From time to time, I get questions from friends or relatives. What do you do all day? I try to direct them here for answers, but often the blog reflects the big events more than our day-to-day lives. Here’s a look at one Monday in the life.
7:00 - PisecoDad’s alarm goes off. He takes BabyGirl downstairs with him to play with tub toys while he showers. JediBoy keeps sleeping. I listen to NPR until I decide to get up - today that was about 7:45. BabyGirl and PisecoDad have some breakfast. I check my email.
8:00 - PisecoDad leaves for work. I grab a banana, finish checking my Google Reader, and sing songs with BabyGirl.
8:30 - JediBoy comes downstairs. We mix dough for kluski, roll it out, and talk about our Polish ancestors. The three of us have cereal for breakfast. Yes, this is BabyGirl’s second breakfast. After we eat, JediBoy is showing off his muscles so we do some bicep curls, tricep extensions, lateral crunches, and other moves using full AquaPod water bottles as weights. JediBoy does some squats, lunges and push-ups too. BabyGirl does her best to follow along.
9:30 - JediBoy and I play “I Spy” in the living room. He suggests that we use clues such as “Spy everything you can that’s red,” or “Spy three circles.” BabyGirl follows a bit of the color searching, but mostly just dances around us. JediBoy and BabyGirl play some kind of superhero/pretend/dress-up using playsilks and bandannas as capes. JediBoy asks me to read, and I read 12 stories from One-Minute Favorite Fairy Tales by Shari Lewis. When I am done, JediBoy asks to use BabyGirl’s new Okiedog Fropper hopping ride-on toy, notices the weight limit label (45 lbs) and weighs himself (54 lbs) and BabyGirl (27.5 lbs).
10:30 - The three of us head upstairs to the bedroom and unwrap the Math U See Gamma dvd. BabyGirl happily plays with the blocks while JediBoy and I watch and work through three lessons in quick succession. The lessons cover the dimensions and area of a rectangle, multiplication by 0 and 1, and skip counting by 2, 5, and 10. We finish three full lessons in about 45 minutes. That’s not typical - we usually cover 1-2 lessons per week.
11:30 - It’s snowing! But not sticking. JediBoy plays Legos and Star Wars figures alone in the playroom while I work on lunch prep with BabyGirl underfoot - er, helping out. JediBoy helps to cut and curl the kluski. We’ve gone without a morning snack today, so the kids are starving.
12:30 - We have lunch - Muffin Tin Monday: lunch is served in muffin tins and this week includes food from my Polish grandparents: kluski, huckleberries, pierogies, kielbasa, horseradish with beets, and ham. The kids watch Muzzy Spanish Level 1, dvd 2 while I clean up a bit and stop by the computer for a few minutes.
1:30 - I read aloud from The Story of the World: Volume 1, Chapter 18 - Crete. JediBoy answers the review questions and asks me to talk more about Theseus and the Minotaur. BabyGirl flips through board books on her own, on the other side of the room. We find a Minotaur figure in his box (thanks, PisecoSis, it used to be yours) and work together to make a big maze from wooden blocks, while BabyGirl tries to help by handing us random blocks.
2:30 - The three of us continue to play with blocks in the nursery. JediBoy builds a “school” (that’s what the block says) with a big, elaborate playground. He adds cars, trains and railroad tracks. BabyGirl and I build towers to knock over. While this is going on, we put some red cabbage on to boil to make pH indicator. JediBoy makes a crayon drawing of Theseus and the Minotaur.
3:30 - The kids are having a hard time playing alone together while I strain the cabbage water. I decide it’s time for an art project, and we make Soapy Dough together, mixing 2 c. flour, 1/2 c. salt, 2 T. paint and 1 T. dish soap. The green, scented dough looks to JediBoy like a wad of giant’s chewing gum. It is sticky and gloppy and occupies us for a half hour. Impressively, the spots on the table, chairs, walls and floor - not to mention on the kids - where the goo lands come away cleaner thanks to the dish soap. I know Dave C. is missing us right now. The kids, now cleaner, have cereal and bananas for a snack.
4:00 - BabyGirl goes down for a nap. JediBoy and I use the pH indicator to test: plain water, water with salt, with flour, with baking soda, with vinegar, with lemon juice, and with cola. JediBoy loves the color changes and plans to share this with PisecoDad tomorrow.
4:30 - JediBoy does the SOTW Minotaur Maze. We work together on 4 pages of “language arts” from the Flash Kids G&T Grade 3 Reading, Writing & Math workbook. A page on the four meanings of the word “key,” a page about common corrections (thorough/though, then/than, mere/mirror), a page for JediBoy to create sentence endings and one for him to come up with sentence beginnings. JediBoy figures out the current time (4:45) and how long until PisecoDad comes home (45 minutes). JediBoy reads The Hero and the Minotaur by Robert Byrd to himself, then asks me to read it aloud because there were some parts he didn’t really understand.
5:30 - PisecoDad comes home. BabyGirl wakes up. JediBoy shows off his block maze. We gather in the living room to talk about our days. PisecoDad puts on water for spaghetti, BabyGirl plays in the kitchen, JediBoy puts on his Dragon Warrior costume to play, and I retreat to the computer.
6:30 - We have dinner together. The kids love spaghetti and meatballs, so they eat well, though messily. I read Time magazine (the Obama issue) and some of the latest Mental Floss, and work on the computer while JediBoy and PisecoDad play Zombie Fluxx in the living room and BabyGirl dances to Laurie Berkner.
7:30 - PisecoDad takes the kids to the store so he can pick up a book of kakuro puzzles. I write and post this blog entry. When they come home, we’ll clean up (probably a bath since they’re covered in tomato sauce), read books & head to bed.
