"How Do You Do It?" - Math Edition

I think we are all asked the "How do you do it?" question, whether as a mother of two, three, or four - or seven. :-) Well, here's a good example of how something - in this case, math - often gets done in our house. We had begun with other subjects, and by the time we got to math, the boys had already dumped out the contents of numerous toy bins, but mostly in their room, which was tolerable. Math is always a little tricky at best, because it's the subject that requires the most personal attention from me, and therefore it's the time when the little ones are the least supervised. Today was no exception, but I thought we could all sit together in Aimee's room and thus keep a watch on the little ones while they played in and between both their room and Aimee's room. Things began along these lines, the boys continuing to dump out toys and blocks - a sound that really tries my nerves! - but playing happily for the most part, until they began to carry the toys up the hall and into the living room. Then they began to raid Aimee's room, much to her distraction and annoyance, and to fight about one particular toy (Ryan wanted to play with it, Chase wanted to sit on it), then I heard the sound of glass, as they dropped toy soldiers into a glass jar. Naturally, each of these situations required intervention; every time I left, Aimee began doing something else, and it was more difficult each time to return her attention to the really riveting math lesson. :-) Finally, though, I finished the instruction part, and was able to hand her the workpage she could do on her own. I then started Drew on his math, and just when he began his page, Aimee brought her work out for me to check. She had omitted a difficult problem, so I sat down with her to work on it, at which she began protesting the unfairness of my correcting her work. How could I be correcting what she hadn't even done, I wondered, with an attempt at light-heartedness, but by then she was past good humor or even reason. Chase, who had wandered back down the hallway, emerged again at this point, carrying a dry-erase marker he had discovered in Aimee's room and with which he had decorated Aimee's bed, his clothes, and - "Look what else he did, Mom!" the DVR equipment in the living room. (I don't know how I missed him doing that one...) I secured the marker, thankful at least that he hadn't gotten around to eating it yet, and returned to helping Aimee. She was uncooperative and unhappy, and my patience was wearing thin. At one particularly trying moment, I snapped at her, feeling instantly sorry, but of course, she burst into tears and was quite past any assistance. We took a break for lunch, about five minutes too late, and I took deep breaths to exhale all the feelings of futility, and hoping, as I so often do, that the kids were able to salvage at least some useful bits of information, as well as some character-building material, from that chaotic session.

But for a more encouraging glimpse into our family life, our bedtime routine has been running especially smoothly the last few nights. Bedtime for us is one of those times which can either affirm our parenting skills, or highlight the weaknesses - lately, since things had been so busy in the preceding weeks, the bedtime routine was disasterous, and we were falling into some bad habits. I wanted to stop all that in its tracks, so several nights ago, I herded everyone into one room, the middle boys in their bed, Aimee reclining on a pillow on the floor, and Chase in my arms nursing, and I read a chapter from the book we've been reading together. This worked beautifully, and I have done it every night since. Ryan falls asleep listening, Chase falls asleep nursing, and I can spend some quiet time with the older two at the same time. The chapter-book reading time we had always cherished had become endangered in this past year - we used to read, and read, and read, every time I sat down to nurse whoever was the baby at the time, but this past year it's been so difficult to get the boys together and sitting still for any period of time. I was beginning to miss those quiet hours, and this has been a wonderful way to return to it.