Camping Out

My husband didn’t do any camping out as a kid. I did some and I was the one who came into the relationship with a 2-3 person tent, a good “mummy bag”, and some experience.

That said, I dislike the true “roughing it” that comes with camping out. I learned to bring along my inflatable mattress that fits nicely into my tent (and even has room for my spouse on it). I learned to cook fairly decently over a campfire, although I lack all the specialty tools that true outdoors types have. I just can’t abide with the whole no-toilet-facilities thing.

The kids enjoy camping out. The husband enjoys camping out. So, I grin and bear the experience when it is proposed.

We have been borrowing another tent the last few of years since we can no longer fit all of us into my 2-3 man. We put the older children in my tent and use the borrowed tent for the rest of us. We picked up a new BIG tent on clearance earlier this year, but haven’t tried it out yet. By the time this post appears, we will be mostly through our “roughing it” experience this year. When I recover, I’ll tell you how it went. Maybe.

Until then, enjoy all the comforts of home and cross your fingers for not much rain and mosquitos for us.

Potty Training – Week 9

It has been awhile since I updated how we have been doing on potty training. We were in despair when we passed a month of actively trying to get Child #3 to perform her peeing and pooping in the toilet instead of her pants. She really was fairly good about the liquid refuse. It almost always went into the potty. The pooping was another story.

We tried just about every trick we’d ever heard of.

- We had her pick out cute little (Tinkerbell) underwear and told her that Tinkerbell would be very sad if she was pooped in. Happened anyway.
- We bribed her. For every three days she didn’t have an “accident,” she would get to pick out a movie to watch. Didn’t work.
- We rewarded her for success. Small candies were ready to pass out for successfully pooping in the potty. They sat ungiven for weeks.
- We even tried rewarding EVERYONE for success. I read somewhere to give everyone in the house a small treat when they performed the desired behavior. Then, the theory went, the small child would want to also be rewarded and would demonstrate the desired behavior. No dice. It was pretty pitiful to hand out M&M rewards to everyone else in the house but not Child #3.

There were other things we tried. None of them worked. Each day, I would clean between one and four pairs of pooped-in underwear. It was very discouraging.

Then, suddenly, with some backsliding but not too many days of it, she finally started going poop in the toilet. It was right around Week 7. It wasn’t anything WE did. It was all her. I have been happily not cleaning poopy pants for almost two weeks.

She’s been dry during the day and night for over that amount of time. We don’t put her in an overnight diaper because she has shown incredible bladder control and amazing lengths of time of ‘holding it.’

She doesn’t normally pee during the night, but twice she has gotten up because her bladder is full. I usually hear her open her door and go help her. She heads right back to sleep.

I’m calling this one potty trained. Hooray!!

Summer school update

In what should only take an hour a day, we have been working through Writing With Ease Level 2 (both older kids), Growing with Grammar 3 (Child #1), Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons (Child #2), A Beka Arithmetic 1 (Child #2), and reviewing math facts using games/flashcards/etc (Child #1).

Unfortunately, it has not been going well lately. The whining and complaining start even before we sit down to “do school.” Anything that has to do with a pencil causes complaints with Child #1, so WWE & GWG are both resented. Even the small amount of writing that each calls for is lamented loudly before, during, and after the lesson. We are on Week 5 of WWE and Child #1 just finished Chapter 1 (of 5) in GWG 3.

Swimming at the pool usually follows the completion of our lessons for the day, but only if they have them done at a decent time. Getting up late or fooling around rather than completing chores causes the schedule to be moved back – and back – and back. It doesn’t look like there will be any pool-time today because they both have refused to take their schoolwork seriously today (breaking a pencil lead out on purpose and sulking on the other child’s part). ‘Tis sad because they really have had a great time at the pool this summer and made marvelous strides in their swimming abilities.

The cloud cover has been on and off all day, so perhaps that is contributing to their (and my) gloomy moods. I hope for a more upbeat blog post another time.

Summer Reading Club

The tiny local library has started their summer reading club up. Activities are planned once per week at the library and all books the kids read (or have read to them) are recorded on sheets and turned in. At the end of the club, the kids get a chance to redeem their “book bucks” for prizes and also have a chance to win a bike donated by a local business.

The older kids really enjoyed the first week’s activity. We arrived early enough to pick up our stash of books (eventually maxing out our checkout number). Child #1 who now “loves to read” has already read between two and three (170-210 pg) books per day since then. It is hard to find “suitable” reading material on her reading level in our small town library. We are going to be joining the “big city” library system (1 1/2 hrs drive away) sometime this late summer/early fall to gain access to more books we would like to use for our Story of the World history curriculum and hopefully more books on Child #1’s reading level.

Until then, we are having a great time with the summer reading club, swimming several times a week at the local pool, and hitting local (or regional) kid-friendly events while trying to stay cool!