Trucking along.

I wrote the title to this post feeling pretty positive today but then had to laugh out loud. There is nothing organized, orderly, or emotionally stabilizing about home schooling 4 boys 8 and under and being pregnant with a baby while also watching an infant full time. There just isn't.

But somehow we keep trucking a long. I'm learning that less is more. I'm learning that we should have very few things that we order our day around in order to keep from getting so stressed out that I literally accomplish nothing and instead end up a huge crying mess.

So what do we order our days around? Breakfast, Bible/Catechism/Hymn time, Lunch, quiet time, Dinner, and Bible time with Daddy.

I've also embraced the fact that my oldest is now very capable of being independent in his lessons. He has a math book he is mostly capable of doing alone with short moments of guidance from me, he is interested in learning cursive so I bought him two workbooks that complement each other and he's working through those, and we're working through two different chapter books right now in addition to an audio book series he listens to every day and narrates to his dad when he gets home. We have multiple other things we pick up when we feel like it, social studies and science type books, but it's so nice to be able to, between all the above things we schedule our day around, say, "Hey, I see you're looking for something to do, go grab your math book and I'd like you to do three pages please."

We have a motto in our home, "We work before we play." My kids know that just like the daily household maintenance chores I ask them to do, school work is part of their whole duty of a child which means that it enables them to better serve their family, which is their current vocation. Of course, the typical amount of time they are asked to do anything from curriculum is very small right now because most of the day they are so full of questions of their own and are buried in our books, reference books, and having me look things up online for them. I am much more inclined to watch them hungrily devour knowledge they are pursuing on their own until they are of age where they will be working hard towards a goal that will enable them to pursue their new vocations as adults.

The hard part, for me, is not losing it in the chaos. There just is no perfect way to feel complete order and control when one is managing education, home, meals, outside of the home activities and friends, etc. So, I'm sticking with less is more for now and trying to enjoy these last 10 weeks (!!!!!!) of pregnancy and the baby kicking the daylights out of my ribs.