to do list

dang, my house is a wreck. this is  a list of crap i need to get done, not just to get ready for schooling, but to have a place we can function in on a day to day  basis-

1) we have so many great books. books are so great and open a world of imagination and joy.. and they are taking over my motha f*ckin house! i swear half of the kids’ room is a giant freaking pile of books. next to the huge pile is a neat little box of library books, which looks pretty dumb, but if it wasn’t for their box they would be swallowed by the cannibalistic mountain of literature on the floor. yikes. so yeah, that needs to be organized or something.

2) ditto the above, only sub books for laundry. at least i can fold the laundry and put it away once i’m caught up on it.

3) the school area. everything in the school area has a place, it just doesn’t stay there. i guess we just  need to get in the habit of cleaning it once or twice a day. i call audrey the crazy artist because her papers and crayons are sprawled out all over the place like she’s been up for days drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and working on her drawings. she gets really upset if i stack them out of order. or if gwyneth eats one of them.

4) stuffed animals. i just need to set them all free in the woods behind our apartment complex. or maybe buy another 17 animal nets?

5) the diapers are everywhere. i’m starting to see a theme here of stuff being everywhere. hrmm.

6) school journals, curriculum, and projects will need to be planned out. we’ve just been doing the bare minimum- following the handwriting without tears books, the singapore math books, and practicing reading a little at night. thinking of enrolling audrey in a part- time program through the school district here, but not sure about that. she would have to go 7 hrs a week (spread over a couple of days). i’d have to be on campus with her the entire time, and i’m not sure how thrilled i am about chasing gwyneth around the school two days a week for three hours a day.

7) stocking up on food and toiletry staples. not really sure why i feel the need to do this- we’ll have grocery money every week. it’s not like we’re getting ready for an alien invasion, yet i feel compelled to stock up on oatmeal and canned veggies. hmm.

8) pick up some clothes for the girls in a size up. i guess just incase one of them wakes up 4 inches taller and won’t fit into any of their clothing. see above for further reasoning.

9) am i running out of preparedness ideas? hmm. ok, well i guess that’s it. there is no #9. goodbye.

Plugging along…

Yeah, so I haven’t written much in here. I’m busy like ALL the time. I’m tired like ALL the time, too. We do Audrey’s homeschooling at night before she goes to bed, and she’s doing fine with that. Right now we are focusing on reading, writing, and math. I throw science and history in there when I have time. She likes history ( we’re working on ancient Egypt right now). One thing is for sure, working and having two kids is er, interesting. I have been trying to decide whether I want to keep sending the girls to daycare while I work my butt off and come home cranky and unavailable to anything except the TV, or quit my job and learn to live without money. Hmmm. So, beginning in February I will try staying home for a while. I’m feeling sort of panicked, excited, and disappointed at the same time. Doing this will make some things easier, and some harder. If we can make it work and get ends to meet without tons of stress I will be happy. Right now our house is a mess, I feel like I don’t know the kids, and I just feel like there is something else I should be doing.

Anyway, as far as the homeschooling goes I’m planning to look into a program here in Kirkland that let’s you pick and choose public school classes and do the rest of the schooling at home. I’ve only read about it online, so I could change my mind all together after talking with someone about it on the phone. It’s a small learning center, the classes are not held at a big public school ( but the children are considered public school students). Audrey is interested in trying school, but I don’t want her in school all day long so I figure this is a good trade off. If we don’t like it we can skip it next year, and if she does like it we can add another class. I need to be able to school her at least part time so I have something to do- plus I feel like she picks things up much more easily when she is learning them from me at home. I just know how she learns- she’s a really straight forward auditory learner. Her memory is scary good, too. She just needs things repeated to her a couple times, and I feel like a teacher trying to deal with other kids is probably going to get annoyed and move on before Audrey really “gets” a concept.

Alright, bed time.