Here it is, 1:30 a.m., and I'm still flying on the caffeine I took for an earlier headache. And there's tennis tomorrow. Yawn!

Finally, the weather broke. It wasn't exactly a perfect day outdoors, but I'm not complaining. We're back at the park, and that's where I want to be in April.

Time sure is winding down on the schoolyear. I'm not ready to stop by any means--in fact, I'm feeling energized by my new commitment to doing things in the way that has worked for us in the past, which means fewer workbooks, more time spent on the things that matter to us. It has been more or less successful in the past, and perhaps I was wrong in looking down another path thinking it offered some kind of insurance. We owe it to ourselves to choose what makes us happy, and not some list of "shoulds" that come from the great beyond or someone else's paradigm. I don't want to lose sight of why we chose this lifestyle in the first place, which was so that we could do something different, so that we weren't tied to anyone else's timeframe, so that our standards didn't have to be dictated by someone else, especially a someone else over whom we have no control.

Writing was more painful than usual tonight for us. The assignment felt pretty straightforward, but Walter was just not in the game at all. Maybe it's spring fever. Maybe it's that he wasn't invested in his topic. Or it was just too late--too much swimming, too much time running around it the park, too much time since he had woken up in the morning. But he was just out of it, and his writing seemed to come from another world. I see this as an area where we need to continue to focus, and maybe I need to scale things back.

Kerry and I did something a bit out of our normal range--we instituted an incentive system to try to encourage greater effort on what they do for school. I don't want to call myself skeptical, because that isn't the right word, but I know that it will be challenging to fight against some of their personality tendencies, traits that seem pretty deeply ingrained in them. Ollie has always had a hard time embracing tasks that he can't master with little to no effort. It is not simply perfectionism, it's that he really expects things to come easily to him or that skimming the surface is enough (I can strum a few things, therefore I know how to play the guitar). They have a harder time seeing the value of long, steady practice, that this is how people get to be experts, how they get to be successful. So we are offering points/stars for accuracy and completion on a number of our regular educational pursuits, and when they reach 100, they can choose a Wii game. I've been having this feeling that they wonder what the point of doing better on their math might be. So I guess we'll see how this goes.

Walter is speeding along in trumpet. I didn't hear a lot from his lesson this morning, but the reports I'm getting are that he is going to be ready for intermediate band when the fall comes, especially if he keeps up with some lessons over the summer. I'm really proud of his progress.

My teeth are feeling filthy now. I must go brush. TMI, I know!