Primarily written by Adrienne, a homeschooling mother of seven, ages 10 and under. She chronicles life, laughs, struggles, and lessons learned as she raises a larger-than-most sized family and tries to figure out what she's doing day by day.

With occasional posts, Alexandra, Adrienne's older sister, writes of her ranch life in Nevada and raising four sons, ages 5 and under. Life is never dull and her boys have given her some pretty awesome stories to tell.

Stick around awhile, and you're sure to laugh, nod, smile, be encouraged, and see what life is like with a big (little) family.

2.10.2012

Nothing like a little demo.

Trying to teach Pierce to nap in his bed instead of on me. Crying it out isn’t my method of choice, but since informing him of his responsibilities isn’t working, it’s my only option. Pierce has the crying part down pat. But yesterday, when Blaine decided he’d had enough of Pierce’s crying in the living room, he put him to bed.

He didn’t even fuss.

Pierce: 1,254

Momma: 0.

I cannot figure this boy out for the life of me. But that two hour nap he took in his bed – I accomplished something right about then. Both in my house and, hopefully, in Pierce’s habits. Hopefully.

Liberty is impatient with my efforts to teach Sterling to read. Or maybe she’s just tired of Sterling’s hourly requests to be read to. Either way, she got out the phonics charts and decided to teach him herself. Her methods are a bit interesting, but Sterling likes the attention. I have a feeling she’ll get it done. Next up: teaching him to tie his shoes. For as many little children that I have, it feels like I taught Eden these things forever ago. It’s kind of fun to have another one enter the grand world of education.

Every six months or so, I leave the much-used mop in the closet and wash my kitchen on my hands and knees. Mops can only do so much, and a good scrubbing now and then does the floor wonders. Judging from the looks of my jeans when I was finished, I shouldn’t have waited so long. But the feeling of my bare feet on the floor this morning made it very worthwhile. And then my kids ate breakfast…

We had a dresser with every drawer falling apart. It was headed for the curb this morning, but I wasn’t sure how I was going to get it there after Blaine forgot it. The girls had fun with the drawers. Jumping on them made them fall apart – really, it didn’t need much help. I decided to push the dresser off of the porch and see if I could get it to fall apart so that I could carry it.

One push had it as flat as a pancake. The whole thing just flattened. It was the most fun I’ve had with a task in a long time. If everything were so obedient and efficient, I’d get a whole lot more done in a day! Nothing like a little demo.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So are you one dresser short now? Roxanne

Unknown said...

No. We had one hideous and long (as opposed to tall, taking up less floor space) dresser in the shop. I moved the kids room around, took the closet doors off and hung a curtain instead, and put the ugly dresser in the closet. It's working well and I haven't had to rehang a closet door in two weeks. That's a new record. Those doors drove me crazy.