Category: Groftzoo Updates

Moving Right Along

Things are picking up speed again in the Groftzoo. Paisley recently returned from a 10 day stay at a Carmelite convent. She and other girls worked there while the nuns put on retreats. Paisley is VERY glad to be home, and very glad to be able to take a nice LONG shower after 10 days sharing a shower with 7 other girls! She had a good time and missed her family all at once. The rest of us are very glad to have her back.

I am still feeling nauseated several times a day. Some days are better than others, but I am able to do more and more of my usual duties. Everyone is relieved to have real dinners made for them again! (Well, at least sometimes!)

Summer is in it’s fullest, hottest swing right now with daily temps ranging from 106-112 or so. The monsoons blew in this week with a doozy of a storm while Jay was out of town. The kids all slept through it, but the dogs sat by my bed and cried the whole darn three hours of thunder and lightning! Big babies!

I love to watch the clouds grow around the edges of the city as the afternoon wears on. There is always a little suspense about whether or not there will be a dust storm or even a bit of rain. It is interesting that after a big storm like we had a few days ago, it takes a few days to kind of charge itself up again. But today driving around at noon, I already saw some thunderheads forming! It is so exciting!

Tessa is talking up a storm and always surprises us with new full sentences. The other day she came running around the corner and ran into me in the kitchen, falling on her bottom as she did so. She looked up at me and exclaimed, “Look what you did with me!” I hemmed and hawed a bit and then she pointed her fat little toddler finger at me and accused, “You did it on PURPOSE!” I tried to plead not guilty, but she would have none of it!

Her other favorite thing right now is to walk around the house saying, “Rock, Pa-PER scissors” over and over. She doesn’t understand the game, but she knows it must be fun since her brothers and sisters play it!

Getting back to “normal”

Whew, finally the morning sickness has mostly calmed down, although I am still on some medication to keep it at bay. I will be 14 weeks along tomorrow and this is by far the earliest that I have ever been this close to normal! Thank God for this miracle!

Lots has been going on while I have been ignoring my blog. Most importantly, Paisley and James are heading off to school in the fall! Wonders shall never cease! We found a charter school that focuses on Classical education and are really excited about it. It covers 7th-12th grades, so that is why both children are about to go. Paisley will be a freshman this year (9th grade) and James will be in 7th grade. The school is quite far away from our home, so transportation will be an issue. But hopefully we have found some answers for that.

That means that next year I will only have Posy and Ben (4th and 2nd grades) to teach at home, plus Tessa and halfway through the year a new baby. I am so relieved at having to only teach two grades. I hope that we can have a lot of fun this year!

Can I just tell you that I have an amazing husband? He has single handedly kept food on the table, a reasonably clean house (well, it wasn’t fodder for the health department as it could have been!) ferried children back and forth to baseball games and gymnastics, and still worked full time out in the Arizona heat. He is truly my hero. (Although he is now very relieved at the parts I can take over again a little bit at a time!)

Yes, it’s true!

Groft baby number 6 is on the way!

We found out a week ago and have been having a lot of fun sharing our good news. This will be our second miracle baby after Jay’s vasectomy reversal. Most people have been very happy for us, but now everyone is watching me like a hawk to see when *IT* hits me. IT is Hyperemesis Gravidarum, otherwise known as extreme-knock-you-on-your-butt morning sickness.

I have felt mostly fine so far. I have been shoveling in the protein, which is in no way helping my diet! But it is helping to keep away those very mild queasies that I get from time to time. I have also been slightly more tired, but that is really all so far. Sometimes I am not sure that I am pregnant at all! (But since I have had now *8* positive tests, I think I should go ahead and believe them.)

So I am walking along through my days, trying to act as normal as possible, all the while knowing that any day now *IT* could hit me and I will be down for the count. Sometimes I dare to hope that IT won’t happen, but it is still very early yet. VERY early yet.

So anyway, in spite of the fact that my life could be indefinately put on hold at any moment, I have been walking in the clouds. Oh, it’s a BABY. I’m havin’ a BABY.

Good things come in twos

Two Rainbows:
It was good Friday, and I was talking to a friend about my raging hormones. She asked me if I thought I was finally starting to get my cycle back. I looked up into the sky and saw Two Rainbows right at that very moment.

Two Days Later:
On Easter morning, my temperature went up, showing me that my wild mood swings were, in fact, caused my hormones and impending fertility.

Two Weeks Later:
Will I see two pink lines? Shoot, it didn’t even take THAT long! Easter baby is on it’s way! (To be met in January.)

A Saturday in April at the Groftzoo

I woke up bright and early this morning to get some of my Don Quixote notes typed out. Tessa had already been waking every 15 minutes for a couple of hours, just sure that it was morning and time to nurse. I held her off until 5:30, nursed her into a deep sleep and then found myself too wide awake to sleep anymore. So why not get up and get some work done?

Before I finished that, Jay and Tessa woke up and came in to wish me a good morning. I finished up (at least as far as I was going to this morning, and went in to take a shower while Jay made the bed, put Tessa on the potty, and went down to breakfast. When I was done showering (and dressing) I joined them with the good news that I am now down *15* pounds in all! Yahooo!

We dragged the rest of the munchkins out of bed and Jay is now taking Ben with him over to go and mow the lawn of some friends. (We barter piano lessons for lawn care.) They will give Ben a ride to his baseball practice this morning, since their son is also on Ben’s team. I don’t know how he will get home yet… I guess I will find out!

My next job is to keep the laundry going while figuring out how much money is in our checking account. Ooh fun! I then have the privilege of making our comprehensive grocery list and taking the rest of them with me grocery shopping. We also need to buy a birthday present for today’s party.

Jay and Ben will be home around lunchtime, and hopefully by then I will have procured some food to feed them. Then Jay is off to go sing at a wedding and Posy to a birthday party, leaving me to party with the laundry. Ah, but with Tessa’s help, it will be very fun!

Amid all of this James and Paisley will ask me repeatedly if we are going anywhere interesting today. Um, nope. Not if I can help it. Ah… to stay home for a whole day, that is what dreams are made of.

Tessa do you want a drink?

I asked Tessa if she wanted a drink this morning, but she kept ignoring me. So I asked if she wanted a drink of milk or a drink of water. She looked up to the ceiling and pondered for a second and then said, “A drink of socks.” and cracked up laughing! She thinks she is so funny! (And I have to say that seeing a two year old laugh at their own jokes is pretty darn cute!)

Springing Back

What a school year! It has been quite a ride, and it’s not over yet. Looking back to the beginning of the year, I can see how much progress we have made. Reading abilities have improved, study skills are becoming more ingrained, and math facts are becoming more natural to all involved. Even the kids are starting to notice that learning is coming a little easier to them these days.

I still have so many days where I fantasize about sending them off to school, doing my house work, a little studying or scrapbooking, then fixing a snack and greeting them with a smile when they come home from school. But then I remember that this is really just a fantasy, and most days wouldn’t be like that anyway. Besides, I would really miss them.

Spring is a time that homeschooling really meshes with our family culture and stops being a way of studying. we have spent several months working really hard, but now there are things around the house that we have neglected, and yet there is still studying to do. In order to balance the two we have to kind of squish them together. The result is a day of housework here and there punctuated by reading, math, and quite a bit of play.

Lately James and Posy have been reading “Archemedes and the Door of Science” aloud to me. So I decided to just follow along on that train of thought and added in some Greek Myths (which Ben has enjoyed listening to as well) and some projects. Last week James and Posy spent a whole morning making a cardboard Labrynth for our guinea pig “Minotaurs” to run through. Tessa got a hold of it, though, before any pictures could be taken, and pulled it to pieces.

Paisley is working her way through Key to Algebra, slowly and in spurts. She has really been concentrating on History this year and the writing assignments that have gone along with it. Her writing skills have really taken off this year! She has also just begun working through C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity and we are discussing that.

Posy is learning her division facts now. She is really getting fast with them. Her math book, Rod and Staff grade 3 only goes up through the 6s, but we will cover the rest this summer.

Ben’s reading abilities continue to amaze me. Yesterday I started having him read to me from McGuffey’s Third Reader. He struggled just a little bit, but overall he did better than I expected. He has been devouring Magic Tree House books like crazy, going through 3-4 of them a week!

Tessa and I have been doing a few activities in Slow and Steady Get Me Ready. She really enjoys working one on one and loves to be read to as well. Some of her favorite books are Corduroy, Goodnight Moon, and Elephants Never Forget. She loves hearing nursery rhymes and is starting to be able to fill in the blanks if I leave out a word and wait for her to say it. But she gets tired of that game pretty fast and after the first two or three times will just say, “I don’t know.”

Been Away a While

Well, time sure does fly, doesn’t it, it has been a long while since I have posted any updates here, but there has been plenty going on! All three girls have had birthdays, and we have been through a nasty bout with the flu and some health issues for Jay.

Jay went through some steadily worsening pain a few weeks ago, and it went on and on. He kept going to doctor only to hear, “We can’t find anything wrong with you.” It was very frustrating for all of us. To make a long story short, he was finally diagnosed with Colitis, still waiting on the info of what kind, but the doctor was able to put him on some medication to control it. He is feeling much better now and is back at work!

Tessa Turns Two!

Our little princess turned two. It is hard to believe how fast time has flown. One minute she was a tiny baby in our arms, and now she is running around, making her own jokes, taking her shoes off (again and again…) and talking our ears off.

She is learning to count. She usually just counts “6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11.” She can say her ABCs along with us. She loves to go bug hunting with her sister, Posy. She sings all the time. When she can’t think up a song, she will just hum to herself and make up one. She has been fully potty trained for sometime now, and is sleeping mostly in her own bed (but still in Mommy and Daddy’s room!)

Tessa is learning to make the sign of the cross, how to pray a Hail Mary, how to wait for our grace to be said before she eats. She knows Jesus when she sees statues or pictures, and always wants to kiss his owies. She tells him she loves him and we tell her how much he loves her!

She just exudes sweetness, and we are so blessed to have this little jewel in our lives!