Isn't that just the sweetest little face? Rutledge told Santa that he wants a Wii game and Star Wars the Clone Wars.


And then a week later he got to meet Mrs. Claus when he went to see a Santa play at Swift Creek Mill playhouse.

And I'm pleased to announce that there are continued greetings from Winter Wonderland!

The magic continues. We slept late, we read a good book together, and the snow is still out there on the ground. The pull of playing outside was not so strong today, and there was more to do to make the holiday happen this week. Frances had a long Little Prince rehearsal, and I got to do some running around. Here's what I learned: intermediate flutes are very expensive. And there will not be one under our Christmas tree at this time. What I did get was a wah-wah Harmon mute for a trumpet, some things for stockings, and I found the giant Nerf gun for $8 less than I paid for it yesterday. I even had a few ideas for Ollie, which was a breakthrough. What a relief.

I've realized that I am much more lonely than I realized, which is, well, kind of sad. I'm missing conversation with actual adult humans, and I've realized that I've done a horrible job of keeping in touch with people or just plain being decent and making and keeping friends. It dawned on me how isolated I can be when I found myself in the house with just folks under 12 and was relying heavily on them for interaction. They are a lot of fun, don't get me wrong, but there's just something lacking. Shifting responsibilities and just general busyness have changed the patterns of friends I used to spend more time with, and meanwhile, my own busyness has probably prevented me from being more proactive in seeking some things to fill in the gaps. It's not just a Christmas week thing, but a life-wide issue. I hate when it becomes a vicious cycle--I feel alone, then start thinking that maybe I am truly unlovable and unlikeable, and then think that if I wasn't quite so alone, then I would probably be more likeable. Here's to figuring out how to get out of it.

I'm going to start by playing a bit more Bejeweled...

How very perfect was today? Camera still in my coat pocket, hanging on the back of a chair downstairs and I'm too cold to get it. But went sledding and snowboarding (with the fake snowboard) numerous times, with all the required clothing donning and shedding. Got to see Rutledge love the first snowfall that he has really enjoyed. Realized how clueless some of my kids are about appropriate cold-weather gear, since two of them went out with no gloves and with ski bibs, but no coat and realized the hard way that this is kind of dumb.

Played four games of my new very favorite board game, Ticket to Ride. What's funny is that they got this for Christmas last year and we haven't played it even once until today. It's a super strategy game that plays fairly quickly, allows for a lot of player interaction, a lot of decisions, and can have a surprise ending, all elements of a great board game. We split the winnings--two Walters, two mes, and no Ollies, which is a historic first. Cleaned most of my house--four loads of laundry washed and folded, kitchen cleaned, family room cleaned, bedroom sort of cleaned, two bathrooms cleaned, linen closet reorganized, walk-in closet in bedroom cleared up, and floors vacuumed throughout downstairs. I'm loving it. When my house is clean, I feel a huge amount of energy and craft projects abound, reading gets done, instrument practice isn't a chore--everyone can find everything and life is easy. If only it could stay that way!

Most of our Christmas presents are wrapped and under the tree, which is another first for us. I normally wrap presents a day or two before Christmas, and we've never had any under our tree before Christmas Eve, since someone has always been young enough to "accidentally" unwrap everything. This year, no one is doing that (yet), but they are finally getting to enjoy the pleasure that is shaking and feeling the contours of every single thing with their names on them. The most mysterious gift, according to all the children, is the one tagged for "Everyone," and they can't begin to wrap their minds around this. Shh...it's not that exciting, but it is family tree making software, since they are so fascinated with exactly what their relation is to their "cousin" Colin or their "cousins" Jack and Ashley, who are so far removed that I doubt that there even is a name for their relation. But we'll see. It's something all of them are interested in.

And I finally got all those pesky ornaments on the tree--the ones that somehow didn't get on the branches when we first decorated on the day before Thanksgiving. Some of them needed a hot date with a glue gun. Some needed to be tossed because they aren't repairable. All of them needed hooks and a bit of rearrangement so there would be a spot for them. Now there are no gaping boxes with tree-decoration stuff hanging out of them in the middle of the floor. Bliss.

Tonight, Ollie asked if we could make every night be like tonight. Games, watching the new Star Trek movie, making smores in the fireplace and microwave, mindless web-surfing time, and still enough time left to read at the end of the day (okay, I'll admit, they were up until 11:15...). I'm with him. I wish we could always have this kind of free time, and I feel a little guilty that we don't prioritize this and have time to relax and have fun almost every night, when we're typically going and coming from activities, trying to get work done for classes, and tying up the loose ends of the day. I see a New Year's resolution in the making here.

Ugh. When I tried to upload pictures, my post disappeared. Here's the gist of it.

I'm super crazy thrilled that it is snowing! In my 37 years, I've never once experienced a White Christmas or anything close to it. Here we are, fewer than 7 days away from Christmas (I'd actually prefer a white Christmas Eve than a white Christmas), and it's white, very white, out there. I am a snow junkie. I'm an adult who never grew up when it comes to snow. I love how life grinds to a halt, how stillness blankets everything at night, how you get to wear way too many clothes, freeze your toes off, and slide around outside as if nothing in the world matters except having fun.



Today was an all-around perfect Christmas week day. We went to see A Christmas Carol at the Empire Theatre this morning, and the Scrooge in this performance was perfection; I swear he was the real Scrooge, right from the pages of the book. I was very pleased that the play adhered so closely to the original text, since I feel that you can't really appreciate all of the various adaptations until you know to what they are alluding (I had a cute conversation with someone today about how her children saw Shakespeare's As You Like It alluding to Monty Python, rather than the other way around). Then we had a nice, if a bit too pricey lunch together before heading to the South of the James Homeschoolers annual holiday party, which was held this year at a local swim and recreation club. The highlight was a holiday talent show where more than a dozen kids played instruments or sang Christmas songs--what a nice way for a growing group to evolve as folks are getting older. We made some cute ornaments with starlight mints and put together our traditional reindeer chow, and I got a neat idea for a gluten-free chicken salad with curry. All in all, a rousing success. After that, we hopped quickly over to Brookstone to pick up a gift for my Dad, then made it home just in time to greet the first falling snowflakes. From there, life just got whiter and whiter until we looked like a Christmas card. I am still positively giddy when I look outside. The beauty of seeing all of the Christmas lights against the perfect snow, the houses looking so cozy and warm--it's something I've never experienced before, and it is enchanting. Tomorrow we are supposed to get several more inches, and I am so excited.


My dream is to be more like Frances. To be willing to just lie on the ground with no coat, just a sweatshirt, and make a snow angel while I'm not wearing a hat and to just think that this is the greatest day of my life.

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?