We be jammin'

So there's one thing about my scheduling that I've wanted to make sure I could do, and that's to be a little bit flexible. If I wanted to have us do something a little different, I didn't want to be so obsessive about the schedule that I wouldn't let us do something a little spontaneous. So far I think I've succeeded with that.

It really did seem different today having both B and D away at school. It's a little bittersweet. I have to admit that I really did like the quiet, especially when both H and A were taking naps at the same time, so W was the only one awake. Talk about a change. But at the same time, I know that it's not going to be very long before my house is always quiet because they've grown up and moved on, probably before I'm ready for it. And I'm sure that when the time comes, I'll worry about whether or not I've done enough to prepare them for what lies in store, if I've taught them enough or let them experience enough. That's part of the reason I decided to do this schedule. I wanted to be able to look back and know that at least I tried and did my best.

The morning went pretty fast between the time we dropped B off at the bus stop and it was time to take D to the bus. I had been hoping to be able to do our adventure walk down to the park again for a bit, but breakfast and chores and those things ended up taking up most of the time. We did get to do a bit of our adventure walk while we were taking D to the bus stop though. It's really not far at all to take him to the bus stop, but we walked a little further and played a bit.

After we dropped D off, I decided to take advantage of the fact that I only had 3 kids with me and go to the store. It's amazing how much easier it is to take 3 kids to the store than to take 5. Most of the time I wait until my husband is home from work and either send him with a list or leave him with the kids while I go. The former seems to be what happens more often lately, which is actually pretty nice, since neither of us like to go shopping. So my husband is pretty nice to be willing to do it for me, even after a long and hard day at work.

H and A slept through our afternoon bit of learning time, but that meant that W got to take more time having fun with it. Quite often for our learning time, we'll either do flash cards with letters or numbers on them or we'll go visit www.starfall.com and he'll do the letter blocks or other activities there. He was even singing one of their songs while he was taking a bath before bed tonight, so that was fun.

While H and A were asleep, I took the opportunity to do a one-on-one activity with W. We made strawberry jam together. Not really a big thing, but he seemed to have a good time putting strawberries in the blender and helping me pour the ingredients into their bowls. He also did a pretty good job of stirring when it needed to be stirred. He was pretty excited to be able to tell D that we made some jam, since we were almost out of some and it's D's favorite.

After B and D got home from school, we did our story time and then they had some free play before dinner and baths. It's amazing how much fun it can be sometimes to have my kids sitting around me while I'm reading a book to them, especially when they really get into the story and react at different parts. Simple joys.

So with all that I did, I also did a few loads of laundry, fixed my vacuum cleaner, and unclogged the kids' bathroom toilet by taking the toilet off and using the toilet auger to be able to get the 5 big blocks out of there that H had managed to flush down it. The latter there would have been a lot more impressive if I hadn't managed to crack the tank in the process (it's a long story, but we'll just say I was tightening a bolt and thought I had a lot more time before I had to start to worry about that than I actually did).

I love being a mom.