Living with children.

Oh, my poor, dear, sweet Homeschool Blog-- do you still remember me?

Jeez I am so bad at writing anymore. I feel like I had a contingent of readers and surely they must have given up on me by now.

The kids are well, and learning is always taking place. As for the big shot stuff I wrote in August, do I do a disservice to my fellow homechooling Mamas and pretend like we are doing all of that, or do I come out with the reassuring truths that we are not doing any of that right now? How many Mamas had an "impressive" blog the first week of September and then dropped off the face of the Earth besides a few cute Halloween pics? I know I am not the only one.

A lot has changed in my life since late summer, but here we are. The kids are not only surviving, the are BLOSSOMING. New skills are appearing at lightning speed, and new competencies. On the days when it feels like we "didn't do very much", and I think it is time to start reminding myself of the hundreds of days of my life that were spent under the evil tutelage of a "SUB" (substitute teachers, about 20 years old, possibly sober) and their never ending time-fillers, it turns out that the kids had the best day ever and I am still, after 7 years of official homeschooling, having to remind and remind and re remind myself that the majority of all human learning cannot be measured by time spent against ones will filling out paperwork to tape to fridge doors.

Remember "Subs"? The best of them let us play "Win, Lose or Draw" on the blackboard, or told us dirty jokes or let us just hang out. the worst of them came armed with stacks and stacks of "Dittos", everyone knows what a ditto is, right? Some kind of reproduced, often with purplish ink, worksheet or crossword or word search of some kind, which you had to do, but if you finished it they were all mad at you and told you to do another one or to be quiet. These were invariably 5 grade levels too easy and super blurry and horrid. The nice subs let you work with a partner but you still had to be quiet. they might as well have told us to color.

But this is the reality of school, and this is the stuff that children are experiencing and no one gets all freaked out about it--so when we have cozy days where the only thing that can appear to the untrained closed mind that was accomplished that was "Schooly" was reading together or watching Animal Planet or cooking, my guilt is finally becoming less and less.

Do I want our Home-School to be different? Yes. But that is all a part of parenting, and I am working right now on the whole courage to changes the things we can, accepting the things we cant and wisdom to know the difference proverb thingy. I am re-reading The Mother Trip by Ariel Gore, and really getting it about Chaos Theory. I ask myself if my kids would be better off "somehwere else" and I can say NO for sure. Somedays, many days, homeschool can be just living with and raising your children. Making breakfast, cleaning breakfast. Dressing and brushing teeth. Writing a story. Having a race. Doing experiements with one cat, 5 blankets, a big cardborad box, and 55 magnets. Making lunch and cleaning lunch. Nursey and diaper change before naptime. Reading books. Cleaning up toys. Messing around on YouTube. Cutting out papersnowflakes. Watching a show. Recieving a phone call. Giving a bath or 4. Making and cleaning dinner. Laughing and playing. Getting ready for bed. Putting the house back together.

Horrible confessions, or good wholesome human stuff? So there--I said it. And I mean it. Go ahead and freak out, call the cops. Tell 'em you found a family who is just living and having days together, several days a week. I don't feel bad about it anymore. Because we do lots of stuff that is schooly and we do lots of stuff that isnt, and by doing this, we are doing everything we can to see to it that our children are growing up well. Live and Learn.

How is everyone else's fall going?