Someone just described me as having an exciting life. How true is that? I mean really, I'm a stay at home Mom with a tennis addiction and an uneasy juxtaposition of not enough and too much time on my hands. I do some combination of teaching my children at home and watching them learn in the world while I sit back and ferry their bodies where they want to go to do this. And I retrieve my dogs from the woods across from us several times a day. I suppose it's all in how you describe what you do.

And when it all comes down, it is a pretty exciting life. There was the breath-holding, sweat-inducing, ice dripping down my bra and neck singles match yesterday. There was the grand challenge of taking two five year old girls to Wal-Mart tonight and having them babbling to each other, me, and the other shoppers in their made-up language while I ran over their feet an undisclosed number of times because they wouldn't stop darting in front of me. There's tomorrow, when we're planning to drive up to Wintergreen to watch an Eddie from Ohio concert and see some fireworks. There was the non-child-friendly Thai hot chili stir-fry on the rice noodles tonight that we served to seven children, at least three of whom practically turned inside out. There are the 18 semi-melted orangesicles in the garage freezer because I had to take a friend home and then stop at Blockbuster instead of going straight home after I had been grocery shopping. The book group with 8 7-10 year old boys in it. And the used mattress I'm supposed to pick up from a friend tomorrow so that the twins will finally have something on their top bunk. I guess you can't really argue that it's not dull.

I'm in love with our screened porch. I read out here. I type out here. I blog out here. I spend time with the kids out here. I escape the freezing cold air-conditioned house out here. It's a place that positively reeks of my dogs (and features them as a visual element, since they love it more than I do) and gathers clutter like you wouldn't believe (yard stuff, nature table stuff, candles, sand toys, dirty dishes). But it's warm, cozy, and feels set apart from the rest of life.

I'm reading the Memory Keeper's Daughter, and right now I can barely put it down. I just started it this afternoon, and it's noteworthy that I am even able to start a book at this point in my life. Ollie and I finished Harry Potter 5 yesterday and started on the sixth book, but between reading aloud to him and cleaning up at the end of the day and general exhaustion from getting up too early to play tennis almost every day, I don't find a lot of leftover time for my own pursuits. I need to change that somehow. It's back to the old question of what you *don't* do in order to enable yourself to have time to accomplish the things that you *do* do.

I had a conversation with several different people today about what is different about next year from previous years that it just feels so...complicated and necessary to be planning right now for the fall. And my response is that it's because (a) there are more people to plan for--Frances is a real entity who is a full participant in many of the activities and (b) there really are more offerings for homeschoolers these days. There's the Homeschool Place, for one. But there are also just more organized activities and ones that are asking for a commitment or a reserved space...NOW. It went from art class being a drop-in with potential times on M, W, F. Then last year we sort of asked if the teacher would do a class just for our five families at a regular time each week. And now it feels like we have to reserve the spot and the time now to be insured it's going to be there for us and that it fits in our schedule, which of course means that we have to figure out what our schedule is in the first place, which leads back to the realization that IT IS JUNE!! Not August, not September, not even a full month from when the last "school" year ended, but early summer, when we're theoretically supposed to be on break. The best I can say is, it cannot be helped. Here we are, so we have to go with it.

I am going to sign off and return to my reading before the sleepover erupts again or I find myself being awoken by the crying of another person's child at 2 a.m.

My Toke

That's Rutledge's big line these days: "No, my Toke!" Yeah, he's Coke obsessed just like the others. His other major cutie is saying, in response to, "What's your name," something like "I'm me. I'm Rut!"

We spent too much time outside today, considering that it was 95 degrees and deathly humid. The bad thing about my "match of a lifetime" tennis games is that they go on forever, and this one today was a replay of last week, but with a different result. I lost the first set 6-1, which didn't reflect the level of play going on, just, apparently, my inability to wrap it up. The second set I won 1-6. And then I won in the tiebreaker 5-10. It was amazing and exhausting. I kept putting ice into my bra and into my hat, but in the final five minutes, absolutely nothing was helping.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the sitter was locked out of the house in the heat with four kids she had taken to a tennis lesson, and they were all huddled in the garage next to the cat door, where it was cool because of the air conditioning. I felt horrible! Two neighbors have keys, but neither was home, although one arrived fairly soon after I heard the bad news, saving the melting folks at home. Poor, poor Heather, who will probably never set foot at our house again!

Wimbledon is on, Sharapova, my favorite Canon-snapping player, just won in a landslide. And I am remembering, as I always will, that this is the week that I spent in the hospital back when I was pregnant with the twins. I had a lot of time on my hands to watch a lot of tennis. A lot of everything, actually. A lot of crossword puzzles were done. Logic puzzles. All kinds of puzzles. Every day. All day.

Tomorrow is the first book group, and Ollie has a selection of books he might like to read, but Walter is stuck on My Father's Dragon, which is probably a little slower than the speed of this particular group. And a little too innocent. Ollie and I finished Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix tonight, and it was very, very intense for him. Although I've taken some grief that they haven't read the books before, I feel like it makes sense to wait, since the themes, many of them, are rather mature for them even still. It's a lot to take in and process. If we play our cards right and prioritize our reading the way we have been (read: no reading for me, no free time without a child right next to me), we'll be through the sixth book in about five days.

The topic of overprotective parents came up today at the park. I probably fall into the most permissive category. My kids go online and play games almost every day. They're pretty innocuous ones, IMO, things like Nickelodeon cartoon tie-ins, Webkinz, and Lego.com. And they play console video games, including my recent major step out in letting Ollie get Call of Duty 2. We haven't, however, succumbed to World of Warcraft or any other multi-player role-playing games (thank goodness! I know nothing about that subculture and am happy to remain in the dark!). I do let them go out in the cul de sac across the street without me to play with their friends, though this is a pretty recent development. Unfortunately, it has included letting Frances go. I just can't stay over and outside by myself with a pile of 4-8 year olds and not go crazy after an hour. More and more, though, I'm finding that the group ends up here playing, which is fine with me. I have thought a lot lately about letting Ollie go out on his own to take himself to tennis on the trails behind the school playing fields, but I think he's not quite ready yet to take that step, especially if we haven't all walked the path several times with him before. But I do look forward to the time when the boys will be able to be at the pool on their own while I do other things--while I am at the fitness center or playing tennis, especially. It will simplify things to a huge degree. Of course, having Rutledge be 4 will also simplify life in some ways.

I'm feeling like I'm not spending enough time with Franny lately. I'm in the house with her, but I'm so focused on reading to Ollie or keeping Rutledge from hitting us with a big stick or helping Walter with math that I'm not giving her a lot of undivided attention. We probably need a date together this weekend, though preferably one that doesn't include Build-A-Bear. I tend not to stick around during her activities because they are not Rutledge-friendly, and that means that I feel a bit more out of touch with her these days. She loves to be read to, but she isn't going to sit through a 900 page Harry Potter book. She loves to do her own math work, but it requires so much concentration and intervention from me that we don't do it as often as I'd like to be doing it.

I need to get to bed. My most memorable dream last night involved me sleeping in until 9:30 when I had to be at Fox Hall in the West End to play tennis at 9:00. I had missed the babysitter ringing the doorbell, and on top of this, I was wearing about 8 layers of too-tight clothes that I couldn't peel off so that I could get dressed. I knew that by the time I got myself together and drove where I needed to be that it would be 10:15, and it was too late. There was nothing I could do, and given my childcare gaffe week a copule of weeks ago, I knew this would be the end of my time on the USTA team. It was just so vivid!

I was mistaken last week--this week, tomorrow, is my final USTA match. I think I've only had one win this season, which is disappointing. I don't know why I'm so fearful of hitting the ball, but I just give away points. I'm going to try not to think about this and just play as hard as I can. After last week's match, I'm on a high and ready to redeem myself at #1 singles tomorrow. I have a sitter coming, which has taken a good deal of prep; I can't stand strangers coming to stay in my house and feeling like it looks like a pigsty. Right now it's more like a cleanish pigsty, but it's the best I can do. And Ollie will make it to his own tennis lesson, which is a good thing.

If we can find the time tomorrow, we are only a day or so away from finishing Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. We have averaged 120+ pages a day for the past four days, so if we work at slightly above that pace tomorrow, we'll have it all wrapped up and be able to move on to the 6th book and be done well before the 7th comes out in three weeks or so. It is taking all of my spare minutes and my time to myself after children's bedtimes to get to this point, but I'm looking forward to reading some different books once we finish this series. There are so many on our list that I'm eager to get started.

Friday is the first meeting of the boys' book group. I hope that they will be cooperative. I hope that Ollie will find some books that he wants to read. I hope that Walter will listen as we read so that he can participate. But it is exciting for them. Today I took Ollie to B&N to look at possible selections, and I think he has a few. We didn't buy all of them because that was going to get expensive, but he is ready to say what he wants to see happen and what he has liked in the past. More on that to come.

Tomorrow after tennis we are going to Sunday Park for a picnic. It sounds hot. Today was horrendous in terms of heat. The rain that is supposed to arrive Friday cannot come soon enough. It was so hot at the pool today, even in the water. And all three older kids have red faces from me not protecting them well enough. Their bodies are looking rather white, but their heads, no matter what I do, seem to be in trouble. I hope that we don't melt in the heat. And I need not even think about Richmond Olympiad in the afternoon. I'll need to remember to pack plenty of water. Even then, it's rather unbearable there. The weekend promises a much better forecast, with lower temperatures and lower humidity.

I need to get pictures on here again. I have them. I've been taking quite a few at the pool and when we have been out, it's just a matter of uploading them to the computer and then putting them on here. I haven't done it much yet, so I'm less familiar with the process, and for me, if it's not automatic, it doesn't happen.

Kerry accused me of making bad decisions tonight. With a blinding headache with the air pressure today, I took BC powder, which is full of caffeine, at dinnertime. Now here I am, still with a headache, but likely to be awake all night. We shall see.

Speechless

That's what I should be after reading 150 pages of Harry Potter aloud today. This is one of those rare days when I never left Woodlake. Didn't really interact with any other people, which is always questionable, but much like our existence when we first moved here. I played tennis...with myself this morning. Kate had an errand to run for the junior tournament that was going on this morning, so since I already had child care, I went ahead and spent some quality time with my favorite green-clad player, the ball machine. I did two rounds of forehand balls, working on topspin, backspin, and just getting it over the net, and then I served the entire basket of balls. I'm rather sore now! There wasn't quite enough time to accomplish much of anything, since so much time gets taken up wheeling the machine and the basket of balls from the shed to the far hard court, then threading the plug through the fence, then loading in all the balls, and finally picking them up when they've all come shooting out at you. But it was a great use of my time and gave me the sheer number of balls I've needed to it lately.

The kids were at Water Works, which is a program at our swim club where they are supervised by teenagers and don't have to go to the nursery while I do something. I let the older three dive for about 30 minutes before we had to pick up Rutledge. Most of the rest of the day was spent reading aloud. Lovely. Really.

Tomorrow morning, Ollie starts his tennis lessons. I realized I haven't seen or even talked to Rebecca in practically two weeks, which feels just plain wrong to me. So my goal for tomorrow is to go bother her no matter what she says or where she is. How's that for friendly?!

Summer is always an interesting time. Walter's friend Jared has left for the summer, and we don't know when or if he is coming back. We don't have any vacation plans. We don't have plans of any kind to really speak of except for the week of day camp in August for Walter. I'm regretting not forcing them all to do swim team this year, so that's one of my goals for next year. I didn't want to be tied down (or pay another $200), but I'm thinking now, tied down to what??

Deuce

Finally, I've hit my stride in tennis. After the smokin' match on Thursday (even if I didn't win), I've been on the ball, literally, since then. My serve is finally in most of the time--I have been paying attention to nothing more than throwing the ball high enough, and sure enough, I've got my first serve under control and my second serve less pathetic now. My groundstrokes are also more reliable, and I'm getting more overheads and playing more aggressively at the net. This morning I played singles and won 6-4, 6-2, 6-1. Tonight Kerry and I played doubles in a well-matched pairing, and we also won three sets, though I'm blanking on the score. And I am dreadfully tired. Maybe I'll get that racket tattoo after all....

Speaking of smokin' talents, Walter is learning to play the piano, and he is such a natural at it. Right now he is playing Jolly Old St. Nicholas, and he is doing it smoothly and with feeling. I've just been casually teaching them and having them practice 3 or 4 days a week, and this is pretty good for just being three or so weeks into the deal.

Tomorrow I teach Sunday School in the morning. I feel so unprepared, even though there's not that much to prepare for it. The activities in the book we teach from are...interesting. Tomorrow's lesson plan calls for a lot of tearing up foam pieces and throwing them at things--throwing them at plastic ants, of all things. Last week there was a lot of throwing things, too. We threw a styrofoam raven at our prayer requests. Hmmm. And we picked up plastic ants. I can't remember why we did it, but there it was. After tomorrow, we don't have Sunday School again until the middle of August.

Here is my current thinking about what seems to be a key to homeschooling success past the critical zone of late elementary, the point at which many people I've known have chosen to send their children to school. I was listening to a friend who now has 15 and 16 year olds, and while it sounds like sometimes her boys may have wanted to go to school, they accept that this is what their family does. I see her boys all the time around the neighborhood, and they seem very "normal" to me--out with friends, riding their skateboards, they seem to have girlfriends, almost always in a pack of other kids. The three biggies that I see as setting one up for long-term success are (1) Consistent activities--doing the same thing year after year. For her it seems to be Boy Scouts, church show choir and youth activities, and at one point, Lego robotics. (2) Doing a few things and doing them with gusto. (3) Keeping as much as possible local. Some of her boys' major activities happen within walking distance of her house. They haven't lost touch with the other people their age living right around them.

Now I'm on to wondering how I'll put that together for myself. Easier said than done, right?

You Might Be a Redneck

Crass as they are, variations on this theme are some of my favorite little jokes. As anyone who knows me knows, it doesn't actually take much to set me off laughing about something that is amusing to no one else who is older than a third grader. But anyway, tonight you could say I might have had too much to drink when :

* I've poured a whiskey sour into one of my best friend's shoes
* I try to log onto my blog to post and I keep typing in sss.blogger.com and aaa.blogger.com
* I repeat (and type the word "prepeat") the same phrase over and over for effect while I'm trying to convince my sleeping husband that I'm not a lightweight and I can handle my alcohol

So there you are. Make your own decisions, readers. Whoever you are.

I just bot gack (got back) from a pontoon boat cruise with a group of homeschooling friends. We actually didn't talk shop all that much. A few anecdotes here and there, but none of this talk about the new homeschool center that is going to be opening or about plans for next years or about the dreaded C topic or educational clubs or what have you. It was old boat stories, food, talk about dreams, and chat about local restaurants. What a lovely change of pace from nothing but shop talk. I live shop. I love shop. But I don't always have to talk shop. It was a gorgeous night, beyond what one could order from a catalog, if such a thing were possible. Clear skies full of stars, falling ones, even. Ripply water with hopping fish. Other pontoons with swimmers leaping joyously (and drunkily?) off their decks. Children swinging off ropes into the water from their shoreside yards. A popular neighborhood nightspot with a full deck of weekend folks relaxing. A wedding reception going on up the hill. Simply lovely.


Today I took all four children to Busch Gardens by myself. This was a first. It went okay. It was a learning experience for all of us, one where I had to lay down the law on a few lessons. You can't be throwing things or licking your siblings while I am driving on I-64. I will pull over onto the shoulder and talk to you. You can't throw straws out the window or I will pull you out of gymnastics and ballet faster than a speeding cylinder of plastic on I-95. Don't even wander off in a big crowded theme park where your mother can't see you. But overall, we had a lovely day. My plan was to use today to see all of those shows that we never manage to catch when we are running amok and slamming in as many rides in 6 hours as we can. It sort of worked. We saw a very energetic 4-D pirate show with Leslie Nielson, a high on the special effects (how did this guy change costumes so magically quickly?) one-man show about a castle on Ireland, and most of a children's song and dance show. But the fact is, we rode a lot of rides. Not our usual ones. Well, okay, the boys did go on the Loch Ness Monster twice. Frances and Rutledge rode the mini clydesdales ride and walked through the stables and petted and had their picture taken with McGhee (Wednesday when we went, it was with Marty). They all rode all of the rides in Land of the Dragons, which is the little children's area. The water jets were on, although Rutledge was a bit too cautious. They climbed in the treehouse and rode all of the tiny rides. My favorite lines from Rutledge today: "I want to ride dem bopes." "I want to ride dem bugs." And my ultimate favorite line these days, although I am tired of saying no and witnessing the resulting tantrum: "No, my Toke!" (No, my Coke!) We had a very nutritious lunch of 7-11 hot dogs and slurpees (I dropped my Toke all over the ground, and I promise I had not had any alcohol at 11 a.m.!). And I spent too much on Jelly Bellys and big lollipops and frozen lemonade. On the whole, today was a pretty good day out that was neither too long nor too short. My only complaint was that I took a wrong turn getting home because I was zoned out talking to Hilary on my phone, and the next thing I knew I was in Colonial Heights, then Petersburg, then at Fort Lee. I've never been down there before, don't foresee a lot of going down there again any time soon, and it ended up taking me about 45 minutes longer to get home than it should have. Anyone who knows me know that these driving zone-outs happen all too often to me. I hope we'll find a time to get back to Busch Gardens next week, even if i do need to figure out how to spend less on food. I'll get a system down one of these days. Probably a day or so before our season pass expires.

This is old news, but yesterday I played the tennis game of my life. It may not have been the best I ever played (and I lost), but it was my best match ever. Close, close, close. I lost the first set 6-4, won the second 3-6, and then lost in the tie-breaker 12-10. But the points were amazing, my opponent and I had a lot of fun, and we rallied and rallied and got in some incredible shots. My placement was on, my serve was mostly on, and my consistency was such as it has never been before. I had a lot of spectators, primarily because the match was just so darn long--about 45 minutes past the time when everyone else on my team was finished. Hilary showed up after her away match. I wish I could have wrapped things up a little better, but I was so pleased with how this went and, well, just had a ton of fun. This was my second time playing #1 singles, and I am so eager to play more singles now that I've had this experience. I think I'm going to meet a friend to play tomorrow morning, just for more practice. Our final match of the USTA season is next week, but then I'll be starting a 3.0/3.5 combo league on Saturdays when this ends. Just when I'm ready to throw in the towel on something, it seems to turn itself right around and become infused with a new energy, so maybe I just will consider that tennis racket tattoo I joke about.

Here's a question in the air these days. Should you continue to school during the summer? Well, I guess that depends on what you call schooling. Though I still aspire, in some ways, to be completely child-led, in which summer, winter, fall, you name it, we'd just be living life, the fact is that right now, in order to feel okay about whether we are at least sort of on track with our perceived grade level. So for now, I'm trying to hit at least four days a week with math, handwriting (we're now on to copywork, where I'm having them copy short poems on lined paper, using correct form for letters), spelling, and grammar. Everyone hates grammar, and I have this feeling that though the work isn't hard, if they found themselves asked questions about subjects and predicates in six months that they would be glaring blankly at a test booklet. Though I will say, I was rather pleased to hear Walter declare that "diagramming sentences is fun." I love those compound subjects and their triangulating lines, too.

What I'm reading right now: The endless Harry Potter 5 (did I mention that Rutledge unwound and/or ripped 13 cassettes the other day?). The Memory Keeper's Daughter. Writer Mama. And some magazines. Ollie and I have been reading about World War II, the Holocaust, and the causes of the Vietnam War. And the perennial scary stories. We are finding that the back porch is now our favorite place to be. Yes, it smells like dog on a bad day, but usually it is a welcome respite from the cold temperatures of inside the house and is a haven set apart from the noise of indoors. I feel like we are finally bonding with this area that was the original selling point of our house. If only we could reclaim it from the animals and decorate it more comfortably, I think it really would be our favorite room.

Equal

I now have as many posts on this blog as I did on my long past one from a few years ago--24. Not that this matters. But I noticed this fact, and I decided it was blogworthy. So there it is.

Oh my, summer is here. Today was a gorgeous day. Okay, fine, this morning was a little cruddy looking, but it was the perfect day to go to Busch Gardens, which we did. Not too hot, but warm enough that you weren't a total ice cube after getting soaked on a ride. Which I did. I was heartily happy that I was wearing a navy blue shirt instead of a white one, and that my underwear roughly matched the tone of my light-colored shorts, which were clinging to me for hours after I got completely dumped on by the Roman Rapids. I've never seen Walter exuding such sheer joy as when probably 40 gallons of water went straight onto his head and decimated the map he was holding into a pulp (which, this being Walter, he scrunched up and sculpted into a chili pepper). The poor strangers we were riding with! Walter just talked their ear right off with his exuberant excitement in being soaked to the bone. Other notable moments: Rutledge cackling and shouting "Whee!" with his little chunky arms held high in the air on the Battering Ram (otherwise known as "The Bope" to Rutledge), Rutledge on the log flume, and Frances traumatized for the rest of the day by a ride that was too fast.

I've determined that I am spending too much mental energy in thinking about next school year and what we are doing, so I have decided to put some limits on it. I'm not being super-anal about it right now: I have 30 minutes at 4:00 to devote to this and then no more. But I am going to just give is what I can and leave the rest behind for now. I'm kind of off the trumpet thing at the moment. It's not working in our schedule, it may be the one thing too many (you know how that one goes...), and it will still be there next year, and the year after. I could take that trumpet time and money and put it toward a piano lesson three minutes away.

I think I already said that we decided to go ahead with gymnastics for Frances. Big time commitment. There go two nights a week. Ollie wants to try soccer. Walter might like to do that, too, so hey, why not? So that's something to look into. Like we need another sport, but they're only young once, and maybe now they are excited about it and willing to give it some more effort and a new try.

I'm exhausted, and I have a tennis game at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow all the way across town. Ack! It's my final one of the USTA season, and I'm glad for that. I'm over finding the child care, which is a scramble each week. I'm in a combo league starting in July, where players with different ratings are paired together, but that happens on Saturdays, when someone to watch the kids is less of a mystery. I will be playing probably #1 singles, which is always interesting, but I'm happy I'm getting the opportunity to do the more strenuous running game more often now. My legs are feeling much more toned because of it, and I have found that now when we do our evening walks to the Pavilion or the park, I'm not huffing and puffing at all or feeling the pain for days afterward.

I had all of these things to write about tonight, and suddenly they have all slipped my mind. Hmmm. Rutledge is now climbing out of his crib, so enter a whole new era in our lives. I'm way behind on staying in touch with people I need to talk to, partly because my phone time is limited by my nearly-defunct cell phone. I am a chronic multi-tasker, and without my phone with me when I'm out and about, I'm seriously limited in how much time I can spend at home taking care of adult business, either personal or volunteer. I learned my lesson well yesterday about what can happen if you let your attention slip for even a moment: Rutledge unwound 13 Harry Potter cassettes from the library, precipitating an entire afternoon of pencils spinning on tape gears and splicing with Scotch tape. Sigh.... And I thought I was *cleaning* when I was over vacuuming and making our lives look somewhat together!

Ollie and I are reading lately about inventions, which has been fascinating. He's even reading the book on his own when we're not doing it together. And we have been reading and talking about World War II, the Cold War, and terrorism. We're finally finding more friendly resources that are doing a better job of explaining the difference between politics and economics and more succinctly describing rival forms of government and rival forms of economic systems, which is helping him answer his own questions about why the U.S. might have involved itself with North Vietnam. Ollie is the man of a million questions, but no deep interests. I keep thinking that if we just read enough, finally something will get into him to a point where he wants to go past the surface and keep taking himself further.

Walter is Walter. Building traps for the chipmunk that is still in our house. Planting dead trees in holes in our backyard. Creating a display of his most challenging Bionicle figures. Having a war with tennis balls in the playroom. He keeps himself very busy.

In order to keep myself functioning, I absolutely must sign off and go to bed. Midnight. Again.

Walter and Ollie are gone for the weekend. It's kind of a beautiful thing, for them as well as for us. I dealt with the loss by taking Frances to Build-A-Bear, since she was upset at not just staying here with me, but having to go to a dr's appointment on top of that. Turns out that we didn't really need to go in the first place and the doctor could just fill out the physical form for gymnastics and update some info with a current height and weight (42.5 inches, 37 pounds). It's worth noting here that after the flurry of emails about the "creepy guy" who seemed to be using a fluffy dog to lure children away from the pop-jet fountain there, there was mega-high and very obvious security in the fountain area, so much so that it would be a brave little soul who would feel confident playing with an enormous uniformed and armed man standing so menacingly three feet away. I even found myself ruminating on what I might be doing at the moment that would warrant being carried off in shackles by this man. At any rate, it was too cold for anyone with a shred of sanity to be dancing around in what is always freezing cold water anyway. We picked up a Cub Scout styled bear shirt for the ubiquitous Husky and called it a wrap (okay, I just called it a warp before I corrected my spelling, but that's just me..).

I'm thinking seriously again about how I'm going to start writing seriously for money. Maybe I don't need to write seriously, but I do need to write for money. I also started looking into what I'd need to do to apply as an adjunct faculty member at one of the community colleges. Most daunting is getting 3 letters of recommendation; it's been 10 long years since I've taught at all, and I'm a long way from that era of my life and the people who were in it then. Having never finished my degree and kind of gone AWOL numerous times, I'm not in what I view as the best position to be grovelling, but this may be a moment to swallow my pride. I've talked a lot in my blog in the past about whether it is possible to be too poor to homeschool, but it's very clear as I'm planning next year that yes, it is possible, depending on your particular chosen route. And even more so if you are the parent of a miniscule Mary Lou Retton, whose kindergarten gymnastics career actually makes loud slurping noises as it sucks away your paycheck.

Am I nervous about adding in more to my is-my-head-above-water? life? You betcha. It would be the supreme irony if I started working part time to support my homescholing lifestyle and found that it made me so frazzled that I had to put my children in school so I could continue to work. But a little something has to be done. To that end, I have been reading the _Writer Mama_ book I picked up a few weeks ago at B&N, and it makes me both feel like I can do this (or at least an arrogant, hey, if these other people can do it, I can), but it is also scaring the pants off me. I just don't want to write for a newspaper. I don't want to be running around interviewing people on assignments all the time; I hate that kind of stuff. I'm a loner, a recluse, a misanthrope with awful social skills. That's why I want to sit home with my computer by myself and write and never have to actually make actual contact with a human being. I'm thinking about a lot of ideas I have for articles, some of which I'll include here totally unedited.

My old standard is that I haven't ever read anything about breastfeeding after infertility, specifically the angle of mothers who want to maintain their attachment parenting lifestyle and pursue further treatment for a next child. Others are the gritty reality of homeschooling with toddlers in the house, homeschooling twins, ping-pong homeschoolers (unschooling this week, collapsing under the weight of books from the used curriculum sale the next). If it wasn't so late, I'd probably be pulling up a bunch of my others from my list, but my eyes are glazing over yet again. I'm having a problem with this lately.

I need to set firm goals for myself--no more procrastinating. Something along the lines of I need an article written with a real plan for it by the end of this month, which I guess means about two weeks. I'm going to take advantage of the fact that I have two fewer children this weekend to spend some time in the bookstores perusing the magazine racks and narrowing down a loftier goal while also making some plans for a local publication.

At home, I'm pushing for a more clear delineation of budget items. I am drawing up a proposal that I believe will offer the kind of flexibility and generosity we need for activities next year while maintaining accountability with other budgetary areas. Translated, this means that I need a way to put my money where my mouth is and prove that I've tasted those filthy little dollar bills when I say that such-and-such means so much to me that I'm willing to stop eating to have it. Kerry is still pulling his sorry old, "Rules are made to be broken" as a reason why we shouldn't have some envelope system or vague mental plan for how to divide our resources. Frustrating.

Speaking of frustrating, the new cell phone that we won on eBay came yesterday, and it refuses to work. So it has to go back. Meanwhile, my lame, limping phone also refuses to be reactivated. What I'm left with is no working phone, and it is driving me positively crazy. I had not realized how much I depend on the thing to multitask while I'm waiting for children somewhere or driving in the car, and today I ended up spending the majority of my day at home, tethered to the phone, trying to sort out a variety of things going on in the many arenas of my life. I felt like there were fewer hours in the day. What's worth sayng, though, is that obviously four years ago, I was living a perfectly fulfilling life without one of these little devices, and now it is a crisis that I have to go 72 hours without it (actually, we're talking more like 2 weeks, but still...).

Tomorrow hopefully I will have pictures to post of a way improved new haircut.

Backyard Wildlife Habitat

Go ahead and give us a sign for our yard. Wait, you might as well just give us a sign for indoors, too. Today was the day of the wild animals. It started this morning with something bounding across the kitchen. My first thought: "Oh no! The cat finally got the hamster!" But no. It was no hamster. It was a chipmunk, and it was heading upstairs. Eventually he got painted into a corner in the laundry room and found himself a hiding place and, hopefully, eventually a way out of our house. I don't really want to see him inside again. This was not typical for us--in fact, I've never had a live, furry wild animal in my house before.

Imagine my surprise when I was out just a hour or two later picking up the messy stuff that was in our backyard and I lifted the plastic climbing wall that had fallen on the ground and I found a leafy nest with a juvenile opossum in it! Ack! The kids were so very excited. So were the dogs. The poor opossum wasn't. He or she is probably 8-10 inches long, so most likely is a young juvenile living on his own, rather than an orphaned baby (who would be in a pouch with his mother unless she had died or he had been somehow separated from her). This was a healthy-looking, self-sufficient fellow. But he does need a new home. Walter wanted to build it a large cage with pieces of an old dog crate and a papasan chair frame. We had to have the discussion yet again that wild animals are not and will not be pets. It isn't legal to make them pets, it isn't safe to make them pets, and it isn't fair to them to make them pets. And this opossum is best suited to where he is, and he's likely to move along in a day or two at any rate.

We did some reading about opossums to refresh our knowledge. Back last year at Roots and Shoots the Area Rehabbers Klub, ARK, came and did a presentation for our group, complete with miniature baby opossums who had been orphaned. I remembered quite a bit about them from this, so unless something changes, I think our best course of action is to encourage this little guy to move along and make a nest somewhere else where he will be safe from US. The hardest part about knowing he is there now is that, well, we know he is there, and it is more temptation than Walter can handle not to be checking in on it. I'm hoping that nightfall and the memory of the big human dangers today will encourage the baby to find a new place to nap in the daytime. Meanwhile, we need to make the yard a little less hospitable for our own safety.

We had nothing on our schedule today, so we stayed at home for all but about 20 minutes, when we went out for ice cream and an iced latte and to put Rut to bed. Walter's best friend in the neighborhood, Jared, is going away this weekend and will be gone for the entire summer, and it is not clear whether he will be returning when summer is over. Walter doesn't know this yet, and I already ache for the pain I know he will feel when the reality of this hits him. Walter can have a hard time relating to other kids, and Jared was an extraordinary find for him; they are inseparable. Right now he is with Jared from about 3:30 every day until we finally force him to come in at 8:00. And things are so easy when Jared is around because the two of them go off and build things with Legos or make forts in the woods. It will be hard to fill Jared's shoes, even if only for the short term.

Today Times Tales came in the mail. I opened it and read the instruction book right away, and the boys and I read the book (7 times!) and then went through the various steps to memorize and be able to retell the goofy stories about Mrs. Snowman, Mrs. Week, the First Grade Class, and the Treehouse. But darnit, Ollie knows those upper multiplication facts now. I think what "works" about the program isn't the mnemonic devices to help them recall the products, but the motivation to prove they can answer these questions so that they never have to hear about how many Christmas lights the First Grade Class put on the Treehouse ever again! Walter, not surprisingly, has trouble remembering the stories themselves and gets the numbers in them all mixed u. I anticipate much more need for reinforcement with him. It's sort of an ingenious program, though. I wonder if we keep doing this if when they are my age they will still have a part of their mind that has that glimmer of nostalgia whenever they encounter 8x7-56 and there's a fleeting memory of Mrs. Snowman and Mrs. Week getting a speeding ticket.

I am still proceeding with a fairly full school agenda for much of the summer. We're adapting as well as we can to Saxon math, which is stressing us all out because the boys can't seem to figure out what it is looking for. Walter, especially,will blurt out the answer (a correct one), but often that's not even the major point for Saxon. It wants them to show their work, and Walter has done the problem some way other than what they have in mind. But I'll stick with it in the name of better standardized test scores. We'll do better this coming year, I'm sure.

I am just exhausted. Poor sleeping for the past two nights, lots of interruptions, lots of coughing children. I wonder what tomorrow will bring?!

Late Night With...

I don't know how I always manage to stay up late, even when I've had essentially NO sleep the night before. This no sleep thing--gotta go. It's just gotta go. Last night it was the coughing again, and then some protracted tangle with my alarm clock getting set on snooze repeatedly. Ugly. And once the sun is up, Rutledge is ready to start getting up, so sleep is very broken after 6:00. I don't quite know how I got through the whole day.

Today's big news: Ollie is reading a full-length book to himself silently willingly for the first time. He read 90 pages of what Walter describes as "an inappropriate book," while he was with Rebecca this morning, and he was still reading in the car on the way home. It's hard to fully express how big this is for him, because reading novels is not something he has been interested in doing in the past. He'll do Captain Underpants, but this is longer and doesn't have the generous illustrations. I hope this is the first of many happy hours reading for him.

We have this dog problem. Okay, it's a child problem. They're letting out the dogs because they are going in and out the doors so often. I was saying that maybe we need to think about a barrier of some kind. And Kerry replied that we do have a barrier--it's called a door, and it's being left open. Yeah. That's it. My decision on a logical consequence is that they will lose time playing with their friends if they leave open the door and a dog gets out. Everyone is old enough to remember to take the time to fasten gates, shut doors, and watch for escaping things.

We were in the right place at the right time tonight, and one of the Order of the Phoenix tape sets came in while we were at the library tonight. This is such good news because my voice can't seem to handle reading more than 40 or so pages at a sitting, and at the rate we're going, I'll be old and gray before we finish the book with me at the helm. So the tapes will take some burden off of me and allow us to combine actual flesh and blood here and now human interaction reading and the tape and finally make some tracks with this thing.

Other notable finds: complete Land of the Lost seasons.

I'm realizing as I'm typing that my brain is getting increasingly fuzzy. Things are coming out of my fingers that I didn't intend to have happen, and I'm powerless to stop them. I keep having to erase things that make no sense. This is probably my big sign that I should have been in bed an hour ago.

Week End

Thank goodness last week is over and this is a new one! Tomorrow morning I play tennis early at a club that has a reputation for being very rule-bound, but any day that includes tennis is a good one. Some very screwed up version of child dispersement seems to be in the works. I'm just going to sit back and let it happen, rather than trying to talk sense into Rebecca and Hilary.

I seem to have managed to alienate myself completely from my homeschool group and piss the hell right out of everyone. All just more evidence, not that I need any more, that you can't lose friends you never had in the first place. No one is speaking to me. They're speaking to everyone else...and that was kind of the problem to begin with. I have the impression that the root of the problem is that whether anyone wants to be with me or my children or not in the first place, my presence in the co-op is vital because there just has to be a co-op so that the Consolidation of Activity needs of people who live outside of town will be met. I hate to sound callous, but I can't make this my problem. I can't do something that isn't going to bring us pleasure and where I feel uncomfortable just because it makes life more convenient for other people. This was not a situation where my children or me were going to be successful, and the stress it would cause me on so many levels just was not worthwhile. I have to go with my convictions and with what I feel is right, both Right right and right for my famly as it is right now (how's that for a lot of rights?).

I actually feel this tremendous sense of relief. And finally a lot of optimism about next year. I hadn't realized what a weight this co-op was on me and how it was dragging down my whole enthusiasm for homeschooling until the real issues for me bubbled up to the surface the other night. The nagging discomfort that we were excluding some people I knew would be interested and that they would find out about the co-op and I would be implicated in the exclusion. The undercurrent of knowing but not articulating that there are people in the co-op who just don't particularly like my family. We're not talking 20 families and having a conflict with 1 or 2, we're talking about 6 families and having trouble with 20-40%. The uneasiness in having heard or interpreted that my children aren't really challenging enough academically. There were just a lot of uncomfortable things. When you start out at the planning stages with discomfort, it's hard to see how things could possibly be going swimmingly when November rolls around and we're still locked into the thing. I'm homeschooling so we can do things that work for us, and while I can handle a commitment to something as well as anyone else most of the time once I'm in, it just makes no sense at all to initiate something that you know already isn't right. What really pissed everyone off was not just me saying that, to put it most bluntly, I felt like people were being mean, but that when I left, Hilary left and now maybe another family is going to leave. Hilary was going to leave anyway, so my leaving wasn't the final straw, and if I hadn't sent an email first, she would have beat me to it. I'm still kind of in confusion as to how anyone can be upset that I "wrecked their co-op by pulling out" when some of them didn't particularly want to work with me and my children in the first place!

So now I'm on to being part of the advisory committee on this new homeschool enrichment center that is opening. I want to have positive energy to put into that. I'm nearly giddy with the idea that I have an opportunity now to really think about what I'd like to do with other families should other families be interested in doing things with me. I tend to not be that much of a rock the boat kind of person. I err on the side of sticking around just a little too long most of the time, long past the point when I should have bailed for my own sanity and self-preservation. My typical M.O. is to just kind of fade off into the background when I have a problem, and eventually I evaporate and move on to something else. I don't tend to make these clean (or unclean) cuts. But what better time than when this new Homeschool Place is right on the horizon to have released myself into becoming a free agent? And the sense that my weeks belong to me now is very thrilling.

I'm working on getting us into a different co-op that isn't really a co-op. It's more of a schoolish offering, but still sounds fun. Although tonight i noticed that they are using a writing program that I think has a great deal wrong with it in its basic philosophy, so this has made me waver just a little bit. I don't remember hearing much about them doing writing, so I'm not sure what this exactly means in terms of this year. I'd have a lot to 'unteach' if they were taught by this method, because I have strong feelings about teaching forms and teaching style, particularly to younger students who don't have enough filters and critical thinking skills to swerve away from this on their own. Right now there is no room in this group, though, so it's not exactly a sure thing at the moment. If I had this Classical Conversations thing on Tuesday, though, and was able to get together for another group learning time on Thursdays with some friends, then my week would feel pretty complete. Mondays I'd probably teach a class or two at the Homeschool Center, and Wednesdays and Fridays would be free. I'm still on the fence about trumpet for Walter (far away, bisects day, takes a time that used to be park day, but more on that in a minute). I'd really rather keep teaching the kids piano, and eventually move toward finding a Woodlake piano teacher for them later in the year. Frances would have her gymnastics on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, whoever chose to would have wrestling in the winter, and we'd have open space in our schedule for playdates and impromptu things. It sounds pretty good. And it really makes me take back nearly every thought I've had about putting them in school. Finally, I can look forward to the fall!

So that's where I am now. Spoke bluntly and made people dislike me. Probably am leaving the homeschool group I've been with for at least 2 years, and 3 if you want to get technical. And yet I feel a massive surge of potential and confidence. I feel better about my children, energized about what we will do at home over the summer and next year, and I'm back experiencing the freedom that made me choose to homeschool in the first place!

Flew the Coop?

I've been posting quite a bit about co-op lately because we both have this meeting looming and because it has been such an uneasy thought to me in many ways. Tonight I decided that this really isn't going to work for us with the direction it is going. The meeting was also another installment in my master lesson of the year about how you have to look out for yourself, because no one else is. I typically have trouble cutting my losses when the writing is on the wall, and as I was talking to Kerry and describing the big mess that was the planning of this meeting, I realized that I don't need to stick around when things are overly sticky; I can just remove myself from the entire situation. This was a hard lesson back in LLL before we moved--meeting after meeting, elephant in the room after elephant in the room, obfuscated references after obfuscated references, constantly wondering, "Is it me?" Kerry, who listened to me go on for hours, usually in the middle of the night, about my conjectures on this or that, would look at me and frankly ask, "If it's so much grief for you, why don't you just drop out? Why volunteer to do something that is nothing but trouble." And I'd answer with all of these "Well..." responses. Mostly I fear that if I pull out of something, I'll lose contact with everyone I know and be cast adrift in the vast sea of loneliness out there. But you know what, sometimes that's better than having a false sense that you even know what's going on.

So I have a lot of reasons for pulling out of the co-op that is being planned. The general feeling of tension in discussing the who, what, where, when, why, and how of it. Most importantly, I'm over the mucked up communication and feeling like too much is happening behind the scenes, and that I'm out of the loop and that there is much exclusivity. And maybe more than that, the negative emotions it evokes for me about my own children--the sense that they aren't good enough behaviorally, intellectually, and academically--well, these are not healthy. When it really comes down, I homeschool so that I can make them have a positive experience living and learning, so that they can play to their strengths and not be constantly indicted for their weaknesses, and so that they feel confident that they are competent, interesting people. Why intentionally place yourself in settings where you and they come away feeling that they are not good enough, that others are talking about them and you behind your back (and to your face...), and where you know that you all piss off and irritate people? Duh. If you have a choice, especially seeming infinite choice, why not unplug and try to find a place where you do fit in...or at least the next landing spot until you wear out your welcome there?

That said, I'll admit that I am tossing around the idea of school, even though I've always seen myself as a committed homeschooler. There are a couple of facts I can't dispute: They were very successful in preschool. They were beloved by their teachers, they were popular among their peers, and until the last few weeks each year, they loved to go. No matter how problematic they seemed at home, whether in behavior or other skills, I always had reassurance from the preschool teachers and director that they were exceptional, personable, bright, and well-liked. Whenever they are in a setting where they are with current elementary school teachers, they have unanimously been loved and encouraged. I've even...hold your breath here, numerous times had Frances, the one I had given up as forever blonde, called "really smart" by people who actually have spent time with large groups of five year olds. I wonder sometimes if I am denying my children an opportunity to be where they can really be appreciated for who they are and have opportunities to shine. Particularly with Frances, I wonder if she wasn't seen and treated as "behind" or "not smart" if she would totally rise to the occasion. For this year I have had her in kindergarten classes in places like Sunday School and wherever else I have needed to declare a grade. She has worked hard in a mixed-age art class. She has thrived beyond my expectations. I haven't "done school" with her this year, but now we're starting on a first grade math book and she is so excited for herself. She is a hard worker, a bit of a perfectionist. But she has a lot of energy. And she doesn't read yet and doesn't care. An she definitely does not come across as nerdy; quite the opposite, she comes across as brainless and hyperactive. But this year I want to see as her year, the time when she is most definitely not the hanger-on, the sibling that came with, but someone who can hold her own. Homeschooling doesn't always give her that opportunity because she doesn't *look* like someone you'd want in your class with your "smart" kids, but I have this inkling that if I found myself a brand new venue and placed her in a same-age peer class that she might just surprise me and other people. And the thing about school is, they'll do that for her because they have to.

Walter and Ollie...whoa, are they the same old story or what?! Bad to the bone, energy without bounds, mouths that know no tact or decency. But what if they were in an environment where there has been and will be worse than they are? What if they weren't the resident trouble makers? What if they didn't have to spend all day with me! What if they, too, turned out to be more competent than they appear? Oh, how the world loves the child who is studious, quiet, and self-controlled. What if this is how they turned out to be if they were in a setting that valued this and motivated them? Would I be in a close personal relationship with the principal? Or would I find that they were actually children teachers wanted to have in their class?

Right now I think I'm just nervous that I may be losing what I had considered my support network, but it was so clear as I was talking to Kerry tonight that it's not really supporting you if, well, to put it really bluntly, you and your children are disliked. When things like this happen, I tend to jump to the conclusion that if we can't fit one place, we can't fit anywhere (and believe me, we've burned plenty of bridges in our time...who could have prepared me for how being a parent would put me in positions I never dreamed I'd be in!). But I'm doing my best to see this like dating: keep at it, there's probably someone for everyone out there. Dumped once doesn't mean forever alone. I will fill my head with positive thoughts that we can find a niche before resorting to dropping this amazing freedom we have altogether.

Enough oxygen to burn it

Instead of going to bed, tonight we are watching a History Channel show about the Sun. Ollie is amazed at the sheer amount of energy that the Sun puts out--more in a second than has been generated on the entire earth since its very beginning. Before this, we watched a show about Mars. It must be planetary week. Next week begins a new series on the Universe that sounds fascinating. I will need to put it on the calendar or we'll certainly forget it. Our study of chemistry this year probably feels rather relevant right now to the kids, which is just what I hope for what we learn.

Kerry says that he is going to start working with the boys on the upper times tables, which by all counts they should have down by now. They are still skip counting to find answers, which means that they lack automaticity. My goal is 2-3 seconds or less on these facts, and we're just not there yet. I'm not sure what Kerry has in mind--mostly the traditional speed drills that we remember not so fondly from our school days. I ordered Times Tales the other day, a program that is highly recommended by a lot of homeschoolers for learning the last little pocket of facts, the 6-9s, that are often simply hard to recall, and it uses a mnemonic approach with a story. The claim is that they will have mastered these facts within an hour, and I've heard personal testimonial as well as what is on their site and what I've seen elsewhere, so I hope this will be the magic bullet for us. Otherwise, I'm continuing to throw out to them the more unique concepts that are covered in Saxon 3 while I wait for another workbook to arrive, and we are using the speed tests from the first half of the year to review what we've already covered. Meanwhile, we're proceeding with Math U See Gamma on to double digit multiplication, though I'd feel better about this with instant recall of single digit stuff. In the middle of all of this, we are also experimenting with Time4Learning this month. Unfortunately, it lacks some features that would make it even more user-friendly--timers for the older grades (there is no timer after 2nd grade), and most especially something to make assignments so that when they log on they know what they are supposed to do next. Instead, I'm finding I have to be more involved than I want to be. Not that I don't want to be involved in what they are learning, but I had signed on to this with the idea that it might be a painless way to do extra practice and cover concepts that didn't require me to be on top of them like I am with everything else. But overall, I like the scope of what is covered, and I wish that the boys would be a little more enthusiastic.

Who wants to watch math instruction and do problems when there are Webkinz to buy flat screen televisions and air hockey tables for?! Today I found myself a rather irate help desk when the site seemed to be refusing either our password, our user name, our secret code, or some combination of the three. At least 30 minutes was wasted in increasingly frustrated ranting before I discovered that a "G" in the secret code tag had been rubbed off to become a "C," which was wrong. What is immensely irritating about this whole episode is that there is no interactive tech support or a phone number AT ALL for the site. If you can't figure out what is wrong using their FAQs, you're just SOL. I was cursing myself and Ollie for picking out something that requires either batteries or electronics of some kind. Nearly anything that we've ever had that is electronic or battery-driven ends up causing nothing but frustration, and eventually it is missing some piece or hits some glitch we can't get past and then it is tossed aside until it is completely obsolete. I'm so glad that we finally figured out what was going wrong.

Tonight Kerry and I played tennis in an attempt to break me out of my into-the-net rut. My serve was much more on (though I suspect that some of my Thursday morning troubles have to do with needing sunglasses that I can actually see through when I'm on the court), and though I buried a good number of balls into the net, I was a little more consistent in my ground strokes. I continue to have trouble with the "easy" shots--the ones where I have way too much reaction time and a whole clear court in front of me and where I end up blowing the ball too hard way outside the alley. So I'm going to try to breathe through these next time they present myself and not go for some big kill, just work on gently putting the ball away with placement rather than power. And for once, all three kids in child care were complaining that it was time to leave. This is quite good, since I have appointments both for clinic tomorrow morning and then for my match against Hilary on Thursday. I'm not supposed to be this competitive, but I have been a bit disappointed that my partner this week isn't one of our stronger players, which means I feel a higher need to compensate...at a time when I'm feeling like I need someone to compensate for me!

And tomorrow night is the long-awaited play and the rescheduled picnic. I need to go over lines with Passaportout, since it has been a while since he has read through them, and I need to figure out how I'm going to take four kids to Costco to pick up fruit to make my skewer kebabs. And get meat to grill. And I'm going to have to be organized enough to get it all over to Jenn's house without the benefit of Kerry being around. I am so excited to see how it all turns out. Now, if only I could find my camera.

Today we had a pretty good day. Schoolwork out of the way before 9:30, then over to Cheryl's for another meeting about her Homeschool Center idea that she needs to get off the ground by Friday. It was energetic, to say the least. It is an understatement to say that there were lots of kids--close to two dozen. But her project is really coming along, and I hope that enough people will join in to help this become a reality, because we so sorely need adequate and affordable meeting and class space in this area and a central location for homeschoolers to find one another beyond just the internet. After that, I was not very smart and bought us all Slurpees, and for the rest of the day, I could feel the energy of post-Slurpee buzz emanating from Walter. Arrgggh!

This afternoon we went to the pool after our stress-fest with the Webkinz and the all-too-short nap from Rutledge. I'm still not quite ready to get terribly wet there because the water still feels a bit chilly to me, but it didn't stop anyone else except Rutledge. I'm telling you, I tend to make these very unwise parenting decisions when I'm put on the spot, and today was no exception. I allowed Ollie to buy something from the snack bar with his own money, and the next thing I knew, I had three other children sobbing and whining because they had nothing and didn't know they could have brought money. Ooops. That was my big sign to go home, so that's what we did.

Right now I'm going to snuggle up with some of my favorite bedfellows, Ollie and Frances and enjoy the sweetness of a little girl with her head against my arm, snoring.

Okay, I'm lost in a technical muddle today. Really. It's a trend, actually. Yesterday I spent probably an hour trying to sort out user names and passwords on two services I use. You know you're having a bad day when you can't even remember your own name.

Today I am deep in thoughts on what my ideal coop for next year would look like. I am reading around and have been trying to gather ideas for myself. As Walter and Ollie get older, I am finding that I am wanting more substance. I love this idea of a cultural studies coop or group--one where you study a particular culture, perhaps in depth for several weeks. I'm wondering if I could incorporate that into my Latin class or Latin work for the boys next fall. There are a number of homeschool "academies" in our area, but they all seem to have a strong Christian component, not that I'm not Christian, but these really have the focus on the religious element more than the academic in many ways, or the academic is purely presented and viewed through the lens of a "Christian worldview." On one level I'm fine with that, but is this my Lutheran-Presbyterian worldview or something else? Add in that often the classes they offer costs hundreds of dollars, sometimes even stretching a bit toward piecemeal private school tuition, and with three children, they just don't make sense. I can't say for sure at this point that I'm looking for a small-scale Westminster Academy, one such homeschool outsourcing school in our area, but I wouldn't rule that quite out, either. What I'm hoping for is creativity and high-engagement, but with a strong substance component.

There seems to be an ongoing question among homeschoolers about whether one can truly do "school" with other families or whether anything that happens outside of your own home can only aspire to enrichment/fun, but not have any impact on what goes on at home. Perhaps it's my severe slacker ways, but I myself believe that meat and substance are, indeed, possible when you cooperate with other parents and their children. At the very least, my children are open to listening and taking direction from other adults in a way that they aren't always willing to do with me They get exposed to topics that I might not have given much thought to. They are motivated by the opportunity to share their work with other people. Knowing that they will be need to present information or explain homework or share what they know or care about provides the kind of meaningful context that can be lacking in a homeschool life at home. Sure, I could assign them a book report or a presentation about electromagnets, but without either the extrinsic motivator of a grade (the old "We write so that we can get a grade from our teacher and because he told us to do it and we'll be in trouble if we don't") or of an actual audience other than me, who is not giving a grade...well, there doesn't feel like there is a point. Communication feels so vitally important to me across the curriculum. Writing, of course, is all about sharing ideas and communicating with an audience. Remove the audience, especially if you yourself are not writing for your own personal gratification (and my boys generally aren't, if truth be told), and there's simply little meaning left in the process. But even something like science or a language is about expressing what you know to someone else. What good is it to translate in isolation? Isn't a primary goal of experiment and discovery to make known and make useful what you have learned?

With those ideas in mind, I am trying to imagine my ideal situation for the fall. And needless to say, my utopian schoolyear is not taking into account a certain fellow who revels in ripping paper, writing on non-consumable materials, and throwing heavy objects at our heads and legs while we are trying to do timed math drills. But details, details. I would like to have all three of my children experience a discussion of literature of some kind. It could be Junior Great Books, which we have been using both in our classes in the past and sporadically at home. It could be novels that they find interesting (though I'm wondering whether a whole group of 8 year olds finds the same books exciting...unfortunately, mine seem to have inherited my own lack of interest in the fantasy/sci fi genre, which nearly obliterates common fascination with other readers). I would also like to have some opportunity to share learning about the social sciences. This is Ollie's particular interest, and he would be rather keen on doing research in any number of topics--US politics, international relations, current conflicts, anything related to history, comparative government, US government... The list goes on. Walter would enjoy some sort of science class or opportunity to present material and do experiments. For Frances, something involving thinking games, critical thinking, exploration of world cultures, and a chance to discuss stories or do writing would be what I'm looking for. She also has not had the benefit of doing many of the simpler science experiments I used to do with the boys, so something concentrating on kitchen chemistry or experiments you can eat or something like that would be fun for her. Or studies of animals and biology.

There's something about coops that is, well, so confusingly uncooperative. Or maybe things just become more difficult than they need to be, or the focus becomes too narrow and constricting. I don't know that it has to be this way. We get kind of stuck in our ruts of how things have been in the past or the paradigm of what we did last year, and it becomes more difficult to imagine other boxes, other alternate schemes. I'm hoping that this Thursday's meeting won't end up being divisive, or worse yet, result in no coop at all...my largest fear. Instead, I hope that we'll be able to come in with fresh ideas and a commitment to working out something that will be in the ballpark of what everyone is looking for.

Lilypad Surfing

Lilypad surfing-that's what the Webkinz are doing right now in the background as I type. Rutledge is lying sprawled across my lap, leaving my ankles throbbing in pain from his weight. Which, incidentally, only appears to be about 30.5 pounds with his clothes and a cloth diaper on, according to our dr's scale this morning. There's always something to feel guilty about when you are a parent, and right now it's Rutledge's hearing and speech for me. I took him in, thinking maybe I was being reactionary (do I just want to part with a $20 copay, Kerry wanted to know), because he has been waking in the middle of the night every night for the past 9 or 10 weeks with a wet, uncontrollable cough. I have also wondered whether he has fluid in his ears, since his speech is still very slow developing. At his age, we should be understanding 70-75% of what he says, and I'd say that a generous estimate is 25% right now. I wish we had done something earlier. He has only had one ear infection that I know if in his life, but he has frequently been found to have fluid in his ears when he has been in for other minor illnesses or well visits. Now I'm feeling like I've created a disability that may affect all of his early years because I didn't push to have tubes put in his ears months ago (not that anyone offered, or that it was even offered that we see an ENT). The game plan now is to give him an antibiotic for two weeks, then see an ENT in 4-6 weeks, have a hearing exam done, and perhaps go through the early intervention services in our county. If only I had insisted that we have surgery back in the fall, we could probably have spared ourselves a lot of grief!

This morning was fairly productive. The boys worked on their schoolwork--math, handwriting, and spelling, as well as doing the timed DIBELS tests, which haven't really revealed anything I didn't know. Ollie reads well above grade level, though I don't have any specific test that indicates just how far ahead. He can pretty much read anything and has comprehension higher than his actual decoding fluency level. Walter reads at grade level--around a 3rd grade level and meets close to the benchmark for end of third grade in terms of speed and fluency. My expectation is that both of them will be reading at least three to four grade levels ahead, but I'll take on target for now. I'm not sure how I feel about timing things. I guess it does show how much you know, or at least how well you can display what you know with someone breathing down your neck. But really, who cares if you can do 20 math problems in 1 minute or read X number of words in that amount of time. Isn't quality more important than quantity? Is pain the only way to learn?

I plan to use the summer to poke around through the options I have for approaches to teaching. You would think that four years down the line I would have at least a genearl philosophy all figured out, but I find that the longer I do this, the more that I see what I'm doing as a dynamic process. The only thing that is certain to me is that we are always changing, that what we need is evolving, that I couldn't have anticipated what a 9 year old was like (or what my orientation to a 9 year old would be) when I had only 7 year olds. Little snippets of information from here and there affect my attitudes toward where we are now, and dabbling in the descriptions of what other people do sparks my interest in trying something that I hadn't been open to before or that I might not have come up with on my own. Then I surprise myself sometimes, shocked that I care about something that I didn't think I gave a rat's ass about. It bothers me that Walter and Ollie can't spout off multiplication facts in under 3 seconds, for instance. Who knew that I cared that much?

So here we are, constantly changing, always feeling the ground under our feet, and hopefully still having fun and challenging ourselves along the way and not being worn down by the mainstream demands that I can't seem to ignore the way I'd like to.