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| Happy 4th! We're getting ready to see some fireworks! |
I've been waiting to try to blog about a typical summer day, until we actually had a typical summer day. And finally I realized there's no such thing as a typical summer day. They're all different. So here's today, a Wednesday in the middle of a relatively quiet week:
The day starts at 12:39 a.m., when I hear a child get up, sense through my eyelids that she's turned on the hall light, and hear her enter the bathroom. I've been asleep probably about 45 minutes, so this feels downright painful. My mind races, wondering how she'll manage the kittens, who sleep in that bathroom with the door closed, and hoping she doesn't end up having to chase them through the house to put them back in. Because that means I'll be chasing them through the house as well. I also hope she's put the lid back down on the toilet, because whenever someone forgets to, we usually discover that the hard way: via freaked wet kitten tearing through the house. Fortunately, the only thing she forgets is to turn off the hall light, and that's relatively easy for me to remedy. Silence again, and fortunately I make it right back to sleep. Most nights this doesn't happen, but middle-of-the-night wakings never really end for a mommy.
At 7:00, I let the kitties out of their bathroom and into the girls' bedroom because they're far better alarm clocks and child-wakers than I am. We're tempted to let the girls sleep, but that so often leads to the older girls outlasting at least Matt at night. Technically my goal is to get them used to 6:30 or 6:45, and COVID, with all its cancelled activities, will help with that. Since it's summer, and there are kittens, the girls wake up and get out of bed fairly easily.
They dive right into their morning jobs, which also didn't happen very easily before kittens. Naomi handles all the bunny caretaking, Elise empties the dishwasher and assists her sisters with their jobs, and Kalina does the kitten caretaking, including scooping and sweeping litter every day. I help with any deep cleaning. They also dress and get ready for breakfast. Nobody makes their bed because everyone sleeps on top of the covers since it's summer and that's easier. I have tried to fight this battle, but can't argue with the logic. The only real downside is that whenever I wash sheets, I'm actually washing comforters, which are bulky and huge, but honestly much easier than putting clean sheets on any lofted or bunked bed--which describes all three of our girls'. So again, I can't blame them.
Today, they manage the routine super seamlessly with no crises. Today. Elise tells me she had to remind her sisters that they're supposed to get dressed and have their jobs done before they come to the breakfast table, and inwardly I cheer as things move efficiently along, During breakfast, we do some reading and discussing, and go over a plan or two.
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| The kittens love snoozing in our scrap box. |
It helps when Elise is highly motivated by an activity she's looking forward to, and this morning she's done in record time because she's excited about making homemade cards with rubber stamps and embossing equipment. Even though it's a messy, high-maintenance activity that I know Naomi will need lots of help with when she inevitably joins in, I give Elise the go-ahead to get started as I've been promising fancy crafts like embossing all summer. Her sisters soon join her, and Elise's good mood starts to dwindle as she finds she has to share supplies. "I was planning to do this alone," she grumbles, eyeing me meaningfully. But nothing is done alone in this house, Child! Haven't you learned that? Except possibly when I clean bathrooms--nobody joins me then.
Naomi soon moves to just stamping, which is thankfully more fun for her at this point and much simpler for me. "Where can I hang this so everyone will see it?" she wonders, showing me a paper full of kittens, puppies, bunnies and paw prints. Her papers are now hung all over the living room. Kalina makes a very artistic card or two, but she mostly had her fill yesterday when she and Elise embossed while Naomi had her virtual piano lesson. Many of the stamps we're using, as well as embossing powder, are from my childhood, so we enjoy chatting about that a bit. Kalina and Elise are each working on making a set to use as thank-you notes and general cards. Naomi is just having fun.
Meanwhile, I straighten the house, put the couch pillows back on the couch, and make moves toward my computer, which I'm using a lot these days for an intense freelance assignment I'm in the thick of, planning for the school year, completing the 2019 photo album, and all the other things. I have to give up--there's too much going on.
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| If you look closely, you can see a raccoon snitching from a bird feeder. It soon waddled calmly away. |
When Kalina's finished stamping, she looks aimless so I ask her if she wants to work on the board game we're creating together. It's called Symbiosis: Pond, and she came up with the idea, albeit prairie-themed initially, when we were hiking through a mini prairie together. We spend 15 minutes or so brainstorming ideas for different game events, and make some good progress. We attack things from entirely different angles, but agree about enough things that we're able to make it work.
Afterward, Naomi reads a book about dogs aloud to me while I redo her French braids. She insists on French braids every day, and has for nearly a year now. I don't mind too much since they're cute and keep her hair neat, but it takes a good 10 minutes every day.
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| Hiking the arboretum one lovely morning! |
I decide I need to Get Something Done, even though it's summer (especially since it's summer?), and I begin to get out and assemble the drawer organizer I picked up for Elise's desk yesterday. Everyone wants to help, so I become management, and Kalina and Elise are labor. We get stuck on jamming the castors in, so we save them for later/Daddy, and instead put kittens in the drawers, which the kittens don't seem to mind, and would quite possibly choose for themselves, if they were allowed a choice in the matter.
After this, Elise finishes stamping, and I make everyone clean up together. It's a lot to clean up. I straighten the house and put the pillows back on the couches, then finish the little bits of cleanup they miss.
Some mornings, and especially at the beginning of summer when it's all so fresh, the girls all go off and play with Legos, or put together a play, or do crafts independently, or go outside, or whatever, while I can tackle my work, but this is destined to be more of a scattered morning for me as we zip from one activity that needs mild amounts of help or supervision to another. I could of course, put a stop to it, but it's summer so I don't mind too much.
As no one is making any moves to doing anything interesting on their own, I push my work aside and move on to another project that's on my list. I've been promising the girls since June that we'll make garden stones together to put in the strawberry patch for easier picking, and we've purchased the supplies. We're finally going to get started, but that means we need to figure out our designs. So the girls open all the bags and begin piecing together the stones, mosaic style. I'm only needed for initial organization, so I sneak off for 20 minutes and get some freelance work done, and shoot off a few emails, and begin this blog.
I listen as the girls argue about stones, and resolve it themselves. A win! They finish their designs and we take pictures, then organize and put away the stones. Naomi gets upset because it's found that a kitten has chewed up a puzzle piece from her favorite puppy puzzle, which she was completing on the floor. Since she's had it out several days and I've warned her multiple times that if she doesn't keep her pieces picked up, the kittens will bite them, I don't feel too bad for her, but I help her put in some pieces for a few minutes to jumpstart finishing it up. She bemoans the mishap for a bit, then proudly finishes the puzzle within 20 minutes or so.
Kalina has been playing with kittens and the box from Elise's drawer organizer, and Elise has been re-organizing her desk.
Unbelievably, it's nearly lunchtime. I decide on bagels because it seems like we've done everything else recently. Elise pops in and helps a bit, and then everyone else shows up. Shortly after sitting down, I realize it's about to rain, and I wish I'd made them all go outside this morning, since it could rain most of the afternoon. Regardless, I then realize we haven't harvested any blackberries lately and I want to do it before the grass is all wet. We all interrupt the end of lunch to do so, and find our biggest harvest yet--about 15.
After lunch, I make everyone tackle our job for the day. During the summer, I try really hard to make sure they're working and building life skills. Today, our job is to clean and vacuum the van, which really needs it. They've done this plenty of times before, but never very well, so we're going to practice more often. They spend more time playing around than cleaning, but progress is made and, besides, we can do it again next week.
Meanwhile, a friend of mine contacts me for advice about homeschool curriculum, since she's having a baby Friday and her girls' school still doesn't know what they're doing for next year. She's homeschooled before, and would rather homeschool again than do virtual school, but doesn't want to wait to figure it out, for obvious reasons. I send her photos and help her explore options, all via text and while checking on the van-cleaning project. Then another friend texts me with virtually the same question, but for her preschooler.
Afterward, we embark on the big event of the day: taking Kalina to the music store to switch out her too-small viola for a bigger size. We tried to do this last week when she auditioned for the orchestra, but as my temperature was elevated, most likely due to a hot car, I wasn't allowed inside to work on the instrument contract. My temperature had returned to normal by the time we arrived at home, but this still necessitates a second trip, and 22-minute drive. I blasted the air conditioning, even though it was a cool day.
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| We have baby skinks in our yard! |
At the shop, we wear our masks without any kind of a fuss, and are not temperature checked this time. We are quickly shown two violas, and Kalina is measured against each. Elise and Naomi explore the music books, finding some for a few of their favorite soundtracks. We wonder if they would be good to think about. Elise and Naomi start to get a little bit too active for a music store, though, so they begin telling stories to each other. Thank goodness. We get everything we need, I fill out the detailed form and agree to care for the instrument, and we're on our way.
After acquiring the viola, since we are out anyway and there is a frozen yogurt shop nearby and we've had no frozen yogurt probably since last summer, at least as a group, and it's nearly snacktime, and it's cool enough we can easily eat in the car, we...you guessed it...had some frozen yogurt. The kids were amused by the fact that they weren't allowed to approach the toppings bar, and I had to explain, in my most blame-free, diplomatic tone, of course, that not all kids are clean and tidy when it comes to yogurt toppings. Kalina chooses a yummy-looking watermelon and pineapple sorbet combo, and Elise and Naomi both opt for cookies and cream. The each try a little of my favorite, pistachio. Their creations are variously topped with gummy frogs, Nerds, and mango poppers.
We enjoy our yogurt in the car, and Elise names her gummy frogs John and Trissa before eating them. When we arrive home, we read a chapter of Peter Pan before I send everyone off to presumably do their own thing. Kalina digs around on the bookshelf for the next Harry Potter, and Elise tells me about a hanging decoration she's planning to make using the extra stones from our stepping stone project. Naomi is bored. They popcorn in and out, jolting me out of any concentration I'd gained every 2 minutes or so. Clearly, this was not going to be a highly productive day. But it's summer, and sometimes these scattered, unplanned, unproductive days are just what we need. Just not too many of them in a row...
Meanwhile, my freelance client keeps. sending. notes. about work that needs to be done. It won't stop. This was all day yesterday, too. Everybody needs support, all the time, immediately.
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| When you are a cat in our house, you get covered and read to while you nap. |
At 4:58 I realize it's finally quiet with some promise of it remaining quiet for more than 2 minutes. The older girls are upstairs and Naomi is drawing happily. Then I hear Matt's car door slam, and he jolts in the door with stories. I realize I have a conversation in front of me, music practice to supervise and supper to get so I give up on the idea of getting more than a smattering of computer work done. It'll have to wait until late tonight--not ideal, but I'm really, really used to it.
After chatting a bit with Matt, I tackle piano with Naomi, for whom the instrument was proving difficult while her brain was fully occupied by learning to read. Lately, however, she's been laser-focused (when she's actually playing and not distracted) and is zipping through her books. I've noticed this with the other girls, too--their music-reading skills dwindle when they're working really hard on reading, but then pick up again when they're comfortably reading. Naomi still likes me to be with her for moral support, plus she's really still learning. Since their lesson was just the day before and all her pieces are new, she needs me the whole time, but by the end of the week, she'll be fine on her own. She also has been enjoying noodling around on her own, and playing old pieces.
Naomi draws some more while I chop veggies and put pasta on to boil and then I send her up to round everyone else up and tell them it's dinnertime. Elise comes right away and fills me in on the past hour while grating Parmesan cheese for me. She's been singing lullabies to Poppy, and working on the craft project she told me about earlier, using the broken stones from the stepping stone project. She's gluing broken halves together, and then hanging them from a popsicle stick frame to make a hanging decoration. It sounds really cool.
The rest of the family trickle in. They are surprised to see that there's not food ready to dish up, despite the fact that I'm trying to train everyone that dinnertime means finishing helping getting dinner, not necessarily seating down to a fairytale feast that has magically appeared. We divvy up the last-minute jobs, which they are at least well-trained enough to actually do without much of a fuss, and are able to well, even if they sometimes choose not to out of spite. It's only taken, oh, say, six months. Naomi folds the napkins to look like bunnies.
The older girls heartily dish up plain pasta for themselves (but at least it's whole-wheat!), along with garlic bread and strawberries. Naomi opts for garlic bread and strawberries--pretty typical. Towards the end of the meal, Matt ropes them into doing a short Spanish lesson, which they all gripe about with gusto, which annoys him no end (I totally understand--this occasionally happens during school, too). I keep every one of my thoughts to myself, grateful that he's the one pushing this through and not me, and grateful that it's getting done, and grateful that they are actually picking it up, and also grateful that I'm picking it up while I start the dishes. And grateful that they're hearing the message of, "Stop whining, this is not the end of the world unless you make it be" from someone other than me.
After dinner, we usually take a long walk as a family, or occasionally play a game. Our walks usually end up strung out, with either Elise and Naomi running ahead, or Naomi and I lagging behind, or Kalina and Matt in earnest conversation about something super-interesting, or any other combination. Naomi likes to tell fill-in-the-blank stories, as she calls her homemade, on-the-spot Mad Libs, or Fortunately-Unfortunately stories, which always end up taking us to other planet and/or getting drenched in endless rain. We often to walk to the "origin," which is where the girls think all the crinoid fossils in the stream originate before getting washed down. We have found some nice ones in the bank there, but I'm pretty sure they're elsewhere, too. The girls are usually prepared with wading sandals, and occasionally nets and buckets.
This night, however, it's raining and, besides, there's a lot of music practice left to do, so we focus on finishing up. They all enjoy their instruments, but not the practice, so there's a lot of dawdling. I start with Elise.
Elise is thoroughly enjoying her voice lessons and is doing very well, possibly fighting Matt's genes as singing does not come naturally and she was not blessed with perfect pitch, through no fault of her own. Although she's only had a couple in-person voice lessons in addition to months of virtual ones, I can tell she's grown a ton, both in her abilities and her confidence, and she's sounding great. But she'd still rather play with kittens and chat with me than practice. Still, we make it fun, especially since she's excited about her new piece. I play along with her to help her with pitch-matching and to help her stay on task, social creature that she is.
Elise and Naomi are then tasked with getting ready for bed. Naomi usually accomplishes this task in record time. Elise usually has too many other things to do.
It's now Kalina's turn to try out her new viola. It's bigger, so we discuss whether or not to put on tapes for her fingers. And we admire the brand-new, shiny rosin it came with, and she fits on the nice, new shoulder rest. She hardly played the viola in the store, probably being shy of playing in front of the person helping us. So she's absolutely delighted when she hears the richer, deeper tone of a larger instrument, and even more happy to hear that the next size up will be richer and deeper yet. Although we have a new book for her--the book she'll use in orchestra this fall--she wisely decides that since her new instrument will take some getting used to, she should go back and play older, familiar pieces. Kalina doesn't need much help, so I finish cleaning up the kitchen.
Naomi is now finished getting ready for bed, so I make my way upstairs to read to her. We're reading through the Mrs. Piggle Wiggle books, which are great fun, albeit sometimes eyebrow-raising. Naomi's getting an education not only in which types of poor behavior annoy parents (super helpful, I've already seen improvement!), but also in parenting practices on the 1940s. I have to explain a few things as we read to clear up her occasional confusion. But the writing just sparkles, and we both get in a few giggles. Elise, who's heard them all before, is rereading them herself.
Matt is reading The Hobbit to the older girls, which he tried to read to them a year or two ago. Kalina enjoyed it then, but Elise was quite scared and refused to finish. Now, they're both loving it. They always let the bunny out while they read, occasionally letting Posy in as well (but not Poppy, as Poppy wants too much to play with the bunny), and sometimes Elise crafts.
After we finish our portion of Hello Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, I help Naomi write in her diary. She's been keeping a diary since early May, and is tonight starting her second notebook, which she's torn all the used pages out of since she's had this notebook for some time. Although she occasionally writes her own entries, and does very well with them, I usually take dictation just to speed things up since it's bedtime. Every entry, she lists what she ate for each meal (which I find astonishing, given the fact that she doesn't enjoy most foods) and then something special that happened that day, which today will be the frozen yogurt. Tonight, Elise is in the room and comments on some of the things she writes in her diary, which never include what she ate. I succeed in smoothing this slight bit of snarkiness. Since it's her first entry in her second notebook, she wants to do the writing. She occasionally wants help with spelling, but I'm heading to the basement soon to talk via Zoom to a friend I'm doing a book study with, so Elise good-naturedly agrees to be available. Elise also volunteers to read the last half of the chapter we were on in Mrs. Piggle Wiggle aloud to Naomi. I remind them of lights-out time and pass out hugs, and then say goodnight to Kalina. It's about 8:30, which is perfect.
Naomi gets scared without anyone else in the room, so I usually require Elise to read with her booklight until she turns out her light, while trying to hide it from Elise that that's what I'm doing. I think she knows. Kalina does the same eventually, but often has to shower or practice her viola even after The Hobbit, plus I think it's good for Kalina to have a privilege that Elise doesn't have. Elise usually gets annoyed at having to read in bed starting at 8:30 or 8:45 or so, but I personally think she has it pretty good, and quite reasonable. And eventually Naomi won't be afraid anymore--Kalina grew out of it just fine.
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| Kalina sewed this lovely sleep mask because sometimes Elise's headlamp is bright when Kalina is trying to sleep. Hmmm... |
Many nights, Naomi pops down for a second hug, Elise brings a kitten down just to say hi, and Kalina comes over to chat after viola practice. There's also often some whispering, giggling, and storytelling. This is sweet and usually doesn't get out of hand. Usually. Even with whispering and giggling, they're virtually always well-rested and good-natured the next day, so it seems as though there's not actually a problem.
When I check on everyone at 11:30 or so (I had a LOT of work to do after my call), they're all in dreamland. Occasionally the older girls, and especially Elise, are not if I come in earlier, but we're used to the routine of just turning on the headlamp for 5 minutes and reading and trying again. Usually if I check on them 20 minutes after that, they're out.
And that's a wrap!
