Schooled

Never thought I'd be here. Always planned on the traditional form of schooling for my children. The big yellow bus. The tears on the first day. The PTA meetings, back and forths with teachers, field trips and class days and space and time for myself.

But there was something different planned for us. We spend our days schooling. Not sitting doing rote work for hours at a time. On and off throughout the day we are reading, discussing, drawing stories to illustrate our lessons. After a math worksheet we count dominoes before playing an impromptu game. Our morning "school" includes housework and yardwork. Part of the time is spent helping the one younger than you with skills, be it letters or numbers or writing their name. Structure with fluidity. Never saw myself here. Couldn't see us doing anything different. Sure, there are naysayers. Some even family members. They don't understand how this could be as beneficial as public schooling. I used to agree.

But my five year old son is reading and writing. My three year old knows his letters and numbers and is beginning writing his name. My seven year old is doing math 2 years ahead of grade level. More importantly we are all learning together. How to look at life differently. How to learn from each and every experience. How one action can set off a whole chain of reactions and experiences-good and bad. Character qualities are concentrated on each month. This month is Perseverance. We read poems and stories, talk on world events and family happenings, all centered around the idea of Perseverance.

And we are returning to the great literature. Learning from the masters. Viewing life with more richness and color and variations than ever before. Each one is learning to cook for themselves, how to do laundry, work on a car, keep the lawn, care for a pet, MANAGE MONEY (see Dave Ramsey's My Total Money Makeover).

I can't understand now why I ever snickered at the idea of home education, why I ever smiled condescendingly on those that choose that path. It's truly learning how to live life. Do I think it's better than traditional public schooling? I can't say that on behalf of everyone else. But for us nothing could be better.

Man is born broken and the grace of God is glue.

~ Eugene O'Neill

Next Time

So this is what it's come to..Here I sit on the verge of midnight, surrounded by piles of laundry that I'm supposed to be folding. Because I'm behind. Way behind. I'm so behind that by the time I catch up I'll already be behind again. Makes no sense right? So I'm here,folding laundry (supposedly), in the dark. Yup, it's dark because my exhausted hardworking man is trying to rest. Tap tap tap. I think maybe my typing could be disturbing his sweet respose. And my sweetie boy is sacked out sleeping soundly, that is until his next nursing binge. Which should be right about when I finally start tearing into this laundry. It's quite dark. I can't quite tell whose undies I'm folding. And my boy's pants seem to want to stay inside out because I've wrestled with them times without number. My piles are so tall (yeah, I'm that behind) that they keep falling over into each other. Upsetting my rhythm. This is actually becoming quite exasperating. My word of the day. Exasperating. Yeah, so this is a pointless, goofy post I know. I'm tired. Probably time to call it a day. And pile this laundry right back in the same basket. Only a little smoother and neater this time so I feel like I accomplished something. Maybe next time I decide to stay up late and feel tempted to catch up on laundry, I might switch a light on. Or skip the laundry altogether.

"I never really looked at [my children]. When I looked at their mouths, I saw dirt around them. When I looked at their noses, I saw them running. When I looked at their eyes, I saw them open when they should have been closed. When I saw their hair, it needed combing or cutting. I never really looked at the whole face without offering some advice.
For over twenty years, I invited myself into their lives. I, put sweaters on them when I was cold, removed blankets from their beds when I was hot. I fed them when I was hungry and put them to bed when I was tired. I put them on diets when I was fat. I car-pooled them when I felt that the distance was too far for me to walk. Then I told them they took a lot of my time.
I never realized as I dedicated my life to ring-around-the-collar that cleanliness is not next to godliness — children are."

~Erma Bombeck

A Cooking Lesson

Oh three. Dear sweet,loveable, exasperating, utterly intoxicating three. A question: Wanna make muffins ya think? Without waiting for response, chubby hands pull out mixing bowls and spoons with a crash and clatter. The cinnamon is swiftly and somewhat clumsily sprinkled over a just cleaned countertop. Out come the measuring spoons and spatulas, onto the floor they go. You wanna help me Mom? Remember we always cook together Mom? Yes,I remember well. Sunlight slanted on flour dusted floors. A chattering little boy swathed in a green apron four sizes too big. Can I just take lick of that ya think? Mmm that is really good. We made something good. Right Mom? Yes Will, we made something really good.





My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.
-- Mark Twain

Make it Work

Okay so I don't exactly enjoy grocery shopping. I love making food, dreaming up new recipes and combinations, poring over my favorite worn Williams Sonoma cookbook, kneading and rolling and shaping loaves of bread, stirring up muffins or shaping scones.

I love seeing the excitement on little faces as they clamber downstairs to the table on a Saturday morning, grabbing eagerly for a muffin or piling high the chocolate chip pancakes.

But I don't love shopping. In fact sometimes, most times I dread it. And it is even more dread-worthy (is that a word) when I must bring my little foursome along. The foursome are jolly and raucous and completely adorable and mostly manageable when the are within the familiar confines of home and yard. But put them in a brightly lit supermarket with hundreds of thousands of hands off items, anchored to a rickety and crowded cart, forced to watch me linger over which head of broccoli is the firmest, which type of creamer for my coffee, which bag of frozen peas has more...and they go just a little bit cuckoo. Grabbing things off the shelves, giving a poke or an unwanted tickle to a sibling, fighting over who gets to put the oatmeal in the cart (yes, just about anything looks exciting when someone else is getting to do it!)...Needless to say I don't exactly enjoy shopping with my children. At least not all of them at once...when I'm pressed for time and on a strict budget..

So this morning after all the normal rush of breakfast and lost shoes and scattered coats and repacking the diaper bag and changing several diapers and trying to run a brush through unruly bedheads and an argument over clothes that needed to be changed and finding sippy cups and packing snacks and buckling everyone into their carseats and nursing the baby once more and carting out all the LUGGAGE necessary to round out our arduous 12 minute trip to the grocery store...I couldn't find my keys.

They had been swallowed up in the black hole that is life with a toddler, a newborn and two under 8. Great. The only thing I like less than grocery shopping with four wiggle worms is not being able to grocery shop when I've put in the hour and a half of preparation and psyching myself up to grocery shop. But after I realized I'd lost my keys then I realized I didn't have my list either, then baby Jack started to whimper. And I realized it was time to call it a day. Or in our case an almost day.

So in we came. I pushed down the desire to search frantically for keys, barking at little people to help me. I swallowed down the urge to begin an immediate frenzied scrub, sweep, vacuum of the rumpled house before me. I realized and acknowledged my desire, my need to feel that I accomplished something from start to finish. And I looked at my little guys looking at me to see what would come next. It was all up to me. I didn't have control of this shopping trip, couldn't find my keys, couldn't keep the dishes from piling up around me, the crumbs from collecting on the floors, the mess of life from smearing the windows and walls. But I could choose my response to it all.

So I smiled, gave each little upturned face a big fat kiss and gathered up baby and out we went to sit in the sunshine while they made mudpies and played tag and swung as high as they could.And my sweet Will and I did some baking, read some stories, talked about life from the view of a little 3 year old guy.

That's something I could do. Choose how I would spend the rest of my day instead of letting it spend me.

Alternate Universe

I live between two places. The lands of Perfect and Good Enough. In Perfect I am sure to dot all my t's and cross all my i's. Most of my waking moments are spent clearing the crumbs of life and smoothing the rough edges of our world. In Perfect all my striving, all my lifting and heaving and straightening and fixing doesn't cut it. Doesn't measure up. I am tense and uneasy, trying to showcase something, someone that doesn't exist. Working towards an impossible goal. For a far off someday.

As the years have gone on I have been spending less and less time in Perfect. Good Enough just seems more friendly, more down home, more kick off your shoes and stay awhile. In Good Enough what you see is what you get. I can scootch down with a cup of coffee and get comfy. I am welcome there with a freshly scrubbed no makeup face, in leggings and flip flops and a ponytail. With my mess and dirt and unanswered questions. There's lots of room in Good Enough, space for my little ones to scramble in around me and just be. Be little and loud and messy, make mudpies and throw water balloons and have big dreams and even bigger what ifs. and that's ok, the what ifs are what add the color, the rosy rainbow bursts of sweetness and the sad purply grey twilights to this life.

I don't have it all figured out yet. Not sure exactly what lies ahead. The years have brought a distance from the places and people I grew up with. I used to think family was a right. That no matter what was said or done or not said or not done that you held that door to yourself open. That my job was to make myself smaller, not take up too much space. Agree. But I came to realize the death inside of me. That the life my God had created me to live was first to Him and then to those He entrusted me with. I have left those halls, those spaces. I have grown up and out. I need more. Family is a privilege. There won't always be peace on earth and goodwill isn't always what we're called to bring. Sometimes life just hurts. Sometimes people you care about refuse to change or to let you change. all I know is the bottle of questions could not be corked any longer.

In this place of Good Enough I have found rest and strong shoulders and a laugh that carries miles. My great big God can answer all my queries. Maybe the answer is not just yet...