Family of 6 in PA

it was nice having my mom for the weekend. she did her teacher thing....but we got past it. i am going to try to enjoy the summer and not worry about academics. if we do school work, great, if not, ok. honestly i would like to. but only if they are willing.

today was j's first day home from school and it has been and still is a disaster. reason? diet. i repeatedly offered food all day. but until 6 pm or so, when he had a corn dog, all he had was sweet junk. lemonade soda, cookies, candy, i don't know what else. some cheese too. he is still wired up snd its almost 11 pm. he is bouncing off the fucking walls.

we pulled the 3 dressers out from the wall in the boys room and it was much worse than we thought. p peed between all of them repeatedly. i am so angry i told him if he ever did it again i would punch him in the penis. we aren't raising children, they're little animals!

the driveway is going to cost $1000 more than we planned. so money will be tight the next 3 weeks. maybe longer.

what to do about these children. i don't feel i can confide in my mother anymore. keep them off sugar and sell all their toys. put them in straight jackets and lock them in cages. send them to school! hahahaha. pray!

Its Friday, the first of the holiday weekend. jeffrey's last full day of school. He goes in Tuesday for a half day, during which time they will walk to a nearby field, play games and have a picnic lunch. No way he's going to miss that! :) Then one day next week K is going to drive down to his mom's and get a load of stuff (tables, shelves) and possibly bring her back as well. I don't think she will stay long, as she has to hire a real estate agent and put her house on the market. But she hasn't seen the new baby yet so it would be nice if she could come even briefly! K says she is going to buy a house after she sells hers, and most likely here in PA near us, but who knows, K is great at assuming things without knowing the facts.

My mother is coming this evening and staying til after church Sunday. I have some cleaning to do after K gets back from picking up J. Baby C is sleeping in her Jumperoo so I have 2 hands to type with! N is doing some art work at the kitchen table, P is watching the cartoons I put on for N. N had pudding for breakfast. I can hear our mother's gasping with shock. But does it really matter? At least it has some calcium in it. I am tired of food battles, let them eat what they want, when they want. Within reason I suppose.....

The crew finally finished our yard around the new garage yesterday and today's rain should be a nice start on the new grass. It will be exciting to show my mother the new garage, I just wish we had more done but Kevin was sick for a week or more so very little was done in that time, the basement is still filled with boxes of stuff that needs to be put in the garage and the garage is still waiting on shelves for his tools and construction stuff which is laying all over the floor. Oh well, we never claimed to be perfect :)

C was up on her hands and knees today, tummy clearing the floor! With all the others I never wanted them to walk early or anything but with her I am very much looking forward to it! She's so cute. Well they all were of course, as they all look alike. Now she's awake. And nursing. I am not looking forward to the day she weans, but that is far in the future anyhow :)

the last conversation with my mother is still on my mind. her seeming lack of confidence in my abilities to raise and educate my children rankles. she dismissed my assertion that J just needs more love and parental supervision and redirection. he doesn't need more love! she retorted. well, i like to think i know my children and i believe what i said holds true.

then there is the school issue. from her tone i suspect she feels i will fail at whatever i attempt with him over the summer and he will just have to go to school next year. i caught not a shred of positive thinking from her. like it was predestined. the fact is, i feel i made a big mistake in sending him to school and wish i had not done so. and the only way i will send him next year is if he begs and pleads to go. i do not want my children in school. my girls will not go to preschool either. I also don't want to have 1 in school and the rest at home, I feel it is disruptive, though some families do it well. of course that is not the main reason I don't want him to go!

yes the children need me more, need me to be more available, not tied up on the computer or stuck with the baby, but more aware of what they are doing so that I can correct and redirect before they get into trouble. all else will fall into place with regard to learning. I am not going to try to follow a schedule like I did before (sonlight's). we will definitely be following the math curriculum and doing lessons as often as we can. but we will not be crying over it or any other school work. we will have fun. we will live life. we will go places and do things. we will try to be a loving and happy family.

Ok so its MD and I called my mother. We had a nice conversation until we started talking about my kids. She became very forceful in her tone and wording regarding getting my boys' behavior issues under control. And when I mentioned that I was looking forward to J being home again in 2 weeks she commented on how awful it will be because he'll be back to all his misbehaving. I explained he is plenty wild when he's home so we aren't missing anything (not in those words). And I said how I was so looking forward to him not going to school next year and she was very negative about that too....oh, you have to work with him over the summer and see if he will do his work! Which is just repeating what I have said to her but still....she has always been a proponent of the school at home stuff which doesn't work for us, and so I really hesitate to tell her that I am going to try something completely different once he is home. Yes the 3 R's are important and they can be learned in fun ways not just by following lessons. So can everything else. I won't label it unschooling (especially not to her!) but that is what I am researching now to see how, or in what way, it can work for our family. That doesn't mean we will be unschoolers, by some definitions, but hey I am looking into it. And I also mentioned that J went to church with me, I had told him I wanted him to check it out and see if he wanted to go there for CCD next year (which would require him to go to Mass with me every 2 weeks) or go to the church up here for CCD (daddy takes him and he doesn't have to go to Mass). She said, oh, I have to make that decision and tell him! I calmly replied no, I want that to be his choice. I hope that he will go to CCD, he can decide where, and she did back down on that. but jeez. This reminds me of the long period of time that she would be on me constantly about weaning J. I finally had to tell her its my kid and I'll nurse him as long as I want to! She kept hard on it for over a year. I'm sure a lot of people have trouble disagreeing with their mothers. I decided after the phone call that, though I think she has made some unwise choices with regard to moving to MD, perhaps it is, after all, best that she did not move here to PA. I don't want her to restrict our home schooling freedom or choices. The trouble is I have to watch my mouth and not say too much to her about it!

for years i have heard how parents dread summer vacation and can't WAIT for their kids to go back to school. well, Jeffrey has only been in school for 2.5 months and has only 10 days to go and I can barely stand it. I want him home! I don't want him in school. He knows he has the choice, if he wants to go back to public school, but I hope he never does. In fact maybe I shouldn't give him that choice. Elementary school is probably harmless but I surely don't want him in school when he is older. I don't know how parents can stand to have their kids away from them all day!!!

yes he is an irritating 8 yo. what he needs is more parental interaction and supervision. more hands on activities. I wish now I had never put him in school. my goal was always to be more of a facilitator, to provide educational opportunities. To have all kinds of interesting materials available. somehow, in part due to my mother the school teacher's influence, partly due to my own lack of confidence, i moved away from this goal to more of a school at home approach. i was even advised to have a scheduled routine, such as, math at 9 a.m., reading at 9:30, you get the idea. I never did go that far, but I did make the mistake of becoming too focused on sticking to Sonlight's schedule and not being flexible enough.

so I can't wait for J to come home so we can start over. I don't mean start school at home over! I mean start living life over! Learning through living! Delight driven learning! Interest driven learning! relaxed home schooling! unschooling! whatever you want to call it. of course the 3 R's are important and we will stick with our excellent and fun math curriculum. whatever we do, we'll try to have fun! and at the same time, work on the children's behavior issues. At this time that is more important than learning history or whatever. I am beginning to have more confidence in myself and in my children. it will be a learning experience for all of us!

gee...2nd day and I already forgot my user name. cute. today is sunday, jeffrey had his last day of ccd, followed by all the kids going to mass, so i had to go to that church, too. saw aunt audrey and uncle joe there, sat with them. her youngest daughter is 3 months pregnant with a surprise baby, her 2nd child is only 7 months old. she was nursing him but weaned him when she got pregnant. much as i disliked tandem nursing, i would do it again if the baby was so young!

colleen is at that age (5 months) where she is so happy and cute, i always want more babies at this stage. i need to get fixed quick! cuz i definitely don't want to go through all that again! not to mention i am really too old.

jeffrey is at baseball, and the other kids want to go up there and eat at the snack bar. that's patrick's favorite thing! patrick, my cute as pie, sneaky, lying 5 yo. peed in the bed room today, between 2 dressers. luckily jeffrey told me. i spanked him. in retrospect, i should have told him no snack bar. maybe that would have got through to him? i don't know what the child's problem is. there's no reason for him to pee in the house like he does. i don't want to spank them but there seems no alternative at times.

I am creating this blog as a sort of journal where I can record our adventures in home schooling. i am 42 yo mom to 4. I made a couple of mistakes this school year. I was doing five in a row with my oldest....and last summer decided to try sonlight. Then I put my 5 yo in a private preschool 2 mornings a week so he could play with other kids. Then I had a baby in nov and when I tried to start school back up with my 8 yo in jan, I met with so much resistance, got tired of fighting with him and put him in public school at the start of march. In retrospect I feel I should have taken more time to figure out what was not working. Then I took my 5 yo out of the preschool and we occasionally do reading, writing, math, when he wants to. I am reading the before fiar stories to him and my 3 yo, and doing some of the activities. I plan to move on to fiar when he is 6.


my plan for my 8 yo....well, there are only 4 weeks of school left. i will let him stay....he likes it, but doesn't want to go next year. i don't want him to go either. if there were more than 4 weeks left, i'd take him out. i am trying to develop more of an unschooling philosophy. i have realized i don't need to teach history via sonlight. fiar is much more relaxed. i hope to do that with him (he will be 9 in sept, 3rd grade) along with math. i know, that's still not unschooling. i am working on it. i do want my kids to be good readers, know how to write, and understand math. but i am going to take a different approach. in fact what we need to work on most around here are behavior and character issues. my kids need more parental supervision and involvement. i can tell you that unparenting does not work, not that we set out to "do" unparenting, but that seems to be what has evolved.


though i am dreading dealing with his behavior, i am trying to arrange things so that I can spend more time with the kids (instead of on the computer or whatever lol) i do feel that going to school is not necessary, and regret that I am not the one teaching him math. I want them home! preschool was ok, but i wish i hadn't sent my 5 yo there, either. live and learn...

well unfortunately we have to leave for a baseball game at which I must help run the concession stand during the game. time to get dh up from his nap!