The Grandparents Are Gone

My parents left yesterday morning {Insert pause and long, sad sigh}.  We actually didn't do a lot.  DC was closed the weekend they got ... (I sat down to blog on Wednesday - that's as far as I got.  The story of my life these days.)

Anyway, to back up, we spent most of our time hanging out at the house and a little bit of time shopping.  Okay, a lot bit.  My mom has been looking forward to the shopper's paradise we live in. It was so good to have someone here visiting.  Our household feels very stressful all the time.  Part of it is the drama that engulfs school every morning and part is me just not having the time (or the energy) to get things done like I like to.  I felt like I could slow down and breathe for the first time in a while.  I cut back Jaelyn's school work to the big 3 (reading, writing and arithmetic).  My mom helped with school leaving me free to get some house work done.  I even cooked real meals since I had people other than kids who are happy with chicken nuggets or scrambled eggs to feed.  Dan even gave up his free day (which isn't really free.  He has no class, but he still spends 12-16 hours at school doing work) to see a movie with me.  It was a good visit.

On the school front, moving and kids is just hard.  Caden has been saying he doesn't like school.  I've talked to his teacher.  She says he's doing fine with his work and seems to have friends.  We just don't have the good friends that only time can bring.  Allie also seems to be struggling.  Hers is school related.  I've seen more Ds and Fs than I care to admit (although her averages are As and Bs, I don't get it).  I was so involved at her last school, but I don't know anyone at this one.  It's hard to feel like I'm on the outside here.  I keep telling myself  "it's only a year, it's only a year, it's only a year."

I keep telling myself that with Jaelyn too.  I am all over the map with her.  On bad days, I want to send her to school and never ever ever consider homeschooling again.  On good days, I want to bring Allie and Caden home and teach them all. I'm insane, I know that.  This week has been a really good homeschooling week.  I think last week's break and different teacher helped us both.  She's been calm and polite.  It's been a real joy to work with her.  And she's learning.  One night, while reading, she pointed out a word that didn't end in -ly (an easy give away) and said "that's an adverb."  We spent 3 days on adverbs....it finally sunk in :).  Last night, she said something with "either/or" in it and said "hey, either/or are conjunctions" (yesterday's lesson).  It's these little nuggets that I need to hold on to.

In order to make our day more peaceful, I'm continuing to tweak our schedule and try different things.  I've been cramming a lot into each week.  I'm backing off.  I've decided to only do social studies or science, not both in each week.  We've also gone to a very structured day.  If it were me, I'd start with the hardest subjects and move to the easiest and get my work done, boom, boom boom, but that's not Jaelyn.  She needs a written schedule (Spelling 9:40, Reading 10:15, snack 11:00) and she sticks to it exactly.  If she finishes one subject with 7 minutes left, she plays for 7 minutes instead of starting on her next subject and I am learning to be okay with that. She's already asking me to homeschool her next year.  She is adamant that she doesn't want to go back to school.  We shall see.