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.  

Which patient are you?

I observed my children this morning with their crazy behavior while attempting to do simple things like stir the pancakes, stuff jars with green beans and basically walk through a room without arguing with anyone.   So.....in my usual crazy way I asked them which psyche ward patient they were? 

The passive aggressive patient who knows what they are supposed to do but quietly ignore the rules and procedures even when reminded.   In your face ignoring.   There seems some sinister pleasure in doing the opposite of what is expected.   The caretaker could clearly be getting frustrated but the rules don't apply to that patient.   The other side of this coin might be that they simply do not 'get' why their deaf ears are maddening.  

At this house we have particular children who might be diagnosed with some sort of 'outburst' disorder.   Not sure what that is called in the psychiatric world,  but when the outburst begins, these mostly small children need solitary confinement to end the episode.   I either get frustrated with the outburst or I might start to laugh as it just doesn't stop.  

Our moments of congregate living certainly are interesting.   I will continue to persevere in my quest to raise book worms, not for the benefits of their brain, but for the benefit of the noise level in the house.   Reading is very good and beneficial to the family.    It does encourage deaf ears to the rest of the world but overall if they all have their noses in books it might get quieter around here.   I am not there yet but I am trying.  

I personally am a fan of some quiet time in my padded room.   I don't have a room where it is barren and free of things which might hurt me as I still have a bunch of clutter and my bed is a storage place for everyone to dump their stuff on when they don't know what to do with it.   But.....despite the  junk, I can hide now and then, but they can still find me.  

Got through today

I have to stop and think what we even did today if it was earlier than noon.  That is sad....I guess.   I know that the kids picked tomatoes and I hung out some laundry.   This afternoon, Matthew asked to do some practice driving.   What started as a one hour drive, turned into a four hour adventure.   Between paying bills, turning in insurance information which I had forgotten, returning Erik's crutches, mailing stuff and paying more bills, and.....accidentally being in the neighborhood of Better World Books and stopping in.....this all took awhile.   We even managed to get lost for a small while and explored an area I had never been to in our quest to get reoriented.   Of course we had a hilarious time.  Every driving student (child) of mine has been an enjoyable time for me.  

The evening was spent quickly preparing and eating dinner, going to a Divine Service at church, saying goodbye to a dear young friend who will be missed this school year and then returning to spend a few hours with Martin in helping him figure out how to use a computer.   I suppose I should be ashamed (?) that my fourteen year old does not know how to navigate a website, but he has never cared before.   He now wants to learn how to type as doing what he is doing now takes up too much time.   Smart boy.   I love natural consequences of past resistance to such skills.   I should not take too much pleasure in that.

I am sure we will pick up where we left off in the morning.  

Purposefully slowing down.....even more.

I think we are succeeding in slowing down.   I am taking this whole week to work on schedule and expectations which are reasonable and fit better with my slow demeanor lately.   I do not like to rush and be bombarded by many a human at once.   I am a wimp where rapid questions fly.   I've said that before.  

Monday we went through ALL of the kids subjects and weeded out every single book which did not even appear likely to happen.   Those are all hiding in the basement as I planned before.   I left each of my students/kids with two to three things to work on and have hanging over their head so to speak.   They thought we were going to do everything at once; spelling, math, grammar, writing, reading, science etc......not.   I can't see the sense in taking on too much at once and getting none of it done.   I would love to push everyone to get all of their math done for the school year by Christmas.   That would be awesome.   Perhaps I will just call them done at that point if I am brave enough and then spend all of the spring semester playing with history and reading books together.   That sounds delightful.

We braved the library today and hope to return.    It will help if I can 'train' Evan the two year old to sit for books for longer periods of time.   He was fascinated with the long row of couches and the beautiful window sills   They were much like an obstacle course for him and he was loving it.   Slowing down and not hyper spazzing at him will mean taking a breath and baby steps in listening to books for us both.   Perhaps there will be days when we visit the library when we will have to make abrupt departures.   I am sure there will be.   I would like to go there more often this year, especially since going there will alleviate temptations of all of us to be distracted by the junk in our house.   It was easier to come home today after having time at the library since books suddenly became more interesting to them all.  

A little visit accomplished way more than I intended.   Slowing down and living makes things easier to bear with all the kiddos.   Leaving for an evening spin on my bike was also far less stressful.   Hope we can keep this up and I can remember the goal.  

Can't be everyone's everything

Greetings from a woman who needs to be *allowed* to be alone.  Allowed to be myself.    My light bulb experience of last night was that it is very difficult for my dear family to give me any space or allow me NOT to take care of them for an hour or so.    Somehow I need to leave my responsibility at the door or inside the door and check my head out for a bit.   They are very trained to still come to me even if I say I am checking out.    Either they come or they  tell me how horrible their life was while caring for the short people while I am away and then I allow the guilt to heap hot coals on my head.   

What is 'away"?   Away could be time to read  a book or walk through the house without being accosted.   My brain is asking for some grace to check out and be by itself a bit.   The mom is a resource for many a trouble on the home front.   The mom doesn't allow herself to clock out for a bit and let all the troubles of the day sit on the sidelines.   Sigh.   This mom may have processed this concept but if the family members don't understand it then the very effort of checking out for a bit is met with many obstacles.

My current mental check out will be to breathe and slow down even more.   Blinders......that might help but will mainly breathe deeply, pray and quiet my inside down as much as mentally possible and also mentally say tough rocks to many of the expectation real or imagined.

Here ends my mental gymnastics of the morning.  

Simpler and simpler

Charted out the week for the coming school year and I see that there are about 18 realistic hours per week to devote to individual or group attention to the kiddo.   How to use the time is the question.   It seems the best thing to do in order to both relieve stress and guilt and eventually get something done, is to lay out the possibilities of subjects we can work on and then take a deep breath and make some sort of decision.  

I started reading "To Kill a Mockingbird" to my eleven year old.   I was asked by my mother-in-law why I was reading to her since she should be reading to me.   The explanation again was that the amount of learning we get from the conversations we have is exponential compared to any sort of text book I might do with her.   That book in particular is very rich in information between the lines, that in the first chapter alone we talked for over an hour as we progressed through.   Win.  

I will most likely need to do more of this sort of learning this year with the kids as breathing alone around here is a challenge at best at times.   I enjoy this sort of time with them anyway.   Now to science out what that will be and resist the temptation to compare myself to the overachiever moms in my life.  

School planning

In facing the coming school year, I am once again hoping to keep things as simple as possible.   That is a pretty difficult task but am going to try.   I've decided to begin by putting a small stack of curriculum thoughts/books on the table with a name on them and decide if it is a reasonable amount for said child and then.......perhaps I am going to pack every single other book which might tempt me to divert from the plan, in a box and have someone hide it from me.    Succeeding to focus has always been a challenge.   Succeeding in not having too high of an expectation for my school year is also a problem.   What *if* I decided to accomplish the smallest amount and actually get that much done?   Even then I probably wouldn't get it done.   Sigh.  

I am thankful my eldest at home will be with Wittenberg Academy this year and he seems to be building enthusiasm for the year.   That will relieve some of the pressure off of me and I always love to see him enthusiastic about anything.  

The next oldest has much to do but hoping that keeping it simple and him accountable will help.   VERY DEEP SIGH.   Again.....the hope is if the plan is simple and can stay consistent, then perhaps we will see more in the line of progress.  

Progress with the five and under children will be reading more consistently with them and actually planning perhaps one fun thing for them to do a week.   The seventh and eighth children are on the cusp of reading.   Will I get there and actually blow off their math life?   Don't try to do any math Karin!!!!    Stick with the literacy thing and it will all be easier!!!!!     Cuddling up with books and talking with them sounds like a lot more fun anyway than chasing the homeschooling dream of sending them to college at a super young age.   Hopefully by the time number nine is ready for that I don't push him to leave for school too young.   That is another blog post which probably will never happen.   Maybe.....

I better go make dinner.  

Cabbage dish tweaking

My dear 16 year old son tweaked the cabbage/sausage recipe and simply cut up potatoes and put them directly in the cabbage mix.   The longer it cooks with the vinegar and sugar, the yummier it is.   I can not believe that I actually volunteer to eat the leftovers of something made out of cabbage for my lunch!   I used to HATE cabbage.   I suppose that is what nine kids and knowing money doesn't grow on trees will do to a person.   Eat what you have.  

Rearranging

I am hoping to rearrange a bit of life around here.   The first rearrangement seems a bit backwards.   We eat dinner together every night.....all thirteen of us.   Fourteen when Anna is home.   Every night, the noisy crew gathers together.    We have striven for years to maintain dinner together but frankly with people ranging from 2 to 86 attempting to pass food, eat it without running for the wind, getting frustrated as the food they would love to eat is on the other end of the table - 12 feet away......    This puts a whole different spin on gathering during Christmas and Easter and Thanksgiving.   On those days we should all be able to eat one meal without having to pass anything???    A table in every room?????    Every day is a family gathering around here!  

So I am going to feed the little people early.   They are always the hungriest, least patient, hardest to deal with at the table.   I think if I can just eat quietly with them earlier, it will help their demeanor and mine.   I would not describe dinner as the most relaxed of circumstances.  

I want the small children in bed as soon as possible in the evenings so they don't become sleep deprived.   The seventy to eighty somethings are not used to stubborn, verbal small children so I am sure they will have less indigestion this way too.   We shall see if dear husband sees the sense in this plan.   My goal is for everyone to lead.....a quiet and peaceable life.   Whatever I can do to help to that end is how I proceed.  

Extraction day

I love whatever variety of bees I have.   Perhaps they are sort of my variety as I have raised several of my own queens.   The honey flow is done and I have left each hive the equivalent of four medium supers for the winter.   I did not use any queen excluders this year and am pleased with the results.   No swarms and it was much easier to deal with through the season.   I only found a small amount of drone brood in the healthiest hive, in the fifth super up from the bottom.   Otherwise the honey was not tainted and good to go. 

The lack of aggression of the bees this year was sort of nice but hoping that isn't a bad sign either.   There were plenty of bees overflowing the hives and lots of healthy brood in the brood chamber area.   I've worked pretty diligently to clean up the hives the last few years and am going to do some more clean up and purging of frames and boxes this fall.

I have been at this beekeeping thing since 2003 and am now looking forward to the fruits of my labors from all the clean up.   I should say the fruits of the BEES labor.  Bees amaze me and it is very relaxing to go play with the bees who just do what the expression says......they are busy as bees.   Since I now have so much drawn comb for my honey supers, the hope is to have two harvests next year or at least a small harvest in late to mid June.   

Now to clean up my extraction equipment and go to the next beekeeping meeting to listen and pick the experienced beekeepers brains on several topics such as why my honey is so much darker this year than any other that I can remember.  I have read a few books by experienced beekeepers lately and they have helped to stimulate my beekeeping brain to think through their thoughts and apply them.   The art of beekeeping is sort of like dancing to me.   I hope to dance with a few more hives next year and even if I do not get done everything I wish I could get done in the fall in winter in preparation, every little bit has made a difference. 

Warm biscuits and honey tomorrow for sure.