Since I have begun working from home, our days are starting out a bit different. I used to get up at 5am and get my day going and the children started getting up at 6am.  Now that I work from home, I often work 4am - 6am.  On the days I don't work, I have been sleeping until 6:30 am.  We have had to adjust our schedule a bit but I must say I really like how it is working out.  The children now don't get up until 7am.  The older three go about taking care of their chores etc... and Mark is my helper in the morning.  It has really been a joy having him as my morning helper.  It has been a great way to invest time in him first thing in the day (start fillig that love tank) and for tying heart-strings.  It also keeps him out of the way of the older children.  The first thing we do each morning is to grind some wheat.

I will explain the notes on the cabinet behind Mark in another entry. 

While the wheat is grinding, Mark usually does something silly like pretend to sleep and I act surprised and wake him up.

Then we proceed with making our breakfast.  Recently we have been making muffins.  Mark's favorite is choc. chip muffins.  Here is his favorite part of helping with the morning work.

Look at that smile.  He always asks if he can eat just a few.    We have so much fun and we get in lots of learning too.  Each day I give him a different amount of chips he can eat (or blueberries or whatever kind of muffins we are making)  I will ask him to count them.  Then I ask him how many he had yesterday.  Then we add those numbers together and we subtract them to see how many more (or less) he has today than yesterday.  We have so much fun.  It is really working out wonderfully.  I love spending this time with him each morning.  I love haivng him share his thoughts with me.  The other morning he said, "Mommy, I have da (the) runny nose and cough again"  I said, "I'm sorry."  He said, "why do me have da runny nose and cough again?"  As I was thinking of what answer to give he said, "I tink (think) I know why.  I tink day (they) love me." 

Recently Mark was playing with his Little People.  This is what I heard him saying:

"Look at da (the) serpent pole and you will be healed.  You no look at serpent pole and you no be healed."  I looked over to try and figure out what he was doing and I saw he had some little people lying down (dead) because they didn't look at the serpent pole and he had others walking around because they had obeyed and were healed. 

Seeing Mark play this way was a big reminder to me that they are ALWAYS listening.  He doesn't participate in our bible time; however, he is always in the room with us.  It is obvious he is listening and learning.