Catching up...

I haven't posted in forever. I've been online off and on, but not seriously so. I've spent so much time this morning just reading through my bloglist and catching up with what's going on with everyone else.

I find that when things get crazy in my life, I tend to withdraw from everything and take stock. This has been one of those times. I was feeling really stressed out, and without any real source that could be readily identified, so the best thing for me was just to back off a while. It turned out that I was just getting overwhelmed with blog reading and posting, news articles and other online sources of information, AND all the things regular life stuff like school and housework and errands, etc. Backing off of the internet, then working my way back in a little at a time, has allowed me to once again find a balance that works for me. Dumping a few Yahoo groups and eliminating daytime chat room usage have pretty much done the trick.

Amazing how much time you waste spend on the internet when you start paying attention, huh? The irony in all of it is that I get so involved online out of desperation to have some sort of a life, only to find too much can prevent me from having a life.

Accepting weirdness...

Today I went to my very first activity with some other moms in a local homeschool group. It was just the park. Completely open and non-threatening. But I was so stinkin nervous about it. I had to make myself think of other things all night last night so I wouldn't work myself into a wreck over it. Today was my birthday, and while I planned to go to the park, I thought about everything else I had to do instead. I got to the park early, and chose to read a book to get my mind off things.

On the way to the park, I gave the kids the pre-event lecture. This is a speech they get prior to any activity, and has become so routine I doubt the kids even listen to it much anymore. Before going into the store, the library, or restaurant, the lecture has been shortened to simply, "Please remember how to act in the store/library/restaurant." It's really no longer necessary to remind Chad or Cadence, but Riley can benefit from a refresher occasionally. But on the way to the park today, they got the full run-through. Please be nice to children smaller than yourselves. Absolutely no hitting, kicking or shoving (this is really only an issue with each other, not other kids). For the love of Bob, no playing "Spitty" or "E.T." or "Stupid Teenager" or "Old Man" or any of the other completely idiotic games they play involved really, really stupid voices and ignorant behavior. Please, PLEASE act like you have a brain in your head that isn't damaged. And most importantly, "These are new people I've maybe never met. If you shame me with your behavior, I may never be able to show my face around them again."

They were perfectly fine at the park, and we had a good time. But why all the nerves? Why all the precautions and concern over their behavior?

Well, my kids are weird. My son is the biggest weirdo I know. Those games I mentioned? They play them every day at home, Chad initiating and the others following. I feel like I'm raising kids with mental issues, crawling around on the floor saying "Spitty!!" and laughing, over and over and over and over for HOURS. And I'm afraid other people will notice how completely and absolutely WEIRD this is, and maybe think something is wrong with my kids. And I'm a bit weird too... what if they see how weird I am.. and think it's my fault my kids act like this? What if they think I'm a bad parent or something? What if they judge us?

Then I remember an old acquaintance who, after watching my then 8 year old son playing "Supercat" for 45 minutes, said, "Wow.. your kid is like.. retarded or something." And I realize that my nerves over how weird my kids are come directly from this incident. That one comment made me see my son's lack of social awareness and inability to conform socially, and I started thinking maybe something really WAS wrong with him.

I'm starting to realize though, that he doesn't lack the ability to conform, he just doesn't care to. Being homeschooled has given him even more reason not to act "normal." My grandmother would say this was a bad thing, as he surely won't know how to act in the "real world" when he's older. But you know what? It's not so bad. Because he doesn't care what people think, he takes chances and experiences things a lot of kids aren't brave enough to experience.

Yeah. My kids are raving weirdos. They're loud and rowdy, and may repeat the same stupid phrase over and over a million times. But it's okay to accept that - to accept who they are and not focus on how others think they should be. I don't try that hard to conform, why should they?

Saying it's okay to accept weirdness is not the same as actually accepting it. It confuses me how I can be so solid in who I am and confident in my abilities, and yet still fret over stupid things like this. As usual, I'm working on it.

An explanation of cousins...

Last night I was talking to Vic about one of my cousins, and he said, "You sure have a lot of cousins." I started thinking about how often I mention one of them here as simply "my cousin," and thought I should explain things a bit.


I have twenty-four first cousins, who have twenty-one children between them, also my cousins. My mother has more than I do (I'm not even sure of the actual number), who are then my cousins, and most of them have at least a couple of kids each themselves. My father's cousins are widespread and if I've ever met them, I don't remember. But, adding my first cousins and their kids to my mom's cousins and their kids, we're talking about somewhere around 100 of them, most of whom I've known very well all my life.

I spent my childhood having family camping trips and big group events that included great-aunts and uncles and gobs and gobs of cousins. It's such a massive group that nobody expects children to understand the real relationships (every adult accepting the title of "aunt" or "uncle" even when it doesn't apply), until they're grown. Poor Vic grew up with very little contact with relatives beyond his grandparents, and I honestly doubt my poor husband will ever know everyone in my family. In fact, at our last family dinner, an aunt invited a girl from her church, who sat with everyone chatting while her daughter ran around with the kids for three hours, and Vic didn't even notice there was an "outsider" among us.

So please know that any posts about cousins are not an attempt to confuse you. I just have a LOT of 'em.

Because we're on the subject, my cousin in Florida is recovering well from her liver transplant surgery. Someone finally set up a care page for her, where her husband can update on her progress and there will no longer be such drastic miscommunication involved. She has had a tracheotomy, so she can't speak, but she mouths words and can nod yes and no, and it's apparent she is fully aware, without any obvious brain damage. Because of infections and anti-rejection drugs, she will probably be in the hospital longer than her baby, who now weighs more than 3 pounds and is thriving - a big jump from the 1 pound and 12 oz he was born with.

In case you were wondering...

Some of you may have noticed a lack of homeschooling posts in the last few months. Springtime is my normal time of reflecting over our school year, reviewing what we've accomplished, and subsequently freaking out over what we haven't gotten done. But this time, I'm remarkably calm about the whole situation. We're only on chapter 36 when we should be on chapter 47, and I'm okay with that. We have this summer, right? And the kids are learning tons of stuff they wouldn't be learning otherwise if we were focusing solely on our textbooks. See? It's all good.

Right after Christmas, I started my regular freakout sessions, "We haven't done spelling since November!! AAACK!!!" With an upcoming tax refund (whenever they worked out what I owed and all that), I was planning on buying new books for next year and stuff too. So one day I'm telling the kids we're gonna skip science today (because I'm going to buy from a different company next year), and telling them watching Animal Planet or The Weather Channel, or playing with kitchen ingredients will be sufficient. And the next day I'm yelling at them, doubling up on assignments in subjects we're behind in. And threatening them! Because if they don't be quiet and do their damn Language work Right This Second, the lady that reviews our portfolio will think they're not learning, and they'll have to go to public school, and I'll probably go to jail or something.

Can you feel the crazy, people? It radiates from my body.

Then one night while I sat drinking my tea and reading some math geek book, I remembered a funny family story. See, my great aunt had a cat that was not allowed on the furniture. The story goes that the cat had a litter of kittens, and when they were big enough to get around, she got on the couch for the one and only time of her life and taught her kittens not to go on the furniture as well. She meowed and called them, and every time they jumped up, she would hiss and bat at them until they went sprawling back on the floor. After several minutes, none of the kittens were willing to jump from the floor. Lesson learned.


Then I saw that this is what I've been doing to my kids. I suddenly realized that as much as I talk about being a relaxed homeschooler, I haven't actually been one. I've baited them with the wonderful ideals found in all those books: learning should be fun, learning is a natural process, learn at your own pace, c'mon you'll love it... and then switched on them, lecturing about the importance of education and staying at "grade level", punishing them with extra work and guilt trips about laziness. (Hello? Hypocrite??) My great aunt's cat was pretty darned smart. But me? Not so much. Why this story popped into my head that night I'll never know. But my next big thought was, "Pretty soon, they'll stop trying to jump." What happens when they stop believing that learning can be fun? What happens when "school" becomes a code word for boring drudgery, or worse, forced work on the whims of a crazy lady? And *choke* how do I look to them, with this homeschool teacher schizophrenia?? How will they look back on our homeschooling experience? Holy hell.

So I've made a deliberate and pointed attempt to let go. They are learning, without my pressure. They can learn those few things I feel they need to have, but they can do it on their terms. I will no longer look at lesson numbers, or count days until the end of the year. Despite all the former attempts at this kind of calm, I don't think I ever achieved it before now. Don't get me wrong, I don't think for a second that I will feel this way every day (and I don't). But it's March, and I haven't forced double lessons or yelled about schoolwork since January. It's a step down a long, long path and I realize that. But I feel so much better about homeschooling than I ever have before. And it's all good.

Conversations with a five year old...

Me: Whatcha doin'?
Riley: Drawing a picture. It's a scary monster. See how his arms come out of his head? And this is puss coming out of his arms. And this is a puss puddle here at the bottom, from the puss running down.
Me: Eew, yuck. Why is there puss running down?
Riley: Because somebody cut his arms.
Me: Doesn't he have blood?
Riley: Yeah. But this is puss.
Me: Why? Puss comes from infections.
Riley: (irritated voice, slight eye roll) He does have an infection. Because nobody put a bandaid on his cuts.
Me: Oh, I see.

Riley: Can we get a dog?
Me: We already have a lot of pets. Dogs take a lot of work. I don't we'll get a dog right now.
Riley: We could get a dog that had wings. And it could fly and find its own food, and just come home to sleep at night. And he could be a grown-up dog, and take care of himself.
Me: I'm sure it would be fun to have a dog with wings, but I don't think there are any dogs like that.
Riley: What about in Zambia? (Zambia is code for "anywhere besides here")
Me: I'm pretty sure there aren't dogs like that anywhere on the whole planet.
(slight thoughtful pause)
Riley: How about an alien dog?

Happy Birthday, Riley!...

Today, my baby turned five.

Five long years since I've held a squirmy newborn.
Five very short years since she was a squirmy newborn.

Four years and 5 months since she first said, "Mama."
Four thousand times she's said it just today.
Four years and one month since she first walked.
Four hours since I told her (again) not to run in the house.

Three years and 10 months since the Very Last Time she nursed.
Three years and 10 months since she laid against my chest with her fingers wound in my hair.
Three years and 10 months since she fell asleep to the sound of my heartbeat alone.
About three minutes since I last cried about that.

Five very short years of growing, laughing, and driving me insane.
Only a few more blink-and-you'll-miss-them years until she's all grown up.

Happy birthday to my baby girl.

Dye-no-mite...

Monday afternoon, as I sat with the kids in the lobby of the oral surgeon's office waiting to take my bleeding husband home with one less tooth than he came in with, I perused the Family Fun magazine and found this awesome idea for leaf-printing eggs. I was planning on trying egg-dying with the kids this year anyway, but this was the most fabulous thing ever and I was anxious to try it. I imagined doing them, and taking pictures, and posting them here so people could ooh and ahh and then go try it themselves. I was really excited.

After buying all the dye and eggs and stuff and promising to dye eggs this week, imagine my surprise to see that Poppins had seen the same article, and tried it with great results. Ah, well. She is the queen of fab, and one can't be first all the time.

We still did leaf print eggs, and we still had a really fun time doing them, and you can still ooh and ahh over them if you like:

This is the first time I've ever dyed eggs, and Vic had never done it either, so it was a first for everyone in my house. My leaf print was the green one in the middle, which turned out pretty cool, and Cadence's blue leaf egg and Riley's orange (top right) were neat too. But I was especially impressed with Chad's (top left) where he dipped and soaked a million times in red, green, and blue, until the contrast of the leaf print was the most dramatic. I'm so glad we tried this. It was so much fun!

Because grades matter...

This was fun! Either I paid a lot of attention in science, or I've long ago figured out how to guess on multiple choice. Try it out. Let me know how you did.



Thanks, Wendy!