Welcome Back to School (A Review of Our First Day Back)

6:30am My alarm went off and due to the fact that my brain was racing all night long and new neighbors were moving at 2:00am I barely slept. So I turned off my alarm and decided to give myself 15mins. to get out of bed. Well as it usually goes around here, I passed out and didn’t wait up until 7:30 where I still lagged to get out of bed. 

I bounced up a few minutes later reminding myself that I needed to wake the child, who can be slow, make her breakfast and clear out the cabinets for the maintenance man to come and do his thing. I headed to the bathroom to get myself together then went to wake up Harmonie. I told her she had to wake up at 7:00am. Oops, missed that wake up time. She still fought me on getting up but rolled out of bed and headed to the bathroom to get cleaned up. 

I headed to the room to get her clothes ready and I chose an outfit for myself that I will rethink next time, combed my hair and headed to the kitchen to make breakfast and clear the cabinets. I think hard boiled eggs and sausage will do the trick.

8:30am My little warrior tramples into the dining room and sits at the laptop and starts Spanish. God how I love Rosetta Stone. It keeps her focused and honest. She whines about being hungry. This is a normal occurrence, it happens all day long, as if I never feed her. Yes she is that child. My phone starts going off with text messages. It’s our former neighbor checking in. She wants to stop by and say, “Hi!” I wander out the door to the car to get our beach bag cooler to pack our lunch. Our former neighbor is outside and follows me in to chit chat. I hear, “El niño lee.” In the background. Spanish is in full swing. 

I continue to make breakfast and start working on making lunch to be packed. Sandwiches on homemade bread with string cheese and a piece of fruit for a snack. I grab a few bottles of water and toss them in the bag too. 

9:00am We say goodbye to our former neighbor and Harmonie shuts down Rosetta Stone while I take the shells off the eggs and sprinkle salt for our on to go breakfast. I grab my coffee, pack my laptop, iPad, purse, lunch and our book bag and we’re out the door by 9:15.

Barnes & Noble is on the other end of Long Beach. We live on the city limit and Barnes is on the other limit so it takes us about a half an hour to drive across town. Harmonie eats her breakfast and passes the bowl to me when she’s done. We drive up the coast and my smarty pants request to do school at the beach. I explain to her that she first needs to prove she can focus long enough to get school work done in a timely matter and we need a battery on our car that will start up without needing a jump. We have been known to go to the bay for school but she gets distracted by wanting to play so I have decided to wait until my car is fixed and we have gotten a new groove before we pick that privilege back up.

9:50am No traffic this morning. Yippee! We arrived at Barnes & Noble and wandered down to the children’s section and found a table with benches to set up shop. We always start out our morning saying the Serenity Prayer but I forgot in the may lay, so in the middle of doing our Math assignment I make Harmonie say it. 

10:15am We start our English assignment: Pronouns. I read the two page explain of what a pronoun is and Harmonie chimes in wanting to read all the pronouns a loud. 

10:30am English assignment is done and corrected. Another 100% and we transition into the Religion assignment. I read the religious story a loud and then have Harmonie do the fill in the blanks assignment independently. She finishes in record time. 

10:45am I send Harmonie off to wander the store for a 15 minute recess and I grab my phone and start making important phone calls. Once I’m done with the calls of the morning I pull out the iPad and check my emails and start writing this post. I call Harmonie’s name out a couple of times to make sure she’s still in the children’s section because I can’t she her. I hear her little voice from the opposite end of the department, “Yes Mom!” Yay, she’s following the rules and is near by. I start calling out how much time she has left. It makes it much easier to get her to come when its time to get back to work. I like to give her opportunities to earn my trust. She’s eight! It’s time to let go a little bit. Notice I said a little. 

11:00am Time for Reading. At the end of the quarter she is required to write a book review on St. Padre Pio a Catholic saint. I pull out the required book and begin reading it to her. I read ten pages. My eyes are so tired already they are beginning to fade, making this reading process a bit difficult. Harmonie offers her glasses knowing that our prescriptions are far different. These kid constantly thinks she’s funny. I make it through the ten pages unskaved and move on to History.

11:30am Ugh! More reading! “Almost lunchtime. You can do this,” I think to myself. I trail through. Today we learn about The Exploration of Mississippi. More or less the exploration of what we now call the Mississippi River. It’s a six page tale so I opt to read three pages today and three tomorrow. My poor eyes need a break. I am developing cabin fever in this store. I need air. 

12:00noon We wander to the car to put the unused laptop away and grab our lunch bag. It’s a beautiful California day so we sit outside of Starbucks and have our lunch amongst the birds and other patrons. We sit quietly while we munch away and I start reading Simple Home school: Home school A Day in the Life series, a blog I just recently discovered. While I try to read Harmonie talks to me about the birds that are on the table across from us. I try to take pictures but the birds weren’t having it. Don’t they know I need pictures for my blog? How rude of them to not accommodate me. 🙂 Now a bee is flying around trying to attach us. We sit very still and watch it taunt us until it finally flies away.

 12:30pm We head to the car to put our bag away and back in the store we go to finish up with school. I hand Harmonie her Spelling book and tell her she’s on her own. I start working on this post. Let the lagging begin. I know it’s coming. I see her slowly wandering those eyes around the store. “Focus!” I tell her. Oh how often does that word come out of my mouth? She ask for my help and once she gets the hang of the assignment she’s off to the races. 

1:00pm Bathroom break handled and now back to work. I hand her the handwriting book where she begins to grumble. I tell her she only has one page but I would be happy to give her more and she quickly picked up the pen and said she was good with the one. As I suspected. I continue writing.15 minutes later she’s done and ready to hit Phonics and be done for the day. She has a book called: Bad Kitty in front of her that she desperately wants to read. 

1:15pm Phonics and away she goes. I look up and a mom brings her little one in to read her stories. How cute! Unfortunately that means a FOCUS or two or three will be released from my lips any second. And there it is, “Focus!” I say to her and she turns around to stare at the page. Stall tactics are kicking in. She doesn’t want to do the assignment. I bet she thinks its hard because she failed to read the direction. I read them to her as to not have to get myself frustrated and tell her how easy the assignment is. Once she realizes the simplicity of the work, she digs right in. I continue writing. “Done,” I hear with pride. “May I go now?” I asked her about the book she was so anxious to read and she decides she doesn’t want to read it. How funny my kid is. 

2:00pm Still writing as she wanders the children’s section out of my line of sight. I call and she comes running. This store rocks I tell you. I love having a kid who loves to read. I’ll give her five more minutes then its off to run errands. The iPad is dying so I need to go charge it up. I’ll go back to this post and my other blog this evening. 

2:15pm We took off and headed to the post office, Charter Communications and the 99 cent Store. I’m feeling a bit worn in the eyes but I keep trucking along because I told my favorite tiny human I would take her to the park. Well as I came out of the 99 cent Store, our final stop, I noticed she had something in her mouth. It turns out since I left my purse in the car while I ran in the store to grab two items she thought it would be a great idea to grab a piece of candy out of my purse. In my house you take absolutely nothing that isn’t in your snack basket without permission. So her punishment was no park trip for the day, which in all honesty worked better for me because by the time we finally got home I was so tired there was no way I would have survived a park trip.

3:32pm We walked in the door and the apartment smelled like the exterminator had been there. So I opened the windows and my favorite tiny human ran off to the bedroom for some much needed down time to watch television. The television is a big deal in our house. I know most people think the television is a bad thing but we are so busy all the time it is how we unwind. I start heading to the kitchen to start cleaning out the cabinets from the fumigation and decide I really need a moment myself to unwind so I opt for my sofa and my television in the living room. I tell myself I have twenty minutes then I need to get back to work. I check some email and Facebook and watched some Food Network channel.

4:00pm I climb off the couch and head to the kitchen. I needed to figure out dinner and of course the kid comes in asking for a bowl of cereal. I tell her I’m making dinner and she disappears. I start cleaning out the cabinets with my bleach, Fabulouso and water solution then I start loading the dishes back in the cabinets. I have a hard time cooking in a cluttered messy kitchen so I scramble to get it in a workable order.

4:32pm Again the tiny human walks in, “Mom I would like cereal for dinner.” Well that’s twice. Who am I to argue. Cereal it is. Every now and again we have cereal because hey we like cereal. My mom use to make pancake breakfast for dinner every once in a while as a treat and we kids loved it. While she eats her Fresh and Easy Rice Crispys I continue with the task of cleaning and refilling my cabinets.

5:00pm Harmonie finishes dinner and I make her sit and do her 30 minutes of reading while I sit down to work on the blog a little more, check emails, Facebook, put in more submissions for my little love and check in on my own school to see if I need to respond to anyone, until I figure out what I want for dinner. Mom-magers job is never done.

6:12pm I head in the kitchen to make homemade tortillas so that I can make a quesadilla for myself because it’s the only thing I feel like eating with french fries. Yeah that sounds great. I don’t normally eat so poorly but every now and again I have strange cravings and today is just one of those days.

7:12pm I opted to make butter noodles with tuna and asparagus instead. I called Harmonie in to tell her to get ready for bed while I take a moment to eat. I notice my niece is on Facebook. I chat with her for a second and then message her mom my cousin, who I have a nice chat with for a bit. While talking to my cousin one of my friends messaged me too. Now two conversations. It’s nice to get a grown up moment from time to time.

7:45pm Here is where I say about a thousand times go brush your teeth. Strangely tonight I only had to say it once. She must be tired. This kid usually will do anything to stay awake.

8:00pm I close the laptop to trade rooms with Harmonie give her a hug and kiss good night and watch the lights go off as I go to my room where I plug up the laptop and go right back to work.

12:15am I spent some time talking to my cousins on Facebook. We all live far apart and hardly ever see each other. While doing this I write my other blog: Adventures in Life, Love and Parenting also on blogger. Tonight’s post was about commercials. Not very riveting but I like to have fun random conversations from time to time. I correct Harmonie’s Spelling and Phonics assignment from earlier today. I graded all her other work immediately after she did it. It’s my new goal to grade her work every week. Eager beaver remember. I finish this blog post, close up the laptop and bid the world a good night until tomorrow. I’m not a morning person at all. 6:30am is not my favorite hour but if I’m going to get things going it is the time for me. Tomorrow will be a totally different day. So stay tune till tomorrow to see what a Tuesday looks like in our house.

I learned a valuable lesson today: Harmonie works better if I work with her rather than force her to be super independent. As independent as she is she needs balance. So my plan of working with her on the most important subjects to me and let her work independently on the others is working.

Does this look anything like your day? Do you see anything in my day that you can use or do you have any suggestions on how I can be more efficient. Let’s talk about it.