We are eagerly awaiting the birth of our third child. She, however, seems to be in no hurry to exit the comfort of the womb. As a result, I am at this point officially more pregnant than I have ever been: 39 weeks and 3 days.
Perhaps this wouldn't cause so much anticipation if Joshua and Hannah had been born a bit closer to their due dates. They were born at 37 weeks and 38 weeks 6 days, respectively. I have been saying throughout this pregnancy that I would be surprised if the middle of September came and I was still pregnant. And yet, here I sit. It's September 13 (nearly the very middle of the month) and very pregnant indeed. And since everybody knows that first babies come late and subsequent babies come early, I felt certain that this little one would be here by Labor Day weekend. She has proven me wrong and I am humbled, indeed. Certainly, no one knows the day or the hour.
Again ,this wouldn't be quite as much of a source of anxiety if I weren't having the stop and start approach to labor. The Lord is currently enabling me to ignore any labor signs that I might feel, particularly those hours at a time when I have regular, fairly strong contractions that do a good job of mocking early labor. But this was not the case last week when I was certain every time that this would be it (you'd think I would know by the third time around!) and was more than happy to try and move things along.
On Wednesday I decided that labor would definitely start if I walked with the little guys to a nearby playground - somewhere over 2 miles round trip. Plus I was playing with them on the playground for two full hours. Surely if those contractions started again they would progress into labor. But no. That day gave me a wonderful time with Joshua and Hannah, plus a very stiff and sore pelvis and lower back.
On Thursday I woke up with regular contractions. Maybe the walking did pay off! So I figured that I would clean the floors, organize a few things around the house, and finish packing a bag for Joshua and Hannah. This was all very productive but not in terms of labor. Again, I enjoyed spending time with Joshua and Hannah along with a prolonged backache.
Friday was going to be different. I was going to stop thinking about what all these contractions might be doing (aside from generally preparing my body for the real birth) and instead I was focusing on grocery shopping. So, I headed to Costco. Lifting 30+ pound kids in and out of incredibly high shopping carts, transporting gallons of milk, and large containers of other bulk goods off of shelves, into the cart, onto the belt at the checkout, into the car, and then out of the car, down the hill, up the steps and eventually into our cupboards seemed promising labor-induction activities (even thought I had theoretically stopped thinking about inducing labor at this point). Again, I enjoyed time with the kiddos, felt like my back, pelvis, and hips would just fall apart from being tired, sore, and by this very loose, and was pretty much exhausted.
The Lord really is helping me this week, however. Instead of thinking "today could be the day" or "it might be tomorrow so I'd better be prepared just in case my plans have to change" I have now mapped out the entire week, just as I always do, and in my mind the calendar looks normal. No question marks, no "false" starts, just the usual day to day with as few thoughts of "when is this baby going to come?!" as possible. Of course, we'll see how many days this mindset lasts this week. On my own I wouldn't have gotten through today, so if I can just keep leaning on the Lord I think we'll make to the big day (whenever that may be) without too much unnecessary stiff and sore joints.
13 September 2010
Back to (Home) School
So, the spring was a bit of a bust in our home school experiment. I was just not that into keeping up on projects and lesson plans and whatever other school-type activities we had been doing last fall. But the great news is that learning never seems to stop, even when Mom is struggling to stay awake throughout the day and Joshua and Hannah seem to be doing nothing but "playing".
I'm glad for the unintentional break, however. As I've been approaching this little experiment, it has been continually in my thoughts that if home education is going to work for us we have to find a way for it to really work. Yes, there are all the ideals behind home education, but for any of those ideals to have even the slightest opportunity of success it must first be practical. I've had more than a few months now to realize some overly ambitious ideas and some low expectations that need to be raised.
In re-evaluating, I've been considering buying a preschool curriculum. Previously I was just going off of a learning objectives list for toddlers and preschoolers. While it's fun to think of activity ideas, it's another thing to know how to plan out a week, month, semester, or year of lessons so that we cover everything. So, I checked out a curriculum that looks really great. It's even a good price and if we had a copy machine I could re-use it for any and all the little ones the Lord would choose to put in our family.
After printing out a sample lesson plan for one week, I put it into action. It worked quite well. In fact, so well, that I thought I could probably come up with something similar. Well...maybe not quite. Since looking through how she broke down certain activities over the course of the week I picked up on a pattern and thought, "I could do this if I just find the right resources for the occasional worksheet or coloring page and some ideas for crafts and projects."
We've planned the first month of lessons and so far it's been very manageable. Mind you, we've only been doing it since just after Labor Day weekend. Not exactly a great length of time to determine our success, but so far we're doing well. Praise the Lord! And I'm feeling more organized and learning to prepare things way ahead of time (or as much ahead of time as is possible given all the many circumstances of our family life).
Some highlights for the month of September are as follows:
Social Studies--Joshua and Hannah are each putting together an "All About Me" book. So far they've drawn a self-portrait, learned their full names, learned their birth dates, and taken their height and weight measurements to be recorded. They seem to really enjoy this, and the booklets are really cute too. Maybe some photos will come once they're finished.
Science--We're learning about animals right now. I tried to select a variety of different wild animals, particularly varying their habitat. In the end, it works better when the kids choose what animals we study. So far they're nearly all from Africa: elephants, lions, zebras, giraffes and rhinos with some kangaroos and giant pandas thrown in. All in all it's been a good unit. We made a world map (which is now colored with a "beautiful rainbow" compliments of Joshua) onto which we glue a picture of each animal and a fact card that reminds us where they live, what they eat, and some interesting fact we learned about them. Just ask Hannah where rhinos live and you'll hear, "In grassy plains Africa."
Lord willing we'll be doing a short unit on plants as well, but more on that once we've actually started and (hopefully) completed it.
Bible--This is a bit hard for me to decide what to work on. So much of what I write for Bible curriculum Joshua and Hannah have already gone through at least once in the church nursery (and will continue to repeat yearly until they're out of kindergarten) that I have to get creative at home so they don't get bored. We did a unit on Jonah, which was moderately successful. I say that only because the main thing that they say they learned was that "Jonah ran away". Not really what I was going for, but we're slowly but surely getting around to the point that, even though he did run away, God extended love and mercy by sparing his life (via the big fish) and restoring Jonah to a righteous relationship with Himself so that Jonah could then go on to do the Lord's will. Anyway...they think it's all about running away and big fishes saying "Gulp!"
The Basics--Basic reading, writing, maths, and readiness skills are regularly in our daily lessons. Joshua and Hannah both love these activities. They are the easiest and generally simplest to prepare because a lot of it is practice and experience with the skills at this point. Hannah is learning shapes and colors. Joshua is learning to use scissors and to count objects up to and eventually past 20. They are both reviewing the number sequence, identifying written numbers, learning letter sounds, practicing writing by tracing lines (straight, curved, zig-zag), shapes, and anything else they can get their crayons and markers around. I think they could sit for hours tracing things...strange, but I'm glad they like it so much.
Extras--We're also incorporating some music and physical education into the mix. This is only one day a week of an actual lesson because these two are always practicing musical and physical skills. I'm interested to see how this progresses, but for now we're working through some rhythm exercises and will start very basic ear training (just matching pitch at this point). For physical education I've been taking opportunity in our normal play time to show Joshua and Hannah how to do somersaults (not by example!) and hopefully we'll be getting out some bean bags and other activities aside from the usual playground/outdoor running and climbing.
That's the run down. It does seem to be going very well. In fact, when both kiddos had back to back tantrums at the start of our school time last Friday, they were devastated that the result of such behavior was no school. I wasn't sure if it was a wise move, but since we only cover three or four subject areas with activities that take in total an hour or less (and that's with a lot of interruptions), I figured it couldn't really hurt. And boy did it shut down those tantrums in a hurry. Although the fussing started back up when they realized I meant business and had already packed up our school supplies. Ah well...we're caught up now and they're having fun each time we gather around our dining table for "school".
I'm glad for the unintentional break, however. As I've been approaching this little experiment, it has been continually in my thoughts that if home education is going to work for us we have to find a way for it to really work. Yes, there are all the ideals behind home education, but for any of those ideals to have even the slightest opportunity of success it must first be practical. I've had more than a few months now to realize some overly ambitious ideas and some low expectations that need to be raised.
In re-evaluating, I've been considering buying a preschool curriculum. Previously I was just going off of a learning objectives list for toddlers and preschoolers. While it's fun to think of activity ideas, it's another thing to know how to plan out a week, month, semester, or year of lessons so that we cover everything. So, I checked out a curriculum that looks really great. It's even a good price and if we had a copy machine I could re-use it for any and all the little ones the Lord would choose to put in our family.
After printing out a sample lesson plan for one week, I put it into action. It worked quite well. In fact, so well, that I thought I could probably come up with something similar. Well...maybe not quite. Since looking through how she broke down certain activities over the course of the week I picked up on a pattern and thought, "I could do this if I just find the right resources for the occasional worksheet or coloring page and some ideas for crafts and projects."
We've planned the first month of lessons and so far it's been very manageable. Mind you, we've only been doing it since just after Labor Day weekend. Not exactly a great length of time to determine our success, but so far we're doing well. Praise the Lord! And I'm feeling more organized and learning to prepare things way ahead of time (or as much ahead of time as is possible given all the many circumstances of our family life).
Some highlights for the month of September are as follows:
Social Studies--Joshua and Hannah are each putting together an "All About Me" book. So far they've drawn a self-portrait, learned their full names, learned their birth dates, and taken their height and weight measurements to be recorded. They seem to really enjoy this, and the booklets are really cute too. Maybe some photos will come once they're finished.
Science--We're learning about animals right now. I tried to select a variety of different wild animals, particularly varying their habitat. In the end, it works better when the kids choose what animals we study. So far they're nearly all from Africa: elephants, lions, zebras, giraffes and rhinos with some kangaroos and giant pandas thrown in. All in all it's been a good unit. We made a world map (which is now colored with a "beautiful rainbow" compliments of Joshua) onto which we glue a picture of each animal and a fact card that reminds us where they live, what they eat, and some interesting fact we learned about them. Just ask Hannah where rhinos live and you'll hear, "In grassy plains Africa."
Lord willing we'll be doing a short unit on plants as well, but more on that once we've actually started and (hopefully) completed it.
Bible--This is a bit hard for me to decide what to work on. So much of what I write for Bible curriculum Joshua and Hannah have already gone through at least once in the church nursery (and will continue to repeat yearly until they're out of kindergarten) that I have to get creative at home so they don't get bored. We did a unit on Jonah, which was moderately successful. I say that only because the main thing that they say they learned was that "Jonah ran away". Not really what I was going for, but we're slowly but surely getting around to the point that, even though he did run away, God extended love and mercy by sparing his life (via the big fish) and restoring Jonah to a righteous relationship with Himself so that Jonah could then go on to do the Lord's will. Anyway...they think it's all about running away and big fishes saying "Gulp!"
The Basics--Basic reading, writing, maths, and readiness skills are regularly in our daily lessons. Joshua and Hannah both love these activities. They are the easiest and generally simplest to prepare because a lot of it is practice and experience with the skills at this point. Hannah is learning shapes and colors. Joshua is learning to use scissors and to count objects up to and eventually past 20. They are both reviewing the number sequence, identifying written numbers, learning letter sounds, practicing writing by tracing lines (straight, curved, zig-zag), shapes, and anything else they can get their crayons and markers around. I think they could sit for hours tracing things...strange, but I'm glad they like it so much.
Extras--We're also incorporating some music and physical education into the mix. This is only one day a week of an actual lesson because these two are always practicing musical and physical skills. I'm interested to see how this progresses, but for now we're working through some rhythm exercises and will start very basic ear training (just matching pitch at this point). For physical education I've been taking opportunity in our normal play time to show Joshua and Hannah how to do somersaults (not by example!) and hopefully we'll be getting out some bean bags and other activities aside from the usual playground/outdoor running and climbing.
That's the run down. It does seem to be going very well. In fact, when both kiddos had back to back tantrums at the start of our school time last Friday, they were devastated that the result of such behavior was no school. I wasn't sure if it was a wise move, but since we only cover three or four subject areas with activities that take in total an hour or less (and that's with a lot of interruptions), I figured it couldn't really hurt. And boy did it shut down those tantrums in a hurry. Although the fussing started back up when they realized I meant business and had already packed up our school supplies. Ah well...we're caught up now and they're having fun each time we gather around our dining table for "school".
04 September 2010
Sans Kiddos
So, Claude and I enjoyed the first overnight without little guys since Joshua was born over three years ago. It was wonderful...and also a little bit strange. Our day to day has been so full of joyful noise and fairly constant needs that it was surreal to be at home or going out for the day with so little fuss. Could it be true that we were ready to go out for the day with a mere five minutes of preparation? Apparently this is what our childless lives were like. Who knew that we had so much time?
To make the time even better, God arranged for a beautifully cool and dry day - just what this pregnant lady has been praying for most of the summer. Every time I felt the wind on my face it was like all the hot, sweaty, humid days were being washed away and with them my poor attitude about being uncomfortable in such weather. Praise the Lord!
The kids loved their night away, too! When we came to pick them up this evening, Joshua looked like he might cry and then quickly ran to find something to play with. Maybe if he was busy we would let him stay??? Hannah was more excited to see us, but certainly not in a hurry to get back home.
Thank you, Lenharts, for making this time possible and for providing the kids with a very fun time! From their own lips, the favorite parts of the day were as follows:
Hannah, "Going outside with Sarah and eating pizza."
Joshua, "Playing in the sand."
I'm sure we'll be hearing about this from them for days, even weeks, to come. :)
To make the time even better, God arranged for a beautifully cool and dry day - just what this pregnant lady has been praying for most of the summer. Every time I felt the wind on my face it was like all the hot, sweaty, humid days were being washed away and with them my poor attitude about being uncomfortable in such weather. Praise the Lord!
The kids loved their night away, too! When we came to pick them up this evening, Joshua looked like he might cry and then quickly ran to find something to play with. Maybe if he was busy we would let him stay??? Hannah was more excited to see us, but certainly not in a hurry to get back home.
Thank you, Lenharts, for making this time possible and for providing the kids with a very fun time! From their own lips, the favorite parts of the day were as follows:
Hannah, "Going outside with Sarah and eating pizza."
Joshua, "Playing in the sand."
I'm sure we'll be hearing about this from them for days, even weeks, to come. :)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)