I am really interested in homeschooling but I don’t think it’s something that will happen, for a few reasons. For one thing, Hayley is desperate to go to school just like all the kids she sees around the neighborhood when they get off the school bus each afternoon. For another, there is no homeschooling group that I can find in this area and since I don’t drive that means that we wouldn’t be able to take part in homeschool outings; I disagree that teaching your kids at home means they miss out on socialization, but in our case, she really would miss out because of the incredible limitations of a lack of transport. And finally, I intend to get a part time job after the baby is born (around 6 months) in the evenings and one day a weekend so I don’t know if I could teach during the day and then work in the evenings without burning out.

Having resigned myself to the fact that I’m not going to be homeschooling unless we suddenly win the lottery or something, I am consoling myself by doing very loose home-based preschool with Hayley instead. It’s not a set thing for every day but I follow Hayley’s lead. And really, it doesn’t have to be something where she sits at a desk and does formal work. Almost anything can be a learning process and I also believe in learning through play.

For instance, although she enjoys her preschool books that have “lessons” where you trace the letter and follow instructions like, “circle the capital A, draw and x over the lower case a” we do a lot of other activities that are fun. A few days ago I made her a memory game. I took construction paper, cut out squares, and drew pairs of pictures on one side – hearts, stars, butterflies, etc. Then I taught her how you play the game. She caught on really quickly and loved it. Every day since then she’s asked to play. We also incorporate arts and crafts into our day, whether it’s just coloring in her coloring book together or the craft we started today, which was to use a headband, pipe cleaners, styrofoam balls, and glitter glue to make ant antennae for her to wear (unfortunately we didn’t finish it all today because the glue was taking forever to dry, so we’ll do the assembly tomorrow).

I enjoy it and so does she. I also found a great learn to read website. Obviously, I don’t expect her to learn to read books overnight, but there’s a really good section that just goes through the alphabet and teaches kids in a really fun way about the sound each letter makes. She already knows all her letters so it seemed like a good next step.

I never push, and like I said it’s very loose and unstructured. If she wasn’t interested or became frustrated, I wouldn’t do it. She seems to really love it though and most days she’ll ask, “can we do school?” One time she even asked me, bleary-eyed and yawning, if she could do school stuff at 7:30 and was really disappointed when I said no because it was time to get ready for bed.

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I’m hoping this baby is going to stay in here until full term (38 weeks) or even 37 weeks. I’d be comfortable with 37, though 38 is obviously better. I know I expected to go early with Hayley and ended up going past my due date, but they say that second babies often come earlier (and faster – since Hayley was born in 8 hours, that worries me a little!). Also, although I contracted for most of my third trimester with Hayley, my contractions lately have been more than simply tight. Sometimes they’re quite uncomfortable and are even accompanied by mild cramping sensations. They are still completely erratic so I’m not too concerned, but I will mention it at my appointment on Tuesday. I’ve also felt a lot of pressure in my pelvic area, but I think that happened last time around now too.

One thing I had been bemoaning was the fact that I have so little energy partway through the day that I was wondering if I’d ever get to the nesting phase. It hit yesterday. Hard. I forced myself to do the dishes and make the bed and do some laundry, just the normal routine stuff. Then Hayley requested a movie and I agreed. Since she has an inability to leave her DVDs alone, all her movies are stored in the linen closet. When I went to get the movie she wanted, I noticed that the stack of movies was in a state of total disarray, as was the rest of the closet. I put the movie on and couldn’t even make myself start supper because the closet was BUGGING me. I ended upcompletely organizing it so that it looked better and had a more logical setup.

Once that was done I ended up pulling out all the Halloween decorations (I keep seasonal decorations on the top shelf) and setting those up in the living room. Then I picked up all the crap that gets tossed around in the living room over the course of the day. From there I cleared the dining room table, cleaned the buffet, and cleaned the kitchen. I finally had to force myself to start supper. I even had to practically physically drag myself out of the bathroom after peeing because otherwise I was going to end up ignoring the food simmering in the skillet so that I could re-organize the cupboards in there too.

It’s a disease.

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A slew of pictures.

Hayley and George have a “fun” new game called “Give Mommy a heart attack”. It starts with Hayley standing on the table perpendicular to George’s in the music room.

Then she leaps into the air and jumps quite far into George’s arms.

It ends with a lot of giggling.

I try hard to ignore it.

One of Hayley’s new bath time obssessions is to request a color, which I provide with a bit of food coloring. Then she gets all her toy animals and plays with them. When they line up like this I always think of an African watering hole.

She looks so cute in her Dora nightgown.

And then she goes to sleep and snuggles up with her Dora doll.

Last weekend we went to a birthday party, and Hayley had a blast bouncing around on this ball. Even though it’s really blurry, I love this picture so much because you can see how much fun she had, and you can almost hear her laughing.

Over the past week, she’s developed a very endearing habit. She’ll disappear into her room, usually while I’m doing the lunch dishes, and she climbs into the rocking chair with a book and starts “reading” out loud. I asked her if she was reading to her toys or one of her imaginary friends and it turns out that she pretends her sister is lying in the crib while she reads to her. I hope so much that she’ll want to do it when her sister really is here.

This isn’t such a new habit though; whenever George comes home and goes into the bathroom for a shower, Hayley has a tendency to bring one of her chairs into the hall where she sits (mostly) patiently, waiting for him to come out. It always makes me laugh.

Self-portrait taken yesterday, at 33 weeks and 5 days. It amazes me, the way that a pregnant belly defies all laws of gravity and just keeps growing straight out like that.

Hayley, guitar goddess.

We decided that we aren’t busy enough with a 3-year-old, a baby on the way any week now, two rats, and a dumbass cat. So we added six new members to the household: Meet the new goldfish, Goldie, Dorothy, Nemo, Oscar, Angie, and one fish whose name alternates between Dory and Bruce.

Although she tried to keep about her normal daily activities, she kept running back to the bookshelf saying, “I just want to look at my fish for a minute!” She even pushed her table over there so she could eat lunch with them.

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Whew. I’m tired. Time for a bit of reading, then bed.

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I am: 33 weeks, 6 days.
Craving: Pumpkin pie.

Reading: The Historian.
Watching: Nothing much.

I love: Hayley’s fish.
I hate: Torpedo baby who likes to launch herself downwards onto whatever nerve that is down in there. Holy ouch!
Eating: Breakfast РCinnamon waffles. Lunch РLeftover tortellini with ros̩ sauce. Supper РPierogies with fried onions and sour cream.