Curriculum, Snacks, and Mastitis

It is Saturday evening and the house is quiet.

Well, not really quiet, quiet, just sort of quiet. It can't really be quiet with a teething baby in the house, now can it?

But it's the quietest it's been in three weeks, so relatively speaking, it's quiet.

It's been three weeks now since we made the switch over to homeschooling, so I have been surrounded by 4 noisy little bundles of energy nearly nonstop for just long enough to make me think a single crying baby is actually quite peaceful and quiet. Either that or I'm just losing my mind hearing.

So what do I want to do with this peaceful, quiet evening?

SNACK!!!!

Bring on the chips, chocolate, granola bars, peeps, yogurt cups, cheez-its, and while I'm at it I may just grab a spoon and dig out a big blob of peanut butter. It's not like I need my tongue in order to write a blog post, now is it?

*sigh*

No really, I don't even have most of those things in the house right now, but it sounds good! Er, well, maybe not all at once. But I'd settle for one or two.

Why the sudden rush on junk food, you ask? Seriously, if you're a mom you probably already completely understand this. But in case you are NOT a mother and are actually reading my blog anyway, I'll lay out the timeline for you:

First: Cute little bundle of new baby is born. Meals are a little less regular than previously, since baby ALWAYS senses the impending meal and feels the need to be fed during the dinner hour. Since Mommy's got the equipment, Mommy misses dinner.

Fast forward a year: Toddler now needs food cut up, food spooned in, food cleaned up from face, hair, floor, walls, etc. and Mommy once again misses meals or eats cold food. (For those of us with a few MORE children, Mommy starts eating leftovers from toddler plate)

Included in the fast forward: Mommy is now pregnant, ravenously hungry at ALL times, and feels pukey if she doesn't eat every two hours.

Fast forward a bit more: By the time the fourth child is born, Mommy has become extremely adept at hiding the mid-morning granola bar that she invariably eats at 10 o'clock because she was so busy feeding the munchkins that her own breakfast was completely forgotten.

Which makes her not hungry when lunch time comes around, but a few bites of leftover kid food will hold her till dinner. Or so she thinks.

Until about 3 o'clock, when she grabs an apple.

And so the vicious cycle goes.

It's not that we intend to be snackers, it's just that it sort of sneaks up on a mom and the next thing she knows she's quietly chewing in the front seat of the car and surreptitiously taking bites out of the corner of her mouth that's hidden by the seatbelt strap so the backseat doesn't erupt in a chorus of "MOM!!! I'm HUNGRY!!" "Can I have a granola bar?!" "Can I have a bite?!" "Waaahhh!!!" ... that would be the baby.

Of course I know that whole scenario is less than ideal. But denial is a lovely thing, and it has gotten me through many things in life!

So I've been working on correcting some bad habits here and attempting to set a better example on the mealtime front. Mostly because not having a strict mealtime plan leads to absolute chaos and an exponentially increasing level of whine starting at 10 am and crescendoing about 30 seconds before lunch is on the table and .5 seconds before I lose it.

Besides wanting to set a better example, I have found that snacking is no longer an option simply because my older children have this sense of radar that invariably sounds the alarm whenever I reach into the cupboard. It doesn't matter if they are outside, on the swingset, in full swing mode. When their snack radar goes off, they can be at my side, half way up the whineo'meter in a flash. It's amazing.

It seems the mealtime prep, eating, and cleanup with everyone home takes up an insane amount of my day, but besides that, I've been doing all of this research online about homeschool curriculum options. Let me tell you - this is no easy task. There are MILLIONS of options out there and wading through them when you don't know what you're doing is CRAZY! Mind boggling!!

Trying to sort through it all has led me to several great resources, though, and in the meantime we are finishing up the workbooks we received from their school and supplementing with stuff I've picked up here and there. It will be enough to finish out the school year so I still have time to decide what package I want for next year.

Oh, and about the Mastitis (aka the Boob Flu)? Well, I'll spare you all the gory details! Let's just say that combined with a terrible allergic reaction to the antibiotics I was given made for an EXTREMELY fun week! I wasn't sure if I were more thankful that I didn't have to get up early and get children off to school or if I were more chagrined that I had all 4 children home with me to take care of while I was so sick!

At the end of it all, though, I found that I was more at peace with having them at home with me than I was the week before. Somewhere in that miserable week I found joy and anticipation in the prospect of homeschooling and let go of the expectation that I needed to have everything put together perfectly at all times. So in it all there was a blessing for me to find. Now if I could just hold on to that blessing 'cause I'm going to need it for the future!

And while I'm at it... if I could just hold on to a thought process long enough to develop it into an actual blog post more than once a month that would be nice, too!