The good, the bad, and the ugly...

I've been meaning to sit down and summarize our first week of school for some time now, but understandably haven't had the time. Basically the title my post sums up our week quite succinctly. It was good. It was bad. And it was sometimes ugly. I don't think you can expect much more from a first week of school.

Let's start with the good. We learned a lot. We had a lot of fun. Things ran smoothly and according to plan. We finished all our work in our lesson plans for every day. Sometimes we even finished a bit early. It was great. For me, I managed to get all my housework done every day in a timely manner. One of my biggest fears was that I would end up doing laundry after bedtime or something crazy, or be vacuuming at midnight. But so far that hasn't happened.

And now onto the bad. I have to admit (for reasons far beyond my control) I wasn't in the best mood all last week. Because of that I was errr, how should I put it? Crabby. There, I said it. I was crabby. Because of that I had very little patience for a certain student of mine who doesn't like to sit still, doesn't always follow directions and basically drives me crazy. So yeah, we had some bad moments. But I don't think it was anything more than I expected. I expect for us to butt heads sometimes, that's the nature of homeschooling your own child. You know them too well, so you have higher expectations of them.

Oh yeah, and the ugly. Well, that would be Sophia. No, I'm not calling her ugly. Let's just say she's the proverbial "wild card" around here. You just never know what to expect. Not only in the last week is she trying to readjust her nap schedule, she's also cutting four molars very slowly. It's been insanity. We all get up at 7-7:30 and start school an hour later. Now in the old days she would take a nap exactly two hours after she woke up. Which means I used to only have to put up with her for the first hour of school and then she'd be down for her morning nap. She'd wake up around lunchtime, which would also be the time we'd be done with school. It was a perfect schedule. Well, lately I never know when she's going to want to nap. Mostly she's only been taking one after lunch. Which means she's there for a good part of school. I find myself getting Elijah settled with some busywork, running to switch out my laundry and then back to the living room to read books or play with Sophia. It's crazy...and sometimes ugly.

But we're managing, and we survived (the most important part!). It's definitely a learning experience for everything, but fortunately I'm a fast learner. And I'm quickly catching on to the things that work for us and the things that don't. It's been a little more hectic than I would have preferred and my main downfall has been finding any free time for myself. Though I'm not surprised by this, I'd like to change it. I'm having to choose every afternoon during my 1-2 hours of free time to either talk on the phone with a family member, work out, shower, write, or just relax and do nothing.

*sigh*

So there you have it. The good, the bad, the ugly and the exhausted... can you guess which one I am?