structure

I have developed a habit of mentally noting the little ways that school at home differ from the classroom experience. A lot of good habits are created in a class in the way of organization and discipline to work. They slip away quietly in the unstructured time at home. Some details that we needed to keep and expand on:

1. Coming to "class" ready. This is an important detail that obviously needed to be strictly maintained. Use the restroom, get a drink, gather your supplies, come to the table ready to sit for morning lessons without getting up. Going to the pencil sharpener, OK. Wandering around the living room and sitting in the bathroom with a book for 15 minutes? Not OK. The discipline to sit in one place, despite other distractions, and do lessons in one big section is important in the classroom, and is now important at home.

2. Paper organization. I found myself automatically bringing all the books and papers to the lesson and keeping them sorted in folders. Not good. Now he is required to bring the necessary books to lesson and keep his own papers carefully organized in the appropriate folders. It is refreshing to be able to supervise his organization more closely. No more jumbles of bent, torn, folded papers coming home! No more back to school nights of peering into his desk, jammed to the brim with bent, torn, crumpled papers and folders. He is continually pleasantly surprised to find that things are where he left them, and that life is actually easier when you take one minute to put work in its' place - neatly. "Amazing," he says nearly everyday as he pulls out his history folder and, to his astonishment, his history work is sitting there all ready!

3. When he talks. When would he talk in his regular classroom? That's when he can talk at home. He needs to hear out a lesson, think through the work, formulate appropriate questions the way he would in class. Talking over me to "explain" what he already knows? No more. (OK, I wish he would stop this completely. Work in progress.)

4. Revisions. I would correct his work AS he wrote. This does not work for writing. I need to leave him to write the whole assignment. (Summary, narration, analysis - whatever) I take my red edit pen and make editing symbols, and he takes it to rewrite. I have begun reading his writing aloud after he finished rough drafts so he can hear how his thoughts sound on paper. I use a pencil to mark the sections he wants to fix or reword immediately. This has helped him do this on his own.

5. Bathroom. Drinks. Snacks. Daydreaming. These are important parts of a boy's life. Just not during math.

on another note, but maybe not

If I seriously plan on being ready to sing the very beautiful nay, transcendent, alto aria O Thou That Tellest Good Tidings to Zion in two concerts less than two months from today - I am going to need to stop losing my voice yelling at my children. I hate yelling and I hate that I yell. It accomplishes nothing except a ragged throat and bitter children.

quiet.

Day 35

I find myself in the middle of a daily battle  between covering a little of everything and covering a few things in depth. I sat down over the weekend and pored over the school days between now and Christmas.

(Funny thing, the school year has always felt too long in the past. This year I am wishing for another month between now and Christmas to fit everything in!) I am attempting to plan more throughly in advance so as to facilitate alternating days where we cover a little bit of everything, and days where we go into depth in a few places.

Our writing curriculum has a "pecked to death by ducks" strategy that has worked so well I have adapted it for use across the disciplines. However, there are some things that simply need time every single day or the rust begins to spread. Speedy multiplication can be achieved with the duck philosophy. Learning and developing and applying new math skills takes a commitment of 60 minutes each day.

We spend quite a bit of time practicing music in a week, and I alternately justify this time as education (as valuable as his most important subjects) and question whether or not it is. Between violin and choir he is in lessons or practicing 9-10 hours in five weekdays. Besides his Messiah learning he has begun studying music theory: A Young Singer's Journey and he is learning A Ceremony of Carols for his Christmas concert mid-December.

All of this does take away from in-depth days. Mostly we are able to cover the basic subjects everyday: grammar, writing, spelling, reading, math, memorization (poems, math facts, parts of speech,etc.) and then we have to move on to afternoons of music practice and lessons and rehearsals. (That he actually has energy for these days!)

I have begun to worry constantly that I am not doing enough schoolwork... and I am not sure how I am supposed to know or gauge whether or not I am doing enough.

92 or something?

It was hot and dry in Ventura this morning (which did not bode well for what Pasadena would hold)  and my two people to watch the babe were both house-bound by illness. So, the plans changed somewhat.

First, we made sure to get free tickets for next month this morning. I anticipated that today would be brief and exhausted... so I wanted to have another day to look forward to.

Secondly, I decided to bring Alice with us and Jay worked from home for the afternoon so we could still leave the babe behind. Napping. And eating. On schedule. The only way she is good for anything.

Thirdly, frozen yogurt.

We made our first stop at 21 Choices because that is what you do when you leave a hot Ventura and go to an even hotter place, Pasadena. Pasadena to spend the afternoon walking in the sun, 15% humidity, and the 92 degrees. Seriously.

It was a beautiful trip. The cool, very temperature controlled library where they display the Gutenberg Bible, an original King James Printing of the Bible, an Ellesmere Chaucer was that much more welcome a respite. We walked through the conservatory that houses a rainforest and cloud forest and the most incredible variety of carnivorous plants! After the humidity inside the conservatory, the outdoors felt a cool relief! The kids and Grandma lay on their stomachs over the koi pond and touched the open mouths of the beautiful fish, many of them comparable in size to tunas! We lingered in the herb and rose gardens as closing time approached and we felt the staff herding us towards the exit.

A kind of learning. The kind you use all of yourself for... and that's nice.

Day 27

We are on the eve of our very first field trip! I have it in the weekly plan to have lessons that
include more creativity than just reading, studying, writing, but we never seem to get there.


Once the grammar basics, writing, maths, history/social studies are finished - we are so relieved to get a break.


The baby is usually up by this time and Alice needs to be picked up at school. Everyday (nearly) I am the last person there for pick-up, and everyday I promise myself I will get there earlier and I never make it. I even think about it all morning, plan for it, and still end up getting there late. It is a puzzle. Alice is gone 3 1/2 hours each day and that is exactly the amount of daily direct instruction I try to give Gray so we work hard every single second she is in school, working right up until she's done. I sense some sort of conspiracy because even though I was there at 11:34 AM today, everyone was gone except little Alice on the bench. It takes 4 minutes to completely clear the place? 


Anyway, we're going to the Huntington Library tomorrow for their free day! We actually paid attention, reminded ourselves again and again and secured free tickets for this month. For free day you log onto their site starting at 9 AM on the 1st of the month, to reserve free tickets for the 1st Thursday of the next month. Admission on the weekdays is $15/person and $20/person on the weekends, so our five tickets for tomorrow are a great bargain.


The Huntington's website actually has detailed lesson plans covering a wide array of disciplines. They even detail the California Content Standards covered by the different lessons. I was so excited to find this, I began to question if I had lost my mind a little bit.


Our goals: 
1. We have studied haiku and plan on creating some of our own while in the Japanese Garden


2. We have studied J. Gutenberg and the printing press and they have a Gutenberg Bible on permanent display.


3. They have a wonderful Childrens' Garden to set them free in while I sit down and read my book.


Hopefully we can catch up on some creative time that we've pushed aside in favor of sitting on the sofa and reading.


PIctures to follow.

Slowing down to a crawl.

Moving from two to three children and to homeschooling in these last months makes me very, and unexpectedly busy. Two years ago I had two kids: 1 in school full time and 1 in preschool three days a week. The house was clean, the laundry was done. I shopped for groceries regularly, had the affairs in order and predictable. I definitely have the sense that I am moving backwards in life. Now I have 1 in school half-time, 1 I am teaching full time, and 1 that is not quite 7 months old. Yes, that is most certainly full time.

Auden has been "crawling" for a few weeks now. She's really good at the classic yoga move, the "down dog". She seems to know intuitively that she should be able to move while on hands and knees, but cannot coordinate the knee/hand movement. Therefore, she moves on her belly, stops every foot and pushes up into a down dog, drops to hand and knees, rocks back and forth, pushes herself into the air, yells out a little like, "Is anybody around here interested in giving me a little instruction as to what the problem is?!" She is decidedly mobile and really too young to be left unwatched for one single second.


This is all a lot of work. Maybe I am the biggest fool in the house to be surprised, somewhat, by this development? All my plans for organization and order and planning and - blah - gone. Now the days fly by more quickly than I can even think. I will look into the refrigerator and think, "Wow, we need some milk." and I plan, mentally, to go to the store. And then, I will look into the fridge and think the same thing again and I will look at the calendar and see that this last time I had the thought was ten days prior.


The adjustment to never getting to the store and continually leaving wet clothes in the washer (which, above all things, I hate the most) and finally, inevitably, completely and totally forgetting to pick my precious daughter up at school has not been an easy one. (It did not even cross my mind that I had forgotten her until school had been out for 45 minutes!)

It has been a slow acceptance that I will leave the house a lot less, that everything takes twice as long, that the laundry will have to be done at night and folded the next night, and that if I do not write down to pick up my daughter, I may forget. Funny thing is, I feel like I am actually enjoying my children and my life for the first time, instead of wanting another day to be here. I live in today because there is so much to do before it comes to an end.

Every moment I want to feel discouraged that I can't do everything I want, I take time to picture the day, not very far from this one, when my day will involve trips to the post office to mail care packages to my kids in college and no laundry to wash. Due to our stellar family planning, however, I have a fresh eighteen years from now.

Shakespeare

I remember when I first studied Shakespeare in 9th grade English. Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar were the customary plays for freshman to read. It was not long into the study of Romeo and Juliet that I knew I loved Shakespeare. 


This love continued through high school and college where I referred to his work in most of mine. I could not get away from the way his understanding of the world and people and love and hate resonated with my own. My favorite, and I know I am not alone in this, has to be Hamlet. The thief uncle king so liberal with his false smiles and his stolen bride queen, Hamlet's moody stalking around and his generous friends, the pain and grief in both love and death, the drama of it!


When I found a very nicely written book of Shakespeare summarized for children, I scooped it right up. I was not sure how this would go over with a fourth grader, but  have learned that there is difficulty in predicting what Gray will take to and reject. 


He immediately began reading and narrowed in fairly quickly on A Midsummer's Night Dream. He has hardly stopped talking about it for weeks, reading and rereading. He took out the original text and used his summary to help him read and understand. He has begun to use the play to interpret and understand his own life and relationship better. I have heard him start sentences, "...like Bottom when he..." and "...that's how Oberon is acting when he wants to raise Titania's Indian baby for himself!"


We were working on a written summary of the play as one of Grayson's finished writing samples for this grade, when the idea of writing a paper based on a single theme of the play emerged.
He kept reciting Lysander's famous line, "The course of true love never did run smooth;" and I suggested he write an outline showing how the play unfolds to support the idea.


He set his mind to this task with a surprising amount of enthusiasm. He quickly jotted the themes of "rocky love". Love unreturned, impossible marriages, "loving and unloving in the same, like, second". I drank my coffee and turned my attention elsewhere. Then he says, "Was Shakespeare a Christian?" I figure that this is something I have never thought about most likely because there is not much record of such a thing. I have to tell him so - deferring to the real truth. Who can say such a thing about anyone for certain? That is a nice general answer. He says, "Well it feels like it. It seems that mortal love doesn't run smooth, but to think so you would have to know immortal love, which must be smooth."

It's personal. Or not.

Today after church, a mother of a boy in the son's class at school (well, K-3rd) approached me.

For context: Her son has just started violin with Gray's teacher and we ran into them at
lesson last Monday afternoon. They asked how Gray's class has been - and we broke the news
that he was not in class this year.

She greeted me warmly, and then leaned in very close to me. She lowered her voice to
a barley audible whisper and said, "Can I ask you a personal question?"


I am always unsettled by this question. Everyone has a different understanding of personal... and
I cannot think how there is any other answer to this question, with this particular wording, other than, "Um, OK?"

"Why did you decide to homeschool after all these years in school?"


I hear Alicia Silverstone from Clueless in my mind, "You say that like's it's a bad thing."

I am not sure for who this would be too personal a question. I am not that person. I have an infant and the questions that flashed through my mind went right to love life after infant questions. This person would have no reason to ask me this - those are questions I consider personal.

The list of reasons is so long and involved I am not sure that I can even begin to explain in a comprehensible manner. I attempt a brief rundown. She nods for a bit, as I talk in bullet points. Then, she has a pen out. She's jotting down notes and saying how interested she is and can she call me. Wait, is this a feeling of admiration I am sensing?! She thinks I am brave. (There's that line again, but this time it has a genuine warmth to it.)

I am a rebel! I have never been a rebel. I like to do expected things. Stable, known, organized things. Every single time I go to Cafe Bariloche for South American food, I order the Pastel de Choclo.  (A Chilean corn and meat pie that is delicious!)

Now, I am getting rebellious. Maybe I will order something different next time.

Patience

While I prepared to make the Big Decision, I made many lists.
Pros and Cons assembled over months, daily schedules, curriculum thoughts,
wish list of what we'd study, cons broken down into area of concern.
There was the social aspect, the friendship issue, keeping up with grade level, all the general
concerns that revolve around removing a child from the traditional school setting.

There was one list I never made. My cons.

I knew that my son and I had a working relationship in that,
He is good-natured enough to sit down to instruction. We have slaved
through (and more often than not - as of late-  enjoyed) three years of violin lessons and practicing. I knew with a reasonable certainty that our teacher/student relationship had been ironed out. (More like, warm iron, no starch, no steam kind of ironed. Better than a mess right out of the dryer, at least.)

But, could I take it? I might have a slight reputation for losing my temper with him. It is the struggle and agony of my life so far. My passion for everything else - let loose when things get on the wrong side of my control, my comfort, my agenda. I never listed this anywhere, even though I knew it to be the most significant obstacle in making homeschooling feasible. In my defense, he can be really irritating.

It is here where homeschooling became not just a leap of faith but a base jump into the fathomless pit of my anger. I think that this is why the first day, the first hours, were the worst. How can I limit my son's daily life to our home, knowing that when things get heated with him, I can get mad?

In all the ways that homeschooling have been easier, there is one way that it has been hard. I have been yanked out of contentment with small changes and forced to pursue deeper, authentic change.

The comfort is that after a morning involving some yelling and at the end of myself, I found, like one of those pools cave jumpers find a thousand feet down in the pitch black, the grace of God for today. More real than I have ever experienced it. Real enough to touch and taste and get up and ask for forgiveness and go on. Forward because I know only one thing for sure: there will be enough grace down there tomorrow.

Pacing

Another lesson learned this week.

I had been putting off my large Amazon order. The online cart had been all set for weeks, but I could not bring myself to "complete purchase". Included in my cart was the math curriculum Grayson's class is using this year. Because I have been afraid of falling behind, we have been working hard in the last three weeks to do at least an hour of math work a day. I found an online math program, IXL, that we have enjoyed thoroughly. It is a monthly subscription site, but it's detailed breakdown of concepts and reporting features have been very useful. Grayson has been working hard and carefully through new concepts.

I finally made our order and all the shiny new curriculum arrived in the mail. When I started evaluating the math text from his class for this year - it started to dawn on me that we had already covered quite a bit of the material. After doing a more thorough evaluation: Grayson has demonstrated mastery of more than half of the concepts being introduced in his class text this year. I knew he was working hard, but in 22 hours of working to complete more than half of the year?! I am still not sure what to think. Does he know it well enough? Have I been pushing him too hard? Did I miss something?

I think we'll slow down a little there and try to focus on catching his writing skills up to level. I had a picture of always catching up, never that we would move too quickly!

It's (was) the weather?

Now the California weather upon which all stereotypes are created has returned. We are once again enjoying the land of eternal springtime. Inside the home, although the temperature has returned to it's typical 72-75 degree range, things are heating up considerably.

Grayson has, lagging a few days behind me, come to accept that this is life as he knows it for the foreseeable future. His behavior is slightly worse for the wear.  So, when all else fails, text your spouse.  Despite being the one in our pair of marital bliss who has never quite been thrilled with this entire endeavor (and I think that these text messages are a teeny, tiny taste of what that was all about...) he was unflappable.

I am despondent that it is only day 13 and I am staring down failure. (maybe just in my mind, but it feels a lot like) He responds: "You haven't failed. He has deep seated patterns that can't be defeated in a short time." My response, "I cannot do it." Him: "He needs to build his endurance. Like an athlete. Start small. Just like violin."(When he struggled to extend his violin practice time to 45 minutes/day we went back to 15 minutes and forced him to stop after that short time had elapsed. He ended up wanting to practice longer.) "It's going to be a hard first two months. Take a break. Don't try to do too much. Make some cookies."

I sent the son out running - around the block four times, 20 jumping jacks on each corner.

And I guess that says it all for today.

Friday at last.

We will definitely be embracing the resting element of the weekend this Labor Day.
I have spent a bit of my "free" mental energy these days (a very slow trickle with a nearly broken circuit) weighing the work argument of homeschooling vs. traditional classroom.

The truth is, sending a child to school is a lot of work. There is the rigid in and out of the door in the morning, the lunches, the papers to organize and sign ranging from PTA forms to permissions slips to t-shirt orders, the homework to keep organized and to monitor in the afternoons. It is a busyness that is hard to explain exactly, but it is there - a constant stream of paper, details, and driving all centered around school.

I recognize that we were in a somewhat unusual situation. Gray, due to his tendency to talk through assignment explanations and daydream through classroom teaching times, relied very heavily on homework time. The reality: if I did not teach him the material at night, he did not know it. His classroom work, done without direct supervision, was generally unreadable and unfinished. His teachers knew he was capable of better-  his tests and assignments done at home reflected his abilities. (I never did them, but I forced revision and attention to detail.) Unfortunately, with two other kids at home, having every afternoon between 3 and 5 a battle with an exhausted child learning what he should have learned in class was too much. We could not enjoy the time we were spending together during the week. I dreaded Mondays and lived for Fridays.

Maybe I am doing it incorrectly, but in 9 days of school I have never felt more free. Granted, I am only teaching one student, and I have him alone for the first 3.5 hours of the morning. Alice is at school, Auden sleeps. I teach once (he listens and learns, there is nothing else to do!) when he is rested and fed. He practices and reinforces directly following.

As the news begins to find its' way out I can't go onto the school campus without being approached by a different parent. They all say a variation of, "That is so brave. I wish I could do that, but I would never be able to."  I think they might be saying this to make me feel better? Make themselves feel better? I don't know. I don't feel brave. I feel scared and uncertain. I can only answer for our circumstance. Every parent has a pile of heart-wrenching decisions to make (popular ones, unpopular ones) for the good and benefit of their child. It was a very difficult decision, fraught with only unknowns and one exception: If I did not do it because I was afraid of the time I would sacrifice, I would always regret it. What better way could I spend my time than on my child who I see needs me in this way? As it turns out, the time commitment so far is a drastic reduction from life before. Life is easier, simpler.

Heat

The days have been hot, hot hot. Grayson and I sit, sweaty arms stuck to the dining room table, heads bent over math and grammar and writing, ceiling fans whirring in every room but ours. We get the large light fixture. Incandescent bulbs and recessed lighting add another 5 degrees to our heads. We fill and refill Ball jars with ice from the icemaker and water. These leave plate-sized puddles of water on the table. We move the books around the water, protecting all the paper from the pools. It is too hot for him to protest all the writing. He methodically unsticks his arm from the page over and over again.

I learned something new about him today. After spending three days working on a difficult math concept, a breakthrough. I taught him the principles, demonstrated the use, and set him to practice problems. He struggled through them for a day or so while I resisted giving him the answers. I explained the principles again, but did not demonstrate on the problems he was working. Finally, he found himself stuck on one he could not find a way to apply the principles to and solve. Maybe some whining was involved. I got frustrated and took the pencil. I leaned across the table and silently, angrily, solved it. He gasped a quiet "Oh" and polished off the rest of the page with a flurry of pencil and computing and smiling.

My son needs to be shown as many variations as possible. I plan on saving my voice quite a bit here forth.

Day 6

An early trip to fedexkinkos (seriously the name on the store. Did I miss something?) and then a stop at Peet's for coffee drinks and some studying in a new setting. It would have gone perfectly - me and Gray and espresso drinks in mugs, all our schoolwork spread on a table, tolerable music in the background. Not to be. Auden would have none of it. She moaned and groaned and cried to such an extent I had no choice but to hold her while Gray worked. She sucked on the table, her hands, her arms, my sweater, my hair, the memory stick on a cord around my neck, copious amounts of drool covering all the aforementioned areas with the addition of my lap absorbing the extras. She was quiet (ish), at least.

The heat has been oppressive the last few days, and our afternoon of math lessons went well, despite taking 90 minutes and having us both exhausted and sweating over the table. It has not been under 80 degrees in the house in 5 days.

The smoke from the Station Fire in LA, here in the early morning of day 7, turn the sunrise into a glowing orange and red haze. The world seems to be lit by a campfire of gargantuan proportions. I suppose, in a way, it is. The air is completely still, and hot.

I absolutely love teaching Grayson at home.

Day 5

Monday Morning.

The reality of the school year stretching before us - all 180 days of it - moves towards the acceptance phase in my mind.

We began this morning with a grammar review, spelling pre-test, and a history lesson. We read an overview of pre-history and I learned more than I would really care to admit. We worked together in his history notebook writing a summary of what we'd studied and making some lists of early people and their inventions.

Next, some more multiplication, large number, place value reviewing. Boring. (says the son)
"You said we were going to do rock studies and interesting stuff."

My line: the standard response about not doing the interesting things all the time.

We have our first Field Trip Day towards the end of September. We have three or four such days planned before Christmas. The girls will go elsewhere for the entire day and Gray and I will go for a full day of exploration. Possibilities for this month? The Huntington Library  and Botanic Gardens or our standard, an art study (they have some great lesson plans on the site) at The Getty  (the Getty Villa is closed on our planned day), or perhaps MOCA . We do enough working with different art mediums at home, so integrating some writing, history, art study and investigation into our trips will be up on the list. Also, getting a Getty guided tour  device all to himself to wander around and his choice of lunch in the cafe will be quite the thrill. (The beauty of having to share all the time with the sister.)

Day 4

Still considering Monday our official Day 1, but we have already dipped our brains into the pool of some basics. This is where we've started:


1. As a nod to the California obsession with rapid acquisition of advanced math skills, we have math as our priority these days. I have done countless hours of research into different math curricula and have yet to decide. I liked the review, learn, drill, review style of the Kumon Grade 4 Math series. They are nothing for a fancy night out in the world of learning new concepts, but they do methodic drilling well. That's good enough for us this week.
We have been reviewing multiplication, using large numbers (billion, trillion, 987 trillion), geometric shapes and their manipulation, and measurements of various kinds. I have him ripping his hair out tolerating patiently times table flashcards. We are about to move into more advanced long division and, although I try to explain what counting on his hands will be like while trying to get through the division of four and five digit numbers, he knows more than me and is fully convinced I need the instruction.


2. Spelling. All of his spelling lessons for the year are on the textbook website. Even the different levels of challenge words are there. Today was a spelling test. I can barely stomach the memory of all the hours we spent using spelling words in different ways for homework assignments. Oh, the torture! This is one area where I am breathing a deep sigh of relief over the reduced workload.


3. Grammar. We are using First Language Lessons (for the Well-Trained Mind) It is old-school and rote and involves sentence diagramming; but he is learning grammar now and he was not before. We had to start in the 3rd grade book because his understanding of the parts of speech and their use simply was not at a 4th grade level. It is not exciting, but memorizing lists of pronouns, helping verbs, state of being verbs, linking verbs, and prepositions is helping him grow as a student of the English language.


4. Logic. We spend time everyday (usually a warm-up) working a logic puzzle simultaneously. We work separately and share our answers. He is smarter than me. This is no surprise. He cries more still, barely.


5. Reading. He is a voracious reader. (I thank God for this blessing every single day.) I bought him Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain 9 days ago. He is already deep into the fourth of five books. The only thing that I have added into his reading universe is some diversity, (ie. He had to read a chapter of Where the Red Fern Grows for every chapter of his current fantasy read.) and a written book journal. I have also been known to give pop quizzes on books that seem to be going by more quickly than expected.


6. History. This year we're going to study California. From the beginnings and early people, missions, agriculture etc. I am also reading aloud to him from E.H. Gombrich's A Little History of the World and he is writing summaries. As a well-written, broad overview of world (read: European) history, I love it. Gombrich is instructing about history, understanding history and piecing it together as a story. I read it for fun and enjoy it thoroughly.


7. Music. Violin practice happens everyday. Today, for reasons I don't know, he picked up the violin and sight-read his next piece. I dropped dead of shock cooly ignored it hoping not to disturb it, the same way one might regard a hawk that has happened on the backyard birdbath. "Can it really be? Where is the camera? Will it stay if I move a single muscle?" I was secretly hoping that taking initiative in his learning would be a result of this independent education venture. Maybe this is a sign in the right direction?


And, my favorite opportunity afforded by a more flexible bedtime? This December he is going to perform in two local productions of the Messiah. He has already begun the task of learning the soprano part for all the Christmas portion choruses. He sits, score flopped open on his lap, ipod buds on, singing along and listening. This week: And the Glory of the Lord and And He Shall Purify. He is able to make the evening trips to two different locations for rehearsals because he does not have to be at his desk by 8 AM anymore.


Now, a weekend off.

Homeschooling Week One

Well, Day 3.

I have considered it for years. Bored every single person who knows me to death talking about it.

Planned for it the last 3 summers as August approached.

This week, in a step of bravery that was more terrifying and exhilarating than I could have ever imagined:

I cut the cord and did not send my son to the 4th grade.

Last year I went at night, up to the class list postings hanging outside of the school office.

The class had only 18 kids, many of them the brightest in the grade.

The teacher was considered a favorite.

I knew I should send him, it seemed the right thing to do.

This past Sunday evening (OK, creepily late at night) I parked in front of the school and left the car running.

I used the light from my cellphone screen to see the class lists.

Alice was securely settled in a nice kindergarten class with a very sweet and competent teacher.
(And I already tortured her having her at home last year with me  - and a brand new screaming bundle of spitting up sour milk love)

All I needed to see was that there were 34 students in his class this year.

My son prioritizes his life in the following manner: if you asked him what five things he would need to survive on a desert island, food and water would not be involved.

Without someone to talk to, life is not worth living.

And so, for this reason as well as myriad others, I kept him home.

I think he will learn more in half the time. And nothing like a little proverbial desert island to grow some character. (read: washing dishes, doing laundry, cooking, babysitting)

I kept him home on Tuesday, The First Day of School. It was a hard day.

I was not quite ready to launch into our full daily schedule - and the day was hot.

Grayson was bored and spent quite a bit of time carrying the baby around and

washing dishes and doing math drills.

I had a walk to the brink of meltdown. I don't know what my expectations were for what this would be like, but I was not prepared in any way for how scared and vulnerable and insecure I felt.

At the end of Day 1 I figured I could send him off to school in the morning and forget it had ever happened.

Day 2. Violin practicing, working through the Messiah portions for choir rehearsal, handwriting, math practice and review, two books reviews written gave me confidence that I could, at minimum, survive the week.
Whether or not I will be knocking at the school office door by next Monday begging them to take him back remains to be seen.

It has been nearly a year since my last trip East with the kids.

When we first moved across the country, one of my greatest concerns would be that
we would not be able to travel "home" enough to continue the precious
relationships we were leaving behind. Not the least of which included my parents, my siblings,
their spouses. In the first 4 1/2 years away, no problems. We flew back and forth several times a year, spending
a lot of time having the kids bond with their grandparents and aunts and uncles. We went to weddings, funerals,
important birthday parties, wedding dress shopping, holidays, the birth of babies, surgeries. The 5 hour trip from LA to Philadelphia did not deter us in the least from being as involved as we could in our other life.

Now that almost a year has gone by without a trip, I start to feel the pangs of longing for Philadelphia in autumn.
The kids have a week out of school in October and this has been a natural time to travel most other years.
This year, this time, for the first time in my life... I had to acknowledge I was just not up to it. The thought of the airport, the crowds, the long flight, the baggage - too daunting. My husband was cheerful and supportive (despite his job being quite closely connected to the housing market) but I just cannot face the prospect of
airline travel. Granted, I am pushing five months pregnant, with two other children to drag through security; but I don't think that would have mattered to me earlier.

Well, I know it didn't. I flew with my daughter at one month, at three months, at four months, at eleven months and on and on, making my son drag his own luggage through the airport all those times. "NO, you cannot ride on the stroller (after walking a mile lugging his bag) you have to carry your bag!"

And so approaches the longest amount of time that has ever gone between my trips to the East.

Hopefully I will get my energy back - we all miss it.

Hmmm...

after so long the ideas for posts have begun to come back to me, but I am sure this blog is long forgotten.
How to begin all over again?

the best and worst of times

Because nothing that you look back on and wish you remembered seems significant at the time, I have no way to know how many times I have flown coast to coast with my children.

In the midst of dragging myself, two children, luggage, and a dripping hot coffee (why do the cups that drip always come to me when I am either dressed up or travelling?) through airports in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Atlanta, Raleigh/Durham, Chicago O'Hare, Dallas, Houston, JFK, Philadelphia I have no clue why I don't immediately arrive at destination and whip out the scrapbook. Probably because, after each trip, I spend several weeks saying to myself, "For the love all things peaceful and sane WHY do I keep flying these children across the country?"

I know the answer, and the truth comes back to me after a few months of using full-size toiletries: My love for my family is not peaceful or sane; but it is one that makes you do crazy things like coaxing crying children off of airplanes when they refuse to go one more step with their bag and you are preventing about 167 travel-weary people from getting off that plane! And so, we fly. My best estimates put roundtrips at about 14 (70000 miles!) with one or both children since May 2001. I like to fly with them alone, and usually do, because they are better when we have three seats together and it is clear there is nowhere else to go and nothing else to do but sit.

I have a long list of tips about flying with children of varying ages. (infant to 7.5 - although once they reach 6 you can buy a Game Boy and some acceptable games and bring it out only for flights. It is magic.) This trip, some more were confirmed.

1. Crocs are a heinous crime against fashion; but they are a security line lifesaver!
2. Do not rely on airplane coffee to feed your caffeine addiction - unless you enjoy leaving your children to sit in a random waiting area while you run 1/4 mile to the nearest coffee stand and back with scalding hot coffee. (during very short layover)
3. Use the bathroom at the last minute possible before landing.
4. Make sure you are in the correct terminal to avoid long walks through mile-long underground tunnels.
5. Don't take offense when the lady in front of you turns around at the end of the flight and says, "You know I was dreading having to sit in front of two children for this whole flight, but I didn't even hear yours."
6. Pray for kids movies. Nancy Drew and Even Almighty shown back to back saved our return home. Don't worry, the sound isn't good enough for the movies to influence them very much.
7. Dress the kids up a bit, and straighten their hair. Nothing like a couple of cute kids to inspire people
give you little extras. Free food, snacks, headphones, extra cans of drinks.