Our Friday starts early. Around midnight there was a thunderstorm which brought Evie into my bedroom. She does not like storms. Never has. Phita is in a special bed in our room for safety reasons. Basically it looks like if a hospital bed and a crib could have a twin-sized baby. It’s been fantastic for her.

Evie woke me up again around one to let me know Phita was having seizures. She’d climbed in bed with her and was holding her hands through her seizures, reassuring her. She was so sweet. I told her she could go back to sleep, but Phita was saying, “E-E,” which is what she says for Evie and Evie told me seriously that that meant she had to stay awake with her.

Evie told me, “She takes a break and says my name and then her brain just keeps zapping her.” It broke my heart, but was also a really good description of cluster seizures. I gave Phita her emergency meds and she stopped having them and fell back asleep.

We all went back to bed until around five-thirty when I got up for the day. I did my morning routine and wrote for a while. Teeny, of course, was the first awake. We did her math and language arts.

Lou Bae woke up and wanted to make breakfast. She asked me where the butter was and I told her it was in the drawer of the fridge. She was confused that it was in a block and not sticks. I was like, “Oh, yeah, I bought some uncut butter,” which I did. But, it was in the freezer still.

What was in the fridge? What did my sweet, sweet girl spread on ten pieces of perfect toast? Lard. Lard, 0/10 do not recommend lard toast. I felt so bad. It was all my fault because I should have double-checked. I didn’t think to do that. So we had eggs and potatoes.

We read the Bible and prayed. Tom went to bed. Moved into our school routine. We did history and geography, and then took a ten minute break. Came back for science and religion. We’re studying invertebrates in science and reading this cool See Inside book on spiders and scorpions. The kids thought it was equal parts cool and gross!

Phita was fairly grumpy and the only thing that calmed her down was Evie. She would ask for her and Evie would literally just sit next to her and hold her hand, and she was a happy clam! Evie decided that means she’s Phita’s favorite.

Another ten minute break and did music and sign language. We’re using Prodigies for music practice and the girls are really enjoying using the hand bells and learning music notes. We’re using Signing Time for Sign Language and they’re learning so much! They’ll come up to me and ask for things in ASL and I’m totally lost, hahaha!

They finished up all of their notebook work while I made lunch. We listened to an Uncle Bob science story while we ate quesadillas. After lunch the girls played outside for about thirty minutes while I worked with Phita. She didn’t want to say anything or use her speech devices other than to ask for Evie!

Phita laid down for a nap and the other girls came back inside. I’ve decided to start doing life skills Friday afternoons. I was never taught how to deep clean or maintain things. So at thirty-six, I’m still struggling with routines, maintenance, etc. I don’t want my kids to be almost forty Googling, “Am I really supposed to clean….?”

We went to work on the kitchen, I showed them how to pull out things and scrub the fronts of the cabinets and what a difference it makes. They said the cabinets were clean…until they saw them without grime and build up!

Teeny was scrubbing the fridge front and was having trouble with where some Expo marker from out calendar wouldn’t come off. Lou Bae told her to use elbow grease. Teeny literally used her elbow to scrub! Which brought on a very long discussion about what Amelia Bedelia would do if Mrs. Rogers told her to use elbow grease.

We made pizza and I worked on math and language arts with Evie and Lou Bae. Evie is so sweet. She has a spelling list every day and she’s only required to do the spelling word on her white board. Every day she insists on writing a sentence with the word instead. It’s so sweet to watch her come up with a sentence that includes the word and she’s getting in extra handwriting and spelling practice, too.

Tom woke up. So did Phita. We had supper and tidied up the house. He left for work and the girls played. I worked on some loose projects until bedtime. We did our bedtime routine and I got everyone to bed. I called my grandma to check in and then I started writing to you!

And that was Friday With Amanda! I hope you all had a great day and didn’t put lard on your toast!