Is it Friday yet? (Week 13)

Since starting to home school, we’ve had a lot of good weeks. This was not one of them. I woke up Monday feeling total despair. My back hurt and I had pain shooting down my leg. My mind was stuck on negative. I couldn’t believe it was only Monday, and I would have to wait until Friday to be alone. Why am I never alone? The house was cluttered and messy, and I felt hopeless about how much time I spend cleaning up and how easily it is undone. Discouraged.
And, it was raining outside so we were stuck inside.

"The Green Slicer"

I thought about going to the gym and just hiding for 2 hours while the kids playing in child care, but Leif is technically not supposed to go in the mornings now that he’s 6, so I figured we would start online lessons, and just go from there. Of course Leif picked a lesson that he required a lot of reading, so before even having my breakfast or coffee, I sat down with him to read his lessons. It was on Vikings, and it ended up being kind of fun. This lesson had an assignment for the student to give Viking names to 5 toys or things around the house, because the Vikings named their weapons. Owen had just mowed the lawn with Charles, so they named the lawn mower, “Lawn Mowery with green slicer power!”, which we shortened to “Green Slicer”. And of course, they named their nerf guns “Hole Maker” and “Fire Shooter”. We all enjoyed it, and that helped my mood a little.

Our matching stripy shirts for dancing.

I ate breakfast while Leif did his next lesson. At the end, one of the little animated creatures that was teaching the lesson did the moonwalk across the screen to celebrate. I mentioned the moonwalk, and both kids had no idea what I was talking about. So, of course, we had to look up Michael Jackson, and watch him do it. Then I looked up a tutorial, and talked the kids into trying to learn the moonwalk with me. I told them in order to dance, we had to clean up the room, and they helped me clean up. (this greatly improved my mood) We put Dubstep Radio on Pandora, and watched several tutorials on the moonwalk.
Leif and I got the movement, but not really the flow of the dance. Still, it was fun. I was pleasantly surprised that I pulled out of my funk, but Tuesday I woke up in pain again, and crabby.

We made it through Tuesday somehow, and Tuesday night I got to bed late, around midnight. Owen woke up at 3:15am and was up for an hour and a half. Wednesday seemed unbearable. Not only was I tired, but Owen was also exhausted and wept about EVERYTHING.

At the playground.

Thursday we had a play date scheduled for mid-day, so we focused on lessons and got out of the house early. I got to spend over 2 hours at the park with two other home school moms. One of the other moms showed up with red eyes because she had been crying in the car feeling like she was the worst mom ever. It was so healing for me to see someone else who didn’t have it all together. We talked about our times of discouragement, but even better than that, we just talked, sometimes not even about our kids. It was just what I needed.

Leif demonstrating the moonwalk.

Leif painted a piano for the Piano Tuner.

Leif's partially finished viking ship painting. Leif claims it is finished, and that there are no oars, and no sails because the vikings are eating breakfast. 

Charles and Owen working on a "Whirlpool" picture.

Owen was very proud of his picture.