Thursday, November 08, 2007

Misc. babble

I was going to post a picture of my cat watching our 52" plasma tv this morning--I had put The Secret dvd on and he was on the tv stand, sitting with his nose practically on the screen--but he left his spot when I came back with the camera. It was just so funny watching him!

School stuff: (Is today Wed. or Thurs.? Holy cow, it's Thurs.!)

The 13yo (who would like me to refer to him as "Bob") has an eye appointment today. Oooh, that reminds me, I'm supposed to write up a note so that he doesn't forget details in explaining what's going on with his eyes. He is definitely far-sighted--saw a parking lot sign from I'm not sure how far away that none of the rest of us could see. He's been complaining a lot about print being too small--and not just when I expect him to read. The other day, he was reading dd's story as she typed it on the laptop and I asked him how he found the size, because she had the font fairly large. He said it was okay. I took the laptop and started slowly pulling it backwards, asking him if it was getting worse. He got this kind of surprised look on his face: "It's getting better! Why?" All this time, as he had problems seeing words in books, he's apparently been pulling the book closer to his face (that's what everybody else does, right?) and he had no inkling that if he held the book further away, he'd have a better chance of reading it.


I have to wonder how long this has been a problem for him. I'm so eager to see what glasses will do for him. He has always given up so quickly when he gets frustrated with reading--how much of it has been because he simply can't see the letters correctly? I know in elementary, his eye doctor had always diagnosed him as being far-sighted, but for some reason, never gave him glasses. (This eye doctor also refused to give glasses to his sister, despite rather severe astigmatism, until a couple of years ago--she, too, spent years struggling with the print in books.) Last year, the eye doctor said his eyesight was normal, which I found odd. There were still signs here and there of him being far-sighted. He's seeing a different eye doctor today.

This week has been an odd week for school work. We finally started getting back on track yesterday, but still sluggish. We are ALL suffering still from the time change. Which is weird. I remember how we always used to do just fine with the fall time change, but no longer. My kids are going to bed later for their internal clocks, but still getting up at the same time. The two oldest are tired. I've been exhausted--went to bed just after 9 last night, which was good, because my body's waking me up at 4 still (internally 5), so I almost got 7 hours, which is to be celebrated because I had been getting 5.5-6 before that. Even my dh hasn't made the transition as well as he usually does. I don't get it. And I'm not sure what we should do to make the transition. My poor kids have bags under their eyes, but they are just not capable of sleeping past 5-5:30. And I don't really want them to be going to bed at 7pm and up at 5-5:30 every morning! I'll have to see what I can find online.

That was supposed to be a paragraph about odd week for school work. Oh well. We get more of what we focus on though, right? So I'll stop focusing on that. :) Let me focus on today:

16yo:
-lots and lots and lots for math, social (*gasp* Do I have her test ready?) and chem. Need to point out to her how much more she could get done if she stayed focused. Maybe I'll track her time on task and show it to her at the end of the day, ask her how much time she thinks she's spending truly working on her work. We've discussed how she needs to put in a solid 4 hours a day just to maintain, and needs to do more than that or cut corners to catch-up. I think in her mind if she's got 4 hours blocked out for work, she figures she's worked 4 hours. Yesterday's 2 hours in the morning were more like an hour and 15. Maybe not even. Yesterday afternoon she was tired and just sluggish, not really allowing herself to be distracted, which is understandable, but she still didn't actually do 2 hours of work (actually, by the time we were done watching Transformers--which she hadn't yet seen and wanted to see and we didn't have my niece, so it was a good time--she had less than 2 hours left to work). The focus must be on the work to accomplish!

13yo:
His appointment's not until 11, but he'll probably be picked up around 10:30. That's plenty of time to do some math and work on his essay. We've only done one day of that remedial reading drills--he's complained of the print, plus it's just been weird around here. I'd like him to do them today. We can find a good distance for him to see the words. I don't think they should be too small for him.

dd:
She's been working a lot on Spanish. She has wanted to do a flute lesson all week, so I'll make sure I fit that in with her.

ds:
Ds has been doing more work this week! Yay! I'd like to do some letter work with him again today and some oral math. At the moment, he and dd are watching a video about the Mars Rover--science!

Other than that, we finished reading Schooled this week (great book!) and I have yet to figure out what our next read-aloud will be. But now it's 7 and I have to go get ready. :)

2 comments:

Correne said...

Hi, Daisy. Thinking about your sleep-deprivation, and I remember an article that I read lately about treatments for sleep-disturbed people. It had people get a dose of bright light (natural or artificial) and/or a dose of melatonin at different times of day depending on if they were night owls or early birds. I think night owls needed a dose of bright light right away in the morning, and early birds needed it in the late afternoon/early evening. I can't remember the timing of the melatonin. The only reason it stuck out in my mind is because I saw melatonin supplements for sale in the pharmacy the very next day. I had never seen that before.

Maybe you could find some information online to help your family get into a better sleeping routine.

One Alberta Voice said...

Thanks for the info, Correne. I'll have to look into that more. It could be something useful to have on hand. Although right now, things have improved. The only change has been my expectations and visualizations: seeing, in my mind, my kids sleeping until at least 6:30 was followed up by them sleeping until 6:30 (dd until 7) the very next day. I've been sleeping better, too!