Everything takes Longer with 7

So far so good. It's after 3 and everyone is still alive. In fact, no one is crying so even better!

We did the first half of our rainstick craft today. Even the boys enjoyed decorating the tubes although there are markedly more swords drawn on the boys' tubes. It ended up taking a bajillion years. They were very meticulous about it and very particular about their "vision." Isaac spent a long time ripping small tufts of yarn into fluffy bits so he could glue them onto his tube and then abandoned that for something else. Savannah's weighs about 47 pounds after all the things she glued and glued and glued onto it.

Once they were done I cleaned up the craft and realized it was getting close to time for William to go to Parent/teacher conferences. His appointment was at noon so I thought it would be good to get lunch going before he left. Well well well I'm not sure what happened exactly. Apparently I forgot how to make macaroni and cheese. I started out with 40 thousand million gallons of water that just wouldn't boil. Then I dumped the noodles in before it was even warm...like when you make rice. So the noodles start sorta disintegrating into this gelatinous glob and I panic. I started stirring and stirring and freaking out. It finally started to get warm when I looked at the kitchen clock.

Before I continue this story, I need to clue you in on the state of the kitchen clock. It's on our microwave, the instructions for which have long since disappeared. It has buttons and knobs and is pretty obtuse. It has a button that says "clock" which doesn't actually help you to set the clock. The only time I've been able to figure it out is when I've unplugged it or the power went out. That would be ok except that it runs fast. I'm not talking a minute fast every week or so. That would be fine. No, this is 2 or 3 minutes faster every DAY. So the last time I unplugged it or managed to hit the random combinations of buttons that allows it to be set, was a couple weeks ago. So now it's somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes fast.

So I looked at the kitchen clock. It said it was 12:30 which meant there were only a few minutes left until William's 12:00 appointment. The water was warm but the noodles were hard tubes surrounded by this gross gooey paste. I thought...well at least I can get the rest of lunch ready. So I chopped some oranges and got out carrots and granola bars but then William had to leave. Poor hungry boy.

The macaroni & cheese came out ok. In my panic I chopped up a couple string cheese and added it to the mix and all the kids ate it. William complained of a stomach ache afterward (yes it was done by the time he got back) and Isaac didn't finish his (he's usually a bottomless pit) but the girls had multiple bowls and dubbed it "Macaroni & YUMMY cheese."

Now to the park! I know we're slow. One adult with 7 kids is just going to be slow but I think we set a new record for slowness today. It took us 45 minutes to put on our socks, put on our shoes, go to the bathroom, put on our coats, put our shoes back on, go to the bathroom again, find where we dropped our coat, change out of the dress up high heels, put on gloves, take them off again because that made our hands too sweaty, and finally get out the door.

Then the walk. I get really panicked when we go to the school while the teachers are still there. There are lots of cars in the parking lot and people driving in and out. I kept stopping and talking to the kids about not running around like maniacs. I was really nervous the whole walk over as the kids, in our huge rush to leave, left their minds at home.

Finally at the park! That was nice. It was a little chilly but pleasant and the kids played great. I was still really nervous since the YMCA was outside playing with their zillions of kids and there were a few men walking around without any kids attached to them. Once the YMCA cleared out and the pedophiles all went back home though, it really was a nice playground visit.

We came home without too many stops for Amanda Lectures (my big discipline technique is to punish them with boredom if they start to disobey). Now we're home and finally watching Larry Boy! The kids are finishing up the lunches they were too full/clogged-with-cheesey-goo to eat earlier.

I had thought the day would go differently...I had allotted much less time for each activity. I think I'd rather have too many things planned than too little. Everything takes longer with 7 but that's not so bad!

Games & Snacks

This morning was sleepy and quiet until Rand & Savannah rolled out of bed and got their chores done. We had a busy and late night last night so I wanted to make sure they got some sleep. Both kids had parent/teacher conferences and then we went immediately over to our first Cub Scout Committee meeting (both Troy and I are on the committee) and we didn't get home till nearly 9:30.

Sydney and Ash Lee played Dora Candyland while Isaac & William watched Totoro. They all kept trying to go back to the bedroom and I played usher bringing them back to the living room. It was a boring hour!

Once my kids were up and going I gave them breakfast but William was so excited to play Monopoly Jr that he couldn't wait till they were done. It's a 4 player game but all the kids were gathered around watching. Rand was winning when everyone quit on him. I had to teach him this valuable life lesson: losing Monopoly is a long slow painful process and Monopoly games must end early or risk qualifying as something Dante would have included in the Inferno somewhere. Probably between the 3rd and 4th circles...first you're encased in the flaming tombs for a millennium, then you have to swim the murky tides of the river Styx being torn at by the tortured dead, then you have to play a Monopoly game all the way to the end...you get the idea.

I decided to put everybody's snack into paper sacks that we'll reuse throughout the day. We're having crackers, fruit snacks (thanks Penny!) and milk. I'm actually the most excited for our afternoon snack...mini bananas, nutella and bread....can you say YUMMM?!

I told the kids we could go outside when it hit 50 degrees. It's 43 according to my desktop weatherbug thinger so I told them just 7 more degrees. They held hands and jumped around in a circle chanting "7 more degrees! 7 more degrees!" It was cute, then a little too Lord-of-the-Flies for me so I sent them off to play...but I think they're excited!

"W" doesn't say "Wuh"

I figured I should tell everybody before the kids come home and tell you for themselves! I've talked to a couple of reading experts and read a couple of books on teaching kids how to read and found out something startling. As the title of this post says, "W" doesn't say "wuh." *cue alarming music: buh buh buh bummmmmmm* In most cases W actually says "oo" as in Boo. It takes some getting used to but it makes sense the more and more I think about it.

In words like word or well or what or woah, the wuh sound is the combination of the 'oo' sound and the vowel that follows it. When the kids are learning to read, we need to break the letters down into their smallest phonemes to make it easier for them to "hear" in their mind. Just like we want them to say "p" instead of "puh" or "mm" instead of "muh" they need to say "oo" instead of "wuh" so they can blend the sounds together to create the words.

One of the books I read suggests that beginning reading is a mostly auditory skill...not a visual decoding that we use later. If they're trying to sound out a word like "mom" but they're not using the smallest phoneme, or sound chunk, they won't be able to decipher it. It will sound like muh-ah-muh (a 3 syllable non-word) instead of mm-ah-mm (a one syllable real word). The same holds true with the w. Wow can be either oo-ah-oo or wuh-ah-wuh....totally cool huh.

Now just wait till you find out what Y says! :-)

Calling All Paper Towel Tubes!

We will be making Rain Sticks on Thursday for our weather related craft...I figure in Oregon weather and rain are synonyms! Since there is no school on Thursday I need to ask for everyone's help. We need Paper Towel Tubes so all the kids can participate. If you have any tubes sitting around, either from paper towels, wrapping paper, foil, whatever, please send them our way! Thanks!!

When It Rains, It Pours, and pours and then leaks all over the floor

Well we got back into town from our GREAT vacation Saturday morning but driving all night long twice within a week was more than my immune system could handle! I came down with a pretty major cold Saturday night and by Sunday morning I felt like poo. This morning I woke up early so I could hopefully have the medicine working by the time all the kids arrived and I think my plan worked. The headache's gone, my nose isn't running THAT much and my throat no longer feels like someone's raking it with hot pokers.

The girls have done really well this morning. They played and played for a couple of hours and I had to call them in for a snack. They've colored and lego'd and pixtered to their heart's delight.

I took advantage of their preoccupation to throw some laundry in the washer. I even threw in Scout's life jacket for a hot rinse. Of course that was a terrible idea. It floated on the top and made the washer overflow. I knew it was risky but I figured it was worth it to have a non-mildewy life jacket.

I was moving all the luggage out of the hall and trying to mop up the mess when the girls all piled out of the room. Why did you move the bags? Why are you cleaning the floor? Why are there all these bags? Why is there water on the floor? Why did you make the washer put water on the floor? Why did you put the bags in the water?

I'm constantly amazed at how disrupted these little ones get by just a little variation in life. All 3 girls will remind me if we miss a song or a do something out of order at circle time. My hope is that with our schedule they will feel comfortable knowing what happens next. That they'll have enough stability in their little lives that when it rains, and pours, and leaks all over the floor, they'll be able to deal with it better than me!