On the move!!

This little guy is ready to go!!! I'm afraid his little tiny legs have trouble keeping up with the pace at which he wants to go, but I don't think it will take him too long to figure this out!!!

Finally!!

The world heaved a sigh of relief yesterday!!

Hanging on by a thread

Have I mentioned that Rachel's top front tooth won't come out?  Have I mentioned that she can't focus on her schoolwork or her violin practice because she thinks about (and wiggles) her tooth?  Have I mentioned that Rachel can't sleep, worries about ballet, and is nervous about Art because she thinks she'll swallow or lose her tooth (as in, can't find it when it comes out and therefore can't leave it for the Tooth Fairy).  It has gotten so bad that she is now writing notes to the Tooth Fairy.  Two nights ago she left a note under her pillow to ask the Tooth Fairy what she could do about her tooth.  Luckily, the Fairy had some special powder that she left in an envelope for Rachel to rub on her tooth after every meal.  It's purple and smells like blueberries and it's NOT WORKING!!!   I have pulled and tugged and yanked on that tooth to the point that Allen probably just passed out reading this and the doggone thing won't come out!!  This is getting ridiculous!!!  Two weeks ago she told Dr. Ed at her checkup that she'd come back in a week and let him pull it if it hadn't come out.  The next week we had to go back and see him because of her swollen eye and he tried to pull it, but it wouldn't budge.  Next week Baxter has a 9 month check up and I'm not leaving that office until her tooth is out!!!  Hopefully it will come out on its own before then, but OMG this is putting a real kink in our days!!!!  Come on, tooth!  The Tooth Fairy is obviously hovering around waiting for you!!!

What we're doing this week...

Science...finishing up Animals with Ford and Habitats with Rachel
Math...inequalities with Rachel, tally marks with Ford
Language Arts...animal folktales
Autumn stories and information with everyone leading us into a week of leaf activities next week
Ruby...letter B, activities in her preschool book, working on being patient!
Baxter...crawling on knees, climbing up stairs,  cruising all around the furniture!
Teeth...Rachel has a dangling front tooth, Baxter has a mouth full ready to pop through any day
P.E....Ford suddenly hates soccer, girls LOVE dance class
Art...awesome as always, Ford and Ruby are visiting different countries, Rachel learns new artists
Costumes...Ford now has his own Batman, Thomas, Peter Pan, and Robin costumes, Baxter is going to try out Olivia's Robin costume, everyone has to decide next week what their Halloween costumes will be and then we get to work!  Looking like a family of super heroes this year!!
We are all super happy that Fall is finally here!!!

Fair Time!

The Ingrams finally got to experience the fair this year!  We weren't planning to go but after a phone call this morning and complimentary tickets, Baxter was entered into the Diaper Derby!  Funny enough, the boy who crawls everywhere didn't move a smidgen until the girl who won his heat was finished!  It was pretty cute, though, and the big kids were excited to go.  They had hot dogs and cotton candy.  Ford and Ruby wanted to ride a roller coaster but Rachel's anxiety level was way too high for that!  Luckily, they only had enough tickets for the helicopters so no one had to stress out about the safety factors!  Rachel wanted to pick a duck instead of riding and she won a large yellow ball.  The Fair is just one more thing that is completely different as an adult then it is as a kid.  I hope they had a good time!!

Finally!

We finally had a great morning of school despite the fact that Baxter didn't take a morning nap until 10:30.  He was in a great mood and found lots to play with, so we were able to get so much done.  Everyone did some handwriting.  Rachel wrote a journal entry about why it's important to keep promises.  Ford learned about fish and filled out the L part of his KWL chart.  Rachel worked on inequalities.  Ruby put stickers on faces and named each part.  Ford read a couple of Bob books to me and Rachel read a story with un- and re- words in it.  Ruby made the letter P with Play-Doh and a witch out of Play-Doh without any help!  She also played with her alphabet cards and built letters with blocks. Rachel reviewed ocean currents and underwater life.  Ford read "How Many Spots Does a Leopard Have?" and Rachel read "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" then Ruby answered all of the questions for each story that I asked ☺️.  Ford did some work with tally marks and worked on his Lego track.  It was amazing how much we accomplished!  The girls and I went for hair cuts today and now everyone is resting (we actually turned on a movie because they've been so good and the mosquitoes outside make it miserable to play out there!!).  It was nice to feel successful at school and ready to move on to some fun activities tomorrow with what we've been working on!

Using my resources

Today was a much better school day.  We started a little later than normal so that we could clean up and get some laundry done first.  Rachel even sewed a present for Baxter before school started.  She loves bring crafty!  She worked so hard this weekend to help Allen load up bricks that we ordered her a set of looms for knitting...don't be surprised if everyone in our family has new scarves and toboggans before Christmas!  Anyway, I was delaying starting school, too, hoping that Baxter would go ahead and take a morning nap so that we wouldn't have to stop to make that happen.  Not-so-much.  He was happy to play for handwriting and math then threw a huge fit for  reading time and finally slept for Science!  During Scuence today I got the wise old idea to look in one of the books I'd bought for Rachel (What Every First Grader Needs to Know) to see if there was any info on animal habitats.  I felt about as unplanned and unorganized as I could possibly feel when I opened it to a whole section of information on all of the science topics we've been covering.  Duh!!!  Isn't that why I bought the book?!?!  I really need to get my act together here!  I'm really not doing a very good job of using all of my resources and I'm doing a lot of flying by the seat of my pants!  Just can't wait to have all of our school stuff in one place to make planning and organizing easier :)

Living on the Edge

I'm not going to sugar coat it, life is hard some days.  It seems that I can't ever have four happy or satisfied children at the same time.  Every day we think the bank is going to be ready to set our closing date on our construction loan and every day they realize they need more information or something else signed.  I guess I should say that life is frustrating.  It's rare that everything goes the way you want it to and I understand that it's not going to but some days it just seems like nothing works the way I thought it would.  This week alone (and it's only Tuesday!) the bank has put us off twice, Rachel has had a sick visit to the doctor to find out what caused her face to swell up so much that she couldn't open her left eye, Rachel's tooth refuses to come out and makes her belly hurt with anxiety that she'll swallow it, Allen has been sick, Baxter is STILL teething and not sleeping, Ford wants to rush through schoolwork, and Ruby wants to hit/kick/throw when she's mad.  We've had some rough moments!  That's when I have to stop and remind myself of our blessings and our good fortune.  Allen and I have four beautiful, talented, happy, healthy children.  We have a place to live while we get our house built, we have food to eat, we have awesome activities for our children to be involved in, and we're going to make it just fine.  It's hard not to wish ourselves into the future and be in our own place with our own things.  In fact, it drives me crazy every.single.day, but I have to stop and enjoy this time because we'll never have it again.  It's exciting that Baxter is cruising around the furniture and dancing to music.  I love that Ruby is going to ballet and art.  Ford is so proud to be a helper in his art class and to be on a "real" soccer team.  Rachel impresses me every day with her knowledge and her abilities.  I love these kids unconditionally forever and I'm so proud to be their Mama...just have to remind myself when I get to the edge and need to breathe and take a step back.

Some of the crazy stuff we've been doing

The kids have really been wanting to go to an apple orchard to pick apples like Fancy Nancy does in Apples Galore so we found an orchard a couple of towns over and got 9 pounds of apples.  We made baked apples and apple cinnamon oatmeal and will have lots of apple slices.  Our expectations were a little high so I think they were disappointed that there wasn't Apple cider to drink or homemade applesauce to taste, but they had a good time and the apples are delicious!

For our fun Friday activity this week I made a map of our downtown and we walked around identifying 6 places on the map. I made them tell me if we were going N,S,E, orW.  They did a pretty good job and were able to figure out each spot on the map ending at the candy store. I gave them their allowance and was proud of them for just spending a little and bringing back some change for their banks!

And, I just had to share this picture of Ruby.  It's rare that I get a picture of her not posing and especially rare that I catch her being so calm and focused by herself.  She has always loved to sit and look at books, though, and I love that!  She looked up at me while "reading" this version of Jack and the Beanstalk and said, "Mama, they didn't throw the seeds out on the ground in this story!"  Talk about paying attention to details!!

Life is crazy and this post is random

 Rachel started ballet today.  She loved it!  She had her usual nervous stomach but really enjoyed being with her friends and learning "real" ballet :). She definitely has the body of a real ballerina!

Ruby was so excited for Rachel to be a dancer, too!

 Saw this at the candy store...Allen is the only person I know who might even try it!!

Rachel and Ford had check ups this morning.  Everybody is super healthy and Rachel is still taller and weighs more than Ford...one day he'll pass her!!

Ford started soccer tonight.  He's on a team that will have games this year...it will be interesting to see how he does in a game!  Hope the coach lets him play defense, I think he's allergic to running toward the goal!

Allen met with the builder this evening.  We are so ready to get started and are so close.  Come on, bank!!!

Oh, yeah, we did some school work, too.  Compasses, mammals, food chain, hemispheres, counting by fives, number sequences, comparing pictures, Bob books, letter D, action sentences...

Tiny Dancer

Ladies and Gentlemen, the newest ballerina in town, RUBY MARION INGRAM!!  This sweet little girl couldn't stop bouncing off the walls after rest time today because she was so excited about putting those cute little ballet shoes on!!!  She walked right into Studio 2 withou looking back and had a great time!  Her first comment afterwards was, "Mama, we didn't do any REAL ballet."  Sorry, Ruby, the 4 and 5 year-olds in town weren't ready for plies and grand jetes on their first ever day of ballet!!  Leave it to the 3 year-old to recognize the real stuff!

Last Day Off for Awhile!

Yesterday was a holiday and it was really hard to get back to "normal" today.  Everyone has been a little grouchy and a little sensitive and not exactly thrilled about sitting still for anything.  Oh, and did I mention that we do our schoolwork in a basement?  Not exactly a happy place all the time.  Some days I don't even notice that we're in the basement, but on a day like today, it was a little confining!  I tried to get everyone through their basic work (math, handwriting, etc) one at a time while giving everyone else time to just play and have fun.  That went fine as long as Baxter wasn't trying to climb the stairs.  However, when it came time to focus on Language Arts, Science, and Social Studies...not-so-much.  Baxter screamed through all of Ford's Bob books, so I fed him and got him down for a nap.  I thought that meant we'd have a pleasant little time reading stories and filling out charts with characters, setting, etc.  Let's just say it's really hard to sit still for three stories.  I've been thinking that next week I will try to alternate days of stories and after today, I see that it is absolutely necessary.  I want to read a story one day and do an activity with it the next, so next week we'll try something like Rachel's stories on M/W and Ford's on T/TH and let them do their activities the other days.  It was like pulling teeth today to get Rachel to think of three reasons why a horse is her favorite animal (Ruby gave her 15 things she could write down, but she didn't like any of them.)  I think when Rachel's grumpy that's when we have our hardest days.  Ford can get out of a funk by playing trains for a little while.  Ruby can change into happiness if she can change outfits or draw pictures in her "Pre-K" book.  Nothing makes Rachel happy.  She just needs to be left alone and that's hard to do in a basement!  So once we zoomed through everything to a place where I felt like we could leave the baement for a little while, we went for a walk.  It was great until Rachel didn't like the game Ford and Ruby were playing (seriously, they were just naming the colors on everyone's clothes and Rachel had a meltdown when they said the colors whe was wearing!!).  So, she and I had to have a little heart to heart about arguing (her new favorite past time) and then things were better.  We had lunch, they played outside, we read two chapters in Magic Bone and now everyone is resting.  We tried all weekend to go without any sort of nap in the hopes of making bed time better, which it did, but after the morning we had, I felt that everyone needed to grab some books and lay down before we all lost our minds!!  They will be up shortly and we'll try to get in the last bit of Science (underground habitats) before heading out to violin this afternoon.  Thank goodness dinner is in the crock pot already!!!