Quickly for my own reference:

Week of 3/29

Eldest - Finishing up housing/Native American block. Copied "What do we plant?" verse and drew different types of Native American shelters. Will hear story of Sacagawea and finish paragraph for The Rough-Faced Girl before block is finished. Also, will visit science museum.

Middle Boy- Copied and illustrated spring verse. Still working on word families reader. Will hear one more Irish fairy tale.

Also need to do this week - Form drawing and painting.

Happy Spring!

After over a week of sleeping through the night, it was inevitable that Baby would be up in the wee hours at least this once. It's okay, though, as I finally get a chance to sit here with him on my lap and update.

He'll be six weeks old on Sunday and I'm finding that hard to believe. He's so big now, and still as alert as ever. His naps are growing shorter (but still frequent), and his smiles are more deliberate. He loves lying on a blanket without a diaper and just looking around at everyone and everything. I'd love to do a bit more knitting for him soon, but as he's such an in-arms baby, I rarely have my hands free these days.

Middle Girl, who has ballet in a few hours, finally seems to be getting a handle on her meltdowns. They're definitely related to blood sugar and she's starting to learn that if she gets something to eat early on, they're not as bad for her. She's still contemplating public school next year, but I have a strong feeling she'll settle on homeschooling. At least I hope so; I really dislike our "neighborhood" public school (which really isn't in our neighborhood at all, but that's another story).

My dad took Middle Boy and Eldest to see Race to Witch Mountain on Friday and they loved it. It was nice for the bigger kids to be out with grandpa by themselves. I think they needed a more grown-up outing. They've been absorbed with Star Wars lately, as have some of their friends, and we've been talking a bit about all the common mythology incorporated into the Star Wars stories.

Middle Boy is just starting to learn recorder, and does better learning one on one from me than in class. I figured that would be the case. He's also doing some amazing artwork lately. He thinks in graphic novel form, and every story he tells comes out that way.

Eldest's lesson block is still Native Americans/house building and she's really loving it. She's been reading a book about Sacagawea to me aloud, along with her extra lesson reader, and she's so much more fluent now than she was just months ago. She's working on some more challenging form drawings, and her writing has shown drastic improvement. She's going to be Princess Yashodora in her LCG class play about the Buddha's life, and she's bubbling over with excitement about it.

Ah, Baby is fussing and ready for sleep. Time for me to sign off.

Middle Boy has spent a good portion of the afternoon making "mail" for everyone in the house. He made comics for the girls and sent them along with a bill. Middle Girl's reaction was, "Am I even old enough for a bill?"

Anyway, she's sitting here beside me looking over her mail intently, so interested in what he's drawn there. I love these little moments.

Of course, the batteries in my camera picked today to fizzle out. So I'll commit this bit of sweetness to memory here.

So my laptop is dead, which means that I'm now sharing our main computer with the four other computer-using people in this house. Someone commented a few posts back that they had some yarn they were willing to send me, and I just want you to know that I *am* interested, but it's been a bit crazy around here, so I'll email you as soon as I get my head back on straight (and have the time to go through my overstuffed inbox). Also, I've lost a lot of pictures/writing/homeschool records that I hadn't backed up over the last couple of months, but I'm trying not to think about that right now. So, on to happy thoughts...

We started back up with our Waldorf-inspired homeschooling schedule this week and it's going very nicely. I'm back to work at Lilac Children's Garden and my class was absolutely wonderful today. At home, Eldest is doing a lesson block on Native Americans/housing and we're currently working with Iroquois stories. She's really into this lesson block, and has been writing more and more in her main lesson book. I'll try to get some pictures up soon because I'm really impressed with her progress.

Middle Boy is still doing fairy tales, and recently we've told The Emperor's New Clothes, and a few Irish fairy tales. He also just got his pentatonic recorder today at LCG, so we're going to start working with that in the coming weeks. Both Eldest and Middle Boy have been very interested in singing more in our circle, which makes me wish I were more musically inclined. But I try to muddle through anyway, and we've had a lot of fun attempting to sing in rounds.

Middle Girl's been working on a main lesson book of her own spontaneously, and she's occasionally asking me to tell her stories so she can illustrate them there. Her ugly duckling was very sweet.

Newly Youngest is a very, very sweet baby. He has his fussy periods, but mostly he's happy to eat, sleep, and look around. He adores the Moby wrap, which is what made it possible for me to get back to teaching so quickly. This is the first baby I've used one for and I'm so appreciating it for a newborn. Which reminds me, Newly Youngest was one month old on Sunday. I can't believe an entire month has passed so quickly. I feel like I was just savoring the last few days of pregnancy, but here we are in the throes of our old routine all over again.

And on that note, the baby's ready to nurse back to sleep, and I think I'm ready to rest my eyes for the night.

Five things that are making me happy today:

1. Sick hellmonkeys who are ever so slowly starting to feel better.

2. A warm fire while it's so very cold outside.

3. A mug of hot tea.

4. A baby who has finally decided to give in to sleep.

5. A fridge full of meals from generous friends.

So sleepy today. But the dishes are done, the kitchen is clean, hellmonkeys are fed, diapers are washed and a load of sheets is in the washer now. I think I'm going to curl up in front of the fire for a while and rest.

So I have a sleeping baby in my lap, the other hellmonkeys went to bed long ago, and it's quiet in my room. I have a cup of my current favorite tea, vanilla honey chamomile, sitting next to me, and the laptop here with me. The only way this could be more perfect would be if I had yarn. But alas, our financial situation is pretty woeful at the moment, so yarn is something of a pipe dream for me right now as I try to figure out how to keep groceries in the house after this month is up. (A dear, dear friend has arranged for friends and acquaintances to bring us meals regularly in the wake of the little one's birth, which has been a positively serendipitous reprieve.)

My future in-laws are in town for a couple of days, and they came over tonight to coo over the baby and lavish attention on the other three. They're so sweet, and the older kids just adore them. The visit was rather spur of the moment (they're in the process of moving from a city 12 hours away from us in one direction to a city 3 hours away from us in the other, and are staying here on their way from the old home to the new), but it motivated me to do a bit of cleaning that's been neglected since I gave birth.

He's such a happy, mellow baby, in arms. Of course this makes keeping up with the cleaning/older kids a bit of a struggle, but I'm working on it. He's out like a light every time I tuck him into the moby wrap, so he rides around in that a fair amount in the mornings. My freakishly short carnie arms make it hard to do dishes with him wrapped around the front, but we're managing. He'll be big enough to ride on my back all too soon, so I need to enjoy this while I can.

We have a spot of our own, this baby and I, in a rocking chair beside the woodburning stove, and nearly every night we spend one of the smallest hours of the morning there, rocking and snuggling, and sometimes sipping tea. (Tea for me, that is, all he sips is breastmilk.)

I took baby and Next to Youngest to the grocery store today, in some rather sketchy weather, to restock a few staples that were running low and get me out of the house for a bit. Now that my pregnancy is over, and with it the deep exhaustion, I'd like to start doing a lot more cooking and baking from scratch, and hopefully cut down on our grocery bills in the process. I've been reading up on recipes for homemade cheese, butter and yogurt, and I definately want to try them out, along with starting to make my own breads and rolls again.

The older two and I have been sorting out our Waldorf supplies and cleaning/rearranging the dining room and getting ready to pick back up with our Waldorf-inspired homeschooling in two weeks. They're both very excited about it. Eldest asks me to read her the curriculum plan daily. I never dreamed that they'd become nearly as passionate about Waldorf as I am, and it thrills me to death.

Baby's stirring... I'll end this here for now.

Newest Baby

He was born on February 8, at 2:15 pm, into his mama's hands after a lovely, long labor surrounded by friends and family and running, laughing children. A full birth story will follow soon, but for now, I don't want to look away from him long enough to write it.