Week in Review - first try! :)

So I notice that:

a) I never update any more!
b) Some of my bloggy friends (the homeschooling ones) write regular Week in Review posts.
c) It might be a good idea to give it a try, because it's quick and easy-looking, and I would actually BLOG and keep track of things again! Maybe!

A blog that I read with faithfully regular Week in Review posts is Tristan's (Our Busy Homeschool), and today's blog post of hers finally provoked me to write my own, copying her format to try it out for myself. I am BAD at consistency (I know you know this already!) but here goes nothing! :) Even if it's just occasional, it will be stuff that I long to keep recorded, ACTUALLY RECORDED!

Week in Review

In my life this week...

I am 20 weeks pregnant! I had "The Big Scan" on Friday, and would you believe it?! After six precious sons in a row, the gift from God I am carrying is a baby GIRL!!!!! My first daughter! I actually still can't comprehend it, and I expect it will take a while to sink in. We are all (big brothers included) absolutely thrilled and so joyful to be expecting a baby girl! :)

Matthew's appointment came through for his assessment. Another thing that's NEW news if you are a reader who only knows me at this blog, as I haven't updated for a long time about anything in-depth. Arthur has been through assessment this year for Autistic Spectrum Disorder (specifically the child psychiatrist (who he saw once for a phobia of dogs, which he's doing better with now) suspected Asperger's Syndrome). He was just diagnosed last month with Asperger's Syndrome - not a big surprise to us, but it has meant the last year has been much more challenging than the one before it, and so on. His behaviour is HARD to manage, and his mannerisms are "different" to other children. He is very bright and chatty and lovely! He is pretty "classic" Asperger's though, apparently. Matthew's behaviour is different to Arthur's but almost more difficult to manage. I have no idea, I'm no expert, and I understand Arthur better than I understand Matthew, but my gut feeling is that Matthew is also on the autistic spectrum (not necessarily Asperger's though), and has sensory processing disorder, ADHD, and speech issues (he is now on the waiting list for speech therapy as well), as well as possibly dyslexia and dyscalcula. He has learning difficulties that are more problematic than I first thought when I started homeschooling him. He isn't making progress with reading, writing, or maths, and can't concentrate for any length of time, and rapidly progresses to crazy wild behaviour where he's beyond-reach as far as verbal reasoning goes, and disrupts any effort to teach him anything. I can't tell you how hard it's been this past year, with everything else going on (which I can't remember if I mentioned here, and have no particular desire to right this minute). Which leads me neatly to...!

In our homeschool this week...

Ah, now this will probably necessitate some lengthy explaining, since I haven't updated my blog in so long... Not sure I want to get into that right now, but hmmm. Suffice to say that we are currently pretty much unschooling. This means no formal education (curriculum work, etc.) but everything is child-led, and various things are available for them to choose from. This is NOT a preferred choice for me, it makes me fidgetty, lol! But right now it's where we are at, for various reasons which it would take too long to go into tonight. It is also NOT a permanent situation. I am hoping it's temporary, and even this week we've been discussing how to ease some curriculum subjects back in, for one or two of the boys. This week, Arthur has been out to Heather's house (my doula, who homeschools her 15-year-old daughter), to do a history lesson with her daughter, for a full morning on Wednesday. This isn't every week, but it did happen this week. Arthur loves it! He has a workbook that is rapidly filling with all sorts of very creative activities on medieval British history that Heather's daughter has prepared herself, and photos of him in costume, etc! So fun! Arthur is hugely into sea creatures at the moment, and we have just bought the Apologia Science: Zoology 2 curriculum, which is all about sea creatures and oceanography. He is so excited and can't wait to start it tomorrow! I intended him to work through much of it independently as that's how he works best, but I think that I will have him read it aloud to me (or I'll read some of it, whichever he prefers), and I'll oversee the written activities, and obviously do the science experiments with him. I expect Matthew and probably Nathan will also be intrigued and want to join in when it comes to it, as well. Otherwise we've had beautiful weather this week and most of the boys' time has been spent in the garden, or we've been out to a big "beach" (complete with water fountain for water play!) at the park one day this week, and we spent another day visiting a homeschooling family we know fairly locally who have six children as well. The children all get on so well together, it's lovely how excited they all get about our visits! Matthew and Nathan have drawn a lot this week, and written letters and such as they've wanted to. Matthew has been tracing sea mammals and dinosaurs from reference books. They've done puzzles, built Lego, and played strategic games. Arthur has created maps with alternate battle plans for armies in the 2nd World War this week, for some random reason! He was very focused on it for a long time, and eager to show and explain it all. He has (as usual) spent hours each day this week reading mainly reference books (British History, World History, and the enormous Complete History of the World book on the shelf that he can barely lift off! Amongst many many other non-history books). He hasn't done much fiction reading this week.

Helpful homeschool hints or advice to share...

I am the opposite of the fount-of-all-wisdom at this stage, lol! I NEED advice from homeschooling mothers, or mothers of children on the autistic spectrum, or mothers of eleventy little children, that sort of thing. But I don't think I have any to give out! The only advice I would give is to PRAY in all things, including homeschool. I do not know what I would do without God, in all this. Talk about anchor in the storm! :)

Places we've been and people we've seen...

Okay so I've answered this already, for the most part! Monday we went to Vicki's to visit and play with her six little ones. Wednesday was Arthur's history lesson and Heather's daughter brought him home and then helped me take the boys to the "beach" park in the beautiful weather, for the afternoon. They made a ton of friends (Arthur especially, in his element organising and leading the children who were there in strategic water-channelling-through-sand battle games!) and had a blast. On Friday, Heather came over to spend time playing with the boys while Neil and I went to have our scan, and find out that we have a daughter! Saturday I went to the women's breakfast at church (VERY inspirational talk), and then Neil took all the boys to the park to play ball games and build forts (and crawl in the grass, depending on which child we're talking about, lol!), while I rested off a bout of IBS at home. :S Sunday (today) we went to church as a family, the boys enjoyed their groups and playing with the kids afterwards for an hour or so, and then this evening I went to the evening service on my own (we alternate).

Things I'm working on...

Ideas for school this coming week. I bought a Kumon workbook for Matthew on telling the time, as he just can't grasp it, no matter the fabulousness of the Right Start Mathematics curriculum in its clear explanation and games to teach him. He just. doesn't. get it. I can't break it down any simpler, so I'm hoping if he has a workbook all his own, to fill in any time he fancies and get a certificate at the end, he might get somewhere with it over time. I will help him if he lets me. I also got a wipe-clean book for Nathan and some dry-erase pens to go with it, with loads of activities to do inside it, including writing, numbers, dot-to-dot and matching activities, drawing activities, and telling the time. He seems eager to test it out, and I'll leave him to do that as he wants to, and supervise him when he does. He prefers things that way.

Matthew's 7th birthday is on Friday this coming week! Definitely included in my list of things I'm working on! ;) I have all his presents and wrapping paper ready to wrap them, but he can't decide on a cake design (he has suggested 7 different ideas so far!) yet. I will hurry him so that I can prepare now!

I'm sure I'm working on other things (I always have a million things in my head that I can't keep track of, but which are all very important or relevant to be working on RIGHT NOW! ;) I feel so scatty these past few years, with so much to be responsible for all the time! But I do love what I do!) - but I can't remember any of them right now.

I'm cooking...

I'm way too disorganised for meal planning right now, though I would love to change that. All I know this week is that I have chicken thighs to make into chicken in white wine, lemon and rosemary, for Neil and I one evening. I am hoping to do some sweet baking this week, as I seem to have urges to bake things lately. Banana cake if the boys don't eat all the bananas (they usually do, though we buy 5 bunches per week, and even then those only last half the week, lol!), brownies or cookies maybe. We'll see! :) Also I want to make pizza for dinner one day this week, and a pot roast leg of lamb another night.

I'm grateful for...

God in my every day life, my weaknesses and my desperate moments, especially. Lots of those lately.

Church. My heart was heavy tonight (no time to explain, but a good reason unfortunately), and I went to church, totally felt God's presence during the worship time, listened to a sermon that was really relevant to me right now, and then went forward to be prayed for at the end of the service, where God was gracious to me and gently pushed me waaaaaaay outside my comfort zone (where I needed to be) to crying with actual people (gasp!) and thus receiving the kind of prayer and comfort I actually needed. So grateful for my family in Christ! :)

My children! My many blessings from God, and my much-longed-for baby girl after all these years of bearing children! :)

I'm praying for...

Help from God to manage the week ahead. Patience, self-control, and wisdom, specifically. And I am praying for help in consistently training up Samuel, who is 2, over the usual two-year-old behaviours. He's a darling sweetie-pie, happy and cute as anything! But you know two-year-olds! ;) I need to work with him on learning to obey Mummy and not touch/climb/tip those things he knows he's not meant to. I'm praying for wisdom and patience in understanding and dealing with the behaviour from Matthew (especially), Arthur, and Benjamin. Benjamin is nearly 4 and has some autistic tendencies that I'm suspicious about, but he's not quite like Arthur or Matthew, so I don't know. He has bouts of odd behaviours, on and off. This past week he has been doing his thing again where he does weird shouting and twists his cheeks aggressively in his fingers at the same time, compulsively. He can be a bit volatile and aggressive/melt-down-ish when he has these "bouts", and there's obviously a trigger but I have no idea what it is. It gets wearing after a while so I am praying for patience and wisdom with Benji. Also praying for general guidance in terms of "the next thing", schooling, and moving - we sold our house months ago and still have our buyers, but have looked at SO many houses in so many different locations now, and STILL don't know where we are meant to move to! We want to stay HERE but in no way can we afford a bigger house here, so...

Something I have my eye on...

Baby girl clothes!!! Oh my goodness! So much fun!!!! :) I have been out to local shops looking at baby clothes this weekend, but they're not great shops so I didn't see anything I like. I will hit some nicer shops soon! :) Meanwhile I'm "window shopping" online, and browsing through eBay, where I am having to suppress actual squealing a lot of the time, haha! I can't believe I actually get to look at little dresses and pink butterfly sleepsuits without it being a wistful thing - I am growing an actual baby to buy them for!! :D I am even looking at newborn cloth nappies - we haven't used any cloth nappies with Elijah or Samuel - well, I think we put Samuel in a kissaluv size 0 for his very first nappy after birth, but not at all for Elijah. Benjamin had newborn nappies for a couple of weeks, until he outgrew them (quickly!), and then no more. We used cloth full-time for Arthur and Matthew all the way through, and Nathan for 6 weeks maybe? Or a bit longer. It got too much, with so many in nappies and the laundry piling up with so many little ones as well, never mind nappies to wash as well! I still have them in the loft, but no desire to use them in such an intense season - not willing to part with them though! ;) BUT, I wonder about the chance to buy some ultra cute girly print nappies for my newborn baby girl. I can handle newborn cloth, but beyond that probably not for now. So I am looking at newborn sized nappies for the early weeks/months, and that is a TON of fun! :)

Wow, that wasn't particularly quick or easy! But fun, and I'm glad to have it written down. After this one, hopefully any Week in Review posts I make will be shorter and less detailed, because I have had to do some explaining here and there in this post, because of not having said about certain things in recent months, that relate to the week's "stuff".

I hope anyone reading this has a good week! :)