The last few weeks the van really started having troubles. It could no longer drive in reverse. I knew we needed to bring it in, but John wanted to wait. I missed a trip to visit my family and see my sister Amber, but that turned out good because Monika's daughter Sadie had some trouble with some medication that they put her on and ended up hospitalized and Sadie and my sister Amy tested positive for covid. So I have to hand it to John. I often don't understand him and why he does or says the same things that he does, but he usually ends up right. The van is now in the shop. It has been there for 7 days and it has now been more than 2 weeks since we grocery shopped, so we are really starting to miss having a vehicle. I have ordered some snack food from amazon, but we are out of milk, low on eggs because the chickens and ducks have not been laying much, almost out of flour except for that canned for food storage, and out of rice. But 15 people consume a lot. I spent over $900 when I last shopped. We still have a freezer full of meat, plenty of cheese, oats, and canned goods.
School is going well because most of the kids are doing their work. But teaching and taking care of the household and such is hard. I am the one who has to run the school, take care of the little kids, nurse and care for the baby, cook most of the meals, and I do a large amount of the cleaning and I organize everyone else's cleaning and most of the meals, and it is hard. I feel old and worn out. My body is tired. I realized about 3 weeks ago, that I had taken ibuprofen almost everyday since Eliza's birth. It would just get between 10pm and midnight and my joints would swell and ache. Well, I want my kidneys and liver to function well for many years to come, so I simply stopped taking ibuprofen, and to my relief, I am just fine. The achiness seems to have gone away.
So to the kids. Ruth is working hard on a book about pigeons. She was having trouble with weight and bloating and fatigue and a rash on her face. She changed some things about her diet, and we started fasting for her. Her skin is clean and pretty now and she has lost all of the weight, and I think she is feeling better in general now except when she has her periods. Ruth has difficult periods.
Kate is John's companion and comfort and she spends many hours each day with her dad.
Johnny has been doing a lot more with computer programming as well as teaching Adam and Joseph more steadily.
I put Adam on 4 online courses and that has freed up my school day by about two hours and Adam is doing well with those courses. I think the accountability and the daily quizzes has helped him to focus better and to learn. Adam has made leaps and bounds and is doing so much better.
Rachel is finally back to sitting around reading books after about a 4 year hiatus to discover herself, I guess. I don't really know, but I am pleased to see Rachel reading on her own time. School wise, Rachel is complaining less about everything except math. Rachel has been teaching a science course to Susan and Joseph and that has been going extremely well. I got a couple of science courses through the Good and the Beautiful and I am really liking the results.
Anya teaches the other science course to Arwen and Joshua. Anya is not as interested in her course, but I really think that being the teacher helps the student to learn things a lot better. Anya is the same generally happy sweet girl that she has always been. She stays up too late, though, chatting with her 3 older sisters.
Joseph is still struggling with school. He doesn't want to do any of it ever. He wants to play and stay up late into the night and sleep late into the day and do basically no work. So I have been butting heads with Joseph and trying to find ways to force him to accomplish his work. He is not getting everything in and completed each day at this point. I had skipped him up a grade when we started homeschooling because academically he was 2 years ahead of his grade level. But at this point, I am going to take that as a blessing, and officially start him in high school two years from now, instead of a year from now.
Joshua is finally reading and knowing what he reads and mostly fluently. He has times when his mind will wander and his dyslexia will kick back in and he will do funny things like start reading a line ahead or a line below or reading from right to left instead of left to right. I am now reading his chapter, writing questions for it and giving that to him before he reads his chapter. That has made the biggest difference recently because he has to pay attention to what he reads to answer the questions.
Arwen is smart, gets her work done in a reasonable amount of time, and is pretty easy going most days. I hope she stays that way.
Susan is still learning to read. I put her back onto last year's reading curriculum because she only finished half and never really learned it. Over the summer, I started her at a lower level and began this year with last year's curriculum. We have just finished the last lesson that she did last year and will now be on the second half of the same curriculum and this time she is retaining it. Susan, however slow she has been with reading, apparently is quite smart with math. Besides Johnny, Susan is the only one of my children who uses adding up tens to learn her math facts, so she gets them quickly and easily.
Samuel does school with me twice a week and that seems to be working best. He is not ready for daily lessons. His hand writing has changed immensely. He knows his alphabet and we are now working on sounds and 3 letter words. I think Sam will pick up reading fairly easily, which is always nice for me.
Gideon will not potty train. He has been horrible about it. He knows what to do, but he just won't do it. I do not think there is anything wrong. I think that he is just stubborn. But time will tell. I have backed off a little more this past week because the messes are getting to be too much.
Eliza likes me to hold her almost all day long. How this little one who thinks she needs to be carried around everywhere is doing so well with crawling and standing and sitting is beyond me. She is a little miracle.
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