Terrible/Perfect

The Grammar of Our Civility

I'm mulling a classical education for the big kid. It wasn't something I ever thought would appeal, but the more I consider it the more I feel that a rigorous liberal arts and sciences education is an excellent fit for her. She has a supernatural sort of intellectual patience. It's unusual, I don't know that I can very well relate to it, but there it is. I'm extremely interested in reading The Grammar of Our Civility. Still not sure about teaching her Latin. We have time to figure it out. I think.

Be sure to drink your Ovaltine

If you can picture Ralphie opening his mailbox every day for weeks, you know the kind of anticipation and excitement that this (actually quite large and special) patch inspired in the big kid. It arrived in the mail today, with a really nice letter, even, on United States Department of the Interior letterhead. Some of the activities were simple, but some were surprisingly involved and difficult. It took her several weeks of significant effort to do, but she pushed forward, earned the patch, and made herself proud...which makes me proud, too. And if they want to essentially advertise national parks and the preservation of wild spaces and historically significant sites to my kid, by all means. We will drink that Ovaltine.

Weird pictures

I know I shouldn't try to take pictures of, say, astronomical events since I don't have a tripod, but on this occasion it made the clouds look like smoke and the streetlight look like fire. Which is kind of cool. Venus, Jupiter, and the moon or...alien invasion! Ahh! Ahh! Pshhhhhhhkchhhhhhh PEW! PEW! PEW-PEW! PEW-PEW-PEW! That's what it would sound like. Obviously.

I did it all for the cookie

I was certain that I had been doing a good job these last almost 14 years of adulthood presenting myself as moderately incapable, but I somehow ended up with a handful of volunteer jobs with words like "manager" and "leader" and "adviser" in the title. It's either my undeniable aura of sharp intelligence and inborn leadership presence, or I'm the only one without a paying day job and I can't come up with a good excuse to say no.

 

Troop Cookie Manager. I want a badge. And to un-do all the cookie eating that's been done this last week. Bleh.

Borrowed Lent

This is what homeschooling has been looking like. Molting teenage eagle, very cold, very rainy bird watching, reading, wonderfully nerdy educational websites. We've been busy, too, but at home, when we're alone, it's simple and quiet. Winter stuff.

A friend of mine is observing Lent right now, so I decided to give up using the internet as entertainment. Ash Wednesday served as a fine start date, but I'm not giving it up for 40 days. I'm hoping it will be the new normal by then. I don't mean that I will NOT EVER EVER AGAIN look at a silly website or read the news or whatever, but I have a strict policy all written up. Web journaling is one of the small concessions to non-utilitarian interneting, something creative (between the writing and the photographing) that I can do for a bit, of an evening, after the kids are in bed. End of day two, and I feel very much checked into my life. My kitchen is tidy. There's actually far more time in a day than I realized. I think I might start reading poetry, or something indulgent like that.

I'm doing this Seinfeld thing to try and deal with my procrastination problem, too, which I find humorous and exciting. It needs to work because I'm suddenly rather seriously committed to a few volunteering gigs and I can't let people down.

This is good. Time is mine. My world is mine. The children grow and grow and grow, I don't wish to miss it.

Poetry suggestions welcome.

Charrrrrd, matey*.

It's been such a long time. I'm never sure how to start again when it's been this long. Randomly? A list? A random list? Sure.

-My older daughter decided to eat a vegan diet, all on her own, which spurred a huge revolution in the way our whole household eats. All changes for the very best. No meat or dairy, lots and lots and lots of fruits and vegetables, very little processed grain, basically no refined sugar or junk food, lots of nuts and beans. We've pretty much cut out refined oils, too, which is still kind of at the outer edge of nutrition science at the moment but I think it's where the advice is headed. I still need to be better about getting a lot of leafy greens.

-We took vegan pizza out for a spin for the first time today, at a pizzeria, and my girl chose the fixins': basil pesto, a vegan white sauce (mostly soy products and garlic, I think), spiced tofu, and roasted garlic. The crust made me sick (not the crust's fault, but it has been weeks since I've had that much starch) but her toppings made me smile and smile. She was totally satisfied...I guess veganism agrees with her, for now. And the rest of us. Whew. 

-I'm dedicated to perfecting homemade vegan pho. I still haven't dragged my lazy arse to the asian market to procure the proper spices, so my attempts have been pretty far off base, but ultimately, I believe in the soup. The soup wants to come out right.

-I'm stupid excited about a bunch of things right now. I started to feel sorry for myself last night, but I snapped out of it post haste. I don't have time for that! Things are happening! I just get dumb, dumb, dumb happy anymore, all the time, over the silliest little nothing/everything, everything things. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes audiobook I got from the library. The campsite I booked for three nights this summer, in an old growth forest right next to an aquamarine glacial river. The perfect, brilliant hikes we'll take there, and the Junior Ranger programs she'll do. Web Rangers. Family Zen. Girl Scouts. Volkssport. Strawberries.

-Strawberries are obscenely delicious and it seems like they should be terrible for you, but they're not. Win. Win! Forever a win.

-The girls and I are headed to Arizona to visit family in a couple of months, to the Phoenix area, and I am kicking myself that I didn't think to make the trip just a touch longer and try to see some of the national and state park action down there. I'm not sure if I'm up for the Grand Canyon with my littlest buddy, but soon. Soon!

-This is funny to me. One of the big kid's friends has a chart-sticker-reward scheme going on at home with her mum and dad to work on some behaviors, and the proverbial carrot on the stick is a pizza at the end of a good week. My kid decided this was unfair, never mind that she can basically have pizza whenever she wants, so long as we have the ingredients and time or the money to go out. Still, she told me she wanted me to do some kind of chart and sticker scheme. I told her I wouldn't do it**, but we compromised and she has decided to read 56 books (I think this was just the number of boxes that happened to be in the chart she made) and keep track with a chart and stickers, then at the end I will give her a hand-knit bunny as her self-selected reward for achieving the self-selected goal that she will be self-monitoring. But, you know, it's a chart. With stickers. I guess I need to get knitting.

-That says "Bun Bun Day" not "Bon Bon Day". Geez. I wish.

*Ha! That picture above isn't even chard. It's beet greens. Derp.

**We've purposely eschewed the punishments/rewards paradigm as a family, which is why I refuse to indulge my daughter's desire to play that out, but I want to make it clear to my dear friends and readers that I realize I have no right to any notion of what families walking their walks in different pairs of shoes "ought" to do. My friend's situation sounds very, very frustrating, and I sincerely hope this route is fruitful for them.

This way

Things are going pretty awesomely right now. The trajectory is awesome, anyway. I'd been feeling iffy and a little fail-ish about homeschooling and now I'm not. It rules. We're busy but in precisely the way I envisioned us being as a homeschooling family: taking on a bunch of what would be extracurriculars if the kid was in school, but are the core of her "out there, in the world" life since she's here at home during the day. Girl Scouts, 4-H, classes, clubs, church. The ratio of adults to kids in her life is always between 1:2 and 1:5. That pleases me.

One aspect of homeschooling that I hadn't thought of or predicted, and that I am coming to hold near and dear to my heart, is that a pretty significant portion of our lives, which flows so completely as an education, with very few boundaries or demarcations, is spent in the development of personal character. We have chosen a number of activities that quite explicitly deal with being a good and kind-spirited human, and she takes them quite seriously.

We are so busy now. Every day there is something. She gets enough connection to other kids. She's happy. Energetic. She never asks about public school. She pesters me to get out her life science labs.

She was working on her math the other day and the little one, who's just turned three, demanded that I get out her math book. She doesn't have one. I told her I'd get her one and she got really excited. So I guess we need to do that now. Some kind of "math" for her to do.

The little one and I will read our way through this list, too. I had finished them all with her big sister by the time she was 2 1/2. Just as a fun thing to do. The little one is barely able to sit through one picture book before she snatches it from you and "reads" it to herself. Funny. Okay, I hope. I assume she's just walking her own path. I try hard to take them on their own terms.

I sometimes think about the long term, and what I want to give them. We've made this unconventional choice, taken on some different freedoms and responsibilities. Why? I feel clear on how I want our here and now to look and feel (slow, for starters) but what do I want them to walk out into the world with? And it seems that, really, if they're solid in their values-values that have been interrogated, put on, worn, and lived in,if they are able to think critically, and if they can express their ideas clearly? Yes. Yes. Yes.

Those are the stars we'll steer by.