Hay Happens and Hay's Happen

The adoption process began on April 4th, 2020.

We showed up at the office to fill out the necessary paperwork. Daddy and Tot played with her Shopkins Parlor. He’s a great sport.

We have all the paperwork and the next step is the hearing.

Praise Jesus!

They are so cute together!

May of 2018, Tatum started receiving allowance. We started with $5/week when she was 5. She divided it up into GIVE, SAVE, SPEND.

Well, now she is 7, and we decided it was time to open a child savings account. The Hay fam headed over to Bank of America for our appointment. We met with a guy named Nick, and he and Tatum hit it off. She talked his ear off. Apparently, he has an 8-year old sister, so he had no problem chatting away with her.

She brought in her SAVE envelope. (with Dino of course)

She puts in about $1/week, so how much do you think she has saved up?

That’s right: She’s saved $63 + $16 in $2 (which we did not deposit) + $50 from Doug’s mom from Christmas. Altogether:
$113.

So exciting! Let’s continue to be diligent in our saving, Tatum. So proud of your efforts.

Her teacher, Mrs. Guy, sends us assignments to work on. Here is the latest:

Started with a piece of graph paper and then turned into a tree!

Love it!

Tatum helped Daddy put up some blinds the other night. We have been home A.L.O.T due to the Coronavirus quarantine. The windows were filthy, and Tot agreed to clean them.

Now we can see! Cooper helped out too.

Thank you Tot and Daddy for all your hard work!

What’s a mommy to do? You see your child get so frustrated because she just can’t seem to master her subtraction math facts fast enough. The timed tests stymie her, and she feels like she “can’t” do it.

I REFUSE TO BELIEVE THIS.

I tell her: Practice, Practice, Practice. This is what we need to do.

Last week, I made a fun chart for her to complete in 5 days. 4 x/day practice, and let’s see how you do after this.

Well, we are going to do this again next week, but you can see she had some perfect practices! I also look at attitude.

I needed to come up with a prize incentive, and I decided on a treasure box. I filled the treasure box with gifts. The gifts have a point value on them. This way, she can collect “tickets” and “purchase” a gift with her tickets. She learns math this way too! (there’s always a method to my madness).

These tickets were created:

You can see that the blank has to be filled in with WHAT she did well; this way she can see the specific thing she did well. As you can see, she received two tickets, and ONE was just for attitude. I value this above the work!

Here is the treasure box:

She earned 10 points, and that was enough to purchase some mechanical pencils!

She WANTS the other gifts, so guess what she did all night and today? She’s been practicing and practicing!!
She got her math facts page down from 10 minutes to …..wait for it……

FIVE MINUTES!!! She cut it in 1/2 in 2 days.

Let’s see how she does next week. She is having FUN with math now. Yah!!!

Frustration. It produces all kinds of reactions. For example, Tatum has been trying to master her math facts so she can get 100% on a 6 minute assessment. She can do the sheet in 7.5 minutes, practicing and then with the actual test, it’s more like 10 minutes.

She runs into her room crying and telling me she’s “stupid.” UGH. Then, there’s some impulsive reactions with words she doesn’t mean, but they come out. All completely unavoidable with a some self-control and some grace for herself. She is so hard on herself (sounds familiar).

Sometimes, also, I have an opinion of how she should be doing something, and she doesn’t quite agree. This reaction can come out in an ugly way as well.

BUT WITH ALL OF THIS > one thing my daughter possesses is a strong repentant heart. She immediately has immense guilt, and makes things right. It’s a stellar quality how she wants to fix things right away. She doesn’t let things fester or get worse. This could also be that I don’t respond in kind.

First, I don’t allow her to say things about herself that are lies from the PIT. I make her repeat these words: “I am a CHILD of GOD; I am wonderfully made.” Maybe she makes a stupid choice but I will not allow her to say this about herself. Also, I don’t yell back or be angry with her (Oh, sure, I have slipped, but I don’t respond back this way for the most part). SO, it doesn’t escalate.

She loves to make a little note and put it on the counter before we talk.

This is an endearing quality of Tatum. As I always say, “How you respond is more important that the circumstance itself.” Let’s try to STOP, THINK, and PRAY more often to minimize regret.

I love you Tatum.

Tatum and I are together pretty much all day every day. I actually am loving seeing what she is learning AND I do enjoy being with her this much as crazy as that sounds. Well, with that, I like to add a few things here and there to our day.

Everyday, after Spalding, we like to take Cooper out for a walk. I decided to add photography at this time. Tatum carries our Nikon camera (around her neck of course) and I have her find 2 pictures to take. This means she needs to be observant. Then we FOCUS!

I’m trying to get her to really focus closely on ONE item vs. taking a whole scene. Look at this rock she found!

Here’s another one:

She also found flowers to take.

And more close-ups

We are having so much fun with this, and she’s doing so well eating this up.

Speaking of eating up, it’s time for some peanut butter toast with math.

Let’s talk about math in the next blog.