Friday bullets, Nov. 13, 2019

And here we are at Friday again, with Christmas hurtling towards us at a fantastic rate.

• Today would have been my Father's birthday. I miss him.

B. spent Thanksgiving digitizing more of our family photo albums. This is from the last batch he did. This is my dad with B. and A.

• L. and G. have become a little obsessed with writing reports, particularly L. We are now officially on Christmas break and the two of them have decided that they will continue their education on their own. Unsurprisingly, G. is doing her report on horses, which I think is just an excuse to get out all the books on horses and look at them. L. has chosen American history. All day yesterday she sat and watched a multi-disk documentary on American history, taking notes for her report. While her spelling is improving, when she is taking notes, it is still pretty imaginative. L. knows this and wants it corrected so that in her report she has her spelling correct. This all sounds fantastic, doesn't it? Self-motivated learning, note taking, a desire to improve spelling. In reality it is quite a little less fantastic. L. does not manage frustration well, and when she gets a project in her head, she wants to do it NOW. So for most of the day, L. has followed older siblings and parents around demanding asking that we sit down and edit her notes. Eleven pages of notes. No one can manage more than a couple of pages at a time. I think we are all halfway through, but how knows if L. will take more notes in the interim. (In fact, I glanced at her as I'm writing this, and she has pencil and notepad in hand.) So far she's covered the Revolutionary War, the Civil Way, and World War II. It might be easier to just continue doing school all the way up to Christmas.
• Aster has a lot of teeth.

TM took this picture yesterday.

• I am still not done with my Christmas shopping, though am making progress.
• G. is making stockings for the horses which will be hung in the barn, and she has plans to fill them with peppermints for Christmas morning. Well, Emmy and Bristol will get peppermints. Java does not care for them and will either get an apple or carrot.
• This morning, as I was working on things, I suddenly thought, "Oh no! I forgot an appointment for R. yesterday!" I slapped my head, and made the call to reschedule. Well, it turns out, after chatting with the operator, I did not forget the appointment, it's next Thursday. Phew!
• Did I mention that R. and I saw our new pediatric psychiatrist again last weekend? I still really like her. We are just going to continue with the medicine protocol we have right now since it seems to be working, and we'll revisit the whole thing in March. But, she is also happy to have us come in sooner if we need to. I love having that as a back up.
• I'm also throwing up my hands and crying uncle over how R. spends her day. Once she gets an activity she likes, she wants to do it for literally hours on end, day after day. My gut tells me that this isn't good for her, so we've been limiting these activities to a more modest amount. (And boy, it always felt as though I was the bad guy.) But, maybe my gut is wrong. I'm tired of always telling her no. So, we're trying something else. I'm letting her do her two chosen activities for as long as she wants, as often as she wants. Maybe there is something about these activities that she just needs to do. It feels totally wrong to me, but my way of managing her time clearly wasn't working. 
• Sometimes I love buying things of Facebook garage sales lists. It has saved me a ton of money on things I need. But sometimes, I find it infuriating. For instance, earlier this week, I saw a large rug which would have worked well under our new couch and chair in the living room. I contacted the seller, and things were good. We left it that I would talk to my husband to figure a time that would work to come and pick it up. (It was big enough I couldn't do it by myself.) Later that same day, when I contacted the seller, I discover he sold the rug to someone else in the interim because they could come that day. I could have managed to come that day if he had just asked. Grrrrr... !
• I bought D. a book of Christmas carols for cello that have a piano accompaniment that go along with them. It has been a lot of fun to play Christmas carol duet with D., him on cello and me on piano.
• The seed catalog arrived the other day. I've already spent a fair bit of time staring at it, regretting last year's garden, and making ridiculously huge plans for next year's. 
• Since today is National Day of the Horse, I thought I'd share one more photo from B.'s digitizing.

This is J. with A., on possibly her first pony ride. (I don't know why her hair is quite so crazy!) M. is in the background on another pony.

Enjoy your weekend!