Dear Sarah,

For Sarah

The mailman brought a big surprise for the twins this morning - a letter from big sister Sarah at college.  

I didn't expect they'd be able to read her handwriting, but I was wrong.

They read it out loud, together.

She sent them a movie quote that touched her recently:

"If I were God, I would have made the world just so and no different. And so I have you."

Tuesday Morning.

They all have their own beds, 

but they just can't seem to stay there all night.

This is what my room looked like this morning.

Right side.

Left side.

Middle.  Good morning, Sunshine!

Picture Parade: Just Hanging Out

Picture Parade: Cashing In

The twins were so cute today . . . we had two boxes full of change, and our credit union has a no-fee coin machine.  They stood next to each other on tiptoes, taking turns loading the hopper and shoveling in the coins, until every last penny of the $31.00 was cashed in.

Picture Parade: Hard At Work

A local department store had a table set up where kids could color free Mother's Day cards, picture frames, or coupon books while parents shopped.  I had quite a difficult time prying my little workers away!

2:33 p.m., Any Given Weekday

This picture speaks volumes, if you know what to listen for.   

I’ve been homeschooling my kids since 1998.  None of the children who are currently homeschooled, with the exception of Clare for her kindergarten year, have ever been in traditional school.  12 days ago, (on Thursday the 15^th) Clare, who is 10, faced off with me and told me she doesn’t want to do her schoolwork.  This was not a news flash.  We'd been having issues with her cooperation for almost two years.  She was just being honest - sassy, but honest - but I was tired of threatening her and telling her how much easier she had it with me rather than in school, tired of her draining me of time and energy and enthusiasm.  Within a few minutes I had called the principal and made an appointment, and before she knew what hit her, she started school last Monday.  I cried about the decision for 2 straight days, and she cried every day in school for the first week. 

It’s Tuesday of the second week now, and both of us have stopped crying, although we still both have mixed feelings about this development. We are spending the same amount of time on after-school homework that we used to spend on all of her daily work put together.  She misses being home, being with her sisters, spending time with me, and she regrets losing the freedom we used to enjoy. She's sorry that she didn't cooperate more.  She wishes she could just come back home.  I don’t think she’s learned enough of a lesson yet.  We agreed that she has to finish out the year, but that seems so terribly long to me.  I want her to do well in school, but not so well that she loves it and never wants to be homeschooled again. 

And yet, without her, I’m getting a lot more done with my other kids.  The younger girls are getting regular lessons every day now, where before I often ran out of time.  Noelle will be 5 on the day after Christmas, and she has already progressed to the point where she can read 75% of everything she sees.  The “reading” switch has been turned on in her head, and now she can’t stop herself!!!    And Theresa, who is almost 8, still wasn’t reading fluently, but in just the past 2 weeks she’s made huge improvements.  The small increase in time we're put in has already reaped huge dividends.

Because Clare needs to get up early, all the girls have been put to bed earlier so that the house quiets down enough for her to be able to sleep.  She is notoriously nosy, and can't settle down if they're being noisy in the hall or the next bedroom.

There's another bonus I should mention - since Clare needs to catch her bus at 7:18 a.m., we have been getting up at 6:30 a.m. every weekday. I have never been a morning person, so this has opened up a whole world of extra time that I didn't even know existed!  (Just kidding, but only barely)  I have several hours of the peace I crave before the baby and the twins wake up.  If we get cracking, Brian and I can complete his courseload by 10:00 a.m., instead of us just getting up and moving by the same time.  I still haven't figured out how to work in all the cooking and cleaning too, but hey, it's only been 7 days.  Give me time.

So here I am, caught in this conundrum.  Because Clare is in school, I have this extra time.  If she were back at home, my motivation to get up early would diminish severely.  We'd probably fall back into our late bed/late rise pattern.  But having her in school was my last resort, and it was never part of my dream for our family.  All of the things she likes about school are the social aspects:  recess, seeing her friends, lunches.  There is tuition to be paid - we're paying for her to socialize?  Why is it that the school has her for seven hours during the day, but they send her home with two hours of homework that she can't even do, because she didn't understand the teachers' explanations?  If she can sit with me and do two hours of someone else's assignments, why couldn't she have just cooperated with me in the first place??  Then there's the endless fundraising, school uniforms, gym uniforms, new shoes, yada yada yada.  And did I mention that it's no coincidence that by the end of her very. first. week.  she and several others in our family had caught cold? 

There's no neat ending to this post, just a jagged hole in our day that used to be filled with Clare, for better or for worse.  And every day at 2:32, we go to meet the bus that brings her back to us.  They miss her, I miss her, and you can see how happy they all are for her to be back.

Postscript 10/21/11


That "cold" she caught turned out to be pneumonia.  She missed the next eight days of school and lost 9 pounds, but she's fully mended now.

Rockin' Out At The Church Picnic

Everybody Loves You

"Everybody loves you, everybody loves you..." is what Natalie was singing as she tenderly surrounded Regina with stuffed toys, trying to keep her from crying while I sorted laundry.

dReSsInG uP

Baby Love

Regina, 5 months old, with Noelle and Clare.

I Can't Think of a Good Title for This Post

I have a confession: I can't stand doing crafts with the kids. It always turns into a disaster. It wasn't always like this. I start out with high hopes, but invariably it turns into a free-for-all.

Whether we're making candles or finger-painting or making a foam Christmas tree, simultaneously there's always one kid who can't do it without help, one kid who can't do it without help but does it anyway, one kid who rushes through and is (poorly) done in five minutes, one kid who still isn't done two hours later, and, of course, the twins, too young to include but too old to be left out.

If it's a food craft, they're clamoring and fighting and crying ,"You said I could mix it!" or "I wanted to pour the chocolate chips in!"

And then there's me, rushing from kid to kid, trying to give three different sets of instructions at the same time while stopping one twin from giving the other a safety-scissor haircut, all in a state somewhere between frenzy and nervous breakdown.

Sometimes, just to liven things up, the occasional fight breaks out. And towards the end, they see something shiny, and I'm left cleaning up the glitter or pumpkin guts or picking up 300 twisted tie-dye rubber bands (and sporting tie-dyed hands for a week because I forgot to put on gloves), all the while wondering why I even bother in the first place. It completely wears me out for the rest of the day, and I usually need a nap and a heavy dose of solitude when it's all over.

It makes me wonder if I'm really cut out to be a homeschooling mom after all.

Having said all that, today we made rice krispy treats together.

Backstory: The last time we went to the salon, the stylist had a box of krispy treats and gave each of the girls one. Today we stopped in briefly, and as we were leaving, Natalie dug in her heels, started hopping up and down, and howling "I want a bar! I want a bar!" Of course, I had no idea what she meant.

Natalie hopped and howled all the way to the car, until Clare remembered the krispy treats from last time. So instead of scolding her or threatening her or any of those other things parents do in public to a tantrum kid, I tried to explain to a two-year-old that the treats were all gone. Didn't work. Then I told her that if she stopped crying, we would stop at the store and get marshmallows to make krispy treats at home. Thankfully, this did work.

They were very good in the store and for the 3-minute ride to our house. And true to my word, I proceeded to start making krispy treats, but I was dreading the usual clamoring chaos until I had a stroke of genius. This wouldn't work for every craft, but it worked like a charm this time.

I counted out 10 marshmallows per kid (next time I'll let them each count out 10), and let them drop them one by one into the melted butter. They ran laps around the downstairs until the microwaving was done. Then I showed them, to their amazement, the huge spongy mass that now was where their marshmallows had been.

Then - first stroke of genius - instead of scooping 6 cups of krispies one at a time out of the box, I scooped all six cups into large bowl and put 3 smaller measuring scoops into the bowl. Then I appointed the oldest, Clare, to be Designated Stirrer, because that marshmallow stuff is so goopy that she's the only one who could handle it.

Next - second stroke of genius - I took them out to the front walk so that any spills would be cleaned up by the wildlife detail instead of on my kitchen floor. And it worked beautifully! Clare was satisfied because she had an important job, using three scoopers meant that everybody got adequate turns to add krispies, and the smaller scoops meant that it took a good, long time to add them all.




Even more fun was that Mom let everybody eat handfuls of the sticky, gooey mess right out of the mixing bowl.



Remember that, kids. Your mom is awesome.