentions and everyone else the worst, but in this case, as most, the answer was far closer to the other end than i'd expected. And so i sat down with the principal and the learning coach that Anna's been working with and they were both VERY helpful and I was able to get a more accurate picture of what is going on, and I feel really bad that feelings ended up getting hurt due to me. :( At any rate, i did NOT mean to in any way bad mouth the school my daughters attend. I LOVE their teachers and the principal and Learning coach are both very very accessible and helpful. I was also able to learn some more puzzling and frustrating things about Annabeth. And i do admit, it is REALLY helpful hearing others' input, since with your own child you get used to certain traits and characteristics and don't really think about it, if its not obvious. Like, for example, She didn't know what a CLOSET was!!! and she called a fish bowl a "fish basket" which, totally cracks me up.

So its clear to the school as well as myself that testing needs to happen soon, and it will be, so all is well, i guess. I'm still really mystified by Anna's bizzare combination of auditory and visual AND cognitive issues. Its frustrating and scary. i'm starting to wonder if a friend's suggestion that she, too, might be on the spectrum might have some merit. Ugg. God would NOT give me 4 autistic children, RIGHT??? RIGHT?? Tell me RIGHT people!! Oy... Ok, so back to my much neglected children. I just had to get that off my chest and clear the air.... Hope your homes are having less drama than mine right now :-D :-D

Leif's first day of homeschool Kindergarten!!!!

So despite being sick and drinking my vitamin C drinks like crazy, i'm feeling GOOD!!!! Leify is back home where he's happy... ahhh... and he's the most fun, most super smart and easy student ever!!!! The thing about Leif is, he has a really rigid need structure. He needs certain things and if he doesn't have them, he completely breaks down and shuts down. Its like no other child i've ever seen. One thing he needs- his mommy! CHECK, here i am :)



So anyway, I am sick right now, so my brain is fuzzy and i'm feeling really out of it, however, thanks to our wonderful one month trial of time-4-learning, the day was not lost!!! i had him start out with that, after doing some phonics pad (the letter "s") And found that he really really thrives on computer lessons. So he did about an hour and a half of that, and then i made him stop, because I don't think its a great idea for a 5yo to be on the computer all day!!! we did his phonics workbook page, and he had some playdough time, and later we did a lesson of verbal math which he took too like a duck to water, and called it a day!!! A good day!



Nik also had a great day. I need to check his journal to see what he learned about today, since i was very hands-off with him today, but he got everything on his list done! (he's SO dilligent!) including spelling, which I have to do, so it occasionally gets neglected, but not today, and he ACED it. I'm very very encouraged. He's doing level one of Sequential spelling and he has some major learning issues, probably dyslexia, which cause him to have a very very hard time with spelling but as i'm watching him work through his spelling words, i'm seeing him develop his own little tricks to making it work for him. And its working so well. Getting to see all this happen is such a miracle. Its such a blessing for me. I'm so grateful to get to homeschool my dudes!!!



Anyway, back to life, just had to share a tiny glimpse of our challenging, yet still successful day!!!

First day!!!!

So, sadly, (or happily, depending on your perspective) I was super busy all day actually DOING stuff that I barely got any pictures taken and they all stunk. But i'm posting them anyway!

We started out the day with several challenges. First, I was having some... discomfort.... you might say, so I was already feeling like i wanted to lay around all day- NOT gonna be happenin'! Secondly, Leif stayed home with us, sick, having had diarrhea all weekend, Nik was pretty down for the count too with nasty stomach cramps, and I was sick with a nasty cold, along with Alex (who went to college anyway, because you have to be half dead to skip college!!) and Elliott who had green boogers. All the little guys had fevers too :(


Another issue was since we had sickies we had to cancel asher's therapy, and Ash does not do well when we have to cancel therapy! he LOVES his "Gohgah" (Laura) and the structure she provides is awesome (along with his other buddies, Bryn, and Amie) So I knew it would be melt down city with asher, and it was, but i've noticed since having most of the kids in school, that if i can get through the first half of the day, naptime on is a breeze. So we did! I had Nikolas take the dudes for a walk in the morning while we waited for our landlord to come by and pick up rent, then we sat down and did some activities at the table. leif worked on some pipe cleaners and i tried doing this pipe cleaner and colander activity that I found on pinterest but it wasn't very Pinteresting, apparently, bwahaha... But as soon as i chopped up some apples they were all happy again, so it all worked out. They colored for a while and mingled and then i made sandwiches for dudes, and leftovers for nik and I, and we had lunch and put doodles to sleep. With a nice quiet house we were free to work in peace! i had Leif working on a really cool puzzle thing I got from timberdoodle called Pattern Play.


Doesn't that look like fun?!? It TOTALLY is. The one downside to it- its missing a small purple peice... sigh... and i've been SO careful to make sure Leif gets ALL the pieces put away when he has played.. sigh... Oh well, its still fun and the cards it comes with are stellar for helping him to visualize a design and then make it. He played with these through most of our school work and then cleaned it up into the nice cotton drawstring bag in which it came. I can't wait till I can place our next timberdoodle order! I love their toys.

So while leif played, we went over the 7 page Pdf I made for Goals for NIk's year, including basic subjects covered, goals, for him as a person and for each class. We talked about what curriculum we had, and what we'd be ordering.

We then proceeded to work on Science, lesson 1 on Apologia's General Science, a GREAT curriculum. It was a good lesson, Nik answered his on your own questions and wrote out his vocabulary definitions and then gave a quick summary in his notebook (which i'm encouraging him to do to help keep track of what he does each day, since much of his work is independent, then I'll have more of a clue what he's doing to report to his SLPC through MP3.

Next, we moved on to spelling, restarting Sequential spelling level 1. Nik has issues with spelling- BIG issues. I'm hoping this might stick a little better this time. We'll see! :)

Finally, he closed out his academic day with a lesson in history in Time4Learning.



At this point it was time to play with Bella (our neighbor's dog, and Nik's new job!) So he went and got Bella and he and Leif and the twins played ball with her while I cleaned up the house from the apparent tornado that whipped through it when I wasn't looking.

By this time the other children were coming home and after making them cookies, i went to my room and rested. I'm so tired today!


Overall though, i SO can't complain. It felt SO GOOD having my boys home today!!! I am so grateful to get to homeschool Nik again and will be looking forward so much to bringing the others home!!

Update on us.

So, things have changed! (again!!!) Where to begin?? I swear, its been such a roller coaster. First off, we did successfully withdraw Nik from middle school, which we'd planned for a while but set the date a week ago. (not sure if i mentioned that in my post) And i'm feeling so good about that! We actually chose nik first because he's the easiest, plus the long school day was really wearing on him. He's been going to bed early and getting up REALLY early and spending most of his time home just EXHAUSTED. Plus, he's had NO time to write his book, and that's really important to him. I discovered this curricula, The One Year Adventure Novel which seems PERFECT for him. The one caveat is that its for 8th on up, and he's a bit of a delayed 7th. However, he's HIGHLY motivated, and how can you turn down a highly motivated 7th grade boy. One thing i've learned, parenting, is that you do NOT discourage a teenager from a heavy academic endeavor even if it seems unlikely to work. So for the majority of english he'll be doing that. I'm also working on a mission statement/learning plan, i'll post it when I finish. its loooong.



Anyway, so we planned to pull Nik out of the public school, and successfully did, the only hitch being that he had a dentist appt wednesday, was sick thursday and nearly stayed home friday from the stomach bug we have going around our family, but i didn't realize that's what it was so i sent him late on friday. He wanted to be able to say goodbye to his friends! So I spent the rest of the day getting his enrollment paperwork for Meridian parent partnership program filled out and faxed. MP3 is an AWESOME program, which will classify us as public schoolers, even though I will still maintain all control over his curricula and whatnot. Its the perfect happy medium. I get some much needed funding toward educational items and keep good organization. The only real downside is that I HAVE to be really organized. its a LOT of accountability and honestly, i'm not sure I can hack it right now, but if not, i can always bail and make do with what we've got. I really wanted to get the adventure novel curriculum for him though and that was super expensive, plus time4learning, which will help to provide more work for him that doesn't involve me, so that's good!

So, i'm already 2 big paragraph's in and haven't even hit on the BIGGIE we have been dealing with this week. OY. I'm disgusted just thinking about it. This all went down on tuesday and I am still seething and just repulsed and confused and have NO clue how to deal with the situation.

Some background. First I called a meeting shortly after school started for Annabeth's teacher, principal, psychologist, learning coach, etc. to talk about getting her tested for a learning disability. She's had a lot of difficulty learning to read- which in and of itself is NOT a problem. I'm not a big believer in the "the child must be reading by 5" philosophy. Of course, i'm not a school district that needs to make itself look good, so that could explain part of it. So she's a lot behind in reading which i'd normally not be too concerned about. My 12yo didn't functionally read fluently till about a year ago, and my 16yo, the one who scored nearly perfect scores on his compass test in reading and writing, he wasn't reading at 7 either, it all works out. But in anna's case, i could tell last year that something was wrong. She started kindergarten 2 yrs ago ahead of the game, knowing all her letters and numbers and being inquisitive and obviously the smart girl that she is. Kindergarten moved slowly, but not a big deal, she's just a K, right. Well last year moved pretty slowly too. we had to repeat a LOT of lessons in her reading curriculum, she'd know it and then, seemingly forget it. Her handwriting wasn't improving. Spring of last year rolled around and with the difficulties we had been having with Asher all year we KNEW we had to do something. we prayed about it and felt lead to enroll the kiddos in PS next year. (this year) In retrospect, i don't know what happend with that. Have I lost all ability to understand God's will for our lives? we were both so sure! but this year has been a disaster! ugg. whole nother subject.


So this year, we enrolled them in school, I immediately sent an email to Anna's prospective teacher explaining her situation, and she was transferred to another class, with a more experienced teacher. Her teacher is AWESOME. She's super experienced, kind, compassionate, and I trust her with my most fragile baby. She, too has seen the issues i've been seeing with Annabeth. So anyway, I asked the teacher and principal if we could meet to discuss Annabeth's issues and try to initiate special education testing. The principal asked if we could also call in a few other specialists to see if they could help. So she did. it ended up being a pretty big meeting. I explained what I just did in this post, and they went on to reveal their testing results. It was a massive guilt trip, a "your child is operating at mid kindergarten level, look what you've done" guilt trip. I left the meeting, feeling like a complete failure. I quickly got it together and realized this was NOT my fault, and moved on. I had filled out paperwork at that meeting, requesting she be tested for a disability. My primary concern was NOT her reading or math skills but rather her difficulty in learning. When I read aloud to her, she can't tell me what I read about. In class, she doesn't understand her teacher and can't tell me what they studied. All the other kids including our Kindy son leif, CAN. Leif is quickly surpassing her in a lot of areas (they are very much alike personality and intellect-wise. even in appearance) SEE??



Today, even, after dad yelled at her for giving her a directive to wash the table 4 times, she broke down and was like "I just can't HEAR you with the music going!) by the way, her hearing test at her last physical was perfect.

So I made a visit to the school after the week before last week's visit to the Neurologist with Chloe, (That's my cutie- pictured above!) where she was diagnosed officially with aspergers. I wanted to see what needed to be done at the school regarding that and talk to her teacher, etc. (she, too has an awesome teacher, PTL!!!) So I went to the office and ran into the learning coach. She asked if i wanted to see the curriculum they use for the "at risk" kids (that would be Annabeth, of all ridiculousness!) she showed me the curriculum, explained that it was in the vast majority, phonics based, and tried to assuage my concerns about a sight word based reading program. She did! she also said she's be personally tutoring her each day. Sounded almost too good to be true. Turns out it was too good to be true. This week as she's been bringing home read aloud books (only one set this week, i think she only got either 1 or two tutoring sessions too. argh!) they were books that read like this:

Frog Food-

I like bugs on pancakes, left page, (big picture of a frog eating pancakes with bugs on it on the right)
I like bugs on popcorn (same as above)
I like bugs on soup
I like bugs on bread
i like bugs on pizza,
I like bugs on salad,
i like bugs on cake,
I like bugs

And

Waking up-

The rooster wakes up- Cock-a-doodle-doo!
The cow wakes up- Moo, moo!
The pig wakes up, Oink, oink!
The horse wakes up, Neigh, neigh
the turkey wakes up, Gobble, gobble,
the sheep wakes up, baa baa!
the duck wakes up, quack, quack
And the chick wakes up- peep peep

So you can see this has virtually no phonetic element to it at all- there's repetition, and super obvious picture clues. Honestly i find it really disturbing. One that I was obviously misled, and two that the school district is even using this "memorizing" strategy of "reading" in general. OY.


So, i have her on queue to get testing with the neurological something or other at mary bridge, as soon as the dr. gets the paperwork faxed it would be about DECEMBER when she'd get in. OY, and that's if she did it right away, and i'm afraid that's probably not the case, since i've been absolutely swamping her tiny medical practice's office with neurology referrals!!!! So that's a game changer.

Oh, i haven't even dropped the bombshell yet! Ok, so tuesday, i got the mail, and in it, was a letter from the school. Saying, GET THIS, that they refuse to test her for learning disabilities. The REASON? because she was homeschooled last year and i just might have done a crappy job.
Problem 1 with this assertion is that even though I referred in the meeting to us as being "homeschoolers" which is my bad, we were technically only part time homeschooling and 99% public schoolers through a virtual academy. SO, i've been supervised all of anna's academic career. TRY AGAIN! ugg. Though truly, i have to say i'm extremely insulted. How dare they suggest that just because we were homeschooling that she wasn't learning anything. That's horrible.

And SECONDLY and most importantly, aside from their finger pointing and guilt tripping they missed the most important issue of all- that I wanted to have her tested, not because of her reading and math delay but because she can't understand group instruction! And HELLO! have you ever TRIED Teaching someone to read who can't hear you and frequently has to repeat lessons or start over?!? Yeah. that's where I'm at. I'm completely disgusted. i'm in the process of speaking with an advocate who can help me decide what we should do. I'm honestly leaning toward pulling her out of school ASAP. the problem being that dh really really wants us to do it one child at a time, so i can acclimate to my many responsibilities and that makes MUCH sense, but it feels like such a crisis now, that EACH of them need to be pulled for different reasons. not to mention the bigger collective family reason! Sigh... I swear, i'm just so emotional, i want to look at these people and SCREAM- THIS IS MY BABY! look at her! she's precious and fragile and she NEEDS you. Please CARE about her!!!! but its no use! I guess that's why God made ME her mama... to make sure she's treated right.

So anyway I see my options as basically

1. pull annabeth out of school altogether- don't even bother to go through testing with her (after fighting for it!)

2. Pull annabeth out of school BUT fight for testing, get it and have her tested. but still keep her out of school other than special ed. They legally have to do this I think.

3. keep her in school and fight for getting her tested. Honestly, i don't see any point in keeping her in school if she's not actually LEARNING anything. Sigh.... Any feedback?

Time 4 Learning?

After several recommendations, i'm working on giving this curriculum a shot!

I've been invited to try Time4Learning for one month in exchange for a candid review. My opinion will be entirely my own, so be sure to come back and read about my experience. Time4Learning can be used as a homeschool curriculum, for afterschool enrichment and for summer skill sharpening. Find out how to write your own curriculum review for Time4Learning.

What's extra cool is that i will have 4 children trying it, in different schooling situations, so the review might be a book :) I'll work on my brevity skills :)

Rebecca

I guess we aren't very good public schoolers!

Wow, this last month has been one trial after another. The whole thing has left me confused and wondering if I am even capable of hearing God correctly... When dh and I both felt strongly that putting the kiddos in school was what we were supposed to do, we did. I trusted that it would work out, that they would be protected and that we'd adapt. And for the most part that has happened.

What is curious though, is that I discovered that the things I feared about public school didn't actually come to pass, and things I DIDN'T even think would be an issue, really started to be a big problem. Here's what's been going on

• I anticipated having less time with the children- Of course I saw that coming, BUT I didn't anticipate having virtually NO time with them. Since we started school, homework, dinner, dinner clean up and getting ready for bed has been pretty much all that happens in the evenings :(
• Its been disheartening having other authorities over my children. One night I asked Chloe to switch the laundry, and she glibly replied "I can't. I have to read an hour a night, my teacher said so!" That prompted a long talk about who her primary authority was. But it really got me thinking, public school families give up SO MUCH.
  
• Leif is a very young 5yo, and the only kindergarten the local school offers is full day. Lately he's been super super clingy, is having a hard time separating from me during the weekend, and has been complaining that he misses me. In addition, he has a full day of school, and then comes home and has to do homework! Which seems entirely crazy to me, WHY on earth would a full day kindergartener need homework. Its not a LOT but since he's a BOY and is 5, his motor skills aren't great, so his handwriting takes a long time.
  
• On nights like Monday (our church's community group night, at least till it turns to friday in a few weeks) and Wednesday, youth group night, we are super busy and homework doesn't get done.
  
• Someone else's expectations suddenly become a big deal. My daughter Annabeth is 7, she reads minimally. She knows all the letters and most of the sounds, and reads short vowel words well, but is stuck on diagraphs and beyond. This isn't a problem for me. Well, let me rephrase that. I know she has learning issues, and we are working to uncover the cause, so THAT is a problem but the fact she doesn't read at 7 is not a problem for me. However, in a classroom full of kids that have been taught to read (or memorize sight words so it looks like they are reading) that's unacceptable.
  

So these are my observations. I'm finding the whole experience disheartening. Bible study isn't happening in the morning, devotions aren't happening in the evening, we have NO family time during the week. And this is NOT ok with me. I am amazed that so many people ARE ok with this plan, but then again, one of the things about large families is that it takes forever to do stuff so eating dinner, for example and cleaning it up, is a huge endeavor.

Further, we feel so much like we are in jail. If something happens in the news we can no longer google the topic, read about it, do an art project etc. We also can't just pack up and go to the zoo. We can't decide to just skip school if its a beautiful day. We can't stay up late to watch a movie or everyone will be like zombies in the morning! I find myself just biding the time, waiting for the weekend.

The next thing that's been going on in our lives is the massive surge of testing going on. When the kiddos had their summer physical, my dr. recommended we take Chloe to the neurology department and have her tested for Aspergers. While we did sort of see it coming: She didn't talk till she was 5, a friend pointed out to me recently that she doesn't make eye contact and walks funny, she has strange muscle problems, she's really sensitive to touch, she doesn't get jokes, etc. It was still a shock when the doctor explained that to qualify as an aspie they had to meet a few of these criteria and a few of some of these, and chloe met most of them. She was a cut and dried case. It freaked me out. I don't know why, but i've been feeling so sad lately for her. She's not any different, but as a girl, it just feels different to me. And with her adding to the Aspie club already existing in our family of Alex and Asher (probably) i am boggled by the prospect of having 3 children on the spectrum.

While all this was going on, we were discovering that Annabeth was having some major problems in school. We had been recommended to go to a developmental optometrist last year and didn't get to it, so that's our next step. NO clue if insurance will cover it, and no clue what we will do if it doesn't! but that's step one. Also we'll be taking her to the neurologist also to rule out auditory processing issues which I think is quite likely, and dyslexia, which i think is less likely but wouldn't hurt to rule it out. We plan to keep her in school if things stay the same because right now she's being one on one tutored by the awesome learning coach at her school, and also is in math intervention (because she's an "at risk" child, dontcha know) so with the one on one tutoring, we are thinking she's in pretty good shape. HOPEFULLY. we also realized we need to get Alex properly diagnosed medically (he was diagnosed through the school district, but for proper accommodations at college, he totally needs a medical documentation, AAK! hoping its not going to be too late for this quarter and hoping he doesn't bomb.

Overall, the whole school thing has left Andrew and I disheartened. We don't WANT to adapt to not being around our children much. We don't feel the need to subject our 5yo to constant academics. We want him to be a kid!! We don't want Nik to never have time to work on his book! (He's working on writing a novel, but never has time!) We are just plain not cut out for this public school business. At least not in this setting. We decided to pull them out one at a time, with the exception of annabeth and possibly Chloe, depending on how it goes. We are starting with Nikolas, and I'm feverishly working on his learning plan and hope to get him enrolled in MP3 which will open up much to us in the way of resources. Next, once we get Nikolas settled will be Leif. Oh will I be so glad to have my sweet sunshine home again... I miss him so much.

The girls, i'm torn about. Annabeth, as long as the tutoring is going well we probalbly should keep in, for at least half the year, possibly all. Ugg. I don't like it though. Chloe we could go either way. Its nice having her there with Annabeth, sort of, they can walk to school together, etc. Plus as an aspie the social benefit should be pretty good for her. So in that, we are still undecided, but i'm very much looking forward to bringing my boys HOME!