It’s so exciting! This week, we have interviewed three teachers for our “Learn Music At Home” company. (That’s not what it’s named; I’m just anonymizing it). Just like regular employers, we interviewed people who fumbled in their speech and weren’t prepared, and we interviewed people who were on par, squared away, and ready to work.
Our children didn’t pay much attention to the guitar teacher. They were interested in the piano teacher because I had her play a Mozart piece to which they are accustomed. The drum teacher really took them for a spin, though! Ty covered his ears, and Kyle and Taylor were all smiles too hear the drums being played quickly. It’s very fun to see their reactions when strangers come into the house and play music.
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Dad usually goes to the grocery store as part of his coming-home-from-work routine. That’s pretty funny because there are men who go home through the tavern. The brocolli was on sale, so Dad got a bunch of it. While we were interviewing the drum teacher, Ty came up to us, holding this bunch of brocolli up, asking for it to be cut. We told him to wait, and he did. The rest of the evening, the kids were all grazing on raw brocolli like it was candy.
Saturday morning, we weren’t up more than an hour when Ty was asking for brocolli again. There are children who are asking for doughnuts. Ours ask for brocolli. Weirdos.
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So after a week of marketing our business for the coming school year, both Dad and I were inspired to further our progress in our own talents. Dad stayed in the office room and worked on the websites, hunted for graphics, and practiced magic. I learned to yodel. I sat in front of the piano with my iBook and took online yodeling courses. Some friends of Dad’s came to visit and heard the “hodl oh ee dee” coming from the music room.
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My parents came over on Sunday and brought lunch. And they brought furniture. I got a folding table that is a perfect sewing table. The kids got a solid wood table, just their height, and four wooden chairs. The packaging read “Crafts Table,” but we’re using it to homeschool. Santa Claus had brought a table for the kids on Christmas. They eat their meals there, and Ty has used it to fingerpaint. But it’s a little flimsy, and it has been doctored with wood glue and extra screws.
But this table rocks. The chairs are so sturdy that *I* can sit in them!
Ty has been practicing writing. We started with the alphabet. I can’t get him to focus on one or two letters at a time. He wants to write the entire alphabet on one sheet of paper. It’s not lined paper that we use. It’s all freehand, and he copies the letters from the sheet on which I drew letters. Using only crayons, of course. Then he wanted to write the numbers. Things were fine and beautiful until he got to 6. He kept making 0.
“Ty, bring the loop around before you get to the top.”
He got really frustrated and told me that I was making him mad.
We tried again the next day. I drew dotted lines in the form of numbers, and he traced over them correctly. His freehand numbers (without the dotted lines) were pretty good. They all looked great!
“Okay, now we count to 20.”
Uhmmm…. okay. But during his 14, he brought the hypotenuse of the 4 down too low and couldn’t make it to look like a 4. So he screamed. Because that’s Ty!
“I need another paper!”
“Ty, just write it correctly on top of your mistake, but make it darker.”
“I can’t!”
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He knows that chickens aren’t like cows, horses, and sheep because “they don’t have nurse.”
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Taylor doesn’t nurse to sleep anymore. She hasn’t weaned. She just stays awake so long that I get tired of nursing. I put her down, and she screams at me. The first three nights were dreadful, but tonight, when I told her that she was going to her crib, she shook her head, whimpered in her crib for less than five seconds, and went to sleep.
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Kyle found my hygiene bag (that’s where you keep your toothpaste and hair brush when you go on a trip) that has the U.S. Army seal on it. Inside, we keep a puzzle that has 26 pieces, enough for each letter of the alphabet to make a train (alligator, bear, crocodile, etc.). He played with the pieces a little bit but found more fun telling everybody that he was going to the post office. He’d hop in his red plastic car and drive around the house, waving at everybody, with the bag held tightly under his arm.
Daddy’s car must be loads of fun (it’s a red Miata). Nobody ever pretends to go to the library.
