It's Like Fingernails on a Chalkboard

Last Tuesday evening, Kelly and I were giving Ashlynn and Lauryn a bath when it happened. We've always warned these girls it could happen but so far we had escaped anything really bad. So I guess it's fitting that our last little girl finally bought it. Instead of standing still in the slippery bathtub like we are always telling them to do, she decided to walk around and she slipped.

And hit the side of the tub with her two front teeth.

The sound was AWFUL.

Immediately we could tell her two front teeth were chipped, but at least they were still in her mouth, for now. She was bleeding from somewhere in her mouth, though we couldn't tell exactly where immediately. We finally figured out the gums around one of her front teeth was bleeding and we were afraid she would lose at least that tooth. I was having visions of no front teeth for the next 4-5 years. Of course this is after business hours of our dentist.

The next morning I had to do two things: find a dentist that would see her and find out how to handle our new dental insurance, which had just kicked in the day she fell. Our dentist doesn't see children under the age of five, so they told me to find a pediatric dentist. There's one right down the road from us, but in finding out if they were in our network, we discovered that somehow we still weren't in the dental insurance system.

So Kelly had to go down to HR and work with one of the ladies down there to figure out what the issue was while I took Ashlynn to the new dentist. We just decided to pay up front and file a claim with the insurance company once we got all that settled.

The dentist appointment turned out to be something of an anti-climax. The office was great, very child-friendly and the people were so nice and helpful. They examined her and said she was fine. The teeth might or might not discolor but she probably wouldn't lose them. He didn't even want to file them down. He said just to have her eat soft foods for the next 7 days just to make sure the teeth are traumatized anymore. Fortunately, just as I was about to pay for the visit, Kelly called and said the insurance was worked out. So they ran it again, and the visit was covered 100%.

Fortunately we had no further problems. But she is much more cautious in the bathtub now!

Conversations with a 5 year old, HGTV version

The other day, Lauryn was showing me how she had her doll house set up. She told me:

"See this room? It looks crazy, doesn't it? It needs Design on a Dime."

Conversations with a 5 year old, potty version

Tonight, Hailey bought a little photo album, pink with a latch that velcros shut, kind of like diaries have the latch that locks.

Evidently, Lauryn (5 yo) thought so too. "Hailey," she exclaimed quite excitedly, "it looks like a diarrhea!"

CVS deal

I haven't posted one of my CVS deals lately, so I thought I'd do this. Monday, I went to CVS and got all this (except the toddler, of course)
for $3.44. Plus I had $16 in ECB's (Extra Care Bucks, "dollars" good only at CVS) on the bottom of the receipt.

Everything except the trial sized deodorant was on sale, plus I used a $5 off a $30 CVS coupon that CVS emailed me (you just have to sign up for the emails). Then I used manufacturers coupons either out of the newspaper or printed on the internet and ECB's I had earned from previous trips to CVS. Toilet paper, Kleenex, diapers, shampoo, and deodorant. Good deal!

My boat is bigger than your boat

Last weekend, we went to Odessa to see my family. Next Sunday is my parent's 40th wedding anniversary, so we've been planning for months to get together for the weekend and take them out to eat for their anniversary. We had a little surprise for my mom planned. With my grandmother's permission, we used the topper that was used at my grandparents' 40th anniversary party (in 1983) on the cake.

This cake was my youngest sister's creation. The top cake was spice cake, the middle cake was white cake, and the bottom was chocolate. You'd think we were feeding the whole city of Odessa instead of our family and a couple of friends.

My parents.

This is what my mom got my dad. It's to decorate his office at work.

My dad had a surprise for my mom that blows our little bit of nostalgia off the planet. You see for weeks, he and my mom have been "planning" on going back to Arkansas where they spent their honeymoon. What my mom didn't know was that my dad had no intention of going back to Arkansas. He'd received a bonus from work a couple months back and wanted to use it go to on a really great trip, something they hadn't done before.

So he decided to book them on an Alaskan cruise. He bought the tickets, arranged for airfare, made hotel reservations the day before the cruise ALL WITHOUT TELLING MY MOM. My sisters and I knew and he wanted us to be in on telling her. His idea was to play a version of Let's Make a Deal. We got little gifts that would be for the cruise - like binoculars - that she would "earn" by answering questions about their married life. By answering more questions she could trade in for bigger prizes.
Finally she got to pick one of three boxes. One had a trip to No Trees, Texas (yes it really does exist). Box 2 was a description of the Arkansas trip.
She picked that one at first and then, after one last question, was able to choose box number 3. Here's Sarah showing her the actually cruise ship they will be on.

My mom was so surprised. She had NO IDEA. First she laughed.

Then she cried.

Then I teased her about how much bigger the boat Daddy gave her is than the one she gave him.

Vocabulary words

Ashlynn was the least vocal of all my girls. She started talking later and took longer to build up her vocabulary than any of the other ones. In fact she said about 5-6 words BEFORE she ever said Mama, and she didn't say that until she was nearly 15 months old. Compared to some of the other girls who were composing stories by that time, well...

But all that is behind her, and she talks about like all two year olds now. She bosses us all around just fine. There are two relatively recent additions to her vocabulary that I wanted to mention. The first is quite cute. The second, not so much.

Ashlynn is the youngest one to learn the following word: princess. Of course, when she says it, it comes out more like "pwincess." She loves to show us all the princesses in books or on a movie (which she calls moo-bies).

The last word I think will become a Smith family no-no word. Years ago, we decided not to let the older two girls use the word stupid at all. We figured that if they didn't ever use the word, they couldn't call each other things like "stupid head" that we had heard other kids call each other. And I have never heard my kids call other people stupid, so I guess in that it worked, though we've certainly slackened up on it in recent years. It did cause grandparents some problems when they would visit and use the word. ("That is a stupid thing for the president to have done." "Granddad, you said a no-no word.")

We may have to revise the no-no word list and add a new one to it. It's such a benign little word too. I think we need to add the word "fine" to the Smith banned list. You see this is how recent conversations have gone in our house.

Me: Ashlynn, come here. (She just stares at me, so I stand up to go over to her.)

Ashlynn (seeing me coming her way, starts running to me, yelling): FINE!

OR

Me: Ashlynn, go upstairs.

(She stands there, staring at me rebelliously. Then as I start heading her way...)
Ashlynn: FINE!

No, not "fine." I'll never hear that word again without hearing my two year old's voice yelling it at me.

The End

The school year is over. Well, mostly. Kora was still getting over her bout of bronchitis earlier this week, so she missed the first day of the standardized testing. So she still has to make that up. And I have them do at least one lesson in math per week during the summer - their favorite! Our pool is closed on Monday so I try to do it then and get it over with.

I usually do a post to kind of evaluate how the year has gone. I hesitated to do it this year. Not so much because we had a bad year academically. But it was a tough year all around. We've dealt with a death in the family, a fairly serious injury on my part, the serious deterioration of the health of my grandmother, Kelly's uncertain job situation and the emotional angst that entailed, and months and months of what seemed like unending illnesses. Add that to the normal routine of taking care of a family of eight and the homeschooling year should have collapsed under the weight of all of it. But I realized as I look over the year that we had a good year, in spite of all of that. In some cases, school work provided a normality that served as an anchor during some hard times. That doesn't mean that I wasn't ready to "pitch" it at times this year. :-)

As I look over the year, here are some of my evaluation points, both good and bad:

1. Hailey really started to read this year! She struggled more than all the other girls put together, but it finally "clicked" this year. She's reading books on her own and liking it. She's not the bookworm Brynna is, but this is a huge step forward. Hopefully this will translate to being able to read her math story problems, for example.

2. Brynna is really starting to make a transition into being able to work a little more independently. Don't get me wrong, at nine, she still needs a lot of supervision. But this year she was able to move from subject to subject without too much daydreaming in between. She even had a subject with computer cd lessons and she did great with it. She is eating up Latin like Kora does. She will soon be making the transition to Saxon 5/4 and I hope that helps her with her multiplication skills - that two digit multiplication has given her problems.

3. Aubrey is making great improvement in her thinking skills and logical thought. She's on the edge of the "logic stage" of development and it shows (right down to the "pert" remarks). She's always been a math person and she is continuing to excel in that. We are working on her writing/compositions. That did get better this year, but still needs help. She's also a little, shall we say lazy, when it comes to doing things like answering her history questions. Latin is not her "thing" like it is for Kora, but she did get better at that this year as well. Next year we are concentrating on writing and thoroughness.

4. Kora's writing made leaps and bounds of improvement this year, no thanks to me. I enrolled her in a writing co-op class, and it was so worth it. Last year she struggled with math; this year she did so much better. I'm glad that last year we slowed and down and re-did some of the book she was in and really made sure she grasped the material. Yay for the freedom and flexibility of homeschooling! Now I'm not worried about her moving into Algebra I at all. She's far ahead of me in Latin now so we are going to be enrolling her in an online course to help with that for next year.

5. Lauryn, well, to be honest Lauryn is where I really dropped the ball. She turned 5 a few months ago, and with the older girls I was working with them a lot more by this age. I did work with her some, but not consistently. She wasn't terrible interested either, so it was easy to let this be a sporadic thing. Hailey and Brynna's work was very teacher intensive this last year, and so I let Lauryn pretty much have a playful year, her work largely revolving around which princess she would be that day. So next year, my goal is to consistently work with her on phonics and have some fun math activities and games to play with her.

6. Ashlynn started talking and is showing interest in potty training. 'Nough said. ;-)