Here is Louis pulling himself up on the tv. We do have a tv here and use it to watch French childrens' movies and french news to hopefully pick up pronunciation and vocab!
I thought I would try to give you a glimpse into our days here. There is not really a "typical" day yet since we aren't in school. When we start school we will have a typical day to some degree, but I'll give you an idea what we are doing now. Partially because if I were you, I would wonder what in the world we are doing every day in France!
~5:30am: Daniel up
~6:00-6:30: Marianna our morning girl usually wakes up and wakes the rest of the house up. We try to work with her on that, but so far it hasn't been successful;)
~6:30: girls start their "morning routine" while mommy makes breakfast. One of us has to help Olivia through the morning routine (she can do parts of it independently such as putting her bedding away and brushing her teeth, but needs help going potty, getting a new diaper on etc.
7:00 eat breakfast together and do catechisms, memory work, pray etc.
After this the timeline is kind of loose.~Clean up from breakfast and finish morning routine
~Girls watch 15 minutes of a sermon online(we often use desiringgod.org) this is practice for sitting still in church/other times we need them to sit still!
~Daniel and I take turns getting ready for the day and I nurse Louis somewhere in here
~Girls color/play playdough at table
~Family cleanup time! We usually do some sort of laundry task(we do 2 loads a day and then all need to be hung up to dry), general pick up, sweeping, and vaccuming during this time
~Girls have free play time or trip to the store/playground until lunch. This would be a time I might sneak in some studying (flashcards, some short videos on french basics) Daniel is often gone to study at this time and returns later in the afternoon unless we have a tutoring session.
11:00-noon: lunch prep and eat lunch (usually leftovers or sandwiches)
noon-1pm: free play/possible cartoon in French
1:00pm start winding down for naps. All three take a rest during this time, generally all sleep at least 45 minutes, even Marianna. Some days we have tutoring for 2 hours during this time.
~When Marianna and Louis wake up (usually by 2:30) Marianna has started some "School time" I'm excited because she's able to do some independently on the computer now. ~We go to "starfall.org" and she is able to do it mostly by herself after a little introduction to how to use our laptops touchpad.
~4:00pm or so I usually start getting geared up for dinner, we do a pre dinner cleanup and sometimes Daniel takes some/all of the kids out for a walk/to the playground. If this isn't possible I might have them walk a french cartoon or go play in their room. Louis is often taking his third nap of the day (if anyone has any sweet tips for how to lengthen naps instead of having to do three, I'd be grateful! My other two did this naturally but Louis is a very different little one when it comes to sleep!)
~5:00pm or so is dinner, dinnertime devotions and cleanup. Sometime the girls help with dishes and sweeping.
~After dinner is usually just trying to get things ready for the next day, cleaning up and maybe a french video. Sometimes we read books, but often it is unstructured and usually unproductive time for Mommy and daddy! Usually Olivia and Louis are grumpy by this time and take a LOT of attention. So although we'd love to study and get projects done, it just doesn't happen! And since the kiddos have been sick a lot lately and Louis still gets up once or so a night we try to be in bed ourselves by 9:00pm or so (8:00pm is the kids' bedtime). We try to study after they go to bed as we can.
When classes start the kids' schedule will stay the same for the most part except that Marianna may be attending morning classes at a local school as well. The dynamics of having just Louis and Liv at home will be interesting! Hope that gave you an idea of what the children and I do, and of course some days are drastically different such as when we go to the store, bank, or library since we typically have to walk at least 15 minutes to get where we want to go.
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