Monday, February 9, 2009

Not Me Monday - with pictures!

Welcome to Not Me! Monday ! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.

My "Not Me" anecdote this week isn't about me, it's about one of the Stefo Crew. I just couldn't resist, although she's going to want to kill me someday...

BTW, I just realized that all three of my Not-Mes have featured the same child. Hmmm, does that tell you anything???


This is not a picture of one of my children asleep in the laundry hamper behind her door. She was not so tired after school that she was overcome while in the process of changing out of her uniform. Those are not her underpants down around her knees, either.






Back story: We started homeschooling in 1998 and I was doing okay with 6 kids, but in mid-2006, all the rules changed: I was expecting twins, and I was expecting the worst. Advanced maternal age, complications, bedrest, premature labor...not to mention the waking nightmare that I envisioned life with newborn twins to be. I panicked.

Now factor in a child who acted like sandpaper against everybody else in the family. You might have one of these in your house. She just annoyed everybody at that particular age. Her two next older siblings wouldn't play with her at all and delighted in tormenting her, but they doted on the youngest of the family. I envisioned her two older siblings shunning her, with me too busy or exhausted to intervene, and too busy to give her schoolwork the attention she deserved.

So I made the agonizing decision to send her to kindergarten. It really was more about occupying her all day so she wouldn't be unintentionally neglected at home. I wept over the decision, and the day I enrolled her I could barely choke out any words through the lump in my throat.

She did fine in school, although she asked me almost every day why SHE couldn't stay home with me and the babies and her SIBLINGS go to school instead. And she never did get used to that whole getting-up-early thing. None of those awful things I envisioned came to pass, anyway, and next fall she was back home with me where she belongs.

4 comments:

Heather~sheaaa6 said...

That picture cracks me up. ;) Even asleep she's a cutie pie. :)

Those windmills are in Shenandoah. They are awesome and huge! I am not good with directions, so I am not sure which way my hubby went, but they are on both sides of the mountain and you can see them vividly from the road. We pulled off to get the pictures and we could see them slowly turning. :) Really cool.

Kim said...

You have the funniest pictures! I still chuckle over that shot of your little one's head bent way back (inside a laundry basket, I think)—someday you'll be able to make a collage of your kids sleeping in hampers and on the laundry ; )

Am I to understand correctly that you are currently homeschooling all your children? For some reason, I hadn't picked up on that. I was under the impression that you used to homeschool, but didn't now (?)

Kathy B! said...

Yes, she's going to love you for that picture when she is older. What a sweet little doll she is! How on earth do you find the time to do it all?!?!

Restless Ink said...

that's a really cute picture.

I'm amazed at your family and home-schooling?! Wow. Incredible.