There is a fascinating thread going on on one of the email lists I'm on about "The Mid-Year Slump," which some simply call the holidays. I haven't posted to it. I actually have this thing about not becoming too much of a homeschooling persona on these lists, I guess some of it is also a feeling of inexpert inadequacy ("Low Self-Esteem" is another name folks use), and some of it is that I reserve my right to change my mind about who I am and how I do things, so I hate to set myself out there saying one thing when maybe I'll feel differently about it in a few weeks. But it all comes out to that persona thing. We get to 'know' these people who post frequently and throw it all out there, and I had made a solemn promise to myself when I began homeschooling that I was not going to obsess about it and let the contemplation of it consume my life in the way, say, infertility did when I was going through it. I lived it, breathed it, meta-analyzed it, wallowed in it online, and it had an incredible capacity to suck my entire life away for days at a time. I think I always suspected that if I became an online researching, support-grouping homeschool junkie, I'd never actually get around to, well...homeschooling.

I've digressed again. This thread was from a person who sounded fairly new to homeschooling--typical story of a 4th grader who isn't relishing "learning" the way that we theoretically hoped they would when we made this decision to homeschool. Others, less afraid of sticking themselves out there, responded reassuring that this was normal, that many families take big breaks at this time, that breaks are refreshing, that changing curricula can be energizing, that we're learning all the time, that a schedule or a promise of fun after the work is done might help. All the usual stuff. I'm not sure what I would say on the topic, but I guess I'm going to try to say it anyway.

I'm in that position. If I can be perfectly blunt and honest, I'd say that I'm in a bit of a slump myself. I am having a harder and harder time lately figuring out why I'm doing this homeschooling thing, what benefit I am perceiving that is making it worthwhile. There's a column for the pro and con, as usual, but my pro column is feeling a bit scant lately. Originally, my impetus to homeschool was a rather liberal one. I could see that my oldest two were a bit divergent in their thinking, that they might not be a good fit for a traditional elementary school. I could see the parental politics, the PTA stress, the cliques that begin right with the adults, the expectations driven by standardization, and I felt this wasn't what I wanted for us, that this wouldn't be a fit for us as a whole. But then I started reading all the lofty stuff--the self-directed learners who find passions and follow them voraciously, the time for family relationships to be truly fostered and for us to all truly know one another from quantity time together, the outside the box means of experiencing the world, the potential for opportunities that children in a building for most of their day might not have, the ability to play to the strengths and find success there, the freedom of it all.

Enter Reality, stage right. I'm certainly not saying it's not all roses. We know that. Make it through the first three weeks of homeschooling, and you'll at least have a whiff of that one. But right now, my goals are becoming a little more concrete, a little more mainstream. I want them to be prepared to apply to a good university. I want them to be competitive with peers who have been educated in a wide variety of systems. I want them to have opportunities to achieve in the mainstream world if they choose that, and, I no longer blush to admit, I kind of want them to achieve some in that world. I'm having to continually convince myself that homeschooling is going to provide a path to those ends, a path I can trust.

The path of top private schools, the path of top public schools--that path is well-trodden. Every single year, dozens of students there go off to good universities, they have interesting and varied C.V.s and have had many experiences. Homeschoolers can often sound like they have the corner on the market when it comes to experiences--the old "other kids are trapped in a box and never see the light of day or have an independent thought." But the thing is, there are some opportunities out there, they're close to home, and they are often logistically efficient. Rather than driving hither and yon to get art, band, Latin, a science class, this, and that, there are places that offer all of that and more in one convenient building, often with transportation right to the door.

I'm probably just being my Type A self, but I find myself worrying more and more that they aren't getting the top-notch education that I want them to have. Or that they aren't capable of what I have in mind (that's a scarier thought, one I am not often bold enough to explore too deeply). It's just a fact that life often gets messy, that a day starts slipping away, that we don't get to the hardcore academics that seem so important to me right now. I find myself thinking more and more that things march forward in a school, that maybe that's actually a good thing. That they have opportunities to learn independent work skills, that more subjects are covered more days. That there may be more order and may be inspiring teachers who would push them to do their best. I'm having an especially rough time with what I feel is the chaos of a lot of the homeschool activities we do. I kind of want what I want, and when I'm not getting it, or I'm getting it with a lot of static, I'm more anxious now to streamline, to boil things down to what's working because the days are short and what I'd like us them to cover is long.

The kids, of course, are asking when the break starts. They can't be fooled the way they were when they were younger. Then again, when they were younger, they had a much more slack mama. We weren't that regular anyway, so the break was just more of the same. They have been hopefully begging for a reprieve from all work for the past two weeks, and in my head, I'm calculating how many days we will need in order to finish our current math book with its 120 lessons (we're on 74, which means that if we get the work done tomorrow we'll have 45 days left, but there are two days off from every weekend, and Mondays are more or less shot, and....). Then I think, well, maybe we'll be stronger than ever after some time to recharge, and absence makes the heart grow fonder, or maybe the brain stronger, when it comes to decimals and geometry.

I think the truth is, the break is starting whether I planned it or not. Tomorrow morning is the much-anticipated A Christmas Carol performance, followed by the kids' party in the afternoon for our homeschool group, followed, it would seem, by our first good snowfall of the season. It looks likes our church group Christmas party/dinner out and Frances's pre-production-week Big Dance Rehearsal are going to be cancelled. But there's little time to get much done of what looks like "school." And by Monday, except for the Latin class they have in the morning, we're falling headlong into the break.

I'm sure that there's much good that will happen in that time. Somehow I seriously doubt that we're just going to have tons and tons of time on our hands, like I'm imagining, though I hope that we do. I'm dying to play a lot of board games, some of the games they got last Christmas that we haven't had time to even try yet, which is a sad, sad commentary on the busyness of our life. We are reading so many good books lately, and I hope that there will be more time for that. Walter is reading Mr. Popper's Penguins after Frances read it for her Non-Book-Club this past week. She's in an in-between stage with the book club she had been in, where she is deeply offended at being placed with the 5 and 6 year olds, but didn't seem to make the cut for the girls her own age. So we had her get together with a friend to discuss a book and have the shared reading experience that she loves so much. Now she's reading Charlotte's Web (alternating chapters with me) and a graphic novel about squirrels or something like that and an adaptation of the Nutcracker and the book that I've assigned her as her official "reading" assignment. We all just finished reading the original of A Christmas Carol, since the story is fairly short for Dickens, an author that they love that we don't often make very swift progress in. The boys and I are reading Crispin, the Cross of Lead together (a book that I've had out of the Henrico Library since October and which is ridiculously overdue because I can't seem to get myself out there), and we have been listening to Shakespeare's Secret in the car and are almost done. Ollie is reading a Susan Cooper book that involves flashbacks or time travel or something to the Tudor age, and we all just finished Chasing Lincoln's Killer. So yeah, we're kind of all over the map, studying Shakespeare (we did Hamlet a few weeks ago), the Tudor age, the Civil War, Victorian London, and the Middle Ages. I have to constantly remind myself that this breadth has to count for something, that it's probably more than they would be getting if they were in a more structured school situation, and it's probably more reading than they would be getting done if our life looked a lot different.

It occurs to me now that it could snow and life could be shut down for a while, and I'm woefully unprepared for Christmas for some people in the family. I'm still a bit stumped for Ollie, and it's only a week until Christmas. No, he's not getting a Rolex. Probably not getting a new flute. Not getting the violent video game he asked for. The crisp $100 bill idea isn't the worst I've heard. It also occurs to me, as I'm sitting here way past midnight, that though I thought tomorrow was "free" until we go to the play, that actually I'm getting up bright and early for Spongebob School tomorrow (speech). Yikes! I better run before I really do lose all of tomorrow!

Maybe I'll make December my NaNoBloMo month. Or maybe not. Who are we kidding?

It's been a very Clendenon kind of start to the holiday season. We have this yearly tradition that I wish was not quite so traditional. It involves our Christmas tree, and it happens, almost without fail, every year.

Back when we lived in Roanoke, we had a special tree farm that we visited up in Floyd, VA, which is a charming area high on top of the mountains that over-look Roanoke where there is a strong mix of traditional small town farmers and an artist community. The best part about the tree farm in Floyd is that it seems to be able to produce snow flurries on demand, which makes for a postcard-esque tree cutting experience. The tough part is that I'd always choose the biggest tree that could possibly fit in our house with nary a thought to its cost, and we were, to put it mildly, not particularly prosperous in those years. Without fail, the tree would be $95 or something like that, but it was already cut and on our car by the time we would find that out, and then I'd feel guilty all season.

Since we've been in Midlothian, we have had to find a new spot for a tree. It used to be a tree farm about 5 miles from us in an area with the disgusting name "Skinquarter" (reminds me of a person whose skin has been flayed open and is lying in a red pool of blood and entrails). But lately they have not grown their own fraser firs, which is the kind of tree we like, and if I'm going to get something trucked in and propped up all fake-like on a metal pole, I might as well go to the Food Lion. One year I went ahead and chose a Scotch pine at the tree farm, and though it looked lovely, it was totally unable to handle our ornaments. So we started going to a beautiful nursery near where Frances takes ballet--Cross Creek Nursery. They have gorgeous trees, reasonable prices, and most years (though not this one) they have free hot chocolate or cider. Sunday was unseasonably warm, so it felt rather wrong to be buying a tree while wearing shorts. But the point is, we got a tree.

But I digress. Here's the tradition. This tree is carefully lighted, ornaments are hung, we admire it as our "best ever," (this year it really may be true), and we tuck ourselves into bed where sugarplums dance in our heads. Then comes the moment when we wonder, "What was that noise?" And the noise turns out to be the sound of dozens of smashed ornaments, a gallon of water flowing across the living room, and a tree on its side. Last night was that very special night for us. Kerry was sleeping downstairs because he has been on call and managing his team in India, who have this habit of having their workday occur at the time when reasonable Americans are asleep. He got the full brunt of the big crash. I heard a ruckus and came down to find that many of our "special" ornaments--the ones that we get for the children each year so that, in theory, they will one day grow up to be adults who have a box with Hello Kitty, Elvis, flamingo, and Cookie Monster ornaments on their own trees--were crushed to bits by an 8 foot tree. Water had seeped under our aquarium stand, which is always bad news (our wood floors are poorly sealed, so water tends to turn things permanently black). We could not get this tree back in the stand. Electric lights were dangling into standing water. It all felt very dangerous, and we were barefoot.

So I went out today to buy a new tree stand, a laughable errand since we have, I kid you not, four tree stands already. Two look exactly alike, only one has slightly rusted screws on it. In the end I decided that we would make one of our current ones work for us. Our "best tree ever" is now redecorated, after, of course, a yelling, insulting, blame-casting fight between the adults after all the stress. The poor tree ended up spending about 18 hours out of water while we waited until two adults were home to re-stand the thing. And the lights still look funny. But it's up, it's ours, and we still have a gazillion ornaments to put on it. It makes me feel like we need to only buy ornaments from now on that are made of resin, paper, or plastic. Poor flamingo. Poor Hello Kitty. Poor Elvis who looks like a leg amputee. Poor Snoopy who was flung out of his canoe. Poor rocking horse from Frances's first year that now has only one rocker. Poor brand new glass ball that read "When you stop believing in Santa you get underwear." Poor Lenox ornament that was given to me by a Sunday School student three years ago. Poor multi-colored glass balls that had no business being on our "mismatched family memories" tree (as opposed to the more coordinated fake tree in our front room that has the giant set of matching blue and silver and UNBREAKABLE ornaments and that never falls over) because they aren't very memorable and take up valuable space that could be occupied by a decoupaged piece of stryfoam my kindergarten teacher made me or the paper star that Walter glued glitter on in preschool or the crossed baseball bats sent by my "Secret Santa" on the August 1998 Babies email list I'm still on.

Yes, today was a cleaning up day. And a day of appointments. And of over-commitment at Christmas that we are warned by all those women's magazines to avoid and just say no to.

Readers, I did not say no.

I was the late signer-upper for preschool, and our preschool requires parents to choose a month and provide snacks for each day for all of the children. I ended up with December, which is a good month because it is short, but, well, it's December. I made glutenous Rice Krispy treats with chocolate chips in them for today's snack, since preschoolers all need a little more sugar. I also sent in some cream cheese and bagels for tomorrow, a gallon of milk, a half gallon of apple juice, and a big box of Goldfish crackers. All of this ended up requiring 3 trips to the Wal-Mart down the street (have I mentioned how horrible I feel about how often I go there and how convenient it is? I would love to be holier than thou and never set foot in a Wal-Mart, but it's just so dang close!). Drop off the boy. Come home and crack the whip on math. Deal with Walter's tears because he missed 6 out of 30 problems and Ollie got all of them right today. Finish reading the last two chapters of _Shakespeare's Scribe_ with Walter and Ollie, a great book that is a sequel to the equally well-written and informative _The Shakespeare Stealer_, which they also just read. Then take Frances to the pediatrician for her well visit, even though her birthday was 2 months ago. Counsel her about the minorness of a finger prick. Recounsel her that it would not kill her, that no, I did not know if she would need one, and chill out, because millions of people prick their fingers at least 4 times a day and go on to live productive lives using their fingers. At least she got a yellow popsicle for her pains.

Then we came home to wait for the fish guy, Scott. Yes, I'm talking about that damn saltwater aquarium again. 55 gallons and just two little fish. Two asshole fish, we were told. On Saturday (today is Tuesday), we broke down and bought a new fish. Frances had a crying fit in the middle of the fish store because we were going to get a pajama cardinal, a fish she declared was "too ugly." I agree--it isn't particularly pretty compared to most saltwater fish; it looks like it has a hangover or has had an allergic reaction to something and ended up with big red circles under its eyes. So we came home with a regular cardinal, the black and white gingham kind that we had before. For a day and a half it hovered about 1/2" above the sand staring at its reflection in the glass. And then it croaked. I've been through this drill before (not the staring at itself part, the dead in no time one). Actually, he wasn't quite dead when we decided to remove his potentially diseased body before he wiped out my whole tank again. I took him back to the store in a little baggie and made an appointment for a full servicing of the tank.

Among other problems, I realized that I don't know where our protein skimmer is (the protein skimmer is important for maintaining healthy water parameters and collects the icky foam that you see washing up on beaches, which is mostly waste matter and byproducts). Our previous protein skimmer needed to be emptied sometimes more than once a day or it would start bubbling over the top onto the floor. Obviously, since I don't even know where ours is now, our current one has never been emptied, and I've never seen foam. Guess what? It is broken and has been since we've owned the aquarium. Thankfully, our water parameters are textbook--there's no obvious reason why we should have a death chamber on our hands. I took a water sample last night as well, and all of our nitrates, nitrites, ammonia, calcium, phosphorus, ph, specific gravity, etc. was right where it should be. "Fish just die," the person told me. Yeah, they do. But they shouldn't die every single time we buy one.

So Scott hosed our place out today. It does look much better, but I'm not positive it's not going to kill something else we get. His theory, though not in these words, are that we have these kind of asshole fish (semi-aggressive is probably the more accurate term). They aren't big--one of them looks like Nemo in Washington Redskins colors, and the other is hot pink and skinny--but they may have intimidated the nice little cardinal we bought, and that made him freak out and go narcissistic and stop eating until his poor little body died of fright. So the fish guy recommends a new, bigger fish to help keep some order in there. This big fish would be exactly the type that the hyper online reef aquarium aficionado militants on the various forums I read every few months would say is not permitted in an aquarium any smaller than the Indian Ocean. The type that LFS's (Local Fish Stores, in cyber-lingo) love to sell idiots like me. Anyway, when I hear bigger fish, I hear more expensive fish, and since we only get back 50% of what we put into these soon-to-be-dead suckers, I'm hesitant. Oh, and of course they are getting a bunch of new stock in tomorrow. Stayed tuned to see if I give in.

Then we had another guy come out and fix our refrigerator and stove. We have had no water and no ice for a while now, of course right at the moment when I bought a new filter. Thank goodness we have cold water again, but this meant leaving the freezer open for a few hours with a big blanket hanging across the front so that we could melt impacted ice from the water line. I'm a food safety nut, so this didn't sit well with me. I'm going to have to purge any fish, because I still have my emetophobic limits.

Oh--there was also the piano lesson. And art class. And the pants that Frances spilled paint all over at art class (and on the pants of everyone else there, I hear), requiring me to take her to Target to buy something clean to wear to hip-hop class.

I got home in time to experience one of my ADD moments, which alas are all too frequent. The stove guy was still working on the stove, so I couldn't get started on my cupcakes, which I had promised to bring as a snack for the Living Nativity cast. I have no idea how large this cast is, but my impression is: large. I had already made 50 Rice Krispy treats last night when I made the preschool snack, but they all needed to be cut and presented in some container. Then I realized we were out of cupcake liners, so I had to rely on my non-stick pan with a lot of Pam. Every time a pan would come out, I'd have to clean 24 little holes so it could go in again. And I had less than an hour to devote to this. In my flurry of activity, I totally spaced out and reached my fingers into the dry cake mix and ate a big mouthful of it before I remembered that I was eating wheat flour and will probably pay for it with a three day migraine. My despair was almost enough to make me just go ahead and eat a sandwich on real bread and a finished cupcake and a Rice Krispy treat and a pizza from Gino's, since the accepted wisdom is that when you have gluten intolerance, your body can't tell the difference between a molecule of gluten and a whole loaf of bread. But I didn't. I popped two enzyme tablets and prayed and put on some rice pasta to boil.

And then I had to run out to lead the LLL meeting, which is normally on Thursdays but this month was on a Tuesday because we could not get the library room we use on the night we desired. I love these meetings. I no longer have anyone nursing, but I always feel good after getting together with new babies and mothers who need to hear that what they are experiencing is pretty normal. I've been reflecting lately how much my life owes to LLL--it truly sent me in directions I might never have gone if I had not gotten involved. It's one of those watershed things that directly led to homeschooling, to learning about homeopathy, to homebirth, to seeking alternative treatments for medical conditions to eating differently from how I did growing up to, of course, the breastfeeding lifestyle and the kind of parenting decisions that still affect how I do things. I think that through the people I met at meetings and as co-Leaders, I had the kinds of paradigm shifts that allowed me to feel confident going against the mainstream and to trust my own instincts about what would be best for the needs of these specific children I've been given. So it was a good night, but a late one.

Meanwhile, while I was gone, Frances was at Living Nativity rehearsal (she's a townsperson), Ollie was at dive practice (he will soon be moving to 3 practices a week), and the rest of the kids went swimming. Tomorrow night is more of the same--Nativity dress rehearsal, Little Prince rehearsal, Boy Scout meeting, praise band practice.

Hopefully it will be a day when Christmas decorations are finally up and out of my upstairs hallway, when trees in stands will remain upright, and when no more glass will be shattered. Maybe it finally will be the beginning of the more spartan and organized life I am imagining for us!

Sometimes I feel like every other homeschooling family on the planet is more organized and effective than we are. There are the days when it feels like we cover so much and are taking advantage of whatever it is that is the current biggest advantage of homeschooling (time, freedom, opportunity for depth, flexibility, tailoring to each child's needs and strengths). And then there are the days when it feels like we should have gotten more done than we did.

The past few days have been very wide open, much more so than an average week. But it still feels like time is so short and there isnt' enough "free" time for hanging out and plain old puttering around. I have this nagging sense that if only my house was arranged perfectly, if only our rooms were bigger or we had less clutter or we were neater and tidier people in general that time would explode along with our creativity. Who knows?

Today was our traditional "Starbucks Thursday," which is an occasion we have instated for the final day of the week when Rutledge is in preschool. Today our Starbucks Thursday was rather short because I had a Freecycle person coming for a desk and a Best Buy delivery at noon. But we still get a good amount done in this altered circumstance, and I was proud of myself for restricting our food choices more today and not making it a $26 outing like last week's. I've broken down again and have the boys doing their grammar right in their book instead of writing it on the computer. This is based on the theory that it is better to do something consistently in a "less" kind of way than to do something intermittently and make it more difficult. We got a whole day's grammar work done in about 10 minutes in the focus of our caffeine-infused atmosphere. It's also a great place to do some of those mildly discussion-intensive things like vocabulary and word building. I have two curricula that I am using this year, kind of in a weaving type of way, for working with words--Megawords and this Morphics Literacy System thing I bought at a conference. Their favorite in the vocabulary/word realm is Wordly Wise, since it is bite-sized and generally fun. Walter, who used to hate this type of thing, now asks if it's possible for someone to major in vocabulary in college. Um, not exactly, but you can kind of make a field of study out of words, depending on what aspect of them interests you most. Ollie find the current grade level too easy, but when I tried bumping up to Vocabulary From Classical Roots and a book aimed more at high schoolers, he got a bit overwhelmed. Not only are the vocabulary words more challenging and less familiar, but the words to select from as synonyms and antonyms in the exercises can be very unfamiliar--"assiduous" and the like.

One of the hardest things for me about having responsibility for educating my kids is that I constantly feel the pull to push further, often quite a bit further than they would be pushed if they were in school. I'm struggling some with this with regard to Latin lately. Should they be doing a 1st year high school Latin program at 6th/modified 5th grade? Should I be taking them through what we have faster than we are going? As I write this, I wonder where I get my ideas. I mean, I guess the obvious question is, "Why?" But I feel like since what we're using can ostensibly be used as early as 3rd grade (not by most 3rd graders I know or have been...) that being on book 2 of it now is somehow not far enough alone. I suppose I need to keep my eyes on the prize of mastery and understanding, rather than the clock. Why is it so much easier to tell a new mother to "watch the baby, not the clock," and yet when it comes to older kids, that advice goes right out the window with me. Maybe it's normal to always have a nagging suspicion that somehow time is fleeting and every moment must be one of supreme challenge.

The best decision of the past week has been starting Rutledge in a dance class. He's the fourth kid, and that seems to be an explanation, excuse, and reason behind all kinds of things. In so many ways, he acts like and is treated as a really big baby, and yet he's going to be five in a very short time. At his age, Frances was already in a pre-team gymnastics program and had been dancing for almost two years. Rutledge has never really done any organized anything except for his private swim lessons this summer. I think I wrote about how Swim Lessons Changed Our Life--they tapped into abilities we didn't recognize and created a confidence in him and in us that he's ready for more than we give him credit for. But this dance class has been just what he needed. There are at least two other little boys around his age in the class, though other participants are as old as ten or twelve. He works so very hard to watch the instructor's steps and to be part of the group; he is capable of incredible concentration when he wants it. All week this and last week he has asked every single day whether this is his capoeira day. As I watched him tonight, I realized that I haven't been entirely fair to him by not giving him more opportunities to shine somewhere in an area beyond the letters and numbers academics that he doesn't give a rat's ass about most of the time. His preschool is pretty academic, and on my more stressful days, I compare him to the other kids, even though I know better. I can objectively stand back and say that this is, in some ways, not the best fit for him in terms of whether it plays to his strengths, but then my emotions and competitiveness will rear up and get the better of me. So the new interest in dance and the attention his is giving it is helping me to get back into the paradigm where I think children thrive best--where you put the emphasis on what they are doing well, on what excites them, on where they can be a star, rather than trying to fit some box that our culture says they should be in. Frances certainly wasn't doing any more (and probably much less) academic or traditional preschool/kindergarten work at his age, but because she was so obviously excelling in her physical pursuits, I didn't think of it so much; she felt successful, and I felt she was successful. I'm glad that I'm getting a chance to build up that feeling with Rutledge now. Parenting is just so darn hard, isn't it?! Doesn't it seem like you'd kind of get it by the time you get to the 4th?

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention how today, a lovely day mostly at home, was heavy on the life skills education. With our broken dishwasher (and I'll spare the horrible story of today and why we still don't have a dishwasher even though one was delivered), we have had to revert to that chore of yesteryear--washing dishes by hand. Walter and Ollie were more than eager to do this, for a price, of course. I had to slow them way down so that I could clean up the sink and counters enough for them to have a safe and hygeinic setup for dishwashing. I am a strong believer that you can't just tell someone who is 8 or 11 to just perform a task; you must stop and give explicit training and ongoing instruction if you want them to do it correctly, and a task isn't worth doing if it isn't done correctly. And let me tell you, I'm meticulous about my dishes! I don't want to put my mouth on the lip of a glass that someone with a cold or other illness has been drinking out of until I know that it has been thoroughly scoured. Then we moved on to the leaves in the yard. It wasn't the ideal day for raking or bagging. There has been rain for far too long, including this morning, and the leaves were pretty damp, which is both a recipe for problems with leaf mold (I get pounding headaches and nauseous when I deal with leaves) and problems actually getting things up. But again, some working together, some cash incentive, and some instruction moved things along. We have five massive, oversize bags of leaves finished, which took care of about 3/5 of the back yard. I appreciated Frances's suggestion that we start in the front, since that would improve our image, but the back yard was absolutely carpeted with a layer of leaves, so it was a natural spot to tackle. Our deadline that has lit the fire under us is a free dump of leaves at the shopping center in our neighborhood on Saturday and Sunday. Too bad the weather is cooperating so poorly (it's pouring right now!). But I felt like we accomplished a good deal and they got a sense of how much work it can be to be an adult, which is something I haven't gotten across to them as well as I should have in the past.

So we're mostly plodding along, trying to stay on track before holidays get into the middle of our plans. Lots of dancing (Frances is at 4 days a week now). Lots of diving (3+ hours a week). Lots of trying to finish up those math lessons. We're reading a couple of things together this week--Squanto and the Pilgrims and the Odyssey. The older ones are still working through Oliver Twist. It's kind of a good place to be--settling into the late fall, when the days get dark more quickly and there seems to be more time for the games, the music playing, and the reading that make our life feel more harmonious and together.

Greetings from runny nose land. I'm getting tired of this cold or whatever it is. It's not all that annoying, actually--it has comparatively few symptoms, and most of those not severe. But it's getting old. My throat has been hurting off and on for five days. My nose is running tonight, despite Benadryl, and I have a headache for part of every day, including now. I have a 4 year old who is still coughing and must be drugged so he can sleep without undue interruption. Our life has been on hold, it feels, in some ways. But in others, it just keeps moving right along. I'd like one or the other. Actually, the little break has been somewhat welcome.

Our little dance issues are, for the moment, resolved. I attended the new dance class today with Frances, and I felt like I wasn't such an awful dancer after all. Okay, so I haven't taken a dance class in 31 years, and my previous dance experience spans all of three months, but I did my best to keep up, and I was really sweating. Frances has gotten the role of one of two Little Princes in a production that will happen in February. We read the Little Prince at home, but in typical Frances style, she already knew the story and most of its details and many of the themes of the book from just the audition. I think everyone has enjoyed getting to know this story--it's good for discussing deeper meanings and for analysis, yet still very accessible to younger readers. I'm always on the lookout for good, classic books whose themes aren't excessively beyond the experience of the reader.

Walter and Ollie just checked out a new book group tonight at our local library. I wasn't there, but it sounds like it went fairly well. They absolutely loved the book, which we might not have stumbled upon on our own--_Life As We Knew It_. It deals with the challenges faced by a middle class family after the moon is hit by an asteroid and unexpectedly knocked closer to earth, unleashing a series of natural disasters (volcano eruptions, tsunamis, out of control tides, excessive seasons, earthquakes) that turn life completely upside down. I would have loved to be in on the discussion, but I was at a LLL Leaders' meeting at the North Side Grille. And I guess you were supposed to be a middle schooler to go to the book group, which would be a wee problem for me. They are part of another book club in our homeschool group, but have had increasing difficulty maintaining enough enthusiasm to finish some of these fantasy series books that are often chosen. It's just not a genre that they (or me) really enjoy, so I can't say I blame them for not wanting to invest the time in something that isn't keeping their interest. I'm not willing to spend my own time on a book that I'm just not into. So this was a bit of an experiment tonight. It sounds like there were only two other participants, but maybe it will grow over time. And we couldn't beat the convenient location.

Tomorrow our new dishwasher comes. I feel so guilty. I am an appliance murderer. Or at least I think I am. We have replaced every single major appliance in our house at least once, and some of them twice in the past 5.5 years. We have had two washing machines, a new dryer, a new range, a new refrigerator, a new freezer for the garage, new microwave, new hot water heater, and this will be our second new dishwasher. I don't know if we're just hard on things, if appliances aren't made the way they used to be, or if we're doing something unintentionally that is harming them. Our current dishwasher, a mere 4 years old, has been doing a poor job of washing dishes for at least two years. The kids are disgusted by the stuff left in the bottom of glasses or on bowls, and this is after pre-washing most things that go in. For well over a year, we haven't been able to change the cycle that it is on--and we're not even sure what cycle it's on. So hopefully this new one, which has a nifty steam feature that is supposed to both sanitize and get off nasty food. All I can say is that it can't happen too soon.

My days are truly packed now. It is a full time job to homeschool four children and to attend to their needs. All of them require so much from me--I'd like to think that we are moving toward more independent learning, but the fact is, everyone needs me to teach, to explain, to tutor, and to keep them on task as much as ever. The boys are doing very well in math, but their work is becoming more complex and they need to ask more questions and be helped to organize their work and answers so that they are both readable and free of careless errors. We play a lot of games lately--games I've made for Frances or that she has helped me make for math, Uno, Rummy Roots, games with the Latin flashcards. This also requires me to be right in there with them. I'm finding we barely have time to cover all subjects in the course of a week, much less daily. So once again I'm finding myself having to determine where to make cuts in our activities or the time we spend out of the house. I don't want their life to be nothing but work, but at the same time, we have to use our time smarter if we don't want longer. It's a good year, but it is requiring ever so much more organization from me to keep everyone on track.


Penguins are a big deal at our house, and judging by what I see on clothing, at the mall (I can't believe I set foot in a mall this past weekend while we were looking at dishwashers...), and just about everywhere, they're a big deal for a lot of people. Art class on Tuesdays is one of the indispensable parts of our week--it's the day most looked forward to, and I have to say, I love it because I don't need to be involved in any way whatsoever. It asks nothing of me except that I provide transportation to and from. And it's a good thing, since I never could have painted a penguin like that.


Some other animals are not so satisfying. This is one of our two fish in our Tank From Hell. I am no longer enamored with my saltwater tank. It's a den of doom, a veritable death chamber, and this is dragging me down. A hobby is no fun when it sucks away all your money and forces you to watch innocent animals suffering and then being mercilessly torn apart by hermit crabs. We have very slowly added some new stock over the past 2.5 months--this pseudochromis and a burgundy clown with a bubble tip anemone. In about 3 weeks, this gorgeous anemone went from huge and bubbled out to squished into the size of a quarter, wedged against the power head and the wall, and eventually dead. And he was expensive. Our previous anemone, who behaved as though he was less than thrilled at the interloper, is once again thriving--I've never seen him so expansive and front and center. And unfortunately, just when I was making peace with the recent loss, Walter informed me that the sea urchin, affectionately named Mr. Halloween because he looks exactly like a Halloween spider decoration, has started losing spines. Lots of them. And the spines are being carried around by the shrimp and hermit crabs. This is not a normal, healthy molting, so I'm expecting another big, icky, half-eaten carcass to remove any time. This leaves us with just our two fish, the anemone, the cleaner shrimp (our peppermint shrimp seems to have disappeared...), a xenia, and some button polyps. It's a rather paltry showing for a 60 gallon tank, but who wants to throw a bunch of cash at more living things to get attached to that are just going to kick the bucket at the first chance they get?

Oh my goodness, I had the worst migraine for most of today. I take Maxalt for my migraines, but in many ways, it makes a dull, steady pain into a festival of nausea and nastiness that can last for half of the day. If I don't nip my migraines either in the bud or in mid-stream, they may go on for days. I always try to use a lesser evil of medication before resorting to the ill-making prescription that works (eventually...), but lately these haven't been incredibly successful. So I had to crash for about 40 minutes this morning when I wanted to be taking advantage of our free hours without Rutledge distraction.

It's a hard week here because of Frances's production schedule. Nightly practices which have kept her out until 10 every night except Tuesday, shopping for last minute items (you wouldn't believe how challenging it can be to find a bright-colored (not pale pink, not black, not white, not light blue) leotard in a child's size small on short notice. I also really needed to find some kind of hair extensions, but I gave up on that. Now they want me to color her hair "any color." Ummm, okay. She told me blue and pink and purple, but is that what the director really said? The world may never know.

Meanwhile, we're trying to pull together Halloween costumes. Tomorrow is our homeschool group's annual Halloween party, and I think we have things mostly together, but there is always some scrambling at the end. Tonight I was mixing up the pumpkin muffins and realized that our milk was sour (actually, I didn't realize it, Kerry did that this morning, but I remembered that he had realized it when I had already started to cream the shortening and sugar). Another trip out for supplies....

Ollie has managed to get himself into a heap of trouble this week and is now on restriction, which is going to affect his trick or treating and the sleepover he had planned. It seems that it's going to be just me and Rutledge out here, which should be interesting. Rutledge is going to be Yoshi from Mario Brothers. I hope that Kerry doesn't leave tomorrow with my safety pins, since the head of his costume is a bit large and unwieldy and keeps falling in his face. I had also planned to make him a Mario Kart, but so far that hasn't happened (and yesterday was recycling pickup, so I'm low on boxes).

Tonight we started reading Oliver Twist at Ollie's bidding. This morning we finished The Shakespeare Stealer, which everyone loved. I think we must have listened to it on CD at some point, since the story was pretty familiar to everyone, though I couldn't quite place where I knew it. I am so loving finally being able to talk about literature and literary and cultural history and having at least one interested party.

Whoa, our life is always a whirlwind! We've been very busy, hence the lack of writing about what we have been doing to keep so busy.

We're on a geology bender at the moment. So far, we are lagging a bit behind in our own science studies at home, but at RES, where the kids take classes twice a week, all of the older ones are taking an Earth Science class during the first session, and this should be continuing through much of the year. Last Friday we went on a field trip to a winery in Goochland County where the kids participated in a rocks and minerals program. And tomorrow we are going to Morefield Mine, one of the all-time favorite field trip destinations.

Morefield Mine is like Williamsburg--it's not a do it once and get everything possible out of it event. It's one of those things that needs to be repeated yearly or so, each time bringing some extra bit of information or some new twist on the endless thrill of collecting rocks. Morefield Mine is constantly in danger of closing, is closed forever, just emerged from being closed forever, or is only open for this here limited time before it will be gone. But like the phoenix or the dirty wormy thing that becomes the beautiful butterfly, there it is just when you need it. So we'll spend a few hours in the morning at the sluice, in the pit, and covered with dirt so that we can bring home yet another bucket of rocks that I will strive not to vaccuum up because they are everywhere!

And then the following week we are visiting the Midlothian Mines, a spot which I pass nearly daily but have never actually stopped to investigate. There is currently a county park on the site of these mines, but I am anxious to learn more about the history of this area, and hey, it's all in the theme of what we're doing lately, so it is a timely opportunity.

Rutledge also had his first Rutledge-only field trip this past week. Kerry took off work on Wednesday to take him to the pumpkin patch at Chesterfield Berry Farm with his preschool class. This place is always a favorite--hayrides, pumpkin picking, a firepit to roast weenies in, a corn maize, the whole nine yards. I was a bit sad not to share it with him, but the boys have math class on Wednesdays and I teach in the early afternoons, so the older ones of us stayed home and got some work done.

We are doggedly pursuing our own work at the moment as well, so all of this disruption of field trips, lovely as they are, can tend to get us behind. I'm pleased that we've stayed the course as well as we have so far. Frances continues to learn by leaps and bounds. All of those promises about how if you leave them alone and let them learn slowly and prioritize play, exploration, and down time to ponder instead of early academics they will catch up in a short amount of time when they are a little older do seem to be panning out, at least in this case. Her reading continues to explode, her fluency increases by the day, and we're about ready to leave behind her 2nd grade math book in a couple of weeks. What's incredible is that a mere 5 months ago I was fretting about her being able to pass a non-ambitious standardized test with 1st grade math. Now she's multiplying, adding and borrowing, and complaining that what we're doing is too easy. There are still areas where she needs work and where she needs to have facts and ideas come more automatically, so I'm in no huge rush, but the change is so staggering. We're also catching up on some of the Story of the World material from last year, and Frances is the ideal audience for the activity book. Though she wasn't feeling her best this morning, she was meticulous in rolling out, cutting, and drawing bricks on her Mohenjo-Daro house, and she is looking forward to making a diorama with it tomorrow. She also has a similar aural memory to Ollie, which is so easy to work with.

Our Lego League is also rocking along. The competition comes up in just a few weeks, and today was an especially productive day. The boys have programmed the robot to complete almost four of the tasks that can be awarded points, which is more than we had dared to hope for even a week ago. The robot is still being tweaked, but they have come a long way in their ability to delegate tasks, problem solve, and work together in small groups to meet a challenge or troubleshoot. This has been a great experience for everyone involved, and I hope that this will just be the first of several of these competitions to come. I am hoping to find some time this weekend to play around with our robot, which we redesigned today. I am dying to work through the Mayan Adventure book as well when our official competition duties slow down some. It is a nice, methodical introduction to how to build robots, but also a super introduction to design and planning for projects in general. If only we had more time to tinker with this kind of thing!

One of the highlights of this week was Rutledge reconnecting with his friend Beckett, whom we had not seen in a long while. They hit it off immediately and Rutledge cannot wait for a playdate again. Alas, my older ones are getting less and less interested in park day. Walter and Ollie opted to bring a friend home from their math class to play Guitar Hero with, and Frances just didn't want to come. I think partly she was feeling a little phlegmy and wanted to hang out at home, but partly she just doesn't have the same good time she once did. It's hard to be the parent through this stage of hers. I think she is working out where she fits in with various groups and people she spends time with. It's hard work. It seems like she's always relegated to a younger age category than where she chronologically belongs, partly because she's small for her age and very active and goofy, partly because her interest before now hasn't been very academic (which I think is fine--she should spend time being a child and not just pushing toward the next stage), and partly because I and she have been complicit with his. But now she is wanting to find ways to have some responsibility, to play the part of something other than the younger tagalong. She is practically obsessed with wanting to start a preschool or to run some kind of classes for babies, toddlers, or Rutledge's friends. And as always, she wants to make money at it. I've told her that that might be hard right now, but she's welcome to spend time with the little ones that we know, and I'd certainly appreciate her helping Rutledge with things he needs to do. But it's like there's some ineluctable urge to parent/nurture/have authority over people younger than her right now. But it has meant that she's seeming more aloof and less interested in social situations with her own peers. As a parent, I feel good when I see her integrated, see her having fun. Much of the time she is off by herself now, even in groups, and she is complaining that she is bored. This too shall pass, I presume.

Ollie is off on a reading binge again. He recently reread the entire Harry Potter series over a few weeks, and he just finished Ender's Game, The Bullfight, and I don't know what else. Walter, Ollie and I just read Where the Red Fern Grows as a read-aloud and finished it tonight. This was my absolute favorite book growing up, and I was sobbing as I tried to read that next to last chapter--excruciating! They both really liked it. Frances has been enjoying a bunch of books as well. She likes reading the Usborne classics adaptations on her own, and we still do lots of reading aloud together. Recently we read Frindle, the Cricket in Times Square, the Littles, More Stories from Grandma's Attic, and we're getting ready to start Betsy, Tacy, and Tib, since she really loved the first Betsy-Tacy book.

Rutledge's current on-list is The Monster at the End of This Book, Puppies are Like That, The Little Engine that Could, Peter Sis's London Bridge is Falling Down, and a non-fiction book called Are You a Spider? For him, repetition is the big key, and we have no lack of that around here.



This is a bit of a creepy picture, but there's always something a little creepy about Latin American productions. After the big disappointment of not being able to perform at the Department of Education this month comes more than you want of performance on the stage! We had not been told until this week, but apparently the younger performers are going to be in next weekend's production of Dio de los Muertos, which will be running for four performances and will coincide with a Day of the Dead festival on Halloween day. Frances is performing in three numbers--Shake Senora, a group circle dance, and a procession of the dead. Next week will be one of those marathon weeks--4 days of rehearsals across town, followed by 3 days of performances, sometimes two per day. The bummer is that she will miss trick-or treating, since she will be dancing during those hours, but the good thing is that she gets more stage experience, and I had meant to go to the festival anyway, and now we have more of an excuse.

It's blogworthy. My house is clean. At least the downstairs is. Tonight we had our Community Group from church over, and I spent much of yesterday and today getting things in order downstairs.

I have this problem, and the problem is that I am severely, pathologically challenged when it comes to interior design...or any kind of design, for that matter. Kerry would say that it is because I have too much stuff, but I believe very rationally and honestly that I don't have as much stuff as many people, and certainly that I don't have more than most. I just have a tremendous amount of trouble figuring out what to do with what I have. I have the messy's issue with feeling like if I put something in a drawer, behind a door, or into a box, I will forgot that I ever had it and will never use it again. But then when it's all out in the open, there's a clutter problem, and I can't tell what is anywhere. Precious time gets wasted looking for things, or I need a book, and there are 13 different shelves where it might be, unless it's under the bed, or in that stack on the plant stand in the kitchen....

I also have mentioned here that the boys were having a problem with a lot of errors on their math work, a problem that has largely been remedied by, gasp, punishing them with rewards. And not just any rewards, but politically and nutritionally incorrect rewards. Alfie Kohn, cover your ears. I take anyone with a perfect 30/30 on their math out for a drink at Starbucks, and a highly caffeinated one is one of the options. So far, Walter hasn't made it, and ironically, he is arguably the stronger math student. Ollie has had a perfect score twice, but has only been out once for his caramel macchiato. But scores have improved dramatically. The real secret is simply the amount of time and effor they put into checking their work before calling it done. They each do the work independently, then they get together and compare answers and settle any disputes (sometimes for the wrong, but that's part of the learning process and the learning to collaborate process), and then they give me their work, which sometimes still has some differences. But they've gone from Cs-Fs to As and Bs since the change and rewards.

But part of my attacking the problem and streamlining the schoolday has involved making a new schoolroom. Anyone who knows me knows that I've done this before. Several times. And that each time we don't end up actually using that schoolroom. But I'm going to give it another go. The trouble is that I need a very large whiteboard--a 3x4 one--and we have had it in our eat-in area in our kitchen. It violates one of my central principles of placing things, which is that things should be in their functional groups. But the real issue was that the whiteboard only fit in one place, and that place was not one you could easily see from the table if you were sitting there with your work. To use the board for actual demonstration and work, they had to sit on the stairs with their books, and that impeded traffic, wasn't comfortable, things were always falling, and it meant they had no hard surface to write on. What I liked about the whiteboard there is that you can't help but see it every time you head toward the stairs or down them. At least subconsciously, you had to see those Latin declensions or that demonstration of scientific notation, even if you chose not to actively register it. Moving it to a new spot means, almost by definition, that it is going to be less obvious and in a less-trafficked area.

Kerry completed his first triathlon this past weekend--a sprint tri up at Lake Anna called the Acorn Run or something like that. He is now convinced that he needs some gazillion dollar road bike and that he will cover up for the expense by selling the Bowflex that he so desperately needed three months ago and which was going to transform his exercise life and his health. Yeah, right. And it absolutely had to go right in our formal dining room, where it took up the entire space. And it came with a NordicTrack exercise bike, which took up more space in the rom, leaving a very narrow path to the piano and no real space for the trumpet and flute stands. All of a sudden, the Bowflex that was only used about 3 times was sold, the bike went this morning, and there's an entire room with nothing but a china cabinet, a piano, a painted file cabinet, and two dog crates. I made the difficult decision to part with my mother's china cabinet. I've had it since she died 7 years ago (wow...I hadn't realized that until I wrote this, but 7 years to the day today), though I got rid of the dining table that matched a long time ago because we had a table surplus and this one wasn't one I needed. Without a table, and with some scratches on it, and being kind of plain tending toward not entirely up to date, I felt like I could get by without a cabinet and pass it along to someone else while I put our Christmas and formal china in a cabinet in the kitchen. So that moved out.

And thus began my quest for a new schoolroom. The goal was to have it be really open and clear, with almost nothing in it. And to have lots of wall space, something that is always lacking in my schoolroom attempts because we have too many bookcases, and they're all tall. This time, I wasn't not going to overdo it. But I think I already have.

For hours I moved furniture back and forth. The requirements for the room are the 12 cube Ikea shelving unit that will hold our school books and backup stuff, the 3x4 whiteboard, the U.S. and world maps, and maybe the printer stand, which is another small bookcase. I still don't feel like I have it right. And I don't have my whiteboard up because it took so much brainwork to make a decision to put it where I think it's going. On the plus side, it's kind of visible from our foyer when you come in the front door. This means that maybe, if you subconsciously glance to the left when you come in, you'll see something on it and it might slip into your long term memory. But I don't have it up yet because I'm also kind of impaired when it comes to using those little plastic wall anchors. I need it up, and fast.

So a lot of energy has been going into not only making the downstairs presentable and clean for guests, but also into settling out this old china, this soon-to-be-gone china cabinet, the layout of this schoolroom, and the movement of items from all of the other places where they have been (the other "schoolroom/library/artroom," the kitchen, the living room, etc.), and managing the area near our garage entrance. I'm just really happy to have a clear living space for even a few hours. It makes me feel such a sense of possibility and productivity!

It is very rainy and cold now, after a long period of relative clearness and warmth, and I have an urge to just sit at home and read books with the kids and hole up in our little insular life. Swine flu reports both from the media and from other families in the neighborhood who have this illness have me a little cautious about wanting to go anywhere. But mostly I think that this time of year is supposed to be a time where there is a turning inward and some quiet time in the warmth of inside. Tomorrow should, hopefully, be a day of relative less-activity than our other days of the week, and I'm really looking forward to it.

As I'm getting ready for bed, there is a great show about intelligence in plants that I would like to record for the boys to watch tomorrow, and I've realized again, to my chagrin, that I cannot operate our TVs in even the most basic of ways. We pay to rent a machine that works as a DVR, and yet we have never, not even once, taped something and watched it. I've tried a bunch of times, including tonight, and not only couldn't record, but couldn't even figure out how to turn on the television itself. Earlier today, I wanted to put on a VCR cassette for Frances and Rutledge, and I couldn't figure out how to hook it to the television, despite color-coded cords that were in the correct colors. In fact, even Oliver, who is our resident technology help desk, could not figure out why we were getting nothing but a blue screen with the words AV1 on it. So we gave up. And I gave up on the plant show. Is it really too much to ask to return to the place wehre you just pushed a button that said ON and the television was on? Or when you put in a tape and press PLAY that something would just play? Every single time I turn the television on or off (and I don't know how to operate the one downstairs at all, and it has no buttons externally, only an invisible touch pad that you cannot see at all, even if good light), it takes me at least four attempts. I still have no idea what the correct order of operations is for pushing the buttons, I just try all kinds of things and eventually one of them works, usually with an annoying time lag. I feel like such an idiot, but then again, maybe I'm just not displaying the best attitude, one where I behave as if I am indeed competent and capable of learning. I just don't know.... What I do see is that I could be using History, Science, and Discovery better in our schooling life, and I'm not tapping that potential.



I'll leave with this image. As if Bilbo really needs any extra incentive to attack plush toys. He has this thing for Webkinz and Beanie Babies--he'll sneak them out of bedrooms and playrooms and from under furniture and rush them outside, where he vigorously breaks their necks. Why, oh why, would we need to make him salivate over a Spiderman?