Too Loose Goose

This is a funny two-part story.

Mark has been eating Whole30/Paleo since last October.  He has lost 30 pounds, all the pain and inflammation in his joints, and has experienced countless other improvements in his health.  His pants are so loose that he looks like a hobo with his belt cinched in tight enough to hold them up.  He is slowly replacing his clothes that don't fit with some that do.  He's lookin' pretty hot, I must say!

This is our new Toulouse Goose:

We are unsure of its gender, but the person we got it from thought at first she was a female, but then when it started fighting with her other male, she thought it also might be a male and wanted to get rid of it.  We were just watching and waiting to see if it got aggressive or starting laying eggs.  The kids call it Gwin, I think.

Last night, Evie had the misfortune of being attacked by the goose.  She was down on the ground trying to kick it off her while it bit her boots.  She wasn't hurt, just shaken up a bit.  And she was worried that the goose would get hurt if she kicked it too hard.  Mark went in to show the goose who was boss after he rescued Evie.  He used goose language and spread his arms wide, flapping them and hissing like he was the dominant male (because he is).  Guess what happened when he flapped his "wings"?

His wedding ring flew off his finger and disappeared in the long grass in the pasture.

The wedding band falls off Mark's finger.

There is another part to this story.  When Mark's dad had open heart surgery, he lost a lot of weight.  One day he was up on the roof cleaning out the gutters and his wedding ring fell off and got lost.  He never found it, so somewhere around the house, buried now thanks to the bulldozing we had to do a few years ago, there is a gold wedding band.  If Mark's wedding band had to be lost, I couldn't think of a better place for it to go... two lost wedding bands on our property....
But the band wasn't lost forever.  Mark watched where it landed and with Evie's help found it.  We are now in the market for a new one!

Birth Personalities

"He's been like that his whole life."
"I could tell she was going to be like that since before she was born."

Have you ever heard or said that?

Fact: Ian sleeps late and is hard to motivate, but he always gets things done at the last minute.

Truth: When my water broke with Ian, he refused to be born.  I was induced 30 hours after my water broke and he was born 14 hours later.  Just in time to avoid a C-section.

Fact: Shane often doesn't know what is going on around him.  But he always ends up in the right place at the right time.

Truth: I didn't even know I was pregnant with Shane until I actually felt him.  He was breech until the third trimester.  But he was born just fine with no interventions.

Fact: Evie is a bit of a perfectionist.  She takes such a long time making sure every detail is correct that it drives me crazy.

Fact: Evie was born on a day that Laura wasn't feeling well enough to go to school.  Laura stayed home with Ian and Shane.  My labor was slow enough that Mark was able to squeeze in a Taekwondo class before we needed to head into the hospital.  She was slow enough that Mark was able to get himself some Jack-in-the-Box for dinner after we checked in at the hospital.  She was born at such a perfect time that Mark was able to leave the hospital and pick Laura up from work and take her home.

Truth: Fiona is crazy and vivacious and aims to please. 

Fact: Fiona was our first homebirth. Homebirth is just crazy.  But she aimed to please: we were worried about Ami and Laura's schedules for school and whether or not one of them would be available to help us out with Ian, Shane, and Evie.  I said, "Well, hopefully my water will break tonight and she will be born by the time Ami needs to go to school."  My water broke within a half hour and she was born at 3:30ish AM.  Mark greeted Ami with her new little sister one minute before her alarm clock went off.

Truth: No one makes Daniel do things he doesn't want to do.  No one but ME.  And he changes his mind on a regular basis.  He wants to do something, I support him, he changes his mind to do the opposite.

Truth: Daniel didn't want to be born. He got the process started four days early, but labor stalled.  For hours.  It took forever for him to get in a good position.  He kicked like crazy all through labor, like he was trying to keep from coming out.  But I won in the end.

Fact: Lula is super snuggly.  She would still ride around in the Ergo facing in if I could still fasten the belt around my big, pregnant belly.  She is also the best sleeper in the whole family.

Truth: I rarely felt Lula move while I was pregnant with her.  I would have to purposely drink juice and wait for her to get a boost of blood sugar and move.  She was born quickly, but went right back to sleep for the next few weeks.  I thought she was going to sleep herself to death and ended up bottle feeding her just to get her to wake up and eat.

Fact: Heidi is a spunky ball of energy.  She loves jumping on the little trampoline and the beds and riding the spring horse.  She is attached to me in a totally different way than Lula is.  While Lula snuggles in, Heidi kicks me all night long, just to make sure I'm still there.  She needs to hold my hand while she sleeps, but she doesn't just hold it, she laces her fingers in mine and immediately pulls her hand away, but then wants to go through the finger lacing again.

Truth: Heidi was quite the gymnast before she was born.  She tumbled and kicked until I felt sick to my stomach.  Heidi took her own sweet time getting born, just like Daniel and Evie.  But with Heidi? I wanted her OUT of my body.  I was so tired of being pregnant with her.  Just like I want to sleep without being kicked or holding someone's hand right now.

And finally, Fact/Truth: I don't know what this next baby's name is, but I do know one thing.  He is strong.  He likes to move.  But he doesn't make me feel grumpy.  He actually makes me quite happy.  So instead of his movements meaning he is kicking in crankiness, I think he is just a jolly, active little boy who is going to love trampolines, swings, and running.

I can't wait to meet him!

Chickens

Another spring, another batch of meat chickens are in my freezer.

I told Mark right from the beginning of this project that I would be far too pregnant to deal with chicken butchering this year.  I just wanted to buy chicken and not even deal with a pregnant belly leaning up against a butcher table. 

Mark was able to butcher and process all 18 chickens with Shane, Evie, and Fiona's help in one day.  Those three kids were amazing workers!  Daniel started with them, but the smell was too much for him.  Ian got out of butcher duty by getting invited to an air soft event.  I stayed indoors with the three younger kids and the dogs.  But I didn't completely get out of butcher duty.  I packed the quartered chicken pieces with my Food Saver and boiled the rest of the meat off the bones.  It was a long day!

Thirteen

Ian is thirteen years old.  A teenager.  He isn't the first teenager, thanks to Ami and Laura, but he is the first little boy to completely steal my heart, cut his teeth on it, and then have the audacity to grow up and cut his apron strings.  I'm sure I'd be a whole lot more emotional if I hadn't seven more kids coming up behind him... but still. My baby is growing up way too fast.

So how should I embarrass him on this blog for this special milestone? List 13 things I love about him? Tell adorable stories from the years before I blogged (complete with pictures)? Write him a personal letter that I then share with everyone else? Write a boring account of his 13th birthday party?

Or just sneak another peek at him while I work on my computer while he works on his?

Playing

Sometimes you just have to pull the plug and make them play something different:

The foosball table is a 9 in 1 game table that was gifted to us by a friend.  It has foosball, pool, air hockey, bowling, chess, shuffle board, ping pong...and some other games I can't remember.  This was an early birthday present for my almost teenager...

Teaching Daniel

I thought for sure I would have a terrible time homeschooling Daniel.  Everyone knows that he desires to be the master of his own destiny and he has a terrible time taking direction from me.  I thought for sure he was a better late than early kid or even a great candidate for unschooling/interest led schooling.  I also thought he would be a maniacal dictator of a small country when he grew up.

But Daniel surprised me.  He thrives on workbooks, schedules, and check boxes.  He loves the boundaries.  While we wait for his new Math-U-See curriculum to come in the mail (it's here and he calls it Lego Math!), he is using a kindergarten workbook that has been sitting in my get-rid-of pile for ten years (no, I'm not kidding-ten years).  The front of the book has a few pages dedicated to star stickers.  You finish a page, you get a star sticker by that page number.  Daniel is so motivated by star stickers.  If he finishes ten pages and gets ten stars, he gets a Fun Size piece of chocolate.  The same is true for Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons.  I thought for sure this program would be a no-go for Daniel.  There is a LOT of repeat-after-me and that is NOT Daniel's style.  But he has a chart with the numbers 1-100 representing the lessons.  After each successful lesson, he gets to pick his own sticker for that chart (right now he is using some old ant stickers from a scrapbooking project).  After he completes five lessons, he gets a Fun Size chocolate.  Star stickers and chocolate. Wow.

He also loves the routine of school.  He helps me set up my "preschool" table and all the chairs.  He and Fiona bring their boxes downstairs and he always wants to be first to do his writing and math.  We end with reading lessons while Fiona works on her math and then he heads off to play.  He and Fiona have also started working through my Introduction to World History curriculum that I bought when Ian was in Kindergarten, which is just looking at my Usborne Children's Encyclopedias.  Sometimes, however, Daniel is ready to be GONE, so I just browse what needs to be teaching and I tell them what they need to know while they play outside. 

Last week's science topic was all about trees.  Instead of reading one page per day for four days from my Encyclopedia of Nature, I said, "Look at the trees! What are they doing?"  Uhhh, nothing? "NO! They are fighting a great battle! And you can't even see it!"  Attention captured. We went on to talk about what living things needs and how the trees compete for those resources and leaf shape and cones vs flowers and all that tree stuff.

As for the rest of these guys, it looks like no one gets the whole summer off....everyone is behind somewhere.  But there is comfort in routine...

Eleven Weeks

This Bouncing Baby Boy is due in 11 weeks.  That means I have only 11 "Bless this Mess" days.  And 11 weeks to finish up everything on my list of things to do before the baby is born.  For a homeschooling mom of seven, this List is quite the thing to behold.  But you can't see it; it is all in my mind.

The Weekly Schedule-for now

The most important thing that I'm working on is school.  Homeschooling five kids is a major undertaking, which is probably why people say, "I don't know how you do it!"  And truly, what I manage every day is so complicated I don't even want to type it all out.  But I have a daily schedule that changes based on the day and little tricks that keep things streamlined.  I'm thinking ahead to the next school year and making my plans for curriculum and such.  I have so many decisions to make about books and money, but I'm leaning toward another Parent Partnership Program. And switching math curriculum for Fiona. (I never though I would be the mom that owned four or five different math programs-why oh why do my kids have to be so different?)

My take on the Workbox system.  Everything in one box. One box per person.

We are going to continue to school through the summer simply because we started late and took a lot of time off.  Some subjects are finished (Ian is done with History and Lit and Shane is done with math) but some, like Fiona and Evie's Language Arts, need way more attention.  Daniel started kindergarten work not too long ago, so he is plugging along nicely.  It only takes about 30 minutes to get through his school work.

Last Day of Math!

Daniel totally surprised me with his attitude toward school.  I'll write about that another day.

Works in Progress

I'm knitting and sewing whenever I can because I know that 1) it will get too hot to knit soon and I won't have time in the fall to make them and 2) once this baby is born I won't have time to sit at my sewing machine.  I just won't have time for anything but feeding eight children, school, and diaper changes.  I'm knitting a February Lady Sweater (Google for images) out of yarn that I have had stashed since Fiona was a baby.  I'm afraid the moths will eat it before I can actually use it, and it is the nicest yarn I have ever purchased.  I only have 1 1/2 sleeves left.  I'm also knitting a plethora of winter wool pants: something not pink or purple for the baby and something not shorts for Heidi.  I'm taking existing pants that still fit around Heidi's skinny middle but are too short and adding length.  The moths ate all of Daniel's hand-me-down wool.

Twelve diapers waiting for sewing (and a whole pile of fabric waiting to be cut out)

Maybe next year I'll have time to sew the requested nightgowns and pajamas for my older kids.

Fifteen diapers needing snaps

I'm also crazy busy in the kitchen.  Mark and I are on another Whole30 for the month of May.  With Whole30, there are very few convenience foods that are approved.  Think about that for a moment.  Almost nothing you can buy off a store shelf has ingredients that aren't hormone disruptors or bad for your gut or not inflammatory.  Too many double negatives in that last sentence: I'll try it again... Almost everything commercially available contains ingredients that are bad for you in some way or another.  This means we have to cook everything everything from scratch.  We mostly eat sautes that are light on meat and heavy on the veggies, so we do a lot of chopping.  The kids aren't on Whole30, so we are actually cooking/preparing six meals per day.  I've only gained 16 pounds with this pregnancy and can still wear my regular clothes from last summer.

Two days these towels sat in the washing machine and two days they spent on the line

I have midwife appointments an hour away every two weeks.  I take the kids to the YMCA twice a week, which is a good three hour chunk each time. Tuesdays we are on the road all day for dance and Scouts.  I'm battling the insurance company to pay for the genetic screening test because I don't really have $8000 right now.  The sun is shining on a regular basis so I'm back to line-drying our laundry.  I've stopped going to my women's groups because I need that time in the evening to make dinner, catch up on missed school due to activities and appointments, and take a big fat nap that I totally deserve.

...it took me three days to finish this post...Down to 10 1/2 weeks....The clock is ticking...

THEY ARE TOTALLY WORTH IT!!!  (Practicing their topiary skills. That bush is now a turtle. Can you see it?)

And did I mention that I love my life? Like crazy? And I have the best job in the whole world?

Farewell Kinder-garten!

Yesterday, as Mark and I enjoyed our coffee on the school room porch, Mark said, "I think we need to pull down the garden fence and make the play yard bigger."  But that is my Kinder Garten!  For my kids to grow things and then munch on them! So what if it is over run with kale that survived the winter and shot five feet up in the air? That's what we feed the tortoise! Besides, I'm in no condition to bend over and pull the kale myself, I need someone to help me make my kinder garten this year.

This morning, as Mark and I enjoyed our coffee on the school room porch, Mark said, "We really need to make the play yard bigger."  This time I agreed.  Mark set Ian and Shane to work pulling up the kale as soon as he was done taking down the fence...

And now? Oh my, why did we wait so long?  My play yard is so big!  We are thinking about adding a swing set or a smallish picnic table that won't be so tall that you have to get stitches if you fell off.  I spent my afternoon just watching my littlest girls play and play and listening to the birds sing (because that is all you can hear out here).  I love my porch, I love my play yard, and I love my Mark.

Birthday Trip to the Zoo

Fiona turned seven years old this last week!  I cannot believe how quickly the time goes.  She wanted to have a pool party, just like Evie did, but the YMCA rules are that you have to have a parent within arms reach in the pool until you are eight years old.  I figured the mamas aren't interested in getting in the pool, so we went to the zoo instead.

I love the look on Fiona's face when she opened her Barbie horse set.  Evie's Barbies get to ride Breyer horses and Fiona's Barbies have to walk.  Not anymore!

Fiona is such a sweetheart and is full of sunshine and light.  I've never known such a loving caring person.

I loved going to the zoo with my new camera.  Pictures that used to be blurry are now nice a crisp with great color.  Heidi liked the little fishes, but anything bigger than what you see pictured above scared her.

I only took six kids to the zoo (Ian stayed home to do his schoolwork in peace and quiet and then play video games), but I was not alone.  My sister and parents were there, which was nice for Lula because she made my sister carry her the whole time.  Shane was Heidi's buddy.

These two girls have always been friends.  They go disappear in their room on school mornings and play and play until noon.  Sometimes it drives me crazy, especially when I need them to spell words correctly in their workbooks, but other times I know that their relationship is more important.

Heidi was also scared of the walrus. The walrus is always my favorite.

After the zoo, we stopped by Costco and got pizza and fruit salad for dinner and had chocolate cake and ice cream for dessert.  The kids watched Annie and I crashed on the couch.  Happy birthday Fiona!

Classy

Shane earned his second class rank in Boy Scouts!  He worked really hard to double rank and also earned his first class!

He is also interested in stepping up his school work so he can be a successful adult.  I'm very proud of my unsocialized homeschooler.

Marshmallow Molecules

I have been working very hard at keeping up with all the different school needs, which means I've been putting other things on the back burner for later....things like blogging.  That is why you will see a bunch of new posts pop up on a Saturday morning.  Part of "getting it all done" can sometimes mean that we have to finish our school work on a Monday evening after dinner while Ian is at youth group.

After a day in the sun, do chemistry in your bathing suits.

The last time we built molecules for chemistry, we used gumdrops.  And as much as I love gumdrops, I needed something a little less expensive for this number of kids.  We used multicolor marshmallows, which are quite fruity, and toothpicks. 

Water and methane

My minor was in chemistry, only because I needed two years of chemistry classes and four years of dance classes for a dance minor (can you imagine? "Hello, I have a Bachelor's of Science in Environmental Science with a minor in dance. Hire me).  I only had one more year to accumulate credits and I only needed one more chemistry class for a minor, so chemistry it was.  The great thing about have a whole year of organic chemistry is knowing how the atoms fit together.  I have no trepidation when I need to teach my kids how to build an ethanol molecule.  Marshmallows, however, are not the best molecule building material.  They are too soft, so we followed up with air dry clay that we will (someday) paint.

Would you like a cup of water?

As soon as we were done building our molecules, we ate them.  Delicious! Too bad Ian missed out!