Hiking

A homeschool friend has instituted weekly hikes. We missed this week's hike but we got to go last week. I'm really excited about this as I've been wanting to get the kids moving more. I'm envisioning a day when we can do some real serious hiking. And this time of year is just made for hiking. It's cool with the leaves blazing in their change.

 Fall days!

 Before our walk.

 In the Nature Center. We got there a bit before our friend so the kids played in here. It was hard to drag them out!

 Dinner! The girls were very excited to see the snake's dead rat lunch. They were hoping he'd feed while we there but no luck.

 Love Beastie P's big eye here.

Practicing with the binoculars.

Ahhh...so deceiving. They're cuddling and they appear to get along. Do not be fooled.

Beastie Boy checking out some things.

On the Dragonfly Pond trail. We started with an easy trail to start.

 Checking out a rotted log looking for bugs.

 Using the observation stuff the center gave us.

 At the pond!

 My big boy.

And my little sprite.

Camille did surprisingly well on the hike. She really doesn't like walking and she's always the first to start complaining that she's tired. I think it helped that we walked to the pond with friends. On the way back, however, we walked back a lone as I needed to get to work. She wasn't too thrilled with the walking at that point.

Baby Beastie loved the hike and stayed up for the whole trip. She normally goes to sleep when we walk.

The end, right before mama realized she was going to be late for her class!

Breaking Children and the Problem with Spying

In the last couple of weeks a blog post has been circulating around concerning one man, a blogger, who watched another father not be very nice to a child. He condemned the man, saying the man "Broke his child." His post was moving, and in many ways right on but I didn't react the way that others did. Why? Because about ten minutes before I read the article, I had yelled at Beastie C after a really long, hard day for her. Unlike most of the people I knew, when I got done the article, I thought "Congratulations asshole on making another parent feel like a big fat fail."

You see I could relate to the father who was not being overly nice. After shopping with four kids, who are alternately screaming for everything they see, sobbing to be breastfeed right.now, and beating on each other because "She looked at me weird!" I get a little snappy by the time time we hit the check out. I'm sure there have been many a parent who looked at me snarling at beautiful innocent Beastie P and thought "Oh my god that woman should have gotten a license to have a child." I'm sure that people thought "Oh my god she's breaking those poor babies. Someone take them away."

And here's the thing, if you're spying on me in a micro second of my life, you miss all the other things. You miss the parks where I am laying on the gross covered in beasties laughing and playing. You're missing me at 4 am holding my baby boy as he seizes. You're missing me sitting with Beastie C and reading with her at 2 am because she can't sleep. You'll miss the lovely nursing sessions with Baby Beastie.  You don't see me walking down the road holding hands with Beastie P. You don't see the cooking, cleaning, and lesson preparation that goes into making their lives happier and smoother. No, what you see in your tiny spying moment is GreenTeaGinger being a utter and total bitch to her children. Because she's tired. She hasn't spoken to another adult in over eight hours. People have given her dirty looks when her child has shoved against them.  No one has said in a while "Good job mama." Instead there's you. At the counter. With your one FUCKING child. You and your judgment which is already being formulated into a blog post. A blog post that thousands of mamas will love and share. And there will be an equal number who hate it. There will also be a number, who like me secretly feel for the other dad.

I'm not advocating that we yell at our children. But I am advocating that maybe as parents we need to be more honest. Perhaps there are many of you who don't ever do anything wrong in your parenting. I applaud you and perhaps we should leave the breeding to you. But I suspect that there are many more who, like me, sometimes fail. Sometimes we yell or say mean things. Sometimes we really don't like our kids because they're being awful (I always love them but I don't always like them). You know what I think? I don't think we're breaking them. Breaking is something that happens over time. When I yell at my kids a few times a week they are not broken. Trust me. Kids are more resilient than we give them credit for. I am one who believes firmly in apologizing to my children. When I yell, I wait until I'm calm and then I hold them and apologize. I explain to them why I yelled. We have a talk and then they're off into the next thing.

Those who know me know that my kids do not fear me. They love me as fiercely as I love them. But those who know me know this because they weren't spying on me at the local grocery store.

Blocked

This weekend was spent "doing too much" and "not nearly enough." I had to re-constitute my to-do list on the computer again because every time I remember something to do, it was followed by three other things that needed doing. My perfectionist side was rearing up and getting real snappy about things not moving along like clock work. It was one of those weekends where I just picked fights with everyone over everything.

But mostly it was the problem of me getting one thing into my head and just bulling for that thing. I am, like most parents, a master multi-tasker but sometimes my feet find a path and nothing is going to get me off it. All I want to do is work until the task is completed. This is was how I was feeling about my grad applications. I had many other things to do. I had children to feed and care for but damn it all I cared about were those stupid applications.

Life kept happening though and I felt frustrated with each minor set back. R decided she MUST NURSE.every.second.of.the.day. Piper was just super needy and wanted lots of extra attention. We had a pumpkin farm visit we had promised the kids. There were meals, dirty dishes, and dirty clothes all needing care. In my head, I gnashed my teeth and thought terrible thoughts.

And then I got knocked right off the damn path. I discovered that my GRE scores were not valid. I missed the cut of date for time by about five months. I am going to have to retake them and soon. I had not budgeted out the money for this or the time. In addition, the thesis title on my transcripts is wrong. It's the title of another person's thesis. I ranted and raged. I sobbed until I was hysterical. H calmed me down but I was so devastated.

I know it doesn't seem like a big deal but it was just this one more thing that made everything feel so over-whelming. It's all part of me being tired. Tired of fighting for every damn thing I have in terms of the academy. I spent four years fighting to prove I could do the work. And now I'm fighting to convince a PhD program that I'm awesome and they should take me. And just when I'm feeling like I might be able to pull this off, I am knocked down. Again.

But today some friends kicked my ass, and promised to kick some ass for me. And just now I took some time from doing all the stuff for my classes (cause yeah I'm teaching two classes with all this going on and by tomorrow at midnight will have 60 papers waiting to be graded), to read to Umberto. Because if I'm going to keep knocked down, I might as well take the time to lay down sometimes. Take the time to be with my beasties.

If I hadn't gone to the pumpkin farm, hadn't paused for that moment, I would have missed this:

 Cause how cute is Piper in a riding hat?

 And a top her first pony!

Oh Camille, the look on your face when they put you on that horse. She's hooked, and I remember that feeling so well. The feel of beings so high up, and oh the smell of horse. Like heaven.

She's got it! She felt confident enough to give the horse a pat. Now I'm hoping we can scrape up the money for her to ride. You could see her visibly calm down as she sat there being lead around. The horse is a good thing for Camille. She told me: "Up on the horse...I felt wild like the horse." Total connection.

And how could this not make anyone stop for a second and just breath. Oh baby!

I have to remember that what kept me sane through my MA was H and these beasties. It was having to be human to feed them. Having to stop to read a beautiful picture book. Time to watch them grow into themselves.

The Bully Next Door

When I was nine, we moved to a new town. This wasn't an unusual occurrence. We moved a lot. This move was rougher because I would no longer be attending the tiny Christian school connected to our church. My family made up a large portion of the church and thus ensured that I had a place of prominence among my peers. Before that I wasn't popular but I wasn't picked on either. Mostly I was so strange the other kids just ignored me. They no doubt would be the same kids who picked on me in Jr. High but for some reason at the lower levels of elementary, I was just shunned. This didn't bother me much. I was in my own world anyway.

But our move brought me into direct contact with a whole new world of children's cruelty. It was so bad that even now when people talk about the "innocence and purity" of children I snicker. The children in this town were some of the nastiest people I've ever known. It began on the first day when I wore my favorite outfit. It was Kmart purchase. Beige dress pants with gold buttons, a cream dress shirt with a peter pan collar, and a crochet beige vest with gold buttons. I LOVED this outfit and, yes, looking back I realize it was hideous. But I.loved.it. 

When I was introduced to the class, everyone laughed. And this was the only start. At the first recess, I was mocked. I was trying desperately hard to not cry because I sensed if I cried, it would be over. The lunch recess was where all hell broke loose. I couldn't hold back the tears, and then they knocked up the bullying a notch or two. Several students surrounded me, boys and girls, and began to yell insults at me. Then they started to push me around until I finally was shoved hard enough to fall into a mud puddle. My outfit was ruined, and to cap it off when we returned to the classroom, the teacher yelled at me for being dirty and wet. This happened every day. For months. Looking back, I wonder where in the adults were. I mean, wouldn't a teacher on recess duty noticed that a gang of fucking kids had surrounded another kid? I don't think I told my mom because there was a lot of crap going on in our lives, and I didn't want to worry her. I was the good kid who didn't cause problems.

One day I was at my grandparents visiting (they lived in the same town). I loved going to their house. It was my safe, warm space. My comfort space. I was helping my grandfather put leaves into the garbage bags when all of a sudden I heard the familiar taunts. I looked up, wiping my hair from my ears, to see the ringleader of the bullies with a friend. How ironic that he lived right across the road from my grandparents. He kept at it and I tried to ignore him. My grandfather encouraged me to ignore him. And I tired. But finally I couldn't take it. I was in my safe place and this little asshole was making fun of me. I ran at him, and put him in a headlock. I held on while he bucked and tried to shake my off. I didn't care. I wanted him to hurt. I wanted him to feel every bit of pain he had inflicted on me. I remember his friend screaming for me to let him go, and I kicked at the friend when he tired to touch me. My grandfather ended up pulling me off. The kid was chocking, his lips blue. I was sobbing and screaming obscenities at the kid. My grandfather carried me back to the house and gave me chocolate milk. I was shacking and terrified. I was scared about what would happen at school the next day. 

The next day everyone ignored me. I was now someone to be feared. I was crazy.

Looking back, I wonder how I survived this bullying. It stopped at that school but it continued at other schools. And remember we moved a lot. There was always something. I was fat. I had zits. I was dorky. I read too much. My clothes were crappy Kmart purchases. My hair was frizzy. There was always something. I learned to not let it show how much it hurt. I starved myself thin. I stole Clearasil to try to get rid of the zits. I hid in my books. 

Everyone told me to ignore it but years and years of being called ugly takes its toll on a person. My body became shaped by those words. Now, 30 years later, I still have moments when in the mirror I still see that girl who is fat, ugly and covered in acne. 

Writing a Life

Where does one begin a life story?
Life does not really move a long a straight line. There are no themes. No over arching lessons.

Memories are tricky material to weave into a story. When I look back over my life, there are many stories but they do not flow. Some of these stories are likely not even true, or at least did not happen the way I tell them. When I close my eyes, and think backwards through the years, the memories are fuzzy. They come in random bits, not in any kind of coherent order. I think of moments that stand out but that do not always connect neatly.

When I look back, there are not always stories or even words. There are times when what  I remember is a smell, a flash of touch, jumbled images packed together in poem. There are memories that I have created over pictures. These picture tales are so old that I no longer know if the memory came before the picture.

And my memories of my religious past come now with a whole set of theoretical considerations. They come with the concerns of a mother wondering about her own children and religion. They come both sanctified with nostalgia and demonized with old wounds.

Reluctance

Striking a balance between the beasties' plans and our plans is a constant struggle in our homeschooling journey. I struggle with my teacher side which wants to plan every little detail and my more hippie side which wants to let things just flow. There appears to me to be a middle road that meanders through these two extremes. My goal is to follow that road as best as possible.

This morning typified what I have learned about how the beasties work. Now given their own choice, they'd watch Netflix instant streaming or play X-Box all day (depending on which beastie you ask). When I call a quit on electronics, boy beastie will play with Legos and maybe even read. Girl beastie 1 and 2 event elaborate story lines with their stuffies. None of these things qualify as non-learning but I do think that a little structure is important. It's that middle road, and it's a middle road I try hard to get them to see rather than impose it on them. I know that they may go to college someday and that we have to start prepping them for a learning world that is not home. So after breakfast and some electronics time, I pushed, gently, towards the dreaded Math books. Boy beastie is quite good at math concepts but he detests the drudgery work associated with Math. Girl beastie 1 just plain hates Math.

As usual, there was whining, eye rolling and sulking. I counted to ten because lately my patience has been in short supply (no sleep and little baby). Instead of yelling, I just pointed out that they only had to do one sheet each and then they were done. I sat with them and nursed R so that they could have me there if needed. They both sat down, and did the work. And that's when the amazing thing happened. After helping them, I went to nurse R in our bedroom. Beastie C came in and asked me if she could do another page. Hell yeah! Please! Then Boy Beastie came in and wanted to show me his drawing of a Native American village and his "village." He explained to me what things were and then said he didn't see much alike in the two villages. He went on to list the differences. At the library, Beastie C sat and read three books on wolves including one with Native American myths. She speculated with me about why Native peoples might use the wolf so much in their stories ("The wolf can be very mysterious."). Boy beastie was engrossed in a book on the Hoover Dam.  When we got home, Beastie C did a bunch of science experiments, sharing her results with everyone which in turn got them excited to try them out. After dinner, all the beasties did wet watercolor paintings representing autumn. They were lovely and Beastie P did this wonderful abstract painting in which she captured water, leaves changing and pumpkins.

I told H how that it's neat that if I push them just a little, it seems to set off this chain reaction in which they engage in a variety of other learning activities that I don't have to push on them. The freedom comes with a little reminder of the restriction.

Old Age Learning

My high school French teacher was crazy. At some point, he gave up trying to teach us how to conjugate verbs and focused his energies on training us to sing in French and Latin. He claimed to have been a trained opera singer but considering the number of things he claimed to be, we were skeptical (he was crazy remember?). Needless to say my grasp of French was weak at best. I tried. I loved translating poems but it involved a lot of dictionary use. I felt unable to memorize vocabulary. And speaking French was out of the question. My inability to speak English well eroded my confidence. Plus we were too busy singing.

Flash forward to college. I'm dating someone who is obsessed with China. I mean, obsessed. He talks me into studying Chinese as my language. This may be the stupidest thing I've ever done. A, it's really hard. B, it's not the language that will get me into graduate school for English or for American Religion. C, the boyfriend dumps me and marries our teacher (not joking), and D, I end up marrying the hot exchange student from Mexico and reproduced many little beasties with him.

Now here I am still not knowing Spanish even though we've been married for almost 11 years, and I kind of lived in Mexico for awhile. Why? Well I suspect my in-laws ask that often. I'm sure my friends do as well. And oh yes, my professors who often ask me for Spanish pronunciation. It is a huge embarrassment to me. But my fear outweighs that embarrassment. I am so scared of failing. So scared that I just kept saying I was going to learn Spanish and then never did anything about it.

This came crashing in on me while I was filling out applications to Ph.D programs. One programs basically said they are not going to take you if you don't have the prerequisite two languages. I felt pretty down about it. I even cried a bit. But mostly I sat on the couch and whined about why I can't learn languages. H, that hot Mexican exchange student, essentially shot down all my reasons. At the time, it was super annoying and I kind of said mean things to him so he would leave me a lone to sulk.

And later, after everyone was sleeping, I thought about this whole language thing. I was angry over some comments that had been made when I foolishly whined on Facebook. I suspect the poster thought I was being "that American", you know the one who says dumb things like "You better speak American here." It was insulting to be lumped into that category when that wasn't the issue at all. What bugged me was that this poster had no idea how hard foreign languages can be for someone like me. I didn't even take  a language until high school as the American public school system doesn't feel the need to teach us foreign languages until then. Yeah private schools do it earlier but hell there was no way we could have afforded that kind of education. When I decided to major in the academy, no one sat with me and said "Chinese. No. Not unless you plan on studying something that has to do with China." I had no clue what it meant to major in the academy and certainly no idea of what I had to do to prepare myself for that life.

But really there's nothing I can do about those things. And I realize as I sat on the couch that I don't know if  I suck at languages because really I've never tried. I never had the opportunity to apply myself. More importantly, my beasties had sat there while I cried about what I perceived as my inability, my stupidity. I keep telling them that they can learn anything they apply themselves too. We home school because we believe that learning should be self-motivated and self-driven. We believe that with effort we can learn what we desire to know. In the course of about ten minutes I had shown my beasties that I didn't truly believe those things when they pertained to me.

Tonight I sat down with H's Spanish book, and began at chapter 1. It wasn't so bad. The beasties helped me. We serenaded their daddy to sleep with our Spanish.

Attachment

Thursday was spent in a constant haze of too much to do. I strapped Rowena to me, and just plowed through all the crap on my to-do list. We packed snacks, made lunches, prepared for my class, did math with the older beasties. She was attached to me physically but there was a gap. I didn't feel fully connected. At one level, I know that I can really be that attached 24/7. But these days are rough because I just never felt we had our little moments together. Nursing was rushed and spent with me busily typing and reading.

We dropped boy beastie off with his pal, and then zoomed over to my school. Rowena surprised us all by not screaming through the whole car trip. She started fussing a bit once we hit the last light before the parking lot. We rushed to get coffee for mama and chocolate milk for the girl beasties. We hurried from the cafe to my office, where I rushed nurse Rowena. I brought her to class, handed her off to her dad, taught a hell of a class (one of those rarefied beautiful moments where the class just gets it, and you did nothing but gently lead them there). After class, I got to nurse Rowena during my office hours but it was still a fast and furious pace.

One the way home, H offered to ride with her in the van because at this point she was super cranky. I drove the girl beasties home in H's car while he charioted Rowena. I should have enjoyed the relative peace (five years do not stop talking. Ever.). But instead I felt this pain, this tugging inside me. I yearned towards my baby. I had not renewed that sweet connection we have, and being apart from her, not close enough to hear her crying, to see in the rear view mirror her shock of black hair, hurt. I knew this tiny cut could not be healed until we laid together to nurture not just to eat.

And so we finally arrived home to lay down in our quiet room, just the two of us. I held her small round body against me as she nursed. We gazed at each other with nothing to buffer the moment. And I felt with each second, that invisible thread shine.

Busy..doing stuff

So my to do list for the week looks like this:

-grade 70 article reviews
-grade 70 tests
-type up notes for article
-read book for class I'm sitting in on
-call Lego store to get email address for class on Wednesday
-take care of clean clothes
-diaper laundry
-make lactation bars
-make dinners for week
-homeschool beasties including but not limited to making an ocean floor map complete with animals, paint clay brain, and finish Book I of History of US. Maybe do math.
-go to Lego store which is really far away with screaming baby
-go to McDowell park with one of my best mom pals
-go apple picking on Saturday
-design the blog I'm going to write with my mom

And at some point, I really need to add "Do graduate school applications." I used to feel really over-whelmed when I looked at my to do lists. Now I've accepted that the world will not end if I don't finish everything on the list. Sometimes the right choice is to lay with R and nurse her. I love lying down to nurse the baby beastie. It's one of those quiet, still moments that I think everyone should have one way or another. Once we're done though it's back to high speed.

The major thing on my mind is trying to come up with a plan for Toronto. After my great awakening, I decided to actively seek out scholars who were doing the things I'm interested in and I remembered that wonderful post-advisor had recommended a book on homebirths and religion. Well fast forward to me reading said book and being like "Whoa I need to work this woman." So I emailed post haste, and received a response. Of course Toronto wants a fully developed project. Yikes! I've been making myself mad going through about a hundred ideas for a project. I'm going to list them and look for insight from my wonderful readers.

1. Looking at working class/poor woman and birth. Is it religious for them as it was for the woman whom I am reading about. How does class effect how women see birth and religion?
2. Midwives who see their profession as a religious vocation.
3. (This is my favorite: Looking at attachment parenting in terms of those who are religiously conservative with an eye to how they use on line boards like Mothering. How do they use religion to formulate their ideas about parenting? How do they reconcile being among people who believe very differently than they do about everything but parenting? This of course could lead to some awesome ideas about the internet as religious space.
4. Quiverfuly families.

Ginger Does Life

After a crippling intellectual breakdown, life got on with itself. I have way too little time for these existential angst moments. I went hiking. I cared for the littlest beastie. I did something vaguely resembling school with the older beasties (we made clay brains!). I taught my classes. I cooked food. I went to Virgina to see my brother. And I came to the realization that really I'm not much suited for anything but the bloody academy. I hit a fence, folks, and I decided to tear it down.

I meet with some friends to discuss grad. school thinking it would help me to make a decision. It did not do this. Instead we seemed to talk ourselves in circles. H and I talked on the way home but I was still just not sure where to go. I had done a tarot reading (yes I do that) earlier that day and the cards, feeding off of me, captured the situation perfectly, including my indecision. It was apparent that no one or nothing was going to just make a decision for me.

When I got home, I needed to do some fast reading for a class (I am sitting in on a class with the best post-advisor ever. He lets me bring R (who sleeps the whole time). This guy seriously needs to be at a place that does Ph. D so I can have him for an advisor again). I'm reading this article. Typical, rather dry, sociological stuff. It's all about working class kids who go to college. And how they have to let go of their past to move on...and the next thing I know I'M CRYING. H and I talked this stuff out for about two hours. I realized I was tired of fighting. Of not fitting in. I can't play the game as well as those who were raised in this class. My speech betrays me. My past comes knocking when I don't want it to...I am always in the middle in this world. Not quite of the academy and no longer part of the poor. I am in between. Betwixt. I am scared. I am afraid that not knowing the game plan will lead to failure.

Upon waking the next morning, I'm pissed. Filled with a righteous anger. I am going to rip that fence out of the ground. The academy needs people like me. It needs those who come from the poor. It needs woman. Mothers. Baby bearers. Students need to see me wearing my baby to class before her daddy picks her up. It's that simple. Plus I am good at this (ignore the poor writing of my blog, I really can write). And with that fighting thought, I realize I can combine my passion for birth and mothering with my passion for the academy. There is lots of room in religion for the topic of mothering, birthing and children. I'm now piecing together a new project that has me really excited.

And all the while, I'm doing life.

Identity Crisis

I saw a bumper sticker on a car at the birth center that read "Who are all these children and why are they calling me Mom?" Welcome to my world. Everywhere I go, I hear "Wow you've got your hands full don't you?" And I've started to answer "Happily so yes!" The other day I got a nice surprise when a Walmart greeter said "Good for you" to H and I upon hearing that R was our fourth. It's nice to not always here criticism. Frankly, however, I am just as surprised as anyone that I have so many beasties.

As those of you faithfully follow my blog know, I struggle with this woman who bears children. I consider myself a feminist yet I can not deny that my happiest days are days spent surrounded by my little beastlings. I ADORE being a mom (note I do not say  housekeeper because I so do not ADORE housekeeping). Yet I feel as if I betrayed that fiery young feminist from so long ago. I'm raising fierce girls, I tell her. My son is sensitive and allowed to cry! But is it enough...?

With the birth of my fourth child, I am at a crossroads. I have completed my masters. I am proud of that accomplishment. Very proud. It was a long road and I feel that I created a piece of scholarship that is really mine (with the help of many great minds of course...one could argue that nothing is truly one's own). Perhaps, I ponder, this earns me feminist points. The thesis is about women, their lives, and their struggles.  After all, I completed it as a mom to three. I worked outside of the home. Equally shared responsibility with my partner (who is a man..and oh what a man!). But lately I have even begun to wonder if this is what that young feminist envisioned.

When I was young, I wanted to change the world. I wanted to help. I wanted to do something magnificent that would make life easier for people. As I grew into that feminist young woman, I wanted that something to have an effect on the lives of women. Of course, I had to reconcile that desire with the reality that the academy doesn't seem to effect the multitude very much. And eventually I just has to accept that my desire for an academic life was selfish. I was good at it and I enjoyed it.

But now...now I am a mother. An unashamed mother. I feel like the academy would like me to be ashamed. Would like to me meekly roll over and let childless women do what I'm doing. I felt like my pregnancy was seen as a big failure by so many of those I had just proved myself to. And now as I look at a PhD program, I know I will likely have to keep my family quiet. Secret. But I am not ashamed, and I wonder how much of myself I would compromise if I never spoke of my family to those I study under and with. It feels like it would be a betrayal of some fundamental part of myself. And you know what? My feminist young self would have hated that. It would have disgusted her.

I keep going back to the midwife idea. I would be helping women. I would be advocating for birth and women's choice in birth (something I believe in quite passionately). I don't think my many children would be seen as a liability. But there are as many doubts as there are things that make me excited. Am I too old to embark on a totally different career? Would I actually like delivering babies or is just the idea that appeals to me? Would I be bored without that academic life that I really do find stimulating?

My identity is shifting again, and at 38 I don't know what I want to be when I grow up.

Wars

Before bed this evening, my girls sat on the chair together. Camille was reading Piper a book. She looked up at me and said "I just love to read to Piper." And Piper added "I love it when Camille reads to me." They were the picture of sibling bliss. Never mind that earlier today they were tearing at each other. Pushing and pulling hair. Sobbing of course. This was only a minor skirmish in the daily battles. There had been name calling, stealing of each other's toys, whispered threats.

 The girls bicker all the time. There are constant battles involving name calling and sometimes even resort to physical violence. Throughout the day, they tear at me to be the moderator in their battles which seem so petty to me but are momentous to them. Again and again I hear "Just ignore them." "Let them work it out themselves." I read books about siblings rivalry. I try to be careful with my words so that they do not feel labeled. And yet they battle on...asking me to be a witness to what I see as petty disagreements.

But for the girls, these are passionate war fares. Camille storms about with tears and flying hair. She sweeps through the room in an agony of angst over her sister's cruel words. Piper sobs big tears that drop onto my am  because Camille has broken hear. They languish on the couch begging to me listen to their complaints. I tell them "Work it out!" But they don't. They look at me with accusing eyes. I am supposed to be the witness.

Maybe it's not the most researched or recommended way to deal with sibling wars but I have begun to listen. I don't say scripted words. Sometimes I just hold tiny bodies on my laps while the story pours onto me. I am often surprised by the intensity of their pain. And when they are done with this outpouring, I am equally surprised by how quickly they fall in love with each other again. They only want my ear, they only want to record this bloody history somewhere. They do not want me to punish the other girl, or to even take sides. I am the witness.

Then they turn from me and towards each other.

Vacation Bible School

There is a story in my family that has become legend as stories are apt to do in families. In this story, I convert my whole family to Christianity. It's an impossible story because my family always leaned toward Christianity. But it's a good story that has roots. Those kind of stories are only pulled up with a great amount of soil.

In this story, I go to "Vacation Bible School." These kind of programs run every summer with churches vying to lure the unchurched to church through their children. They usually run for a week and involve summer themes like "Fun With the Son!" Note the clever pun with "son." I went to many as did most of the neighbors. They provide a chance for our parents to get a break from us. They were fun. Lots of crafts with a few obligatory services that were made bearable with puppets and songs.

I dimly remember the VBS that started it all. It was held at a Baptist Church on Madison Ave. It was a gray stone building that looked properly like a church. A white school bus picked us up each morning at nine. We began the day with a prayer in the sanctuary and then were taken downstairs, divvied by age, into various rooms. In these rooms, we learned Bible verses and made crafts that had something vaguely to do with the Bible verses. The end of the day was spent back in the sanctuary. It was here that the legend began.

During the last afternoon of VBS, the sermon was a call to salvation. The church was not radical. It was an old fashion kind of Baptist church that was losing its members to death. In it's own gentle way, salvation was a given. There was no hell fire and brimstone in the old pastor. But I was four. And at four I tended to follow what the other kids were doing. So when the pastor invited us to give our hearts to Jesus, and I watched the older kids obediently trot down (this was old school to them), I decided that maybe I should give my heart to Jesus. I doubt if I even knew what it meant but the older kids were doing it and they got a fair amount of attention for doing it. Thus did i give my hear to Jesus. And I got a little white pocket Bible for doing so...

That's what I remember. The little gray church on the corner with its grand stained glass window. A white school bus bring us to the church where staunch middle age Baptist ladies taught us to do crafts with white paper plates and glitter. And that little white Bible that I thought was so pretty.

What my family remembers is a little four year old coming home with the fire of God inside her. This little girl delivers a sermon powerful in its innocence about the perils of hell. She implores them with tears in her eyes to accept Jesus into their hearts. And of course they are all convicted. Thus the little girl brought her family to God.

Eventually they will use this story like a weapon.

And so we begin...

Even though I consider our learning to be an all year around kind of thing, we are not immune to the aisles of school supplies that fill every department store in the US come August. Kitten folders, shark notebooks, new pencils, pens with green ink, sharp, unbroken crayons! How can we resist the allure of these wonderful creation tools? I certainly can't and neither can the beasties. So we purchased shiny new things to start of our "school year" alongside the school kids.

Time is a funny thing. It's not just that buying school supplies is a "tradition" we have fallen into without thought. Rather it's that H and I have centered our lives around school. We just recently got done being students and are now teachers. We plan on being students again, and hope to spend the rest of lives as professors. Our lives for a very long time center around a school year not a year as many see it. For me, the year doesn't really begin in January but rather August. The feeling of a new start totally doesn't hit me in January. Nope it comes with the first day of classes. To me that is the real start of a  year. New students. New syllabus. Another chance to perfect the class. I suspect that our children are infected by this spirit as well.

Plus I have ironed out a plan with which H and I feel comfortable. Neither of us want do school at home but we're not entire comfortable for unschooling for various reasons that I won't even start on here (although maybe some day I'll feel up a good debate on it). We do feel strongly that children should have a big say in their education and their education should be centered around their interest while encouraging them to explore also beyond their comfort zone. Basically what I did is sit with each kid and come up with a list of things they and I felt they should/want to learn this year. We also came up with various ways they could go about that learning. Each week I make a chart with the subjects listed, and a loose guideline of what they need to do. They then go about doing the list when and how they choose. I'll update with how it goes.

I also cleaned up our supply area to make it more accessible to the beasties.

I am totally loving my Ikea shelves. The ability to use different size bins rocks. The big white bin for example has a bunch of puppets. And our poor underused easel. I only have it up because if I put it away someone has a fit.

This is where I store all our "creation material." Here you will find paints, glitter, magazines, bits of yarn and other fun creation stuff.

My lovely model, Camille, is posing by her bin. Each of the beasties has their own bin where they store their binders, special books, etc.

The tall shelf in the corner is a mixed lot of books.

I love how it looks but am not sure how long I can maintain the neatness and organization.

A Revial

From when I used to post my daily activities and notes about what was up and my to do list. You know boring mundane stuff that I actually kind of like to read on other people's blogs. It's so much more satisfying than a FB update because there's more detail. H would say it's because I'm nosy. I say it's because I'm a writer...I'm curious. So in that spirit....

My To Do List:
Clean up the dining room area which means organizing the shelves and homeschooling crap that is all over the Place (at least it's not in boxes).
Do dishes.
Do ALL the laundry including a diaper load.
Maybe fold said laundry.
Finish the syllabus for both classes and upload to Moodle.
Organize the articles I have online on Moodle.
Send threatening letter to future students.
Sit at the pool and drink beer with H.

I started this post around noonish and thought as I typed it out "There is NO WAY I'm going to get this all done!" I mean yesterday, it did take me five hours to clean my microscopic kitchen. And yet look at those strike outs. I did all that in like four hours. And I'm one load away from being caught up with laundry. I'm also thinking that within an hour I can put a line through my last to do as well.

I wish there was a way to replicate what makes some days easier to get things done. Yesterday seemed no different really. Rowena was just as fussy today and took as many short naps. Maybe I had more energy? I just don't know so that means tomorrow I'll get NOTHING done and feel like a failure.

My goal this year is yet another attempt to get us organized. I know I say this at least twice a year! But in my defense we get a bit better. Before I got pregnant I was quite adept at keeping the house respectable. And we do a lot more schoolish type stuff as well. I've found several blogs where moms have these schedules for chores. These outlines are usually divided into daily chores, weekly chores, monthly chores, etc. If I can get the house really clean then I think we can swing ourselves into that kind of routine. I KNOW we need to do this before we start our Ph.Ds or it's going to be utter chaos. We HAVE to train now.

My problem is that there is a big of me that just hates this kind of thing. I hate routine, schedules, etc. I detest being tied down by outlines. I resented having to write outlines of papers in school and then being FORCED to follow said outline. One of my greatest joys in my family is how deliciously spontaneous we are! But I also am becoming painfully aware that much of the time our house looks like three mini tornadoes whirled through destroying everything in their path. I walked into the kids' bedroom and found one of my favorite Mexican boxes broken. It made me sad rather than angry because I knew if I had kept up with the cleaning I would have noticed it missing likely before it got broken. In addition, our kids are slovenly and spoiled about it. They are the destroyers of rooms because when one room is destroyed the move onto another. They don't like to play in the messes they created.  But how do I balance this? I spent the last two days cleaning and we didn't go out all day. We really can't live like that. I don't want to live like that. How do other homeschooling moms do this? Or am I placing unreasonable expectations on myself? How clean does the house really have to be?

It's Time Of That Year...Again.

So this is my fifth birthday post since I started this blog. Holy whatever!

This year the little life that was inside me last year is now this:

Sometimes I am not sure if I deserve such happiness but mostly I just embrace it.

The last year was eventful. We started the kids at school and then took the kids out of school (again). I had an amazing, wonderful birth. H lost his job. H got another job. We had a home invasion. U was diagnosed with epilepsy. We moved.

It was one of those crazy years where life just kind of up and slaps you across the face a few times. But it could have been so much worst. And really last year was wonderful overall. U's epilepsy allowed us to get him help which lead to a breakthrough on his reading ability. Dealing with school, helped us to reevaluate what we wanted for our family. And lovely little R has given us all joy. Despite all the yucky of last year, the joy is what remains strong.

Because this year I didn't question it .I embraced it. I embraced being pregnant and the changes that enveloped my body. I embraced loving being a mom and being with my children. I embraced teaching and relished reaching the five or so students who get it each semester. I embraced my marriage and the luck I had at finding someone who loves the things I love. Each moment of joy is worth a lifetime of mediocrity.

And next year,well, I'm ready. We've got a lot going on: grad school applications (yes we're really doing it this year), teaching for both us (H at a new school...middle school this time around), more homeschooling, R's wonderful infant year....and no doubt plenty of surprises which we'll meet with the same kind of crazy passion we meet everything.

Intimacy

In the early evening, I wash my baby's tiny, round body. I coo to her as she kicks her chunky legs sending water over the edge of the baby bath and into the big bath. I gently wipe in the crevices of her warm flesh. I slosh water gently over her shock of black hair. She looks up at me with her brown eyes, sparkly (I didn't think eyes could sparkle until she existed), trusting. When I am done washing her, I wrap her in a towel, cradling her wet body to mine. I like to wrap her up so that only her round face is revealed.

After she is carefully dried, diapered, and clothed, I lay down beside her on the bed. I like to nurse her like this: on our sides, bodies nestled together. She looks up at me as she suckles, her eyes laughing because her mouth is busy. I relish the heaviness of her on my arm, and I pull her closer. Sometimes, if the older children are busy, H comes to lay with us. He spoons his body around my mine, one arm around my waist, the other around my head so that he holds the baby as well. We don't always talk during these moments. We just lay, the three of us, wrapped in each other. All of us nurturing, feeding the others.

Night Wanderings

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R's first extended time in a back carry. She seemed to enjoy it.

This is the building that houses the Matthew's library. I love the tower thing on top and always wonder if one can go up there and look through those windows.

H and U fooling around. I'm still a little taken back whenever I see a picture of U next to one of us. He's so tall now. He's slowly becoming a man.

The fam.

Mama ruined U's cool moment. And don't worry R was more secure than she appears to be in this picture:) We kept checking.

P posing as a street urchin in the harsh urban life of Matthews, NC/

C waiting for us to catch up. 

The Matthews Community Center. I've never actually been inside but we've explored the outside often enough.

H trying to jolly up C. It worked believe it or not.

A lonesome bus.

H and R sharing a moment.

U goofing it up.

Haunted building.

The kids are starting to lag on the walk. It was very hot out.

The Matthews Community Center up close.

P giving H a booster (what we call a push when one is one a bike and needs to get going).

Only way back home.

Electric H and R.

This is U's electric cowboy moment.

A reminder of little Maine general stores. A bit of nostalgia in a Coke bottle.

A couple of women had justed by whispering "That's the cutest baby." I figured I ought to have a picture of the cutest baby.

C trespassing. 

P following her older sister's bad example.

U very unenthusiastically doing a silly dance for me. He's at the age where his parents are dreadfully embarrassing. 

Piper showing off her pine cone treasure.

Our end time. Another evening walk completed.