January 14, 2019: Figuring Out Reading

Monday. I tried to sleep in this morning, but it didn’t work. A customer had a system down and no one else could be found to deal with it. So I was up and working on it at eight. Not bad, but not what I wanted.

My day was very busy. Paul had a project for me analyzing a lot of customers and that took the whole day to go through loads and loads of potential customer information and make notes and create a document for us to work from. Productive, but a lot of work outside of my normal stuff.

My day actually flew by, and I really never got a chance to stop working. I was at my desk the entire day and pretty much missed everything going on in the house, for the most part. I even ended up not getting lunch until something like three or four in the afternoon. Lunch was just veggie chicken sandwiches that I often make for myself.

I had to intervene with home school unhappiness today, but I think that I help to solve a problem with Liesl and reading. She really does not enjoy reading when it is “assigned reading.” It is just not her thing. And really, it is not most kids’ thing. Lots of kids like to read, but lots do not. Nothing wrong with not being a reader. Her reading skills are not an issue and she reads “stuff” all day long, no problem. It is reading books that bothers her. But she likes books, just not reading them. Dominica’s concern is that she will lack a literary background that you get from reading, but in reality she is way, way ahead in that regard. So we discussed reading plans and how I can read to the kids and cover the literary range that they need and, in reality, they will probably get way, way better literature exposure with me reading to them than if they just read on their own. Heavier material, with the ability to ask questions as they go, years earlier than they could read for themselves.

For example, I’ve already read several of the Chronicles of Narnia, the Harry Potter saga, Tom Sawyer (nearly to the end), The Witch of Blackbird Pond, A Wrinkle in Time (party way through), and many others that she would not read on her own or, if she did, she would be unhappy and it would take a very, very long time. Instead, we move through them pretty quickly and she loves it (as does Luciana.) And instead of encouraging solitary time, we are encouraging family “together time.”

So this afternoon while the girls were showering I read chapter thirty three and some of thirty four of Tom Sawyer. We are right up to the end. Although Luciana is struggling with the sadness of the book. She hates when people die, even really bad people like Injun Joe, and the book is pretty upsetting for her. We were not able to finish it today even though we were right up to the end. It is slated to be completed tomorrow night. They will finish it before Dominica, who still has never read it.

Dominica is going to read them A Cricket in Times Square as part of their normal lessons. I have read them much of that book already, but it was years ago and I am sure that neither of them remember it at all.

Dominica dug out books that the girls might be interested in and filled the small bookshelf in the living room with them, instead of having them buried on the shelves in my office. Trying to make it easier for the girls to have a “home library” that they can visit when they want something to read.

Paul is back to working on the second bathroom. With the Grices coming to visit on Friday night, Dominica is anxious to have things completed in there. There isn’t anything really huge to do in there, but there is a lot of cosmetic stuff that is going to take quite a bit of work.

For dinner tonight, Dominica made muzi muzi. It sounded like a good idea, but after she made it and we started watching Star Trek: Voyager she discovered that she suddenly that she had really acute sharp pains in her stomach. So I went and looked at the sauce that she had used and, sure enough, ingredient number two was onions. She had only looked way down in the list for onions and never thought to look at the top of the list of the main ingredients. So she had eaten quite a bit of onions and was in a lot of pain. It hits her so fast now.

Nick ended up coming over this evening. He stayed maybe an hour. We talked about sales and some of his career plans; he is thinking about becoming a pilot. Apparently the pilot market is really good right now. He stayed for dinner, we have lots of muzi muzi now that Dominica cannot eat it.

Luciana spent the evening playing video games in the bed rooms on Steam. Dominica mostly watched The Golden Girls.

Liesl used the Oculus Go for a while this evening. She is starting to get used to using it. She got her own new games for it today and was checking them out.

Luciana wanted Liesl and I to help her do a “don’t laugh challenge”, one of the many simple games that Luciana has learned from watching YouTube shows. We did that for maybe fifteen minutes, but it really does not work as a game and doesn’t really make any sense. I always win, there is no real way for me not to.

After Nick left, I went back to work in my office. I had been thinking about calling it a night, but there was so much to do. I went back in my office and ended up having a phone conference for a while and working until after one in the morning! So many emails to send and meeting to set up. Many pokers in the proverbial fire and I have to manage them all and keep things moving forward. It is exhausting, but it seems like lots of good things are happening.

I didn’t get a lot of SGL backlog taken care of today, but I did get two or three old posts completed.