Elisa’s Day

the first morning of school! i’m sure it helped the kids were super excited, it may be more challenging a few months in of course. but i got them to the bus on time. we almost lost olivia to a huge tantrum ( olivia can pitch a fit like no one has ever seen, over virtually nothing ) because she didn’t like how her new shoes fit, but we managed to avoid it and get out the door.

the one thing i kind of forgot was the part where molly can decide to be hungry at any point during that oh so busy hour. so i’m toying with the idea of waking her up at 6, before the kids get up to feed her first. today i just nursed her quickly while the kids got dressed and brushed thier teeth, luckily she is getting faster now that she’s almost 3 months as well. then we all walked up to the bus and once we got home we settled in for a good feed.

and now we’re going to head into town to get hannah her very first hair cut, and pick up my pictures. i finally finished fixing all the red eye. 2 years worth of pictures, about 550 in total. i was pretty happy to find out shopper’s drug mart was having a sale, 10 cents a print (!!) which is super cheap, pretty excited about that. now i dread sorting them all, as they never come in order. i swear to never let it go that long again, every three months is my goal.

haven’t really updated much about miss molly ( or missy molly as hannah calls her ) but she is so amazing. i can’t believe she is already 10 weeks. already my infant is a baby. and the easiest baby ever to boot. she is a good sleeper, with long naps during the day and usually sleeping from 8ish to 3ish at night, nursing once and back to bed for another few hours.  i know this could all go away once teeth start, but for now i’m loving it, especially since hannah was more one of those up to nurse every 1.5 hours types. and when she’s awake she is so easy going all around. she’ll happily be carried or worn, but also will happily lay in the pack n’ play with her mobile to look at or chill in the swing, which not only gives me much needed time for all the baking that goes on around here, it has eased most of my fears about how i was going to get the girls out the door in the morning for school. she’s even a good shopper, sling or stroller, if she isn’t asleep right away she just looks around, taking it all in until she does quietly nod off. she loves her baths and attention from her sisters. she is full of ridiculous huge smiles and so very close to laughs.  she is such an easy baby that it makes it hard to imagine this as the last time. so i remind myself that not all babies are so easy. and like jerry told george, you want to go out on a high note, so really, i’m just thankful that my last baby has turned out to be such an easy and 100% enjoyable experience. so far our biggest issue is a bit of walking/rocking to sleep sometimes and that she sometimes wakes up when i put her to bed, so instead of bed we just chill with ryan on the couch, the baby burrito asleep on my chest, and really, who doesn’t love a sleeping baby on them? this is our biggest “issue”?? LOL

i can’t believe school starts on tuesday. i am so not ready. i did make bread last evening, mostly because we have plans with friends this afternoon and tomorrow afternoon so i wouldn’t have had time otherwise. and i am making two lasagna’s for this afternoon and still need to find time to make cookies and rice krispie squares to freeze for the girls lunches. plus they all need a bath and hair wash, and to get their backpacks and other school stuff organized. yikes. i am looking forward to it though. sidney and olivia are played out. they are bored of each other and everything else.

i am taking advantage of a situation this year, a friend mentioned how her daughter was really hating daycare. she is olivia’s very best little friend, so i offered for her to come here on her off days. so that’s a bit of extra cash for us and i’m hoping it helps to amuse olivia on the days she’s home, since i’m still pretty occupied with molly in general. my only concern is that they play nicely with hannah as well, and don’t exclude her too much. we shall see. the crazy thing is that next year, kindergarten is supposed to go full time. which means that all the sudden i have three kids in school full time and it’ll just be me and miss molly all day every day. that seems crazy.

i am dreading winter. i can feel it already, in the cold mornings. i am dreading getting up in the pitch dark, and being cold all of the time. and getting the kids to the bus in -30. hopefully the really brutal weather holds off until ryan is home in jan. and feb. to do bus duty until the bad weather though, i’m looking forward to the walk to the bus every morning because i am hopelessly out of shape from a long, miserable, pregnancy. luckily the driveway is long and up hill, so a couple daily treks up that will help.

so i guess we’ll just have to enjoy fall as much as we can since there was no real summer. ryan’s been stacking wood and trying to finish off as many little out door jobs as he can. we have been doing the birthday thing so very much, ah sept. and all your birthdays. and i am looking very forward to the fair in a couple weeks. i only hope it is as much fun as it was last year, and that it becomes a much anticipated family tradition. and we have my cousins wedding the weekend of sidney’s birthday, so although it is an unusual birthday, i think it’ll be a fun one for her. i made reservations for about 20 at a fun restaurant ( the wedding is in the evening so no dinner ) and we’ll get her a cake, and then she gets to dress up, stay up late, and dance…..sounds like a good birthday to me.

that all makes for a crazy september though. and before i know it, we’ll be into october.

yesterday was our annual school trip to the peterborough zoo, annual because they do it in both years of kindergarten at the girls school. which means that we have done it the past two years with sidney and now olivia this year and next and by then hannah will be in kindergarten.

the peterborough zoo is a sad place really. last i checked, one sad old camel ( who’s cell mate died just last year, of old age i imagine, so he now has some scruffy donkeys for company ) a few reindeer, a bunch of riled up lemurs, and an empty python enclosure, does not a zoo make.  not to mention the ramshackle assortment of  remaining animals that barely compete with any small farm. oh look hannah, turkeys…..oh wait, we have turkeys at home…….throw in a rickety old miniature train ride that has the same script it has since i was a kid ( pretty much the entire zoo is the same as when i was a kid ) and involves short ride through some tress looking for poorly painted cut outs of animals. the biggest draw is the huge playground, including a giant slide down the hillside.

the school goes there because it’s free no doubt. but the zoo sucks so much because it’s free, no doubt. if they just charged a small admission i’m sure they could improve it by leaps and bounds, as it is i have no idea how they even maintain it to the pathetic standard they do.

but the kids love it all the same. and though there could have been few things i wanted to do less yesterday then get up at 5am so i could keep the car then drive the 40 min to the zoo and then walk my big, pregnant, butt around the zoo all day, that is exactly what i did. see, the huge playground i mentioned. well it’s not fenced. or supervised in anyway. and it’s big, and sprawly ( having been added on to over the years many times ) and the zoo is just open to anybody, oh yeah, and free right, so you don’t even have to fork over 5$ or anything in your master plan to snatch some kid. it’s hard to keep track of a few kids on it in the most vigilant of ways. and i just can’t in good conscience leave that responsibility up to someone i don’t know. we’re talking four year olds here. so we go. i can’t actually go as a parent chaperon, because i have hannah with me as well, but i just go, and follow behind and park myself on the playground and keep my eye on them ( while olivia’s official parent “chaperon” sat at a picnic table chatting with the teachers, a picnic table that was in no way, in view of even a third of the playground )

so another year, another trip to the “zoo” under my belt.

there’s only 3.5 weeks of school left too. this is going to be a crazy few weeks for us. a lot, a lot, of stuff going on, not the least of which of course, is you know, a baby coming. but seriously that just comes in the midst of all kinds of craziness…..of course. ryan and i are headed off to the city on saturday which i couldn’t be looking forward to more. a day away from the kids and spent with good  friends, and hopefully some good food. have i ever mentioned how much i miss city food? oh yeah….right…..only every chance i get.

i think so far, the most surprising challenge of having kids has been dealing with school. i guess i didn’t realize it would be so hard, but given my feelings about school in general i guess i should have seen it coming.  between piles of homework in grade one and bitchy principals chastising me for jay walking in front of the school ( instead of walking the entire block each way to the cross walk from the extra parking across the street…..in the rain…..with a baby…..) and curriculum that seems to involve a lot of nothing while reading and writing your letters properly and holy fuck, just holding your pencil properly is all left to home, it’s all i can do to hide my outright disdain for the whole system from the kids.

and i know that they have to learn how to use computers, i get that. but how much time a week are they spending in “computer lab” playing pc games, maybe a bit of that time could be dedicated to making sure they all learn how to hold their pencil properly so that they don’t develop a bad habit that will plague them the rest of their lives. ( my mom, an english teacher, is always saying how poor most of her students handwriting is, and that most of them now print which is so slow. yet plagiarism is so rampant with the internet that she makes them write in class essays a few times a year, and it is literally painful for them since writing things by hand is becoming a lost skill, something considered un-improtant i guess, why learn to write nicely when your expected to type anything anyone else is ever going to  read anyway? )

i’m pretty sure i have already complained lots about the homework thing. homework should start midway through elementary school, grade 4 or 5. and even then, it should be minimal, a few projects, small assignments, just to get into the habit for highschool. you know who shouldn’t be bringing home 3o minutes worth of homework a night? 6 year olds!! ( i think that’s a conservative estimate btw, but i couldn’t say how long it actually would take since we don’t do it all )

i did just read an article that there is maybe going to be a shift back in the other direction, that one school in ontario has put a ban on homework all together in elementary school, with good results so far. and it quoted a few new studies about the fact there seems to be no correlation between homework and improved school work, or test scores. that in fact it could be the opposite, too much homework is actually bringing the level of school work and test scores down. so i guess it’s a start.

and the general meddling in my parenting……holy crap….like the vaccinations thing. or all this “homework” half of which is just poorly veiled attempts by the government/school board to make parents spend time with their kids. and while the sad reality is that some parents probably need that, we do not. we do lots of things with our kids and i don’t need some lame reading/worksheets homework sent home to have a reason to read to my kids. in fact i have so many better things to do with my time with my kids then homework it’s not even funny.

we’ve talked about homeschooling….on and off. i really doubt i have the patience to do it. plus, those days, when it is just hannah and i…..those are nice. besides, you know who loves school? 5 and 6 year olds!! which is why i try and keep my disdain to myself as much as possible. the kids really do love it, and i’d hate to taint that for them so early.

but i think about it still….my mom guesstimated you could cover the required curriculum in approximately 2 hours a day. that leaves a lot of hours for baking and art and fun experiments and playing, not to even mention, oh how i loath to pack lunches, it’s so very hard to pack a litter free, healthy lunch five times a week for a picky eater who goes to a peanut and fish free school……….i know right?………but then there’s the missing of the non-academic aspects too, learning the structure and the social aspects of school, both important i think.

i guess, as with all majour decisions we’re required to make for our kids, who’s to really know which is the right one?

well, yesterday was total chaos and i still only managed to get half of what i wanted to, done. but i did get some other things done, picked up the girls big “combo” gift, i suddenly got worried if i left it until next week it might be gone ( an easel and a bunch of art supplies, the lack of art done in school is pretty appalling, so we’ll be doing even more at home ). there is only one good, but small, toy store here in town, and driving around a few days before chritsmas trying to locate an easel if that one had sold, not so much fun. after getting home, late, from the christmas party at my mom’s school, i wrapped most of the presents in front of re-runs of survivor.

i only managed to get my squares made, so today is macaroons, sugar cookies and ginger snaps. and i need them done by 2:30. so yeah………there is much talk of big snow tonight, and a snow day tomorrow. so now i think handing out tins of cookies today is our best bet. of course, because having done that, there will be no snow day tomorrow in the end. but if i don’t do it there will be. of course.

so back to cookies it is.

looks like it’s just the girls tomorrow at the farmers market, with dad away for the day. not quite sure of the logistics of keeping track of three small kids in a crowd on my own, but i know it involves at least a stroller, which i have no doubt hannah will not want to sit in ( though, she is going through a “shy” stage, so she may be content to sit in it surrounded by all those “scary strangers” )

i wanted to say that i appreciate everyone’s comments on my last entry, and update that we’ve decided to ride out this year, and see where we are at the end of it, and because i think switching schools would be easier at the beginning of the year. so we’ll take the summer to decide based on how this year goes for sidney, with us not really helping with any french at home, and sticking to our 10 minutes of homework a night. the meeting was fairly useless, as expected, but it’s not a big concern of mine at this point, and until sidney seems unhappy for any reason it won’t be.

we did unpack our halloween stuff today, a few decorations and books. i like to keep holiday books as  special things, that only come out on the holiday. it avoids the absurdity of reading christmas books in june, and makes them that much more exciting when they are out. the downside of course, is that they get put into HEAVY rotation. so, since yesterday, i believe that BOO! by robert munsch has been read 72 times ( okay…maybe like 7 or 8 times…but still ) there is also a board book with a vampire on the last page who lets out a very scary “wha ha ha ha” laugh that is quite popular with hannah, who opens it to the last page, giggles, says “oooo, scarwy” and does it all over again.

i also found a couple meters of black polar fleece ends at the local fabric store, for just a few dollars, which will be sidney’s bat costume, and possibly olivia’s vampire costume. i took all they had in black, but it might not be enough. i’m going to check back later in the week, to see if there is more, and to pick out some fabric to make some duvet covers for the girls for chritsmas. i’m thinking something soft and fuzzy, especially since all things soft and fuzzy are buy one meter get two free right now.

i guess that’s it for tonight, always more to say, but i ramble. ryan is watching hockey so i’ll be crawling into bed to watch whatever i have taped from this week that i haven’t had time to watch yet, assuming i can stay awake that is

we seem to have finally recovered from our crazy thanksgiving, and have settled back into our routine. tomorrow i am off to have a meeting with sidney’s teacher. i am having some issues with her school, and the french immersion program, as well as with her teacher specifically. of course the most important thing to remember at all times, is that it’s MY issue, and sidney seems quite happy with all of it. so i have to be careful not to project my all too numerous issues with the school system in general onto sidney. that being said there are some real problems.

like homework.

in grade 1.

and okay, i can’t really get on board with homework in grade one, but after talking with my mom ( the English teacher ) i have decided i can get on board with the practice of learning how to do homework. so i concede, we will do a small amount of “homework” each night. but only 10 or 15 minutes, which ends up being one of the 5 or 6 things they ( the school ) include in the homework. according to them your child should be practicing 5 high frequency words, 5 vocabulary words, reading from photocopied readers sent home, and practicing counting, from 1 to 50, by 1’s, 2’s, and 5’s !!!! yeah…..wtf?  well around here we work on the 5 high frequency words because they are on a test every friday, and we work on whichever numbers will be on the same test, this week it’s 30-40…….never mind that sidney, and i’m sure others, still don’t have 10-20 down, or 20-30….but hey, they’re moving on

oh, and did i mention it’s all in french?

of which i speak none. when i choose the french program, it was with the understanding that i need not know ANY french, and that my job as the parent was to give my child a strong english base at home to make sure their english didn’t suffer while they learned french AT SCHOOL….yeah, so a meeting with the teacher it is

and that’s not even getting into my personal dislike for her, and her old fashioned ways. her class is the only one ( of the three grade one french classes ) that has the kids in rows instead of groups, and yesterday, according to sidney ( a six year old is always a suspect source of course ) she told the class, of SIX YEAR OLDS “if you aren’t going to do the work, don’t bother coming here”

like dude…..that’s something you spout to an ornery grade 10 class, not a grade one class

at this point, i am very tempted to take them out of that school, the only french immersion school in the district, which they spend an hour on the bus to get to ( not that it is that far, it’s not, 8 minutes by car, they just have them on some crazy milk run of a bus ride ) and put them in the local english school, which i’m sure would come with a much shorter bus ride. but i still like the idea of them having the second language so…….i don’t know

this school stuff is hard

even though it really feels like  saturday

which is mostly due to the PA day today at school. both friday and monday are days off school this weekend, for thanksgiving, and i think i was looking forward to the long weekend more then the kids. dragging them out of bed at 6am so they can catch their 7:45 bus to school, not my favorite thing in the world ( note to self, call the ministry of transport next week and see if their are any other buses they could be on ) all three girls have a cold as well, so today we’re having a chill day in hopes of fending off the worst of it. pj’s and tv and relaxing. lots of oj. maybe we’ll make some play dough in a while. we normally have a pretty strict  limit on tv time around here, but there are rare exceptions.

so it feels like a quiet saturday, minus one thing of course, the farmers market. the farmers market has been a whole different experience for us this year. we often went last year, but this year it’s where we pick up our csa share, so we go every single week and it turned into a bit of  an event. we visit with the vendors we know, including our neighbour with the TEN children ( who is awesome btw ) and we get our fairtrade coffee and we hang in the park the market is set up on the edge of . and then we come home and spend the rest of the day cleaning and putting away veggies and fruit, prepping and saving anything that we can’t eat ( canning, freezing ). it’s all fun, and rewarding…..and exhausting. i’ll have mixed feelings with the end of the farmers market, which is quickly approaching, i’ll miss it, but will welcome the return of quiet saturday mornings and saturday afternoons not spent almost entirely in the kitchen, with our three little “helpers”/ messmakers. i was also very happy to find out the mennonite market will be open all winter with root veggies from their fields and preserves and such, so we can continue to shop some local this winter.

big turkey dinner on sunday, which i always look forward to. though i’m a little sad it won’t be at the cottage like last year, which was so fun and the weather is supposed to be great, but it is in the closest bigger town, where i can take sidney out while we’re there and get her a snow suit and save myself a trip, which with gas at these prices, is always helpful. i love big family get togethers, although we almost never manage to have everyone together at the same time, it’s usually a good 25 to 30 people. so much fun. plus, a little one on one time shopping with sidney is nice, it’s pretty crazy how they start full time school, and then they’re gone every day…..for the next 12 years ( obviously i exaggerate for effect ! ) but still weird, evenings seem to short, weekends fly by….i don’t know how parents who both work outside the home full time even manage, i know now for sure there are a lot of sacrifices we’re willing to make before we give up those few hours a day we have with her ( and them as they all go off to school )

okay, well, clearly i missed this whole blogging thing more then i knew……