The internet is my gateway drug to the hardcore information found in published magazines and books. You know my interest is serious if I’ve bought a book off of Amazon or gone and spent an evening reading at our local bookstore. The fact that I have so many books I just have to read that I’ve already done those things multiple times and checked out (and read) a stack of books from the library means that I’ve reached critical mass. Armed with the kind of information that I’ve been inhaling the past few months, I am now pretty well sold on homeschooling.

I’ve always been like this. If I have an interest I just have to research the stuffing out of what ever topic I’m currently stuck on, be it hamsters or educational theory. When we were deciding to start our family I read more pregnancy and baby books than I can even remember, and then proceeded to develop such obscure complications that they weren’t even mentioned in the scads of information I’d processed in preparation. Kind of figures, doesn’t it?

The great thing about being weird like this is that in the process of all of the insecure, perfectionistic searching for answers is that by the time you make your decision, you really know why you are doing it. You know exactly where you stand and you can articulate your reasoning. Being a very verbal person, I need to be able to completely verbalize my reasoning to myself. I do not do well running off of gut feelings and instinct; I like my facts cold and hard, and I like my opinions to make a heck of a lot of sense when argued.

The trouble with needing those facts and logically reasoned out excuses is that sometimes I don’t jump on a gut feeling that does deserve some attention. Sometimes I take longer in making a change than I really needed to or even ought to have taken. However, I am pretty comfortable with myself, knowing that it is better for me to be a few weeks off with my head on straight and my eyes on the target and my heart in a happy place on the matter.

I think the biggest reason why it took so long for us to come to this place is that I don’t have one solid reason for wanting to have him learn at home. I have many reasons that span all the way from knowing my son’s temperament to disagreeing with some of the very fundamental principles that public schooling uses to educate. I will go more into those reasons later.

So, we will remove Jonas from school. We are not 100% certain if we will do this before the school year is up or wait out the last five weeks. We will be finding out in the next few days if Chris will be able to take leave for a two week vacation that we would like to do in May. That is one of our largest deciding factors, as well as Jonas’ increasing dislike and frustration with school. We are on our third week of a substitute who makes Jonas’ regular teacher look like a saint, and he is already growing by leaps and bounds through our efforts to work with him at home. So we will see. An early exit might be just what he needs.

I do plan to blog about many of the reasons why I am choosing this course for us for right now. Because there are so many different facets to my choice, I’m sure it will take a few posts. If you have any questions, do ask them here, and I will answer them.

Are you a Gadget Geek? I’m not. I am a die hard notebook list maker who tends to forget to take her cell phone out with her, much to her husband’s dismay. You see, although I am not a huge fan of gadgetry, I married the King of all Things That Beep, Signal & Download. So you can imagine that me reviewing a new software designed to turn your cell phone into your control center might create some interesting challenges like, “how do I make the phone hook to the dadgum computer, honey?” But, I am pleased to say that I have figured it out, and I understand how to run the technology on my little phone, and it is pretty cool. SimplyMobile Moms is a unique, free service that helps Moms stay connected and organized via mobile phone, keeping our lives running smoothly when we are away from home.

If you go to Simply Mobile Moms you can check it out and learn how you can access a bunch of useful info like:

On the go directions from Mapquest, GoogleMaps, Yahoo! etc.

Send pictures to relatives and friends

Read an article or share your favorite news with friends

Download product pictures to aid shopping for specific items (ie: 5 cool birthday gifts to look for)

Send a “honey-do list”

Keep your daily details (work appointments, kids activities, phone #’s, etc.) at hand with you

I really like that it can keep recipes with me for when I’m shopping and can’t remember what exactly goes into Taco Soup. I have called my mother and grandma several times from the grocery store trying to remember what I need to buy.

Now, the best and most awesome part of this technology? You can read your favorite blogs when you’re out and about, bored waiting for a kid to get out of school or done with her ballet lesson or just stuck in a long grocery line. Think of it! Life as Lou archives to fill the mundanity! For Free!Seriously, check it out!

It all started a few weeks ago when Jonas discovered the Dragonolgy books at the local bookstore. He was enraptured. He wanted them all, and the more expensive they were, the more he wanted them. Now, I am all about buying books for my children, and I have spent embarrassing amounts of money on them in the past six years. (The first thing I bought to prepare for my first baby was not baby gear. It was about fifteen books my kid just had to start off with when he was still a bug eyed noodle in my womb. Priorities, right?) However, these Dragonology books are expensive, and I’m already buying him several chapter books a month. We discussed the price of the books, and even put it into comparisons like “five Magic Tree House books for the cost of one Dragonology book.” Jonas understood the concept, but did argue that it was a really, really cool book, and I had to agree. It is pretty awesome.

I gave the usual “maybe for your birthday” answer, and thought it would be over, but throughout the next few weeks those books just kept coming back up. Every trip to the bookstore involved him spending an hour perusing several of them and ended with more pleas to take one home. This was not a passing fancy. We also had several talks about the cost of things and how expensive many of our wants are. He was really bummed about not having any money, so I gave him the opportunity to earn some, and earn it he did.

I do not believe that children should be paid for doing every day chores. I think that routine home maintenance is something that you learn to do because it is a part of life, a part of taking care of your family, and a part of contributing to a healthy society. Because of this, I couldn’t have him just sweep the floors to earn the money. Instead, I had him bake cookies to sell on the curb. He did nearly all of the work involved in baking them. He measured, mixed, rolled out the dough balls and even cleaned up after himself. The only thing I did was put the cookies through the oven. He made a cookies for sale sign ( I made one too), and he sat outside with our piano bench and a few plates of cookies for an hour and a half.

He sat for the entire first half an hour with absolutely no sales. People drove by, smiled and waved, which drove Jonas mad because every time a person acknowledged him, he thought they were going to stop. His little sister had to be banned from the front yard for cookie rustling. This was serious stuff to Jonas.

(Could you resist that face? I couldn’t.)

After much patience on his part, I finally got on the phone and called two friends, both who were kind enough to drop by or send one of their kids to buy a cookie. I called Chris at work and he told his coworkers what was up, and a few stopped by as well.

(Aw, Rosy and a perfect stranger buyin’ cookies! See how stoked Jonas is?)

People came in spurts, even quite a few who the little entrepreneur’s mama didn’t call behind his back, and when he finished up, there were four cookies left and he was $15.50 richer! He was extremely excited and wanted to go to the bookstore right then, but I explained to him that he still didn’t have enough cash to buy the book from the store, but I had found the book on Amazon for only $13.50, so he could order it and even have some pocket change left over. He is already stalking the mailman.

Art happens at our house.

I must tell you guys, my mind has been completely preoccupied with my children for over two months now. I’m feeling such a pull inward toward my family and my home, and away from the rest of the world. I have always tried to make the very best choices that I could for my family. I think that much of the time, I have done well. I haven’t done as well as I would like, but I think that given my set of personal challenges involving health, pregnancies, temperament, our affiliation with the air force, and the other usual everyday stumbling blocks in the road, I have navigated these things with success. My children are healthy. My children are intelligent. My children know that they are loved. My children love to read, love music, love each other, and love God. A person could do worse.

I find myself wanting more. I want more peace in my home. I want my children with me. I want to be enjoying our life together, despite problems, despite my imperfections. I want to do things differently, more peaceably, more wholly.

I have spent many hours in silent debate with myself, engaging in rational skepticism, questioning who I am, what my goals are, and what I’m doing to accomplish those goals, and why I am choosing to live within the perimeters that the world has set as typical.

I have noticed that I have changed. I am not the same person I was a few years ago; I’m not even the same person I was a year ago, and I’m happy for that. Life is about growth and change. My priorities remain the same. God, family, happiness still reign supreme, but my motivations are different, my capacity to work and be patient and accepting has increased. My understanding of myself has grown immensely, and I am finding joy in mothering that I have never found before. I think, just maybe, I’m becoming less selfish.

I am a very selfish person by nature. I am a person who requires extra self time, more time to recharge just me and focus on my goals and what I want. Over the past few months, I’ve both needed and wanted less. I’ve recharged by more perfectly fulfilling my role as a mother and homemaker. Oh, I still need my me time, but it is less, and when I am present for my family, I am wholly present and filled with a lot of joy and peace in what I am accomplishing within that sphere. Children are demanding, and when you add health concerns and other large stresses to the mix, my first response has been to escape. I rarely need to escape anymore. That is no small blessing.

This change, among many others, has led me to want to make different and better choices for my family. Some of these are very doable, and others are dreams that are beyond my reach. Some have been a long time coming, and others are more recent observations. I plan to share these with you guys, but, as I said, I’m still working my brain around them all, trying to figure out what will work and what will need serious tweaking.

I am not comfortable with change, and find that old habits die hard with me. Self discipline isn’t my forte, and changes require that. After months of consideration, I think I’m up for it.

By now, I’m sure that you have noticed the chin. There used to be two chins. I wanted a simple, redesigned header awhile back and the friend playing around with it accidentally deleted the old blog header. However, the chins are apparently not part of the header, they are in an overlap, one that overlapped into the sidebar, which thankfully, miraculously, after much work another friend was able to find and remove. However, the last chin seems to be attached to the post side of the blog, and is apparently here to stay.

It drives me crazy. Does it drive you crazy?

I am sorely tempted to redo the entire thing, except that my web design skills are only slightly worse than my sewing skills, so I know that nothing I come up with will be up to my standards, there fore, I have failed before I have even tried. Ahh, the joy of perfectionism.

So there we are. A chin. Eeech.

Do you remember that clean, well organized scrapbook room of mine? On the surface it looks pretty good, but underneath the scrappy exterior lies a wealth of sewing supplies, all unorganized and almost unused. There are about six half finished projects, including an entire denim quilt top, a wall hanging, quilt pieces, and yards of fabric purchased with big plans that I never got around to.

I dumped it all out the other night and went through it. I haven’t thrown out a pair of jeans in twenty years. I have moved a shower curtain to three different states because I look at it and I don’t see a shower curtain, I see a fairy costume. I have two yards of day-glo pink vinyl and I don’t know why. I have extremely limited sewing skills. I’ve made a few quilts and a few dresses (with supervision). I have mad seam ripping skills from years of practice. I do not think in such a way that allows me to turn things inside out and form seams; I cannot visualize it at all. I have amazing creative visions and no way to carry them out. It is infuriating. I shouldn’t be let inside of a fabric store and yet I keep going back. Like today when I went and bought more felt that I may or may not actually use. It is an illness.

If you want to know more about the mess, I strongly suggest that you click on the photo and read my notes. Confession: it’s good for the soul.

I have never had lice. I can remember childhood checks in the nurse’s office when an outbreak would start, and I’m sure my mother had a huge sign of relief every time us kids came home clean. Now that Jonas is in school, we’ve already had two lice breakouts. Lice has always freaked me out a bit because, well, EW BUGS, but also because most of the treatments out there either don’t have very good reviews when it comes to being effective, or the treatment is so chemical laden I really don’t want my children or myself near it! I’ve heard of some parents who are so desperateto get rid of the lice they wash children’s hair in gasoline! I’ve seen a few kids at Jonas’ school arrive with freshly shaved heads too.

I was recently asked to share a blog post on this new treatment that is out for lice called LiceMD. Now, they gave me a sample, and I cannot tell you how perfectly it works because THANK HEAVEN WE DON’T HAVE LICE, but I am hearing very, very positive things about it actually working. I am also really liking it because it is pesticide free, odorless, you can reapply it as often as you need to, and it conditions the hair while killing lice in ten minutes. Compared to the current brands, that is all very happy news indeed.

As the school year nears the finish line, I hate to announce that I am completely disenchanted. Jonas, according to his teacher, is educationally average compared with his peers in what he is learning, possibly on the lower end of average. On the behavior end of the scale, he remains a challenge, although he has calmed considerably since his rocky beginning. The teacher has also calmed considerably. I think both attitudes have a lot to do with each other. Some days he does great, and he has the occasional bad day, or short run of bad days. On a whole he has made progress, and I am pleased that he is moving forward.

I am frustrated that the verbal reports of what he is learning do not match the written reports or what I am seeing at home. In fact, none of them match. I got a report card that said he was not good at art or music. This is the child who sings “Cecilia” and draws amazing space creatures and super heros. This is the five year old who can draw a very good likeness of Larry Boy, Rescue Pack and just about anything else he sets his mind to. This is my child, a boy who grew up surrounded with so much art and music he should be pooping Picassos and channeling Pete Seeger. I am not a blind mother. I know that my child is imperfect. I know that he will lag in some areas and thrive in others. I know he has bad days and good days. He is human; he is Jonas. I love him for that, not in spite of it.

So how am I supposed to trust these tests that contradict what I know about my child? It isn’t just the subjective art and music that worries me. It is the fact that the teacher’s report says he doesn’t have a certain skill and yet he demonstrates that skill for me at home. It makes me wonder if she really knows where my kid is, or if he is being lumped in with someone else. I can understand how it could happen. It is a big class, and he isn’t complacent to sit and be tested. He jokes and giggles during testing, or, trying to be silly (or get out of the boring tests) he gives the wrong answer. It isn’t all her fault. I know that. Jonas complies when he decides to comply, a trait that will serve him well as an adult, but makes most of the adults in his life crazy while he is a child.

I have spent a few months deeply contemplating what Jonas needs. Not what he needs to succeed, but what he needs to be happy and progress in his learning. I do not need my boy measured by the world’s cookie cutter standard of good and bad, I need him measuring against his standard, and by God’s standard.

A friend of mine who is the mother of sons with autism said something to me last week that makes so much sense. In speaking of her child she said, “We asked ourselves what we really wanted for Jonathan, and we decided that we wanted him to be happy. We know he will never live on is own. He will never reach “normalcy” - but he can be happy. And if my son is happy running around naked in the backyard that is ok even if no one else understands.”

Now, my friend is an excellent mother. Her boys are taught respect. Her boys are taught kindness. They have as much responsibility put on them as is fair for their sweet spirits’s and abilities to handle in the developmental stage they are in. They are expected to be all that they can be, but she sees them for who they are, and understands that ultimately she chooses happiness for them. If a therapy is making them miserable, she stops. She finds something positive to replace it with. These boys know love. I do not think they feel the boundaries of their limitations as acutely as so many of us feel them because they have her standing watch, loving them and guiding them and accepting them. All children should be so blessed.

Jonas no longer qualifies as developmentally delayed, and certainly, our situation is not as dramatic as my friend’s is, but there is truth in her approach that can be applied to every child. My son needs to be happy, and there are things that go a long way toward achieving that for him.

Jonas needs positivity. If I have learned anything being his mother it is that negativity and contention does not work. Another friend of mine who was over the Primary children at church for quite some time made an interesting observation. She said that Jonas seems to do just fine as long as he knows that you like him. It is very true. When he is treated with affection, respect and patience, he is very eager to please. When he is yelled at or talked down to, he becomes cold and locks into a power struggle. My son needs to be accepted.

Jonas needs attention. He needs people around him who he can bounce his energy off of, with whom he can discuss his ideas and practice interacting positively. He needs someone to listen to him, someone to read him stories, someone to let him help her cook in the kitchen and someone to praise and guide him as he learns and discovers. And he needs these things a lot, not just for five minutes when he can be fit in, or during his thirty second moment with his teacher. Jonas needs to be heard.

Jonas needs to move. Just as you or I may have the urge to scratch a mosquito bite, Jonas has the urge to wiggle. It is just as unfocusing for him, as that nagging bug bite is for us. He needs opportunities to get these wiggles out, and he needs them more than many children his age. Our trampoline is the best thing that ever happened to him. He can bounce for five minutes and then focus for fifteen. If you don’t give him opportunities to move constructively, he will move in ways that will irritate you. He will poke and pinch. He will make messes. He will swing from curtains and climb fences. You can tell him no, but that urge is very powerful, and it is better channeled into a positive energy release than stifled until he pops. A trip to the water fountain or a journey to sharpen the teacher’s pencil will do more good than a hundred threats, angry glares, or exasperation. It isn’t always possible to allow for these movement moments, but the more that can be worked in, the better off everyone is. Jonas needs to use his body.

Jonas needs boundaries. Jonas is happiest when his day is structured and when he knows what to expect and what is expected of him. He needs to know that when he pushes the envelope, someone will let him know he is out of line. He needs to be informed of change and transition if it is out of the every day routine, so he can mentally prepare for that change. He needs to feel a measure of control over his life and what happens to him.

So how do I give my son these things? How do I give him happiness in a school system that is designed to squash the wiggles and the obnoxious attention getting behavior with negativity and anger? I really don’t know.

I have seriously considered home schooling. I think it may be a viable option for us, and I have already begun to look at curriculum and formulate ideas of how to organize our family to make it work for us. I have looked into the legal, social, emotional and personal possibilities, problems, and options. It can work for us. My plan, for now, is to try it out over the summer. We will establish the routines and see if we are happy in it. Jonas will not forget what he has learned over the school year and will hopefully have learned more and solidified his skills. Then, I intend to return him to first grade. I know a lot of maturation can happen over a summer, and I think it is worth a try. Now, I hope he has a teacher who is good with him. I hope that he can continue to experience all of the things about public school that are positive and encouraging and worthwhile, and that he finds much success in his endeavors. I hope that he is happy with himself within this system.

However, if he isn’t, we will know what we can and cannot do for him at home. We will have the option, and we will be prepared for the option. I will not push through another year of school like this one. It is not a fight that we will be engaging in. I will choose my battles wisely, as Jonas has always taught me to do.