growth

  

We had a busy weekend with lots of family visitors coming and going.  My mother-in-law helped me paint our guest room that rosy brown where Rosie is sleeping and I love it.  I wasn't sure in advance whether it would make the room too dark with the dark flooring and the pine paneling on one wall, but it's really just cozy and soft looking.  

We are trying to get into a new normal groove for school and I think we are catching up to where I hoped to be by now in spite of all the moving.  Schedules and plans are always being modified until I find something that works for this season of our family life but the elements have stayed about the same all year.  Today we did  morning time right after breakfast and then went outside together so that Lyddie could gather twigs from our "new" trees.  I am planning to have her begin a collection of twigs and draw and identify them.  In the process we found several owl pellets in our little stand of evergreen trees.  I haven't had time to dissect them with her but I hope we can do that later this week.  

I pulled back this week on what I was having Millie do along with Lyddie because I realized her participation in school activities had inched upward over the time we were living in the little temporary house with nothing else to really do.  Now the weather is starting to warm up so I can make sure she is really spending the hours outdoors again that I have wanted for her in this last year before starting first grade.  We are reading A.A. Milne poetry this term, and we all love it.  They all wanted to memorize, "Puppy and I," and it is sweet to hear all three of them excitedly reciting it every day over our morning tea time. 

There has been amazing growth in spelling for both Lyddie and Millie with the use of Spell to Write and Read this year.  I am confident at using it now and will hopefully have only a few preparations to do for it for the next several years since it will be the same curriculum over again and reaching farther and farther each year.  If you are willing to put in some study before the beginning of the year and a little study each week the first year you use it, I can highly recommend this curriculum.  I think my girls are beginning to have a really excellent foundation for spelling and grammar because of it.  They were both reading with great skill before this year so I don't know if there has been impact on their reading, but if they hadn't, I feel confident that there would be improvements there too.  

All in all, we are getting pretty settled in to our home and it feels nice to clear out one of the leftover boxes every day if I can.  We have been diligently continuing with the DASH diet changes and Jesse and I have both lost several pounds over the past 10 days.  I lost seven pounds as of this morning!  We will soon add back in some whole grains and fruits in limited quantities and I am looking forward to that since I have missed fruit!  Overall the changes have not been as hard as I feared they would be, especially after the first few days of sugar withdrawal passed.  I don't know if this will make sense to every person, but I feel a sense of freedom from food.  Because I am strictly following a plan I have made for the moment, I don't wander into the kitchen wondering if there's anything I can/should munch, no trying to resist temptation because it's just not on my radar.  I am not always thinking and trying to figure out what the next meal or snack will be because it's already done for me and posted on the fridge.  The most planning I have to do is pulling out meat to thaw or putting together a lunch.  Having the choices removed really helped kick start my attitude and ability to change.  No decision fatigue, no panicked moments of trying to figure out what breakfast is going to be again today.  Not to mention not feeling like I have to track everything as I go because it's already laid out specifically for me.  Tracking is tedious and I have always had a hard time being consistent because I get busy.  I'm really thankful for this journey the past week and a half and I am excited for the first time in a long time about the real possibility of being a healthy weight and having healthy habits and being a healthy model for my children.