I think we're going to have another first tonight...I think I'm going to be asleep before Isaac gets home.
He and Ben are at a magic event and I'm so tired. It's been close a few times in the past, where I've been in bed when they get home, but tonight I might actually be asleep
Stay tuned
A few weeks ago I was at the library during story time. And they started doing the Bunny song. ("See the little bunnies sleeping til it's nearly noon..." Oh, that was my favorite song at story time. The kids were so still, trying to sleep. And then so excited to hop. Anyway, it got stuck in my head today. I told Isaac about it while dropping him off at rock climbing.
Then at karate we were doing some finger stretches. "Open, shut them. Open, shut." ...which of course reminded me of another story time rhyme, "Open Shut them" So I told Isaac about it when I picked him up.
(Also, having Mr. Rob do the songs instead of random internet channels was 100x better.)
Yesterday at bed time I had 101 items on my to-do list. This is rather high, but I also had put all my weekly Wednesday items on it already - laundry, groceries, etc.
Today at bed time I have...99 items on the to-do list! Oh my goodness. Today it felt like for everything thing I did I put at least one thing on the list, and that was pretty accurate. I also didn't finish nearly as much as I was hoping, so most of my "really fast" items are still on the list.
Oh well, I still got stuff done. It just wasn't the stuff I was planning on.
Isaac was trying to trick the facial recognition on the laptop. It still recognized him.
We had about an hour between getting home from school and going to rock climbing. I had to get dinner ready. The kids were trying to eat a filling snack and were blocking the way out of the kitchen. So I sat down in the middle of the kitchen floor. It hadn't really been a long day, but I talked more than normal during classes. Isaac joined me, because when you do something funny he joins in. So then Joshua joined in, because now sitting on the kitchen floor is cool. Joshua was trying to stop eating the peanuts and having a hard time...he would have just one more. I'm not really sure what we talked about, but it was the best part of my day.
Tomorrow I'm working on the normal Wednesday things, but also trying to get as many things off my to-do list as possible. I've prioritized them by estimated length of time instead of importance like normal.
This morning I found Tornado on my chair when I started work. He didn't stick around very long. A bit later I got up for a five minute break and what do I find when I come back? Tornado on my chair.
Later I found this on my ground turkey and thought it was a bit hilarious, so I texted it to a group of friends.
It seemed like a weird brag. "3 larger LB size!" 33% more than the 2.25lb tray...what a weird thing to say. Who sells 2.25lb trays? Apparently Aldi/Kirkwood does! I thought it was just a random fact that they put on for selling purposes.
Lastly, an actual plot twist. The lab for this week has the x-axis in the horizontal direction, but there were some typos in the procedure such that sometimes the vertical axis was y and sometimes it was z. So my co-teacher and I made a decision that twisted the plot for some of the steps. (Hahahaha. I've been waiting all afternoon for that one.) In case you care, y is now vertical. I was a bit intimidated by my co-teacher at first, but she's super nice.
I put down a basket of clean laundry next to Horizon. He looked at it with disdain. I agreed.
The boys and I went to a rock show this afternoon. We went in the afternoon instead of the morning - it was a good choice as it wasn't as busy as last year. There was a nice scavenger hunt and the kids enjoyed figuring out what to buy with the money that I gave them.
Today I was purposeful about spending some time on Operation: Clean the House. I had plenty of things I was supposed to do, but O:CtH makes me feel like I'm actually accomplishing things, especially things that don't need to be done again the next week. Anyway, I worked on the laundry room. I cleared off the dryer, cleaned the inside of the washer, and mostly finished cleaning the cabinet. I got rid of a bunch of random things along with several bottles.
I also used a coupon for a sleep over with three of Joshua's four stuffies. I also got to sleep with Giraffe.
However, Creeper was really sad to be left out and gave me a coupon for a sleepover with him. Note that Creeper is just learning how to write.
Stuff got done today. Today is my boring weekly chore day, so I was happy that I was able to get a few other things done too - that doesn't always happen.
My arms are sore from rock climbing yesterday. It's probably the first time I've actually been sore; Joshua worked me hard.
This evening Ben and I went to the Gentile lecture at Hope College. It was given by one of the guys that he lived with senior year in Reese, Dr. Chris Avery. It was interesting and not too long...no one fell asleep. :D But really, it was pretty interesting. Afterwards we went to dinner with Andy and Natalie and that was really nice too. It's nice to be able to leave the kids for a while, but Joshua was also really happy that we were back in time for books before bed.
Today felt odd, but I'm not really sure why. Grading went a bit faster than expected today and I had coffee with Pat this morning. I was just sitting down after that to finish the last two lab reports when I got a call saying Joshua wasn't feeling very good.
So I went back out to get him. He didn't look amazing, but he wasn't all that sick either. We both had lunch and took a nap; it seemed to help him out. I feel like he always has one of these days in the first few weeks of school and I'm not really sure why.
I finished grading along with a few other small random things after nap time. I don't feel like I got a ton of stuff done today, but it really was pretty productive in the end. I am not winding down like I normally do at night, which might be a problem. We'll see I guess.
So, in our last D&D round Joshua had managed to get a potion of acid resistance. (Not at all ominous, right?) Today's fight was against some puddings that dealt acid damage. A lot of acid damage. What does Joshua do? Drink the potion? Oh no. He throws the potion at one of the puddings. (Isaac and I did not really agree with this action, but not too vehemently. He gets to decide his own actions.)
Our fearless dungeon master was not expecting that. The internet was not expecting that and had no guidance on what happens when an acid monster drinks an acid resistance potion. So Ben made it up. The pudding globbed over it, eroded the container, and reacted very poorly to the potion. It didn't quite kill it, but almost.
Was this the best choice? Still unclear. There were two other puddings to deal with and they rolled well, so a lot of damage was given by them. However, they were also very strong, so getting one out of the way quickly was helpful. Either way, it was a fun choice.
Thursdays will be our busy day. The other days all of have aspect of busy, but Thursday is the day I have extra help sessions and in the evening we're all going in different directions. (However, I did make all my appointments today! On time without reminders even.)
And so we finally reached 8pm and time for books. I did fine with the prayer and the Bible reading and then started reading our story book...and also falling asleep. There were a few words that I stretched out a lot, but then the kids would start laughing at me and I'd wake up. I could tell the whole thing was a bit rough...normally I read a few words ahead to help with context and voice and whatnot, but tonight that wasn't working. I was reading one word at a time and it was not going well.
It's been a while since I've read out loud and fallen asleep, but there were a few times when the kids were so small that it happened. I always felt bad about it because I love to read, but sitting down, snuggling with warm bodies on not quite enough sleep just did me in.
I was able to work on chores today. It's amazing how it can sometimes feel like a luxury to have time time to do them. For the most part though, they were boring chores. I did make some raspberry jam, although it didn't seem to be setting very well. Oh well, I'll use it like jam anyway. My to do list has gotten slightly smaller, but there are still a lot of things on the "this is important to do soon" list.
I put the baby gate back up today. After asking people multiple times to please take stuff downstairs and put it away and everyone, including myself, 95% ignoring me, I put it up as a reminder barrier. It has an aggressive sign that says "BRING SOMETHING DOWNSTAIRS." It's been amazing in the four hours it's been up - about a third of the stuff has been brought down.
I also got a jury summons for next month. Of course. It's been a crazy week so let's just add that on top of it. I asked for a deferral until December and they granted it. I know December is often busy too, but teaching wise it's easier to hand off to someone else. Don't worry - I'll complain if I get called on a week I didn't want to be called on. (The first week of December would actually work really well.)
Today was crazy busy, but otherwise fine. I just finished the stuff I needed to get done, but it's now done. I do expect that following weeks will be better, but the fact that the kids had Friday and Monday off along with it being the first week of college required some extra work. I'm going to be optimistic about it at least.
We were all at rock climbing tonight - Isaac for dev team and Joshua to climb and me to climb and have a parent meeting. Since we were going to be there a while, Joshua decided to climb one of the routes 300 times. It isn't a high route, but 300 times is still a lot. He climbed and then jumped off the top. Half way through the time I told him his rate was a little slow and he needed to pick it up, and he did! He was a ball of sweat that barely wanted to move when we left, but he was proud of himself.
I was in Isaac's bedroom this morning and he said, "When Joshua is done on the Switch can you come and take me out?" I said, "take you out like hit you really hard?" No. He just wanted me to get him out of his bedroom...which makes more sense, but his phrasing was so weird.
This morning we did another segment of our D&D story. There was a mimic that surprised us, although we really shouldn't have been surprised. I think mimics are my favorite monster right now, although that is partially because they've been coming up in a lot of good stories recently.
This afternoon we went to a pool party. It was really fun and wore everyone out.
