Day 69

I thought I would try to list this day chronologically rather than by child. I haven't done that for a while.

We have been getting up later than usual for some reason -- in my case I've been staying up later and the kids have been fighting colds, I guess. I also notice that if we don't have to go out of town in the afternoon, it's more tempting to let the day take its natural course. Which ought to be fine, of course! So today I got downstairs to start the day at about 8:30. Aidan was already awake so we made breakfast together and I set out some of his "work" -- pink cards and number cards, and he got out his handwriting book as well.

Kieron and Paddy got up and started to play.

I asked Kieron to move their beds which are upstairs so that I could get to the Advent and Christmas stuff. I had Kieron and Aidan clean up the toys that had fallen behind their beds and then I did some sweeping. Meanwhile Kieron rediscovered the Christmas books which he immediately sat down to with delight.

Since they were all so wrapped up in the day and I really needed to get clean I zipped off to take a quick bath. Meanwhile Sean got up and started working on his Greek and Vocabulary.

I told the guys to do their weeklies. Then I brought the wreath downstairs (I know, it's already the 6th, but we are slow!). This caused the day to go rather wrong because Aidan wanted to play with it and Clare told him not to. I was trying to start Sean on Algebra and Aidan got very upset and to put it mildly, had a meltdown. I am not sure if moving the furniture plus the wreath etc were just too many changes for him. The aftershocks of his ill mood lasted for some time and made it difficult to focus on Algebra. We did various things to try to change the situation but it wasn't until Clare put on the Clancy Brothers that Aidan was able to get a grip on himself again.

Meanwhile, I had given Kieron a checklist of things to do (easy things because of the feast day and because he finished his math chapter yesterday). He started right in reading Nicholas the Wonder Worker and read it for a long time.

After math, I had Sean do a free writing exercise. He was not too thrilled with this. I told him to free associate on paper for a few minutes and gave him the explanation that it helped to pin down ideas that he could develop later for a paper. He reluctantly did it but obviously felt his space was being a bit invaded, which indeed is a reaction that he probably came by through his family lines. He didn't mind us reading it; in fact, that was his favorite part of the whole thing. He just didn't like dumping his brain out on paper. When you're not doing it for your own personal reasons it feels like a psychotherapy session, which is what Clare compared it to.

At that point I set Kieron to writing curves and lines, while I got ready to go exchange Paddy's boots which were too small (before the rain we are getting turns to snow). Then I took Aidan, Kieron and Clare to the store. Meanwhile Brendan of his own volition was getting the deck snow-ready, and cleaning up the front yard and putting tarps on the stacked firewood.

When we got back I gave the boys verbal quizzes on Latin and Geography. They know the Latin pretty well, but we are having some trouble with geography. This hasn't really ever happened before; the older set all knew their geography since Brendan was so into it. I am not talking complicated; they still get countries and continents mixed up at present. But they know their oceans at least.

Then I left the boys to play with their Bionicles while I came upstairs to write this. Clare is trying to figure out what to sing for Christmas at the church (she was asked to do a solo). She is just a bit stressed. The boys followed me and are now wrestling/quarreling on the bed. Brendan is cleaning the bathroom.

Later on I will explain the Jesse Tree to Kieron. We haven't done one before. He loved the MacCaughrean book though and was following me around narrating it yesterday. So hopefully he will like the symbols and the explanations.

This is Thursday so I am going to try out my planning flowchart.

Our laptop came yesterday and Kevin has been spending the day rerouting our local area network. So along with the beds out of place and all the other different things, I suppose I can see why everyone is a bit on the edgy side today. Not that we're all snarling at each other; but we seem to be a bit more extroverted and volatile than we usually are. We introverts seem to need our equilibrium ;-).

Evita was good yesterday, I hear, and tonight Sean has his football awards ceremony, which he is dreading (because he was injured the whole season and didn't really play, therefore he will be humiliated to get an award and all that). He is hoping for a blizzard so we have to stay home.