A sad fact of my multi-faceted life is that I have to prioritize in a major way, and many things fall by the wayside. Like answering emails (sorry people But I do love receiving them!) and getting to know some of my favorite bloggers better.

Here’s someone I would definitely try and catch up with if I was in California : Andrea, of Sweet Life.

I am guest posting about home schooling over there today.

Ah-em. Well, so yesterday was our 15th wedding anniversary.  Crystal, I believe. And we should have been whooping it up. Except we forgot. Again.

It’s not at all like it sounds. We forget almost every year. I mean, we don’t forget we are married, and we do remember in the days leading up to our anniversary that we will soon be married one year more. It’s just that, when the day itself arrives, we usually go on with our daily lives, our happily married daily lives, and don’t even think about celebrating that fact.

It’s easy for us to forget our actual wedding day because although we had a very nice day (and that is entirely down to my mother, I mean, I was 22 years old and quite happy to rock up to the registry office wearing a pair of old jeans) it wasn’t really a day when anything changed. We were poor students before we married, and we were still poor students afterwards, albeit poor students with a little more income as the government judged that married people somehow needed more money. And anyhow, we were practically living in each others pockets from the day we met. Or, as in each others pockets as you can be when you are living in separate cities and only see each other every three weeks. I mean, when your boyfriend of a couple of months turns up on his motorcycle at 2 in the morning and throws stones at the window to get in, then announces that he has spent all his student allowance on beer … oh  and on gas to come see you (awwww, how romantic) and so you will have to pay for everything this weekend, you may as well be married already

The license was a formality, we really only needed it to get The Daddy a visa. Otherwise we might still be living together happily unmarried to this day. I never really had any dreams of flowery bowers and lacey white dresses and although the thought quite appeals to me now, that’s probably only because I want an excuse to throw a big, bling party.

So, seeing as we forgot our anniversary and I therefore don’t have any happy stories of swanky restaurant dates and clinking champagne glasses to relate, I thought you might find a little photo roundup of us together through the years mildly amusing.

I went looking through my archives. But it appears that throughout this marital adventure we have been quite happy to take photos of each other from time to time, without attaching much importance to formal posed photos together.  I came up with only two photos of the early days, and one of them is from our wedding. Thanks goodness for weddings! Except, I have lost my scanner cable, and  you will have to wait to see them.

Don’t worry, once I have had a good tidying session and found my errant cable I will post them, along with a photo of me aged 17 with my 1980s ‘do. I know! I know! I was 17 in 1989, I had no business even still having 1980s hair! But, very unfortunately, I did. And I really do not want to show the results, except that I was dumb enough promise Kirsten that my 1980’s hair was worse than her 1980’s hair (and it was) and now feel obliged to prove it. You are going to laugh and laugh.

In the meantime, I will leave you with a few photos, blurry ones taken with my phone (because of course I forgot my camera), at the celebration I did take part in yesterday. It was a 5 year old Princess Party for one of Baby Sister’s friends, and it was one of the best childrens’ birthday parties ever. I wanted to dress up as a Princess too and get my nails done and “fairy glitter” on my cheeks, and decorate a cupcake and do a fashion show and even play musical chairs (even though I knew I wouldn’t win and would end up crying) but to fit into any of the available dresses I would have had to lose a ton of weight and probably shrink by at least a foot.

So I contented myself with talking to the other moms and shooting very bad camera photos. By the way, despite appearances, there were other children there. I was just very careful to crop them out.

The choice of dresses was amazing. Surprisingly, she chose blue...

Goodness girl, one would think you had never modeled before... oh yeah. You haven't.

Her first ever manicure!

Well, actually they just dabbed on a bit of pink polish. She bites her nails, so it has been touched up at least 3 times today already. And then she insisted I do her toes. And she has already finished the lip gloss from her party bag. Sigh. Before I know it I will be opening her an account at Sephora. Do they even have accounts at Sephora? Because Mommy sure doesn’t have one…

This morning I was a little groggy as I met T-Bot and Baby Sister coming down the stairs.

Not for long though!

I woke up very suddenly when Baby Sister casually announced that her brother had blood all over his foot.

“I scratched it, Mommy” he said, suddenly concerned. “It’s on my hand too”.

Oh my goodness, I thought. My white carpets!*

… and rushed him to a bathroom where I started by trying to scrub the blood off his hand.

… but it wouldn’t come off.

… because it was red marker pen.

It wouldn’t come off completely with soap, wet wipes or alcohol either. Thank goodness he doesn’t have school. I don’t think they would take too kindly to bodily decoration.

It was only later that he showed me his other hand:

Son, that’s very sweet, but … if you really want to impress me try something more permanent.  On your upper arm.

Oh, actually it does appear to be permanent…

I guess that’s a start.

(*Yes, I did actually think that. Judge me as you will. )

For almost as long as I can remember, I have been looking at toy teepees in those catalogs which flood the mailbox around Christmas. For almost as long as I can remember, I have narrowly avoided buying one, for all manner of practical and monetary (OK, mostly monetary) reasons.

At various times I could have bought one like this ($99):

But there is no room for it indoors. Outdoors it would get muddy, it would get torn, and how much fun can you have in a teepee anyway?

At other various times I could have bought one like this ($366):

Except (and no offense to anyone who has bought one, because they are beautiful and are supposed to last from childhood into the teens, although what a teenager would find to do with one of these beats me, unless they were to sit in it to smoke marijuana. Oh, I misread that, it actually said tweens, but still… ) um…

… except it would get muddy, it would get torn and OMG $366, didn’t my Wii cost around that? You know, the one involving chips and wires and years of experimental research by some very educated boffins? I am looking forward to the day when I can just drop $366 on a couple of poles and some cloth which doesn’t even fit a full grown adult (no, not even me, I am actually slightly over 5ft. Slightly.) and think nothing of it. Oh and BTW here is another tent which costs around $366, give or take $3. It doesn’t have a hole in the roof and will fit a family of three.

And also - how much fun can you have in a teepee anyway?

Given all the above, I have not given in to the Lure of the Funny Shaped Tent. But those catalogs keep dropping through the mailbox and falling open at the Fun Native American Toys page. It must be the hippy in me, but a teepee, that’s so cool! My kids would love one! Oh the fun they would have! Oh the stories they would weave! Oh the joys they would sing!

But then this Christmas I came home from shopping to find that The Daddy, without even being asked, had solved the problem for me. Because theoretically I might just have given in this Christmas and bought a teepee. And if that had been the case The Daddy would have just saved me between $99 and $366. He’s a keeper, that The Daddy…

And his creation? Classy. Around here, this is how we roll.

Oh, and the kids loved it … for the first 10 minutes. Because actually it turns out, there isn’t a whole lot of fun to be had in a teepee. Unless you are really into sitting.

Last night The Wictor didn’t want to go to sleep. So I lay down next to him and promptly fell asleep until 9. And it’s lucky I did, because this is how my schedule for the evening turned out:

12.30: Go to bed

1.00ish: Fall asleep

3.30 am: Woken up by a loud sound, like a toad croaking but inside the house. It woke up The Daddy too. We traced the noise to our en suite toilet. Blocked and booming, apparently because it was attempting to unblock itself. I know, weird, I have never experienced that either. When we flushed the toilet it overflowed, but it was clean water and the noise stopped so we went back to bed.

4amish: Woken by the sound of a child screaming in the distance. I went out into the lounge to listen but couldn’t hear anything. Realized it was actually The Daddy, snore-whistling. Went back to bed.

Sometime after 4: Woken by the the sound of running back and forth upstairs. Baby Sister is not supposed to come downstairs at night unless it is “something important” and it seems she kept changing her mind as to whether this was something important. In the end I went up and she decided she had had a bad dream. Lay down in her bed and fell asleep.

Sometime after sometime after 4: Woken by The Wictor patting my face. It was still dark. Took him back to bed, lay down next to him and fell asleep. Again.

Around 7: Baby Sister came in and woke us both up.  I was so tired I kept insisting it was still nighttime, but my children were wiser and soon had the light on and every battery-operated toy we own up and running.

I know what sleep deprivation is, I didn’t really sleep much for six years.

But it turns out it doesn’t take long to get out of the habit.

I hope I make it to midnight tonight. In case I don’t - Happy New Year!

Courtesy of The Daddy, official proof that Bling is dead.

(Photo from Jalopnik )

I’m not sad. I am kind of an understated gal myself. Maybe one day I will come back into fashion.

What do you think? Would you drive it?

More photos, today. If you are a cynical, cold-hearted person, just look away.

We started out drawing on our hands because we were learning to spell words with “TH” in them. On the spur of the moment I decided to provide a visual aid by writing “thumb” on the T-Bot’s thumb. Then he wanted all the parts of his hand labeled, so I did.

Which is how he came to draw on my palm (yes, the childish podgy paw is actually mine).

I am not going to pretend that the T-Bot is the most normal of children. If he was a toaster you couldn’t plug him in out of the box and then he would probably burn your toast, just for fun, before flicking it 3 ft into the air.

But he does have a really sweet temperament.

I don’t think I am going to let this boy leave home until he is at least 26.

This freaked me out a little the first time I drove into it - in spring and fall our local supermarket becomes a rest stop for migrating birds.

No points for guessing which movie I am always reminded of.

I am hoping that today I will have time - and feel well enough - to write about this weekend’s strange scenes at the local park. We all have some plague-like illness here. Well, not really plague-like although I am sure people with the plague feel much the same way. I don’t want to minimise plague sufferer’s experience or anything, but this is really yucky.

This is the post I have put off over and over because I was unsure of what, exactly, to write.

Then a few people caught my passing reference on Twitter to homeschooling the T-Bot and I received requests for information.

So, yes. I am now homeschooling the T-Bot. The problem with writing about it is, I am still not quite sure why. I mean, obviously I am aware of the events which eventually led us to pull him out of school overnight. But that was just the climax of a very stressful school year-plus-six-weeks, where everything and anything seemed to go horribly wrong for him.

I have gone around and around and around thinking about this. Just over a year ago I sent the school a happy, outgoing, confident little boy who was very excited about starting kindergarten. A little socially immature and not quite there with language, a little excitable, but generally well behaved in both home and social environments. To cut a long story short, that is not the child they handed back to my care at the end of every school day.

I hoped things would go well this year. The T-Bot was back to his normal self over the long summer vacation and was excited at the prospect of making new friends. Instead, he became doubly anxious, at home as at school, and everything just, for want of a better phrase, blew up.

I can’t assign blame. There are too many factors to consider. Consider a child already prone to anxiety, a large, impersonal school environment with an extreme emphasis on independence from a young age, a strict “zero-tolerance” policy, daily teasing and minor bullying, subtle lingering problems with language, cultural differences, immaturity, boredom with those interminable worksheets, a fear of tests and failure, an intense longing to fit in combined with an almost total lack of guile (he tripped me so it must be cool to trip him…. oh, I got caught), being a six year old, being a boy.

One thing I do know. These problems are mostly environmental. And that calls for a change of environment.

I am just sorry I didn’t do it earlier. Why didn’t I? Because truly, I didn’t want to homeschool. With my last child just starting in the preschool system, I was *this* far away from getting my independence. From next year I would have been able to work, uninterrupted, all day, every weekday, rather than carving out time here and there and mostly after 9pm.

I have been having brief pity parties. My life expectations changed overnight so I think I am entitled. But then I have also been in awe of the T-Bot and how, in a fun and relaxed learning environment, he is so motivated to learn. That’s all I am asking him to do, is learn, the best way he knows how. I am not ordering him to memorize 20 meaningless phonograms, complete two graded tests a week, fill in worksheet after worksheet with drawings of eight things next to the number eight or three things next to the number three, walk around our house two steps behind me with his hands behind his back. Jump through any No Child Left Behind style hoops at all. I do ask him to sit still, concentrate on what we are doing, listen to and follow the instructions. I do ask him to read and write about things that interest him. I do ask him to look at math patterns and how numbers are interrelated until it clicks and he has one of those “wow” moments. I ask him to look at word patterns the same way (did any of us truly learn to spell “work” by memorizing that when -or is preceded by w it can sound like -er ??) . I do ask him to do worksheets, in 5 minute bursts, emphasizing all the way that it will not take long. And when we have finished all this, as a treat, I let him do science experiments.

In the end, I guess, the reason for homeschooling the T-Bot turns out to be very simple. The local public school was unable to teach him in an appropriately stress-free environment.

At the time we removed him from school I was halfway through reading Richard Lavoie’s The Motivation Breakthrough. It was the book which gave me the courage to finally make the break with the public school system. Not because the book advocates that - far from it - but because the solutions in the book require some flexibility and ingenuity from both educators and parents. And how can I ask that of an elementary teacher already feeling the weight of the required standardized testing? How can I ask that of a system which has no provisions for seeing past mediocre test results to my sons real and very apparent abilities,  a system with an authoritarian bent which prefers to repeatedly punish minor transgressions rather than take a good hard look at making school fun so that children are interested and engaged?

I have been reading other books too. About boys and why they are failing in ever greater numbers, being given questionable diagnoses in ever greater numbers. Being drugged in ever greater numbers. I think everybody with a boy - no matter what his character - should read at least one of these. The Minds of Boys is a good one but there is plenty of choice.

I know there are people out there who will read this and think I am an apologist for my child, probably just a lazy boy with disciplinary issues. Obviously these are people who know far more about my child than I do. Let me just say this. There are children that fit in fine in a public school environment. And then there are those who don’t. I just feel fortunate that, like it or not, I have the opportunity to create the appropriate learning environment for my son. I am confident about his future now, because it is in my hands.

And truly, we have all breathed a sigh of relief.

I am always extra cautious when trying to guess how strangers are coping. It is so easy to imagine how you you yourself might feel under the same circumstances, project this onto the other person and get it wrong. I know this from much personal experience. 

For example, when I have a lot to do in a short time or there is a crisis, I go into overdrive, and zip about doing everything quickly and barking orders. I call this efficient. Others seem to interpret this as “panicking” and tell me to “calm down“. 

(Let me just interrupt myself a moment here to point out that this has happened to me only since I became A Mommy of Three . Before I saw fit to bear multiple children, way back when it was my job to solve crises as rapidly as possible, the same behavior used to win me praise for my clear-headed troubleshooting under pressure. Newsflash! The rules change for “Little Ladies”.)

In another example, if I am at a park, unless we magically click and/or you strike up an enthusiastic conversation with me (and I do love enthusiastic conversations of the right nature!), I will not exchange more than a smile, a hello and a few polite comments. Also, unless you shoot me an obvious panicked look and/or ask explicitly, I will not intervene with the care of your children. Well, I might pick up a dropped sippy cup, or save a lost child from walking into the lake (what is it with these playgrounds built right next to water ???) but I won’t go further than that.

I call this kind of behavior not bothering a random stranger with unwanted attention.  Some people, however, call it reserved. 

Recently, Anymommy wrote a post which really resonated with me. She thinks she is a Magnet for Crazies. I wonder if she just has My Kind of Face? Because apparently I have the kind of face which says helpless. It seems that what I think of as my “Mommy is the boss and everything is under control” expression, to other people says “Not handling this. Help!” And then they feel obliged to step in, undermine my authority and generally create a three ringed circus. 

A  circus where the clown has pushed aside the ringmaster and tried to take over the show. 

Oh yeah, and then there is one more thing. By pointing this out, I think I am just calmly and rationally signaling my frustration with the state of affairs. You know the perceived change from capable adult to not-coping neurotic which came about when I became a breeder. I think I am just stating facts. 

But I know that someone, somewhere, will see fit to call me defensive. Another surprise:  I really don’t care. No, really. And that is so not defensiveness speaking. 

At least my kids think I am SuperMommy…