A Day...

Today is Monday. This may not be the best day to do "A Day in the Life". It is, after all, a Monday. But that's okay. 1/7th of my life is Mondays. They happen to the best of us. Anyhow, here's now the morning goes...

The alarm goes off. Zorak gets up and ready for work. I notice a draft and look around, wondering where my warmth went. It is still dark. I try to get up. It is very cold. He mumbles something at me. I mumble something back, and try to get up again. He tucks the covers over my shoulders and reminds me that I'm pregnant and it's okay not to get up with him in the mornings.

Yes, awww, that sounds very sweet. And he is very sweet. He's also not a morning person, and I suspect he doesn't want me following him around the house, getting more verbal with every sip of coffee. I smile and pull the covers back over my neck. I can appreciate that desire for quiet and solitude. I'll be begging for it around nine tonight.

I lay in bed, drifting in and out of sleep, appreciating the blankets and the insulation in the walls, until the light begins to filter into the basement, which alerts Houdini, down there, that he ought to be outside, planning his next escape. His baying drags me from my bed. Not so much out of sympathy for him, but out of fear that he'll wake the kids.

Start the coffee. It's a BUNN. I'm spoiled. It'll be ready by the time I find my shoes and pee. I'm still irritated that it can't sense my presence and start on its own. Our next BUNN will, at the very least, have the pour-n-serve option. In the meantime, we've both nearly mastered the tilt-n-switch method of getting coffee from the still-brewing pot. That corner of the kitchen gets cleaned quite often. I notice it still looks like we have a blind kitchen servant. Huh. Weird.

I grab my morning studies: Latin (Henle); math (yep, pre-calc, still, just like college); Bible; whatever I'm reading at the time (right now, I'm on week eighty-thousand of trying to slog through Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness). Head to the porch. The cold wind hits my face and I spill hot coffee on my feet. (There are burn holes on the tops of my feet that match the circles in my crocs - you'd think I'd learn by now -- stay inside, or put on different shoes.) Nevermind, I'll go hide in the school room.

I get about half my studies done before I take my computer break. If I'd risen with Zorak, I could have done it all. As it stands, I'm not giving up my email and brain candy and Very Important Board Time, just because I stayed in bed. We all have ways of rejuvenating and filling our tanks. Some people take long weekends in Vegas, some people sell products so they can go to training seminars, some have "Moms night out". I read email, peruse the news, and check on my homies and their blogs. This may also be why I'm still in pre-calc after two years. I know.

The boys start getting up. John first, always. He comes out dressed, hungry, and unaccountably perky. Have an apple and a glass of milk while we wait for your brothers. He sits at the breakfast bar with his Latin, munching away, waiting for me to emerge for more coffee. We hang out in the kitchen, doing Latin and chit-chatting about the day. I like this time with him. It's good stuff. We have about half an hour together before Smidge gets up.

Smidge comes out acting like he's been kept from us for months. In a dark, slimy dungeon. He's quiet. Almost tearful. Snuggly. Downright clingy. Please let his be a personality quirk and not a wheat allergy, I pray. He perks right up at the offer to grab a banana, and he asks if I've printed up his math page yet. No. I forgot about that. I slip off to print one out. Smidge and John find some way, while I'm doing that, to irritate each other and wake EmBaby.

Thankfully, she likes to stay in bed and talk to herself for about twenty minutes when she wakes up. She turns on her music, wraps her bunny in blankets, throws things out of her crib. If you go in and try to remove her before she has summoned you, it will get ugly. Just enjoy it. Relax. She's not going to be in therapy in 20 years because you left her in her crib in the mornings.

I get Smidge's paper printed and hand it over to him. I get John redirected on his worksheet. I get more coffee. I wander down the hall and do something loud, hoping it'll stir James. He's good about getting up if I ask him to get up, but I don't mind letting him sleep if we don't have anywhere to be. It's a good give-and-take situation. He stays up late, reading, which I can appreciate. He also seems to need more sleep lately. Heaven help me, those pants we just bought him won't fit much longer. Make a mental note to set money aside for pants sometime before Christmas.

John and Smidge pop in a short video. They used to watch PBS, but we can't get it on our rabbit ears anymore. This buys me time to get dressed (obviously, I'm not a FLYlady graduate) and make my bed. By the time I'm dressed, EmBaby's ready to get up and start her day.

I spend way too much time picking out something for her to wear before I remember I've got to find some kind of angle for her to want to wear it. It can be anything -- flowers, hearts, red piping -- but I've got to point it out before she can say "no" or it's all over and she'll end up in sweats and a tie-dyed t-shirt for the rest of the day. Fortunately, she has several tie-dyed t-shirts. One of the perks of being #4. Today I'm quick on the draw, and she's wearing the sweater with the "bearses" on it. We head into the kitchen and start breakfast.

John follows me back into the kitchen and finishes his Latin. Heh. I knew he wasn't done yet. (But I did need to get dressed.) Whoever is up gets to help with breakfast. This morning it's yogurt, toast with peanut butter and honey (pb&j for Em), fresh fruit, and milk. Most mornings it's eggs and sausage, toast with Granny jelly (cactus apple jelly the boys' Granny makes and stocks us up with every year), fruit, and milk. Or oats. Oats are always good if I get on it before they get up.

By the time breakfast is ready, John's done with his Latin and is working on his reading. Smidge has done his math and a few maze pages. He's running laps through the kitchen. James is up and making hot tea to go with his breakfast. We all eat, I read their Bible study, we do a little for-fun reading, and go over the day's plans. This part strikes me as funny, because I feel like Pinky and the Brain, "it's the same thing we do every night, Pinky..." The older boys get it when I laugh to myself over that. The younger children think I'm just happy. That works.

After breakfast, things break down a bit into a semi-controlled chaos. James starts with his reading, then on to math, and finally Latin. He and John are in two different books, so that works out easier than trying to do blocks-by-subject. As long as they get those three subjects done before mid-morning, we're good. John finishes his reading and starts his math. Smidge forgets he already did math, and does another math project. Then he puts on James' Superman costume and makes laps through the kitchen again. This time, pushing a pirate ship. He and EmBaby race ships around the house. Some days, I think we should have stuck with a dead-end galley layout. Most days, though, I don't mind. I like the noise and the chaos. I don't know when I began to like it, but I do. The older boys don't seem to mind much, either. If the noise gets to them, they'll pick up their books and disperse to the bedrooms for a little quiet study time. Mostly, though, this is just "how it is", and they're good about ignoring it.

Lessons do take longer this year than they did last year. Not because I've increased the boys' workload significantly, but because the boys have discovered they're funny. Really funny. Honestly-able-to-crack-Mom-up, funny. And they make use of that. I don't do such a good job of keeping them from making jokes, but it is challenging to be the straight man to these guys.

Of course, it's not all high-quality Night At The Improv. John offers to gargle his math answers for me today. When I decline, he has a stream of other options: snort, belch, say them with a full mouth. Ah, yes. Yes, this is why Other Mothers keep it in check. Much to his disappointment, I decline even the gas-based answer method, and suggest, instead, that perhaps he could write his answers instead of giving them orally. He decides plain old English is just fine, thanks, and we finish in record time.

Smidge slams into the hall door frame. EmBaby, coming in a close second in the Brigand Regatta, ploughs right over the wreckage. While I disentangle small, angry survivors from the disaster, the older boys decide it's time for a break. They head outside to burn leaves, train lizards, and feed the dog. I get the littles sorted and send them back to the docks with their ships for refitting, then sit down for a bit of a coffee break and another chapter in my reading.

I'll post the second half of the day later.
Kiss those babies!
~Dy

*Edited to add a link to Part 2.*