A Little Bit of Everything

"In cleaning out your basement, you will find great and necessary things!", said No One Famous.

We've been on a warpath to attack some of the projects on our Master List during the last few months.  Me and my husband-who-never-sits-down.

Plans around here are always tied into, well, everything else, and we can't get one thing actually finished without starting or ripping out something else that is somehow necessary to completing the first thing.  I'll give you an example - the basement (which is really more of just a lower room, halfway under the ground in our split-level home) has been slated to become a family room for years now.

But first, we have to address the water problem.  The one where water comes in the bottom door and the crawlspace in copious amounts when it rains a lot, or the snow melts a lot.  And that means digging a trench and laying a pipe and having stone, and etc, etc, etc.  So, in the middle of Frozen January, when you all of a sudden want to get hot-to-trot on your new Family Room, well, it just ain't happenin'.

Then, we also know that the crawlspace will be less likely to take on water if the back addition gets walls and a roof.  Can we borrow some TIME from you?

There's also the minor issue of how the basement is filled with CRAP.  Okay, maybe not CRAP.  Stuff.  Stuff that is mostly needed on some project, either at our house, in our garage, for our newly planned outdoor living space, or for the farmhouse project, all of which will likely save us lots of money.  So, not stuff to get rid of.

Yeah, we've been moving (slowly) on that.  The trench is mostly done, with a little help from a small man with a red shovel.

We've been cleaning and clearing that ole' basement.  We bought an enclosed trailer to store stuff in for now, which will eventually serve its purpose in the business.  We managed to find, in the process, a whole bunch of useful things that we forgot we had.  There were some leftover or extra (i.e. FREE) cabinets from some of our vendors that I absorbed into the homeschool room and my new laundry area.

So we took out Indy's old Pirate Ship themed bed, love it tho we did...

...and of course, the walls were ruined, so we spackled and painted... 

...and then put those cabinets to good use.  

The best gift a man can get for his wife is STORAGE!

We found the brackets to fix the fence panel that got whacked down by a tree limb a few weeks back.  We found the tub of Easter eggs and buckets in the basement, too - ha, right?!  Just in time!  And what the heck was it doing down there, anyway?  We (finally) moved the big filing cabinet up to the office where it belongs.  It's like a whole different house in here!

Beyond that, our winter can be summed up like this:

It snowed.

It warmed up.

Snow melted.

It rained.

It snowed.

It warmed up.

Snow melted.

It rained. 

REPEAT.  

We ping-ponged between snow and mud.  My washing machine groaned and moaned at the increased laundry from all that Splish, Splash, Splooshin'.  I got smart and added screws for hooks in the exposed ceiling joists in the half-cleaned out basement above the fireplace to dry the snow gear that continually got soaked from the wet, slushy, muddy, sort-of, almost snow.

The children delighted in the mud and I delighted in them.  For the few and far between snowstorms that actually produced anything worth writing home about, we decided that Snow Blowers were SO 2014, and Roger helped cleared part of the road, too.

But Spring is FINALLY here.  I can tell because my head is chock full of snot every damn morning.  This is normal for me, unfortunately for like 3/4 of the year, and I don't bother going to a doctor about it because they'd probably either recommend meds (which I don't want), or a head transplant, since this one causes me so much trouble.

My spring bulbs out front have burst through.  Our early crop seeds have turned into little shoots sitting on our windowsill.  We are outside (without MUD) more and more.  Baseball practice is in full swing, after many weeks of drowned out or snowed out practices. We are thankful our league starts at age 5, because Riley wanted to play this year, but she has to wait.  Next year we can run around on 3 different teams...

Riley plants more seeds for the kids' flower garden this year.

The farmhouse has a back wall and a REAL DOOR.  This is huge.  :)

Homeschool is going well, we are in our groove more than ever.  RJ is starting to nearly, almost, maybe normalize, or perhaps I have just learned better ways to manage him (it sometimes takes A LOT), so we get out more to homeschool meetups and events.  We are doing some cool side stuff with school, like making Stop Motion videos, and the kids are writing and illustrating their own books.  We sort of float back and forth from sit-down learning, book-learning, and hands-on learning and it works really well for us.  Indy has been doing charcoal art projects from here, and she's actually pretty good at it.  Musical instruments continue, with the big two taking lessons and performing with the local district kids, and Riley practicing making noise on her trumpet.

Don't mind the spackle in the foyer and downed curtains... this was probably one of the last days that our living room was bright orange.  I can't tell if RJ is singing or crying...

RJ demands often to be included with school, and we've been learning about Steam Trains and Steam Engines so in-depth it makes my brain hurt.  I never really thought trains were that great.  Ever.  And I still don't think they're that great.  But RJ does.  And so, I know more than I ever cared to know about trains, tracks, train parts, and train terminology in general.  But it is really fantastic to see him so excited by something he loves.

Since we are still living without that family room, sometimes triple-table train set-ups end up in the Master Bedroom.  Thank You, Craigslist, for  connecting me with all those people who darn-near GIVE AWAY really cool train stuff.  More spackle in the background and a ladder waiting for us to get in the painting mood again.

So that's about it.  Business is good, Rog has been out doing estimates like crazy and the phone rings often.  Customers are concerned about getting on our schedule, as they've heard about us and know that we are busy.  This is an excellent sign of Roger's workmanship quality, since we don't actively market the business.  We rely almost solely on word-of-mouth referrals, and it also seems to help that people see him literally all over the town working on local jobs. I don't know for sure exactly what it is about him, but people get REAL excited when they see him... "Hey! Roger!  Yeah, I see your truck all the time!  You were working on my neighbor's house!"  Local vendors love the crap out of him and even share their company lunch with him.  The one guy working at the T-Shirt place nearly falls out of his chair when he sees me coming in.  Me.  Not even Roger.  He just knows I'm married to Roger.  So excited, I tell you.  And Rog deserves it, because he really does put his heart into every job he does.  No half-assing, no short-cuts, no trying to rip people off because he thinks they can afford it, and no taking on anything he can't handle.  He's genuine, with an excellent work ethic and a knowledge base that is rarely matched, and I'm sure those are reasons why everyone from the town to the customers to our vendors loves the crap out of my Roger.  But for small Roger, well, we'll need to work on his motivation and work ethic a little bit, because as of right now, he still sleeps through lunch...

Splish, Splash, Sploosh...

...says Thomas!  Click-clack, down the track!  Thomas and Friends!  I'm huffing and puffing up the hill!  I'm shunting, Mommy.  Thomas needs my help!  Where's your freight?  Clear the tracks!

These are the things we hear all day long, from our little Train-Lover, RJ.  He talks in Thomas-talk.  Phrases from that wacky, British television show about trains.  RJ doesn't get mad, he gets Cross.  Heading up the stairs?  "No, I'm going up the hill."  Dropped something on the floor?  "Flatten my Funnel!" he exclaims. Have you ever noticed just how much Thomas and his friends curse?  "Cinders and Ashes!" they shout when things don't go their way.  "Bust my Buffers!"  "Fizzling Fireboxes!" and more.  If I could just re-habit my potty mouth with all Thomas phrases... But, back to RJ.  He speaks in appropriately-timed Thomas talk for just about any situation.  Just the other day he farted, and happily shouted that he "Pumped his Pistons."  Now that one had us all rolling with laughter.

Does it sound like we watch too much TV?  It might.  Until we clarify that we still don't have cable, and we use Netflix sparingly for shows, and that we have gotten run over by not one, but two entirely different stomach bugs, since Christmas Eve, in this house, grabbing ahold of each of us with explicit timing.  So, yeah, the Boob Tube has been on a bit more than usual for whatever sickies happen to be on the couch.  Which means we've watched a lot of Thomas.  Thankfully Netflix has about 20 Thomas the Train episode collections, compared to the ONE Mickey Mouse Clubhouse episode.  And for some reason, even the big kids like watching Thomas.  

Outside play has been still available this winter for us, with an occasional measly couple inches of snow.  The local forecasters screwed up big with the first storm forecast, and are now just walking around in circles with their heads still completely up their asses, so we don't even listen to them anymore.  We never did get the 2 feet of snow they promised, which also shut down the town, the state, and the local schools for 2 days.  Sometimes it starts to snow, but no one gets too excited.  Once we got about 5 inches, and it was good sticky snow, and Riley made her first snowman of the season.  

The kids bundled up and went out to play for hours, enjoying what little was there and playing with our fleet of trucks.  They sledded down our back hill until the snow was gone and the leaves wouldn't let the sleds slide down anymore.  

Trucks and buckets!

This guy likes his "pockets."

Then it rained.  And rained, and rained.  For about a day and a half.  And turned our snow into MUD. 

There's that nice, big, low spot in the backyard where the neighborhood's water collects when it rains. 

Roger decided the warmer weather meant it was time to clean up the driveway side of the house a little bit, which eventually meant I had to come and help move something heavy.  So, the inevitable time had come, and we dressed the kids up in their snow clothes, and sent them outside.  

We half-heartedly said, "Stay away from the mud puddle..."  full well knowing that it wouldn't really happen.  

RJ, of course, was first in.  One of his favorite Thomas episodes is 30 minutes of trains splashing through mud puddles... so it was not very long before we heard a little voice yelling, "Splish, Splash, Sploosh!" just like Thomas.  

He does not even care that his face is crusted with mud and boogers. 

At least I had put on a crockpot of homemade Beef Stew, a perfect end to our Muddy Day outside.

Hug and Moon

So I started this post a LONG time ago (try September), but due to being on my feet all day with LIFE, I just did not get a chance to finish it!

I had meant to announce it when it happened, it being something we were kind of not expecting, at that moment, anyway. And so, it was exciting.  So without further adieu....

Riley is a reader and a speller!!  

Sometime back in August of last year, this awesome little girl read her first book ever by herself - "Pout-Pout Fish" by  Deborah Diesen.  Actually read it, not just memorized it, like pretty much the rest of her book collection.  It had many of her known sight words, but also some words that she was finally confident enough to sound out and even a few that used blends, like "sm" for smile.  She read it, then read it to her brother, then read it again.  What an amazing thing to see the joy on her face as she realized her accomplishment.  It was just as exciting as a first step, or a first word!  

A few days later, she sounded out the word "H-u-g" at bedtime, and just a few days after that, she sounded out "M-o-o-n" using her knowledge of two o's making the "ooooh" sound.  From there, she took off, wanting to try to spell something new every day, writing out words, writing (and sometimes mailing) letters to family and friends.  Of her own accord, because, in opposition of what some may think, we do not push her to do any of this.  We have learned, over time, that when our kids do things that are "ahead" of the norm, that they can't be discussed openly in public, or at the playground, or to the other preschool Moms last year, or certainly not to any other parents who have same-aged kids, because of course, we're bragging, and we MUST be pushing our children, and never letting them play, and probably strapping them to torture chairs and injecting knowledge into them.  

It has seriously been her heart's desire to learn to read for as long as we can remember, she has said so herself so many times.  I've mentioned before how her favorite "toy" has always been a book.  As an infant, she was happiest on someone's lap with book after book after book.  It didn't matter if you repeated the same book 80 times, or read her 80 different books, just as long as you were reading.  Still as a statue she'd sit and listen attentively.  

Baby Riley would even steal mail to "read!" 

Content as can be. 

Daddy reading to 1 yr old Riley

By 6 months, we'd ask her where things were in her favorite books, and she'd point to them.  By 8 months, she was saying the names of the things we pointed to.  She never seemed to lose interest (although I did.... lol!)  Around that time, I started babysitting for 2 other babes, who were 3 months older and 2 months younger than Riley, respectively, so I got a little busier and couldn't read as many books to her as I previously could, so she learned to sit and "read" herself.  She'd page through each book, never skipping a page, and shortly after her 1st birthday she would "read" out loud, as she had memorized parts of her faves.  Any time we needed to keep her busy, just add books.  Restaurant?  No problem.  She'd happily read the same 4 books over and over.  Mom needs a shower?  No problem.  Sit Riley on the floor surrounded by books.  She never wandered off, not once.  Garden needs weeding?  No problem!  Sit Riley in grass with books.  At the hospital for unknown respiratory issues?  Just bring books and she is the best behaved kid there.  It worked every time.  Old books, new books, it did not matter. 

 Roger and I loved to listen to her on the monitor at bedtime, after we'd read her books and left the room she would read to herself, 10 or so books in a row, fully memorized and correct every time, until she fell asleep.  Her memorization was also so good that if it was bedtime and say, Mom or Dad didn't feel well and tried to skip a word, a line, or a page in the book they were reading, she'd catch us and correct us.  

Age 2 was frustrating for her.  She was learning sight words after expressing her desire to learn some of Indigo's kindergarten words.  She'd ask for more and more, saying she just wanted to learn how to read!  By now, she had an awareness that bigger kids could read new books on their own, and that she was stuck with the books that someone had already read to her.  RJ was born and it got a little hectic in here, and I'll be the first to admit that this exhausted Mommy probably read to her even less.  But books were still her favorite, can still keep her occupied everywhere we went...

From age 3 to 4 we backed off of sight words for a little bit.  The wee Man-child began to crawl just 6 short months into his life, and then to walk at 9 months, and proved to be explicitly different from his siblings in all kinds of ways that required extra parental attention.  Riley had learned about 50 sight words prior to turning 3, and practiced finding those words in the books she had.  As many people know, sight words are not reading, although they're an important part of learning to read.  Sight Words are rote memorization of words that tend to not follow the "rules" of the letter sounds.  RJ, somewhere in the middle of age 1, was eventually not as needy as when he was smaller, and he was beginning to be able to sit still for a book or two himself, so we as a family increased our reading together.  Chase and Indy also read to Riley a lot.

As her 4th birthday approached, she asked for sight words again and so we started where we'd left off - the last set of Primer words.  We use the Dolch Word Lists from here, they offer Pre-Primer, Primer, 1st and 2nd Grade lists.  She also started asking A LOT of questions about letter sounds within words, how to spell things, etc.  This was often while we're driving.  It's totally fine with me when we turn the music down and have great conversation.  One day, she went through the whole alphabet, saying the proper letter sounds for each.  She needed correction for a few, mostly those tricky vowel sounds.  While this was sometimes boring for me, and maybe not what I wanted to be doing, I certainly didn't think it fair to deny her.  

In July, she turned 4.  For a while before, we had had a little routine where she would be sad because I was done reading at bedtime.  So I would ask for a "kiss and a bug" or some other word that rhymed with "hug."  This would always make her giggle.  I'd guess many wrong rhyming words, but she would eventually have to give me the answer.  "That's 'cuz I'm smarter than you, Mom," she'd say.  Redirection successful, we'd kiss, hug, and off I'd go.  She continued to read every night with her reading light on (ikea janso clamp light) until she fell asleep, with books piled on top of her.

Somewhere in late August, I grew tired of the rhyming game.  She could rhyme any word you gave her, and we'd been working on blends, since she had asked me why Chase's name didn't start with the "C" sound like it should, she said.  So one night I told her I wanted "a kiss and a ...."  "Wait!!  Can you SPELL that word... hmmmm....", I said.  And that's how it happened.  

I used to tease Roger about how "easy" of a baby and toddler Riley was, I wanted to make sure he really appreciated that not all kids were like her.  (And boy did he get a dose of something different with his son....).  We read to her every day, from the day she was born, and I took her to infant storytime for the first time when she was just 4 days old.  But we mostly did that with the other kids, too, and for the record, it doesn't always mean you're going to get a kid who loves to sit and read.  It's still a wonderful way to connect with your child and build the brain skills that go along with listening to words and hearing stories.

A day or so after her first spell, we went out to look at the Moon.  On a whim, I asked her how to spell it.  She totally got it right.  "Two O's like in Zoo, Mom."  And after that, it's history.  She starting getting pieces of paper, and writing words down every day.  She gets out Bananagrams to play with the pieces and turn "cat" into "sat."  She cracks herself up by saying, "Hey, Mom, I'm going to spell a color....  G - R - E - E - E - E - E - E - E....." and then she just loses it with laughter as she says, "Greeeeeeeeeeee" over and over until we're both dying with laughter and can't breathe anymore.  She impresses me every day.  And it's not even like I'm doing a whole lot of teaching, at least, not in the sit-down-and-let's-go-over-this way.  I teach, yes, but it's in the moment.  When it comes up.  As it's happening.  Or when she asks me.

Reading to RJ

A friend asked me, "How do you teach a kid to read?"  And there's no short answer.  For Riley, it has a lot to do with what I mentioned above about who she is and what her first years were like.  It's our availability as parents to read to her daily, it's her desire combined with the language and vocabulary we use with our kids, it's our stance that books are unconditional, that reading time with Mom & Dad can never be taken away as punishment, no matter how bad of a day they've had, it's the sheer number of books in our house (and on the couch, and the floor, and the kitchen table....) plus the love they get on a daily basis and minus the excessive TV and video game time that we see in homes with young children all around us.

This is just what's next to her bed.  We are overflowing with books. 

But if I had to give a short answer, say, to a new Mom who was embarking on her new journey as being in charge of a small, stinky, helpless human being with a giant sponge of a brain - I'd say, "Read out aloud.  Every Day."  That's the short answer.

And perhaps, if all lines up, in a few short years, you'll get your own "Hug and Moon."