boys say the funniest things...

The boys got to see their newborn cousin last night. Number four's reaction: "That baby is cuter than a pig."

Not sure what her Mom thought about that.

boys say the funniest things...

Today's math lesson:

Number Four was trying to figure out when he'll be able to play with his new cousin.

"When she's four, I'll be like five."

"No, you'll be eight."

"When she's eight, I'll be 11."

"No, you'll be twelve."

"Well, when she's 12, I'll be a grandpa!"

Good Lord, I hope his father isn't even a grandpa at that point.

boys say the funniest things...

I told Number Four to get his sheets off his bed. He brought them down to the laundry room and said, "I brought my pillow sheet too!"

real work

"Mom, we're doing WORK today." (This is my third child, informing me of his father's BIG plans for the day.)

"What about Mom - is she working today?" I ask him.

"No, we're doing ACTUAL work!"

Sigh. A mother's work just doesn't count in a houseful of boys.

back to school

For most normal people, the arrival of Labor Day is met with mixed emotions - summer is winding down and in Minnesota, that means winter is about a month away. But, on the positive side, it also means that the kids are finally going back to school.
I’m sure there are a few half-insane people who anticipate winter, and there are probably a few sentimental types who are actually sad that the kids are leaving.

I however, am not maudlin. I would welcome the quiet that would come with three out of the four kids heading out each morning, leaving me with the only one who seems to know how to play by himself. I would not mourn the noise, the mess and the begging for snacks. I think I might actually dance a little jig if Labor Day meant that my boys were going back to a school that wasn’t at home.

As it is, we are a homeschooling family, so this time of year means much more than popping kids on a bus and packing lunches.
It means tears and whining (from me), planning and purchasing (again me), discipline and maybe even a little sisu. (For those of you non-Finns, sisu is a bit like moxie – super guts is how we always translated it.) And this is just for starters.

It will take approximately a month to settle into a routine that looks a bit like this: endless questions like “What do I do now?” when the schedule clearly says math, an hour’s worth of nagging to get a half hour of language done, begging for recess and two kids who will somehow disappear when Mom is working with the third.

I can guarantee that we won’t be even that far into the school schedule when two boys will have lost every pencil that was purchased for them (all 27.) The third will have scribbled his name on someone else’s workbook. One will hide his monthly schedule and claim he doesn’t have to do any school. And at some point in the first month or so, someone will pull out brand-new markers (the non-washable kind because Mom forgot to buy those) and tattoo himself and his little brother.

And to make matters worse, the littlest one - the one who doesn’t have to do school - will be the only one begging for a school book.
The bright side is that when they do disappear on me, they’re likely to have a book in hand and I will find them in some random spot, hunched over reading How to Eat Fried Worms or some other delightful tale. Last year I measured my success as a teacher/mother not in test scores, but in the fact that boy #2 wanting to read his library book during his traveling team’s wrestling match. Anything else that happened that year was gravy.

All complaining aside (and mostly from me), homeschooling is not much different than parenting. It involves focus and discipline and consequences and love. I need to have a keen eye for how my children learn so that I can best know how to teach them. I need to have the will power and strength to maintain a schedule and not back down from their challenges. I need to be able to enforce missing football practice if schoolwork isn’t done. And I need to do all of this with mercy and love.
So, it’s not any easier than parenting.

But, the rewards are there, just as they are in parenting. Occasionally you’ll get a glimpse of a job well done or a lesson learned or even a new skill acquired. And that’s just on my part. They probably get much more out of it, although I doubt they’d admit it.

Knowing all of this, I probably shouldn’t dread the approach of Labor Day. Every year, it’s the same thing - a bit of anxiety in the planning stages (what curriculum should I use? Rosetta Stone costs how much? It’s how many days until Christmas break?) but the end result is usually worth it.

This is not a journey for everyone, and sometimes I question if it’s the right journey for us, but so far, one year at a time, we’re doing our best to follow the path God has laid out for us, even if it doesn’t mean orange school buses and the local elementary school.

Who knows what I’ll learn this year...

boys say the funniest things...

So the big discussion last night was whose muscles (biceps) were bigger - Mom's or Dad's. After both of us flexed for Number Four, he decided that Mom won because Dad has a "flab on his muscle."

However, in Dad's defense, his muscle is actually bigger, but bulgier (is that a word?) and that's what Number Four decided was flabby.

I'll take any compliment I can get, even if it's not truthful.

it's nice to have boys...

because they crack me up.

Boy #3: Are we gonna have any more kids, Mom?

Me: Do you want more?

Boy #3: Only if it's a brother.

Boy #2: We got four boys, so it'll probably be a girl.

Boy #4: Well, it can't pet my kitten!

boys say the funniest things...

‎"Mom how come you get creamer?"

"It's for my coffee."

"How come you get creamer and coffee?"

"Cuz I'm special."

"No you're not special. Dad is. "

And that it precisely why I get chocolate too.

maple flooring reveal

I hope we don't regret doing this, but we stained the maple flooring three different colors. The landing at the top of the stairs and one bedroom have two coats of Minwax's Early American. Two bedrooms were left clear with only the poly on top and the last bedroom was white washed so it would stay more whitish gray (which it didn't because the poly has such a yellowish cast).

The dark stain color was a compromise. I wanted walnut and hubby wanted to keep it looking natural without stain. We settle somewhere in the middle with the Early American. I will probably go a bit darker on the main floor, but at least he can get used to the color for now upstairs.

We lucked out with the direction that the wood runs so we weren't changing the color across the grain, but ended on the edge of board. Does that make sense? See what it looks like in the bottom picture. Maybe that will help.

Notice how only the windows are trimmed out? The rest of the casing around the doors and floor boards is my responsibility. I'm guessing it will take awhile - four rooms, plus oil-based trim paint might mean the boys will be lucky to get in their rooms by next summer.

setting an example?

As far as we know, hubby and I are supposed to be setting good examples to the four offspring hanging on our every word and watching our every move. And, unfortunately most of them have good hearing and all of them can see.

So when we screw up - they notice. They will gag and run away when Mom and Dad kiss in front of them (mission accomplished), but will stare fascinated at how we react when we stub a toe or pound a thumb with a hammer. And then they can repeat word-for-word what we said.

But, it’s worse than that. I think they’ve actually developed some sort of tag-team system to purposely drive us crazy. A typical game (one in which I’m a very unwilling participant) goes a little like this: Contender #1 will beg incessantly for a snack. When he’s accomplished frazzling his mother’s hair, he calls in the next competitor. This one will crank his iPod to obscene levels and beat box to TobyMac until either Mom is singing along to Christian rap or she yells at him to go somewhere else. He usually cannot hear above the “music” in his ears, which only gives him more points in this crazy game. After Mom has sufficiently expended enough energy with the yelling, he calmly tags out and the third opponent comes in. This one will not stop talking - no matter what. He can chatter about the dust under my desk and how he can make a guitar strap from his belt. Then he will rattle on about dirt bikes and baseball cards and the fact that he should really have a bandage on the miniscule cut on his palm.

Some days the third round goes to Mom, but only because she developed a pretty good talent for in-one-ear-and-out-the-other as a teenager (just ask her mother.) Other days, she will try to physically walk away and lock herself in the bathroom. But mostly, she has to resort to yelling again.

This only serves as a battle call to bring in the fourth challenger. He arrives with questions: “Can I get my bb gun out and shoot a bird?” “Can I play MouseTrap?” “Can I make frozen bananas on a stick?” The questions alone aren’t enough for him to win - he accomplishes that by asking all of this in spite of not having his chores done. Or by picking up one thing in the room when there are 27 left and making his mother check every time if he’s done.

It’s really a small miracle that she is still around to talk about all this.

We learned this past week at Wood Lake Bible Camp that we are to set an example in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity (straight from Scripture - 1 Timothy 4:12). Pretty convicting words because when I look at those examples, I fall flat on all of them.

My speech is not always positive or edifying. My life is usually a mess and busy and stressful. My love is sometimes conditional. My faith gets shaken. And I’m far from pure. Many days, I’m about as far from setting a good example as a mother could get.

My only hope is found in the verses that follow this passage which promise that if I am diligent people will see progress in me and there is salvation if I persevere.

But, it’s the persevering that has me worried. I’m not really sure how much more I have left in me to “keep on keeping on.” It’s a good thing these boys have two of us to take on - one of us can sit back and laugh at the whole insane game while the other engages in a competition that never ends.

There does appear to be some hope in sight, however. We just noticed that as they get closer to becoming teenagers, they also get quieter. Not sure if that’s due to hormones causing sullen attitudes and less communication or if it’s just the iPods jammed in their ears.

They are also starting to debate instead of duel. Twice now, hubby has had to backtrack on his discipline of taking snacks away because two boys have convinced him that he misread their actions and they didn’t deserve the punishment. Not sure if that will make for more discussions or more conniving to come up with good arguments, but it should make for less doors being slammed.

Either way, I’ll take it. Quiet is a hard commodity to come by in this house. And peace only comes when they’re sleeping.

it's nice to have boys...

because the fun doesn't end when you get home from camping. One boy keeps beating up the others. One boy wants a new family (and has his bags packed ready to leave to find one). One boy is lost in ipod land. And one boy is acting out a one-boy drama in the living room because he thinks he's dying of hunger since he hasn't got an afternoon snack yet.

I love my life.

talk of the camp

Caveat: I claim no responsibility in this next post. I do not know if you will think it funny or bawdy, but either way - I did not teach my son this phrase.

First day at Bible Camp, my four-year-old wants to go swimming. We sent him in the lake with his older brother as a buddy. Hubby and I were sitting a little ways away from the swim area, barely within earshot. I looked over to see him standing just over knee-deep in water that apparently was very cold, because he was hugging himself and shivering. Then, I noticed the lifeguard doubled over in laughter.

Pointing this out to hubby, I had a feeling of dread - mainly because this child is well known for entertaining people (and mortifying me) with what comes out of his mouth. As soon as hubby looked over, the lifeguard attempted to walk down the dock to his co-lifeguard. I say attempted because he was having a difficult time walking while belly-laughing so hard. He managed to make the 20 feet and then both guys were looking over at my son, laughing hysterically. By this time, we were a bit uncomfortable and curious as to what was going on. The first lifeguard walked back over the source of his merriment and asked him, "Are you all right?" (Hubby figured this was in hopes that he would say something even more entertaining.)

Later that afternoon, when swimming was over and suits were off, we learned that the lifeguard had asked our precocious four-year-old if something was wrong because he wasn't swimming. He apparently replied to the guy, "My nuts are freezing."

It didn't take long for the story to spread across camp to the nearly 200 people in attendance - much to their amusement. People were coming up to me and telling me things like: "The first thing I heard when I got to camp was..." and "I just love your son."

Later that evening, the lifeguard came up to Number Four and told him, "You're my FAVORITE camper!"

Apparently the rest of camp felt the same way - even the pastors. Well, everyone but me. I didn't know if I should laugh or cry.