Breakfast of Champions

Joel: [looking longingly at the cake I brought home from last night's baptism] Mom, can I have a piece of cake?

Me: Not until you eat, like, 4 vegetables.

Joel: Does eating 4 carrots count as 4 vegetables?

Me: No. One.

Joel: Ok.

[sits down with the bag of carrots and hummus]

OK, I ate 10 carrots! That counts as 2 vegetables, right?

Me: Sure. [...] What are you making now?

Joel: I don't know, broccoli, 10 of them, with cheese. You said 4 of them is 1, so after I eat them I'll be done with my vegetables, right?

Me: [feeling slightly manipulated] Yeah, ok.

Joel: Done!

Harlan: Hurray!

Joel: Cake? [with goofy grin]

Me: OK.

10 thanks

to my mom and dad, for giving me so many opportunities and supporting me as I tried them out.

to Harlan, for putting up with all my grownup tantrums and giving me chances to make it all up to you.

to Joel, for trying things that we think you'll enjoy.

to Jamie, for reminding me what love and tenderness is.

to My church family, for teaching the gospel to my family.

to Music, for giving me a language that I can speak.

to Open Air, for letting Harlan work from home.

to Shay, for introducing me to a diet that I can stick to.

to Heavenly Father, for giving me the chance to do this and pushing me every step of the way.

to Jesus Christ, for paying for all of my mistakes.

New Phase: Ups and Downs

Homeschooling is hard. For some people, maybe it's not.

I remember when I was reading about pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding. Reading about it was easy. Predicting how someone with average intelligence would sail through it was easy. Getting through it adeptly with grace and ease, not easy. Lots of tears. Lots of panic. Lots of despair.

Homeschooling looks hard, sounds hard, and probably could be easier than I'm making it. But [huge sigh] I'm struggling with my strong-willed, argumentative, always-thinking-outside-the-box son to get him to do what he needs to do each day. Dare I wager that all parents struggle, albeit in different ways, to get their kids to do things or learn something important? That's probably the hardest part in the early days of homeschooling. That and trying not to throw something when his eyes glaze over.

Like with pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding, there are moments of great joy while slogging through hours of lessons at home. After a two-hour briefing on the history of Western civilization from Ancient Rome to the beginning of the Renaissance, I fully expected him to say "I'm so glad that is OVER!!" So when he said, "That was fun! I like history!" I wanted to pour chocolate syrup over him and lick him from head to toe. And, during Spelling he said, "I don't know a word for 'to provide all that is needed', unless it's 'supply'?" After a particularly grueling dose of defiant protesting and my justified rant on how miserable I felt, he turned on the charm and randomly inserted "I love you, mom" into the rest of the day's lessons.

Small moments of bliss that nearly make all the tears worthwhile keep me wondering if I can handle this, and if so, for how long? I'm measuring my hatred of giving up against my love of my own sanity. Will it come to that?

So as I take a lesson from my own history, I welcome the flashbacks to the despairing first few months of motherhood and the wise women who said, "it will get better." It did. And this will.

I don't recognize myself.

I'm not vain. I can hope, at least.

Before I ask why then I'm posting all these pictures if I'm not vain, let me explain.

I'm looking through these pictures, and I don't recognize myself. That's not really my nose, those bags under my eyes are not that dark, are they? my skin isn't usually that clear (Thanks, Proactiv!), are those wrinkles always there? Are my eyeballs getting bigger?

I'm thinking about the trauma to my psyche the process of updating my photo causes and am reminded that I've spent well over 10 years avoiding mirrors and photographs. The last image of myself that was really carved into my memory is of a much younger version. I'm dismayed when I look through these photos. It is difficult to find a photo that matches what I think/remember of myself.

Does everyone feel this way? As our bodies age, do our minds not? I certainly think my mind is not the same "age" as when I was a kid, but in a lot of ways, it does still feel like my 20-something mind. Does this change? Certainly our shells do. And I'm thinking of crawling back in mine and hiding some more.

My Partridge in a pear tree

New Phase

We've decided to give WAVA a try with Joel. He seems excited about it. It's been a couple of years of him not loving school and having a tough time keeping his hands to himself in class and driving his teachers nuts and riding the bus a couple of hours each day. I feel like we gave the traditional school a fair chance. The prospects of it getting better with time seem remote as class sizes are predicted to rise next year and more budget cuts are expected. So, I think I'm ready to try something else.

I'm nervously excited. It'll be a big adjustment for me to be "home-schooling" him. I love having large chunks of time to myself during the week, so we'll see how I handle the new schedule as soon as things rolling. A "pro" is that the K12 curriculum is already provided along with all the supplies, so that makes things much easier for me, I think/hope. Another "pro" is that WAVA is a public school, so we don't have to pay for anything. Some kinks to work out that I'm expecting is figuring out how to share my computer with Joel for a large portion of the day, keeping track of hours he spends on each of his courses, and making sure he doesn't burn out and lose his enthusiasm/motivation.

Stay tuned and wish us all luck.

A lesson on prayer

Tonight Joel said that he had given up on praying to God because he never heard any answers from Him before. Trying to hold back my maternal hackles of alarm, I decided to tell him some stories about when I had heard answers to my prayers. Afterwards, he said, "so I just need to give Him more time! Usually I just give Him like 30 seconds."

So about 10 minutes after he goes to bed, he comes downstairs and says, "I got an answer!!"

I said, "to what?"

"I asked Heavenly Father what he wanted me to do as I start my journey on this earth and then He said, 'Help people'. I know exactly what to do! Like at recess, when someone falls, I can help them up."

I wish I could frame forever the smile that was on his face as he looked ahead and envisioned himself helping people. I melted.