Bee Stings and other things...

Friday, I went to Goodwill with Hailey to look around a bit. She lucked out. There were HUGE bags of stuffed animals they are just wanting to get rid of for $1.99. I let her buy one and she found two Webkinz inside...the kids all kept a few but the rest will be gotten rid of soon. I lucked out as well, finding a set of three shelving units for $40. They seem to be made well and fill a need we had. I have created a sort of 'reading center' in our play area...with an area rug, a chair-and-a-half, and the book shelves. Today I bought cloth bins on sale at Wal-mart and brought them home and placed toys and books inside. I think I may need to go buy a few more, but it already looks so much better. More organized and uniform, and the three younger kids love it. They can often be found sitting on the chair or on the rug playing or reading. Even the cats gravitate to it for naps, which is nice because it keeps them off the couches, which in turn means less cleaning overall for me!

We did not actually get to bring the shelves inside until Saturday evening, as it was raining when we got home Friday. Karl and Logan unloaded it all while Emma, Corbin, Hailey, and I looked on....necessary supervisors, ya know. When they had everything out, while still holding Emma, I reached up to close the back gate of the SUV. Emma jerked her leg, began to cry, and commenced rubbing the offended member. At first I thought I had somehow hit her leg with the gate, but I knew I hadn't. At that moment a neighbor stopped at the driveway....I know, crazy right, after months of no contact with neighbors!? She was asking how we'd been (Hailey is kind of friends with her daughter) and gave me one of those shopping cart covers...you know the cloth you put over the cart seat to pad it and keep baby from biting on the cart? Anyway, during this Emma had gotten quiet but she was still rubbing her thigh occasionally. As soon as the neighbor left we came inside and inspected her leg....She began to cry in earnest (I think more afraid we were going to make it hurt more rather than actual pain) and we were not surprised to find a welt on her leg...a definite bee sting. I put some vinegar on it and we kept her awake a bit longer to watch her, to make sure she had no adverse reactions to the sting. Poor baby, I have no idea how she got stung and I didn't. I never even saw the bee. It must have landed on me or her leg, and when I shifted my body to close the gate on the truck pressed her leg against it. She slept fine though, and the next morning there was barely a mark. So no worse for the wear....

I'm looking forward to getting the rest of the toys organized on the shelves and purging the house of the other things we've been using for storage...or maybe storing books, etc. that need to be put away in those now-empty bins. I am planning to rotate out some of the toys because we just don't have room for them all, and Emma doesn't play with everything all at once anyway. That way, I can change things out in a few months and it will be like new to her....plus we can (hopefully) have less clutter.

We finally got our school plan together too. Logan is using the 7th grade curriculum plan from Old Fashioned Education, a mostly independent program. Hailey and Corbin are now combined in Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory, with some additional readings and questions for Hailey in reading, writing, science, and history to make it more challenging for her. They were each working at their own level in math already. This plan makes it easier on me to teach them and still have time for Emma and the baby once she arrives. Next year we will re-evaluate to see if we want to continue with this plan or find something else. I'm good with that...