The beginning of the year is always a rough time for us. It's not so much that we've got bad things happening. It's more that we've got so much going on that it's hard to actually get everything done, or anything done for that matter. I'd almost rather have winter vacation lasting all winter long than summer vacation, which in Texas doesn't even last the whole summer. Of course, things will be what they will be.
Every year Christmas greatly distracts from getting back into the swing of things. For the next several weeks the kids want to do nothing but play with their new Christmas toys. Books are cast aside and ignored until later. Games occasionally get played, but more often than not, they don't really have much patience to play them. There's too much else to distract them.
Chesh and I have our own things to worry about. The beginning of the year always brings new considerations, like financial planning for the year and tax returns. Every January we take stock of what we've got and what we'll need so we can plan for the rest of the year. Generally some of tax returns get spent on clothes for the kids. We like to save something for the older two since their birthdays are in the spring. It's a lot of time spent looking ahead.
This year we've had another distraction from it all. I'm working as a nanny again. I'm watching my friend's precious baby girl. I have to admit, it's really nice to have a baby in the house again. I forgot how wonderful and sweet they really are. She's been fantastic, but babies require a lot of attention, so this has dragged us off course a little more as we attempt to establish a new routine that now includes getting up before a soldier has to be in training in the morning, and having her here all day. We're finally starting to settle in to that as well.
Homeschooling took longer to get back in gear this year than usual. Thankfully, now that we're hitting the school work, we're hitting it hard. Bunny Boo has been hitting the math hard of her own accord. She's been telling everyone how much this plus that equals, even starting to toy with doing triple digit math in her head. She's only really good at doing addition in her head at this point, but we're getting there. Our next step is going to be deeper math, but we're getting there. She's been doing a little bit of writing, mostly copy work from books. We're trying to reinforce spelling and proper structure to her letters. She's been picking up books way below her level, but she's been reading them without a fuss, so I consider that progress. She's been reading her little brothers, which is also good for them. She's very excited about that and it's inspired her to keep on reading.
Link-boy, the great adventurer, has decided he's ready to buckle down and do some school work of his own. He's been working on writing his name as his big focus, though he needs a lot of help with it. If you don't watch him like a hawk, he gets all sorts of side-tracked. He's been working on reading with Bunny Boo. He's already proven he can read a little bit, so I can only hope that teaching him to read will be much easier than it was with his sister.
Little man, the littlest of our lot, has decided it's time to start talking up a storm. While this isn't really doing school work by learning to talk, he's definitely making progress. Our goal for the longest time has been helping him to better communicate because he gets so frustrated. Thankfully, he seems to be learning. He's got simple things down like "please" which sounds more like "pleesh". He can ask for some things he wants. For most things, if he can't figure out how to say it, he can at least give us a hint with his own made-up sign language. We've made a lot of progress!
It really feels like we're finally getting back on track, and making more progress than we have in the past. I have a feeling this year we're going to be kicking off this year far better than we have with any year in the past. We're actually on-target for once!
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