Best Homeschooling Week Ever

So, I'm completely ripping this idea off of CJane, who does a weekly "Best Blogging Week Ever". But since she ripped the idea off of VH1's "Best Week Ever", I felt that the concept was fair game.

This week saw me tearing my hair out repeatedly over Austin's geometry lessons. I'm having a very hard time impressing upon him the importance of learning math and why he will need it in life. His lack of interest could not be made more clear than by the fact that he has started randomly squeaking in the middle of my fascinating explanations of topics like "How to Find the Area of a Parallelogram" and "What Math Has to Do With French Fries". But I don't suppose this supports the premise of it being the best homeschooling week ever, so I'll just take a deep breath and let it go (which needs to happen a lot when you teach your own children).

Tuesday we blew school off early and packed off for a picnic at Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge. It was great! We hiked the boardwalk trail and ate our lunch on the new observation platform overlooking the water. I could have done without the (freezing!) wind, but seeing the dozens of fiddler crabs popping in and out of the mud below us was completely (almost) worth it. We saw hundreds of northern shovelers (a small duck with a flat, wide bill) and four bald eagles. Oliver was really into it, pointing at everything and babbling a mile a minute. And, since Austin is studying ornithology this year, we could legitimately call it a field trip. Good times.

Northern Shoveler Pair

'Tis the Season

This is that magical time of year when my heart turns to thoughts of plants, mulch, and landscaping books. Spring gardening is my favorite, and not just because the weeds are still small enough that I can see my plants (though that is a real plus). It's also not just because of the relief it brings to my winter-induced cabin fever. I think the best thing about spring gardening is the boundless potential of it all. I haven't killed any plants yet or failed at my newest yard renovation project. It's also the time when I get to set the stage for the season of outdoor living that awaits. It's that feeling that this year everything will be perfect.

Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep

I have a love-hate relationship with sleep. I really wish I could do without it entirely. For the longest time I thought I was a night owl. Back in my college days, I would stay up until 3 or 4 in the morning. The thing is, I would never sleep later than 8 or 8:30. I was the same way at slumber parties when I was a kid. I would always be the first one up. Even then I think I had a notion that sleep was a waste of time. It's very hard for me to have patience with my family members who want to sleep in. It's not that I'm driven to be up and productive, just to be up. I should probably work on that productive part. And napping is out of the question. I will prop my eyes open with toothpicks rather than go to sleep during the day. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy the feeling of climbing into my bed at the end of the day, and I do aim for 7 to 8 hours of sleep every night, it's just that there are so many things I'd rather be doing.

I guess I can't blame anyone but myself for the fact that my little one seems to have inherited my anti-sleep philosophy. That won't stop me from whining about it a little, though.

Poached Eggs

Homeschooling is the ultimate thrill ride. When it's good--when your child spontaneously says amazingly intelligent sounding things--you feel like the best mom ever. At least a part of you is in there taking all the credit for it. "I, being the most dedicated and insightful parent, have created a richly educational environment for my child and look how he has flourished!" But when it's bad--when your child spontaneously decides that guessing the answers to algebraic equations is simpler than solving them and so scores a grade too horrible to be mentioned in a public forum--you feel like throwing a good old-fashioned fit. If you're really lucky though, your toddler will wake you up at 4am and spend an hour poking you in the eyes, nose, and mouth, so that you will be not only too tired to throw that fit, you will lack the energy even to think about it for too long, leaving you free to finally score three stars on that pesky level of Angry Birds.

A Fresh Start

In honor of the first day of spring, I am starting fresh with this blogging thing. I really love blogging. The problem is, I spend so much time loving other people's blogging that I forget to leave time for my own. So, in keeping with the optimism that spring always lures me into, I decided to recommit.

I first became a country mouse when I was 9 and my family (my parents, me, and our yellow lab) moved into a log house in the woods. Coming from suburbia, the rural life was something of a culture shock. Years of raising chickens and goats--complete with heading out to the barn for milking chores before school each morning--farmerized me just enough to be a country girl to the urbanites I was around at college, but was never enough to completely chase the city girl core out of me. For a long time, I tried hard to purge the country mouse out of my system, but it was no use. I'd like to say I claim dual citizenship, but now, over 16 years after moving my own family into my childhood home, I realize it's time to embrace my inner country mousiness.

I was going to include a list of the top five things I love about the rural life, but they all were pretty much variations on the same theme--epitomized by the fact that my children can relieve themselves outdoors (a practice I STRONGLY discourage, and one of the reasons I wanted girls, but that's another story) without being photographed by the neighbors. But most of the time we put all that privacy to much more respectable uses.

The Anatomy of a Homeschool Snow Day

I'm such a mean mother that I tend to make my children do schoolwork even on their sick days, so you can bet that I don't let them off the hook just because it snows. Actually, I don't always make them do work when they're sick, but I do try to get them through some material if they aren't feeling too rotten. That said, there is still something about a good substantial snowfall that calls for bending the rules a little.

7:30 - Sleeping in is one of the first concessions to the weather. Starting late is no big deal, especially after getting a phone call at five in the morning from John's work, telling him to not come in before noon.

9:30 - Sitting snug on Mom and Dad's bed, watching the snow blowing around out the window, Carter and I discuss run-on sentences while Austin does a little Rosetta Stone French.

10:15 - We watch the bird feeding frenzy around the four stations of the bird seed taste test experiment we set up for Austin's ornithology course. Highlights include two blue jays sparring over the suet and a bald eagle flying over.

11-12 - We get down to honest to goodness schoolwork. We're even in the classroom!

12:00 - Lunch accompanied by a lively discussion about which Pixar characters we are each most like when we lose our tempers.

1:30 - Austin finishes up geometry while Carter suits up and heads out in the snow with Grandpop (I highly recommend everyone have grandparents as neighbors).

Next on the agenda is reading an excerpt from Moby Dick, a group dance-off Wii-style, and shuffling around the schedule to accommodate the lessons we missed (of which there are only two!). I love my life.

Coming Clean

One of the blogs I frequent is written by a woman whose little girl died two and half years ago. I was introduced to her blog by the friend of a friend and found the brave way she told her story and continued to live her life after such tragedy to be so compelling that I began reading her on a regular basis. Last week she wrote a post that was so poignant I haven't been able to get it out of my head. Her honesty struck a real chord with me and took me back to the days when my oldest son was diagnosed with autism--thirteen years ago this month.

Autism is like a death in some ways. I remember the time I spent watching my sleeping little boy, crying over the loss of the life I dreamed he would have. I did a lot of grieving in those days. At an age when most children are opening up and their lucky parents are getting to know them more and more, our son was retreating farther away from us. He wouldn't talk to us or look at us. He wouldn't hug and kiss us. It was years before he could bring himself to say "Mom" or "Dad". And while the years that have passed since then have been full of many victories, I wanted to let you know that I still grieve.

I have heard many parents of special needs children vow that they wouldn't change a thing about their children. In an effort to push societal acceptance, it has become trendy to declare that disabilities do not need a "cure". Let me just say that I would love a cure for my son. I do not relish the suffering and isolation that he must endure and it is the dearest wish of my heart for all the obstacles in his path to be removed. I know that our family has been blessed by the trials this has brought into our life; I don't sit around wallowing in self pity. However, I have had moments where resentment has washed over me. Mostly I focus my anger at my son's disease, but I've also leveled it at innocent women whose only crimes have been to produce non-autistic offspring.

So, to all of you women out there who fall into that category, I'm sorry if I sometimes hate you. I'm sorry if I'm not sympathetic when it comes to the challenges you face in raising your children because I'm too busy thinking that I have it harder than you. I'm sorry if I don't show enough appreciation for the support you show my son when it doesn't come in the form I think it should. I'm sorry for sometimes blaming you for not understanding how it feels to be me.

The vast majority of the time, I don't feel those feelings. I certainly feel them less these days than I did when my grief was new. I just want you and all the mothers that are parenting special needs children to know that my grief is still there, despite all my progress in coming to terms with it. I also want you to know--and this is the most important thing my grief has taught me--to celebrate the little normalcies of your children. They may seem as automatic as breathing, but they are truly miraculous.