Evan's first 2 weeks of mommy school

In the spring, the Greg and I signed Evan up for Preschool for the fall, but had reservations the whole time. It was four days a week for 3 hours each day and 100/month. I have no doubt that he would have loved it, but honestly, I don't want him under anyone else's influence until he has to be (if we decide to not homeschool, which I just don't know if I'm cut out for) and I think paying money for something I can do is so dumb. So, I'm going to try and blog weekly about our homeschooling because eventually I want to get my blog made into a book and I want to have this in it! So far, we have had so much fun! Have a little sneak peak...

We work together 3 days of the week and we always start with prayer, calendar, Pledge of Allegiance, and we work on telling time.

This week we focused a lot on apples because it's fall and a fun fall thing to do is visit an apple orchard. So, I'm taking him to Lynd's fruit farm for a little field trip sometime after the baby comes (or maybe before if the wee one is late). After we read some books and sang some songs we moved on to fun hands on things.

Evan LOVES to use scissors, so he cut out a bunch of things for our activities

We read some books about how Apple Tree's grow, what happens to them during all the seasons, and how Apples grow from a flower on the tree (which is pretty cool, actually!) Then we talked about the parts of an apple and he was able to glue all the parts together. We used the apple tree he cut out to drop buttons (apples) on. He would try to predict how many buttons he could get on the tree when he dropped them and then after he would count them all and see if he was right. Such a fun counting game! He could have done that forever.

We moved on to some fine motor things. He used a q-tip, dipped it in paint, and filled in the dots to paint the numbers. Then he practiced writing his letters by writing words.

Day 2

We have some great people in our neighborhood that homeschool all of their kids and they were kind enough to invite us to their messy art day.

 Then we came home and did sight word Hopscotch (thank you husband for writing the words so I didn't have to bend over my giant uterus!) I called out a word and he had to jump to it. He loved this one as well--a nice gross motor activity. 

I made a tree with numbers and cut out some leaves numbered 1-20 and he just had to match up the numbers. Just a simple number recognition activity. The tree we dropped buttons on yesterday we used to glue the buttons onto today. It was more of a "I don't really know what to do with this, so just glue them on" but Evan actually made a little lesson out of it himself. He lined all the buttons up and as he glued them down he would count them all and say, "I have 24 more until I'm all done." Well done child.

I had him write Apple Tree today to get some writing practice in. We also read more books and then called it a day.

Day 3

I had a baby! So we took some time off.

Day 4

It's been pretty low key lately and totally not according to my lesson plans I made through the spring/summer. I'm just really jumping around, but we're getting it all in, so it works.

This was some candy corn math. He counted out the candy corn according to the number Ihad written and then we practiced adding and subtracting from that number.

Then we worked on some fine motor skills and literacy things. We stuffed the apple after he got the majority of it laced. He was so proud of this apple we had to hang it on his wall haha.

I printed off this little book and he read each page and colored it according to what the book said. I was impressed he didn't need help reading any of the colors

Day 5

A little STEM activity. He tried to build these pumpkins as tall as he could.

Pumpkin patch number match. For number recognition....I drew numbers 10-30 and he had to put the candy pumpkin on top of the number.

I made apples with uppercase letters on them and clothespins with lowercase letters and he matched them up. Then he put all the letters in order.

More writing

Day 6
He collected sticks and then he arranged them in order for tallest to shortest

Practicing patterns. I printed this off, he cuts out the animals and finishes each pattern.

Practicing adding.

More writing.

Mitchell Everett: A Birth Story

Thursday I had my 39 week appointment and I was almost dilated to a 3 still 80%. We had scheduled an induction for Thursday the 3rd (5 days late) if the babe hadn't come yet. My doctor was convinced I would have him before then, but I was not. I did notice my contractions were stronger that day but not any closer together than they had been.

10:30 that night, Greg and I were watching a show after the kids went to bed and I had one contraction that was pretty strong, but I was thinking- ok this baby might come this weekend! Well then, they started coming every 3-5 min and I had to breathe through them. I started timing them for an hour and called my mom to get her prepared to come that night. Literally, 10 minutes before I started having those contractions my mom sent me a text that said something along the lines of--your dad said it's a full moon tonight, you're going to have the baby-- so that was kind of funny.

I told my mom to just wait until I timed them for an hour to be sure it wasn't a false alarm, but needless to say, my mom got in her car and was on her way and got here around 11:45. We were at the hospital by 12ish. I was in Triage for about an hour and had progressed to a 4 while at home. I walked the halls for an hour and dilated to a 5 and then got admitted. My doctor wasn't on call that night, but if I didn't have the baby by 6 in the morning she would come and deliver. So I kind of didn't want to do anything that would make me dilate so I hung out in the bed for the most part. I was a 7 by 4am and hung out on the birthing ball for about an hour and didn't change.

I was having so much back labor (like I did with Eva) so they thought maybe he was posterior. So I got into bed again and labored on my side because that helps turn the baby if it needs to be turned. You guys, it is real hard laboring on your side. Contractions hurt anyway, but have them laying down and it's excruciating. So that lasted about 4 contractions and I'd had it. so I had her come and check me and I was still a 7 but my contractions were getting so much harder.

I started talking an epidural, but before we did it, I felt my water break and I was feeling pressure. I went from a 7 to a 10 in like 5 minutes. I did the same thing with Eva--when I got to transition I was like I ok I'm done, I don't want to feel this anymore, but then right when I started talking epidural, it was time to push. Transition- you are the worst!

My doc showed up and got gowned at like 7:15 and I had Mitchell at 7:24. We did about 3 rounds of 3 pushes. Basically, during each contraction I pushed 3 times for 10 seconds each.  He was so tiny when he came out! No one thought he would weigh much more than 6, but he showed them!

His delivery was so easy compared to my other two. Completely uneventful, not a single decel the whole time, and because my water didn't break my contractions weren't as insane as they were when I had Eva--the nurse accidentally broke my water while checking me when I was an 8-- Eva likes to hold him for about 5 seconds. She loves babies, but I think because this baby takes up her momma's time, she's a little hesitant to be mushy with him. Evan, however, would hold him all day. He LOVES his baby brother. I've seriously never seen something so cute in my life. When Mitchell cries while Evan is holding him, Evan says, "I got ya Mitchell, I got ya." Evan has always been a tender hearted little guy and he's just presh right now, taking on this big brother role for the second time.

Our Mitchell, he's a keeper!