Depression VS Anger

There's such a fine line when anger becomes depression and visa versa. When something happens (or someone does something) that angers you, maddens you so deeply - but really there isn't anything you can DO about it that could be deemed constructive - those are the things and actions that always toy with the anger/depression line.

 I had surgery Tuesday and am obviously starting to hit the apex of pain. Stitches are settling in, the tendon is doing whatever tendons do to reattach, nerves do whatever they do to heal (feel like they're on fire BTW).  *MY* plan had been to take a muscle relaxer, read a book, help the kids with their school some, lay around a LOT, let the 2 other grown-ups who live here be grown-ups and warm up one of the 450 freezer meals I already made, take the kids to their activities, clean the house, take care of the farm. Well. Hubby is trying really hard. He's been insulted and wronged by the other at his every attempt to do anything. So he doesn't even WANT to try to help (which he's just going to have to anyhow because - I only have 1 arm working) and the other *grown up* has been so blatantly sourly rude, it's not worth the breath to converse.

I understand that mental health is playing a large part in the case of the one. It always has in situations like these, but those who need the help always deny the need for it. ALWAYS. There is no point in arguing logic, there is none. They just want to argue. It's like when The Girl's meds are off. You cannot simply tell her that she should stop. She can't. Or trying to force The Boy to talk to people. People aren't meat puppets for us to dangle about. I guess that's the point of depression vs anger. I know what this person NEEDS. They are refusing to seek it and deeply hurting people on the way down.

Week 1

     We are at the end of week 1 on our new schedule. It went SO smoothly Monday through Wednesday. Thursday it started to get a little slippery. We had Swimming. The kids got tired. Friday took a nose dive. *I* had a doctor appointment. Then we had to go to the pharmacy. Then my mom was home and sick. Then the girl had to do laundry. Then.. and then.. and then..  The kids ended up with more than a full days worth of work left. So, we spend ALL freaking day today (Saturday) making them do all the last bits of school work they hadn't done, correcting it, re-correcting it. ALL. DAY. They each ended up with at least 3 pages of math, spelling tests, Art, Science. So on. Then, they had to go back and error correct ALL the stuff they had done wrong they hadn't bothered to correct and the stuff they had done today.
     Even better? I was going to allow them to type out their spelling tests because writing is so hard for them. BUT, they started to use Spell Check!! I kid you not. I give The Boy his first word and he asks me if he spelled it correctly and I tell him he'll have to figure it out. He says, " Oh, I did. Spell Check says so." Oh, Hellz no! 
     Tomorrow, we still have to complete Art and Science. I'm letting them pick the topic. They've decided to rotate Boy pick, Girl pick and so on. Boy has picked arthropods for this first 2 to 4 week session. I know the Girl is going to pick Rocks and Minerals for her, so I can at least start planning on that. The weather is supposed to be gorgeous this upcoming week, so I may journey to the zoo and go on an arthropod hunt. It would be something to do one afternoon. I have no idea what the heck I'm doing with art. I may stick with what I've got going with the art book I've started and attempt to add more mediums or textures or.. Something? I don't know. I don't *do* art. The boy tends to follow me in that, the girl loves arts.
    

New Year, New Grades

About 6 weeks ago, I explained to each kid what they had left to finish out the grade level the were currently in and what (exactly, specifically) they needed to do to finish the grade level and move up. We are at the deadline time. 1 child has finished. 1 child has made a half-hearted lazy attempt at throwing a pen at it and isn't even close to being finished. Is what I expected the lazy child to do hard? No. Is it time consuming? Not really. In all honesty, it could all be done in a matter of a few hours if they actually tried. 6 weeks. Not done. Not only is it not done. 1 of the 3 items that needed to be completed hadn't been started as of this am. The actual shocker - it's The Girl who has made no attempt to do the assignment! The Boy has completed his.

I made them both a clear, concise sheet of instructions. A clear time frame. A book of instructions for if they instructions *I* gave them were somehow unclear. Time and reminders DAILY of their assignments. Asked them frequently how it was coming along and if they needed help.

They had to finish their math books.
Pick a topic and complete a short research paper on that topic
and
Complete a book report on a new book or one they've already read.

She's in 4th grade for all purposes. These are not unrealistic goals. They were the last remaining items she needed to complete to show the skills needed to move up. *sigh* I brought up the need for her to finish her work this am, she starts stomping her feet saying she's not going to. I can't make her. She doesn't have to. Really??? You're right. I cannot MAKE you write a research paper. But there will be consequences for every behavior either good or bad. You pick.

The Boy's assignment was exactly the same, though I took into consideration he is working to complete 3rd grade. He had some grammatical and spacing issues that needed help - BUT - he finished his work.  His was on level for his grade. I let them both type their work since they have dysgraphia so it's just a matter of him going and making corrections. It's no big deal.  It's clear he's read through it.

I'm clearly doing something wrong. I just don't know what. I guess some would suggest catering to her more to make it *funner*. Honestly, I don't care if she has *fun*.  She needs to learn to get off her lazy bum and do what she needs to do in a timely manner. I know I'll get less resistance if she has *fun*, but last time I tried *fun* she pick and chose the parts she liked then became a mule on the rest. 

I am going to attempt to put her on a more rigid schedule. She does do better with that. The holidays always screw with scheduling and she settles nicely once things are more routine. I want to try to plan out the pacing better, they both took WAY too long on this last set of books. It took them almost a full year on each of their math books and this stuff isn't even hard. It's frustrating because they're just both so smart, but The Girl is so darn lazy! She even admits it's not hard, she just prefers to sit on her rump not doing it. She's got to figure out how to beat the lazy, procrastinator, messy demon living inside her now or she's going to have continuous problems.

OH My! Look Whose 9!!

This Girl:

She's come soo far from this tiny little thing:

See?? What happened to my wee baby girl! She got all big!!


Happy Birthday to my Princess!!

School Revamp

We homeschool year round. The kids are about a grade and a half of where they are supposed to be in pretty much everything except handwriting. They are MASSIVELY behind there - and will probably never ever catch up. They both have dysgraphia and we've even been sending The Girl to occupational therapy (OT) to learn ways to strengthen her hands, learn new ways to teach her, typing programs, and other ways to help her circumnavigate this. We've been working with  The Boy on these things as well because you can't read either of their handwriting STILL. Well, come to find out (and I had a suspicion) a couple of weeks ago as I was asking Girl some questions about what she was doing in OT because the report from her therapist had been rather vague. That "it's SO fun" but she wasn't *learning* anything we weren't already doing at home and HAD NOT been the entire time was what I gleamed from the conversation. I asked her about several aspects of things that she could be missing. Nope. She wasn't missing them. They just weren't being done. Our insurance doesn't cover OT really at all so we've been paying out of pocket for it. Which, if they are teaching her things and is beneficial, I don't mind one single bit. BUT. I do not want to pay $120 a week for a glorified babysitter to play games with my kid to teach her jack shit. I can pay myself to play with her. I love the OT we use. She has helped us a tremendous amount where it comes to The Girl's sensory issues, behavioral issues, stimulation issues. But this is clearly NOT her best work. So, as of this week, we are again therapy free. And I broke up with them over email because I am a complete and utter pansy. So, instead of leaving my house every Wednesday at 2 to get home at 4:45 to 5 for a 1 hour appointment. (Yes, 3 hours for a 1 hour appointment.) we are now freeeeeee.(And $120 per week less spent.)

Both kids have also had medication changes within the last month. The Boy has gone from not talking to *anyone* but people in the family, to most people he knows. I'll take it! He'll actually go off and play with other kids almost like a real kid now.  The Girl stopped sleeping again so we changed her sleep meds and found out she grew and out grew her dosage levels of other medications so we upped that slightly. It's only been one day on that so hopefully she won't go all wonky and turn into the Poltergeist child permanently. 

But one of the biggest changes is their school. I keep wondering if I'm leaving something out of what I've assembled for them. Whether on accident or by my own biased and preferences. So we're trying an alternating schedule of what we had been doing for the last while - just dividing the full schedule up into slightly smaller bites, not even dividing the days in half - and adding in Easy Peasy Homeschooling in too. Because the work, even at their accentuated grade levels, is too easy for them on the Easy Peasy. But, from what I've seen so far, it focuses on some folk lore, story telling, and game playing so it teaches in a different method than what I normally use. It's a religious based instruction, but since it's online we can take and leave the parts we don't want.

The Boy spend his time on the math online puzzles today instead of Lego Star Wars on the Xbox. *shrug* I figure religiously based or not, I'm ok with it. Plus, I don't feel like I'm going to be leaving SO much out if they are getting things for another source as well. It all goes back to the inadequacy we all tend to feel this time of year when people all talk about *planning* and *curriculum* and such. They do SO well with what we've got set up, I don't see a reason to screw with it much. But they LIKE the computer a lot I figured we would give this a go. I don't want all their stuff on the computer. That seems... like a bad idea.. but if they'll do MORE because some of it's on there.. Ok.

Some randomness!

 An Angry Bird Cake. The birds far out gathered the pigs, but they all tasted delicious!

 A certain wee girl is going to sit RIGHT HERE and eat ice cream.. 

 I'm BORED..

The boy is always on her. And she lets him. She doesn't let ANYONE touch her. BUT him. 

CAKE!

An Ayslum!

Today has been absolutely insane! The highlights:

•  The Girl was systematically peeling her finger and toenails off at bedtime.  After telling her she "didn't have permission to do that", she stopped and fell almost instantly asleep. Huh??
• The Boy threw a FIT. Epic fit because the bread loaf (that HE tore previously) was not straight. He cried, screamed, stomped, yelled, and carried on until I took a knife to the same piece of bread and made the end straight. Same piece, same bread only smaller and straight suddenly became edible and perfectly fine. Huh??
• We found out and have fully grasped JUST how young the newest addition to the farm is. The newest little guy was "supposed" to be 8 ish weeks old and fully weaned and eating solid food great. He's maybe 6, not eating hard food well, and LOVE goat milk. We named him Adams. He's so cute though! It makes me so mad the irresponsible things people do because they're lazy. The people who gave him to us said they were going out of town that night, it's obvious they were just done with puppies. I feel really badly for the people who have no idea what to do with the other 11 puppies that these dumbasses gave out. 
• The Boy has a fairly important to get his eyes dilated tomorrow. He is horrified, compliments of his sister. So I've been trying to convince him he's gonna be a good boy, that it doesn't hurt, and it's really no big deal. Plus, if he's super good, he may get a prize and what would he want? He wants "5 pounds of ice cream."  Ok. I can probably work with that. It's actually really important we get him to cooperate with this appointment because of the previous findings of his eye socket/congenital defect issue. So. A large vat of ice cream to get what we need done. Heck yeah. I think I can do that.
• I ordered 12 guinea eggs. 12. TWELVE. Somehow, we have 32 in the incubator. This is after 2 broke. So there were 34. I ordered 12. How did 34 get here?? I STILL haven't figured that out! I double checked everything and I only ordered 12.  I so do not want even a 50% hatch rate with that many. I was aiming for like.. 4 guineas total. EEK! 

 He's so Fluffy!

Unwrapping and settling of the Guinea eggs.

Happy New Year

This year we are bringing the New Year in with a boy with a broken nose, a girl with a hair cut (finally after 8 years) and a scheduled day and time for closing on the house we're trying to buy. 2 out of 3 positives is about as good as we get nowadays.


The boy *technically* broke his nose yesterday, but I took him to the doctor for it today. I was NOT going to take him to the ER during peak flu season for them to tell me something I already knew and to not DO anything. So I took him to the pediatrician and have to recount the story of how C and I went to lunch and were gone 45 minutes only to come back to bloody Armageddon. The Boy was launching himself at Gigi's belly and smashed his knee into his face. Now, originally I was told he was launching himself at the sofa, but then the kids corrected me and told on themselves and admitted they had been SUPER naughty and that he was launching his head at HER. Yeah. He broke his own nose on his knee. It's really hard to not repeatedly smack him upside the head and call him a dumbass. But I figure the broken nose is enough.

The Girl FINALLY let me cut her hair. The bottom of her hair was super whispy and gross since she'd only let it get trimmed a TINY, tiny bit once before. I convinced her that the hair was left over baby hair and gross and needed to be cut off so her other hair can grow. Yes, a little bit of a lie, but that bottom part was getting nasty. It was forever dangling in her food, glue, bowl, toothpaste, and tangled beyond repair.  She was freaking out until I told my wee little fib, then she was very content and happy with it. She did refuse to go to the haircut place though, so *I* had to do it. Good thing I can cut fairly straight.. :P

And the ever loving house saga. The closing got postponed  last week because of a lien on the title issue with a neighbor. Something about the neighbor 2 houses down holds the tax lien on the neighbor just to the other side of the house but the legal description was written incorrectly and encroached on like 4 feet of the property we are trying to buy? So.. I appears that the sellers went over and had a chat with the reluctant neighbor 2 houses down and got them to sign whatever paper it is we needed them to sign to get this moving again. Hopefully, this means we can finally close on this stupid this. It's already 3 weeks later than originally planned. *sigh*  The amount of lying BS that has been going on is just obscene.

Ahh a new year will hopefully bring this all to an end.

Meltdown Schmeltdown..

We had a long week, there's no way around it. The girl had a session of 3 hours of educational and developmental and psychological testing on Tuesday. She did well - as in she didn't bite anyone or scream at them. She was her usual obstinate, stubborn, repetitive self. Which, for testing sake, is good because it will give them an accurate view of who she is. Unfortunately, it also made her "done". So over "done" that she lost it for the next 3 days. I particularly enjoyed the crying fit over ice cream. Well, more accurately, the fit was over the lack of ice cream. 

On Wednesday, The Boy had a dentist appointment. They pulled 6 teeth. *6* They were supposed to sedate him, but there was SOOO no sedation going on. He doesn't remember the actual event accurately - which is good. But he bit the dentist at least 6 times and screamed bloody freaking murder. At one point, he was biting the dentist so hard I had to help pry his mouth open. Yeah. Good times. Admittedly 4 of the 6 teeth were SO not loose and had their entire root attached and it HAD to hurt to get them just yanked out, but biting the person while he's doing it isn't the most helpful thing.


So now the boy is running around shouting "I'm Toothless, The Dinosaur. RRRRAAAARRR". It's hilariously wrong.


The kids have both decided what they want to be for Halloween:

 The Girl is Pikachu

The Boy is Quicksilver - Magneto's Son. 

Those two love costumes. A lot.