Over the years I have noticed that each of my friends when their children approach school age ask themselves if they should homeschool. These same friends all went through public schools themselves and talked about public schools when their children were babies and backpacks and No. 10 pencils seemed like a star in another galaxy when daily life revolved around eating schedules, diaper changes and tantrums.
But as the star in that other galaxy drew closer these moms looked at the sweet, shining faces of their children, remembered some of their own not-so-great elementary school experiences, pictured the real world hitting like a large bucket of ice water dumped on their heads, and wondered if perhaps homeschooling wasn't such a bad idea after all.
I was a few years behind most of my close friends and I heard the agony of separation in those conversations without fully understanding. Well, now it's my turn. Our twins did not start Kindergarten this year. They could have, they turned five in the early Fall, and in fact most people assumed we would send them this year, but we chose not to. Firstly, our city only offers a full-day Kindergarten program and up until a couple of weeks ago they still napped for 2 or 3 hours everyday and in fact have fallen asleep on the couch while I write this. Secondly, the proverbial "They" recommend boys start school at the age of six. They recommend this for many reasons, one being "They" did a study and found that the language area in the brain of a five-year-old boy looks the same as a three-and-a-half-year-old girl. Boys brains develop at a different rate and trajectory and that extra year makes a big difference. And thirdly, I didn't think the kids were ready for school. They have a later birthday and waiting a year means they'll be that much bigger and that much more emotionally mature and I want them to have every advantage available to them to make it in the rough and sometimes cruel world of the playground. But mostly, I just wasn't ready to let them go.
This week I was a parent helper on a field trip the kids took with their playschool. One of the things we do as a family is clap every time we go underneath a bridge. Well, I was partners with my kids and another boy (who I will call X) and on the way there we clapped while X ducked his head, which is what his family does. An interesting thing happened on the way home. At the first bridge X, Ava and I clapped and Tristan ducked his head. At the second bridge, Ava and I clapped and X and Tristan ducked their heads. At the third bridge, I clapped alone while all three ducked their heads. As I looked at my head-ducking children sitting on bus seats twice as tall as them, legs stuck straight out and barely hitting the seat ahead, I felt inexpressibly sad.
This is why I'm not ready to let go yet.
How do you explain to a barely-five-year-old about peer pressure and knowing yourself and liking yourself well enough to not follow the crowd? How do you encourage your children to be who they are without fear or shame or apology? A day or so later we had a talk about how it's really neat that other families do special things too but that we don't have to change what we do just because someone else does it differently. Ava's response to that was, "But Mom, I don't like clapping anymore."
You know what? Maybe homeschooling isn't such a bad option after all...
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Are you there God? It's me, Heather...
Typically Fall here is long and warm. Last year at this time we had just put in the sod for our front lawn. Last year at this time I was wondering if it was ever going to get cool enough for me to wear my new winter boots (they just don't go with capris). This year in the span of two weeks we've gone from t-shirt weather to snow so deep it required toques, Sorells and shovels and back to today which is supposed to be a high of 22.
I'll tell you what is the same as last year. My family is sick. Last year the entire month of October was spent indoors (excluding the time I spent going to the doctor), while a stomach flu, hand foot and mouth disease, and finally colds ran through our household. It was so awful I have become the mom that won't go places if I know anyone has been sick there and I won't let sick kids come over.
This October also reminds me of October two years ago. Two years ago after a brutal delivery where I lost half my blood, spent an hour being internally stitched and had a D&C to get rid of the placenta bits that had attached themselves to my internal C-section scar, Sebastian was born. Two years ago I left the hospital feeling knocked-down and dragged-out and unable to sit without a donut pillow. I got out of the hospital this year on October 6th, the day before Sebastian's second birthday feeling knocked-down, dragged-out and like I had entered a time warp.
It has been two weeks since my surgery and on Thursday, just two short, blissful days ago things were looking good. I was thinking with great satisfaction that no one had been sick in a while (excluding my appendix episode which was an isolated incident and not contagious), and I felt like I had turned a corner in my own recovery and was looking forward to a weekend with Hugh home and the kids playing outside and me not having to sleep all the time. And then Thursday night Hugh said his stomach felt off and immediately I began to hyperventilate. I went to bed with fear and trembling and sure enough was rudely woken up an hour later to the sound of retching. But it wasn't Hugh. Tristan was puking up lasagna all over our bedroom carpet. And then he proceeded to throw up about every 20 minutes from midnight until 5:00am. The next morning Hugh went to work and after finishing up the carpet cleaning from the night before and wiping down every conceivable surface in my house with vinegar we limped through the day from Treehouse show to Treehouse show. Hugh made it through the day feeling fine but bolted out of bed in the wee hours and spent the night hugging the cool porcelain. When I checked on him later this morning I asked if I could get him anything and he said, "I'd like my Saturday back."
Today Hugh was going to take advantage of this good weather, since who knows it might be blizzarding next week, and finish off the top pieces of our fence. This summer while he wasn't working would have been a great time to do that but it's hard to buy lumber when you're not getting a paycheck. We really need to finish the fence so we can paint it. It's starting to turn grey which from an aesthetic point of view I find pleasing but from a rotting wood perspective isn't good, and now that the sprinklers have been blown out it would be a good time. Were it not for the fact that Hugh is currently lying on the couch hoping to keep down his last two sips of water. I am living in such dread of the rest of us getting it that I can't tell if my stomach is off because of nerves or because I already have it.
Do you know what I want? I want October back.
I'll tell you what is the same as last year. My family is sick. Last year the entire month of October was spent indoors (excluding the time I spent going to the doctor), while a stomach flu, hand foot and mouth disease, and finally colds ran through our household. It was so awful I have become the mom that won't go places if I know anyone has been sick there and I won't let sick kids come over.
This October also reminds me of October two years ago. Two years ago after a brutal delivery where I lost half my blood, spent an hour being internally stitched and had a D&C to get rid of the placenta bits that had attached themselves to my internal C-section scar, Sebastian was born. Two years ago I left the hospital feeling knocked-down and dragged-out and unable to sit without a donut pillow. I got out of the hospital this year on October 6th, the day before Sebastian's second birthday feeling knocked-down, dragged-out and like I had entered a time warp.
It has been two weeks since my surgery and on Thursday, just two short, blissful days ago things were looking good. I was thinking with great satisfaction that no one had been sick in a while (excluding my appendix episode which was an isolated incident and not contagious), and I felt like I had turned a corner in my own recovery and was looking forward to a weekend with Hugh home and the kids playing outside and me not having to sleep all the time. And then Thursday night Hugh said his stomach felt off and immediately I began to hyperventilate. I went to bed with fear and trembling and sure enough was rudely woken up an hour later to the sound of retching. But it wasn't Hugh. Tristan was puking up lasagna all over our bedroom carpet. And then he proceeded to throw up about every 20 minutes from midnight until 5:00am. The next morning Hugh went to work and after finishing up the carpet cleaning from the night before and wiping down every conceivable surface in my house with vinegar we limped through the day from Treehouse show to Treehouse show. Hugh made it through the day feeling fine but bolted out of bed in the wee hours and spent the night hugging the cool porcelain. When I checked on him later this morning I asked if I could get him anything and he said, "I'd like my Saturday back."
Today Hugh was going to take advantage of this good weather, since who knows it might be blizzarding next week, and finish off the top pieces of our fence. This summer while he wasn't working would have been a great time to do that but it's hard to buy lumber when you're not getting a paycheck. We really need to finish the fence so we can paint it. It's starting to turn grey which from an aesthetic point of view I find pleasing but from a rotting wood perspective isn't good, and now that the sprinklers have been blown out it would be a good time. Were it not for the fact that Hugh is currently lying on the couch hoping to keep down his last two sips of water. I am living in such dread of the rest of us getting it that I can't tell if my stomach is off because of nerves or because I already have it.
Do you know what I want? I want October back.
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
The long and short of it
Hey. So. Got a stomach ache on Friday afternoon. Thought I was hungry. Ate 3 pieces of pizza, you know, to make sure I was really full and so my stomach really wouldn't hurt. Didn't work. Went to lay down. Writhed in agony on my bed for a while. Had a bath. Writhed in agony in the tub. Puked up my pizza. Drank some peppermint tea. Puked it up. Writhed in agony on the floor of my bedroom for a while. That was uncomfortable. Went back to writhing on bed. Went to hospital. Was immediately admitted and hooked up to IV combo of Gravol and Demerol. Spent the night in a hospital bed in Emerg. puking but doing slightly less writhing thanks to the Demerol and then no writhing when they switched me to morphine. Had a CT scan. Went to the OR. Had a nurse press my throat till I passed out. Woke up without an appendix. The End.
Except it's not really the end is it? Not when the doctors told me I'm not allowed to lift my children for 4 weeks and I have to sleep sitting up and take antibiotics that make me smell like a nursing home. At least the twins are at good ages and will be able to bring me breakfast in bed and feed me grapes all day long while I lounge on the couch. Sigh. And Sebastian? Good thing he loves his crib, cuz I can't lift him out of it!
Except it's not really the end is it? Not when the doctors told me I'm not allowed to lift my children for 4 weeks and I have to sleep sitting up and take antibiotics that make me smell like a nursing home. At least the twins are at good ages and will be able to bring me breakfast in bed and feed me grapes all day long while I lounge on the couch. Sigh. And Sebastian? Good thing he loves his crib, cuz I can't lift him out of it!
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
The Saga Continues
So the webs around the house have been better. I'm only having to brush down my front door every other day now instead of every day so that counts right? I don't know if it's guilty conscience, ghosts of blasted spiders, or just that the weather has turned cooler but I see spiders. Everywhere. Like, Haley Joel "I see dead people", kind of everywhere.
Last night as I was getting ready for bed I glanced up and saw an enormous spider just above my head. Thankfully the ceiling is too high for me to reach so Hugh had to get out of bed to get it. I wasn't even going to watch, I was going to stay in the bathroom and brush my teeth and resolutely not watch. But of course, I had to look. I call this the Britney Spears Syndrome; you know it's going to be bad but you JUST. CAN'T. LOOK. AWAY. So Hugh grabs some toilet paper and crushes it and throws it into the toilet. Right before I have to pee.
As I stare down at the inert form I am faced with a dilemma. Do I flush that spider away and waste the water of an extra flush? Or do I trust that it's dead and pee on it. I think of worldwide water shortage and I sit down. And start panicking. I can't even pee because I'm so afraid that spider is going to come back to life bite my bum. It's like when you're a kid and are convinced a snake is in the outhouse waiting to bite your bum because some you knew knew someone, who knew someone, who heard that it happened to someone, at some camp, somewhere. As I start yelling this Hugh says, while killing himself laughing I might add, "Heather, dead spiders don't resurrect themselves. They don't come back to life. It just doesn't happen!"
WELL IT HAPPENED TO JESUS!
Okay. In the interest of full confession I'll admit that I was being a bit melodramatic. I didn't really believe that the spider was going to come back to life, well not entirely anyway. I just had that outhouse/snake feeling and freaked myself out by yelling about it. Sometimes I can't resist the drama of a moment. I finally talk myself back down and am able to pee and as I stand up and turn to flush I glance into the bowl and THE SPIDER IS SWIMMING!!!!! ALL EIGHT LEGS ARE MOVING! I AM NOT EVEN KIDDING!
I know that's a lot of caps but MOTHER OF GOD THE SPIDER CAME BACK TO LIFE! You know how kids have that one scream that makes you drop everything and run with with all your adrenaline pumping. All of a sudden I was being held up by Hugh and he wasn't laughing. Well, not at first anyway. Hugh was hugging me and I was crying into his shoulder about the spider being alive, ALIVE! as in not dead! when I felt his body start to shake. I looked at him and he was laughing. I almost got eaten alive by a spider and he was laughing! As I glared at him he said, you are so going to blog about this aren't you. I SO AM.
Last night as I was getting ready for bed I glanced up and saw an enormous spider just above my head. Thankfully the ceiling is too high for me to reach so Hugh had to get out of bed to get it. I wasn't even going to watch, I was going to stay in the bathroom and brush my teeth and resolutely not watch. But of course, I had to look. I call this the Britney Spears Syndrome; you know it's going to be bad but you JUST. CAN'T. LOOK. AWAY. So Hugh grabs some toilet paper and crushes it and throws it into the toilet. Right before I have to pee.
As I stare down at the inert form I am faced with a dilemma. Do I flush that spider away and waste the water of an extra flush? Or do I trust that it's dead and pee on it. I think of worldwide water shortage and I sit down. And start panicking. I can't even pee because I'm so afraid that spider is going to come back to life bite my bum. It's like when you're a kid and are convinced a snake is in the outhouse waiting to bite your bum because some you knew knew someone, who knew someone, who heard that it happened to someone, at some camp, somewhere. As I start yelling this Hugh says, while killing himself laughing I might add, "Heather, dead spiders don't resurrect themselves. They don't come back to life. It just doesn't happen!"
WELL IT HAPPENED TO JESUS!
Okay. In the interest of full confession I'll admit that I was being a bit melodramatic. I didn't really believe that the spider was going to come back to life, well not entirely anyway. I just had that outhouse/snake feeling and freaked myself out by yelling about it. Sometimes I can't resist the drama of a moment. I finally talk myself back down and am able to pee and as I stand up and turn to flush I glance into the bowl and THE SPIDER IS SWIMMING!!!!! ALL EIGHT LEGS ARE MOVING! I AM NOT EVEN KIDDING!
I know that's a lot of caps but MOTHER OF GOD THE SPIDER CAME BACK TO LIFE! You know how kids have that one scream that makes you drop everything and run with with all your adrenaline pumping. All of a sudden I was being held up by Hugh and he wasn't laughing. Well, not at first anyway. Hugh was hugging me and I was crying into his shoulder about the spider being alive, ALIVE! as in not dead! when I felt his body start to shake. I looked at him and he was laughing. I almost got eaten alive by a spider and he was laughing! As I glared at him he said, you are so going to blog about this aren't you. I SO AM.
Friday, September 25, 2009
I'll get you next time, Gadget...
The Ant Bully was on TV the other day so we PVR'd it to save it for a day that feels like Fall and staying indoors and making soup. However, since it is the 25th of September and at 34.6 degrees we are breaking 125 year old temperature records, I don't know how soon that day will come. So the kids watched it the other day during Sebastian's naptime and I caught bits and pieces of it while doing some puttering around the kitchen. Somehow a boy becomes a mini boy and has to find his inner ant as punishment for crimes against antdom or something like that. And then he realizes ants aren't all that bad, they have feelings too, and he tries to call off the exterminator he ordered but of course was unable to dial the phone due to his extreme smallness. I don't know how it ended because we had to shut it off just as the exterminator was firing up his Husqvarna, ant-sucker thing and going through his stash of poisons while laughing maniacally, but I imagine, since this is Disney or Pixar or something, that mini boy heroically saved the ant kingdom, gained a new respect for his teeny friends, regained his height and lived happily ever after grateful he discovered his inner ant. But I'm just guessing.
Movies about bugs don't really thrill me. I detest insects. I'm not even really much of an animal person. Little bitty kitties? Meh. Baby chicks and bunnies? Nice from a distance. Also, I don't care how much the dog in the window is; you know, the one with the waggly tail? And I certainly won't be bringing it home with me. Some of you are thinking right now that I obviously don't have a soul. I just really can't imagine adding another animal to the ravening pack already living in my house. And I don't just mean my kids.
We have been inundated by spiders this Fall. I mean, everyone is abandoning the sinking ship and we're dry ground, kind of inundated. It started a few weeks ago when I opened my front door and noticed the top half of the open doorway was covered in web. Yuck. I grabbed some paper towel and brushed it away. The next day it was back and I brushed it down again. And then it was back the day after that. So I Googled spider webs and read through how it's important not to disturb their webs because of the integral part they play in the delicate balance of nature. Do what you want when they're covering your front door, I grabbed a bottle of Windex to poison them away. I sprayed down my front entry from top to bottom including the siding. Satisfied I won this round I twirled the bottle around my index finger and watched tumbleweed roll down the street against a backdrop of prairie sunset fire.
Two days later the webs were back. And I developed a small tic in my right hand which caused me to involuntarily squeeze a trigger every time I opened my front door. And then the webs were everywhere. Walking up the steps to my front door the iron railings were strung with garlands of web. Sitting on the back deck sipping cold tea while the kids played I saw glistening webs everywhere I looked in the railings. They were even in the house. I found webs hanging from light fixtures, hanging from the ceiling attached to our TV, and on a random wall in the kitchen. I went upstairs to do laundry and found a single perfectly formed web in my upper staircase railings. The small tic in my hand turned into a bulging vein in my forehead.
Spiders. They mock me with their never-ending web spinning. Every time I see a web I destroy it but they just keep reappearing. Checking the front porch for spiders has become an obsession. I started by going out every morning with a shoe and whacking all the spiders I could find. The first few days were fruitful, lots of kills, but then the spiders started hiding out so I had to switch up my routine and go out hunting just after the kids went to bed. That worked for a while but they've disappeared again so I'm keeping my patterns random to throw them off guard.
It came to a head yesterday when I went to fill up the kiddy pool; I put my hand on the tap and right into the centre of a sticky web. I actually yelled ARGGGHHH! like I'm some sort of cartoon character. Looking at the siding around the tap while the pool was filling I saw hundreds of dead insects wrapped in little web cocoons. THEY HAD TAKEN OVER! And that's when I completely snapped. I finished filling up the pool and put the spray attachment onto our hose; I fired up my own version of a Husqvarna and I blasted those suckers till every cocoon on that side of the house was gone. Then I did the garage, the back of the house, the other side, and my front entryway. Oh the power beneath my fingertips! I laughed wildly, exultantly as I watched those cocoons fly off the siding. I saw spiders scurrying away from me and I chased them with the spraying water. It was glorious! GLORIOUS!
Whoa, did you just hear that? That evil maniacal laughter? I think I just became the bad guy, the exterminator. I did think of Charlotte's Web while blasting cocoons yesterday and yay for Wilbur and all that but guess what? It's a story! It's not real! Also? I have no inner spider! Also? I WILL WIN THIS ROUND! I have to. Because seriously, this vein in my forehead? It's going to start designing a clothing line soon.
I opened my front door just before bed last night. No webs. Can I actually declare a victory in this epic battle of man vs. insect, me vs. the spiders? I think so. Time will tell. On the other hand I'm scared to open my front door this morning so who is really winning?
Movies about bugs don't really thrill me. I detest insects. I'm not even really much of an animal person. Little bitty kitties? Meh. Baby chicks and bunnies? Nice from a distance. Also, I don't care how much the dog in the window is; you know, the one with the waggly tail? And I certainly won't be bringing it home with me. Some of you are thinking right now that I obviously don't have a soul. I just really can't imagine adding another animal to the ravening pack already living in my house. And I don't just mean my kids.
We have been inundated by spiders this Fall. I mean, everyone is abandoning the sinking ship and we're dry ground, kind of inundated. It started a few weeks ago when I opened my front door and noticed the top half of the open doorway was covered in web. Yuck. I grabbed some paper towel and brushed it away. The next day it was back and I brushed it down again. And then it was back the day after that. So I Googled spider webs and read through how it's important not to disturb their webs because of the integral part they play in the delicate balance of nature. Do what you want when they're covering your front door, I grabbed a bottle of Windex to poison them away. I sprayed down my front entry from top to bottom including the siding. Satisfied I won this round I twirled the bottle around my index finger and watched tumbleweed roll down the street against a backdrop of prairie sunset fire.
Two days later the webs were back. And I developed a small tic in my right hand which caused me to involuntarily squeeze a trigger every time I opened my front door. And then the webs were everywhere. Walking up the steps to my front door the iron railings were strung with garlands of web. Sitting on the back deck sipping cold tea while the kids played I saw glistening webs everywhere I looked in the railings. They were even in the house. I found webs hanging from light fixtures, hanging from the ceiling attached to our TV, and on a random wall in the kitchen. I went upstairs to do laundry and found a single perfectly formed web in my upper staircase railings. The small tic in my hand turned into a bulging vein in my forehead.
Spiders. They mock me with their never-ending web spinning. Every time I see a web I destroy it but they just keep reappearing. Checking the front porch for spiders has become an obsession. I started by going out every morning with a shoe and whacking all the spiders I could find. The first few days were fruitful, lots of kills, but then the spiders started hiding out so I had to switch up my routine and go out hunting just after the kids went to bed. That worked for a while but they've disappeared again so I'm keeping my patterns random to throw them off guard.
It came to a head yesterday when I went to fill up the kiddy pool; I put my hand on the tap and right into the centre of a sticky web. I actually yelled ARGGGHHH! like I'm some sort of cartoon character. Looking at the siding around the tap while the pool was filling I saw hundreds of dead insects wrapped in little web cocoons. THEY HAD TAKEN OVER! And that's when I completely snapped. I finished filling up the pool and put the spray attachment onto our hose; I fired up my own version of a Husqvarna and I blasted those suckers till every cocoon on that side of the house was gone. Then I did the garage, the back of the house, the other side, and my front entryway. Oh the power beneath my fingertips! I laughed wildly, exultantly as I watched those cocoons fly off the siding. I saw spiders scurrying away from me and I chased them with the spraying water. It was glorious! GLORIOUS!
Whoa, did you just hear that? That evil maniacal laughter? I think I just became the bad guy, the exterminator. I did think of Charlotte's Web while blasting cocoons yesterday and yay for Wilbur and all that but guess what? It's a story! It's not real! Also? I have no inner spider! Also? I WILL WIN THIS ROUND! I have to. Because seriously, this vein in my forehead? It's going to start designing a clothing line soon.
I opened my front door just before bed last night. No webs. Can I actually declare a victory in this epic battle of man vs. insect, me vs. the spiders? I think so. Time will tell. On the other hand I'm scared to open my front door this morning so who is really winning?
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