There is a sweet little baby boy lying on the bed next to me. He is so sweet and so chunky and we love him so much. I have no pictures. I should start taking them again--Jesse takes them with his phone sometimes, but he isn't, you know, here a lot.
Things are going along. It has been a kind of cold and wet end of winter here, which is wearing me out a bit. My children have produced an absolutely enormous pile of drawings. I am trying to come up with a proper metaphor...mountain is cliche, but they can sit at the table and draw for hours. Hours. I have no idea what to do with them, either. I sort through them, and can occasionally bring myself to throw one away (Elsa, in particular, can draw the same picture over and over again).
I have lots of tidbits. A possum got into our chicken coop the other night. late. I think we were saved by our, ummm, falling apart chicken coop. I heard a big crash...I thought one of the kids had fallen out of bed...and then the sound of some angry hens. I rushed out, and the big wall of the coop had fallen off, and there was a glittery eyed possum and no hens in the coop. Goneril was clucking furiously all around the yard, and the rest of the girls were nowhere to be seen. So the wall falling off allowed them to escape, I think. Anyway, I chased the possum off and got poor Goneril back in the coop, and hunted around a little bit for the others, then went to bed, thinking we had lost them for sure. But, lo and behold, there they were, the next morning, pecking at our windows and pooping on our patio.
In one way, I felt like a real farmer, chasing predators away in the middle of the night. Mostly, though, I didn't. I felt like a complete non-farmer, as I fretted all night about our chickens...how frightened they must be, how much I was going to miss them, what a terrible chicken owner I am not to have been able to defend my chickens from all harm.
Homeschooling is going pretty well, when I am not, again, fretting about whether I am not teaching Elsa enough and causing her to miss learning everything, even though she has the most amazing breadth of knowledge...as far as I can tell, anyway. And her reading is getting better. I have completely abandoned the Waldorf style curriculum I was using, and am just making her read to me and do some phonics and handwriting workbooks, and math workbooks too, as well as just kind of talking about math. Mostly, I think it is fine and she is thriving. Sam is the sweetest, easiest baby ever, but he still requires a good bit of maintenance (even easy babies need their diaper changed--or to be held over the toilet or however one does Elimination Communication, to be nursed, to take naps and to just not be in their bouncy seats.) Elsa and David and I did some stuff about constellations and stars--we read a whole bunch of constellation tales, and I just got D'Aulaire's book of Greek Mythology and we are reading through that. It is a beautiful book. Anyway, one of the tenets of Project-Based homeschooling (which I am not really doing) is that if the kids are playing about what they are studying, they are really immersed in it. If that is the case, and I think it is, they are immersed. David now, much of the time, wants to be referred to as Zeus, the god of "Funder." Actually, he wants us to say thunder, he just can't manage it. I bought a whole bunch of peg dolls, and they have been making peg doll gods.
Which brings me to the Nature Table. We are setting it up for spring, and I am trying to reconcile my ideas to how it should be, with cute little Waldorfian things that I make to Elsa' ideas, which are many peg dolls colored by her to be the various tulip and daffodil family. Really, I know it is great that she is taking over that function, but it looks a little different than how I want it. That does seem to be a theme....
I am getting excited about the garden, although I am not sure how much I am going to be able to get done in there...trying to remind myself that Sam's babyhood is a short season, and it is going to okay if I can't do much. I do think when he gets bigger, I may try to get more serious about homesteading. There are classes that I want to take...I think that is just the way it is going to have to be for this suburban girl. I would love to be more of a do it yourselfer, but I am clueless and want some support. And when Sam gets a little bigger, it will be possible.
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