Lighten up

Dear Me,
Lighten up.
Love,
Everyone

I was eavesdropping on a couple of other homeschool mothers this afternoon.  One is like me and this is her second year of homeschooling, except her kids are older and she is cobbling a lot of her curriculum together.  I prefer to buy most of my curriculum from one source and then supplement (except for Science, you can see that post elsewhere).  The other mother is tackling her first year.  Listening to the advice being given, my initial thought was that both women needed to lighten up.  But then I realize as I spend the mornings nagging, sighing heavily, growling at my kids that they need to get their assignments that I give out done, and that they need to finish the day, and they need to write this other thing, and read that... Really, I'm the one who needs to lighten up.  Why am I homeschooling?  Seriously.

Seriously?  I'm homeschooling my children because I want to make sure they get a good education regardless of where we live.  We might move a lot or a little, but I want consistency for them.  I moved a lot as a kid and teenager, nothing was worse then the guidance counselor telling me that my credits weren't enough and that I would have to take another year of school.  Not that I had failed too many classes (I retook Algebra, but I didn't fail it the first time, that was my only "failure"), not that I had screwed up for any reason other than my family moved a lot and I wasn't going to graduate with my class.  It was a humiliating experience.  I want more for my kids than I had.  I want to help them learn, and know that they are learning.  I don't want them to fake it.  I want them to have the chance to understand, and if a subject interests them they can pursue it.  We can work with it.  If they don't understand we could slow down.  I want them to have our beliefs honored in our schoolwork, its so nice to be able to include that in our day.  I want them to have time with their father and I, and with one another, learning to cherish and love each other instead of despising thier siblings and parents.  I want... a lot.

Here in Idaho, we have it pretty simple.  Provide your children with an education that is equivalent to what the public school kids graduate with.  The government isn't going to hunt you down if you study World History before American History, as long as in the end, your kids learn something, and finish with similar educations as the public school kids.

What I need is to slow down.  Again, we live some place where we are privileged enough to not have to be held accountable to an outside source.  This means that my kids can work at their own pace.  I just need someone to tell me that one day of quality Science instruction is better than 3 days of dry text and a vocabulary list that a 5 year old has little hope of remembering.  I need to recognize that sometimes subtraction is hard for a 7 year old who doesn't particularly care for Math.  I need to encourage my kids to enjoy thier studies, not groan their way through assignments (a little griping is to be expected, but tears?  I'm not sure).  So I guess I need to take a deep breath.  We might not get through the curriculum before the public school kids break for the year.  Who cares?  If we are still learning, and more importantly enjoying our educational endeavours then perhaps that should be enough. 

So dear self, settle down, let the kids learn at their own pace.  That's why we are here.  And yes, they'll screw around, and yes, some days are going to be unpleasant, but all days shouldn't be.  We're here to learn, but that's not all we are here for in life.

Now may God give me the peace to accept this all ;)

The Boy has a cold

The Boy has a cold.  You know what a cold means when you're the parent of a toddler?  It means, don't wear dark, solid colors because you get to be the human tissue.  Now, this wasn't the case with dear sweet Becks.  At an early age she figured out that snot running down her face was disgusting so she learned how to wipe her nose.  I love that child.  A child who wipes her nose at an early age is a blessing. 

I digress.

The Boy has a cold.  I think the girls are feeling puny too, and since its been hard to get their glassy little eyes to focus, we've done very little school today.  Its ok.  We'll do more tomorrow.  They all went willingly to their room, no negotiating (and I had planned on letting the girls skip quiet time so we could work on phonics, but they thwarted me by wanting to nap).  Boy crawled up the ladder to the bunk bed and snuggled down into Becks' pretty, oh-so-pink, princess bed.  Becks was less than impressed, moreso due to the fact that boy is a snot fountain.  Looking at my watery-eyed, tired, little boy, I asked him to get down.  Sadly, he looked into my eyes and asked me to make sissy snuggle him.  I said no. Lower lip sticking out, big, sad, blue eyes looking at me he said "pwease", I looked at sweet, germophobic Becks and knew I couldn't cave, again I said no, trying to reason with Boy... then he brought his chubby hand to his face, I thought he was going to smear it across that fount of snot, instead, he brought his thumb to his nose, looking me in the eye with his serious, big blue eyes, and he extended his fingers and waved them.

The whole room was silent, and then the girls and I lost it.  Gnomes offers Boy a place in her bed to snuggle with her. 

And quiet reigns for the moment.

Me against the world

Its one of those days.  The alarm went off too early (any day I hear an alarm go off is too early, I have no need for an alarm, I shouldn't have to awaken to one).  The kids have been little...um...knotheads.  Its that time of the month where I want to inhale the Hershey's Symphony with Almonds and Toffee factory.  Plus its early dance night.  The night I send The Boy to class and listen to him cry, while I stand outside the door telling myself its ok, and that they'll tell me if its not.  They haven't said he's not welcome back yet, so surely its ok, right?

To start, we went boot shopping for The Boy.  He wanted boots, but when we got to the farm supply store he tried one pair on and started whining for his sneakers.  OK, should we try on a second pair?  Nope.  No second pair.  The girls had scattered like the beads of a broken bracelet throughout the clothing section.  They want $40 leather belts.  Um, no.  How about $36 belts?  No.  How about $25 belts?  No.  But this one has a pretty silver buckle and pretty flowers on it? No.  Do you want dance shoes or a belt to hold up your adjustable waist jeans--which I buy so I don't have to keep track of belts?  We leave. 

At home, the kids eat ham sandwiches.  Why does no one tell me we are out of mayo until they all want the same kind of sandwich?  Really, a quick "Mom, we're out of mayo" would put it in a mental list where it would at least be filed under "stuff I ignore worrying about until there is a mayo shortage crisis."  I eat the aforementioned chocolate bar. 

After a few more fights with, and between, the kids, finally the blessing of naptime ascends.  I check a few sites, read and reply to emails and generally relax for a moment.  Sure, an on-top-of-it mom would have straightened up, gotten a fab lesson ready for her kids, started dinner.  Nope, I pop onto sites about being fantastic--eating right, exercising, teaching... I want to be fantastic, but I'm not.  I may never be.  Then I go lay down.

The phone rings.  Dan has a dinner meeting tonight.  I secretly wish I had a dinner meeting, one that involves a drink or 5.  A dinner meeting with a bottle of wine--the wine could be my guest, then I wouldn't have to split it.  I'm a lousy conversationalist anyway.  Remember that website about being healthy?  Forget it.  Wine as my dinner companion.  Just me and Wine, eating something that I didn't have to cook, somewhere where someone else serves me.  No knothead children to referee.  Wouldn't that be a lovely dinner?

The clock screeches 3pm.  The kids stir.  Its early dance night so I have to start finding leotards and doing hair so that my children are semi-presentable (this is a problem with homeschooling.  If I let my children out in public looking like they normally do, then I'm judged poorly for not doing their hair, if I do their hair right before we go, then I'm judged harshly for having too much time on my hands.  Who knew that children's hair styles said so much?)  I have to get the girls lessons that they didn't do today ready to do in the car while Boy whines through his dance class.  I have to shove the awkward stroller into the van so I can get my own exercise.  I have to worry about being social for even the few minutes we have drop off.

And really, I just wanted to take a nap.

Almost 3

The Boy is almost 3.  His birthday in in a little more than 2 weeks.  Birthdays and I don't get along for some reason.  I think partly because I tend to forget about them until its too late.  My siblings and nieces and nephews and even my husband can attest to this.  I'm just a forgetful sort of person when it comes to these days.  Maybe there is some deep down thing that a psychologist would like to discover stemming from the fact that my family often failed to recognize my birthday even though it was only 3 days after my oldest sister's.  Indeed it was forgotten more years after I turned 10 than it was remembered.

Anyway, The Boy's birthday is soon, and he wants a "Mitkey Mou Hou Ting".  Confused?  Me too.  Looking online the only Mickey Mouse Clubhouse playset I can really find is $60-ish.  Yikes.  I'm not even sure where the boy has come up with this idea of a Mickey Mouse House thing.  We normally don't even watch Mickey Mouse or even advertisements that are on during the shows we do watch.  But he repeats over and over that he wants a Mickey Mouse House Thing. 

This is where I wonder if 3 is too old to be able to fool him by making a Mickey Mouse cake and having Mickey Mouse plates and cups.  Maybe buy him a number of Mickey Mouse toys and accessories so that he doesn't realize he didn't get the mysterious Thing he keeps asking for? 

I know I have to step up for this birthday.  The third is generally one we celebrate well.  Actually, the 3rd is the birthday we all go to Boise to celebrate, but I don't think we'll be doing that this year.  So I really do have to be serious in planning Boy's birthday and getting him something he remotely wants.  And this creates a huge feeling of stress and fear.  I mean he'll probably be scarred for life if I screw this up, right?

Hmm... a primal corrolation?

So I jumped on another bandwagon a week ago.  It makes sense to me, and I'm relatively happy to follow this plan.  I can see myself eating this way for a long time.  One of the big things is to avoid grains.  Normally this isn't that hard for me.  I'm not a huge sandwich eater, and while I like the occasional piece of toast with my breakfast its too much of a hassle to get the toaster out, make the toast and then put the toaster away.  So I've done pretty well avoiding most grains as of late. 

On Saturday, we broke out the frozen pizza for dinner.  Immediately after dinner the kids were on my nerves big time.  And then my head started to hurt.  And my allergies kicked up.  I didn't think too much of it.  Then today, after making fresh homemade butter, and whipping it to a lighter texture I was so tempted that I decided to have a piece of bread and butter.  Mmmm...  It was good.  We buy our bread from the bountiful basket co-op and it full of all sorts of grains, no HFCS or anything unpronounceable.  Its really a quality bread if you are looking for a replacement to homemade.  EXCEPT... My head started to hurt, my sinuses started to feel awful, my throat started to bother me.  I felt just great this morning, but less than 5 minutes after that piece of bread I felt terrible.  I demanded everyone take naps including myself.  I felt drained of energy. 

So now, I'm very curious, if I feel this way after eating bread is it because of a grain problem?  After a week of very few bread-like foods, I'm beginning to see the wisdom behind this new lifestyle.  I guess we'll see how this all works out over the rest of the month.

Primally me

If you don't know, I'm fat.  I'm happy to blame plenty of causes for it, from PCOS, to "genetics" to an unhappy childhood, to laziness, to the cost of crap foods when I first started out on my own, but blame doesn't fix the fatness it just helps me wallow in it.  And I'm very good at wallowing in the pool of blaming for my fatness.
If you don't know, last spring I suffered a miscarriage.  Now over the years, I've learned to keep the worst of the PCOS symptoms at bay.  I know the weight that I have to struggle to keep at in order to be able to be as active as I want to be.  I know what I need to do to keep it from going up.  I can manage to make sure my skin doesn't break out too bad, and I know what I need to do to hide the issues of hair growth or thinning depending on what part we're talking about.  So, I approached the need for birth control pills to gain control of my body after the miscarriage with trepidation.  I asked that the doctor be sure to prescribe me something that wouldn't make the PCOS worse.  HA!  Like that would happen--a doctor listening to a patient's concerns.  This is the long way to say that I took pills that made it all worse. 

Now I'm fighting to get my hormones under some semblance of control.  Every morning I brace myself to stand on the scale and see another half pound or more register.  After close to a decade of careful moderation to just stay fat instead of getting superfat I'm struggling again.  I hate it.

This time, I'm not going to run to the doctor for a prescription to fix this.  I've been following a blog for a while, reading what the creator Mark Sisson suggests for how we can reprogram our genes and beat our propensity for fatness.  I've slowly started to change, but I admit its hard.  Its hard to give up crappy foods, easy to make and easy to eat.  Its hard to say goodbye to refined sugar and baked goods--especially when baking is a great hobby of mine.  But the idea that I can be healthy, that I can enjoy my family and life is too appealing.

So it is with great hope and not just a little fear that I am joining in the MDA 30-day challenge http://www.marksdailyapple.com/ .  At this point I'm hoping to just stop getting fatter.  I'd be thrilled if I could drop some weight, but the weight gaining that has plagued me since the miscarriage has to be stopped.  Wish me luck.

How we start our school day

Its September 7th, the first day for the elementary school across the street.  The bell rings at 8:25 and my kids run outside, in their pajamas, as I force my lazy self to get out of bed and start the day.  The kids have at least put on shoes, jackets and mittens as its 40 degrees outside.  They play while I get around, and then we meet in the kitchen for a breakfast.  They eat while I get the morning books out. 

Today, we learn about Jacob and his return to the land of Isaac, Muslims, Syria, the Middle East.  I like the fact that our books aren't editorialized with bias of dislike and hatred.  I like that my kids are learning and understanding that people are people no matter where they come from, and that Muslims have contributed so much to our culture and the cultures our culture has come from.  Its hard, because they hear the sound bytes on the 15-30 minutes of news I watch only a few times a week.  They hear of the unease and unrest in the world, although for now, we shield them from the more violent images and actions of mankind.  They hear the words of those around us, who believe only the worst actions of a people speak for the entire belief system.  At least for now they'll learn to love people who are different. 

Lazy Tooth Fairy

So two days ago, Dan got fed up with the 3 little baggies of teeth that are floating around the house. He insisted that Becky turn them into the tooth fairy or throw the teeth away, because they were never put away, and always contributing to the clutter zones in the house. After this stern, insisting reprimand about leaving things out and all of that and how these teeth needed to be dealt with, he didn't have enough coins for the teeth that night.


One of the baggies had fallen down on Nate's bed, so he made up a story about the tooth fairy being confused that a tooth labeled "Rebekah" was on Nate's pillow so she didn't leave any money. Yesterday, he made sure to go to the bank and get more dollar coins for the missing teeth and future missing teeth. While he reminded Becky to have her teeth all in order, he forgot about his tooth fairy duties yet again. Becky didn't say anything to Dan about the teeth this morning, so he thought he'd be safe in swapping them while she worked on a picture she was drawing.

Apparently, Becky had indeed checked on her teeth this morning. Yet, she accepted the coins with much grace and not many questions about how Dad had found the money under her pillow when she had only found teeth. I remain quiet on the subject, as I ponder again, if we didn't encourage our kids to celebrate Santa, and the Easter Bunny, why did we get sucked into the Tooth Fairy for 60 teeth worth of worries?

...and then someone pees in the pantry

Its been one of those days. 
You know the kind.  Its starts out well, but then someone pees in the pantry and from there on out you are counting down the seconds until the reinforcements come.  And that pee in the pantry?  That happens at 9:30 in the morning, before you've finished your last cup of coffee. 

As you can tell we are potty training--sort of.  I'd like to be done with diapers soon.  I like the idea of being done, getting through the accident phase and then buying new furniture.  I can see hope on the horizon.  Such glorious, bright, beckoning hope calling to me, encouraging me to ditch the diapers and put the time into another round of potty training. 

And then someone pees in the pantry.