What the Mom Does....

Yesterday I shared a Semester Check-Up; today I'd like to share what things look like from the Mom side of things.

With three boys -- one in high school, one in middle school/jr. high, and one in elementary school but with learning challenges -- my job is primarily to remain flexible.

Like any stay-at-home mom I have the obvious jobs of running the household; cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc. As a home school mom as well, I have the added job of educating my boys.  Some days are easier than others, and honestly the last two days I've been blessed with rather easy days.

So how does that work, juggling household chores, supervising high school, supervising and helping with middle school, doing intense therapy/remedial school work with the youngest, and still have time for hobbies like reading and quilting?  Yesterday looked something like this.....

I got up at the usual time, about 7, to spend a little time with The Chemist before he headed off to work. He gets up and lets the dogs out, I get up and feed them and start the coffee. Then we chat while he irons his shirt for the day (I do not iron. He is fine with this, because he is better at it than I am. Thank goodness.), have coffee together, and just enjoy a quiet half-hour when we can pretend to be just the same in love couple we've been since high school, and for that little moment, focus on each other as people instead of mom, dad, etc. Have to admit, it's my favorite half hour of the day, chatting over coffee with my husband.

By 7:45 or so, he's out the door, The Adventurer is up and asking for a movie, and I am able to start my morning routine.  I settle The Adventurer on the couch for a movie while the older boys are still asleep, then I settle in to my computer chair, coffee in hand, and surf the 'net for a while. I check email, write any replies to things that have come in over night (time zones and all that...), check Facebook, browse a forum or two and read blogs, then stop by and update my own blogs. Usually I'm interrupted a time or two, and yesterday was no different -- once to fix cereal for The Adventurer, once to kill a wasp that had gotten in the house, once for water to cure his hiccups, and 2 or 3 times to quiet the dogs, busy barking at the gardener next door.

By 10:00, The Adventurer's movie is long over and his patience and ability to keep playing, ALONE, is long gone. As we're still recovering from too many late nights during Christmas break, I went and woke up the older boys (Monday they slept past 11!) and then headed to my sewing room to do some organizing. Quite a pile of scraps had accumulated there over the break, so I organized things, folded the larger pieces, tossed the odds & ends into my scrap bucket, found the next pattern I needed to start and cut the fabric for that, went through my blues, purples & aquas to select fabrics for the next next thing, etc.  A few interruptions here, too, as I broke up an argument between The Artist and The Adventurer, opened the door now that the gardener was done both next door and had come and gone from our yard, too, and put more juice in the fridge so we'd have some cold in time for lunch.

While I was doing this, The Writer was started on school work and the other boys were playing together.  I allow them play time in the mornings as they do not work well first thing; none of us is morning people, and all of us need time to come fully awake before doing things that take brain power, so until such time as school no longer fits in that time slot, they are allowed to wait and start after lunch.

For lunch yesterday I heated up frozen chicken patties. I really need to find a healthier alternative to these, but they are quick, easy, and everyone likes them; I cut mine up into a salad, but the boys eat them plain. They cook slowly which gives me time to sneak a chapter or three of whatever book I'm reading, too, and still not burn them, which is nice.

After lunch is when my day begins to get hectic. The Writer is almost 100% independent, so I just sort of keep tabs on what subject he's on and make sure he is, in fact, progressing through his day; The Artist requires a bit of direction and of course The Adventurer receives the lion's share of my time and attention as far as school goes.

So, after lunch I directed The Artist to do his English first, not his math. Reason being, we were in the midst of a thunder storm and power could go out at any moment; if it did, the internet would go down and may or may not come back up. Better to get the internet-dependent school over & done with first, while he still could, just in case. He balked a little at this change in routine (he prefers to do math first, as he enjoys it far less), but agreed and got started. In the little time that elapsed during this discussion, The Adventurer had fallen asleep on the couch.  I took advantage of this unexpected free time to start the sewing project, but it was much interrupted.

"Mom, I need your help answering these questions. You might have to read the story first."
"What's the story?"  
"Pecos Bill."
"Oh, no, I've read it before; let's look at the questions....."
"You mean it's an old story...?"
(did he just imply I'm old???)  "Yep; been around even longer than me....."  

And we tackled the questions, me explaining both how to pronounce hyperbole (no, it's not hyper-bowl) and what they are; him finding examples on the given pages and then writing a short paragraph on why authors of tall tales use them.

That done, I went back to sewing. Until "Mom......I'm done...."  Nope, son, sorry, you still have to do math. Yes, really. Yes, just the evens, now get going.

Back to sewing. Oh, except, then The Adventurer was awake, but very grumpy, so I went to take care of him.

The Adventurer has a pretty intense amount of school, most of it in the form of various therapies. Because these are therapies, they are not always easy and comfortable for him. Like a lot of kids, he gets frustrated when work is too hard, so starting with an already grumpy boy makes things difficult. I cannot complete his therapy and school work if he does not cooperate. Yesterday looked like it might be one of those days, but I opened his first activity, a directed coloring book, to a random page and got lucky.  This coloring page asked him to "save the little fish" and showed a drawing of a small fish with a very angry looking shark nearby; his job was to draw something that would keep the little fish from being eaten.  This appealed to his boyhood sense of being a hero, cheered him right up and we were able to have a pretty good session. Until....

"Mom, I don't understand this math problem...." came from the school room; I left The Adventurer playing with pick-up-sticks and went to check on The Artist.  I drew him a visual of what it might look like to start with a 34 foot log and then break off first a 9 foot section, leaving behind a log of what length? and then cut off a 12 foot section from that, and with the drawing he was able to find the answers to how long the 3rd and final piece was. Whew. Back to The Adventurer.....

A few more interruptions due to dogs, The Artist looking for a book to read (after math, he really was done), The Writer asking could he take the dogs for their walk (and that is quite the ordeal, because our oldest dog is very particular about how she gets leashed up and such, or she won't go....), The Adventurer needed a snack and a drink, etc. Up and down, up and down, and finally we got through all the interruptions and all the school/therapy stuff we needed to do for the day.

By this time it was close to 4:30, and The Writer had not yet asked for help on Geometry. Hmmm. Oh, wait, he decided on Monday that he'd try reading the chapter alone, then come to me only if he needed help; okay.  Done then with my Artist and Adventurer school duties, I washed up the dishes and then went back to sew some more. I was only working on one single 12" quilt square, and not even half way done due to all the school stuff; I was hopeful I'd be able to finish (I didn't). About this time, The Chemist called to say he was heading home (well, it was 5-ish by then..), The Writer came out to say he needed some help with Geometry, so I sat with him and went over that. I showed him an example of how to work each of the first four problems, made sure he understood what to do (he said he did), and sent him back to his room to do them, then I'd check them, read the 2nd half of the chapter and help with the last problems as needed.

With The  hemist on the way home I figured I'd better do a little straightening up, just after I finished this one little part on the sewing project.......if you sew, you know what happened; I kept sewing, and just like that, The Chemist was home. Oops. It was also at this point that The Writer came out of his room, still not done with Geometry (folks, by now it was after 6 p.m.) and asked what he had to do today for Art and English. What??? He hadn't done either one yet??? (nope). -sigh-

I walked with him to his assignment folder, where everything for every day of the next six weeks is clearly laid out, day by day. I looked at what was listed for English, and what had and had not been checked off on Monday; discovered he had a quiz to do. Six o'clock in the evening is not a good time for him to try and work through a quiz analyzing quotes from Romeo & Juliet, and his Wednesday list was pretty brief, so I allowed him to shift the quiz to Wednesday, to be done along with the regular Wednesday stuff.

Flipped back to last week's art, where he'd stalled out; found the Art Criticism assignment, printed it for him, handed him the sheet of questions and the book and out he went to the back patio while I chatted with The Chemist about how our days went, allowed the younger boys some Nintendo time, did the straightening up I'd neglected while sewing, etc.

By 6:45 I found The Writer still sitting on the patio, one of four answers done. Sigh. I took the book from him and asked the questions out loud; he answered, I wrote. I "translated" some of the questions into plain English instead of Art-ese, which helped. Handed him back the book so he could "think about it in an emotional way" and answer the remaining questions about the emotional response to the drawing, then went inside to help The Chemist start dinner. At which point The Writer confessed to still not having finished Geometry, so he brought that into the kitchen, I walked him through the assignment and The Chemist cooked dinner.

That part would have been comical if not so frustrating. The Writer had 12 problems to do, so I worked an odd problem as an example (his were all evens) and had him follow along, then had him do the even that corresponded. In between, The Chemist was asking advice on how to do the mashed potatoes, I was doing more dishes, The Writer kept getting tripped up (slope intercept and such, y'all; not fun). This half hour/forty-five minutes was probably my least favorite of the day -- I am not the best multi-tasker, so Geometry, dishes and dinner prep all at once was just a smidge overwhelming for me. The main problem being the Geometry.

I understand math and am relatively good at it; The Writer understands math and is pretty talented at it. We do not, however, learn math the same way, so the way I teach math is not the way he best learns math. This is why I keep trying to outsource it. His on-line program though does not have live lectures (or even recorded ones), so I am still teaching Geometry, even though someone else is grading it. We are thinking that next year, we need to find something with an actual outside teacher for math, for The Writer's sake and mine.

Finally at 8:00 we were done cooking, done Geometry'ing, and could sit down, eat dinner, watch a little TV, do a little more sewing, and just enjoy the evening. Whew! Notice that yesterday did not include any laundry or deep cleaning; I should have done a load of laundry but did not, and we do our deep cleaning on Fridays, period. The other days I only sweep as needed and do things like dishes and clean up spills.

Come back tomorrow for a look at what The Writer's day looks like, a freshman in high school using an on-line program. Friday will be The Artist's day & The Adventurer's day (I'll combine those, as neither of them takes a full day), and next week I'll share what it's like to take school on the road when Dad has a business trip.