Life

Changing our perspective

Posted by Michelle on Oct 22, 2011 in Family, Life, Parenting | 0 comments

It’s been a period of readjusting here at home since TLE’s school was cut down from 5 days a week to 2 days a week. Our eventual hope is to up it back up to 3 days a week but with the holidays coming up, it seems sort of silly to pay for 3 days a week when we won’t really be getting our money’s worth.

It was a pretty drastic change to our routine and neither TLE nor I do very well with routine changes. She cried and whined a lot during the first week, saying she was bored and that she wanted to go to preschool. At one point, she even told me she hated me (!!) which earned her a time out while I quietly lost my shit in another room. The battle of the wills continued until it got so bad that I reviewed my resume and posted it online, convinced that I’m just a failure as a stay at home mom.

Things have gotten better since then, with a bit of an attitude adjustment on both of our parts. Being in school so much sort of made me forget how much interaction TLE really craves. It makes working from home pretty much impossible while she’s around so I’ve taken to working late nights to make up for it.

I’ve found that she doesn’t do well with total “free form” days as she likes routines but hates predetermined schedules. So keeping an open, predictable routine seems to have been best. For us that means lots of “free form” play time where she determines what she wants to do.

I’m the first to admit that I’m not very good at knowing how to play with her which sounds horrible but it’s the truth. It’s taking a lot of conscious effort on my part to let her lead and follow up with information rather than lead her with information, if that makes any sense.

In many ways, I have to let her lead while I support. I’m finding that I’m having to shove aside any prejudices I may have had about unschooling because this is what is really working best for her at this stage in her life and with her personality. In our case, sometimes teaching her means letting go a little.

Mommy Confession: I hate reading Dr. Seuss out loud

Posted by Michelle on Sep 8, 2011 in Life, Parenting | 1 comment

The Lorax by Dr. Seuss

I’m sure this will be a highly unpopular opinion but I hate reading Dr. Seuss out loud.

This has nothing to do with the subject matter of the books themselves. I think every Dr. Seuss book have great, solid messagse for children. I just hate reading the damn things out loud.

While I know reading to your kids is Super Important ™ and I do read to TLE daily, I’m the first to admit that I’m not the best person at reading aloud. But reading aloud has always been difficult for me, even when I was in school. I stumble over words, put words where there aren’t any. TLE is pretty observant and easily memorizes her books so she knows when/if I’ve added or forgotten words and will often point it out. (Oddly enough, I’m a decent public speaker but that’s because I refer to bullet points rather than read prepared speeches.)

I can read most children’s books aloud fairly decently but Dr. Seuss is a particular challenge due to the meter, alliteration and nonsense words he uses. The alliteration in particular really trips me up because I just can’t seem to wrap my tongue around the damned words sometimes.

I’ve considered getting a Nook or an iPad so I can get some interactive books for TLE. The expense makes me hesitate as does the idea that I’m not the one reading to TLE. I can soldier on reading Dr. Seuss books since that’s what makes TLE happiest. I just wish my tongue and brain would cooperate while reading them.

Party Kitty

Posted by Michelle on Sep 4, 2011 in Life, Observations, Parenting | 1 comment

Hanging Out

When I went to sign out The Little Empress from school the other, the Director of the school happened to be standing nearby and told me an interesting story about TLE and how she plays.

The girls in her class were “having a dress up party” and TLE had joined in. Rather than dressing up with the other girls, TLE decided that she would be a kitty cat. She crawled around on the ground, mewing and rolling onto her back and playing with her friends as they played dress-up party. When the Director came in, TLE mewed and nuzzled her leg.

TLE’s quite the imaginative little thing! I love the fact that she’s not afraid to be original in a crowd. I can only hope that she will continue to not be afraid to be exactly who she wants to be.

Home is Where You Defend Against Zombies

Posted by Michelle on Apr 29, 2011 in Home Matters, Life, Pop Culture, Reaction | 1 comment

As any geek-family knows, a zombie escape plan is about as essential as any emergency contingency plan.*

But who needs a zombie escape plan when you have this zombie proof house?

The World's First Zombie Proof House

Perfect to raise your family, entertain your friends and protect them from the inevitable zombie invasion of 2012.

Zombie Proof House -- Fortifications

I mean, just look at those defenses! Secure yet movable concrete walls. Only one, easily defendable entrance on the second floor.

* For the record, yes, we’ve discussed both our earthquake and zombie invasion plan at length with relatively equal seriousness. Sort of. Honestly, they’re just about the same except one involves escaping hordes of brain-eating undead and the other involves escaping hordes of lawless, gun-toting hillbillies or gang members, depending on what part of town we’re in. Both The Hubs and I agree we’d rather take on zombies any day.

Back to School

Posted by Michelle on Apr 23, 2011 in Homeschooling, Life, Parenting | 0 comments

Remember how I said we were quasi-homeschoolers for now because we wouldn’t fully homeschool until July, when TLE’s speech therapy school was up? Well, it looks like we’re putting formally homeschooling indefinitely.

Why?

Long story short, we were awarded a scholarship for TLE to attend the preschool I wanted her to attend. After several months of research — and nearly fainting after I saw how much preschool costs around here — I started poking around to see what, if any, programs may help us afford preschool. I found one, applied for it back in December/January and never heard back. I assumed that we either got lost in the shuffle and/or didn’t qualify so I started our homeschool contingency plan.

Fast forward to last week,  I got a call from the program saying that our name had come up. After a week of back and forth between us and the program, here we are with scholarship in hand, ready to start another new school on Monday.

Honestly, I have mixed feelings about it all. On one hand, I’m effing thrilled. All through the process, The Hubs ™ and I had our doubts and nearly pulled the plug on it several times. But it worked out far better than we could have hoped for. The school she is going to go to was the “dream” school I’d picked out for when, you know, we won the lottery or something. So for this opportunity to come around is really something.

Yet, I feel almost forlorn about it. We had our homeschooling plan in place and I want to believe that once we got into a rhythm, we could make it work. But I have to admit to myself that so far, our homeschooling journey hasn’t worked as well as I’d hoped.

Was she learning? Yes. But I didn’t have confidence in myself as a teacher. I realized that our home environment wasn’t stimulating enough for her. It was a struggle to keep her busy and her mind occupied. I often felt like I was failing her as a teacher by not providing that environment.  I think she could sense my stress about it all.

All in all, not a good way to lay a solid foundation to a lifelong love of learning.

There were times that I considered putting a stop to the entire process and giving us no other option but to homeschool. But in hindsight, I realize that would have been foolhardy and to what end? To prove to myself that I could homeschool at the risk of her education? No. For what? My pride. Bull.

In the end, it is all about what is best for TLE. For now, that means taking the golden opportunity that we have in front of us. At some point, that “best for her” may very well be homeschooling. Or it may not be. In any case, I’ll be more prepared for either outcome.

I still fully intend on supplementing her schooling at home. One thing I love about the school we picked is that the actively encourage parents to follow the curriculum and take an active role in building upon what they learned in school.

We’ll see if homeschooling is still in our future. If anything, I hope that I can learn from this (somewhat) failed month trial of homeschooling and create a more inviting, educational space at home, whether we homeschool or not.

I like to believe that things happen for a reason. I try not to get too religious about things but I think that God really does have a hand in my life because the things that I need (but not necessarily want) tend to come into my life just when I need them.

Moment to myself

Posted by Michelle on Apr 18, 2011 in Life | 0 comments

Odd. It seems that during the course of the day, I’m screaming inside to find a moment or two to myself. From the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep, there’s something to do: taking care of TLE, doing chores, running from here and there, etc. As most moms know, it is just the Mommy’s Life.

Yet moments like the one I’m in right now make me wish to be busy. Because when I’m busy, I don’t get the opportunity to think about the other things in my life that I don’t have time to get to.