You Take the Good with the Bad

What a day. Sheesh, I have so much running through my brain I don't even know where to start. Consequently, this will probably be one the most poorly constructed blog entries ever!

Today, while most children in Central Ohio (and perhaps the rest of the state, for all I know) started their first official day of the 2007-2008 school year, my kids and I were embarking on Week Six of our school year. Five weeks gone, just like that. All things considered, it could have gone better but it also could have gone much, much worse. I just find that even now, in my sixth year of homeschooling, I have not grown accustomed to interruptions--isn't that weird, with four kids?--and have not learned to take them in stride. No, I take that back; some days I am non-plussed when the train derails, but today I was definitely plussed a couple of times! (Insert laugh track here.)

It could have started better. Tyler and Darcy had orthodontist appointments first thing this morning and, Lord willing, those are the LAST appointments we'll have to disrupt our mornings for. I finally wised up and started booking their appointments for late afternoon so we don't have this ridiculously annoying chunk of time taken out of our day.

The rest of the morning actually proceeded like something out of a dream. The weather here was very cool and pleasant during the morning hours so I spread a big blanket on the grass for Sawyer and plunked down a stack of library books and his case of cars and he contented himself like that until lunchtime while Tyler, Darcy and Peyton got down to work at the patio table. We had a lot of reading to cover and they had an equal amount of bookwork today--Mondays are just a bear no matter how you slice it.

Randy and I had a little pre-birthday celebration lunch that consisted of Chinese food from Joy Lucky (hey Cam, I consider that a step UP from Pizza Hut, thank you very much!) even though my birthday isn't 'til Wednesday, while the kids had a picnic out on the lawn. After Randy went back to work we finished up most of our reading until it got too warm for us to be outside.

I'm starting to think that this is probably boring to most of you so I will sum up by saying that we got through the rest of the afternoon and were finally able to knock off around 3:30, but it is becoming more and more evident to me that I NEED A CLONE! Two more of me would be even better! (I know, I know, the mere thought of even one more Andrea Todd in the world is enough to make the blood run cold!) It just seems that in a house populated by six people, four of whom are under five feet tall, there is no shortage of interruptions and even the best-laid plans rarely work out in the end!

I was lulled into a false sense of security the first few years that I homeschooled; the material was easy to teach and, for the most part, fun, and I had bright-eyed, eager students ready to put on their thinking caps and learn something new each day. Now, although we have LOTS of good days, we also have so many days where I feel almost defeated because I will have a really great lesson prepared and the whole thing will be punctuated by, "Hang on, I need to go to the bathroom"; "Mom, may I get a drink of water?"; "Oh shoot, my pencil lead broke. May I go sharpen it?"; and "Mom, will you read to me?" (That's Sawyer in his moments when he makes me feel most neglectful.) And that's Monday in a nutshell. I can almost guarantee that tomorrow will be a totally different story. But on days like today I definitely feel like there's not enough of me to go around.