School Days, school days….

Our school year is now in full swing!

Paisley and James have jumped in with both feet. Between homework, volleyball for Paisley, and flag football for James it seems that they barely have time to breathe let alone sleep! But in spite of the mild complaining, they seem to be blooming and even secretly enjoying school.

Home schooling has been greatly simplified by the loss of my two older students. With just Posy and Ben to teach I have time to work with each of them each day and correct their work as it is done. Tessa does get a little noisy, but she is very good about not getting into their school work. I have been collecting special little puzzles and small toys to rotate in and out for her to help prevent boredom. That has seemed to work well.

This year I am taking a little more of a text book approach with my home schooling both for ease in planning and correction and to keep things simple and consistent when the baby comes. So far it seems to be going well!

I was able to get the year planned out. We are doing Religion and World History all together and then each child has 3-4 assignments per day, plus about 30-40 mintues of hands on learning activities that I rotate each day. These include coloring and labeling maps, flashcards, pattern blocks, learning songs and more. They really look forward to doing their “stations” when they are doen with their written work each day.

Baby’s Gender

Well after five mystery pregnancies where we found out baby’s gender only after birth, we decided to go ahead and take a peek this time. It was covered by insurance, so why not?

…drumroll please…

It’s a BOY!

So assuming that they are right about this, sometime around New Years we will be welcoming Maximilian Anthony into our home.

That means that we have a perfect record of alternating girls and boys.
I wonder how long we can keep this up?

Books, books and more books

I am in the process now of reorganizing the school room. Boy is it in need of an overhaul! How do I accumulate so many books? I discovered that I have three different grammar curricula for third grade! So I will continue to spend a few minutes a day, slowly sorting through all of this, trying to decide what I love and what needs to be sent on to bless someone else…

It is so hard to part with books!

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!)