Amazing!

Micah is still working on this potty-training thing.

Whenever I ask him if he needs to go potty, the answer is always, "NO!!!" 

But yet whenever I take him, he always goes. Hmmmm.

This boy refuses to tell me when he has to go. If I do not take him at home, he will go in his underwear and say, "Mom, I peed on your floor!" or "Mom, I peed in my pants!" This happens every.single.time.  Obviously he knows when he goes potty!  He always wears underwear at home, so he always has to change his clothes.

If I set the time at home for every 2 hours or so and take him, he is great! I literally have to drag him to the bathroom kicking and screaming sometimes, but he goes! It is those in-between times when he just goes in his underwear. :(

As for when we are outside of the house, he is great because I take him every so often. I do not know the last time he had an accident outside of the house.

He is great at bedtime too! I don't think he has woke up wet in the last 2-3 weeks. Last night, I put underwear on him for bedtime, and he woke up dry! He has been waking up in the middle of the night, so I usually take him potty and put him back to bed. This seems to be working!

Good bye diapers!!!

I also only have 1-2 pullups left; I don't think I am going to buy anymore. I think we will just be in underwear 100% of the time!

Side effect of having their own rooms!

I have learned a new side effect of the girls having their own rooms.

They now have room to have friends over for sleep overs!!! I know this is kind of minor, but before, there was no floor space to have any friends over, plus I wanted to wait until the girls were older.

Now, they are having sleepovers almost every week.

We have become pretty close to another family from our church and they have two girls the same age as Megan and Courtney.

Last night, we were at ANOTHER family's house (along with this family from church) and as we were going out the door, the two girls who are always over started begging for a sleepover, since they hadn't had one this week yet!! It was 10 pm!!

My girls came to me and said, "Dad said it was up to you." I just shrugged my shoulders- why can't these girls plan it any earlier?? Courtney took my shoulder shrug and ran off to tell everybody I said yes, which I didn't technically say! They all got excited because they had talked us into it yet AGAIN!

In the meantime, there was this other family who also has 4 older girls (they have 9 kids in all), and they were all standing there. They have also become friends, so I said, "You can't invite one family and not the other family!" I extended the invite to them too.

Guess how many extra girls we brought home last night? 5!!!!

My girls thought it was great because Matt and I both had cars there, so we had extra room.

The 2nd group of girls ran off to get their stuff, and everybody piled into the cars! I asked them where everybody was going to sleep, and they said they would figure it out! I now had 7 girls sleeping at my house (5 friends and 2 of my own!)

I just laugh about it because if I was 11 and 14, this would have been super fun!!

I told the other moms that they will not be in bed before 1:30 am, and they were both fine with it.

I heard them come upstairs around 1:40 am last night! I am not sure what they were doing downstairs, but they were quiet! How can 7 girls be so quiet that I couldn't even hear them upstairs??

Anyway, they are all still sleeping now and will probably sleep until 10 am!!

There are three girls in Megan's room and four girls in Courtney's room. They paired off by age.

How fun!!!

A Little behind?

Wow, I have fallen off the blog bandwagon! It has been about a month since I pulled this up. Either my life is extremely boring or busy lately; I am not quite sure!

This last week, I entered the stage of potty training with Micah. I wanted to wait until summer to do this AND I needed to do it when I wasn't really teaching school. I kind of forgot how much time it takes. :(

I do believe in putting children in underwear, giving them lots to drink, and then when they start dancing or showing signs they need to go potty, take them into the bathroom.  This works if you can keep an eye on them.  I will say this sort of worked this week!

 We started last Saturday, and Micah went through at least 15 pair of clothes that first day!  This was our first day, so it was ok. Everyday got a little bit better. It has been a week now, and I have learned a few things about him and potty training.

1.  He will NOT tell me when he needs to go. I either have to catch him dancing or just take him every so often. He knows how to go potty now, so that is a huge plus!
2. He will rather have the microwave tell him to go potty than me! He is kind of stubborn and doesn't like to be told what to do.
3. I cannot ask him if he needs to go potty because the answer is always "no." I need to say, "It's time to go potty."  He still usually responds with "no," but then I say, "We say 'ok, mom', not 'no.'"
4. He wants to do everything "by myself!"  He wants to get his pants and underwear off, get on the toilet, get off, and get everything back on. Usually after he goes, I lay his underwear and his pants out on the floor and walk out. He is successful about 90% of the time! Sometimes he gets very frustrated and I ask him if he needs help and he says, "NO!"  Sometimes I just help him anyway!
5. If I leave him unattended while he washes his hands, he dumps my whole bottle of soap down the sink and lets the water run to the top of the sink. He must be supervised!

6. I am still struggling with what to do when we go out in public.  Since he won't tell me he has to go yet, I have just been putting a diaper on him and not taking him potty, but I know this is not the right thing to do! I may give in and buy pull ups just for this training period! I really don't like pullups, but I cannot have him peeing through his clothes while we are out in public!!! Honestly, when he pees, there is usually some on the floor! This CANNOT happen in public!!  (Last night, he was outside riding his scooter and he peed. "Mom, I pottied on my scooter!!"

7. Oh, and going #2 in the toilet. That is totally not happening. I wish it would though!

Hopefully within the next week or two, we can get him trained to the point where he will tell me he needs to go AND I can take him out in public and not have accidents.

Micah quotes!

Last night, we were outside for awhile and our neighbor boy pointed out the moon to Micah.

Our neighbor said, "Is it a half moon or a full moon?" I could clearly see that it was a half moon.

Micah responded with, "The moon is broken!"

__________________________________________________________

Micah also had a late nap yesterday, so he was still pretty wired at 9 pm. I still put him to bed like usual, but after he laid in bed about 30-45 minutes and didn't go to sleep, he decided to get up.

I told him it was not time to play, but time to go to bed! He responded with, "I slept last night!"

Apparently he didn't think he had to go to sleep!

What do you do??

Yesterday we finished up Christian's phonics books. We had been working on these since January 2016, and we finally finished in May of 2018!! 

I have the 2nd grade program, and I asked him yesterday if he wanted to start these. I kind of talked him out of it because honestly, I want to start wrapping school up for the year.

Today when we were doing language arts, he said, "What about phonics??" I told him that we were done, and I just wanted to wait until next fall to start the next book.

He said, "Really? Can't we just start it now??" 

I guess we can! I pulled it out, and we started it!

What would you do????

Everybody is moving!

It is a bittersweet day in our house today. Everybody is switching bedrooms.

My nursery is being turned into a teenager room.

The room that Megan has slept in for TEN years is being turned into a little boys' room.

Courtney is finally getting "her" room back after being gone for about seven years.

We are also going to move  Micah into a toddler bed.


This is all started because Courtney has been begging for her own room for about the last six months.  Megan and Courtney have been sharing a room since Megan has been in kindergarten, but about six months ago, Courtney decided that she wants to go to sleep early.  This means that she wants the light OFF.  Megan, on the other hand, likes to sit up and write in her journal and read.  To compromise, Courtney would go to bed with the light off and Megan would sit in the hallway and write and read.  When I went to bed, I would turn the hall light off, so Megan had to go into her bedroom. At this point, she would pull out her kindle and continue to read a book until whenever she went to bed! Well, even though Courtney was in bed, she would often lay awake until Megan came in and then she still struggled to get to sleep with the kindle light on.

For the last three months or so, Courtney would often gather up all her bedding and go down to the couch to get to sleep. She was always in her bed in the morning, but this really became a nightly issue as of late.  She felt like she was being kicked out of her own bedroom, which she was really not, and she started begging us for her own room.

We told her that we have four children and three bedrooms, and someone has to share! I told her the only option was to put the boys together and when Micah had a consistent bedtime, the boys could go together.

This brings us to last Sunday. Matt went to Seattle for five days, and I was alone for bedtime.  I told the kids we would try some switching around while Matt was gone. I took Christian's mattress and put it on the floor in Micah's room. I wanted to see how they would do together.  I then took Courtney's mattress and put it on Christian's bed.  She now had her own room, and then Megan got her room to herself to stay up late at night.

Needless to say, there was NO drama at nigh for five nights!! There was nobody in my room crying because she couldn't sleep. There was nobody sitting in the hallway until I went to bed. Nothing! Bedtime was peaceful!!!!

On top of that, the boys played all week in Micah's bedroom together. They actually got along!!

Is this a win for everyone?? Even mom and dad?

Christian and Micah work on their relationship.
Courtney gets her own room.

Megan is not so happy about the whole thing. She has slept in that one corner of her room for ten years, but I think she is willing to move.  She said she doesn't want a blue room; I don't blame her, but we are not going to paint  it. :(

I took them to Hobby Lobby yesterday and we got some new room decorations to help them.

So that brings us to today- moving day!

End of School is in sight!

Just like every other student and teacher in Omaha, I am anxious to wrap up school for the year! I know my children are itching to be done too, but it looks like we will be going at least until the end of May and maybe into June a little bit.

Even though we homeschool, and we can quit when we want, I don't just pick and a day and call that our last day. I like to be at a good "stopping point" in our books.  I rarely finish a curriculum in one year, so I just need to stop somewhere (like a unit break), and then I pick it up again next fall.  I will continue in math and English though until we are done. I really do like to finish our "grade level" items, so we are ready to go on to the next grade level in the fall. I think by looking at everything, we have about six weeks at the most.

Megan starts high school next year, so I am trying to get things lined up there.  

Prealgebra- She has about four chapters left, so we will be trucking through that book for awhile yet. She will start Algebra I in the fall.

English- She is on her last chapter of her 8th grade book!! Her last chapter is on reference sources, such as encyclopedias, dictionaries, and atlases. I am always torn whether I should teach her these or not. I want her to know what they are, but honestly, will she ever use one??   On anther note, she is disappointed that she is done with grammar and has asked that she can continue to diagram sentences next year! She is crazy (but in a good way!)

Greek/ Latin roots- She will continue with this book next year, and then do the next book in the series. I am going to give her half credit for high school for this vocabulary study.

Writing- She finished her writing book awhile ago, so I said we would replace that with the writing assignments in her English book, but we haven't done them yet. We will get to them before the year is over! She really wants to go over the poetry section.

Reading- She has been reading books to go along with our history, and she will probably get a couple books in yet before we quit for the year.

History- She just started the 2nd quarter in her history book. I told her when she gets to the semester break that she can be done for the year. I think she has about six weeks to go. Very manageable!

Science- She is FINALLY finishing up her science curriculum that she started at the beginning of 7th grade! She is set to take the last test tomorrow. I have her next book all ready to go. She wants to start it this last month, but honestly, I wish she would just wait until next fall to start. She will be doing physical science her freshman year. 

Courtney is kind of right beside Megan in many things.

She is on lesson 107 of 170 in her math book. We will keep going all summer. She really wants to move in prealgebra next year because 6th grade math is too easy, according to her! I am not sure if she is ready for prealgebra, so we may just combine the 7th and 8th grade math books for next year. Megan does not want her only a year behind her in math! I guess I will see how the rest of the book goes. I really thought 6th grade was harder, but apparently it isn't for Courtney!

On the other hand, she only has two chapters left in her English book. She is a great sentence diagrammer!! 

She also finished her writing book awhile ago, and we are doing the writing lessons in her English book for writing. She doesn't have near as many as Megan, and they are pretty easy for her. 

She is currently reading "Ginger Pye" for reading. She will probably read one more book before the end of year. I need to figure up something for next year. 

History is also not a favorite subject for her. She is a week behind Megan in history, and I also said that when she gets to the semester break, she can be done for the year! I think that means there are about seven weeks left for her. 

As for science, she is finishing a unit on plants and will start a five week unit on invertebrates next week. Again, when she is done with that unit, she can be done! She is about in the middle of her book.

The same goes for her spelling. She is on week 31 of 36. When she finishes, she can be done! 

Christian has completely different subjects.

He is even further behind in math because at the beginning of the year, he was only doing half a lesson for awhile. I think he just got to lesson 85 of 170. We might need to double up on lessons or skip a few to get done before we go back in August!! 

He has also been working on a 1st grade phonics program since January of 2016!! He has four more lessons and we are done with this curriculum! I will probably pull out the 2nd grade program and have him start that in May. Might as well get ahead!

He is only on week 21 of 36 on spelling, so when we get to a review lesson (24), I said he can be done for the year. I won't make him continue spelling over the summer.

Next fall, I am going to start the same type of writing book for him as I did for the girls. He is going to finish up his sight words in about a week, and then I thought we could work out of a 1st grade one that Courtney started when she was in 1st grade! We will only go until the end of May and then put it back on the shelf. I will start him in the 2nd grade one next fall. 

As for reading, he has been reading short excerpts about animals and answering comprehension questions. I may just keep using this for next year. I also have a curriculum in my basement that Megan used in 2nd grade. It uses chapter books; I may pull that out for him for next year. 

AH! I think that is it!!!