My baby is eight years old, and I think she may become a poet, even though her reading abilities have yet to catch up with her intellectual abilities.
Her most recent similes include:
“When I get through brushing my hair, it’s gonna shine like the top of the Chrysler Building!”
“My feet stink like a cow that just manured!”
“I’m as tired as a baby horse!”
I’m talking about the hoops you have to jump through. The public high school that Brown Bear Daughter will be attending in the fall just called, and they want only four things:
1. A copy of her birth certificate.
2. A copy of her Social Security card.
3. Her immunization record.
4. Proof of residency.
Bad, disorganized mother that I am, can you guess which of those things I can actually produce on demand? Well, I do have two of them and half of another. I hope I don’t have as much trouble getting her a Social Security card as I did my oldest son. We practically had to pass an act through Congress to get him a Social Security card a few years ago, soon after 9/11.
Anybody know what hoops I have to jump through to get a Social Security card these days? We’ve always homeschooled, and now I feel as if I’m committing Brown Bear Daughter to an institution; wait, I guess I am.
I thought it would be fun, perhaps enlightening, to keep a record of what we learned, or at least explored, each week in our homeschool, especially since I sometimes get discouraged and wonder whether or not we’re making any educational progress at all. As I waffle back and forth from strict and rigorous requirements in a classical education mode to a more laissez-faire unschooling approach, I’m thinking that it would be helpful to write down at least some of what we do around here, educationally speaking, helpful to me and maybe to you all, too. We are learning, just not always in a traditional way and not always exactly what I want the urchins to be learning.
Monday:
Z-baby (7) did her regular schoolwork with her older sister. Her math, reading, language lesson and writing practice take about an hour when she does them with Dancer Daughter. It was taking all day when I was trying to do it with her between distractions (for me) and stalling (on her part). She also watched the Kit Kitteredge (American Girl) movie again; I suppose she’s getting some feel for the period of history that we keep hearing is returning: the Great Depression.
Betsy-Bee (10) did little or no schoolwork today. She listened to Narnia stories in her bedroom and re-arranged her room. She likes to clean and re-arrange almost weekly. She’s reading Garfield cartoon books right now.
Karate Kid (12) did a Saxon math lesson and watched a math video about pi with his dad. He practiced drawing, too.
Both Bee and Brown Bear Daughter (14) went to dance this afternoon.
Tuesday:
We read a Psalm from the Bible, prayed together, and then I read them Young Lochinvar by Sir Walter Scott.
Z-baby again did her regular work with Dancer Daughter. I heard them reading from Story of the World about the Rus. I asked Z-baby to tell me later what they read about in their history book, and she said, “We read about the Rocks or the Rus and how they tried to conquer Constantinople.”
“Did they?”
“No, because the Constantinoples had something like sea fire, and it would burn on the water. It burned their ships and they had to go home.”
(She can remember and pronounce Constantinople, but not Rus?)
Z-baby and I also read a few poems from Jon Scieszka’s Science Verse. The evolution poem was rather stupid, even for true believers, (Grandpa was an ape?), but I liked the Gobblegooky poem, a take off on Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky.
‘Twas fructose and the vitamins
Did zinc and dye (red #8)
All poly were the thiamins
And the carbohydrate.
After science poems, Z-baby listened to Prince Caspian on CD. She also asked me to read The Buck Stops Here by Alice Provenson in an effort to stall before going to bed. We talked about some of the presidents as we went along, particularly which ones were assassinated.
Betsy-Bee did her DailyGram and read a chapter of Caddie Woodlawn. She can’t find her math book (Saxon 5/4). I can’t find it either. She also started Book 3 in Mindy Withrow’s history series, Courage and Conviction: Stories of the Reformation. She’s visiting Narnia again in her bedroom after the schoolwork is finished. We finally found the math book, too late to do math today.
Karate Kid did half a math lesson before he went to his canoeing class. I must say that the canoeing class has been good for my now 12 year old Boy Explorer. One week they walked through the sewers with flashlights and found? Better them than me. He finished the math lesson and did a simple worksheet/map exercise for history.
Brown Bear Daughter is reading Mere Christianity for her English/worldview class. She’s also trying to cram Algebra 1 into about three months so that she can test out of it and biology, the science class she’s been in all year. The public school she wants to attend next year won’t take her word, or mine, that she’s completed either course, so she has to take a test. She’s adamantly opposed to taking biology again next year which she would have to do if she doesn’t pass the tests. The next course in their sequence is physics, and they won’t let her take that class unless she’s finished Algebra 1 and taking geometry. Ah, what a tangled web we weave when first we decide to enter the public school system.
Under protest (hers), BB Daughter and I listened to Exploring Music on NPR on the way home from dance. The program was about Beethoven and tempo. She said it only reinforced her distaste for classical music.
Wednesday:
Karate Kid has a test in his math class today. He thinks he’s ready to ace it.
Z-baby did her regular schoolwork, and then listened to still more Chronicles of Narnia.
Betsy-Bee did her math lesson and her daily-gram, but not much else as far as assigned school work. She’s been re-reading Utterly Me, Clarice Bean by Lauren Childs. She spent a couple of hours working on a story called She’s Gone, but she won’t show it to anyone until it’s done.
Brown Bear Daughter is working on her solo for dance, and she has biology homework to complete. She only has two more co-op classes of biology lab, so she’s working hard to complete her Apologia Biology textbook.
Thursday
Ummmm . . . I forgot to keep a record, and I don’t really remember what we we did other than regular school stuff: math and grammar.
Friday
We have co-op on Friday mornings.
Z-baby is taking three classes at co-op: Seven Continents, Feather Files (a class about birds), and P.E.
Betsy-Bee is taking a writing class, an assorted topics in science class, and cooking.
Karate Kid takes Apologia General Science lab, a class on the stock market and how it works, robotics, and geography.
Brown Bear Daughter is studying Apologia Biology, Spanish 1, Study Skills, and Starting Points Literary Analysis and Worldview.
Have I made us sound as if we’re getting more done than we really are? I actually worry that my younger set of four urchins are learning to slack off and get by with the least possible amount of effort. But then again maybe I expect too much.
The continuing trials and second-guessings of a homeschool mom. To be continued . . . .
We go a little crazy when it snows in Houston.
I’m celebrating pumpkins this week, or probably for the rest of the month, maybe even in November. Why not?
If you’d like to celebrate with me, here are some pumpkin suggestions for reading, eating , creating, and just goofing around. Have a pumpkin and enjoy!
Have pumpkin-themed fun:
1. Monica uses and reuses one small pumpkin for big fun and food.
2. TenThingsFarm growing a pumpkin
3. Make a paper bag pumpkin.
4. Gourds turn into bird feeders.
5. How to carve a pumpkin bowl.
6. Decoupage pumpkins.
7. Enjoy a pumpkin picture.
8. How to pick the perfect pumpkin.
9. People for the Ethical Treatment of Pumpkins. (PET-PU)
10. Soda bottle jack-o-lantern.
11. Pumpkin paper plate pouch.
12. CD Pumpkin.
13. Pumpkin carving patterns.
14. Pumpkin poems and songs.
15. How to grow a giant pumpkin.
16. Knit a pumpkin hat.
17. Make a pumpkin lantern.
18. Pumpkin Bouquets.
19. 3 Dimensional Pumpkin Card.
20. Pumpkin Tie-Dye shirts.
21. Extreme Pumpkins!
22. Make some Pumpkin Pie Play Dough.
23. Play “drop the clothespin into the pumpkin.”
24. Pumpkin topiary trompe l’oeil.
25. Make a pumpkin from a flat basketball.
26. Host a Great Pumpkin Party.
27. Make a cinnamon-pumpkin air freshener.
Read a pumpkin book:
28. Big Pumpkin by Erica Silverman. A witch wants to bake a pumpkin pie, but the pumpkin is stuck on the vine. Who will help her?
29. Pumpkin Jack by Will Hubbell. Tim carves a pumpkin which eventually rots and turns into compost, and then more pumpkins grow, and the cycle starts all over.
30. Oh My, Pumpkin Pie! by Charles Ghigna, illus. by Kenneth Spengler. A step into Reading rhyming book.
31. How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin? by Margaret McNamara, illus. by G. Brian Karas. Mr. Tiffin’s class counts the seeds in three pumpkins of varying sizes. Math and pumpkins go together in a story.
32. Pumpkins by Ken Robbins. An autumn book of photographs with an emphasis on pumpkins.
33. Pumpkin Soup by Helen Cooper and Delicious! A Pumpkin Soup Story by Helen Cooper. Cat, Squirrel, and Duck work together to make their famous pumpkin soup.
34. Pumpkin, Pumpkin by Jeanne Titherington. Jamie grows a pumpkin in beautiful colored pencil illustrations.
35. Pumpkins: A Story for a Field by Mary Lynn Ray. A man saves a field from developers by planting it with pumpkins.
36. A story of reading Pumpkin Circle: The Story of a Garden by George Levenson to some of Katrina’s youngest victims.
37. The Pumpkin Patch Parable by Liz Curtis Higgs. Just as a farmer grows a pumpkin, God grows us into a beautiful sight.
38. From Seed to Pumpkin by Jan Kottke.
39. Pumpkin Moonshine by Tasha Tudor. Classic Tasha Tudor tale of how Sylvie Ann sets out to make a pumpkin moonshine.
40. The Biggest Pumpkin Ever by Stephen Kroll. Two mice work together to win the Biggest Pumpkin competition.
41. From Seed to Pumpkin by Wendy Pfeffer. A Let’s Read and Find Out science book.
41. Grandma’s Smile by Elaine Moore. Kim and her grandma carve a pumpkin.
42. The Great Pumpkin Switch by Megan McDonald. Grampa and his friend Otto accidentally smash a prize pumpkin.
43. The Pumpkin Patch by Elizabeth King. Photgraphs of pumpkins growing accompany text about how pumpkins are grown, marketed and enjoyed.
44. Mousekin’s Golden House by Edna Miller. Classic story of a white-foot mouse who finds a wonderful house abandoned in the forest.
45. Mrs. McMurphy’s Pumpkin by Rick Walton. A pumpkin jack-o-lantern threatens to eat Mrs. McMurphy up, but she just says, “We’ll see about that.”
46. Plumply, Dumply Pumpkin by Mary Serfozo. Peter the Tiger picks a perfect pumpkin.
47. The Runaway Pumpkin by Kevin Lewis. A runaway pumpkin creates havoc on the farm. Lesson plan.
48. Pumpkin Town! Or, Nothing Is Better and Worse Than Pumpkins by Katie McKay. Pumpkin vines overrun the town, and the pumpkin farmer’s five sons must come up with a solution for too much of a good thing. Lesson plan.
49. The Pumpkin Book by Gail Gibbons. Out of print, but worth a search.
50. This Is NOT a Pumpkin by Bob Staake. If it’s not a pumpkin, what could it be? A board book for the youngest listeners.
51. The Great Little Pumpkin Cookbook by Michael Krondl.
52. It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown by Charles M. Schulz.
53. Patty’s Pumpkin Patch by Teri Sloat. Patty grows pumpkins on her farm.
54. The Pumpkin Blanket by Deborah Zagwyn. A girl gives up her special blanket to keep the frost off the pumpkin plants.
55. Pumpkin Day, Pumpkin Night by Anne Rockwell.
56. Pumpkin Hill by Elizabeth Spurr. It starts with one pumpkins, but soon the pumpkin vines have taken over the town.
57. The Pumpkin Runner by Marsha Arnold. An Australian rancher uses pumpkin as fuel to help win a 500 mile foot race.
58. The Berenstain Bears and the Prize Pumpkin by Stan and Jan Berenstain.
59. Somethin’ Pumpkin by Scott Allen: Lesson Plan.
60. For older readers (middle grades through young adult): Jen Robinson’s review of Me and the Pumpkin Queen by Marlane Robinson.
Another book review: Squashed by Joan Bauer.
Make something yummy to eat from pumpkin:
61. The Headmistress’s favorite pumpkin recipes.
62. Montana Memories prepares pumpkin pancakes.
63. And here are Poohsticks Pumpkin Buttermilk pancakes.
64. Molly McCall: 30 Ways to Eat Pumpkin.
65. The Headmistress’s Pumpkin Seed Dip.
66. Make some pumpkin bread to give away or enjoy yourself.
67. Brenda’s Pumpkin and Cranberry Bread recipes.
68. Pumpkin Gingerbread at Poohsticks.
69. Preparing fresh pumpkin from seed to pie.
70. Easy Pumpkin Ice Cream.
71. October 21 is National Pumpkin Cheesecake Day?
72. Glorious pumpkin recipes: bread, pie, pasta, and more.
73. Lots more pumpkin recipes.
74. Pumpkin Main Meal Dishes.
75. The Anchoress: Pumpkin Bread Pudding.
76. Impossible Pumpkin Pie. I like baking mix-based pies, but I’ve only made quiche-type pies this way. I never thought of a sweet pie made with an “impossible” crust. On 10/20/2008 the little girls and I made this pie, and it was good. However, I probably should have cooked it a little longer than the fifty minute minimum called for in the recipe.
77. Pumpkin decorated sugar cookies.
78. Pumpkin Biscotti.
79. Harvest Pumpkin Spice Bars.
80. Pumpkin Smoothie.
81. Chocolate Pumpkin Spice Cake.
82. Pumpkin Casserole.
83. The Pioneer Woman’s pumpkin butter.
84. Salted flavored roasted pumpkin seeds.
85. Pumpkin spice cream cheese spread.
86. Pumpkin banana pudding.
87. Pumpkin scones.
88. Mexican Pumpkin Lasagne.
89. Pumpkin Swirl Brownies.
More punkin stuff for fun and learning:
90. Listen to Andy Griffith tell about the fight in the cow pasture over the little orange punkin and about how he dropped his Big Orange drink.
91. Pumpkin pie math lesson.
92. Sandy offers a pumpkin painting.
93. Paint a pumpkin. I mean, paint a picture of a pumpkin.
94. Free pumpkin carving patterns.
O.K., I’m running out of steam, so I’m leaving the last six slots for you. If you have a favorite pumpkin recipe, or book, or craft (easy, I’m craft-impaired) or lesson or anything, that has not already made this list, leave a comment, and I’ll link here later. In the meantime, visit a pumpkin patch, or carve a pumpkin, or eat something pumpkin, or read about pumpkins, or . . . thank the Lord for pumpkins!
95.
96.
97.
98.
99.
100.
Christianity for Modern Pagans, ch. 7: Vanity of Human Reason.
Pascal: ” . . . we require the aid of good habits to overcome bad habitual tendencies in the opposite direction. Therefore, we must act as if we believed, go to church, and so forth, thus habituating the automaton to obey what reason has discovered to be true.”
At least half of parenting and educating children is the development of good habits. As I understand it, Charlotte Mason discusses this aspect of education in her books.
Of course, one can develop a “foolish consistency,” but there is much to be said for doing things out of habit after having developed a conviction that those things indeed ought to be done and don consistently. Some fairly simple habits that I would like to instill in myself and my children:
1. To flush the toilet after each and every use thereof. Does anyone else have this problem? The problem of NOT seeing this done consistently, that is. And of course, Mr. Nobody is always the culprit.
2. Go to church on Sundays. I believe regular worship with a group of Christians is an important Christian discipline.
3. Get up in the morning and get dressed. My children get tired of hearing about how great it is that as homeschoolers they can do school in their pajamas. Unfortunately, they often play into that stereotype by . . . doing school in their pajamas.
4. Brush their teeth without being reminded. We’ve been working on this one for quite a while, and they still need reminders.
5. Tell the truth. I’d like it if they did this habitually without thinking about it.
6. Obey authority. Yes, there are times when a given authority is wrong, but I would rather their first impulse be to obey. Then, they can think about the possibility that the person in authority might have been mistaken or sinful and act accordingly.
7. Look for beauty and joy. This is a habit I need desperately to develop and to model.
8. Speak kindly. Again, if only I could model this one all the time.
9. Put away things when you’re done with them. The clutter, and resultant work, in our house could be cut probably ninety percent if only we would all put things away when we’re done using them.
10. Work first, then play.
11. Read the Bible and pray daily.
Of course, there may be times when the practice of each of these habits will be either impossible or inadvisable. But I would rather the habit be established, and then the mature person can choose to deviate from it for a reason.
Some habits my children are learning inadvertently:
1. Spend the day in your night clothes unless you have to go somewhere.
2. Obey when and if Mom says it a third time and gets THAT tone in her voice.
3. Do your work as soon as you’re reminded to do so.
4. Undress and leave your clothes on the floor.
5. Do as little schoolwork as possible to get by, and when the cat’s away . . . play!
YIkes! How do I replace the second list with a bette set of habits? How do the items on the first list become ingrained habits?
I think “hard work” is at least part of the answer to both questions.
We started back to school this week, what Melissa would call “high-tide homeschooling.” At least we tried. I had to be gone a lot taking my parents to doctor’s appointments, visiting the hospital, and running errands. So the urchins were on their own some of the time. They did quite well, considering.
History:
The Story of the World, Vol. 1 by Susan Wise Bauer: The Library of Nineveh, Nebuchadnezzar’s Madness, The Hanging Gardens of Babylon read to Betsy-bee and Z-baby.
Karate Kid and I read about Pericles, Phidias the Sculptor, Herodotus, the Father of History, and Thucydides, the historian of the Peloponnesion War. Then we began reading about Alcibiades, the archetype of a teenaged rebel, except that I don’t think he was nearly that young. (We’re reading Greenleaf’s Famous Men of Ancient Greece.)
Brown Bear Daughter is working in the history/literature curriculum, Ancient History: A Literature Approach by Rea Berg (Beautiful Feet). She’s studying the Greeks right now just as Karate Kid is. We also used Michael Macrone’s book, It’s Greek to Me! as a reference, and I read Goddess of Yesterday by Caroline B. Cooney, the story of a girl living during the time leading up to the Trojan War, review pending.
Language:
First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind by Jessie Wise. With Betsy-Bee, age 8, and Z-baby, age 6, I reviewed the five poems we learned last semester, started learning a new poem, Dancing by Eleanor Farjeon, and discussed nouns, pronouns, and initials.
Betsy-Bee and Karate Kid did Dailygrams each day.
Math:
The older students use Saxon math, and the younger two use Miquon. We follow the philosophy of “slow and steady” in math, just making sure we do a lesson or a page or two each day, rain or shine.
Books read to and with Z-baby, age 6, this week:
The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins by Dr. Seuss.
Several Berenstain Bear books.
Science:
Brown Bear Daughter is working in Apologia General Science, and the rest of us are reading about the human body. This week we talked about eating and digestion. Z-baby is taking a class at our homeschool co-op called The Human Body, and the others are just reading and discussing. We’ll start reading from our book I Am Joe’s Body again if we ever figure out where we put it before Christmas. The book, based on a Reader’s Digest series, has a bit of evolutionary nonsense in it, but I just skip those parts.
The bane of my life: misplaced books and lost learning tools (pencils, pens, scissors, tape, stapler, hole punch, etc.)
The joy of my homeschool life: children who come together and do school and learn whether I can be here or not.
I hate that song “Grown-up Christmas List.” (If you feel compelled to read a list of my least favorite Christmas songs, written last year, go here. Just don’t blame me if one of the songs gets stuck in your head on infinite repeat.) Anyway, I don’t like the grown-up Christmas list in the song because it sounds like some Miss America contestant trying to impress Bert Parks or the judges or someone in the audience: “No more lives torn apart,/That wars would never start,/And time would heal all hearts./And everyone would have a friend,/And right would always win,/And love would never end.” Wow! why not just wish for “world peace” and be done with it? This is a description of heaven, not Christmas. Nevertheless, I do have my own equally unrealistic grown-up Christmas list, and because this is therapy for me, I’m going to share it with all of you out there in blogland.
WARNING: This list may sound whiny and self-indulgent. I don’t mean to sound that way, but it’s a bad day for me, and I may. So, if you want to skip my grown-up Christmas list, you have my permission to do so. My children DO NOT have permission to skip this post. In fact, I’ll probably send them a link, not that I think they are capable of working miracles. . . Still, I think they should read what I really want for Christmas.
1. One week in which I do not have to take anyone anywhere nor pick anyone up from anywhere. A month would be even better, but I know fantasy when I write it.
2. A clean, organized house. This wish is beyond impossible, and I know it, but we’re talking wishes here. It is not possible for eleven people to live in one house together and keep it both clean and organized in the United States of America in AD 2007. Why? Too much stuff. Even poor people in the U.S. tend to have too much stuff, and we’re not poor. (Yes, I’ve tried Fly Lady. It may work for some people, but she hasn’t seen my house nor met my family.) But I don’t want to get rid of the stuff. I like my stuff, especially my books, all 10,000 or so of them, which leads me to my next item:
3. Enough bookshelves for all our books. In this desire, you might think I’m coming closer to reality, but you, too, have not seen my house. We have bookshelves on almost every available wall. We have a bookcase headboard. We have tall bookshelves, and we have short bookshelves. We have bookshelves in the closets. Yet the books keep multiplying. I think they mate in the night when we’re not looking and produce offspring. (Book Crush by Nancy Pearl meets Home Comforts by Cheryl Mendelson, and suddenly we have all the books I’m planning to buy for Christmas. That’s right, blame the authors. Why don’t they go on strike like the television writers and ease the strain on my poor groaning bookshelves?)
4. A working combination CD/cassette player. No, not reality either. It must keep working. We have five or six of these ugly things in various rooms in our house, and I am always told that when I want to play a cassette that I can’t because none of the cassette players work. And when I want I play a CD I have to use either my computer or the DVD player connected to the TV because none of the CD players work either. And right now the DVD player is unplugged so that we have an ourlet to plug in the Christmas lights. But I can’t throw any of the non-functional uglies away because someone uses them to listen to the radio.
5. A maximum of five working computers, one for every two people in the house. We have six or seven working computers. The reason I’m not sure about the number is that it changes from day to day. A monitor went bad the other day; we found another one and hooked it back up. Nobody has a working printer except me. I know this because everyone wants to email me their schoolwork and have me print it out for them. Some of our computers are connected to the internet; some are not. Some are supposed to be devoted to educational games for the younger children, but they always want to play the games on my computer. One of them is taking up space on a counter that I want to use to serve food. I think five computers should be enough for one family. Are you beginning to see why, books aside, my house is so cluttered?
6. A garage sale. I would like for my children to sell everything that is not nailed down, split the money with me, and not bother me with the details. Just don’t sell any of my books or my bookshelves. Don’t sell your younger siblings either, no matter how tempting it may be.
7. A menu plan for the entire year that will please all eleven people in the family, including the vegetarian, the non-beef eater, the gourmand who’s been to France, the child who lives on pizza and sugar only, the one who would live on chips if we allowed it, and the gentleman who always comes to the table late and wonders why there’s no food left for him. And all the meals would be cheap, easy to prepare, and delightfully delicious.
8. The kitchen cleaned up thoroughly after every meal without my having to remind anyone —ever. We actually have a schedule for kitchen cleaning. But all my readers have a curious disability: they can’t read their own names on the kitchen clean-up schedule posted on the refrigerator. I wouild like for them to learn to do so, and then I’d like it if they actually cleaned the kitchen every time it’s their turn.
9. Light. I want the lights in every room in my house to have a full complement of working light bulbs. And I want to turn them on whenever I want light and have them glow warmly and brightly. I like lights. Lights make me happy.
10. Since all of the things on this list are either cheap or impossible or both, I’d like a month long tour of Europe for my final Christmas gift. If you can’t get the other things, I’ll take the trip. Maybe when I get back the house will be clean, the books will be shelved, the food will be made, and the lights will be glowing to welcome me back home.
I can dream, can’t I?
My three youngest children, ages 10, 8, and 6, just discovered a movie that they’ve never heard of or seen: The Sound of Music.
I find it difficult to believe that they’ve never seen The Classic Movie Musical of all time. Are they homeschooled or something?
I got this question a long time ago and tried to answer it to the best of my ability. I wanted to think about it some more before posting, but I thought too long and couldn’t come up with a better answer.
Sometime I would love a glimpse into your daily life…how much time you give to reading and writing AND schooling your own children.
Do your children understand the time Mom gives to books and writing? Mine are 5-11 and I worry they see me staring at a book or screen more than anything else.
I have this theory that it’s important for children to see you doing something you love —for me that’s reading and blogging— at least some of the time. Not that I read and blog just to show my children how important those activities are, but I think for them to develop a love for reading, they need to see me reading. Engineer Husband Husband loves science and math, so as they see him doing science and math, they begin to enjoy those subjects, too.
My theory doesn’t do much to settle the question of how much time to spend on each activity. I spend a lot of time reading, but often I’m reading while sitting on the couch supervising schoolwork. I stop reading my book to read aloud to the urchins or to help with a math problem. Then, I take up where I left off in my book. I read while I eat lunch. I’m writing this post while eating breakfast, and the urchins are also eating breakfast, doing their morning jobs, and listening to Les Miserables. It’s sort of a juggling act, and sometimes I do it better than other times.
I don’t do housework very well, except in spurts of insiration which don’t occur often enough. We get school done, mostly, and I make meals, most days. All that means that I don’t have it all together, but I’m satisfied with the general way things are going. I only have the same worries as the questioner on alternate Mondays.