Little Photographer

Rowan learned how to use the webcam today, and took over 250 pictures. All the pictures in this post were taken by her, today.




We have been running around like crazy free birds lately-- mostly due to getting a car. We've been a lot happier lately instead of feeling completely trapped, but I have neglected the house (as I haven't been home a lot) and indeed, this blog.


"Momma, get over here and let's do our demented faces!" Ro said. All I have to do is make this face and my kids squeal and run far, far away. It's endlessly amusing. But hey, she didn't do it with me!

I've had a couple of family members challenge me on my unstructured ways lately. I don't want to go into the details and the peeves I have with it, but I will say that having people be so distrusting of my judgment is making it really hard for me to trust myself.



So, I am starting a journal. I'm not sure how long I will need to keep it, but I am mainly starting it to help my family see what natural learning looks like. I'll be writing down what the kids are learning, what we've done for the day, and any amusing things that come out of their tiny mouths. I may be posting semi-nightly to this blog, listing what I've written down through the day, maybe some pictures, etc. (Or, once a week. Who am I kidding?)

Today:

It's snowing today. I pulled out the kids' snowsuits and snow boots and we went out after breakfast. Dairbhre really liked stomping around and crunching the snow under his feet but seemed nervous when I was a few steps away. Rowan buried her hat. She spent so much time making sure it was totally covered, piling armfuls of snow on top of it and patting them down.



We came inside and used the Eyeclops (AKA Best Toy Ever), pictured above. This is a microscope that plugs into the TV. It magnifies everything way more than I thought it would. You can spend ages exploring every little cavern in a piece of popcorn. The fibers on your t-shirt look like they were knit with needles the size of broom handles. And the fibers in anything hand knit just looks like a very hairy beast. Anyway, today we looked at snow, which was really pretty, but melty. I squeezed the water out of my green tea bag, and looked at that, and Rowan says, "Oh stop, you're going to make me throw up!" There were little tiny water bubbles gurgling around under the surface of the paper. It ruled.

As I mentioned, Rowan learned to use the webcam today, and took pictures for about 45 minutes. It was amazing how focused she was. She got into setting up scenes, taking pictures of the almost creepy gnomes on top of my monitor:



And a Littlest Pet Shop seal in a bowl of popcorn:



And my eyeballs.



And baby brother.



It's only 5:30pm but we've already had a really full, enriching day. I've had so much fun today being snowed in.

Last night: Rowan brought me a book of nursery rhymes to read to her. I remembered that when she was about 2 1/2 she had all the nursery rhymes in this collection of books memorized, and would sit on my dad's lap and correct him when he pronounced something wrong. So when I sat down I showed her how she already knew the rhymes, and showed her how to point her finger at the words as she said them. We talked about rhyming and how mitten and kitten both end with itten. I asked her if she could point out certain words to me and she found them easily.

She's been doing a lot of stuff at Starfall lately-- she's moved past the ABC's and onto the Learn To Read section. I let her click around a lot, and I sit beside her and gently guide her so she doesn't get frustrated. She normally finishes each little lesson thingy even though she knows how to close them out and go back. She's learning her way around the computer really well. She likes to go to Etsy and look at the handmade dolls and ask me if I'll make whatever she likes for her.

Some solitude... and meltdown lessons

Firstly, big cheesy virtual hugs to Laura and Ren for the comments on my last post. You guys are the best support net a gal could have. Ren admitting that she is sometimes an asshole (even if I do find that hard to believe :D) helps me start to forgive myself. And yes, Laura, being able to apologize and just say, "Hey, you know what? I'm being a total control freak. Thanks for that. You go on, I'm sorry." is so healing!

Today, the kids were with their assorted grandparents for a whopping 6 hours. I spent about half that time knitting and listening to this talk on archive.org with Sandra Dodd and Richard Prystowsky, on peaceful parenting. Wow. I would recommend this to any parent. It's about having a peaceful relationship with your child and the importance of meditation practice-- the planting of peaceful seeds, internally. It deals a lot with anger-- how troubled times WILL come, and how to deal with them. Just the sound of Sandra Dodd's voice makes me question what I'm doing.

So... after listening to that talk, I had a few more hours to kill. It was quite insane how much I missed my wee beasties. I started thinking, Dammit! I want to practice peaceful parenting right NOW! Right now I say! (Typical me, that.)

I managed to get the toys in the living room straightened out. They had so much stuff in here that they couldn't get to the cool toys for all the junk-- you know the kind, all the stuffed animals they got for Easter last year, etc. I got two boxes to give away, a big plastic box to put away (so I'll have something to pull out for crazy days), and a trashbag of stuff that is, in fact, trash. It's a lot better and more open now. Rowan squealed with delight, no joke. I won't try to pretend that it wasn't all mixed with laundry and Pringles cans. It won't take nearly as long to pick up now.

By the time the kids got back, I was so glad to have them. Dairbhre's grandparents had given Rowan a Valentine's Day present, which turned out to be Milo and Otis on DVD! I feigned falling to the floor in amazement-- that was my favorite movie as a kid. I watched it after school every single day for at least 2 years. I ran to the DVD player and said, "Oh yeah, we're watching this RIGHT NOW!" (I get like that, have you noticed???)

So, at first Ro was like, "I don't like how they keep talking." (The movie is just footage of cats and dogs and animals-- it took four years to make-- with a narrator telling the story and doing the voices of the characters.) Then she got really freaked out over chairs-- she wanted both of the kid chairs beside each other and Boo Bear kept knocking one over and they were both screaming over it, so Chad went and put it up. It wasn't really my place to argue, and I honestly could not figure out what they even wanted. Rowan became completely incoherent with crying and screaming over this chair, that she wanted to sit in THAT chair (it was identical to the one she was sitting in). Normally both kids having meltdowns at once causes me to melt down. But I kept my cool. I didn't even get frustrated. I took Rowan into her room and got her pj's on. She was still freaking out by the time they were on, she thought I was going to make her to to bed. She kept yelling, "Answer me! Do I have to go to bed now? Yes or NO?!" but she was screaming so loud she wouldn't have heard me. I just sat down with her and told her to breathe with me. After two deep breaths she started giggling. We went back into the living room and she got really into the movie. She very calmly asked where the chair was, so I fetched it for her. No more worries.

I think I learned something from that peaceful parenting talk.

Elation and Despair

An eloquent description of my week.

Firstly, the causes of despair, so we can end on a happy note. (Stick with me, it does get happy, really.)

Dairbhre, who will be two next month, has started hitting. Sometimes it is an attention getting thing, but sometimes I'll be sitting there with him talking to him and he'll just be wailing on me with a toy. He's been hitting his sister on top of the head with toy wrenches and such. I have to firmly tell him to stop-- he either keeps on or bursts into tears.


But look at this little face... he really is a sweetie.

And Rowan... she has been very rude to me. She puts her hands on her hips and scowls and resists me in everything I try to do for her. She is doing what I would have before called, "Mouthing off." In an unschooling environment I'm trying to look at it differently these days, but it's been really difficult for me to not see it this way here lately.

For Example: The other day we were doing a Google image search for baby seals. Of course, one of the images that popped up was a guy standing over a seal with a club about to kill it. I tried to distract her but she insisted we click on that one. I told her what was going on. I thought it would make her see in a real way how sad that was. (Although looking back, maybe I shouldn't have told her?) Well, instead of feeling sad for the seal, she says, "I want to go to Alaska and club a baby seal so I can have a nice, soft coat." Okay, so now this is sort of funny. But she was totally serious, and I was trying to figure out how you tell a child why clubbing defenseless baby animals so you can cut off their skin is not right, if this isn't already an instintual feeling! Anyway, I grew very weary of this conversation and noticed that the baby on my breast was falling asleep. So I very gently asked her if she'd mind going and playing on her own for a little while so that I could get brother to sleep, and then we could play. Well, she refused. Quite loudly. And she woke him up. And I ended up yelling. Not only that but I physically forced her into her room, while she screamed at me. (And I'm well aware of how wrong this is!)

I've ended up yelling a few times this week. I want to just tape my mouth shut. This week it is definitely hormones getting to me, just as it was last month, but it's not an excuse. I think during this time of month, I should just vow to myself to shut the hell up, always, unless I am asked a direct question, and then I must think about it internally, be still internally for a moment, and then speak without rudeness.

In short, I've been a rude asshole myself.

BUT! There have been some great times this week. I think that Ro went through a short period of deschooling, and now what we're doing is sincerely unschooling (not radical unschooling, though that is my final goal. I've just been too much of an asshole lately to allow myself that label). She has been asking me questions that revolve around numbers. She is actually learning more math just by talking to me than she ever would with worksheets or even doing it on paper. I don't think it's even necessary to do it on paper at this point-- in the future it may serve her well to be able to do figuring on paper, but it will be because she NEEDS it. She answered my dad correctly when he asked her how many hours are in a day (of course, he was bribing her with tootsie rolls :D) She has also been obsessed with how old everyone she knows is and how old they'll be when she is their age.

We've also been playing a lot with rhymes, with talking and on paper. I wrote "Heather" and "Weather" on a piece of paper and she figured it out!! She is so close to reading and it's so exciting to be on this edge of discovery. I am really enjoying having her home, despite my asshole-ish tendencies. She's my little pal.

We made clothespin dolls together:



And I made these little Waldorf-inspired bendy dolls for Dairbhre...



...using this tutorial as inspiration. Their heads are wooden beads, their bodies are pipecleaners wrapped in cotton crochet thread. I whipstiched the little felt clothes right onto them. Now how adorable are they, hmm? Pretty damn adorable. Boo Bear likes em too-- they're just right for his wee hands. I think the faces are more Fisher-Price Little People (old school) inspired than Waldorf, but no face freaks me out and simpler faces weren't working it for me.

So, sweet readers, thank you for allowing me to come sit down in my little confession box and spew all my guts, so that I might forgive myself and move forward.

How much Time?

I was just reading Sandra Dodd's article entitled Precisely How to Unschool, in which she answers the question, "How much time should I spend with my child every day if I want to unschool?"

If you want to measure, measure generously. If you want to give, give generously. If you want to unschool, or be a mindful parent, give, give, give. You'll find after a few years that you still have everything you thought you had given away, and more.

A Very Rowan Birthday

My Rowan is now 5 years old.

Sitting around the breakfast table on her birthday she suddenly grinned and said, "I'm not four anymore." I asked her if it felt weird. For the rest of the day she had these moments where she stopped what she was doing and said, "It feels weird to be not be four anymore." Good weird.



She had an awesome day. She helped me make a cake, then my dad came over and we ate it. My mom and stepdad came over to get her and took her out to dinner and Libby Loo, where she got her hair and nails done. She came home looking like a princess.




I am going to start experimenting with schedules. I had written out this thing where I had decided I wasn't going to call myself an unschooler because of this-- but I'm coming to see unschooling as a very broad term, and I'm tired of asking myself the very ridiculous question of "Does this go against the rules of unschooling?" What kind of a question is that anyway? Maybe instead of not calling myself an unschooler, I can just effing relax, and quit torturing myself. Identifying as unschooling has definitely put me in touch with some like-minded folks.

Anyway, the schedules. Okay, so I feel incompetent. I spend a lot of days in my pj's, not getting anything accomplished or paying near enough attention to the kids. I'm going to try to get my sporadic sleep times worked out and get up at 7:00 in the morning. I've noticed if I get up about an hour before everyone else, then go wake them up, not only do they not stay awake half the night, but they are better tempered and happier. When I leave them to wake up themselves they tend to wake up in a bad mood, but if I go snuggle them for a few minutes to wake them they are all happy within a few minutes. And I like that time too, before everyone gets up. Before, I was just going to bed when they did and getting up when they poked me awake. Now I'm doing Surya Namaskara (Salutation to the Sun) upon waking, getting a shower in, getting fully dressed, eating breakfast, drinking a cup of tea, and checking email/blogs/posting to my journal. Seriously. That's a good start to the day, all that beautiful still peace of the morning. That's the way it should be.

Rowan loves schedules. I don't think having one would go against unschooling because of this and the fact that I'm not going to be enforcing them. I expect her to do more enforcing than me-- she's a bit on the bossy side. Anyway, I'm thinking that she would actually really like it if we had art time, dance time, reading time, music time... stuff like that. I'm going to have her help me plan this. It may be useful for at least awhile to get me on track.

But I am not going to make them do worksheets or enforce any kind of school work, especially if it causes nothing more than tears and frustration. I'm still not going to enforce a strict bedtime, but instead "make the room sleepy" so they'll get tired. (Earlier. This stuff where I have two little kids running around at 2am is not working for me.) I'm still going to work on my control issues, and trust, and keeping quiet when before I'd have been yelling.

Some things I wish I could just insert directly into my brain:

12 Exercises for Mindful Parenting
The Noble Eightfold Path
The Dhammapada