Big day for our lil Haylee Bug

It's been quite some time since I have written much personal on here.  
I have been spending time working on price matching/couponing.  

Started a new facebook page to be able to communicate with others 
about sales, matchups, etc.  Totally loving that.

That's in addition to the normal typical daily adventures to handle like 
married, house to run, 6 yr old to do homeschooling with.  
Along with my mom who has definite dementia and has to be
tended to pretty consistantly.  Oh and two small dogs that are a 
handful in many ways.  
So some days - altogether, it seems like I have 5+ kids.  :P

Guess I do stay a bit busy and ever since we decided, for many reasons,
to homeschool Haylee, there are many days I wonder if I am 
enough to be able to fulfill all the requirements of taking on this
huge responsibility.  Especially those days that the world is flying 
by at warp speed trying to keep all the little fires of life under control.  
The kind of days that nothing seems to get done - especially anything really notable in the actual school area.

I have made sure not to rush at all with all the little steps of each 
vowel sound, number - etc.  We have strictly followed the  one 
lesson at a time approach no matter how boring it seemed to be 
to myself and to Haylee.  I would liven it up as much as possible, 
(sometimes almost standing on my head, 
but still,  lesson after lesson, review each and every sound - short 
and long vowels, all the letters and finally combinations thereof.  
It can be very challenging to try to stick to one lesson at a time, 
when you could rush them, but I set my mind to not doing that.
Not skipping the little things to rush to the goal of this or that
then having to backtrack to re-learn some little things later.

I do add in lots of little things to mix up a school day as Haylee is
such a bright girl full of way too much energy to set still for very 
long, with the highlights of her day is to give me the toughest time 
possible, and if something doesn't entertain her very well, she is distracted so easily.  

I think writing is her toughest thing so far.  To have to actully set 
in a chair, somewhat still, not on it - under it or hanging off of it, 
and have to focus on writing 
this and that, well, some days - she's as much under the desk as
she is at it.  lol!!  So, what the heck, sometimes I just 
crawl in the floor with her and we change course and try something
else for a bit.  

I have discovered that is another fabulous thing about homeschooling 
from my own ongoing experiences, is to move at your own paces.  
If something is a bit tough, work on that a bit longer, by reviewing 
and trying another approach before heading on to the next
which in, what we call "big school", there are so many children at 
so many levels, all struggling at times to try to keep up where if
it's not working for us, stop to take a break for the day and pick up
where we left off and continue the next day.

Well, the last few days, we have been advancing nicely on the number 
of sight words she can rattle off faster and faster.  Now the lessons
are actually having us put words together a little more and a little more.

Yesterday Haylee was astonished when she read a full sentence I had
written on the dry erase board without hesitation.  Her eyes were like
the biggest diamonds ever.  

I don't think the most awarded poet in the world could have put 
that moment into words for her or for myself.

In that moment I saw her experience that once in a lifetime feeling 
of finally being able to do something effortlessly that she has wanted 
to do so fiercely for as long as her little self can remember.

So, today I had her get out her Leap Frog Tag reader - you know, the
ones with the pen that reads the words for the child.  It's been a while
since she had it out.  We have a set of books that have each vowel 
in short sounds.  I had her set down with it, and said if she gets stuck
and just cannot get that word, then use the pen to tell her the word.

Before she knew it, she had only gotten stuck a couple of times, and breezed
right through the 13 page book.  Totally mezmerized by now that she
had actually read the book all by herself.  She was jumping up and down
repeating  -  "I just read that book ALL by myself.  All by myself.  
All by myself!!" while doing a serious version of a happy dance.

That is one of the small HUGE moments that spending all this time
on all the little things all so very much worth it.  The moment you 
are teaching your child something that others usually do.  
It's so much like the moment that they take their very first step, 
you so much want to NOT miss that moment.  Well, I got to be
a part of it, that I hope to never forget.  That feeling of success for a child. 

This child has asked, seems like daily, for months, maybe a year or two, - when can I read by myself?

I saw for myself that if I had any doubts before - I don't any longer because - Moments like that is truely what it's really all about!!!  


Even if tomorrow we had to end being able to homeschool,  
I was still able to share one of her biggest moments, come to life.


Talk about all the little bits and pieces of ups and downs craziness and 
myself doubting that I should even be doing this on some days- all 
leading to a splendor of a look in a 6 yr old's eyes.  

Even though I have never been considered the "mushy" type very 
often - This was one of those moments that quickly brought on 
goosebumps and tears of excitement right along with our sweet 
lil' Haylee Bug.  

Talk about a feeling so very humbled and honored, to have the ability
to work with a child at home, while needing to be home so much 
of the time for other reasons such as my mom. 

It all can be tough, challenging, stressful, creative, silly acting, mind 
boggeling, laughter along with tears at times, to never know what 
the next minute will hold kind of experience that is a true and precious 
honor, even that much more, when you have the moments of yesterday 
and today to see just how as one is declining in knowledge and 
ability day by day - then on the other hand you see one blossom more and more with each passing day.




** (later on in the evening)  
I think Larry and I have heard that one little book not once but many
dozens of times.  lol!  I think she even took the book to bed with her
along with tooth #5 that the "tooth fairy" will need to collect after 
posting this.  lol!  

I do know that we have one extremely proud little lady probably
dreaming of reading all kinds of books tonight.