I love babies. That's no surprise to most of you who read this blog. Many of you know that I have loved babies since... well, forever. I've always wanted more and more and more. (Not even exaggerating, ask J) I also love the toddler years (except for age three-- you can just HAVE the three year olds, I'll take them back when they turn four). As my own children have gotten older, I've learned to appreciate fours and fives, too, but babies, man. Aaahhh, babies.... That's where it's at for me.

But we're now firmly out of the baby years around the Casa de la Forshey, and unless God intervenes supernaturally, the next babies of mine own will be my grandbabies. This has been interesting to realize. As a teen and young adult, imagining my life ahead of me, I confess I never once looked past the end of my baby-raising days. I never imagined life in a house full of half-grown People. I never imagined (nor could I have) the difficult transition years of the sevens and the eights (and nine and ten and eleven), nor the slowly re-imerging humanity of the 12th year. The relief with which one senses that the feral creature you've been wrestling for the last three or four years is slowly becoming tamed and civilized, can actually carry on a conversation without sassing/crying/arguing/bragging/spitting/potty jokes... ah me. Thank you, sweet Jesus. Of course in our house, just as one is reemerging from the cocoon, the next one is entering it, but no matter. Having seen the miracle of the butterfly once, one ought to have the sense to trust the process.

At any rate, here I stand on the edge of something new and different, something I never imagined for myself, never pictured myself doing. It's awesome, and a little bit scary. We have in our house representatives of three stages of metamorphasis: pupa, chrysallis, newly emerging butterfly (still a bit wet as to wing, still not ready to fly away just yet, thank the Lord: my poor heart). But no more caterpillars. No more fuzzy headed, wiggly-limbed, squishy-faced, milk-sodden, stubby-legged caterpillars.

It's going to be an interesting ride. Stick around...

And continuing on the theme of teaching our kids stuff, here are five things I want to say to New Homeschooling Moms

1) Don't sweat it. A lot of people are probably saying this to you right now. BELIEVE THEM. You can teach your child. You can. I promise. There are tons of resources to help you and you are the one person in the world who knows your child best and you CAN teach them anything. You've already taught them tons of stuff. You taught them how to walk and talk, dress themselves, eat with a fork and spoon, go to the potty, tie their shoes and ride a bike. None of these things is really any different from math, reading, writing and grammar. You've got this.

2) The most important thing is that you have this child in your care for a comparatively few short years. At this point, you have very little indication of what/where they are going to do/go in their lives. But you do have a Scripturally-based idea of who you want them to BE when they get there. Do that first. Everything else will come in it's time. You first need to teach and model for them how to love God and their neighbor-- reading, writing and arithmetic can come along the way.

3) The next most important thing is to teach them HOW to learn. And teach them to LOVE it. This is waaaay more important than any one particular thing/subject/list/extra-curricular activity. Your goal is to create in them a fascination with how things work and the way God made the world, an insatiable desire to Find Out How and Why. Then you teach them HOW to Find Out and send them on their way. You give them the tools, let them do the work.

4) Lists of expected grade skills and behaviors have their place and can be helpful, but one of the best things about home schooling is that you have a chance to discover along with your child who God has created them to be-- the One, the Only, the Unique Them-- and help them get there. Don't expect that every child is going to fit the mold at every stage. You want your child to be a Mold- Breaker!

5) Home schooling is not about School-- it's about Mothering. We all know we need God's help in order to be Godly Mothers. Sometimes we forget we need God's help to be Effectual Teachers, but it's the same thing. Just like you need God's help to model Christian Womanhood, Wisdom, Thrift, Honesty, Bravery and all Virtues for your children; in exactly the same way, you're going to need God's help to teach them math, science, language arts and literature. Good curriculum is helpful, but mostly you have to start every day on your knees and then start their day on their knees, too.


Good luck! Have fun! You've totally got this!!

Kids are gross. Parenting is counter-intuitive. My mother is a saint.

I made pumpkin muffins this morning for breakfast because it's about 65 degrees outside and filling my kitchen with the warm smell of spices is my way of coping. I"m basically denying the reality that this chill is only a harbinger of the death of all the green things and the coming of the Great Cold.

Back to my muffins...

I had the batter all ready and went to pull the muffin tins out of the cabinet. As I unstacked them onto the counter and began to butter them, I realized that whichever child had "washed" them, had simply washed the top one of the stack, leaving the dirty ones firmly fixed to the back end. And then whichever child was responsible for "drying" and putting away the dishes had, complicit, merely dried the outside of the stack and shoved the whole deal into the closet.

G.R.O.S.S.

(All of my children are now old enough to be involved in the dish-washing process, so even if you think you know which kid was responsible, you don't. Thus I protect the identity of the innocent and guilty alike. Also, I have no idea who was responsible either, or believe you me, I'd be doing more about it than just writing a vent-y blog post...)

That old saw about how if you want something done right, do it yourself is SO true. Especially when you have kids. But so is this one about the goal of mothering: that is, our goal is to work ourselves out of a job. Teach our kids to do everything for themselves, so that we have nothing left to do. Hah. I know. There will never actually be nothing for us to do. But you get my point. The problem is that it is SO HARD to make myself take the time to let them do it, fail, correct them, explain, make them do it over again, correct again, etc, wash, rinse, repeat, ad nauseum. It drives me crazy. And the older the kids get and the more of "my job" they learn to do, the more difficult it is for me to let go of the perfection of order and detail that I want, in order to teach them to care for themselves. Don't laugh, IT'S HARD.

When Sofi and Judah were little, J would take them off on Saturday mornings for Special Daddy Time and I would clean the whole house myself. In blissful silence and with total concentration I would polish, wash, sweep and even wash, dry, fold and put away entire loads of laundry, while I cleaned the bathroom to sparkling perfection. Now? Now everyone has Jobs. You might think this would make my job easier. You would be wrong.

It's worth it. I know it is. In the end they will be able to cook and care for themselves, do their own laundry, make a week's meal plan and budget for their groceries. The all (even the boys) will be able to sew on a button, clean a toilet and iron a shirt. And one day they will thank me. I tell them this every Saturday. "One day you'll thank me!" I shout into the maelstrom of whining, complaining, dishcloths flying, laundry swirling, feather dusters flung across the room in frustration, "I know you will!" They roll their eyes, "How do you KNOW???"  I'll tell you how I know. This is how I know.

Dear Mom,
Thank you, thank you for teaching me how to cook and care for myself, how to do my laundry, make a meal plan, keep a budget, sew on a button, scrub a toilet and iron a .... (never mind, that was Mrs Hendry). Thank you for taking the time and sacrificing your standards to teach me the skills to be self-sufficient and a decent respectable member of society. I know it wasn't a cake-walk.
Forever grateful,
you daughter

Sofi, Judah, Jamie, wait and see.... wait and see....

Can you guess what movie we ended up watching the other night?

Judah and I were having a serious conversation about leadership. He wanted to know what you do when you're really trying your best to be a good leader, but nobody believes that you are, so they won't listen to you and they just complain and argue. Good question, dude...

Jamie breaks in, with a grave expression on his face;

"You know, you don't feel flying here (taps his fuzzy round forehead with his grubby, peanut-butter smeared index finger), you feel it here (pats his chest with his chubby hand)"

I am proud to say that I did not crack my serious-conversation-mom-face, or miss a beat. Long years of practice...

Mama loves yoga

It's Friday. TGIF. Whew. Another week finished-- almost. I mean, it's only 7:30 on Friday. I"m only two cups of coffee into the day...

I had a yoga class at the YMCA last night. Yoga is wonderful. There's nothing like an exercise regimen that alternates between kicking the crap out of you and putting you nearly to sleep over the period of 75 minutes of intense strength-and-flexibility-moves-and-poses. It's pretty nice.

It's also nice because it's 75 minutes of focus. 75 minutes of slow, deliberate concentration on one thing. Or perhaps a series of things... but really just one thing-- moving your body. My mind is so fragmented these days. A product, I suppose of both the society and age in which I live and the fact that I have three kids, for two of whom I am both mother and teacher. My job description is basically Hoop Roller Extraordinaire. I dash from side to side, back and forth around my little hoops, giving little nudges and occasional whacks with my stick to keep them rolling in the right direction. I'm rarely doing less than two things at once at any point during the day.

Part of my recent return to the discipline of daily writing has been an attempt to begin the day with a focused, calm activity that will give my brain a chance to focus in on one single thing. Ask me how that's going... Already since I started this post, I've gotten distracted once by looking for a gif of a hoop roller (nada) and once to check out an open tab that I didn't remember opening. It's only been ten minutes of writing...

And now my time is already up and the hoops are rolling down the stairs to start their daily race

Today will be better

Yesterday was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. But today will be better. 

Reasons why today will be better than yesterday:

1) It is the first day of September. This means that Fall is actually coming. I don't love Fall, but I love Christmas and Fall means that Christmas is right around the corner.

2) Yoga class at 9:30. I can totally make it till 9:30

3) Judah's first trip to the dentist went way better than I expected, so I can put THAT fear for his future to rest.

4) The kids had swim lessons last night. Water calms them down and makes them happy. It's like a drug. Matter of fact, I can probably blame a majority of yesterday on the fact that none of them have been fully submerged in weeks. It was bound to happen. Thank goodness for indoor pools! Otherwise, I don't know how we'd survive the winter...