Family women

It's our youngest daughter's birthday tomorrow.  This week is the first time in eighteen years, that we won't have two sisters at home and Ingrid will be alone in the fort.   She isn't completely alone, as she has me, but with three brothers still in the roost, it still will be a lot different.   I hope that she and I will be able to keep each other encouraged with the feminine side of life and support in the sea of testosterone.  

I can already see her gravitating more to me, since her next oldest sister was dropped at school last week.   More hugs, more visits to mom in the evening, more of myself getting a lump in my throat with changes in the family.   She will actually receive more from me than her sisters did, since more have flown the coop and I can focus more on individuals.   I'm sorry for the parts of me which weren't able to invest a bit more with the others, but there again I'm not as each scenario has is plusses and minuses.   We are all very good at getting down on ourselves, or at least I am, and fail to see the benefits to those situations which have been challenging in our past.   I can't assume that my little family of four at home, will not thrive with the new dynamics.   I hope the last four kids can finish off my career of at home kids with a bang.  

Everything gets a bit better when I praise, pray and give thanks and remember who has walked along the way with me.   It isn't all or nothing.   I'm probably too aware of all the nuances and second guess myself more than I should.   Ingrid will get the best of her mom which is now and the family girls hopefully will feel bonded together.  

And so it goes.  

Children free to play

I am going to use my old drafts as writing prompts.   Children free to play......    a person is a child once.   I see their time flying away.   What a delight  to see a child at play and reveling in it.   I have had  children addicted to the sandbox and they simply do not want to leave it.   The youngest in my family is getting older all the time of course and his older siblings are getting older, so there is less time spent playing.   I want to facilitate their playing as much as possible by throwing all of us outside and spending time together.  
"Free" to play was implying that children have less time to play as their lives are scheduled up such there is little time to just have nothing they have to go and do.  My year is as busy as ever and looking at the schedule I do want to guard their time to be able not be under pressure to produce and cough up anything for given activities.   Being free to be bored is awesome.

 Purposely taking off from school today, life around the house just seemed more peaceful.   Right now the kids are outside playing frisbee together.   Phew.   Kids playing outdoors afforded mom some quiet time too before the time of electronics.   I'm not against electronics, but I am against them forgetting how to play and imagine.   We are a family of addictions or obsessions so I do want to guard what time they have left as children to just be children and take that along with them into adult life.  

Clarification and reiterating that my choices with my kids are the privilege of parents for their own family.   I am not judging anyone their choices but stating what I have observed in my own family.   I want my children to have a childhood full of hands on playing.   I had it and have hilarious memories from all that my friends and I played together and wonder why my parents and theirs were okay with some of our shenanigans.   Wow.  I hear hilarious stories from my older children of the stunts they pulled together and then I can revel in the fact that my darlings did some pretty crazy stuff and we can all laugh about it now.  

Leave them alone to play

I used to pride myself on my kids ability to make believe and play with just about nothing but the great outdoors or indoors.  Kids don't need very much to be happy and content.  Mostly they don't need to be in contact with adults constantly to be content.

Our family does have the luxury of living in the middle of ten acres of over half woods and some meadow.  Ever since our oldest was a small child, I can remember putting a sand box outside the living room window and our toddler basically lived in that sandbox while I  read a book and saw her head bobbing around.  She didn't care where I was as she was in her little world of imagination.  She would play for hours and then......I would read to her and she would take her nap....and then start the cycle all over again.

We have nine children total, which isn't necessarily relative to to the topic, but all of them have basically disappeared to their play land for most of their free time.  As small children they were loaded with free time.  Countless people have commented to me at one time or another the kids ability to just be content by themselves without my involvement.

Last week, my second to last child, took me on a delightful romp through our woods.   She showed me all her favorite haunts which frankly I wasn't aware existed.   My seeming neglect or lack of supervision, produced forts which were in their third or fourth stage of redesign by her and her sibs.   Her older sibs had also built and rebuilt forts in the woods.   She described the walking bridge they had created at the bottom of slippery hill and then showed me the remains of a foundation I didn't even know existed after twenty four years of living here!  This bridge had also undergone renovations as some logs rot you know.

I loved how she reminisced about her years in the woods.  It was a world to me that perhaps I can be sorry I wasn't as aware of but on the other hand it is their world.  When I dismiss the kids from their home educated world they frankly stop school in my world and then enter their own school of play.

Another area she described as one of her favorites for all the mushrooms they find there.  She is seven mind you, and the mushroom world is one of her favorites!   Where is MY mushroom world!?   I need a mushroom world!   This world will last her young life.  It can extend through the knowledge gained in observation into her adult life. She experiences things most people will never ever have a chance to experience, mainly because she was given the chance to play and explore on her own and with her sibs.

Lately the collaborative playing has been as Minute Men fighting the British all over the yard.  The book we read together is now live action in the yard without my meddling.  I pondered meddling when the Minute Men started bickering together but I thought better of it and left them to their own devices.

For all the panicking I've done through my parenting years as to whether I am teaching them everything I 'should' I really needn't worry too much about it.  My kids are thriving, know how to work hard, and have so many childhood tales of their adventures.  When they are released from my clutches of reading, math, etc., they disappear into their world for hours and hours.  I am happy for them. My fifteen year old still swings on the swing set and loves it.

So.....I encourage parents to encourage free play time outside as you can.  I know some people don't have that luxury due to apartment living, city living, so go camping!  Get out of sterile plugged in lives and get the kids outside to play with what is there.

Building blocks of Home Educating

Teaching your little people requires patience and viewing little bits of progress as the recipe to success and even fun times between the parent and the child. With a wee little one, the time that is taken to teach them to sit through a board book and finally stop flipping the pages, leads to being able to sit through all of the book.  The child's attention span increases as the level of complexity of a book increases.  This is NOT twaddle but learning.

Math for a little involves beginning with board books and all of life during the day.  Simple counting of things like stairs, stuffed animals, blocks going on a block tower is math.  Counting peas and potatoes.  You don't have to be neurotic about it but there are opportunities to ease kids into listening, learning, and most importantly the ability to sit still and pay attention.  Do little people HAVE to sit still?   No, but it seems to me that even those kids who are defined as hyperactive, can be trained to temper their wiggles bit by bit as the parent cranks up the time paying attention slowly, having patience to let time pass and attention increase.

What a parent shouldn't do is expect their little people to go from never sitting in anyone's lap listening to stories to instantaneously expecting them to be able to listen to chapter books.  That is unrealistic.     It is similar to learning an instrument.   You begin at the beginning, learning notes and practicing and it takes time to make progress.

Hope this pondering is helpful to someone.  I just think it is wise to break down the learning process so that learning is just a natural thing.  More later......

Piano Competitions

I am getting a little more seasoned at these things now and think I did a better job clearing the stress crazies of a house full of people out of the way so we could calmly leave the house and head out to prepare for dear daughters performance.   Phew.   She had a goal of practicing her piece 100 times this week and made it to 81.   Wow.   She knew it well.   Tweaked, polished and well played.   Several area teachers made a point of coming to her and telling her what a fine job she did.  I was so pleased for her.   

 I do try hard to not be an oppressive parent.   It seems to be a dance of not leaving them completely to their own devices coupled with helping them set goals and listening well at her lessons.   Hearing her teacher work with her floats my boat.   People who teach well are a joy to listen to.   She draws out their strengths and keeps them accountable to the weak areas without crushing them.   Her teacher is  honest though too and doesn't just fling  praise around.   It has been a privilege to have her teach my kid.  And it is a pleasure to listen to my daughter play while lounging around the living room.  Ahhhh.

Transitions

My youngest is four now.   My oldest is twenty-three.   Things are changing and I am muddling through the changes.   For the longest time there were nine kids at home and things were relatively predictable outside of illness and stuff like that.   Now there is no one in diapers and I only have one more kid who needs to teach how to read.   Diapers and teaching kids how to read used to be overwhelming but if I stop and think about it, those things now don't loom over my head.  

Now that there is a little bit more time available, I have started practicing my horn again and am hoping to find more opportunities to play in my older age.   I was encouraged to find a website which stated that it is never too late to pick up your instrument again and have a go at it.   So far I have just rejoined the University band here and just finished up the semester.   We all had fun that and the concert went well.   I can almost play through all my old solo pieces and am working through technique books to improve my accuracy.   I enjoy it.   It is a nice change.

One of the side effects from regaining some of my music skills, is that my kids are taking music more seriously and are getting excited about the things they can learn.   I firmly believe that playing a musical instrument improves brain development as well as teaches dedication and perseverance and......it's fun.  

My older kids lives are changing of course so it has just seemed to me that I need to keep my own mind moving along with learning and relearning new things so I don't get caught mourning their growing up to much.   I have a hammer dulcimer which has too much dust on it and needs some tuning and cleaning.   The more I play my horn, the more I want to make more music.   We shall see how this goes as the weeks and months progress.  

More on simplifying

Can I make life any simpler or do I make it more complicated???????    Nine kids.   God has given nine kiddos to the hubby and I and each one of them would like some of my time usually every day.   Staying home as much as possible is my new reminder for myself.   If I lose focus by having tons of appointments etc., then I can't stay home and focus.   They are mostly all on different levels.   My mind keeps a tick list of their strengths and weakness and I try to help each child  keep their focus on them.   I am surprised my brain doesn't blow up on some days.   

When the older kids were young, I had all of these awesome ideals of my hopes and dreams for homeschooling my kids.   Many times I wanted to throw in the towel.   Throwing in the towel amounted to having several days or weeks of discontent and then figuring out how to get everyone back on task, my mind to quit obsessing and feeling sorry for myself, and.....stay home.  There would have been nothing wrong with throwing in the towel btw, but our options here are pretty limited.   

One child has piano.   Two boys have Boy Scouts.   Several have Catechism classes and I do not compromise on church as there I find peace and hope in Word and Sacrament    This leaves little to no time to socialize or go to do much for fun.   I can either gnash my teeth and lament how I can't have 'fun' or forget that and carry on.     It just isn't fun to come home to chaos.   These are the kids God gave me and the hubby and home and this is what I do.   My advice to self is to run away from this computer as much as possible, get up and do what I am given to do and try not to make my life more complicated.   

We do occasionally do fun things but they are usually with part or all of the family.   We went skiing two weeks ago.  The kids go to friends homes to play and goof off.    I went to a symphony concert with my mom in Chicago last Friday.   We had some friends over at various times over the weekend.  One set we see once a year and the rest were children who......played with the kids.    It seems spacing out fun and having significant chunks of hunker down time is the way for me to actually be half way successful at doing this mom and teaching thing.   Then clinging to Christ and the forgiveness of sins is of course the most helpful......but I have to remember that fact too.....thus church is a priority.   Onward.   

Short people eating dinner

As the older kids have gotten, it has been a lot more enjoyable to cook dinner for them.   They just.....eat it.  The younger children however, must read books about how to torture their parents with all the looks and pouting over too many days of soup.   Some days it would just be so sweet if the short people would just.....eat their dinner.   This has been a problem since the beginning of time.   Sin is not grateful for dinner when it keeps appearing every meal.   The short people are not immune from sin and fussing over what they have in front of them to eat.   So......to reduce my stress level around here, I am taking meal planning to a new level.   I know what is in my freezer and what is available in the pantry.   Taking those ingredients, I am doing whatever I can to make dinner more kid friendly.   I buy hams, turkey's and roasts in bulk when they are on super sale, so taking those as the main part of the meal, I am adding veges around that which they love.   I am glad they basically love all veges in their separate from each other form.   Potatoes show up at the table mashed or as oven fries.   Happy my children love baked beans as that is a thrifty option as well.   In every meal I am trying to include one thing which we older folk love to have so that we are not completely bogged down with homemade macaroni and cheese.   Salads are easy to make available to whoever wants it.   Kid friendly and eating as early as I can pull it off, keeps the screaming and whining more under control.  

Kids and helplessness

Kids learning how to do things for themselves is an obvious part of parenting.   Nagging or painful pulling of their bluff.   I have a few kids who have struggled greatly with following the directions in their school work so that they might actually complete it in a reasonable amount of time.   Yesterday it became quite clear that one of the children in question had a complete strategy in play to see if he could get everyone else to do his homework by asking THEM questions about how to do the problems.   The self discipline to study his work and understand it for himself and my teaching him.....or forcing him.....to follow through with these skills, is pretty tedious at best.   To teach this lovely skill, known as helping yourself with your homework and how to study, requires my body to be still and near by to continually point him to how he can solve his own problems by reading and researching and then studying the concept till he completely understands it.  

My house is a wreck, my small people are starving for attention, and once again I am puzzling over how to help the little people survive while I push the envelope with older child  to help himself.   I might be doing other things while said student is struggling with studying and avoiding the easiest route to success as he has it engrained in him to die many deaths rather than simply use the index and the resources online to review his math skills.   Exhausting..........I guess he sees it as a battle of the wills and I sit in wait to wield my will of NO.....look it up darling child.   (If I have patches of hair missing, you now know the reason).  

Take courage parents, one and all!   Don't do your children's homework!   Send them packing to the avenues which will help them learn what they need to do. It might mean you don't have a company ready house and your meals are lacking for a while but....the rewards.....better be sweet.     This child now has a teacher for his math who isn't ME, and learning how to ask the teacher questions rather than the rest of the family is one of THE most tedious parts of this of all.  

I write all this down so that maybe if I look at my blog I won't lose sight of the goal......independent thinking!!!!    Now I should stop writing and perhaps go clean off a surface or make some sort of egg something for the kids brains to feed off  and supercharge their brains!   Onward!  

I forgot the self harming patient

These patients are around two to seven years old and they have a strong propensity to trip.  "Don't run" cries the mother.   Silly mom.   Splat.   Brief silence.   Wailing and gnashing of teeth.   These are the self harming set of our family.   Lots of people have them in their families.   Since I am not much of the hovering mom, the poor children get a much delayed reaction to their owies but I do still scoop them up once I get around to reaching them and they get brushed up and the necessary first aid.   My  prescription for them would be tying pillows around them but they resist their treatment.  

Piano Mom

I am not a soccer mom.  I am a piano mom.  It seems to be an art form to figure out how best to be a piano mom.   I am sure it is not a whole lot different from being a soccer mom or any other sort of mom of kids investing time in one particular talent.   Listening to my daughter play is a joy just like it was a joy to listen to her older sister.   Sitting in on her lessons is a little bit of a respid for me as I can just chill on the couch and soak in observing her interact with her teacher and literally see the light bulbs go off.   What I ponder is how not to be  too involved with the whole thing and allow the teacher to completely orchestrate her lesson and preparation for the next piano event, albeit her lesson or a competition.   I very carefully consider how much I talk to my daughter as a piano mom so as not to muck up what is already going on between her and her teacher.   I love the musical process and seeing it all come together and the end result is awesome.   And.....what if my daughter is not on top of her game some weeks?   Well, then it is carefully considering what sort of big deal or no deal at all I am going to make of it.   I usually make nothing of it and move on.   I do my best not to be the crazy pressure beauty pageant mom.   It is okay.   What if she decided she didn't want to play anymore?   What then?   Would I crush her with disappointment or just love her.    Hopefully it would be the latter.  She did a beautiful job this evening at her Stickley recital for her teacher's studio.   Wow.   Amazing.    Very proud of her. 

Read to Me

I have had the pleasure of discovering the fun of having my kids read books to ME!   Not the kids who are learning to read, although we do that too, but the older kids.    I have wanted them to work on their ability to read aloud and their fluency anyway so my third dear son Martin came up with the idea to read Harry Potter to me.   I am going to encourage more of this behavior as it was very sweet and I enjoyed listening to the story.    It helps me to work with him on his vocabulary a bit and it is also endearing.  

Last night Cecilia and I hit the hay (my hay) at eight o'clock ish after spending an hour with Benjamin who was working on  his reading (a wee bit tedious at times).   I was too tired to read anymore of my own book so she perused my Nook library and peppered me with questions about what the books were about.   She finally settled on reading Aesop's fables and I suggested she read them to me as I drifted off to LaLa land.   She did and we had some nice discussions as to the point of each little tale.   It was sweet and sometimes funny.   She kept telling my about how the Rocky and Bullwinkle series told these same stories.   Yay, Rocky and Bullwinkle for assisting the education of my children.   I guess I will give her the second set for her birthday next Saturday.   It has been in my closet for over a year.  

Anywho, I am enjoying this activity more than I expected and hopefully the  younger ones will see this as something to look forward to.   My nest is the best nest for reading and snuggling with the kiddos.  

Love in

I have all my kids ten and under who LOVE to have love ins with mom.    Last night at church you would think I was leaving on a long extended journey for all the hugging and loving that went on in the pew.   I hate to 'discipline' them for all the hugs as I look at my thirteen year old and that sort of loving is no longer his thing and I know it will pass.    I suppose we have to have a chat about the extent of hugging and squeezing which goes on during sermons etc.   Benjamin thinks I am sleeping during the sermon when I close my eyes to listen.    I tried to explain that I close my eyes to shut out the distractions.  Hmmm.......hard to close your eyes if when you open them for a second there is a cute eight year old face looking up into yours.   The same goes on at home with all the short people vying for space on either side of me.    Perhaps I should get one of those deli machines with little numbers they can pull out.    This is not a huge problem till they begin screaming at each other about who is sitting where. 


Time to rip myself away from the cute little people and get something done for the today.   Bye kids!   Hope you survive without my warm self beside you clicking away on the keyboard.

Talking till you drop

I must go to bed.   I have very talkative small people here and everyone else needs something and talks.  Talk to mom, talk to mom, talk to mom.......   Cecilia wanted to play a game which required me to move and I sadly had to turn her down.   I pitched a two person game at her and her dad and am retreating.   I would love it if I could be able to have full days and full weeks like this every week but there has to be that energy thing to go with it.   Tomorrow I am having a friend and her short people over and play outside a bit while the older kids work on the schoolish stuff.   Hopefully I am out of bed by that time.    By eight o'clock this evening I did not want to answer another single question and was going to self combust.   I am now listening to my giggling eldest reading silly stuff.   Listening.......not talking.....much.    And now.....you are asleep too. 

Poisonous Leftovers

What is it with leftovers that seems to turn my children's stomach?   THey can love and adore the fresh food  the evening before and then the next day will have nothing to do with it even when prodded to eat the same thing.    I have discovered the secret that mothers have searched high and low for, to get their children to eat the dreaded leftovers.     There are two parts to this secret.    The first part is to run out of bread, not make any or buy any, and then make no effort to remember it at the store.    What happens is they have to make something to eat.   But wait.....there is a second part to this relentless problem.   Even when we run out of bread, the kids will make themselves scrambled eggs instead.    Um.....no.....scrambled eggs, a dirty pan, eggs left on the counter and.....a refrigerator which is still the home of the poison.

So what is the secret?   I am sure you are dying to know.   I found the secret when I decided to make up a schedule for the kids which required them to each have a day to prepare lunch for everyone else.   What to do they asked themselves and me.    This is when it started to happen.   Each child, on their special day of lunch preparation, looked at me in disbelief when there was no bread.    I pointed out to them the meals which were already prepared for them and they discovered the amazing ease of heating them up and dishing them out.    There are far fewer leftovers now.   I am relieved.   The fridge is relieved and we spend less on bread.  

I know.....some of y'all do not have leftovers.   We do.   They are poison unless push comes to shove.   Now to just stick to my guns on this despite the BLT's we had the other night.   I personally am not a fan of sandwiches so the lack of bread is of no loss to me.   Evil mother......

Three girls

I have three girls 20, 10 and three. The three of them had the most interesting discussion the other day. The three year old was busy raising her head to the sky and refusing to comply to the ten year olds wishes. The twenty year old sat by and observed and um.....snickered a bit when said ten year inquired why the three year old was being so difficult. There was a smug look of satisfaction on the twenty year olds face as she informed the ten year old that she used to do that too. Ten year old couldn't believe it. The mom of course had experienced all of this three times over as girls do have a knack for screaming. Six boys did their share of screaming but girls just have a special talent. The twenty year old is merrily back at school in her single room leaving us to fend for ourselves. We told the ten year old that some day she might get to have a single room too and how sad it was that the three year old will miss out on this experience. Poor little thing.

Amazing kids

My eldest simply rocks. The kids and I have made some amazing strides in taking stock of a situation and encouraging one another to just keep plugging along in what we are given to do. Our foreheads probably do get some bruises at times for those moments when other people who have speculated what we think and um..........missed the mark and we bang our heads against the wall. I personally am not a fan of speculating. Answer to all questions like this....."Do you think they????....." is "I don't know." If ever there was a stupid thing to do it would be trying to guess the motives of someone else. Communicating and asking questions of the person directly involved to establish understanding and truly care about them sounds like a better plan. No doubt our silly heads do not have this life skill completely down so we will polish up our skills of going to find a toilet to clean or something when tempted to speculate and be happier because of it. I myself am thankful for catechesis being a regular part of our lives, great pastors, great friends and especially for prayers of friends who care. Shudder to think where we would be without each others support. Advise from a friend yesterday was to just simply ask for prayer when I am imploding. They don't even need to know why. Good advice. Some people would perhaps be able to speculate (Lol!) why I ask for prayer, but basically knowing Jesus has it covered covers all the bases. So......asking for prayer to face the week and all it holds. I am single parenting for three of the days and the rest is just the regular life we all chase after. Prayers for all it holds......see???? You could speculate what that means.......if you do, imagine I need prayers to improve upon my ability to wash down a counter this week???? I'll be quiet now.

Moving right along

So, tomorrow I go get my awesome daughter from school for the weekend. We plan to eat lots of yummy food. I know the weekend will pass too quickly but it will be good to see her. Eldest son is working his tail off at his new job and second son works his tail off too a few days a week. I continue to stumble through and try to make something of each day. Maybe.....next week will be normal. Whatever normal is. The weather is getting rather nippy and I am not wanting to hunt the winter clothes. Switching the clothes for me means finding things which fit now, getting rid of more clothes and sadly keeping some on the back burner in hopes I will fit in them some day. Benjamin told me I was nice and skinny now (?). I love clothing camouflage. It works. Matthew and I are addicted to God Whisperers and have been catching up with a years worth while driving him back and forth to work. He has stolen my phone so he can listen. I guess we have an appreciation for irritating and compelling radio. Oh yeah, that isn't what they say all the time. Our family must be irritating and compelling and we are fine with that. Weird is the new normal. Maybe I am getting used it?????.

Love it when that happens

So my eldest dear son has a new *real*, good paying job. He was offered the job without an interview, without knowing what he was going to be doing, without even looking for the job......sweet. He is working at the same location as his dad but not really with him. People have heard his dad talk about his abilities for years and voila! He has a good paying job in a stinky economy without even trying. I am very pleased for him. He also has a few side jobs which have been keeping him hopping as well. The boy went from too much time on his hands to not enough. Not too shabby. The next son also has a part time job for the next three or four weeks. He is a lowly vegetable picker but still it is great for him to have that opportunity as well. He used some of his money to buy himself a new blazer and winter dress coat. I love that when that happens too. I think son number one will be investing in some new duds too which amazingly won't come out of my pocket. Wow. Shazam!

What my kids and I talk about

So.....today I took Erik and Matthew to the consignment store and bought them some new duds. They will be disgustingly well dressed and the envy of all I am sure. This is the kind of fun I have with my young men. I am sure it gives the consignment guy a thrill too as the boys are so enthusiastic about finding suit jackets and dress pants and cool dress shoes etc. Evan slept through this event on my shoulder.

We went and grabbed a sandwich and chatted afterward. The subject of the day was 'what mom will talk to us about someday when we have kids.' I pointed out to them that there probably wouldn't be tons of time to chat as *I* still would have kids. They were laughing as I told them how I would be sure to quiz them and need full reports on where their toddlers have accidents, how much laundry they had done that day, whether their lawn needed mowed, if the kids were picky eaters and if anyone had thrown up lately. This is ALL very important information....well.....I have not a clue what in the world I will talk to them about really. Matthew was calculating approximately how old Stefan would be when he got married and of course I asked him who she was.

Both Erik and Matthew juggled Evan while taking turns eating and were the admiration of all the ladies there. Matthew even held Evan AND refilled his soda. Impressive! Never when Erik and Matthew were short people did I imagine having these funny talks with them. Fun. I look forward to many more conversations to come. They are great kids!