Honesty and Support and Grace

So I wrote a few days ago, teary and frustrated and feeling desperate.  I wanted a raise, I wanted a babysitter, I wanted a cleaning fairy to come vacuum the dog hair off my carpet.  I wanted someone, anyone, to tell me that they’d been there, under that big pile of kids and noise and dirt and work, and I was not alone and that while it was hard to see at the moment, that pile of kids and noise and dirt and work was right where God needed me to be.

And someone did come.  Just like always.  I feel pretty stupid now, actually, for even feeling frustrated.  There was no raise or babysitter or cleaning fairy, but God stepped in with His grace just as clearly as if those things had appeared on my doorstep.

I wanted just one – just one – good moment with one of the kids and SweetPotato, my “challenging” child who is loud (we call that “vibrant”), defiant (“independent”), and continually messy (“creative”) and who will be the first to march up to you and announce, “Hi!  I’m SweetPotato and I’m very rude!” – well, she smiled sweetly and snuggled up for a bedtime story with no complaints, no whining, and was just all cuteness and love.

I wanted a sympathetic, supportive ear from someone who had “been there,” and while I grumped about the too-chipper-and-perfect moms of large homeschooling families, an old friend, a seminarian on the other side of the world who is decidedly none of those things, shared his struggle with his own vocation with me and I realized that he was a person who had been exactly where I was.  He could not have been more “there” had he been sitting in my living room and living my story.

I wanted to feel like my life had more breadth than dirty diapers and drippy noses, and a lovely friend showed up from hours away for coffee and a chat.

I went to confession and Mass over lunch on a blessedly slow work day downtown – the first time in months I’ve had a gap in my meetings to do that – and as I sat in front of a statue of Mary, I thought about how she was exactly there, too.  Being without sin doesn’t mean you’re not afraid, or questioning, or frustrated, or tired.  It doesn’t even mean that sometimes you don’t want to say No. Flippin’. Way. to what God is asking of you.  That just means you’re human.  Mary was human.  Jesus was, too.  The sin only comes when you reject the grace to do what God is calling you to do.  He always gives you the tools.  I just wasn’t seeing them. 

Mary was undoubtedly terrified by her task.  Being Jesus’ mom wasn’t easy.  She stood to lose everything – her husband, her family, the trust of her town.  She probably wanted to tell the angel “Nuh-uh.  No way.  Find yourself another virgin.  I’m outta here.”  And feeling that way would have just been human.  What made her Mary, Mother of God and not just Mary, nice girl from Nazareth, was her ability to accept the grace to carry out the job.

And as I sat there it became abundantly clear that grace had been sitting under my nose the whole time.  I don’t need a raise or babysitter or cleaning fairy.  I just need to take a deep breath, and trust, and know that God will help me find the answers and the patience and the strength when I think I’m all out.  The graces that I found were there all along – I was just so caught up in myself that I couldn’t see them.  Once I found the humility to get down on my knees and ask for help – they were right in front of me.

Honesty and Support

I have not written in ages, because Christmas.  The wee ones look extra cute when they are being forced to wait to open their presents until after Mass, see?

And because the three birthdays we have within two months of each other, right during the holidays.  And because the flu that took over the family.  But that is all drawing to a close now, and so I find myself fresh out of excuses to be away from the keyboard.

School is, on the whole, just super.  Sprout complains that no kid ever in the history of kids has had to do as much work as he does, and it's SO unfair, but they're all doing great and racing ahead and I have no complaints, really, in the academic department.  We've taken a Christmas break for two weeks and I am happier than the kids about it.  No lesson plans, no worksheets, no sorting through binders before bed... it's lovely.

But to be honest, I'm tired.  Some of it's pregnancy and hormones, some of it's the lingering flu, some of it's the getting up at 5am with a crack-of-dawn-type toddler.  But mostly, it's just being worn down and worn out.  I'm tired of wiping butts and wiping noses, tired of mediating fights and having every 30-second trip to the bathroom be interrupted by at least two or three children screaming my name, and tired of having "grown-up conversation time" be limited to the five minutes in between when the kids are finally asleep and when SSHH and I pass out in bed.  95% of the time I love the calling to be a Catholic wife and mother - or at the very least, I can keep the dignity and purpose of the job foremost in my mind.  The other 5% of the time - well, if I didn't truly believe the Church's teaching on families, there would be no way I'd have signed up for this.

Which brings me to my soapbox of the day, which is that this path - the big-Catholic-family path, the homeschooling path - can be very, very lonely.  I know that every parent, whether of one child or ten, has moments of feeling alone, lost, and without support - but it's multiplied when the children outnumber the adults exponentially, when there have been years and years on end of pregnancy, nursing, and toddlerhood - sometimes all three at once - and multiplied when the sheer financial burden and technical difficulty of clothing, housing, and feeding that big ol' family means that not once - not one single time ever - have you paid a babysitter to watch the kids while you went out to dinner or a movie to recharge your batteries.

When the initial response of most people is to think that the very existence of your family is proof of some sort of clinical insanity, it's hard to find a safe place to vent or look for a sympathetic ear.  When being tired at the end of a pregnancy leads acquaintances and colleagues to wonder out loud why you don't just decide that "this is the last one," you're put in the situation of forcing a smile and pretending that everything is great, when you feel like you're about ready to crack.

And my complaint is that none of that is helped by the Catholic or homeschooling communities out there.  While every parent, big family or small, homeschooling or not, has moments of desperation and meltdown under the stress of raising children, leading a large, homeschooling family is like being in a crucible at times.  Handling a vanful of kids going crazy is at least a two-person job, so there's no just handing it to one's spouse for the moment while you step out to compose yourself.  Day care is out, babysitting is (at least for us right now) out, "taking a break" is out - forget about a weekend vacation.  A large family doesn't mean less quality time with the kids, it means less quality time for yourself and as a couple as you stretch to cover what the little ones need.  Homeschooling can create great relationships with your kids - but it also makes for very intense, constant interaction that can be overwhelming.

It's intense - and not always in a happy smiley way.  But I don't read or hear a lot of stories that reflect this.  The Catholic and homeschooling blogosphere and conference circuit is filled with stories of delightful chaos and well-adjusted people.  No one talks about the moments when you lock yourself in the bedroom and sob into your laundry pile, or the effort of wrestling your preschooler onto the toilet, begging her to "just TRY to pee before we go," while the toddler clings to your leg and you breathe through the braxton-hicks contractions the whole episode has just brought on.

When your day looked like that - and the "support" you can find is full of happy and chipper - it's easy to feel alone.  And I know, at least anecdotally, that everyone is emphatically NOT happy and chipper all the time in this endeavor.  So why the heck aren't we talking about it?  Is it that some are so filled with the need to defend and explain our counter-cultural choices that we feel there is no other option than to make them appear blissful all the time?  Is it that other people are able to keep the thought of family as vocation foremost in their minds all the time and truly are happy and chipper every day?  'Cause if so, they're better folks than I am.

And when you have a large family and homeschool, it's hard enough to find support.  Most of my mom-acquaintances have one or two children and feel - and sometimes say out loud - that I've "asked for this" and can't complain.  It's a pretty long, complicated explanation to go into why exactly this view of family is a part and parcel of our faith, what we hold and believe to be true as the foundation of our being, and not a "lifestyle choice."  It's harder still when your own parish - where you, theoretically, should see some big Catholic families and where that support should be coming from - has very, very few large families and fewer homeschooling ones.  I know I'm not the only one whose noticed - two of those large families who offered friendly faces have started going to Mass at other parishes just in the past year.  And now even going to Mass feels like we might be the circus sideshow of the day, and that we stick out like the loud, chaotic bunch that we often are.

So I'd love to hear more about the hard days from those bloggers and conference speakers and community leaders out there.  It would make the road feel less lonely.  It would be more honest.  It might, ultimately, be more supportive to offer a shoulder to cry on than a beaming smile.  Because sometimes, that's what this reality looks like.

Have we arrived?

After a year and a half on this crazy ride, I think we might - maybe - finally know what we're doing.  Fingers crossed.

This week was blissful.  The kids were focused, respectful, eager to learn, asking questions (okay, so Sprout didn't focus on Tuesday.  I had to work in the office on Tuesday.  But he got it back together really, really well, so that's okay.).  All schoolwork was done by 10:30 in the morning at the latest.  And then we had the whole. entire. day. to enjoy ourselves as a family.  We went to the park, to the swimming pool, the kids ran around outside and yelled like banshees and jumped in the big pile of fall leaves.  They read books and watched, of their own accord, a documentary on elephant migration routes ("look, mom, the baby elephant!").

And we've done fun stuff together lately, things that left the kids laughing and grinning and enjoying themselves.  And they're learning so much!  I worried that when we dropped a curriculum provider this year and ventured out on our own, that we wouldn't stay "on track," but if anything, we're doing much more and going much farther this year than last.  SSHH put his microbiology degree to work and taught Sprout the ins and outs of muscle cells, the kids practiced parts of speech with MadLibs (remember those, o children of the eighties?), we learned about photo editing from the nice folks at the Apple Store (field trip!), we made paper-plate-spiders to decorate the front door on Halloween (yes, still in pajamas).  Learning?  Yep.  Fun?  Absolutely.

As we drove home from the pool in the late afternoon this week, we stopped at a red light beside a school bus.  Sprout commented, "Wow.  Are those kids just getting home from school now?"  I told him yes, they were, and some of them probably had homework to finish tonight.  He thought about it for a minute, and said "I don't think I could go back and do that again like I did before.  It would drive me crazy."  He doesn't always remember it (like, say, when grammar is BORING and STUPID and he HATES work), but he's having more and more days where he appreciates owning his own time, learning about things he likes - those migrating elephants - and he's mentioned several times how frustrating it was for him to work at someone else's pace in a traditional school, whether that pace was slower or faster than he needed.  I'm hoping - and trying not to expect, lest I be disappointed - that these realizations will translate into an increased sense of responsibility for his own work and learning.  

For now, though, I'm happy to have enjoyed a fantastic week together.  When we started homeschooling, this is what I wanted - close-knit learning, time together enjoying each other, time for the kids to be kids, doing what they like to do, whether that's playing with computer programming or climbing trees.  Lacking any "real" field trip ideas for Monday, our usual go-places day, we went to a park and the library for a few hours.  SweetPotato spontaneously said grace before munching her string cheese snack, Sprout found some boys and played soccer with them, Doodle invented games in the grass. We never - never - would have had the time, energy, or desire to do these things when Sprout was in school.  When he came home, it was always time for homework, and dinner, and getting everyone through the bedtime routine so that we could do it all over again the next day. We were fried, and there wasn't energy or time for anything else.  Weekends were for Mass, and Scouts, and groceries, and trying to keep a handle on the piles of dog hair and dirt on the floor.  Next week may be a struggle again, but I'm grateful to have had this week to remind me of why we're doing this.

Catholic Home Decorating

A while back Super-Smart Hunky Husband (SSHH) asked if I thought getting holy water font for the house would be a good idea.  I shopped around, found a little plain-looking white one with the Holy Family on it, and we promptly installed it by the front door.  The kids love using it when they're gathering by the door before we go places, and it's a super reminder to say a quick prayer.

Then he asked what I thought of making a home altar.  I had no idea what this was, so I went to my good friend Google and found page after page of gaudy, frilly, cluttered creations stacked high with plastic statues of Mary and festooned with doilies that someone's Great-Aunt Edna had made (no disrespect to Great-Aunt Edna), and thought, "He wants to put a WHAT in our living room?  No. Way.  We can pray just fine without a home altar, thankyouverymuch."

So let me tell you about our home altar.

In our summer home-improvement frenzy, renovating the basement into a schoolroom/playroom, we decided to take a look around the rest of the house.  I painted the kitchen and changed out some hardware.  And as we were creating a "kid space," we also thought about reclaiming the living room as "grown-up space" - no crushed goldfish crackers underfoot, no juice stains on the couch, no puzzle pieces everywhere.

The couch and a big armchair more-or-less face the corner of the room, and we used to have a TV there.  It bothered us that that the TV was the focus of the room, though.  It was too tempting to plop down and turn it on.  We'd cancelled our cable over the winter, in part to escape the increasingly high bills that came with it, but also to reduce what was becoming a dependence on the TV.  We wanted the automatic response to plopping down in that big cozy chair to be something other than watch an inane show.

And so we decided to go for that home altar, after all.  We had a nice, large, wooden wine rack that was going unused.  We moved it into the living room and brought out a few things - an icon of the Holy Family, a crucifix, a book of blessings, a small dish for holy water. We bought some "altar cloths" (i.e., a cheap set of multi-colored napkins from Amazon, from which we extracted the appropriate liturgical colors - it's black today for All Souls' Day, and hard to see in my picture).   SSHH did manly things with tools and turned the wine-cubby part into a small bookshelf.  We've stocked it with a Bible, a few prayer books, and some things for the kids.  Our hope is that when someone sits down, they might be more tempted to pick up a book or say a prayer rather than turn on the television.  And so far it's working - SweetPea picked up a copy of MagnifiKid yesterday and flipped through that, rather than asking for another episode of Magic School Bus.

Despite myself, I think it looks kinda classy and nice.  It fits in with the room and our lives.  It's a work in progress - we'll stick a few rosaries in a drawer, add the Advent wreath in a few weeks, maybe get a niftier holy water font than a dish from the Target dollar bin - but it's already making a difference in how we live in our house.  When we got married, had kids, decided to educate them at home, we reaffirmed each time our commitment to live our lives prayerfully.  Sometimes we need reminders to do that, and just as school, play, sleep, eating, and everything else have their places in our home, now prayer does, too.

Awkward Questions

When SSHH and I were expecting our first little one, everybody was congratulatory and overjoyed.  “How wonderful!” they said.  “You’re starting your family!”  Some were a little concerned that we were having children while still in graduate school and when we were newly married, but we assured them that I wasn’t going to give up my education or career to eat bonbons and stay barefoot and pregnant, and they quickly got over it.

Baby number two was cause for similar excitement.  When she was born, we heard a lot of “it is so nice that you have your boy and your girl now!”  I think most of our friends and family expected us to be done.

So when #3 came along, there was a little more hesitancy in their good wishes.  Several people asked, “was this planned?” or “are you happy about this?”  But three really isn’t all that unusual, and when little SweetPotato came hollering into the world, she won ‘em over.

When I was pregnant with our fourth, there was definite concern.  A few people could not believe that we would actually try for four children, and were convinced that we were just hiding the fact that we really had a family of “mistakes.”  There were a lot of questions about how we were going to “manage this” and more than one person expressed a conviction that I must have been somehow coerced into having a fourth child, because surely no woman would make such a limiting choice freely.

This fifth pregnancy has actually been rather liberating.  We’ve heard all the usual questions that people think are so novel and clever, the usual, “you know what causes this, don’t you?” and “you must not have TV, huh?”  But I think our friends and family are starting to realize that all of these crazy kids are exactly what we want for our family, and so there has been a fair amount of interest in why we’re choosing to accept a large family.

The most interesting questions have come from, of all places, my coworkers.  I’m in public service and work in a fairly diverse office.  To my knowledge, I’m one of two practicing Catholics.  When it became obvious that I was expecting again (my third child since starting work with this group), to a one they asked, “so are you done after this baby?”  I don’t make an overt show of my faith at work; I’ve got a calendar from our parish up on my bulletin board among the kid pictures and that’s it.  But I decided that my answer would be, “well, we’re Catholic so we believe that decision isn’t entirely up to us.  We’ll see” – and then I dropped the subject.

And then the questions started!  I had no idea just how fascinating that was to people.  I also had no idea that I’d end up discussing the ins and outs of NFP and lactational amenorrhea and why exactly the Church isn’t cool with IUDs with my colleagues (with whom I’d never discussed anything deeper than the weather to this point).  Just as interesting as the questions is the fact that they have so many questions, and even find this stuff interesting at all.  There was so much curiosity as to why anyone would chose this path, and even how one could chose this path and still maintain all of those things that the mainstream media says are discouraged for Catholic women – independent thought, a social life, hobbies, a career.

The questions shed such light on the way people view Catholic life.  I’ve been asked if my husband was really okay with the idea of not goin’ at it at all times of the month should we decide that we’d like to delay pregnancy (yep), if I was really okay with accepting the babies as they came right now (yep), and if I felt like I wasn’t allowed to be an “independent woman” because I was having “so many” babies (nope).  I’ve been asked how one could tell what point of their cycle they were in (ummm… do I need to give details?  We’re at work here.) and if the Church thought I was a “bad woman” for being the breadwinner for our family (nope) and if I felt “oppressed” by the Church or by my husband (definitely nope).  I’ve been asked if I ever wanted to just “go on birth control and enjoy not having kids” (nope.  Well, maybe at 3am with a screaming child, but really no.) and what I would do if one of my kids were gay (um, love them.  What did they think I was going to say?).  I’ve been asked if I would “let” one of my children become a priest, monk, or nun (of course!) and if my kids are allowed to watch TV (well, we try to limit it, but srsly – Blue’s Clues has saved my life more than once.).

So while things have gotten a little awkward – I never thought I’d have these conversations with my colleagues at work, who are otherwise decidedly in the “just talk about the weather” category – I’ve decided that it’s been a real opportunity for education and evangelization.  I’m Catholic and believe what my Church teaches about life and marriage and family.  I’m doing my best to live my life by that, although I fall short an embarrassing amount of the time.  I’m happy with the choices we’ve made for our family, although they’re hard – really hard – to carry out sometimes.  I’ve felt a bit like a museum exhibit the past few weeks (and here we have our Catholic woman!  A rare specimen that seldom emerges from the cave where she births and nurses her numerous offspring!  Note the floor-length skirt and veil!), but I think there’s some good that’s coming of it, as maybe some of the people who have asked all this will question, just a bit, what they read in the mainstream media about the Church, or might understand that some of the external signs of a Catholic life – that herd of children – don’t mean that anyone is repressed, oppressed, unhappy, bigoted, out of touch with reality, or closed-minded. 

Effecting change, just a tiny bit, in my wee little corner of the world…

Focus. Focus like a laser.

Sprout has never been able to focus for very long on anything that wasn't his prime topic of interest at the moment (he can recite Mass from start to finish, and can read Garfield comics for hours, but that's not math).

He was born almost two weeks late because he just couldn't get his act together in there enough to come out.  We had horrific ninety-minute nursing sessions when he was a newborn because he'd lose his concentration and start gazing around the room.  In between contemplating giving up nursing and trying to pass the time by watching infomercials at 3am, I would make up dopey little songs, coaching my tiny son on how to "focus!  Focus like a laser!"  A composer I am not.

School is much the same.  He sailed through kindergarten and first grade, but the demands were low.  He's bright, so he'd finish his work way ahead of everyone else and zone out or doodle until the class was ready to go on.  It was tailor-made for his wandering mind.  We caught glimpses of trouble, though, when he brought home (a surprisingly large amount) of homework in first grade.  There would be tears and frustration near-daily as we tried to get him to park himself at the table long enough to write some spelling sentences.  Some of that was his exhaustion after a long day at school, and the fact that doing all this homework left too little time for play, but some of it was the need for some concentrated focus - and he just didn't have enough of that.

And this has really become an issue now that we're homeschooling and "finishing work ahead of everyone else" and taking all day to do work he could do in an hour isn't the way it works.  He's also working at his level now, and that means more work - if he's "above grade level" (whatever that means) in math or reading or whatnot, I'm not going to keep him held back and bored so he can goof off.  He has enough work to fill the morning - and if he does his job, it's always done in three or four hours, even with a break for a snack.  He's not overtaxed.  But I'm the school-supervisor-in-chief, and since I'm also working from home and often dealing with the littles at the same time, I just can. not. supervise breaks every ten minutes for "blowing off steam time."  I can't sit next to Sprout and keep his nose to the grindstone.  I can't watch every grammar question he answers.  Closer supervision is something that just won't work for our family - if we're going to be homeschoolers, then the kids need to be able to work independently at times.  We're there for questions and help, of course, but we can't micromanage.

And ultimately, micromanaging does them a disservice.  It absolves them of all responsibility for their own learning, and responsibility for themselves and their choices is one of the primary lessons we're trying to impart.  When Sprout loses focus and sits, staring at the wall for an hour, pencil in hand and religion worksheet half-finished, his whined excuse is always "but the girls were distracting me!!!!"  And my retort is always, "No, you chose to be distracted.  If you were focusing, they wouldn't be able to distract you."

We'd tried all sorts of systems for helping him keep his mind on his work, from giving him a timer to set for each subject and "work breaks" to elaborate day-scheduling boards.  He and SweetPea do each get a checklist of all their work for each day, which helps immensely when it comes to working independently - they're a pain to put together, but the kids know exactly what they have to do and can get through most of their work on their own.  They can order their day how they work best, and can easily see how much they've done and how much they have left to do.  We start off in the morning as a family with prayer - and then everyone races off in different directions to get their own work done.  It's not for everyone, but for us and our situation it works really, really well.

But it was still escalating into a standoff, nearly every day.  Sprout was frustrated because it was taking nearly all day for him to get his work done while his sisters went off and played, and he was frustrated because he knew that it was his lack of focus that was causing the problem.  His frustration led to yelling, some nasty language, and general disrespectfulness, and that led to angry parents.  And quite frankly, we were sick of yelling, cajoling, and threatening.  We were sick of taking away allowance and computer and tablet privileges.  We were sick of dreading each school day and the fights that would come with it.

So we decided to give negativity the boot.  Bad behavior wouldn't cause punishment or loss of privileges  - he'd start at zero, and good behavior would earn them.  I wrote up some index cards, each of them good for ten minutes of computer or tablet time.  Each subject that he finished without losing focus and without any disrespectful behavior, I told Sprout, he'd get a card and when his work was done, he could use it to play on the computer or with his tablet - his favorite free-time thing to do.

And the light went on for him.  That first day, he got his "tickets" for every subject except one.  He's losing focus sometimes still - but he's feeling like we're working together, not against each other, and his attitude has completely turned around.  Tuesday he slowpoked through his work and didn't finish, although he was at least polite, but Wednesday he turned it around and finished Tuesday's work and all of Wednesday's by lunchtime - and this morning he got everything done quickly and well even while I tended to work in another room.  He was thrilled to spend the whole afternoon riding bikes with SSHH at the park, playing in the yard, and watching Mythbusters reruns instead of slogging through vocabulary words.

So fingers crossed that this continues.  Because I love not feeling like I have to yell at my son to get him through a math worksheet, and I love looking forward to school time and not resenting it, and I love being able to have all that wonderful family time that was part of the reason we started this endeavor in the first place.  He's SO proud of himself and SO happy when he does well, running up to me with his assignment sheet in hand to show off all the checkmarks he's got next to finished subjects, "And it's only 10:15, mom!"  We feel like we're on the same team right now when it comes to learning, and that's a fantastic thing.

In which I confess that I cannot draw a straight line.

So my artistic talent is limited to drawing stick people.  Stick people with odd deformities. That means that when it comes to teaching art, I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing.  But this is homeschooling, right?  We are nothing if not resourceful.  And this year, actually, it looks like we're going to have a lot of fun with art.

Last year art sort of fell out of the gate.  I had good plans and good intentions - we feel that it is important for the kids to learn both how to appreciate art and how to create their own messy masterpieces.  I had decided to take the angle of reading about and looking at an important artwork, then trying to use some of the techniques on our own in a kid-friendly way.  I've got a fancy degree, i lived in Europe for a while and saw all sorts of great art - I could do this, right?  So I found a great book on art appreciation for kids and we did fantastic art projects - for about a month.  Because the problem is, this is really hard - especially for someone for whom creativity does not come naturally.  The planning of these art lessons started to take up an enormous amount of time, and so they fell by the wayside.  I figured since the kids draw approximately 97452 pictures every day, that counted for something, and I didn't feel too badly about not having a "formal" art curriculum.

But this year I was determined to give it another try, and I realized that I needed help (like, preferably completely spelled-out-for-me plans).  I found a great little book called Discovering Great Artists, and it has been a lifesaver.  Each lesson talks about a different artist and a specific technique they used.  Then there are step-by-step directions for the kids to try it on their own, and even pictures of kid-created artwork (to help manage parental expectations!).  There's an index with all of the art projects sorted by time to set up, time to complete, difficulty, and materials needed.  Don't have clay? Well, it's easy to find non-clay-needing projects.  Know I'm going to have a really busy week?  I can pick a project that the kids can do largely on their own.  We are doing art this year!

And so our first official field trip of the year was to the National Art Gallery in Washington, DC.  SweetPotato has been learning all about shapes and we read a couple of books about finding shapes in art, so this was "her" field trip, and her job was to find all sorts of shapes for us.  Sprout and SweetPea will get their own special field trips later in the year.

A trip downtown is always a treat for the kids and we had to go to lunch, pet the police horse, and get very excited about crossing busy streets.  Working in DC and mostly just trying to get in and out as quickly as possible, I forget how exciting all of it is for little ones.

We went to the sculpture garden first, where the kids could get out some energy before being told "shhhhh" for two hours in the museum.  We had to play duck-duck-goose on the circle-of-chairs sculpture:`

And the girls were mystified by Typewriter Eraser, Scale X:

The fountain and green space were a hit:

When we got to the gallery proper, the littles were surprisingly fascinated.  It was a good lesson to me not to sell them short.  SweetPea loved talking about what all of the women and girls in the Impressionist paintings were thinking about, and she discovered that the ideal place to try out some ballet moves was in an empty gallery of Chinese vases.

Doodle loved the fountain best, and was decidedly unimpressed by Monet.

The museum staff were unbelievably helpful and friendly, and went out of their way to talk with the kids and help them have a great day.  They were awestruck when they were asked to be "deputy guards" and "make sure that no one was touching the art!"  

When we left we took some time for them to run around on the National Mall and get their crazies out before heading home.  They started a game of tag that ended in giggles, a pile of kids and shouts of "look, mom, we're a triple-decker!"  I love my brother and SSHH loves his, but we agree that we just don't remember scenes like this from when we were little.  I don't know how it happened, but the kids truly are each other's best friends.  They invent crazy games and have inside jokes and squabble and fight and take care of each other and it's really wonderful to watch.  So despite all the wonderful things we saw in the gallery, this was the best picture of the day:

Very Small Babies

I wound up at a crisis pregnancy center today.  Not because I'm having a crisis pregnancy, although wee one #5 is on the way in April and I think I'm sort of always in a state of minor crisis.  They had hired a new nurse and she was doing a week of intensive ultrasound training and they needed "ultrasound models" (the first time I've ever been called a model!) for her to practice on.  I'm all about seeing lots of baby pictures, so I signed up.

The little one is doing just fine in there, heartbeat just galloping away like it should.  And they appreciated the fact that as I'm on my fifth baby, I have pretty much lost all medical modesty and didn't mind that they scanned away for nearly an hour, checking here and there and practicing with all the settings on their fancy new ultrasound machine.

That fancy new ultrasound machine was another reason why I was particularly excited to be there - SSHH is very active in the Knights of Columbus and one of their initiatives is purchasing ultrasound machines for crisis pregnancy centers.  The nurses can check the health and viability of the babies who come in, but statistics show that the vast majority of women considering abortion who see their baby - little arms, little legs, little heart beating even as the baby is the size of a raisin - choose to continue their pregnancy.  This particular ultrasound machine was bought by the Knights of Columbus, and so I was eager to check it out.

The nurse, the ultrasound trainer, and I had a chance to chat when they were done scanning and it was so heartening to hear how strongly they viewed their vocation.  They are in the business of saving babies, and they truly rejoice for every baby born.  I breathed a sigh of relief when our baby's heartbeat was found, and said that I always held my breath during a pregnancy until I saw a happy, healthy baby on that screen.  The trainer smiled - and said that she held her breath during every ultrasound until she saw that healthy heartbeat, too.

It was wonderful to be around medical personnel who were so wonderfully supportive of life.  I love the obstetricians at the practice I go to; they are caring and skilled.  But at my last visit, when they asked what kind of contraception I would like and I replied none - we would plan our family naturally - they were honestly flummoxed.  They repeated the question, asked if I was sure I didn't want the pill or to talk about other options - after all, I had four children and was not beyond my childbearing years.  It took several polite but firm replies to get them to let me go on my merry contraception-free way.  I understand that the vast majority of women do want some form of contraception and that it is their job to provide it - but it was disconcerting that they found a woman who did not want that to be such an anomaly.

So, surprisingly, I found myself more completely comfortable talking with the nurses at the crisis pregnancy center than I do talking with my own obstetrician.  They thought a fifth child was wonderful, and pointing out all the parts that make up the new baby's support system in the womb, smiled and said that it was amazing how God provides.  They are in the business of celebrating life, in whatever circumstances that life finds itself.  They spoke respectfully and with care of the women who come to the center, and it was clear that their lives were valued just as much as their unborn babies'.  And so I've got an addition to my prayer list, and a place that I'd love to volunteer at someday, and was was heartened by a few people in a small office who are doing amazing work every day.

The First Day, Our Second Time Around

We started our 2014-2015 school year today and our first day was so very different from last year.  The kids know what to expect now and so there were no nerves on their part - just excitement to start school.  They've been asking to do work in the new schoolroom for weeks, so they were thrilled to finally get to use it.  They spun around in their new desk chairs and switched their new lamps onandoffandonandoff and Doodle made herself a pest by emptying a few bookshelves of their contents and there was general cheerful chaos as we jumped in.

And there were far fewer nerves on my part, as well.  I know how to manage our homeschool day and how to handle any hiccups that come up, but even more than that, I realize now that a lousy day or a few bad moments does not represent failure, and that the best way to handle it is to laugh, shrug, and move on (hopefully with a strategy to handle it better the next time).  SSHH is also firmly behind our homeschooling enterprise this year, which makes a big difference in my approach.  Last year was very much a trial year for us and SSHH in particular had concerns and questions about how this was going to work, and I felt quite a bit of self-imposed pressure to make every day and moment spectacular - "See!  We are beaming ALL THE TIME and learning ALL THE THINGS and are done by noon EVERY DAY!  Is this not the most perfect thing EVER?!?!"  And so when reality struck and kids and mom were melting down and work wasn't done by bedtime, it felt catastrophic.  This year we are out to have fun and learn as a family, and sometimes it may be wonderful and sometimes it might lead to us all rolling our eyes at each other, but our outlook is much better from the start.

The perennial question when the kids meet new people is "what grade are you in?"  The usual reply is 3rd grade, kindergarten, and pre-k, but that really just covers their ages, and as far as school is concerned it isn't an honest answer.  Sprout is doing 3rd grade work for several subjects, but his reading, writing, science, and grammar is a grade or two ahead.  He's excited to start Latin this year and start learning computer programming.  SweetPea is five, but she's doing 1st grade math and grammar, and is reading longer chapter books now.  She's doing grade-level religion because it will be tied to sacramental preparation in a couple of years and we don't want to muddy the waters there.  And three-and-a-half-year old SweetPotato is working through kindergarten phonics and math books, although her coordination isn't on a kindergarten level yet.

So I have no idea what grade the kids are in.  Last year we made signs on the first day of school that announced that we had a second grader and a preschooler, but this year our signs just say "2014-2015 Henry Homeschool."  The "grades" have become pretty fluid, and each child is working where they're at in each subject and making progress, and as long as that doesn't stall, I'll be happy that we're on a good path.

We had a short first day of academics, and then we celebrated the new school year by heading to the waterpark and getting Happy Meals for dinner.  Tomorrow we buckle down in earnest and work through a full day.  While I'm sure we'll have our ups and downs, we're in a really good place at the start of this school year, and we're committed to being, as the Church instructs us, "the primary educators of our children."  And really, there's nothing else we'd rather be doing.

Schoolroom!

It has been a summer-long ordeal - but we have a new schoolroom!  Last year we started with Sprout as our only "serious" homeschooler, and so we had a small shelf in our home office with books and supplies, and he did his work at the dining room table.  SweetPea soon showed that she was ready for more consistent schoolwork, so she joined Sprout and the table suddenly seemed smaller.  When SweetPotato begged for her own folder and worksheets, school time turned into Sprout spending half his time distracted and the morning punctuated by wails of "MOOOOOMMMMM!  HER worksheet is touching MY book!!!!"

Something needed to be done.

We had a large family room that was a messy jumble of toys, and a full third of which was taken up by a large brick bar and cabinets.  Someone had some rockin' parties in that room thirty years ago.  It was dark and smelled kind of funny.  And we decided that it would make a perfect schoolroom and playroom.

So we demolished and rebuilt - SSHH did manly things with a sledgehammer and PonyMommy repaired drywall and whitewashed bricks for hours on end after the kids were in bed.  If anything can drive one to tears, it's remodeling.

We wanted an organized space for school, with separate workspaces for each child and lots of storage.  We wanted to separate the "hands-off, mom-only" supplies from the "kid-accessible" schoolbooks.  We wanted a central space to work one-on-one with a child and to do science or art together.  Since I work from home most of the time, the schoolroom also needed an area where I could do my own work while simultaneously being available for the schoolkids' questions.

We also wanted a playspace that gave the kids room to spread out their toys and use their imaginations.  We wanted to have those toys organized so they could actually find things to play with.  And we wanted the play area to be visually accessible from the schoolroom, so that toddlers could play supervised while the older children worked, and so that as the younger ones finished their school day, they could move into play while I still kept tabs on them.

And we ended up with an absolutely perfect room - we are so excited.  The kids are even asking to do schoolwork now so they can sit at their new desks (and spin their new rolly chairs).  We've spent the whole summer sledgehammering walls and repairing drywall and painting and whitewashing bricks (my pet project) and laying carpet and organizing toys (I threw out seven garbage bags full of old broken/mismatched stuff.  Seriously.  Don't tell the kids.).  The finishing touches are done, right down to the addition of the "class pet," guinea pigs Oreo and S'more.  We can't wait to start the school year and use this fantastic space!

There are a few finishing touches left - the walls are bare, but I'm going to wait and see what kind of posters and things seem right over the course of the school year.  Sprout is going to be studying cells this year and has asked for a microscope for the school room - but anything decent that will last us through high school is not inexpensive, so we'll be waiting on that.  And we need a new computer; Sprout is becoming quite the computer programming whiz and will be starting to use a CGI program for children this year, so the decade-old computers he's been using are no longer doing the job.  As a temporary solution I'll be giving my (also elderly) laptop to the schoolroom, and we'll look at new computers once our bank account has finished reeling from the remodel.

So enjoy a few (okay, many) pictures of the before, during, and after - and wish us luck as we start the year in a few short weeks!

Before we started:

Time for some demolition!

Child labor.

Oooh, those cabinets need to go, too.

Painty-paint with feline help.

Carpet tester.

And the new room, all finished and bee-yoo-ti-ful.

Nice organized toys.

Desks, work table, and "mom's stuff" in the corner.

School books, organized by subject.

The new class pets, Oreo and S'more.

The Least of These

Sprout has always been interested in money. He asks how much things cost, and he knows about mortgages and interest and credit cards and loans. He knows how much money our family makes and what we spend it on. So it wasn’t surprising when he asked if we could buy something-or-other and when I said that we couldn’t afford it, he grumped and then said “Wow, we could do so much stuff if we had a million dollars!”

I asked him what he wanted do with a million dollars and he listed a litany of things, like buying a ride-on-battery-powered kids’ jeep, and the big playground set sitting in the parking lot at Home Depot, and flying to a vacation at the beach. I said that those sounded like really cool fun things to do, and asked what he thought we should do if we had a million dollars. He thought for a minute and said “Well, I guess we could probably buy a lot of food for the food drive with it. And we could build some houses for people who don’t have houses.” We had a good discussion about how we have enough money for the things we need and some of the things we want, but not for all of the things we might want – and that’s okay. We talked about how some people don’t have enough money for even the things they need, and we should try to help them, because everyone should have the things they need.

And then, as he often does, Sprout floored me by saying, thoughtfully, “I guess that’s what Jesus meant when he said that it would be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to go to heaven. If you’re rich, then you aren’t doing the right things with your money like taking care of others, huh? So maybe if we have enough money for the things we need then that’s what we should do with the rest of it.”

And as proud as I was of Sprout after our talk, it really is part of a larger mental struggle I’ve been having recently. We give in the usual ways – we buy food for the food pantry, put our money in the collection plate, SSHH is very involved with the charitable work the Knights of Columbus does, we try to generally do the right thing – but all of that is giving of our excess. And I struggle with how we can share our gifts – as a family – in a substantial, deeper way.

It’s a hard thing to contemplate when there are children involved. Sure, we could find some more money to give – but kids don’t just need food and clothes, they need fun, too, and while our fun is simple (camping in a state park instead of flying to Disneyworld), it’s important to keep that in their lives. And I don’t think the gift we’re meant to give, as a family, is necessarily financial. We live modestly on one income, and while we have enough, we track every penny.

Our family’s gift is in our close-knit-ness. It is the sheer joy of living that is there in our children. It is our love of learning and teaching each other. It is our faith. It is the kindness and acceptance that our children have for others, playing with anyone and everyone they meet on the playground, loving older kids and the tiniest babies alike. It is how the kids are each other’s best friends. It's in the love we have for each other and the way we are each other's cheerleaders.

As Sprout said, we're supposed to be sharing ourselves, our gifts, that which we hold most dear, with the least and poorest among us.  We're supposed to be sharing of our substance, seeing Christ in our neighbor and welcoming him into our lives with hospitality.

But how on Earth does one “give of their substance” when their gifts are so intangible? It’s not as easy as “go volunteer” or “visit a nursing home” or (as I’ve been told, and which I found to be a real cop-out) “just be yourselves.” I’m continuing to think and pray about how our family, as a family, is called to give and serve, and how, as a family, we’re meant to live out our vocation. And I don’t have all the answers yet.

When I grow up I'm called to be...

I've read a bunch of social media posts and the like lately by people who are proclaiming that they've discovered that what's important in life is "finding out what you want to do" and "doing what makes you happy" and "focusing on doing what's right for you."

And I think that's a terribly empty way to live a life.  Because here's the thing: your life isn't about you.  It isn't about crossing off things on a bucket list or finding a cool job or having a fun hobby.  It's about emptying yourself of yourself and leaving yourself open for God and others to fill you up again.  It's about making yourself vulnerable to maybe not being filled up exactly the way you would have chosen, and accepting that Thy will be done, and not mine.  It's about giving, and giving, and giving again, and then being unexpectedly but perfectly replenished just as you're emptied out.

Funnily enough, I've found that the more successful I am in clearing away my own me-ness and becoming open to what others need of me, the more fulfilled I am.  Am I gosh-darn happy every minute?  No - but there is a deep, satisfying joy and contentment in service.  I find myself going about my day often just so overwhelmingly grateful for everything - the sky, my grilled cheese sandwich, a cheerful e-mail from my boss - that it feels like I could crack wide open.  I lose that feeling sometimes, but I know where it's coming from, and that it means I'm on the right path - and I know that when I do lose it, the answer is not finding more me, but becoming less me.

I've tried to impart a sense of that to the kids.  We were sitting around the table having dinner a few weeks ago and were talking about the upcoming ordinations in our diocese and the topic of vocation came up.  SweetPea asked what a vocation was, and I told her that she would do a lot of great things, but her vocation was the most important job that God had for her to do in her life, and that God would let her know what that was.  We talked about listening to God and about the difference between being called to do something and wanting to do something.  We talked about how when I was little I didn't think I wanted to be a mommy, but that is my vocation and it is awesome and makes me very happy, and I'm glad I listened to what God wanted me to do.

I want my kids to grow up and do fun things and have rewarding careers and see great places.  But more than that, I want them to be open to where they're being called to serve and the joy that can bring.  I want them to know that putting yourself aside - sometimes in big ways - can lead to unimaginable fulfillment.  I want them to know that "what I want to be when I grow up" is a good question, but "who I am called to be" is a much greater one.  It's a more difficult path, I think.  It's not a popular path.  And it's darned hard to raise kids who are open to the difficulty of finding their vocation and listening to God when most of the world is telling them that "doing what makes them happy" is the way to go.

But I'm growing, and learning what it means to follow, and we'll keep trying to show that to the kids - and maybe, hopefully, it'll work.

Curriculum, Part II

A bit ago I wrote about the books we really loved and felt were a good fit for our kids.  There were also some subjects where, while we weren't unhappy with what we used this past year, we felt that it wasn't quite right.  We'll be making some changes this year, namely in:

Grammar - Kolbe English Grammar 2 and Voyages in English

It's frustratingly difficult to find a grammar curriculum for the elementary grades at all, actually, as it's not taught as widely as it used to be in schools - diagramming sentences and even parts of speech are going the way of the dinosaur.  But SSHH and I have a wall full of literature degrees, and darn it, our kids are going to learn to write.  I spent a few years teaching freshman composition to some of the "best and the brightest" and an astonishing number of them didn't have a solid grasp of how their native language functioned.

We're also going to be starting Latin this year, and want Sprout to have a decent grasp of English grammar before he has to transfer that knowledge to another language.  Learning a foreign language beyond the "Rosetta Stone level" requires studying grammar and mechanics - the boring stuff that makes up the backbone of a language.

So all that means that we've spent considerable time researching our grammar curriculum.  Last year we used Kolbe's texts after reading reviews praising them for being rigorous.  After working through the second grade book this past year, however, we'll be making a change.  Kolbe's book worked through the broad strokes of grammar in an age-appropriate way and with enough practice, but the explanations of concepts were often lacking and the book was quite dry.  There was also very little tying the grammar work to actual writing, which is, of course, why one bothers to study grammar in the first place.

So while the Kolbe text did an adequate job and we really have no complaints, we'll be jumping ship to the popular Voyages in English series this year.  There are very thorough explanations all the way through, and more than enough practice between the textbook and workbook.  The focus is on understanding how language works, and that will form a solid foundation for all of the foreign language and writing work we'll be doing.  Despite the minimal explanations, Sprout did well with the Kolbe text and is ready for the fourth grade book of Voyages - so he'll be "skipping a year" in this, per Kolbe's recommendation.

As a bonus, each book contains a section on writing that complements the writing curriculum we'll be using (Classical Academic Press' Writing and Rhetoric - more on that later).  We're following the Classical model for writing, but with some "normal" extras thrown in, too - elegant prose is great, but things like the structure of a business letter and the mind-numbing five-paragraph essay are going to be necessary, too, and Voyages in English picks these up.

Geography - Evan-Moor Daily Geography Practice and The Complete Book of Maps and Geography

We didn't mind the Evan-Moor book this year, although I'm not sure that Sprout really learned anything substantial.  There were two pages of questions each week about a fictitious map, and Sprout usually dispensed with these in under fifteen minutes.

Since he's clearly just fine with the concept of reading a map, it's time to start learning the content of geography.  This year's book - which we'll actually be spreading out over two or three years - is a solid overview of U.S. and world geography, along with practice reading different kinds of maps.  It's inexpensive, colorful, and not dumbed-down - just right for a pretty cut-and-dried subject that doesn't require too much of a creative methodology to get through.

Last Day

It's the last day of school.  We celebrated with Mass and math games on the computer and chocolate-dipped strawberries for lunch and strawberry shortcake for dinner.  SSHH and I made a big show of telling the kids to get to bed because they had SO MUCH schoolwork tomorrow and then acted surprised when they gleefully shouted "NO!!" and danced around the room.

They've learned a lot this year.  Times tables and typing and how to write a paragraph and a bibliography and how to read and how a plant grows and how to write the number two.  I've learned a lot this year.  How to knock out a lesson plan in the ten minutes before I collapse in bed and that spelling word lists are less important than I thought they were and how to help Sprout focus when his head is in the clouds and how to skewer a bean seed on a pin just so so that it sprouts suspended in mid-air for a science experiment..

There have been times this year when I've had to laugh out loud because the kids and I were just having so much fun.  And there were days when not a single worksheet got finished and Sprout and I stood in the hallway, hands on hips, yelling at each other until we both left in tears.  There were days when we thought about quitting and when it seemed like the right thing - and definitely the easier thing - to just send him off on the big yellow bus in the morning and to turn all this school stuff over to someone else.

The homeschool world talks a lot about how homeschooling helps build wonderful close family relationships and blissfully happy, confident children.  But what they don't say is that this is really, really hard, and that there will be times when your family is wonderfully close and times when it feels like school is driving a wedge between you all.  I wish I had known to expect that in the beginning; it might have spared me a few sleepless nights, wondering if I was ruining my children's lives forever.

Looking back I can recognize those dark days and weeks as growing pains and adjustment, and we've come through them for the most part.  Sprout is usually cheerful about his work these days, and recognizes when he's getting off-track and knows what to do about it - a big skill for an eight-year old!  And the close, happy moments far outnumber the trying ones now.  We've all learned a lot about patience and respect and compassion - and I'd bet I've learned more than the kids have this year about all those things.

The year began as a trial, a hopeful experiment, and it's turned into a way of life.  We've got a crew of wonderfully wise, prayerful, supportive, joyful homeschool families who have offered friendship and advice.  We've got piles of books for all three older children for next year.  We're busily demolishing the family room to turn it into a schoolroom/playroom.  We live for fieldtrip days and start "worksheet days" together with a hug and a sigh.  We still have a lot to learn on this journey - but we've come a long way this year and with God's grace, hard work, prayer, and a sense of humor about it all, we'll keep moving forward as a homeschool family.

Berry Day

We are wrapping up school this week, and like the public schools, there just isn't much work to do in the last few days.  Tests are done, books are finished, and since I'm the boss, I guess we could just be done, but gosh darn it, I told the kids we were ending school on June 4 (180 school days after we started), and I'm going until June 4.  I think it will be better for all of us to put an ending point on the year, rather than having each kid peter out individually as work comes to an end.

But in any case, there's not much book learnin' left.  The kids have loved reading the Little House books this year and read about berry picking in Farmer Boy a couple weeks ago - so off we went to the strawberry fields today.

And it was a wonderful, amazing day.  Children shouting and having fun, racing up and down the rows with their little buckets, tasting juicy strawberries as they went.  A picnic lunch, which Sprout started with a spontaneous grace before meals.  Brother and sisters truly enjoying each other, with not a fight to be heard.  And although it was a fun day, it was a school day, too - we talked about measuring by weight and by volume, about parts of flowers and food chains, about nineteenth-century subsistence farming.

All in all it was a day that made me profoundly grateful to have the opportunity to educate our children at home.  They've had so much fun this year, learned so much about the world and about themselves, and turned into such fascinating little people - watching them run and yell in the sunshine today, all I could do was thank God for the gifts He has given us in each other.