That's what we've become. I love it, in a lot of ways, and I've been really surprised to discover that there is anything not to love about it.
For instance, when you travel all the time, you forget what you're supposed to do when you're home! And, you lose quite a bit of sleep! And, when you're still learning, you book a hotel with beds that are too small for your co-sleeping family! (Jack now happily sleeps in his own bed, but Lily and Charlotte do not. Four people do NOT fit comfortably in a full-sized bed!) And, when you're away from home, you have no chores to do, but when you come home, you come home with loads of laundry to do and no energy to do it!
I really can't think of anything else. I do really love it.
I don't love how much money it costs. Now is where this post gets a little more personal....
I don't handle it well when Tim is gone. Well, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I do! But I can never tell ahead of time how well I'm going to do. Y'all know that I'm dealing with depression; some days, some weeks, even some months are better than others. Some days I wake up and can hardly get out of bed; some days I'm thrilled to be alive!
When we lived in California, I made some really good friends. Yet, when Tim left on business trips, I hardly made it through. Once I was afraid I wasn't even capable of caring for my children. The memory of that trip still scares me and Tim. That was a big reason for moving back to Texarkana, near Tim's mother, who is uncanny about being able to say and do things to help me out. Tim said "Now that we live near my mom, you can stay home when I go on trips, and we can save thousands of dollars!" My mother even moved closer to us from Dallas to be able to help out, too.
Well, we tried it. We even had his dear sister come stay with me in my house while he was gone, to help out and just be there. (Her youthful body is still able to handle sleepless nights holding a crying baby better than either my mom's or Tim's mom's.) But I still felt like I was barely hanging on to my sanity.
And so after lots of discussion between me and Tim, and lots and lots of heartfelt prayers, we have decided that we will all travel together anywhere he needs to go. We look at it as a business expense, and do our best to spend as little as comfortably possible.
I feel like such a wimp. I think of military wives whose husbands are gone for months, even years at a time. I think of families we hear about at General Conference that send the husband/father away to work at a more lucrative job so the family can have money to go to the temple. I think of friends and extended family members who have survived necessary separations. And then I remember that Jesus loves me anyway, Tim tells me he loves to have me around, and my dear friend tells me I'm not a wimp.
Then I feel like such a snob. I have friends and family members that struggle to get by on combined incomes, and I can spend thousands of dollars on travel without batting an eye. I try to stay within a somewhat-restrictive budget in every other category, so I can still feel like I know what it's like to have to decide between buying milk or paying the garbage bill. I have to remember the "new bathrobe" syndrome - remember that one? Where the man buys himself a fancy new bathrobe, then his slippers look drab so he "has" to buy some new slippers, then his rug looks worn so he "has" to buy a new rug, then his curtains look outdated so he "has" to buy new curtains, etc. When we're in the airport and the hotel, I have to remember that just because everyone around me drops money like so much discarded waste doesn't mean I do. (When a hotel charges $100 for a boutique bathrobe, remember, there are people who actually pay that. Not me!) I also have to remember that just because I can spend this much on travel does not mean I can spend as much as I want on anything that strikes my fancy. I also have to reign in my tendency to "rescue" everyone I know who has financial difficulties. I got a good deal on a plane ticket to send my mother-in-law to the rescue of her ailing daughter in Utah, and I feel very good about that purchase. But when my daughter said she wanted her cousins to come to her birthday party, I wanted to buy all four of them plane tickets to come visit us for a week, and it took me a few days of staring at that $1200 total before I could admit that it wasn't a good idea.
ALL OF THAT! Just to be able to put some context behind my current trial: We're travelling to so many places in the next few months, that I can't go for an hour without wondering what else I need to do to prepare for our upcoming trips. We went to South Carolina last week, we're going to France in a month, then we'll be home for a couple of weeks and go to San Francisco, then we'll be home for a few days before we'll go to the Florida coast, then we'll be home for a couple of weeks before we'll go to the San Francisco area again. Four trips in three and a half months. I spent an entire afternoon booking the hotel for our France trip.
What a first-world problem, huh? "Oh poor poor pitiful me, I have to spend so much of my time booking travel for my family!"
The upside of this, is that I really appreciate a normal day at home. When I wake up at my regular time, get up and shower and dress and feed my family and read scriptures (in English and French!), homeschool my children, exercise and feed my family, put my daughters down for their naps, read to my children, clean my home, feed my family again, clean my home some more, and put my kids to bed on time. I appreciate it so much that I'm seriously considering staying home next time Tim travels (well, next time that isn't already planned), just to see how well we all do and pay off some debt. (Don't tell Tim, or he'll expect me to follow through!)
But I do really like being the Caswell Traveling Circus. Tim's field (software development) is so politically liberal, worldly, atheist, anti-family, that I almost feel like we have a duty to show them how awesome a family can be. And who better to do that than us (we? My grammar could use some help!)? Our kids are SO well-behaved when we travel, b/c they love it as much as I do! A lot of Tim's contemporaries are coming to expect us anytime Tim is scheduled to speak at or attend a conference. A few of them are married and/or have children, and they love seeing us and playing with our kids.
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Sunday, March 10, 2013
What we're up to.
-Our homeschool routine:
We start as soon as we’re done with family morning scriptures (we read 10 verses out of the Book of Mormon, rereading each verse in French as we go, then discuss what we read). We go to the couch with our scriptures, and watch one of the Old Testament Stories the church produces, then I ask them to tell the story back to me. We then begin to read the scriptures the story summarizes. I plan it out beforehand so that we'll read about a fourth of the scriptures from the story in a day, so that after 4 days or so we can start the next story. This works very well for a 4-day school week. After we've read the scriptures that the story summarizes, we recite the memory verse I've chosen that goes with the story. I have them each recite the verse as many times as their age, so Jack recites it 6 times and Lily does it 3 times. My goal is that by the end of the week, they can tell me the story and recite to me the verse from memory. After we've done all the Old Testament Stories, we'll do New Testament Stories, then Book of Mormon Stories, then Doctrine and Covenants Stories. That'll keep me busy for a few years!
Next we work on reading practice. I have a set of index cards for their memory verse, one word or punctuation mark per card, and I have them put the cards in order, using a large-print copy of the verse as their key. I might ask them to find repeated words, or just point to a word and ask them what it is, and since they're working on memorizing that verse they can usually answer me correctly.
Next we go to the table with paper and pencils and practice writing. They write the first word of the memory verse, repeating it the number of times as their age in years.
Next is art. This one is wide open, yet I am often at a loss for what to do in this category. My goal is to have them create something that is beautiful and useful. We've painted, colored, sculpted, cut paper, etc. I hope to not forget other categories of arts, like music. Perhaps I can ask their music leader from church what songs they're working on and practice those during this time, or teach them to play songs on the piano. It's all a work in progress!
Next we do math. It might be drill, in which the more challenging aspect is writing their answers down correctly, or it might be a game that practices whatever skill is challenging for one of them (Jack is learning place value in the millions, multiplication and division, arithmetic symbols, negative numbers, fractions, and geometry, while Lily is working on counting! There's a big gap in their skill levels!), or it might be a page or two of Janice VanCleave's "Math for Every Kid", turning as many of her illustrations as possible into real-life activities.
Next is science! We have a pile of science activity books we want to work through; the one we're on at the moment is an old one we got at a curriculum swap, called "God's Marvelous Works" by Faythelma Bechtel. We've done activities like shining flashlights at mirrors to see how the light bounces, mixing water and milk to make a translucent mixture, and holding a glass dish over a pot of boiling water to collect the steam and see it condense (that one, they only observed, I kept them safe!). Next in the pile of books are Janice VanCleave's "Play and Find Out about the Human Body" and Vicki Cobb's "Science Experiments You Can Eat".
Next is Literature. We just finished "Pinocchio" by Carlo Collodi, and we're working on "Little House in the Big Woods" by Laura Ingalls Wilder," Our Island Story" by H. E. Marshall, "A Child's Garden of Verses" by Robert Louis Stevenson, and "Friend", a monthly magazine for children produced by the church.
Last we do something purely for fun, like jump on the trampoline or wrestle on the bed.
Ideally, we do all of this and it's not even noon yet. Realistically, Charlotte will need diaper changes, a potty trip, and a nap before that, and we're lucky if we make it to science. So, the next day, we pick up where we left off, and smile!
We are all learning and growing SO MUCH with this routine. And as an added bonus, Charlotte loves it and happily plays while we do this, unless she needs a nap.
-Charlotte walking:
She's been standing up in the middle of the room for weeks now, just crawling to some open spot, standing and dancing for a while, and crawling some more. She likes to stand while she investigates and plays with toys, and she likes to pull up and cruise along the walls and furniture. She's been slowly realizing that walking is better than crawling for locomotion, and has loved when a big person would hold her hand and help her walk, getting steadier and steadier and needing less and less help. Today, something clicked in her mind, and she took several steps in a row, fell, and got up and kept walking, over and over and over! I realized almost too late that I could record that on video.
-Lily`s perfect behavior except when she needs a nap
Yes, Lily is almost perfect, unless she needs a nap. That is in fact my biggest motivator to take the time out of my day to snuggle her down for her nap, is that if she's well-rested she is such an easy and delightful child! Her only fault is that she can get so focused on whatever she's doing that she doesn't really hear what Tim or I tell her; the hilarious thing is that she'll say "OK!" and then promptly forget! I'm working on not losing my patience with her when she does this. Not being listened to is definitely one of my least favorite things, but I love her and I know she loves me and will do what I need her to do once I can just get through to her!
Lily went for a few weeks from January into February not needing naps at all. That was when I weaned her, too, which went very well. But her behavior began to deteriorate and she started falling asleep on car trips, and I tried putting her down for a nap and found success, so I've kept it up. She won't need naps forever!
Yes, I weaned her, finally. I tried halfheartedly a few times since Charlotte's birth but she vehemently refused, so I figured she wasn't ready and powered through, growing to love it again every time. She increased her nursing frequency again in January or so, and I just had enough. I think she was ready, too, because she was OK with it. It helped that she also didn't need a nap for those few weeks! Whenever she asked to nurse I offered to cuddle her instead, or read to her, and she happily accepted. Tim put her to bed at night, and I started reading her and Jack a bedtime story every night. She noticed that I wasn't nursing her anymore and asked once why, and I held her close and told her that I love her very much but she's getting too big to nurse, and Charlotte's getting bigger too and needs all the milk I make. I let her nurse one last time, then, and while she did continue to ask for a week or so after that, she never cried when I told her no. And then she stopped asking. Later when I started napping her again, I just read her a book and held her close and she fell asleep without any trouble. She did ask again for a couple of days, weeks after, and I gently refused, and she stopped asking with no fuss. She was ready, and so was I!
-Jack isn't doing anything spectacular at the moment, just growing into a fine young man.
He loves his sisters and helps with them, he doesn't do his chores until he's asked but he does them then, and he loves to make things with K'Nex and Tinker Toys. He still throws fits when life is hard, but he's getting better at stopping and translating his emotions into words, and getting the love he needs from me and occasionally from Tim. He's losing his baby teeth and getting his secondary teeth, and doing a decent job remembering to brush his teeth after every meal. He is actually learning to read and write in our homeshool, and while he hates how hard it is, he is very proud of what he knows, as evidenced by the drawings he brings home from church or makes in his spare time. He is still a work in progress, but he is a person I like to have around.
-Tim works and we travel!
Tim has succeeded so far in keeping our family afloat all on his own, not as an employee. Granted, he is working as a contractor for a company, but only 30 hours a week.
And we go with him to every conference he goes to. We went to the San Francisco area in September, Chicago in October, Washington DC in November, and Dallas in February. This month we're going to South Carolina, next month we're going to France (first time out of the states for the kids!), in May we're going to Florida, and in June we'll be back in the Bay area. During this extra-busy traveling time, the company Tim does work for wants him to do more work, so I've taken over doing the dishes in our house. Since I also snuggle both girls down when they need naps, and their naps don't often coincide, I feel like I spend most of my day snuggling, feeding, and washing dishes. The laundry hasn't been caught up in weeks, something I used to keep always done. But it won't be too many more months and Charlotte will go down to just one nap a day, and then I can put her down with Lily. And Tim will be able to do dishes again someday, and I won't know what to do with all my extra time!
Whew! That was supposed to be just a quick update! Good night!
We start as soon as we’re done with family morning scriptures (we read 10 verses out of the Book of Mormon, rereading each verse in French as we go, then discuss what we read). We go to the couch with our scriptures, and watch one of the Old Testament Stories the church produces, then I ask them to tell the story back to me. We then begin to read the scriptures the story summarizes. I plan it out beforehand so that we'll read about a fourth of the scriptures from the story in a day, so that after 4 days or so we can start the next story. This works very well for a 4-day school week. After we've read the scriptures that the story summarizes, we recite the memory verse I've chosen that goes with the story. I have them each recite the verse as many times as their age, so Jack recites it 6 times and Lily does it 3 times. My goal is that by the end of the week, they can tell me the story and recite to me the verse from memory. After we've done all the Old Testament Stories, we'll do New Testament Stories, then Book of Mormon Stories, then Doctrine and Covenants Stories. That'll keep me busy for a few years!
Next we work on reading practice. I have a set of index cards for their memory verse, one word or punctuation mark per card, and I have them put the cards in order, using a large-print copy of the verse as their key. I might ask them to find repeated words, or just point to a word and ask them what it is, and since they're working on memorizing that verse they can usually answer me correctly.
Next we go to the table with paper and pencils and practice writing. They write the first word of the memory verse, repeating it the number of times as their age in years.
Next is art. This one is wide open, yet I am often at a loss for what to do in this category. My goal is to have them create something that is beautiful and useful. We've painted, colored, sculpted, cut paper, etc. I hope to not forget other categories of arts, like music. Perhaps I can ask their music leader from church what songs they're working on and practice those during this time, or teach them to play songs on the piano. It's all a work in progress!
Next we do math. It might be drill, in which the more challenging aspect is writing their answers down correctly, or it might be a game that practices whatever skill is challenging for one of them (Jack is learning place value in the millions, multiplication and division, arithmetic symbols, negative numbers, fractions, and geometry, while Lily is working on counting! There's a big gap in their skill levels!), or it might be a page or two of Janice VanCleave's "Math for Every Kid", turning as many of her illustrations as possible into real-life activities.
Next is science! We have a pile of science activity books we want to work through; the one we're on at the moment is an old one we got at a curriculum swap, called "God's Marvelous Works" by Faythelma Bechtel. We've done activities like shining flashlights at mirrors to see how the light bounces, mixing water and milk to make a translucent mixture, and holding a glass dish over a pot of boiling water to collect the steam and see it condense (that one, they only observed, I kept them safe!). Next in the pile of books are Janice VanCleave's "Play and Find Out about the Human Body" and Vicki Cobb's "Science Experiments You Can Eat".
Next is Literature. We just finished "Pinocchio" by Carlo Collodi, and we're working on "Little House in the Big Woods" by Laura Ingalls Wilder," Our Island Story" by H. E. Marshall, "A Child's Garden of Verses" by Robert Louis Stevenson, and "Friend", a monthly magazine for children produced by the church.
Last we do something purely for fun, like jump on the trampoline or wrestle on the bed.
Ideally, we do all of this and it's not even noon yet. Realistically, Charlotte will need diaper changes, a potty trip, and a nap before that, and we're lucky if we make it to science. So, the next day, we pick up where we left off, and smile!
We are all learning and growing SO MUCH with this routine. And as an added bonus, Charlotte loves it and happily plays while we do this, unless she needs a nap.
-Charlotte walking:
-Lily`s perfect behavior except when she needs a nap
Yes, Lily is almost perfect, unless she needs a nap. That is in fact my biggest motivator to take the time out of my day to snuggle her down for her nap, is that if she's well-rested she is such an easy and delightful child! Her only fault is that she can get so focused on whatever she's doing that she doesn't really hear what Tim or I tell her; the hilarious thing is that she'll say "OK!" and then promptly forget! I'm working on not losing my patience with her when she does this. Not being listened to is definitely one of my least favorite things, but I love her and I know she loves me and will do what I need her to do once I can just get through to her!
Lily went for a few weeks from January into February not needing naps at all. That was when I weaned her, too, which went very well. But her behavior began to deteriorate and she started falling asleep on car trips, and I tried putting her down for a nap and found success, so I've kept it up. She won't need naps forever!
Yes, I weaned her, finally. I tried halfheartedly a few times since Charlotte's birth but she vehemently refused, so I figured she wasn't ready and powered through, growing to love it again every time. She increased her nursing frequency again in January or so, and I just had enough. I think she was ready, too, because she was OK with it. It helped that she also didn't need a nap for those few weeks! Whenever she asked to nurse I offered to cuddle her instead, or read to her, and she happily accepted. Tim put her to bed at night, and I started reading her and Jack a bedtime story every night. She noticed that I wasn't nursing her anymore and asked once why, and I held her close and told her that I love her very much but she's getting too big to nurse, and Charlotte's getting bigger too and needs all the milk I make. I let her nurse one last time, then, and while she did continue to ask for a week or so after that, she never cried when I told her no. And then she stopped asking. Later when I started napping her again, I just read her a book and held her close and she fell asleep without any trouble. She did ask again for a couple of days, weeks after, and I gently refused, and she stopped asking with no fuss. She was ready, and so was I!
-Jack isn't doing anything spectacular at the moment, just growing into a fine young man.
He loves his sisters and helps with them, he doesn't do his chores until he's asked but he does them then, and he loves to make things with K'Nex and Tinker Toys. He still throws fits when life is hard, but he's getting better at stopping and translating his emotions into words, and getting the love he needs from me and occasionally from Tim. He's losing his baby teeth and getting his secondary teeth, and doing a decent job remembering to brush his teeth after every meal. He is actually learning to read and write in our homeshool, and while he hates how hard it is, he is very proud of what he knows, as evidenced by the drawings he brings home from church or makes in his spare time. He is still a work in progress, but he is a person I like to have around.
-Tim works and we travel!
Tim has succeeded so far in keeping our family afloat all on his own, not as an employee. Granted, he is working as a contractor for a company, but only 30 hours a week.
And we go with him to every conference he goes to. We went to the San Francisco area in September, Chicago in October, Washington DC in November, and Dallas in February. This month we're going to South Carolina, next month we're going to France (first time out of the states for the kids!), in May we're going to Florida, and in June we'll be back in the Bay area. During this extra-busy traveling time, the company Tim does work for wants him to do more work, so I've taken over doing the dishes in our house. Since I also snuggle both girls down when they need naps, and their naps don't often coincide, I feel like I spend most of my day snuggling, feeding, and washing dishes. The laundry hasn't been caught up in weeks, something I used to keep always done. But it won't be too many more months and Charlotte will go down to just one nap a day, and then I can put her down with Lily. And Tim will be able to do dishes again someday, and I won't know what to do with all my extra time!
Whew! That was supposed to be just a quick update! Good night!
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