My poor little guy! A big, big bump

For the full story and a better picture, see Nattyman's post.

focus

Today, I've been focusing on the positive. The good, enjoyable things about life. Like good food and drink. The beautiful mature trees in my back yard, and the way the light filters down through their leaves. The call of a little bird amidst the morning quiet. The cute things my kids do and say - like Samuel pushing the pretend mower with his little sun glasses on, which he wants to wear all the time either on his face or the top of his head, unless he can find a hat, which is his other favorite thing to wear; and like Ethan telling me "You just have to get used to it," when I told him I didn't enjoy playing video games nearly as much as he did. Good stories, in literature or on screen. Comfortable clothes and furniture.

Here are a couple of happy pictures to go with the positive focus. Samuel on his trike, with his sunglasses.

better

Surprisingly, things have been going okay these last few days. (Thank you for your prayers and support!) Heath has been very productive at work as a strategy to keep his mind off the tense, sad environment, which is absolutely the best thing he could be doing, since there is more work now. Several people are already interested in the open positions, and one person in Heath's department is being trained to help pick up the slack. So the 10 or 12 hour days I anticipated haven't materialized yet. If they get someone to fill the positions quickly, maybe they won't be necessary.

My ear/body ailment is getting progressively better - I actually felt pretty rested after 8 hours of sleep last night, instead of feeling like I really needed a couple more hours. The pressure is still there, but not causing enough pain to take ibuprofen anymore. So this is all good news!

A new, sweet development for our family is the presence of some neighborhood friends for our two oldest boys. Two houses down are two little boys ages 6 and 4. How have we lived here for two years and not played with them? I know, pretty crazy. Jacob finally met the older boy in his class at school. They sit next to each other and have become "best friends" and play every day on the monkey bars at recess together. They seem to be sweet boys, and their daddy is nice and apparently normal (in this day and age, you almost feel like you should provide background checks for each other before letting your kids play at one another's houses, but we resisted that urge). He is mostly a stay-at-home dad since he only works eight 24-hour days a month as a fireman. He takes the kids to stay at their grandma's house for those eight days, I guess. So, now that our boys realize these boys are available to play almost any time, they want to play with them all the time! It's cute, and I don't really know how to handle it. Like, right now I'm telling Ethan it is too early in the morning - mostly because I haven't showered yet. The daddy doesn't seem to mind letting his boys play with ours as much as they want, so I just hope if it does become too much he'll feel free to speak up.

Oh, but a crazy scary thing about this - Last night we were all out front washing the cars and using sidewalk chalk. Heath and I were both keeping an eye on Samuel, because he is pretty adventurous. We had been checking with each other periodically to make sure he was in sight, and this time, Heath asked me if Samuel was up by the garage, and I said "No..." and we realized he was out of sight and we had no idea where he was! We totally freaked out, all four of us started shouting for him and branching out down both sides of the street with Heath standing in the middle of the street to try to see him and block any cars that would come zooming down with Samuel possibly in the middle of the street. After a few scary minutes, we heard our neighbor with the two little boys say, "He's down here!" Apparently, after walking down to the little friends' house several times, Samuel had learned the way. He had toddled down the sidewalk and up onto their porch and was petting their cat. The four year old had come to the door, and he and Samuel were waving through the glass to each other, and this is how the daddy had discovered him. Normally when we call Samuel's name he responds, "Yeah!" But not this time. When I went to get him, he put his hand up to push me away - he wanted to stay. Crazy kid. I am so glad he was okay!

seriously

We really did not need a crisis right now.

We're still worn out and behind on everything because of sickness. My ears are still incredibly plugged up and uncomfortable, and Heath and I both still feel a general weakness and malaise. (On a bright note, the kids, including Jacob, seem to be in great health.)

So in the midst of feeling weak and vulnerable, we find out yesterday that the other two designers in Heath's department have been fired. No warning, no time to go back and get their things, just ordered to leave and not come back. (There was an offense involved, but nothing anyone in the department anticipated these guys getting fired over.)

This means two things for our family. 1) Heath's work load just tripled. 2) We are thrown into a state of constant anxiety, wondering if Heath is going to be fired next. (Like I said, this was not an offense anyone expected to be fired for.)

Heath is sick with tension. I can't even contemplate how I'm going to do things on my own for the next however long while Heath is working 10-12 hour days (if he can manage to get any work done through the tension!). We already were struggling with feeling like we never get to rest and never get time away from the kids (because we can't afford babysitting and because we can't seem to get the house clean enough to bring a babysitter in even if we could afford it). How are we going to feel after several weeks or months of this?

I guess for today, I just cope the best that I can. Hopefully this headache will go away in a minute, and maybe I can get the dishes done at some point today. Other than that, I don't have any ideas.

catch-up

I have been away from my blog for the last week because our family has been sick.  Jacob started getting chills, fever, and body aches starting Monday night, until Thursday noon-ish, when his fever was finally gone without medicine... for a few hours.  Then it surged up again late Thursday afternoon, and he started having trouble with his asthma.  We took him in to the urgent care clinic, and they did a chest x-ray and discovered he has pneumonia.  He is on antibiotics now and seems to be doing much better.  His fever is gone, and he is eating and playing again.

Early Tuesday morning, around 3:30 am, I woke up with a horrible earache.  I tried everything I could think of for the pain, and finally made it to the doctor at 10:50 am.  (Which is its own crazy story, see Nattyman's blog.)  My eardrum had ruptured.  So that explains the excruciating pain.  I am on antibiotics, steroids, and high-powered pain killers as needed.  The pain isn't so bad now, but my ears still feel totally full of fluid, and it's quite uncomfortable.  I will be so happy when it drains!  I am doing everything the doctor and I can come up with to make it happen more quickly, but it's just not happening yet.

Well, now that I got that out of the way, there have actually been a few things on my mind I wanted to write about.  I wanted to share some of the funny things Ethan has said over the last month or two.

E - "What's that smell?"  (as we go outside to get in the van, shortly after I had changed the fuel filter)

me - "It's probably gasoline."

E - "No. [convinced]  Smells like warthogs."

E - [drinking from our water bottle in the car on the way home from CO, says with suspicion in his voice...] "Is this toilet water?"

There was one more funny quote, but I can't remember it now.  I'll come back and add it if I can remember it...

Jacob lost both his front teeth this week.  The first one he swallowed while taking a drink here at home.  The second he swallowed while jumping on a friend's trampoline.  For the first tooth, he wanted a butterfly style yo-yo from the "tooth fairy."  For the second, he wanted a dollar and a half (which I provided in 6 shiny state quarters from different states).  He knows it's us, of course, so it is funny when he tells us exactly what he wants under his pillow.  

I think he looks very cute.

Finally, I have had some more thoughts about making space in our full lives for each other.  We had our back-to-school picnic at church last week.  After coming home from it, I was thinking how making space in our lives for each other doesn't have to mean opening our homes, although that can certainly be an effective way to accomplish it and is certainly still a goal for me.  But, as in the case of the picnic, sometimes it means sharing our resources and our time and our hearts with each other, even though no one's home is being shared.  Being willing to be open and transparent with each other and have true fellowship.  Being willing to forgo normal routines or schedules for an evening in order to share life with each other.  So, this was encouraging, to see that I can make space for others, and I can experience them making space for me, even though I haven't yet learned how to keep my home open for others as much as I'd like.  And it was reassuring that although an open door is sometimes what people desperately need - someone they can call or come to at any time, whenever the need is greatest - that still, scheduled time for each other is part of making space, too.  In fact, it is probably a necessary part of keeping our lives open for each other, and the non-scheduled, as-the-need-arises time together flows from our scheduled times together.

I am going to end my catch-up entry here, as my super-dose of ibuprofen is making me sleepy.  As a last word, I will say, I am praying for the hurricane victims, especially those in Haiti who are so vulnerable and helpless.  Our church partners with a church down there, and I hope and pray we can aid the victims both in body and spirit, as they must be so disheartened right now.

reflections on the change

Now that Jacob has been in school for several weeks, I can reflect a bit on the decision and the effect it seems to have had so far.

The main reason we decided to make a change was the feeling that it would relieve some pressure in our home environment. It is hard for me to judge yet how much it has actually done that. For one thing, I never formally started the school year with Jacob, although we had started a few of the books for fun or to practice. So I don't know how difficult or easy it might have been to go through the first grade school work with him.

Beyond that, though, I no longer have to deal with the fighting between Jacob and Ethan during the day. That is one variable that is no longer there. Yet, I now notice that Ethan throws quite a lot of fits all by himself. It's funny how that became more apparent once Jacob was gone to school all day, whereas before I attributed most of the chaos to the two boys' interaction rather than to one person's tantrums. I am able to focus more individually on Ethan with his fit-throwing and try to guide him out of this pattern/phase without distraction or complication from Jacob, so I think that is probably easier. Jacob took longer than the average child to grow out of fit-throwing, too. I remember reading that tantrums should rarely or never happen by such-and-such age, when Jacob was already past that age and thinking, "Oh no!" Now I know that he was just slow to outgrow it, as is Ethan apparently. I hope that doesn't reflect on our parenting, but maybe is just some genetic variable out of my control?

As far as how it compares educationally, I see advantages to our home program and advantages to the school program. Our history, geography, and science were fantastic compared to the school's program, which is mostly nonexistent because of the focus on reading and math. Which is okay - we are still reading our science and history books at home, although in an impromptu, not scheduled fashion. It's too bad all the kids can't get the history and science he is getting, because it's just great, but then again, that is his area of interest. Some of them might be bored to death by it. Maybe many of the parents do read science and history books to their children at home if there is an interest.

The reading/language arts program is not necessarily more comprehensive than our home program, but it is much more intensive. They spend so much time on it! Our goals or strategies for home schooling were to do guided reading with him for 10-30 minutes a day (working up to more time as he got more fluent), doing a few language arts exercises and dictation exercises that might take 15-30 minutes a day, and a phonics workbook that might take 10-15 minutes each day. In school they spend 90-120 minutes on reading and language arts each day!

I guess this is okay. It is hard for me to swallow at first, because I came into the homeschooling movement on the coat tails of Raymond and Dorothy Moore, via James Dobson's book Bringing Up Boys. Raymond Moore worked for the US Department of Education in the late 70's and did a huge study (published as Better Late than Early and later as School Can Wait) on the ideal age for beginning formal education, concluding that it was not until 8-10 years of age that children were really developmentally ready for formal, sit-down-in-a-classroom education. These findings especially applied to boys, who were more likely to be developmentally immature. So, the desire to avoid hours spent at a desk trying to learn to read and write before the child was developmentally ready to focus on the task was part of the reason we had tried to home school in the first place. Putting him in an environment where he is in fact focusing on learning to read and write for 1.5-2 hours a day is the biggest switch for me. I sort of feel like I have betrayed the belief that I had come to hold about that. But thankfully, early formal education doesn't seem to be hurting Jacob. (yet?) Obviously, each child is unique in their development and personality traits and that determines how they'll respond to a classroom at this age. I have a hard time thinking it is necessary to force him or any child to read at a certain level at this age, but as long as he is not hating the time spent on it, I figure that is okay. Right? However, if there is anything that could make me want to go back to home schooling, him struggling with the demands of sitting still and practicing reading and writing for two hours a day would be it. I do not want him to grow to hate school and learning because of those pressures or because of a feeling that he is "failing" early on in these areas - when I know he is perfectly intelligent enough to someday be a fantastic reader but may simply have a short attention span at this age. So, I will keep a close eye on that. But so far, so good. I have actually been quite impressed to see how his reading abilities have grown over the last few weeks. Maybe I would have seen those same gains with our home education program, too; I can't know for sure now.

Apparently the language arts consists of small group guided reading and centers. I think the guided reading is comparable to guided reading we would have done at home and includes similar activities that we would have done for language arts and dictation. (I am able to view his reading textbooks online with a login the teacher gave us.) The main difference, as far as I can tell, which accounts for all the extra time, is the centers. One of the centers is computer games, one is a listening center (i.e. books with audio to read along), and the others seem to be phonics games and the like. Good activities, surely, but like I said, I just wouldn't have "forced" him to spend that much time on reading and language arts at this age, unless he was interested and seemed to want that much instruction and practice. But as long as he doesn't complain and still seems to like school... It can't hurt, right? I seem to need to reassure myself of this...

As for math, I have no problem with what they have been doing, although it is amusing to me to see him bring home papers on tally marks and "one greater than," when he knows how to multiply and counts easily by 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, etc. (Sorry, I'm bragging a little bit :-) The kid can't get enough of math. But he seems to still think his math at school is fun, and somehow is not bored by an hour lesson on concepts he mastered last year, so I guess that is okay. It's good for a person to feel he is really good in an area and not to have to worry about it. We can continue to make a game of multiplication flash cards at home. Maybe they will pick up the pace as the year progresses.

All I have heard about PE is them marching and playing some sort of game involving bouncing a ball over a line. All I have heard about Music is them doing the hokie pokie and one or two little songs he has sung for us. I sincerely hope there is more to these "special" classes than what I hear, or else the taxpayers are really wasting their money. I assume there is much more direction and purpose that I am simply not hearing from my selective-memory six-year-old. :-) I am continuing our own music education and PE programs with him - i.e. piano lessons with Calana and sports at the YMCA. He is loving football right now, and if it isn't cute to see a bunch of six-year-olds hike the ball and run a play! Next is basketball, then soccer, then t-ball and swimming lessons again. Gotta love the Y. (Of course I won't make him enroll in any of these sports, it's just that so far he has been eager to try them.)

He loves computer lab, as I knew he would, and I wonder why it didn't occur to me that the time he spent playing educational computer games at home was legitimate "school" time? Heck, he could have done that almost all day (if I let him). He loved the keyboarding program and wants us to buy the program for home, and now he has been working on a Reader Rabbit program, too - I'm not sure if that is in computer lab or in his classroom during centers. He is amazed by the Library, for they have the entire collection of Magic School Bus books to check out.

Of course, best of all, there are friends. He informs me almost each day where he stands with friends - so and so is now his best friend, so and so is also a friend now, so and so is almost a friend, or close to becoming one. I am glad to see him excited to see other little boys and girls. I am surprised he does not discriminate yet - he is just as interested in the little girls being his friends as the little boys. One little girl is named "Cimmaren" - and I wonder if she is really named "Cinammon." But he insists it is Cimmaren.

So, in conclusion, I think it is working out. It gives me a break from the fighting, he is growing in his reading ability and making some friends, and he says he likes it. I have a few doubts I struggle with still about the amount of time he is made to practice reading and language arts each day, but as long as he doesn't seem to mind, we will stick with it. He could be watching Science Channel and playing during the extra hours at home, instead... But this is okay.

full

We talk at WM about making space in our lives for each other. We try to practice it. Yet, it has become more and more apparent to me how really difficult this is.

Everyone's life is full. Every one I know, including myself, maxes out their life. We have no room to help each other, for the most part.

I want to have the sort of home where people can just drop in, where it is always open for anyone who needs me or simply needs a place to hang out where they feel safe and welcomed. But I am not there yet. If a friend called and really needed me, I hope I would drop everything to be there for them, even if it meant them seeing my embarrassingly messy house or my unshowered, ungroomed self. But more often than not, I am not challenged on this issue, because we are so reticent to ask each other for help.

Part of the reason I write this is to see if maybe I am just in this isolated phase of life where it seems this way. Maybe by nature of the stage I am in, all the people around me seem to have a very full life. I just know that if I am struggling, I don't want to burden my friends who are also at home with small children, because they are just as overwhelmed and stressed out at times as I am. Friends who don't have small children at home usually have jobs or other responsibilities while their older children are at school, and often evening activities or responsibilities as well. Friends without any children at home usually have full-time jobs and often evening responsibilities as well, or must use the evening to rest and recover from the pressure and activity of their full-time day jobs. I start to lose my mind from the monotony and stress of being with my children 24/7, and I certainly need reprieve, but Heath comes home from the pressure of his full-time job and needs rest, too. We are both in the same boat, as is everyone else we know.

It seems that we need to make acquaintance with some retired people. Isn't that how our parents did it? I know Heath and I spent a lot of time at our retired grandparents homes. Hardly anyone I know has retired grandparents for their children anymore, though. Our society is much too productive for that. If they are not working, it is probably because they are incapacitated, and possibly in a nursing home.

When all of us max out our lives with no room for stumbling or falling behind for ourselves or anyone else, the only option we are left with is paid help when the need arise. There are day cares, Mom's Day Out programs, and babysitters, housekeeping and laundry services, even, to offer help to families needing a helping hand while raising their children. The problem is, not everyone can afford these reprieves. So what do we do? I personally don't see the solution. How in our modern world and society can we ever offer each other any help, when we are barely able to meet our responsibilities ourselves?