Diaper Daze

Warning: The following is not for the weak of stomach . . .

I find it profoundly funny sometimes to think that I'm a mom of seven because I've never been good at dealing with diarrhea, vomiting, splinters and blood. Case in point . . .

Tonight, Keva filled her diaper. She did it up real good, too. The school had put on her last diaper, and someone had not done a good job, because the contents thereof did not actually get deposited INTO the diaper. Instead, it got down her leg and caked onto pants and limb with amazing bonding power. (Superglue had nothing on that stuff!) Anyway, it stunk to high heaven. I managed to remove her shoes, shocks and pants and stick her into the tub. She went SOME MORE in the tub -- Apparently, she'd been saving it up. I finally got HER clean, then while she soaked, I made my way back to her room wishing I was wearing protective gear and threw diaper and pants into a scented trash bag. I just could not bring myself to rinse out the pants. It was too gross. She had two pairs of pants the same color anyway. Now she has one. : )

Okay, on to more innocuous things.

We've resumed reading The Chronicles of Narnia in the evenings. We'd gotten out of the habit, there for a while, and then it occurred to me "Hey, let's start reading again!" So we're nearly through with The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. That series has got to be one of the richest children's literature ever.

Once we got started, the kids' imaginations flared. All of the writers got their notebooks out and started writing their own stories. Keri Lynn is always writing a story, so that was nothing new. (Her stories are usually about princesses and princes and horses and lots of other sweet things.) And Kristofer sometimes gets the writing urge as well. He'll write well into the night with much enthusiasm about Bionocle-type creatures, wars, action and lots of drams. Lately, though, Kathleen has gotten the writing bug. She tends towards more reality-based writing. And tonight Kylie showed me a story she had written about a trip to the mall to a Build-a-Bear Workshop. Too cute! It does my homeschooler's heart good to see a spontaneous writers workshop like that.

Kathleen and Kylie both are allowed to read until 9:30 each night. I encouraged Kathleen to move to a longer chapter book, Understood Betsy, and to stay with it even though it seemed boring at first. She came to me last night all excited, "You were RIGHT, Mommy! It's a really good book . . . " and then proceeded to give me every last detail of the story until my eyes started rolling back into my head. Kylie, who started with American Girl books, but got discouraged because they were too hard, is now reading by the chapter instead of by the page. I think she's finally got it! The fact that she wrote out a story tonight helped me to realize how much she has improved over this last year.

I'm pretty sure that Kade and Konner will never learn to read. I'll just rename them Konan and K'TArzan. We go through the phonics sounds over and over and over and over AND over again . . . Sigh. I guess they're learning SOME things, though. Each day (usually) we go through the books of the Bible (we've gotten as far as Ezra), reciting of months/days of the week, counting, going over address and phone number, their birthday, etc. The A Beka sales guy encouraged me to put them in the same first grade work this year, but I'm pretty sure that neither of them are ready for it -- especially Konner who could really care less about formal education.