the day

I don't have time to try (again) to upload photos (I'm working on it - IT's WORKING!), but I do have a moment to log in our day...now, this is as much for me as for anyone, but I know that those who read blogs (being one of them) tend toward the voyeuristic (hi, sister), so here it is for all y'all as well...

It did not, for the most part, feel like a good day. I had the greys today: unmotivated, lazy, befuddled, uncreative, blocked, and maybe a touch sad. Just the day. I also failed numerous times to be the mom I want to be, which takes me a long time, each time, to recover from.  I thought, though, that it would be helpful to see what happens, and what learning still takes place, in the midst of my feeling unproductive.

Today...

Anika and I made pancakes together.

Ani and Eliza turned the "learning tower" into a shop, and sold various items to each other while I finished the pancakes.  Made open/closed shop signs and talked about money.

Breakfast with Dan.  Ani asked about the word "midwife", then the word "mid" which led to the German "mit", which led to me talking about my German class at College for Kids in sixth grade, and the singing of "Mein Hut der hat drei echen" (sorry dad - I didn't check my spelling!).

After breakfast we all spent time drawing at the kitchen table.

At some point, the couch was dismantled for some sliding, climbing game, while I checked email (no new messages).

Dan left for school (yes, it is Sunday) around 11 while we were setting up a new game we got for Christmas, called Wildcraft.  The premise is a journey from Grandma's house to the huckleberry patch.  Along the way you harvest plants for your medicine pouch, and run into all kinds of trouble like wasp stings, bruised knees, bramble scrapes, hungry stomach, etc, and together you have to try to use the plants you've found to fix those troubles. This is game is sooo up our alley...I love it.

At some point we had lunch and read a couple of stories.

More drawing, and then got out the watercolors. The paper got bigger and bigger, and then we moved from the kitchen table to the kitchen floor and things got crazy. Paint everywhere. So, of course the floor needed some washing (again) and at this point I got a phone call about helping with homeschool choir which starts back up tomorrow, and...the floor got totally flooded, of course. Into the bathtub with two girls, hair washed, floor toweled off, laundry started...

MORE drawing, some cracking of nuts, some drawing ON nuts, some snack and then David Attenborough's "Life of Mammals".  

Dan came home while I was making dinner, I took a walk in the snow on the bike trail and shook off the day (ha), came home, ate dinner. Dan and the girls started a game of Blokus while I cleaned up and I even got some time to visit with my worms.

The girls are now playing "goat". This goes in the category of...pretend animal play? Along with "bat lions", "baby lions" and "foxes".   We also discussed birthing babies, mud houses (what if our house was made of mud and we had a mud roof?), growing millet, MLK, Gandhi, Rosa Parks, did some funky dancing and some singing, and changed clothes a few times.  Life. Today. The End. (Oh, and we talked about why "e" sounds different at the end of The in "The End")