...OR, the post you should read if you want to feel better about your day...OR...the post you should definitely not read if you are considering homeschooling.
Yesterday was just one of those days. It started out with good intentions, hopes of learning and accomplishing and succeeding, and ended in a big bang of...well, of not many of those things. I made pancakes and tried to get everyone up and moving relatively early (at at time which is probably considered really early for some relaxed homeschoolers, and shamefully late for more structured homeschoolers). I announced to everyone, as I prodded them to get dressed, that we we were going to start the day with math and music, and that we were going to try to get in a good day's worth of school by lunchtime so I could take the younger ones swimming at the Y. One of the kids said, "A whole day's work of school in half a day?" as if he thought this was really going to happen. Another - or maybe it was the same one - observed, "Why does it seem like math and music is all we ever do?" I could have shared my perspective that it seems rather like we don't get in enough of those subjects, but I just said, "Because I'm the boss."
One child started - eventually - on practicing the assigned musical instrument. Another sat down at the table with me to do math. The younger kids played outside for about five minutes, then proceeded to wreak havoc elsewhere in the house.The math lesson quickly went south. At one point the child doing the math exclaimed, "Stop yelling at me!" And I asked how the voice I was using could possibly be thought of as yelling. "Well," returned the child, "it's the voice you use when you're trying not to yell at me." Which is exactly the same thing, of course. At some point during this happy time, Scarlett and Chase pulled leftover Chinese food out of the refrigerator, warmed it up and had a morning snack (most of which ended up all over the table and floor), which I let pass so I wouldn't have to interrupt the math lesson -that, however, only got worse. I dismissed the student to do something else so that we could come back to it later with less frustration and no almost-yelling.
I called in the next child up for math. Usually this child doesn't have many issues at all with this subject, so it should have gone fine, but early on, I began sniffling and my eyes began watering and itching. And then they began to swell. The neighbor had been mowing his grass and cutting weeds, so I'm guessing he stirred something up that caused an allergic reaction (note: I had never had seasonal allergies until I moved to Ohio). "What's wrong with your eyes?" queried the student. "Nothing - keep going." I mean, I can barely see you because my eyes are almost swollen shut, and I'm sure I must look a fright, but don't let that distract you! But it was a little difficult to focus when the child did have a problem, and all the more so when we heard the sound of something breaking on the tile floor in the other room. "It's okay!" shouted one of the boys. "Scarlett just dropped a light bulb." I went to asses the situation, and sure enough, ,they had ransacked the hall closet and were playing with light bulbs- because why wouldn't that be a good idea? I cleaned it up, then tried to get the math thing going again. But then Scarlett came into the dining room and had an accident. (Now, I know this is the second post in a row in which I've described her having an accident, but I promise she's been potty trained for over a year. An accident is rare.) So I cleaned that up, and she stripped down, but we forgot to get her dressed again. So while I was sniffling and sneezing, trying to help one child divide decimals, and trying to get another one to do what he could of his math lesson, I looked out the window to see that Scarlett and Chase were bouncing on the trampoline...and she was stark naked. I went out to get her, and came back in to check on the progress inside, but it appeared that like the first student, no one remembered a single thing we've ever learned about in math. The second math student was stuck on something really basic, the third didn't know how to do anything on his page, and then the first student came back into the room to say that, oh, by the way - the other non-math assignment was also impossible.
And the area around my eyes had now broken out into hives.
I thought we should probably come back to academics later, so I sent the boys out to clean the deck out back. The day before they had been playing with deer corn - again, why wouldn't that be a good idea? - and it was all over the deck. But they came back in a few minutes later to say that the broom was broken. And indeed, it had been irreparably damaged when they were swatting at a bee. Too bad for me! So - there was still deer corn all over, and I also couldn't clean up the mess in the kitchen...and the dining room...and the living room....and who knows where else. So I calmly put the broom down and sweetly observed that this was a stupid day. Chase gasped, in a mixture of shock and delight, "You said 'stupid'!" (Ironic, coming from him, as he's the worst offender when it comes to forbidden words.) "Yes, I did," I replied, "and I quit!" Another of the boys remarked that he was glad to quit school, too, and I reminded him that I'm the only one who's allowed to quit. The boss, remember?
At any rate, I told them to get their suits on, and I hastily made some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which I had them eat in the car. It actually took us forever to get everything ready for the Y, but we made it, and we had a good hour or so of swimming, which was in fact calming. The only stress during the Y experience was after swimming, when we were getting dressed in respective locker rooms. The boys were being so incredibly loud their locker room that Scarlett and I could hear every word and gleeful shout all the way over in the women's locker room. I contemplated how best to handle the situation, but decided that hollering, "Be quiet or I'm coming in there!" would not be appreciated on any level, so I just got dressed in a hurry and hoped they would do the same. No one kicked us out of the Y, so I guess we got out of there fast enough.
Then we had to stop at the store to get some things for dinner. Taking Chase (in particular) to the store is like taking the Tasmanian devil grocery shopping, and is all kinds of stressful, but we actually got through it without buying anything we didn't want or running shopping carts into strangers. We got home, spent about twenty minutes getting ready for quiz practice and church, then we headed over to church...only to realize about halfway there that we had forgotten the quiz questions for practice. So Dave, who was with us at this point, helped us get things in the church building, and went back for the questions while I set up and began practice on my own. Then he arrived and we had a good time with the kids...but then we realized we had forgotten something else, so Aimee and I had to run back to the house after practice, eating dinner on the run. We got back a few minutes late for church, and everyone went to their classes, except for Chase, who couldn't be persuaded by anything to go to his. Scarlett was really tired and wouldn't go to hers - she wouldn't leave my side at all. So Dave sat out with them while I went to my Bible study - a full thirty minutes late by that point.
And when we got home, we just wanted bedtime to happen. It did, but only after we all dealt with a full-scale preschool meltdown, because when Scarlett had commented in the car that she wanted a "princess ipod," she hadn't, apparently, just mean sometime in the future - she had meant right then and there.
I wish I could leave you with something wise and wonderful we learned from our struggles...but sometimes the best thing you can say about a day is that you survived it!
PS We did get those math lessons done today. It seems they do remember some things, after all!
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