We were having a good day. A great day even. We got through school with only tears during, ironically, Handwriting Without Tears. The liars. (As an aside, I actually like the curriculum, we just have a child who weeps easily when her errors are pointed out.)
I met another homeschooling mama to buy a couple of books for next year--Sequential Spelling for the girls and a book teaching letters with Cuisinaire rods for the boy. I want something tactile for him since he's always asking to 'do' school with the girls and we're more than a year from kindergarten for him. We stopped by the store and bought some extra produce for the week. The kids asked for pears and asparagus, not cookies.
We came home, seeing a lemonade stand at the front of our neighborhood. I opted to take the kiddos home for a quick lunch and then walk back in the crisp air to get lemonade. We ate lunches. The kids had peanut butter on wheat with carrot sticks, and I had a salad. We took a nice walk, but when we got there, the young entrepreneur had packed it in. Maybe she would have done better with cocoa today.
The kids took it well. I promised them we would make our own lemonade for snack time. We marched back home, a mile round trip. I opened some windows upstairs and we had 'quiet' time.
We made lemonade. There is always a bit of a struggle when the kids are in the kitchen. They all want to get to do the most. No one wants to share, but we got the lemonade made with relative ease. I let the big kids sit on the front porch with the storm door ajar, the baby in the jumper, and I was between them in the dining room straightening up our school books.
Suddenly there are shouts from outside. Gabby knocked Nate's lemonade over, soaking him. He sat there, dumbfounded, continuing to soak up the lemonade with his pants. I called them all in, shutting the door and putting his cup, with some lemonade remaining, on the table. I told him to take off his shoes and his pants to change. Instead he takes off his jacket and tosses it on the table...knocking the rest of his lemonade onto our school books. We wipe it up as best we can and he runs off to change.
The big kids finish their snack at the kitchen table. Now the baby is finished jumping. I go to retrieve her. I had changed a couple of dirty diapers earlier, so I was shocked to find that she had leaked some on to the front of her clothes. When I laid her down, matters got much worse! Two grocery sacks (retrieved by Nate), 15 baby wipes (fetched by Gabby), and a bath (run by Kate) later the baby was clean...then off to treat her clothes (by the way, I've found a paste of Shout and an oxygen cleaner works wonders--not a paid endorsement, but it has saved several outfits, even if they ran through the wash, but not dryer, first) and the jumper, which does not have a removable seat, despite the fact it is fabric.
Now to get dinner on the table. I wonder what adventures that might hold!
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