Thoughts On My Mind

It’s foggy out. Again. I didn’t real­ize it had been foggy at all this week in the morn­ing because I didn’t pay atten­tion.  Why? I don’t have to drive in the morn­ing any­more.  No one to rush off to school so I didn’t pay any atten­tion to how vis­i­bil­ity was out­side my house.  I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.  But I’m look­ing for­ward to not hav­ing to bun­dle every­one up, rush out the door & drive in the snow as a start to the day this year.

It’s funny the things I’m happy about with each pass­ing year.  When I was 16 it was the abil­ity to drive, now the abil­ity not to HAVE to drive causes me to get all giddy. There might even be a thrill up my leg. I also look for­ward to when my kids can drive them­selves to activ­i­ties & I don’t have to. Of course I look for­ward to that with both excite­ment & TOTAL.PANIC!  Because really my kids are going to be teens? and drive? and um, yeah, the rush­ing of time pan­ics me!

As for our home­school it’s still going sur­pris­ingly well. I am sur­prised because I was pre­pared for all out chaos to set in (maybe that hap­pens in Feb­ru­ary?).  In real­ity, we’ve moved into the life of a home­school­ing fam­ily as if we’ve always done this.  Of course we had some adjust­ments in the begin­ning to fig­ure out what rhythms & rou­tines worked best for our fam­ily.  I also had to let go of what I thought school & cer­tain tra­di­tions for back to school should be & just go with what is. Liv­ing in the moment has always been my hard­est challenge.

OK, we still have the “I DON’T WANT TO” com­plete with exag­ger­ated sighs (Ok, this is really just my old­est Mr. J) but over­all a smooth tran­si­tion.  Mr. J is finally find­ing his words to describe his days & he dis­cov­ered that he loves the gui­tar as part of music.  I mean LOVES it.  Right now he is using Daddy’s gui­tar & he may have his head explode if knows what Christ­mas holds for him.

Mr. G is read­ing.  Really truly read­ing. I had those moments of ter­ror that he would NEVER read because in Kinder­garten now kids have to read War & Peace in Russ­ian & Eng­lish no less!  When I was Kinder­garten we were learn­ing how to sit in a chair.  And so I pan­icked envi­sion­ing him need­ing me to go with him to work when he’s 30.  But turns out he’s read­ing just fine & try­ing to read every­thing he can get his hands on.  I’m sure that will make him a happy 30 year old when he doesn’t have Mom tag­ging along to every­thing he does.  Might be a lit­tle weird.

Mamacita is learn­ing let­ter sounds, num­bers, and pat­terns.  She begs every­day to do more work.  I can’t keep up with her, at 4.5 years old she has a drive for learn­ing that causes me to need a nap.  I can’t keep up.  Seri­ously. I can’t. She’s a machine. (I pic­ture her shout­ing in teenage angst I.AM.NOT.A.MACHINE one day after reflect­ing on me call­ing her a machine).

Baby-man, the D-man, he’s build­ing blocks & learn­ing more words every­day.  Being a tod­dler is hard work. Like he’s even got to work at being cute on the week­ends.  Duu­ude it’s, like, hard being a kid.

Kids have out­side activ­i­ties they are enjoy­ing too.  I don’t keep them chained to the house all day, only some of the day.  (I kid. I kid.) I’m glad we’ve found a few things for them to have that are good fits for them.

As for my teach­ing load this semes­ter it’s going well.  But I’m not going to lie, I’m excited for the end of the semes­ter & the hol­i­day break.  I love that we’ll get some time to set­tle around Christ­mas together with­out me hav­ing to rush off in the evening. On the days I teach it’s hec­tic & makes me think how easy it would be to not have to rush off.  My classes are look­ing solid for the Win­ter semes­ter. I may have 3, if all 3 go.

Some days (most days now) I won­der if I couldn’t make the same liv­ing just writ­ing. Right now I don’t. I don’t even make enough for a Star­bucks Cof­fee Drink (those things have got­ten really costly!).  AND so it’s a big leap to shift gears to “liv­ing” talk.  I’m not a big shifter, I’m slow like a tur­tle when it comes to deci­sions.  It’s why I order the same meals when I’m out to eat. If I try to change it up I just stare & before you know it every­one else has gnawed off a table leg because days have gone by with­out food. I think it may be time to make up my mind & just order.

Speak­ing (or is it writ­ing?) of food I think I’m going to make some choco­late chip muffins either today or tomor­row.  It feels like a choco­late chip muf­fin time of year.  Mamacita sug­gested mak­ing them & said it could be part of school. She got her broth­ers in on the idea who offered it would be count­ing, mea­sur­ing & learn­ing bak­ing skills.  They’re smart ones using choco­late as edu­ca­tion.  Choco­late also off­sets panic.  Mmm…chocolate.   I should order chocolate…

Tagged as: Homeschooling, In Life, in the moment, life, navel-gazing at its best, work