We’re linking up with Not Back To School Blog Hop over at IHomeschool Network. If you are a new visitor here from the blog hop, I thank you for your visit and I hope you’ll consider following our blog in your favorite way.
I want to let you know, too, that we have a big giveaway. It our Not Back To School Blog Hop Giveaway! You can win a $10 gift certificate to the Little Learning Lovies Store. The store sells printable resources for students/teachers in grades PreK through about 4th grade.
Thank you again for your visit. I hope you enjoy the following post and come back during the week for lots of great freebies to wrap up our month long Not Back To School Blog Hop Celebration.
A Day In The Life At Our House:
My day really begins the night before. So that’s where I’ll start.
My night, right before I go to bed much too late, is full of hopeful anticipation. Excellent intentions. I go to sleep with the alarm set for a reasonable hour: Not too early, but early enough that I’ll be able to sip some coffee in peace before the kids wake up. I put my head on my pillow, take my Kindle out for just a few minutes of reading. I know it’s already late and I really shouldn’t, but it’s such a good book and surely just a few pages won’t hurt.
An hour later I wake up with the Kindle smooshed into my nose.
I blearily try to read that last page one more time before realizing that I really need to be asleep. I turn it off, put it on my night stand and shut off my light. I close my eyes anticipating at least 5 or 6 hours of sleep. I check the clock just to be sure I’m right about that. Yup. 6 hours if I fall asleep right now.
My eyes close. I snuggle into my pillow. I smile a little and drift off to sleep.
I throw my covers off and check the clock. Something woke me. What was it? Ah… The baby is awake. The clock reads 2:26. I already got nearly a whole half hour of sleep!
I stumble to the baby’s crib and scoop her up in my arms. She nuzzles into my neck and takes a deep breath, letting it out in a sigh of contentment. I hug her closer, thinking that I really should work on getting her to sleep in her own bed all night as I bring her back to bed with me. Maybe we’ll start tomorrow night. I’m too sleepy to worry about it tonight.
We snuggle close and I drift off to sleep as she nurses.
I’m awake again. She bit me in her sleep. It’s 3:49 am. I try to shift the baby around a little but she complains and wakes up my husband. I flip her over to the other side and she settles down to nurse again. I drift off to sleep again myself.
It’s 5:12. My 6 year old daughter is standing over my head. I didn’t hear her come in and I’m startled by her sudden appearance. “Mommy” she whispers in her not-a-whisper whisper. “What’s wrong, baby?” I ask. “I have to go potty!” The baby stirs. “Oh,” I say. “Go ahead.” She hesitates. “What’s the matter?” She looks at me so earnestly…”Should I flush? I don’t want to wake up the baby.” The baby moans and lets out a little cry. “Yes. It’s okay. You can flush.” My 6 year old runs to the bathroom, slamming the door into the wall as she flings it open and she turns on all the lights on her way. The baby is crying now. Potty-ing done, my 6 year old runs back to her room. She didn’t flush, and she left all the lights on and doors open. With baby in my arms I go shut off the lights, close the bedroom door for the big kids and try to settle back down to sleep. It’s 5:32 now and the baby wants to nurse again.
The baby relaxes finally and drifts back to sleep. I watch the clock until about 6:00.
The alarm goes off. I have no idea what time it was set for. I can’t remember. My husband tries to wake me up. I say no.
Husband gets up. Still don’t care what time it is. Baby is sprawled across the bed and quickly uses up the recently vacated real estate previously occupied by my husband. He tries to wake me. I say no.
Eventually, my body says I’ve had enough sleep and I get up. I check the clock. It’s 10:00! Baby is still asleep, but I jump up and get dressed quickly. I can hear my three big kids up. They are playing but bickering. I’m cross that they can’t get along and then I realize they are probably hungry. Hungry kids have trouble being nice. I’m briefly grateful it’s Monday. That means there are bagels from Sunday that I can toast and throw at them. I do, along with some quickly scrambled eggs. They devour them.
I stare at the coffee pot wondering why I didn’t program it last night. I scramble to get some coffee going. I hear the baby cry. Coffee grounds still in my hand, I go catch her before she has time to fall off the bed, not that she is really in danger of that anymore, but you never know. I shout for the kids to please get dressed and I snuggle the baby while I finish making coffee. I’ve gotten pretty good at doing things one handed.
Kids are in their room hopefully getting dressed. The baby is happily playing and sipping at her morning cup of milk. I take a moment to sip at my fresh coffee and consider the rest of the day. It certainly didn’t start the way I had hoped last night, but we can regroup and salvage the rest. My workboxes are full already. I’ve given up the complicated changes I used to do that made me crazy all week. Subjects stay where they are for weeks at a time, only changing drawers when I feel like we need to shake things up. Our workbox system is the only thing that makes me feel like I can do this. I take a moment to bless the day my oldest sister blogged about those workboxes several years ago.
It’s a pretty day out so I plan to my self to do a few of our written subjects outside on the deck. Math is always fun out there. We use the windows as a white board and the kids love it.
The kids aren’t getting dressed. I shout a reminder and they yell back “Yes Mommy” but I’m not really convinced they even heard what I said. I let it go for now, because the baby needs breakfast. I make her some scrambled eggs and slice up some banana. A piece of toast and she’s in breakfast heaven. I run back to check on the older girls and find them half naked, playing with Legos and a marble run. They’ve gotten a larger Lego stuck in one of the marble run tubes. I ask them to get dressed and we’ll deal with all that later. Time for school!
I wipe up the dining table, hoping we won’t get butter on our school work. The kids come out, ready to get the first box. We all work together all day, so we take turns getting boxes. Katie, Josie, Sarah, or some other permutation. 10 boxes means that whoever got the first one, also gets the last one. It’s a coveted privilege.
We work through our first few boxes, stuff that has to be done inside. As we do our lesson in All About Spelling, the baby joins the kids at the board, segmenting imaginary words and putting random letters on the board. She loves it. I’m beaming. Moments later she grabs a book off the shelf and tries to rip the cover off. I’m just fast enough to save the book. Homeschooling with a toddler in the way isn’t easy. I spend a lot of time half watching her as I’m working with her sisters.
And then we get to History. I know Math is next. I yell “Catch Me If You Can!”, grab the baby and run out the back door. I hear delighted giggles behind me as they do their best to scramble into their shoes. Moments later, I’m attacked by my three oldest children as my baby squeals in delight. We run around for a few moments before settling down on the big swing to read our history assignment. It’s one of our favorite subjects. We finish our chapter and I call lunch.
The kids romp around the back yard while I make our lunch. I call for helpers and they set the outside table with paper plates for sandwiches and cups for drinks. The baby has managed to get into a bucket of water, so she is not only wet but muddy. I finish serving out the sandwiches and give the baby a quick wipe down before I plop her in front of her lunch. We chat and giggle over our meal, welcoming the relaxed moment before digging into our math work.
Math outside. For some of my children, math is fun anywhere. For others, being outside makes a difficult task much more exciting and attainable. Math usually takes the longest for us. But we cover a lot in a short period of time today. Given our late start, I’m expecting it to be nearly 4:00 but it’s not. It’s only 2:26 when we finish up our math lesson for the day.
We go on to do our First Language Lessons box, our art box (which ends with tiny bits of paper all over the floor again!), and some silent reading time. Our last box is computer time. It works out perfectly because I have a laptop, my husband has a laptop and he also has is big workstation in the basement where he does most of his work. Three computers. Three kids. Hubby is out on an errand, therefore we can snag is workstation. Oh, and a napping baby! Perfect. 
Each child gets to work on two different programs while they have computer time.. The first is the hardest: they spend some time studying Italian using Rosetta Stone. They are making wonderful progress and I love to walk around listening in as they speak to the computer. Then they get to choose a math game for review of their math facts.
While they are on the computer, I’m making dinner. It doesn’t work out like this every day. Often we are done much earlier and they are outside playing. Today, though, we just started too late and I was too ambitious. I vow to ease up tomorrow. And to go to bed earlier. And to get up earlier. And to set up my coffee pot tonight so it’s waiting for me in the morning.
Dinner is over, the kids get into pajamas and realize they never did get the Lego out of the marble run. I take that piece, hoping my husband can manage to wiggle it free without breaking anything. They clean up the rest, just in time to save their toys from the threatened garbage bag. And they brush their teeth well enough and quickly enough to earn some reading time. We say goodnight and they go to bed, each turning on her own reading light. They spend 15 minutes reading and then they are off to sleep. But they don’t sleep yet. They chat and giggle for another half hour while I’m trying to get the baby to go to bed.
The baby finally goes to sleep and I have a few precious moments to spend with my husband. We snuggle on the couch and start a movie. Before I know it the movie is over. I fell asleep laying against my darling. The lack of sleep last night combined with his steady breathing was just too much. I wake up just in time to hear the baby crying. I scoop her up, snuggle her back to sleep and lay her back down, earning myself enough time to finish the clean up of the day and get pajamas on.
I meet my husband in bed. He has his Kindle out and I look longingly at mine. Surely a few pages won’t hurt anything? I pick up my Kindle and laugh at myself. But really, this is my only quiet reading time. So I quickly review in my head what went well and what didn’t with the day. I look ahead to tomorrow, ask my husband to set the alarm and settle into my book. I wake up a hour later to a smooshed nose and a crying baby. But I smile, knowing that she won’t need me in the middle of the night much longer and that I’ll miss it when she stops.
Schooling here goes pretty smoothly. It’s the daily up and out we have trouble with. I’ve never been a morning person and, try as I might, I just can’t seem to manage turning myself into one. I am very aware that the troubles in my house stem from this one thing. I stay up too late and can’t get up in the morning. But I just can’t seem to fix it. I try, though. And somehow, despite everything, the children seem to learn just fine. Entering 2nd grade now, they are working on late 2nd grade material already. So though I don’t feel like a competent housekeeper, I also don’t feel like that’s keeping us from being able to homeschool successfully. I feel like if I can manage to do this, anyone who wants this homeschool life for their children can manage it too!
Enter Our Giveaway!
Thanks for reading my Day In The Life post! I’m so glad you stopped by. While you’re here, won’t you think about entering our Not Back To School Blog Hop Giveaway? You can enter it right here:
Come back every day this week for a slew of fun freebies for kids in grades PreK through 4th grade! We’re going to wrap up our Not Back to School month with a bang!
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) If you are visiting from the blog hop, I invite you to look around and think about subscribing to our emails. We have weekly freebies that are usually free for only a few days, so you won’t want to miss them! I hope you enjoy your visit here today and I look forward to seeing you here again soon!
All three of my older girls are in the same grade level. They will be starting 2nd grade this September.
