Monday, April 23, 2012

Week in the Life: Monday


My friend Robyn is beginning her third annual Week in the Life Project.  She's a scrap booker and this is a scrap booking thing, from what I gather.  I am not a scrap booker.  Can you imagine how much I'd bother recording if I had to not only locate my USB cable and a spare thirty minutes but also manipulate scissors and . . . stuff.  Robyn's Week in the Life series are always one of my favorite parts of her, uh, "blog year."  She's a good friend and I spend a lot of time at her house and she blogs about her life almost every day but I  still love to see all the ordinary details she captures each year.  And it's a neat little snapshot of "Where We're At Right Now".  I like, too, that taking a whole week allows that snapshot to more fully develop.  The pressure isn't on to cram everything about our life right now into one perfect day.

I've been meaning to do my own Week in the Life for about six months but it never felt like just the right week.  When Robyn's project came around again I decided to just go for it and not worry about what the week held in store.  Then I promptly forgot.  We had a lovely morning--the kind that is usual enough that I wished I'd captured it but unusual enough that we won't do it again this week.  I got up early to read stories with William (usually Eric is the one to do that), and then we all went to Mass. Afterward we stopped in to the rectory for coffee.  At about 11:00 this morning I thought, "Oh, no!  It's Week in the Life Week and I haven't started taking pictures!  I guess I can't do it now."  And then I realized that that's sort of the point.  That's what my life is about these days:  Monday hitting me square in the face, jumping into each day, ready or not, and trying to walk that line between healthy structure and rolling with things.  

I don't have a master plan for how to approach this project.  Today I just snapped away and I'll caption each photo and call Monday done.  And then we'll see what the rest of the week brings!


I tend to think of Gregory's nap as the beginning point of the day's productivity.

While I got Gregory to sleep Joseph was, of course, drawing.  This is a character from a book he is reading with Eric.
                                   


Normally school is done by naptime but since we were out all morning we had a stack waiting for us, still.  It's a lot of books but the total amount of time spent doing school each day is less than two hours.

Taking the long view, mess and all.

A detail shot of the mess.  I only later noticed that Robyn and I both included  shots of our diaper shipments in the first day of Week in the Life.  And, yes, we mostly still use cloth but disposable work better for us sometimes.

That was a short nap.

Language arts notebook showing some narration, some dictation, and some copy work on the parts of speech.  

Our worms have been moved to "summer quarters" and are doing just fine, as far as we can tell .  They aren't always so wet--we had a lot of rain yesterday.

Checking on the garden and glad I don't need to water today.  In this box: radishes, bok choy, swiss chard, cucumbers, green beans, onions, lettuce, spinach.

Starting a grapevine.  All the neighbors have them so we're hoping it works!

Blueberry, raspberry, tomatoes, basil, peppers, parsley, cilantro, squash, pumpkins, melons, and zucchini.

Arugula, spinach, lettuce, endive, garlic (and a box of corn down in the corner--Joseph insisted!)

On top of the shed:  cauliflower, kale, arugula, lettuce, cabbage, broccoli and strawberries.
Peas and carrots.
                                   

These guys and their friends in brown stop here almost every day because taking four kids shopping is not my favorite activity.

Joseph's rest time activity:  drawing while listening to an audio recording of  Famous Men of Rome.

Snack time:  black beans with olive oil.  

I hold up the camera and these faces are just automatic.

This baby is so stinkin' cute.

I just can't get enough.

We have a lot of this nowadays:  William gave all his beans to his baby brother and then cried for lack of beans. 

Turns out that continuously snapping pictures of a crying child is a good way to get a smile.

I've got my tea.  I'm ready for history.  We do history as a read-aloud with the whole family and then Joseph and Margaret do age-appropriate things with what they've heard.

My ongoing saga of Children v. Curtains:  after four days with no curtains at all they were rehung last night only to have the middle section "accidentally" removed again today by William.  And I knocked down the left hand section trying to rehang them.  I'm thinking of looking into frosted glass and some nice trim.

We built a platform bed and stopped using our nice box spring months ago and today someone finally responded to the Craigslist ad I posted.  Problem:  box springs have become temporary shelving.

Another problem:  box spring exit route is obstructed by recent shed-cleaning project.

A few minutes of leaving the children to fend for themselves and the basement is looking like this.

And the children are looking like this.

They are playing "Children Who Lost Their Parents."

My afternoon project:  dressers, dessers everywhere.  I re-organize the household storage approximately six times a year and this bout was inspired by the acquisition of this old dresser from Grandma Gerold.  It now belongs to Margaret and will someday be topped with a beautiful mirror.  As soon as I fix the frame and cut a new back for it.  

To make room for that, this had to be moved into the kitchen.  Where it used to be.  I hate this piece of furniture and it is in bad shape but it is also very heavy so it is going to stay there until I'm sure I have our storage needs figured out.

This picture shows pretty much all the floor space in my bedroom.  The closet has been emptied onto my  bed and one tiny dresser moved to the basement.  Leaving . .  still two dressers in my tiny room.  That will have to change.

At some point in the afternoon I texted Eric, "Remember when we used to get takeout every Monday night?"  He came home with Mexican.  Excellent.

Evening prayer.







4 comments:

ginger said...

So, you sound on the ball with blogging plans...my "week in the life" series is in my drafts folder...from two years ago. Whoops.

Robyn said...

LOVED this Q!!! You got all kinds of great stuff in here! Can't wait to see tomorrow's!

Emily said...

can I request a pic of the platform bed??

Susan said...

Hmm. I'll see if I can post about that soon. That room is very tiny and always a mess and it's not done so it looks extremely unimpressive right now.