Our New Life

Now that everything has died down a bit, now that it has stopped feeling like a vacation, now that everyone has gone back to their own lives and things have gotten normal - reality has started to set in.

Z and I are starting to get into a regular rhythm, a routine.

In the mornings after breakfast, we do writing and letters for 35 minutes. It's amazing how quickly she catches onto what I am teaching her. I give her worksheets to trace and color. She can now identify every letter (we are only doing capital letters right now - adding little letters at this point would be confusing for her), she can write A,B,C and D.

After we finish that assignment, we do open art. Open art is where I give her paper and every art supply that we have (including the paste and scissors). She will do that for at least another 30 minutes and it usually creates quite the mess.

Then it is shower time. We take a shower and get dressed for the day.

Once we are all clean and dressed, we pick up her bedroom and playroom and decide what we will have for lunch.

I make lunch while she plays in her playroom - she has an amazing imagination.

After lunch, we have a quiet time (not a nap) where she stays in the playroom and watches a movie for an hour or so while I regain my sanity load the dishwasher, washing machine and fold some clothes.

When quiet time is over we work on counting and numbers. She can write and identify 1,2,3 and 4. She can count to 15 before she messes up. We also work on sorting and matching using dominoes and poker chips.

After that, I have a structured art project for her to do. Things like pasting letters that I cut out from magazines into words and sentences (apparently, I am teaching her to write ransom letters).

We do science experiments twice a week. Our last experiment was seeing that water changes to ice and that ice will turn into water. Today's experiment will be watching a balloon get inflated by a bottle of soda.

She also gets to help out when I start dinner, pouring in ingredients and mixing them together (nothing near the stove) and she puts away the pots and pans and tupperware when the dishwasher finishes.

Of course, in between all of this there are the arguments, the threats of time out, the discussions about poop (when will it end?) and a walk to the mailbox in the afternoon (we have a finch that has built a nest in there that is intent on giving us a heart attack). There is dress-up and nudity. There are a million questions - Can I have? How does? What is? and on and on and on.

The one thing I am most proud of is that the TV stays off until 5 PM each day (except for quiet time and Zumba dance time in the morning). It's the one thing I always wished I could take out of her day and it seems as though I have been successful.

I am starting to feel guilty. I am starting to feel as though I should be looking for a job - for anything - to help out the Hubs. I feel like he gets home in the afternoon, looks around and is like, You did nothing all day? Even though he doesn't say it, no matter how busy I feel each day, I feel like it is never enough.

I guess I can't be anywhere without the guilt.