Bear Season

Well, I stepped on the scale this morning. 

Not really! I just thought that sounded like a good opening line. I don't have a scale because I get too married to the numbers and forget what it means to have a healthy body despite the daily weigh session. However, I do judge my body by the way my clothes fit, and even though I didn't set foot on a scale this morning, I did put on my skirt and made a sad face when I couldn't get the zipper all the way up. (solution: wear a longer shirt that hides the half-open zipper.) And then I thought to myself, “Here it is, at last. Bear Season.” 

“Bear Season” is what my husband and I call Winter. It's kind of a pet name for the part of winter that we don't like so much—the part where we both eat too much food, don't get enough exercise, and therefore become fat. Like bears. Calling it Bear Season makes it easier to accept the changes that come with the season and keeps us from being bitter. (Not really. I mean, that IS the idea, but it doesn't really work. I'm still totally bitter.)  

Now I'm going to tie Bear Season into a thought I posted briefly about on Instagram recently:

mamapossum: Do you ever feel like no matter what you do as a parent, you're bound to be screwing up your children? It's just picking and choosing issues and baggage to load upon them before they're adults. We're all doing it wrong, we're just doing it wrong in different ways. Nobody turns out normal. Everybody's doomed. 

This is how I'm feeling today and I can't decide if I'm being a pessimist or an optimist with this line of thought. 
#honestmotherhood #parenting#baggage #doomandgloom#everybodyssomekindofcrazy

This is something I think often and really believe. When I think about the people in my life and all the issues and baggage we carry with us as adults, raising children seems almost hopeless. I look at the parents of my peers who did a great job raising my friends and family, and despite that, we still get together to talk about our issues over lattes or wine. And the scary thing is that the ways we can screw up our kids come in all sizes and shapes, some will go unnoticed, while others are obvious no-nos. Some are supposed to be off-limits, but we just can't help ourselves--it happens. Despite our best efforts, we pass on our insecurities to our children on a daily basis. And that's when I get to feeling hopeless. 

I'm sure you can take a moment and list off a handful of things that could be considered "baggage" that were loaded onto you by your parents. Maybe you feel like you can only run the dishwasher once a day at a specific time. Maybe you feel guilty whenever you choose to drive your own car instead of using public transportation. Maybe eating Taco Bell is a sin equal to cannibalism. We all have these little things, it's okay. And the baggage containers come in a wide array of styles and colors. So many to choose from! So many ways our well-meaning parents screwed us up! And we say to ourselves, "I'm going to do it differently. I'm not going to give my kids these issues. I'm not going to make them feel guilty about not riding the bus. I will not!" So we just choose different guilt trips to plant in their malleable little brains. (Not on purpose, of course. That's what makes this such an optimistic post. We're all trying really hard, this garbage is just going to happen anyway. That doesn't sound very optimistic, but it is.)

Here's what I know I'm passing onto my children despite my ENORMOUS efforts not to: NBI. Negative Body Image. 

I'm probably not the only one striving to raise daughters who feel beautiful in their skin no matter what, while staring into the mirror at our stretch marks and crows feet and muffin tops and cursing ourselves for "allowing" those "imperfections." And here's the really crazy part. I see other women and I think, "OMG YOU ARE SO BEAUTIFUL YOU ARE LIKE A GODDESS." Then I look in the mirror at myself and I think, "OMG YOU ARE A TROLL, PLEASE, FOR THE SAKE OF THE EYES OF HUMANITY DO NOT LEAVE YOUR HOUSE TODAY." These are my actual thoughts! Isn't that terrible? And I know my girls see it. I know they hear me saying aaaalllll the negative phrases we aren't supposed to say in front of them. "My nose is too big." "My hair is so limp and thin." "My skin is so terrible, what am I, thirteen?" (So, in that case, I'm doubling up on the insecurities: Not only is it unacceptable to have pimples, but also being thirteen must be the worst thing ever. I am such a sucky mom.) But the whopper of Negative Body Image Phrases that Must Not Be Said is any variation of: "I'm fat." 

"Do I look fat in this?" "Ugh, I'm so fat." "I need to lose weight." "These clothes make me look fat." "Look at my fat face." "Look at my fat arms." Fat fat fat fat fat fat fat. 

WHAT ON EARTH. 

I heard/read a quote recently that was so brilliant I have kept it at the forefront of my mind, not just as a reminder for myself, but also to be able to say it in appropriate situations. The quote is: "Fat is not something you are, it's something you have." So perfect, so true. Fat is something we have and it's something we need to have. And yes, obesity is a problem, and yes, we need to live healthy lifestyles. But guess what? Fretting about whether your bottom looks a little bit "too round" in your jeans is *not healthy.* Standing in front of the mirror and verbally putting your self image through a shredding machine is *not healthy.* 

What is healthy? Loving our bodies the way they are at their healthiest. Loving our bodies even at their less-than-ideal level of healthiness and trying to get to that place. Not hating ourselves for the natural changes that our bodies go through, be it through pregnancies, surgeries, age, or seasons. We are grownups now, we're going to have some scars that mark us as such. Some are easier to be proud of than others, but really, every mark is a symbol of our story, every line on our face, all the fading elasticity of our skin, each gray hair is part of who we are today. And you can say, "You know, I love that I am 35 and have this peppering of grey, but I really like how I look with red hair," and you can dye it and fall in love with your hair again. Or you can say, "You know, I've noticed my favorite shorts don't fit since I've gotten into the habit of having ice cream every night at midnight," and you can move that habit to a time earlier in the day when your metabolism is working more efficiently. There are always things we can do to help us reach or maintain our best health, but even if we're falling short, we're still US. The scale doesn't tell you who you are, just as fat isn't an adjective. 

This all leads back to our current season, Bear Season, when maybe it's natural to put on a few pounds. During the summer I walk a lot and I prefer walking as my main form of exercise. In the winter, I mostly hang around my warm kitchen and eat. Yeah. The natural outcome of this lifestyle is that I tend to plump up in the winter months, then I work it off when summertime rolls around again. I've always really had a problem with that, and felt that no matter how much I try, there's nothing I can do to not gain weight in the winter. (Somebody might have mentioned at one point in my life that baking cookies every day wasn't an effective weight loss regimen, but whatever.) Truly though, my husband and I often talk about "eating the seasons" and the rhythm of our diet at home. In the summertime we eat a lot of greens and raw veggies. I think most days our lunches were just a plate of vegetables and fruit, with a popsicle for dessert. And between those types of meals we ran around outside all day and worked in the garden and played hard and walked everywhere. These days, as the weather cools I want warm food. I want heavy food. So I make stews and curries and big steak and potato meals. We still eat our veggies, but we cook them so they warm us up. We add them into the soups and have them with big chunks of bread. And while we're eating that yummy, heavy food, we're sitting around the table talking to each other. After dinner, instead of rushing out to ride bikes before bedtime, we stay in together and draw, knit, or read. It's turned to a quiet, slow, warm existence; quite the contrast from the burn-all-the-calories Summertime. But definitely not something I would categorize as bad.

So here I am, at the beginning of Bear Season, unable to zip up my blue skirt with the cute eyelet edging (waaahhh) and I'm thinking, "Am I really going to spend another winter loathing my body? Is it really worth it?" I know I'll likely shed the pounds when spring rolls around again when it's easier to get outside. (And maybe this will be the year I don't, because I know that year is coming.) In the meantime I'll do boring inside exercises that keep me healthy and active enough, but I'll also eat a lot of yummy wintery foods, and I'm going to work really hard this year to love my body during Bear Season. Bears don't practice self-loathing. They don't stand in front of the mirror whining about their tummies and wondering if they look "too heavy" in their fur. I have never seen a bear do anything like that. So, I'm deciding right now that I'm not going to either, because I want to try to love my body through all the seasons, just like the bears do. 

My hope in all this self-love jabber, of course, is simply that the baggage and issues my kids take away from their years with me will be different from my own. My optimistically doomed little bear cubs! 

O Unifying DST

It's that time of year again! Last night we saw 1am twice (Or 2am? I was actually asleep, so I missed it!) and we all relished that extra hour of sleep that was so rudely stolen from us back in March. Well, some of us relished it. Likely the people who didn't have kids who just woke them up an hour earlier than had been the usual wake up for the past eight months.

Being a Hoosier, Daylight Saving Time is a relatively new experience for me. We didn't jump on the bandwagon until 2006, so I was an adult, and it really threw me off those first few years. While I'm used to it now and not so bothered by it since my kids are older and we homeschool (homeschooling offers a perfect schedule for people who have a hard time with schedules,) still every year at this time when we "fall back," I feel like my internal clock is snapped back to normalcy. I don't mind the sun going down so early and I love the earlier sunrises. This is the time when my body rhythm is peaceful again after feeling off all summer, even though it's more subconscious these last few years than it was when DST was first introduced.

Even though I'm used to it, though, I still think Daylight Saving Time is dumb. I think it's a silly practice and while Ben Franklin seems to have been a brilliant person in many matters, this one idea I consider an epic fail. Every year on the dates of falling back or springing forward my husband recites the Native American bit about the blanket-- "Only a white man would think that by cutting off the top of a blanket and sewing the piece back onto the bottom you'd get a longer blanket." I don't know if that's exactly how it goes or even where it came from, but it's so true!

HOWEVER, there's a bright side!

--Oh! Last night I read this article (ahem, "article" might be a stretch) on Facebook about how people who are always late are not actually terrible humans, but we are OPTIMISTS and ENTHUSIASTS! We tend to remember only successes, even if they were few, and forget about the massive piles of failures we've collected in trying to squeeze too many activities into a limited amount of time. We live in the moment! And get this--we are MORE SUCCESSFUL (I really can't understand how that's possible) and WE WILL LIVE LONGER than all you timely pessimists! Which really just means all of humanity has to put up with our tardiness for an extra long time. Tee hee! Sorry!

Oh gosh, last night I was supposed to play a show from 7-8:30. And we really would have been on time, everything was going well, but then my friend showed up and she had randomly adopted a dog from the animal shelter that day! And it was hard to leave. (She got this dog and said it was a "boxer mix of some sort," and it was CLEARLY a boxer/pit bull, and it was growling at us so much that we just admired it through the screen door. I'm not saying I don't like Pit bulls, but the stereotype irony of the situation was hilarious.) Anyway, I ran up the steps to play the show at 7:05 while the (albeit small) audience just quietly stared at me as I frantically unpacked my instruments and hoped none of my dress buttons had come undone during my frazzled run.

Where the heck was I? Oh yes, unifying events. Remember how the Solar Eclipse this summer really brought people together? The whole country was so excited and very few of us had experienced it before and it was so neat and unifying. Well, that's kind of how Daylight Saving Time is, except it's twice a year! It's practically like Christmas! We wake up one morning in March and share our yawns and gripes about losing an hour of our lives over social media. "WHAT IF I DIE THIS SUMMER," we say, "I'LL HAVE LOST THAT HOUR OF MY LIFE FOREVER." Since it's always on a Sunday that the clocks change, on that fateful Sunday in Spring EVERYBODY is late for church. I mean, everybody. One of the first years of Indiana being on DST we actually missed like four Masses throughout the day because we just could not get it right. And we didn't know if we'd gone backward or forward. It was very confusing. (This was before we had smart phones that switched automatically for us.) Some years I wouldn't change the clocks at all, I'd just do the math in my head for the off months. (That was a bad idea, I don't suggest trying it.) And there are so many clocks! Just today I saw a friend posting on Facebook that she was staying at a friend's house and didn't know if the clocks had been changed and what time was it really?! We've all been there. These are unifying experiences.

And then in the fall, when we gain back that hour, we are all so joyous and on time for everything, possibly even early! Sometimes a whole hour early, haha! We still gripe together on social media, of course. "Little Johnnycakes woke up at 5:00 instead of 6:00. Doesn't understand DST. I'LL NEVER GET MY LOST HOUR BACK." More yawns in parental unison. *sigh* It's so hard.

Now, you might think that where I'm going with all this is to advise that we all embrace DST and be happy that it's something a nation can experience together and stop whining so much about it. Not quite! I'm not going to suggest than anyone stop complaining about Daylight Saving Time. That's exactly what's so unifying about it! Instead, I'm going to ask that we recognize our vexation and celebrate it! Fix up some hot buttered rum and toast with the rest of the perturbed, yawning citizens of Standard Time Zones across the nation--Daylight Saving Time knows no race, religion, or political party! Daylight Saving Time is nondiscriminatory! Cheers to Daylight Saving Time, the best worst thing to ever happen to a Nation!

***RECIPE FOR HOT BUTTERED RUM***
Per mug:
-Dash each of Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Allspice
-Spoonful of Brown Sugar
-Thin pat of Butter
-1 Jigger of Spiced Rum
-Add Hot Water to fill mug and stir.
(personally I prefer a tad more rum and a tad less butter)

Enjoy!

Hearing from the Village

This week has been filled with the parental exhaustion that comes from overanalyzing every situation. To be fair, the issues at hand are a relatively big deal—considering putting the kids in regular school, debating the continuation of speech therapy for Anja, and the big one—Ingrid's teeth. After a few days of keeping things light on the old Insta (Knitting orange sweater! Coffee! Emerging butterflies!) today I chose vulnerability over the safety of a(nother) nicely cropped photo of my coffee with the #happymorningtime hashtag. (Not that those posts aren't genuine.... they just aren't always complete.) But today I'd just reached my limit and I needed to confide in my Instafriends. And so, I put up a caption about Ingrid's teeth.

Ingrid's teeth are terrible. They've been in a state of decay since they came in, except I didn't realize it was decay when she was a baby—I thought it was staining. I thought it surely was from some medicine I'd taken while pregnant or something. Or maybe the dTap (or tDap?) shot I'd gotten at the end of my pregnancy with her had caused the white stains. They never brushed off. Then one day, some months ago, they all came off over the course of a few days. All those white spots broke away and underneath was yellowish decay. Now, to be fair, it doesn't look awful. And I think the whole issue has to do with the weird way she holds her mouth.... but still. It makes me feel like a horrible mother. I took her to our regular dentist and the visit was super traumatizing for her. Lots of forcing things in her mouth, so many strangers... it was very difficult and resulted in the kind of three-year-old trauma where they talk it out daily. “I'm never going to the dentist again,” she would say every day. But if you asked questions about her experience she'd just start screaming. We were referred to another dentist who does work under sedation and were given a file folder with her X-rays. I'd made the appointment earlier this summer, but it just happened at the beginning of this week. They were very kind to her. They didn't force her to do anything, she sat on my lap the whole time (screaming and burying her face in my chest,) and the dentist was very nice to her and assured her that he wasn't even going to look at her. He looked at the X-rays and determined how much time he needed for the procedure, then told me that he would try to salvage the teeth if possible, but if the decay was too severe, he'd have to extract them. They do the procedures in Indianapolis and they take a lot of time to set up with insurance, so we may not even be able to schedule it for another month. In that time, I'm going to get a second opinion and hope we can find someone who can work on her gently and maybe not go the extraction route. In the meantime though, I'm feeling suffocated by Mom Guilt. Especially since while we were leaving, one of the gals working there asked me, “Do you brush at home?” Goodness. We aren't actually trolls. We do practice basic personal hygiene. Being asked that was so disheartening. She thinks I don't brush my children's teeth. At all. I wanted to show pictures of Elka's beautiful smile, and give them the rundown of Greta's very specific brush-and-floss routine that she does every.single.night. (And still gets cavities, by the way.) But I didn't. I just went home with Ingrid and felt sad.

Until this morning when I posted on Instagram. And do you know what happened? I got forty comments from other moms—some of them just showing sympathy, but many many many of them sharing their own similar stories. SO MANY MOMS have felt exactly the way I am feeling, as they've watched their little ones struggle with bad teeth that don't have any obvious explanation. It made me realize how much we all keep quiet about these subjects which make us so vulnerable. It's so easy to judge the mom whose toddler's teeth are rotting out, isn't it. Just like it's easy to judge... well, pretty much everything. But by opening up a little bit, where I expected harsh criticism, I was instead given all these virtual hugs by other women who really do know how I feel. It touched me so much, not just to have people care enough to comment, but that they would open up the way they did—that the sharing of my own dental woes prompted them to courageously share their own. It was very much a village moment and it eased my mind tremendously.

Similarly, but more privately, I experienced this over the summer when Anja, Greta and I all got head lice. Let me just tell you... I was absolutely horrified to discover we had lice. And it totally caught me off guard. In fact, it went on for longer than necessary because even though Greta was complaining that her head itched, I never imagined it could be lice until a friend (not even a local friend!) mentioned online that his daughter had gotten lice. Reading that turned the lightbulb on in my head (it wasn't a soft white lightbulb.... it was a red tinted one like in horror movies, suggesting imminent doom) and I Googled Image Searched “lice” then compared my pictures to what I saw on my girls' scalps, and sure enough.... * shudder *

Anyway, this isn't supposed to be the story of the head lice (which cleared up quickly and easily, thank goodness—though I still fanatically check their hair for nits every day and probably will until they go to college,) this is about how people don't talk about these instances that make us targets for criticism. Mention lice and most minds think dirty. I thought the same thing, which was why I was shocked that the dirty, bath-hating preschoolers in our family NEVER got it! (neither did Martin! And he's a total dirtbag!) Nope, that's because, evidently, lice prefer clean hair. Luckily, I had been texting my sister in law when this discovery took place, and her girls had dealt with it too. She told me what treatment worked for them and I started in immediately. The next day the girls were having a friend over, so I alerted his mom that we had lice and if he didn't want to come that was understandable. Turns out, she's had it twice and was totally not worried about it! Later that day when we were at their house, her in-laws were there and her mother-in-law was talking about when her daughter had had it! And when Martin told his coworkers that we had it, they responded, “oh, we had it last week,” and then they shared their own personal ways they've learned to prevent it. (Like wearing hair gel, or using tea tree oil shampoo.) I'd gone my whole life thinking I had never known anyone to have had lice, and then within twenty four hours, I encountered a boatload.

Sometimes you're just unlucky and you get lice. It doesn't automatically mark you as a disgusting human being. And sometimes your kids will have bad teeth for no apparent reason. That doesn't mean you put Mountain Dew in their baby bottles. Sometimes these things just happen. And they happen a lot more often than I'd realized. I don't know why we shy away from sharing the less-than-perfect with people. Maybe it's the age of the internet that has made the vulnerability level increase to an amount that makes us unwilling to divulge in the unfortunate bits of parenting, since it's out there for the universe to read instead of being muttered about over coffee cups. I wish it weren't the case. But at the same time, I'm so happy that the opportunity arose today for so many to commiserate as a group of moms who had been through such similar situations, and from all over the globe!

To all those moms who spoke up yesterday in the comments of my post, THANK YOU. Your words of comfort and experience meant so, so much to me. And to those of you who ever think that you must be the worst mother in the world because of something like this, be assured, you are definitely not alone. 

A Reminder for You

Ooooooh, parenting. Good, fun, joyous, hard, baffling.... choose your adjective and it will fit. I don't know about you, but there are days--many days, really--when I think I'm not cut out for it. When I KNOW my kids would be better off being raised by somebody else. Somebody smarter, more well read, who can explain more articulately the ways of the world. Somebody with all their ducks in a row, one of those organized moms who packs cute bento boxes full of healthy food (actually, healthy food is one of the only areas where I really feel like I'm winning at parenting, or at least running a good race.) I don't even know where all my ducks are, let alone having them in some kind of formation.

Often I feel like my kids would benefit from having a mom who is less sporadic. Who goes to the grocery on the same day every week, who meal plans with cute pages in a cute planner, and then writes the meals for the week on one of those cute chalkboards in fancy letters. I don't do any of that. I see what veggies we have in the fridge and I serve them with either pasta, rice, or eggs.

Sometimes I feel like my kids should have a mom who works, someone who can show them the benefits of being a woman in the workplace, who follows her dreams and is ambitious and is a breadwinner. I'm not even a bread BAKER. That would be beneficial to them too, to have a mother who can keep a sourdough starter alive. Or who could run a business, or be a part of someone else's business. A community leader. A member of a team outside of the home.

It would be good to be somewhat fashionable, to wear trendy clothes, cute shoes, maybe not cut my own hair over the bathroom sink every six months and call it good. I'm raising four daughters who don't know much at all about feminine style and trends.

Maybe I should be a mom who runs 5ks and trains for something I want to do and shows them that anything is achievable, even if the achievement you're striving for is just DOING something. That's really honorable. It shows dedication and commitment and hard work.

All of these things sound like such good things to add to my parenting resume. They would make me a better, fuller person and a stronger role model for my kids. But they are things I know I'll never do (except maybe the sourdough, someday, with practice.) Those things aren't ME. I'm not organized. I like to buy cute planners, but I don't USE them... I rarely even know what day it is. Meal planning--Ha! I've tried it so many times, and it always ends in failure. Because even though Thursday Dinner might say "Chicken Parmesan," if I don't feel like cooking or eating Chicken Parmesan on Thursday, there is no way I'm going to be able to make it.  When it comes to running organizations, that's just as laughable as meal planning. I can run a vacuum and a garbage disposal and that's about it.

It's so easy to feel down on yourself. It's so easy to see the moms around you doing so much, achieving so much.

But here's what I was thinking today. I was thinking, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that I'm not a sports mom. It doesn't matter that I don't get my nails and hair done. It doesn't matter that I "just" stay home and homeschool my kids. It doesn't matter that they aren't exposed to big, enormous achievements by their mom. That doesn't mean I won't encourage them to reach for high goals. That doesn't mean I don't love them. It doesn't mean I'm doing anything wrong--it just means that my life doesn't look exactly like the lives of the families around me.

And here's the really important thing, for anyone who might be reading this and thinking the same thing sometimes:

YOU are just right for YOUR children. You are disciplining, feeding, teaching, loving your children in the way that fits your family, and you can be sure of that because they are yours. You are leading by example in things that they will grow from, no matter how big or small your achievements are, because everything a parent does can foster the growth in their children. You are being a good example for your children because you are showing them love in your own special way. You are making them into special, unique people, just by being uniquely you!

And really, the key point in all this is the fact that your children are yours. Just like when they were babies and you could recognize the difference between a sad cry and a hungry cry, you can tell when your older children are hurt, or embarrassed, or elated.... usually without any words at all. You can look at their faces and see when something is bothering them. You can hear a tone in their voice that says someone has hurt them. You can tell when they are lying to you, when their tears are genuine, when their joy is at it's deepest. These are the things that make you a parent, no matter what car you drive, no matter what planner you use, no matter if you cut your own hair or visit a salon, use bento boxes or brown paper bags.  You have a recognition of your own children that is irreplaceable.

It's great to be a parent, sure. But what makes it most special is that your children are very specially yours.

True Old Sayings

When I hear the old saying "Home is Where the Heart is," I gag a little bit. All that comes to mind are rocking chairs piled with faded, musty-smelling pillows with that saying needlepointed on and adorned with two birds holding a heart together in their beaks, circa 1983. Icky. And I have spent a lot of time thinking about the idea of "home" and have even blogged about it before, as over the past three years I have called a lot of different places home. I've loved all the places we've lived. Each one offered something unique and each was a good fit for us in a different way. But at the end of the day, I realized that underneath all the fun of the country life, beyond the animals and the fields and the foraging, I was always a little homesick for my house downtown and the familiarity surrounding it. And tonight while I was thinking about gagalicious old sayings and hanging pictures in the bathroom of my old downtown house (where I had hung different pictures upon moving in twice before,) I thought, "You know... there's some truth to that. Home really IS where the heart is."

Let's recap:

Fall 2013: Moved from downtown to our first homestead in neighboring county south of hometown. Plan to never move again.

Spring 2015: After two brutal winters, move into cabin on the lakes homestead, back near our hometown, with the intention of fixing up the dilapidated farmhouse on the property. Plan to never move again.

Winter 2016: Shortly after the new year realize we can't stay in the cabin anymore for the cold, and that we're out of money and will never be able to fix up the big farmhouse. Make our escape in the middle of a frigid night, stay at my parents' river cottage north of hometown for one month.  No plans. No idea where we'll go.

February 2016: Move back into our downtown house after fixing some broken pipes and the furnace. Hope to return to the cabin property in the spring.

April 2016: Definitely not moving back to cabin property. After initial sadness, settle in for a fantastic summer downtown and feel (mostly) great about living in the old place, yet still hopeful that we can land ourselves back in the country at some point.

November 2016: In an unforeseen turn of events, we are given the opportunity to live at the farm of some friends, north of our hometown. It's the farthest commute to town we've had, but it's where our animals went when we needed to rehome them upon our move to town. Also at this time our friend arrives home from her five month hike on the PCT and moves in with us. We move out and she moves into our house.

Winter 2016-17: Live in an undeniably cozy and idyllically rustic farmhouse taking care of cattle, pigs, sheep, geese, etc. Lots of woods walking, first time experiencing lambing season, most beautiful setting imaginable. Hygge Central! Time of stay is undetermined.

Spring 2017: All cars have broken down. Over the winter the furnace at our downtown house needed servicing three times. Martin works one full time job, one part time job, and is carrying a full course load in grad school. No time to care for animals, no money to service vehicles, and to my surprise, we're growing more and more homesick. Simple country life is seeming less and less simple every day.

Currently: Moved back downtown to the old house we bought ten years ago. Step into it and it feels like I've come home. There is no adjustment. There's no weird feeling of "I wonder when this will feel like home," or "I wonder if we're making the right choice."  We are just exactly where we're meant to be. Plan to never move again.

And it makes me think, was my heart here all along? Did I just kind of scatter pieces of my heart at all those other places? If I went back to live at any of them, would it feel like home? And the answer is, I don't think so. I definitely left bits of my heart at every place, but none of those other houses ever felt as much like home as this one--though our first homestead is a close second. I ask the girls and they say it feels like all these moves have just been a big adventurous vacation. I hope they remember it only positively and not just as being a massively unstable time.

So now what? Now that our bodies are back where our hearts have always been, we're jumping into the "down-home downtown" lifestyle. LOTS of gardening. Beekeeping. Painting walls and refrigerators and playing music again. Farmers Markets, patio dinners at the brewery, impromptu porch gatherings, a pedestrian lifestyle. Sneaking off to the co-working studio across the street to blog while Martin puts the kids to bed. (Heh heh heh.) Not eating drive-thru food ever again, because we can always be home for dinner. Cooking everything from scratch. Walking everywhere. This is a simple, wholesome, good life.

I loved living in the country and the thing I'll miss most is keeping big animals. I will always miss my goats and sheep. I'm working on getting urban chickens legalized here, but so far my efforts have not ended in success... I really doubt urban goats will ever be allowed. But there are things about the city life that are just really, really wonderful. Things you can't get in the country.

I was never good at asking people to come out to our country homes. I felt like it was too far of a drive, it seemed unfair to ask anyone to make a whole big trip just to see me.  As a result, I was alone. A lot. Even though I kind of chose not to have people out, it was an isolated sort of existence. I would go long stretches without seeing people outside of my family--sometimes up to a week without seeing anyone other than my husband and kids. That might be okay for some people, and I might have thought it was okay for me, but it wasn't. All it did was enhance my social anxiety when I would be around people. I believe that humans are social creatures, and even introverts need to have social experiences beyond caring for their family. (because I wasn't EVER actually alone--I was parenting 100% of the time.) Being back downtown, people drop by the house unannounced. I don't need to plan a day around someone visiting--we just sit in the yard for half an hour while the kids play, then go on. It's *perfect.*

Another benefit is the small space. I know, that sounds kind of ridiculous since the whole draw of country life is all the wide open space, but honestly, I find it pretty intimidating. I feel very vulnerable out in the open. Our downtown is in the river valley; we're protected from the wind, and we have so many huge, old trees all around us. It's wonderful to be able to walk outside and find what I need for dinner just steps from my kitchen door. Onions, kale, basil, lettuce.... all right outside on my patio or in the garden boxes alongside the side fence. It's really wonderful.  I don't have time to forget that I've got butter melting on the stove when I don't have far to go! Soon we will have peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, raspberries and peaches, too. All from our tiny, beloved lot.

The most amazing part for me about moving back this time around has been my total embracing of the downtown life. The last time, I still wanted the country life, at least bits of it. (Mostly the beautiful bits.) I had hard times, feeling over the urban-ness of urban life. I would feel pangs of envy when other people would post pictures to social media of their homesteads. But this time, I'm astounded by my lack of jealousy! I remember our time in the country as a really wonderful time and I look at where I am now and I feel perfectly content. It's a really good feeling.

Maybe I'll get the itch down the road. Maybe we will go back to homesteading later in our life. Never say never, as another saying goes! But for now, I think it's safe to say we're not going anywhere for a long while. We're so very happy to be home!

My Worst Confirmation Ever

Recently I had the privilege of standing by a young man I've known almost his entire life, as his confirmation sponsor. Confirmation is a big deal in the Catholic church--you don't usually have a choice when you're baptized, but receiving the sacrament of confirmation is really accepting the teachings of the Church as a person capable of making big decisions. Similar to Bat Mitzvahs and Bar Mitzvahs, (not theologically, but in the coming-of-age sense,) Confirmation is kind of when you become a grown up in your religion. Baptismal promises are renewed and you receive, along with grace, the fruits of the Holy Spirit. The Mass was beautiful and my nephew/godson was also being confirmed, with my dad as his sponsor, which made it even more of a special event.

But what really made it "special" were my two sidekicks for the evening.

My two kicking, screaming, fighting, squirming, gas-passing, lie-down-in-the-aisle-and-refuse-to-move sidekicks named Elka and Ingrid.

I knew it was going to be a rough night. I'd been lucky the night before for being able to leave all four girls with my husband while I attended the rehearsal, but for the night-of, he was going to be at work all through the Mass with no chance of getting away. Now, you might be thinking, "Didn't you say your nephew and dad were there too? Couldn't the girls sit with other family members?" Ha-ha. Yes, that was the plan. But what is that quote from my beloved Robert Burns about the best laid plans, anyway? Oh that's right, it all ends in doom and humiliation. I think that's what he meant.

We drove into town early in order to stop by the Catholic bookstore downtown and pick up a gift for each boy, then I'd planned to swing through a drive-thru for sandwiches or something to make sure that the girls had full bellies in order to get them through the long Mass (I've noticed our bishop talks very slowly) with help from the promise of a party afterward at Aunt Sarah's house. Just as we were getting into the van after purchasing the gifts, I got a text from my bestie saying it was Jimmy John's dollar sub day! That was perfect, because as well as being nervous about the upcoming evening, I was also flat broke and dollar subs sounded like a host of angels coming specially to save my day.

I'm an idiot!

I could see the line from half a block away. Hoards of people in a line that wound clear around the building, the parking lot overflowing with vehicles all the way into half of the neighboring lot (which is huge because the neighboring lot is a Menards hardware store!) I gave the girls the bad news that we didn't have time to wait half our life for dollar subs, but I still had to wiggle my van through the parking lot mess and turn around before I could be on my way to find something else for them to eat. At this point I was already out of time. I had about twenty minutes to get food and then drive across town, battling after-school traffic and coming dangerously close to the 5 o'clock rush hour. There were three places to eat between us and our destination: McDonalds, Arby's, or Starbucks. But, as is the recurring theme of this post, I'm an idiot! And I let the kids decide.

It was a unanimous vote for Starbucks.

"Ok!" I thought, "I had halfway hoped they'd pick Arby's, but I'll make them get something somewhat filling like a big pastry or a muffin." But the problem with that logic is that pastries and muffins aren't filling at all, no matter how much you will them to be.

We got the pastries. We ate them in the car. We actually did make it to the church right exactly on time. Now, I had talked to my family about my situation for the evening, and the plan was for my girls to sit with my mom and sister and nieces. It was a perfect plan. Perfect, except for the fact that we weren't dealing with average children, we were dealing with MY children, who can't do ANYTHING as it's been planned.

Admittedly, I had expected to have Ingrid with me during the Mass. She has been especially clingy lately, not wanting to be away from me for any amount of time, and that's fine, she's only three, she's really pretty good in church, it wouldn't be a big deal. Besides, our church even has a sign out front that declares us to be "A Pro-Life, Pro-Family Parish!" so really, who's going to notice an extra three-year-old in the procession line? She'd blend right in. And I had talked to Elka about the plan. I had told her that she and Anja and Greta would be sitting with Ooma. Over and over while we were waiting, I was explaining, "We are waiting here for Ooma and when she gets here you're going to sit with her." This had been a running theme of the past few days, she was NOT in the dark about this plan.

My mom and sister arrived just a few minutes before the Mass began, and I said I'd go ahead and keep Ingrid with me, no biggie, and I tried to hand Elka off to them and.... she wouldn't budge. She wouldn't let go of my hand. She looked at me with her scrunched up face that says, "I do not feel comfortable right now, and I am not going with these people, I'm staying with you, and if you say otherwise, you'll hear about it loud and clear." This face is the equivalent of Ingrid screaming, "NO! NO! I'M STAYING WITH MAMA!" We tried gently coaxing her, we tried reminding her of the party afterward, we tried luring her with the promise of sitting in the choir loft (a very rare treat!) We tried explaining the importance of the night and my role in the occasion.... we tried it all and only got closer and closer to that brink of a meltdown. At the same moment, we all said, "not worth it!" and I took Elka and Ingrid both up to my designated seat, which was a single seat (because I'm really only one person, I just have two independently functioning appendages) between two other sponsors and wrestled them into the pew where they immediately started fighting over my lap.

I wish I could say that they soon calmed down, that they were mesmerized by the Mass, or at least interested in the trumpet and the really beautiful dresses that some of the young ladies were wearing, but no. I wish I could say that after a few minutes they were able to relax and sit with my mom after all, or at least sit with my dad who was in our same pew, just a few seats down, but no. They didn't change their minds, and they didn't calm down. In fact, things escalated.

In the time between the processional song and the actual sacrament, we had all manner of fights. Screaming, shoving, snatching each other's peg dolls. (I keep four peg dolls in my purse for Mass--they are four different saints and I use them so that people will think I'm holier than I actually am. This effort is negated by the fact that the kids drew the faces on so Mother Theresa's head is just a bunch of blue scribbles, making her largely unrecognizable, and also that I'm frequently saying very unholy things like, "don't chew on St. Francis!" and "St. Faustina doesn't make toot toot noises!") In short, it was a circus. A miserable, humiliating circus. When it was time to walk in a line up to the front for the kids--ahem, the young adults--to be confirmed, it was my job to walk behind the young man I was sponsoring with my right hand on his right shoulder. The instructions were very clear. Right hand on right shoulder. I am a rule follower! I explained to Elka ahead of time, "when we walk up to the front, you will need to hold onto my skirt because I won't be able to hold your hand."

Ha-ha.

Elka did not feel like playing along that evening.

Elka did not feel like holding onto my skirt. Elka only wanted to hold onto MY RIGHT HAND.

No problem, I have two hands. I'll just shuffle her around to the other side and have her hold my left hand (which is also the arm I'm carrying Ingrid with.)

ELKA SAID NO. ONLY YOUR RIGHT HAND WILL DO.

Elka threw herself down on the floor in the middle of the church as we were processing to the front and screamed.

This is like the stuff of Catholic nightmares.

I pulled her up off the floor, switched Ingrid to my right arm, held Elka's hand with my right hand, WHICH HAD OTHER OBLIGATIONS, and I placed my left hand on the young man's right shoulder, which was not the way it was supposed to be, but I found myself thinking desperately, "Well, I supposed people who only have a left arm would have to use their left arm, and in this case it's kind of like I don't have a right arm, since it is clearly needed elsewhere, so maybe God (and the CCD teacher who will probably never speak to me again... and the bishop, whom I don't know personally, but understand is very strict...) will understand."

That was the worst of it. After the sacrament had been received, I slipped out the back of the church (not before trying once more to dump the kids with my mom, to no avail) for some air. Elka and Ingrid launched immediately into a game that involved a lot of screaming about erupting volcanoes and running up and down the stairs over and over again. They were happy, so I let them play. Eventually we returned to the church, and only for the very end of the Mass, back to our seat, where they were just as horribly behaved as they had been before. But at least then it was over.

I couldn't help but wonder during all this, WHYYYYYYY, GOD!? I came with the best of intentions, I came to do a really good thing despite difficult circumstances. And the whole sacrament is about receiving the Holy Spirit--was the Holy Spirit so preoccupied with the sacrament that no peace could be spared for my little sideshow of wild beasts? WHAT'S WITH THAT, JESUS??? If there's some kind of lesson here, I DON'T GET IT.

Afterward a family friend who has known me my whole life came up to tell me I'm a good mom and that I handled it all really well and that I'm a good lesson for parents like him who are still catching up in the parenting game. His words and kindness were such a comfort to me. Because really, I was totally mortified. It was one of those instances where on the drive home you calculate how much trouble it would be to switch parishes. I certainly didn't look or feel like a good mom and the behavior of my kids suggested they'd never been in a church before in their life, despite the contrary facts. My one sliver of hope is that Anja and Greta are perfectly behaved now, and I am not raising the littler ones any differently, so surely in a few years, they too will know how to behave in solemn situations.

I'm still trying to make out what kind of lesson or benefit could have been hiding in this whole event. Maybe it was just giving a roll-with-it example that some other parent could benefit from seeing, or solidarity with somebody else who has really poorly behaved young church attendees. Maybe witnessing such atrocious behavior from other children encouraged a parent to bring her kids to Mass. Or maybe I was just a really loud reminder for everyone in the church to appreciate their own offspring because "PTL mine aren't THAT bad!" Honestly, I can't really see how anything positive could have come from that fiasco.

But I'm trying to believe that something good came from it because, if nothing else, it does sound kind troublesome to switch parishes.

On Pee and Boogers

I'm finally getting to the point in my parenting journey where I can see that the little things that worried me a lot when my kids were little have all worked themselves out to be not a big deal, and that in some ways my big kids have become normal humans who behave in acceptable ways. This was definitely not always the case with them.

Anja and Greta are ages 9 and 8 years now and, I know, that leaves me plenty of time to mess them up. But, so far, the parenting style of my younger days that made me occasionally stress about how they were going to turn out, has proven to be an adequate style that produced two children who make their bed, say please and thank you, shut the door during AND wash their hands after using the bathroom.

They weren't always like this.

Since toddlerhood, Greta has matured into a marvelously creative individual with delightful manners. She speaks well to grownups (even if she does get a little hyper sometimes,) she is sweet and loving (though she still has a tart side that shows every once in awhile,) and even when her little sisters pull her hair or give her a little punch for no reason, she (usually) reacts by calmly ignoring and waiting for a parent to intervene. She apologizes. She (for the most part) thinks before she speaks. She's a good kid. I no longer think she's a sociopath.

But there was that one time when she was about two, that I fixed her hair and stroked her chubby little  cheeks that are a perfect complexion, and looked into those dark shiny eyes and told her, "Greta, you have the most beautiful skin." And she looked back at me with a death glare and said, "My will eat you."

Hm. That doesn't sound very loving or.... normal.

There was a time when, as toddlers, Anja and Greta would gleefully hop into the bathtub, eager for their first and favorite game of bath time, which was called, "Let's Pee on Each Other." They would stand there and pee, and see who could get the most pee on the other one. It was gross, it was weird, it was slightly concerning. I wondered vaguely, are they going to go to college and think it's okay to pee on their dorm-mates? Are they going to be forever trained to let loose in the tub? I mean, I guess that's kind of a personal decision, but it's still gross, and I don't want to be at all responsible for that kind of training. What about swimming pools? What if MY kids are the the ones who put the "P" in the neighborhood Ool?

The phase didn't last forever. I told them it was gross, they continued to do it anyway (and find it absolutely hysterical,) and then eventually (probably after only a few weeks) they stopped doing it. I don't remember them ENDING the game, I only laugh when I remember that they did it.

Also the big fits, the massive meltdowns, the absolutely colossal tantrums thrown both in public and privately, over things like "I want to touch that pink balloon tied to the car at the dealership we just drove by," or, "You squirted my soap from the dispenser on the left and I wanted soap from the dispenser on the right AND I WANTED TO DO IT MYSELF, YOU MONSTER." Things like this pass. And it's weird, because even though everyone loves balloons, eventually kids become less passionate about balloons and you can look back at how they really would have given their life just to touch that one balloon that in that tiny moment they loved with their whole itty bitty toddler heart, and when you remember that day and see them now as an 8 year old (or older) doing things that normal, average 8 year olds do... there's a little tug. There's just a tiny bit of sadness that she's not two anymore. And even though that whole balloon phase had it's challenges (do you realize how many balloons are floating around the world in locations that make them completely untouchable?!) it was also full of sweetness and innocence... and now it's over.

The reason I bring all this up is that now my big girls are big and my little girls are at that age where they do some concerning things. Ingrid and Elka are now 3 and 4 years old, and they partake in their fair share of concerning antics. Many are the exact same things Anja and Greta did at the same ages. Sometimes I have to remind myself that my parenting hasn't really changed much and I take heart seeing how Anja and Greta have turned out (relatively) normal so far. It only makes sense that these weird little idiosyncrasies of the younger two will work themselves out in time.

This afternoon the two little ones and I were snuggled up on the couch reading storybooks together. Really, it was an image of parenting perfection. They've both had a little bit of a cold this past week and have had some "backup" in the nasal region, so I wasn't really surprised when Ingrid started digging and pulled out a large specimen.

I was surprised, however, at Elka's reaction, which was to lick her lips, say, "I want it!" with a big smile, reach over and pluck it straight off her sister's finger and pop it into her own mouth.

Wow.

I was even more surprised when, from the neighboring nostril, Ingrid produced a second big find, and said to me, "You want it?" And before I could answer, she had shoved it into my mouth.

....

.........

omg.

So, here I am now, at the end of the day, looking back at their little antics with laughter (and a side of nausea) and I think of how tenderly I remember the weird, wild, fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants days of raising the older two and see how similar these days are. I know these days filled with challenges and "interesting" anecdotes won't last forever. It makes me appreciate them so much more. I have to wonder though, will I someday look back on these current days and shed a sentimental tear over the memory of somebody else's booger being placed in my mouth?

And then I worry that I might, and I think my kids really are doomed after all.

What do we DO all day?!

Our homeschool year started out rocky at best this year. Actually, it was awful. We ended last year on a desperate note and I spent the summer dreading the start of our homeschool semester. I glanced at my curriculum a few times, but put off buying books or making plans until the weekend before our start date. And then our first day arrived and I decided, no no, we'll start the next week instead. Shameful! I just could not get moving.

But I did buy some books and we did begin and it was sluggish and involved daily battles over every detail of our day. We were so far from the vision of a happy, organic, homeschooling family that I talked daily about just putting the kids in school. I felt like such a huge failure. (Which is silly--nobody should ever feel like a failure for putting their kids in school. School is great, homeschool is great, both choices have their pros and cons, just like every other decision in the world.) But in the pit of my disastrous homeschooling hell, the idea of throwing them into public school and running away from my problems made me feel like a failure.

We chugged along. We made it to winter break. They'd learned some stuff. (Maybe. I hope.) And I thought to myself, "The next semester will be better. It will be a fresh start. I will finally find my groove. IT HAS TO GO BETTER THIS TIME." One benefit at this point was that we had moved to where we're living now, which is a home that is very conducive to homeschool. The layout of this house is marvelous and there's so much natural light. It is a small house, but the little girls can be nearby, yet playing on their own, because the floor plan is pretty open. It's not like at our downtown house where we mostly did schooling at the kitchen table, and the little ones wanted to be involved but they'd just end up fighting, or falling off their chairs, or eating our experiment supplies, or pooping on school books. (Or on a really stellar day, all of the above.) So starting the second semester was already better than before. AND, we were back in the country with animals about to be born and a great sledding hill, so everyone was getting adequate outside time, which was an immediate improvement upon our days. All of these were benefits, but the real turning point came about rather unexpectedly.

I documented this fairly well on my Instagram account right when it happened, but I used to be a member of a Facebook group organized for the specific curriculum that we follow. It's a Catholic, Charlotte Mason-based curriculum, it's free, it's got great resources, well laid out, and follows a solid Charlotte Mason philosophy. I really do like it. However, I did not realize how passionate these people are about following the rules of the philosophy. I didn't realize how intensely they believe that workbooks are NOT OK. So, posted to the group about something (I don't even remember what it was about, but I was pretty much looking for solidarity and the post itself was very lighthearted) and included an unrelated picture of what I thought was a hilariously filled out page of Greta's workbook, on which she had answered a question with "THIS IS SO BORING." Whooooweee! I got torn apart for posting a workbook--for the very fact that I USE workbooks--and was told that my daughters writing (I think the commenter meant handwriting) was "junk" and that I needed to step away from teaching interrogative, exclamatory and declarative sentences and focus instead on phonics and knowing that sentences begin with a capital letter. The comment was pretty harsh and it made me angry. It made me angry mostly because she felt okay criticizing a seven-year-old, but also because Greta's work was NOT junk. Greta is an excellent writer (better than her older sister, but don't tell Anja I said so) who taught herself to read by reading American Girl books before she had even turned 5. This stranger was tearing apart my methods and my child's work without even knowing who I was, or at what academic level my child was working in.

So, I had myself a little hissy fit. I furiously left that Facebook group, and immediately (because I'm stubborn and childish) ditched my curriculum. For the next week or two, we focused NOT on what was next on our yearly syllabus, but we took our own path and learned bigger things than what was listed in our curriculum for this year. We kept doing our funny workbooks because even if it IS "anti-Charlotte Mason," what do I care? My kids like them. Yes, they get boring. Geezopete, EVERYTHING gets boring. When we get bored, we move on to something else. I've been getting more books, some from the old book list, some not, and of our own accord we started reading Shakespeare and memorizing the Preamble to the Constitution and studying the Bill of Rights in depth. No we've moved on to the presidents. This is stuff I didn't learn in school. We learned about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and that was it. We did not study the amendments in depth (or if we did, it sure didn't stick) when I was in school. Recently I was looking back over the book list of the old curriculum (which I do still use as a loose guide) before a library run, and I found that Anja has read almost every book on the yearly lists all the way through the next year! A great many of them have been family read aloud so Greta has heard them too. After my confrontation with that group, my eyes were opened to see that we are doing a fine job--BEYOND fine. Without noticing it amid our daily struggles of math problems (because the struggle was usually math,) my kids had moved beyond their grade level in their assigned curriculum, and now I'm feeling super comfortable with my second and third grader, teaching them on our own self-directed path.

So, what do we DO? Well, there are a few things that I've noticed about our days at home. For formal learning we use various books as our base--we have two history books that are very good at giving ideas that we can run with; one is "The American Story," which is stories from American history, a lot of which are about specific important people that we then can research and learn more about on our own. Another is The Biggest Book of History, which is one of those cartoon-style books that moves through time, starting with the dinosaurs and leading through modern times. It's great because it gives little detailed snippets of times and cultures, but it doesn't talk about anything in depth, so we can take those three pages of cartoon snippets and then look in other books for more information. We've finished learning about the Ancient World and now we're in Medieval times. (This is separate from US History, which we also do.) This all goes hand in hand with geography. We use this same open-ended method we use for Literature. We read a poem from one of our poetry books, then we study the author, read other works of the author, etc. Math is drill, spelling, cursive writing, and grammar are done in workbooks. We use the religion book prescribed from our old curriculum, as well as various other books I've collected over the years. Honestly, science is what's really lagging for us this year; last year we had a subscription to the Magic School Bus monthly experiment packets, and that was AWESOME. They learned so much. This year we don't have that, so we just do random science stuff. Not very structured. They're probably not learning anything.

So, that's what we do for more formal work, but the way we travel through our days has a few key elements as well, that I've been more recently paying attention to.

One thing we do is talk all the time. Everything is interactive in our family. If someone is reading a book, we talk about it. If one of us learns something new, we talk about it. (This is parents and children.) We ask each other questions. We aren't afraid to ask what something means, or how something works, or to say, "Why is that so?" or  "I don't remember that," and go over it again. Everything is open to discussion.

We do a lot of art. Painting, drawing, singing, learning about artists, poets, naturalists, writers, etc. We do a lot of music, a lot of art, a lot of writing, a lot of reading. Art can be connected to so many things, it's a great vehicle for learning.

We play. Formal lessons at the table are broken up by sessions of play/free time. Lately the cool thing has been peg dolls, but there's always something they're especially into that takes up those pockets of free time.  This is good for me because it allows me to get my work done, and it's good for them because they have the time to let one lesson soak in (or ooze out...) before moving onto the next. And if they aren't into specific games or play, they use those breaks to create independently. Sew, draw, write a little book.... anything.

We're not afraid to move beyond our grade level. Everything is very fluid. Some days we read stacks of "Angelina Ballerina" books, while on others we read Lewis Carroll. "Age appropriate" is respected, but not dwelt upon.

The last thing is something that took me aaaaallllll this time to actually DO, even though I knew it was necessary and would improve our lives. We have a morning routine. I don't know why it was so difficult for me to embrace this, but setting up a very basic morning routine (not by the clock, just by getting stuff done,) has had such a positive impact on our daily life! We all wake up at different times, but throughout the early morning everyone brushes teeth, gets dressed, makes their bed, has breakfast, and we usually begin our schooling with tea and morning prayer. Routine. I knew it was beneficial, but somehow it took me ages to latch onto the idea that it would improve my entire daily existence.

In a lot of ways, I think my flavor of homeschooling might not work for everyone. It's pretty willy-nilly. I don't call it "unschooling" because it's more formal than that, but it's definitely "loose" homeschooling. I know a lot of people prefer much more structure than this--and some prefer less. The most important thing is that my kids are learning. I SEE them learning and I see them LOVING to learn new things. It doesn't matter if you've got your perfect curriculum all mapped out--if the kids reject it, or if it's making you crazy as the homeschool parent, it's not worth it. It's not going to work. I had this silly idea in my head that using this curriculum as it was written year by year was THE ONLY WAY I could do our schooling. What the heck? Workbooks might be anti-Charlotte Mason, but believing that homeschool can ONLY be done ONE specific way is anti-homeschool! The whole idea with learning at home is based on freedom, independence, and personal pace of students' learning. That's sort of the point.

So that's what we do, in a nutshell. We still struggle with math, but not as much as we used to. (We've started using the Life of Fred series along with drills, which has been really great.) Whatever you are doing as a homeschooler (or as a non-homeschooler,) just try to keep in mind that some days really blow and there's no getting around that. Just type out your troubles on social media and receive that mound of virtual hugs of solidarity, and try again tomorrow. Make sure you're not sticking with something you hate just because other people have told you it's the "best way." (This is just about homeschooling, not about religious beliefs or following the law!!) Dabble! Find what works for you. I'm a terrible homeschooler, you honestly should probably disregard everything I've said in this post. BUT, I've found a way that doesn't make me spend extended time in the shower every morning in an effort to avoid doing school. And that, my friends, is progress.

This Time Last Year

A few nights ago I was looking through my Instagram feed for a specific picture (of Captain Detergent,) but got sidetracked when I came upon the series of pictures from about this time last year when we were having the "adventure" of Not Really Having a Home after having been knocked on our tails by Life.

We had been living in the sweet little lakeside cabin with big plans to fix up the farmhouse on that property and move into it as soon as we could. On this day last year--I'll always remember it because it is the Sunday of our local Nutcracker performance, and the Sunday of Epiphany--we woke up to extremely low temperatures in the cabin. It had been cold in there before but this was unbearable. Somewhere around 45 degrees. Being Sunday, we bundled everybody up and headed out for a day in town; Mass, followed by brunch and going to the afternoon performance of the Nutcracker Ballet. When we returned to the cabin later that afternoon, expecting it to be somewhat warmer, we found it to be even colder. (The cabin was/is very poorly insulated... we had a propane fireplace heater that did well in mild temperatures, and even in cold temperatures was okay, as long as it wasn't windy... but the wind just came right through the walls and no amount of heat sources could warm the place.) We did have the option of our empty downtown house. It was getting to be evening, so we figured we could use sleeping bags and blankets and cuddle up on the floor in there for the night. At least we would be warm, even if we didn't have furniture. Unfortunately, when Martin went to turn on the heat, he found that the utilities had actually been turned on when the place had been closed up for the winter and there was no gas available to the house; we'd have to have a serviceman come turn it back on. Finally, we thought, we could drive up to my parents' river cottage about thirty minutes north of town. It's a sweet place to stay in the winter, fully stocked with food and blankets and even some toys, plus a reliable furnace AND cozy wood stove. With my parents' permission we drove up there, only to discover that the hidden key was frozen into it's lock box.

It was so late when we finally got into the cottage. We were so cold and so tired, but once we got inside, we were warm and cozy and the girls loved that place, so they were all thrilled to be there. Martin and I were beyond grateful to have a place to stay. We settled in for what we thought would be a day or two.

It was not going to be just a day or two. All through the beginning of January everything started breaking--furnaces and propane stoves, well pumps and pipes and appliances... It ended up being three weeks that we were living at my parents' river cottage while we waited for things to be assessed and tried to figure out what the heck we were going to do. I had forgotten how long it had taken just to get the appliances serviced, and about the time spent waiting on repairmen to fix things until I read back on my Instagram posts. We were doing a lot of anxious waiting. A LOT.

At the time, those three weeks and the weeks following our stay at the river cottage were incredibly stressful. It was a long drive to town; Martin was going into work before the sun was up every day and coming home well after dark, so we weren't seeing a whole lot of each other. We didn't have cell reception at the river, so my contact with the outside world was maddeningly limited. Dealing with our housing situation was a nightmare; as soon as we thought something would be fixed allowing us to move back to the cabin, something else would break, or some new issue would surface and we'd be back to wondering how it was all going to pan out. Thankfully, we had our downtown house that we knew we could fall back on, but even then, after the gas service came out and we turned on the utilities we found broken pipes (and the ceiling and floor damage that goes along with broken pipes) and an ill furnace. Everything was going wrong and it was all happening at the same time.

Now that a year has passed since that time, I can look back with cloudy affection for those weeks we stayed at the cottage. For the girls, it was the best place they've ever lived. They loved it there. And I did too, in a way. It was very simple to live with only three outfits each, not very many toys, not many responsibilities... aside from the whole "not knowing where we're going to live" thing, it was a pretty sweet vacation. We even had built-in entertainment because the neighbor was having a seawall built, so there were construction vehicles coming and going the whole time! We played a lot of board games, I got a ton of knitting done, (thank you, stress knitting, for providing me a great sweater!) and even though we were sleeping on the floor in the living room, it was a cozy routine. Every morning we'd put our makeshift bed back in the closet, every night we'd lay it all out again. Ingrid was still napping, and sometimes Elka, so the afternoons were very quiet. Our bathing situation at the cabin had been.... "rustic"... so having a posh bathroom with a shower, tub, and endless supply of hot water was incredible. Baths every day! Twice a day!

I didn't realize how happy the girls were to be living at the river, and I felt such guilt about it. I bought them all pajamas at TJ Maxx. I thought they were so sad to not be at the cabin anymore, when really, they were enjoying every second of not being there and to remember it, they now say that "Ooma's Cottage" was the favorite place they've ever lived. I wish I had realized how much fun they were having at the time, because if I hadn't felt so guilty, I think I would have been able to enjoy it more! When I remember that time now, even though I still remember the facts of being so overwhelmed, my memories of that time are oddly very happy and cozy.

As it turned out, we were able to get our downtown house livable faster than the cabin or the big farmhouse on the cabin property, and we moved into it in February. It's funny to look back on that time, too. I was so sad to not be living in the country anymore, but at the same time, I remember feeling that I'd finally come home. Arranging the kitchen again, and having a fresh start in an old place was a really fun experience. And it was still about two months before we realized we'd never be going back to the cabin, so we took a family trip to IKEA and bought a lot of stuff with plans to put it in the big farmhouse when we moved in there.

*I need to backtrack a bit to explain why we had so little stuff. In the middle of moving from our previous homestead to the cabin property, our previous homestead had been robbed twice, and even though we had been largely moved out, there had been packed boxes of all our kitchen stuff there, which all got stolen. We had outfitted the cabin with necessities, expecting to leave them there so it would be a functioning place after we moved into the farmhouse, but it was a one-room cabin, so as you can imagine, it was not a very extensively outfitted kitchen area. (Really, we had plenty, PLENTY of "stuff," it was largely just the kitchen stuff we had to replace.)*

In the downtown house, along with the mentality of "everything we buy for this place can go to the farmhouse," was the idea of, "any work we do to this house will help it to rent or sell." So we got to work! We ripped up carpet and laid wood floors, painted rooms, fixed things, brought in our washer and dryer. We cleaned it up and settled in. And it was surprisingly nice. I missed our animals, I missed our beautiful lake view and I couldn't wait to get back to it, but there was beauty in the simplicity of life downtown, too. It was still stressful having our animals out there to take care of, and being downtown again was kind of a shock to the system, but when I look back on that time, moving into that place with it's white walls and clean floors and good city tap water, (I have never gotten used to well water...) watching the big girls show the little girls all the fun little details of the house, in my memory that was such a happy time.

Of course, the actual time of deciding we needed to STAY downtown and then rehoming our animals and realizing we likely weren't going to be able to homestead ever again remains a not-so-happy memory. But the first weeks of the situation remain a bright time in my mind. Memory is such a funny thing. Now we are back in the country again, unexpectedly, and knowing that we will eventually leave this place when our time is up and return again to our downtown house is an oddly comforting feeling. It makes me miss that house and it's fresh white floors and the way the early spring light came through the west windows. I don't know what to expect this Spring in this new place--where will the light come in at those nice angles? The familiarity of our old house was such a comfort to us in a time of tumult that I think it's pretty clear now that that house is always going to feel like our real Home.

**Funnily, my parents have held onto that property and are now in the process of renovating the farmhouse, so we will still see lots of the little cabin where we lived!