It wasn’t the plan, but then nothing this season will be as planned. Yesterday we said goodbye to our faithful friend, companion and protector. We spent the 24 hours prior pouring as much love into him as we could, and unless Husbeau has removed them–his bowls are still in their place in the kitchen. Coming home to an empty house last night overtook Girly and I; and everyone piled into the Big Bed to try to find some kind of comfort and safety in the mess of tears and anguish. I dosed everyone with 2 drops of Star of Bethlehem Bach flower remedies just in case it could diffuse some of the trauma and grief of losing our best friend. Continue reading Day 1: Remembrance→
Today, my husband showed me how he used the Roku remote app on his iPhone to interrupt the kids playing Pandora with a video of him telling BigGuy to stop and go unload and reload the dishwasher–at which point he could have Pandora put back on. Husbeau is new to Apple products & has had the phone MAYBE a month.
This weekend, I feel like the torch was officially passed to my husband on the Scouting front. He and BigGuy left early Saturday morning for the first of what will be many Scout camping outings. This one was very short, but they banged out all of the requirements to get him his “Scout” badge (the very first rank in Boy Scouts).
It’s been quite a week. Mama is starting to get her footing and get back to engaging better with the small people. Engagement. That’s what I’m going for here. It’s hard. I have horrible Seasonal Affect Disorder and am truly thankful that we spent our emergency funds on a skylight in the master bedroom. So the last few weeks have been very sluggish and mama hasn’t been very engaged. I think I didn’t really realize what was happening, either. My semester in review post made me think about it. Continue reading Real understanding→
And so comes the time to look back at the last few months and assess what has worked, what hasn’t worked, what to change and what to keep. I probably wouldn’t be doing this except that we tried to make a monumental change and I’m not sure we’ve managed it well. In my former career, “continuous process improvement” was actually part of one of my job titles. It’s something I fully embrace.
We have just had a full week of the BigGuy uninspired to do anything academic. It didn’t bother me, but the change certainly threw me off. He had been so inspired for a while there.
And I’m talking full-on, absolutely nothing. At least “nothing” by most of the country’s standards. By the time I got up this morning, slathered my face in green clay and then meditated while that dried… the kids had apparently been fed by Husbeau. I went downstairs and saw that BigGuy’s door was open, but Girly’s was shut and there was music coming from it.
Yeah… I think this is going to work out–not being part of the Young Philosopher’s group that was meeting on Fridays from 11:30am-1pm. I mean, that’s lunchtime. Seriously? And it’s kind of far. And it falls on the day that BigGuy and I are supposed to hold our big Socratic white-elephant-in-my-head discussions… which might be too much heavy conversation for a day.
But Fridays are really, really open now and I think that’s going to work well for us. For one, it’s the day we prepare for the weekend. We do our “weekly home blessing” (thank you, stronghold of The Fly Lady) which is a set of two chores per family member that help get the house cleaned up before the weekend. This started long ago when we hosted “Wine Night” at our house every Friday night for nearly a year before relocating. Taking care of cleaning up the house before the weekend set in meant that we enjoyed a clean house all weekend and company dropping by wasn’t an issue. We could just relax.
Well, we are returning to that. And I think having the review of the week’s work and the Socratic discussions on Friday are going to dovetail nicely into preparing for the weekend. Because we can also have these discussions WHILE we work on stuff.
So each day the kids have all kinds of responsibilities…
Make their bed
Put their laundry in the hall basket and one of them takes the basket down to the laundry room (or one of the adults do)
Pick up toys in their room (which usually happens twice/day–once before going down to breakfast and once before bed… but we’ve removed a lot of toys from their rooms)
Pick up whatever toys they were playing with all day before getting their screen time or going out to any cool play dates
Set the table and get drinks. Honestly, I have no idea who does what part of this now except that at a prior family meeting, Girly wanted to put out the plates. That meant someone had to get them for her. Apparently, not anymore. She’s pushed her kid chair to the cabinet, stood up on it, got down four large dinner plates, and put four forks on them and then carries it all to the table. Whaaaaa…..???
Clear the table after every meal
BigGuy has to clean his bathroom and the master bathroom–and doing that is broken down so that he does a different part each day. He often forgets this chore or forgets to include my bathroom… but this is a new one.
At the end of the week, it goes like this (or rather, IT. IS. PLANNED. to go like this):
BigGuy learning to vacuum. #fail Now we sweep
BigGuy vacuums the entire first floor and upstairs hallway. With his complete failure to master vacuuming, we are now sweeping.
Girly is supposed to dust and put away whatever toys are left out.
Papa is supposed to empty EVERY. GARBAGE CAN. IN THE HOUSE. including the laundry room and powder room; and mop the first floor
Mama is supposed to clear ALL of the horizontal surfaces–desk, kitchen island, counters; and sort/purge all papers–bringing the keepers to the office.
Honestly, the kids are the only ones being held to this right now and BigGuy bears the brunt of it. So add this to the list of “things mom should really get better at”. To be fair, Girly is WAY more helpful in general than BigGuy so I kind of don’t feel all that horrible about it. At 5, she tap dances rings around him in the helpful category. I love my son and he has his amazing qualities. I’m just saying that being helpful isn’t one of them.
And then there’s the general keeping things in their place crap. Shoes go in the closet, not out and about. Pencils have a place. Library books have a place. Board games have a place. My core sense of self is only at rest when “everything has a place and everything in it’s place”. With this house presumably the final place (until retirement), sh*t’s gotta get put in it’s place and that needs to become a habit.
Friday is also farm share day. So if we can get the rest of the house clean, by the time we get our farm food later in the day, we really don’t have anything standing in our way to deal with the vegetables. We get two shares from a farm in town; but then another farm uses our house as a drop-off point (it’s complicated–they started using us mid-season when we were already midway through a full season share with the other farm. Although to be fair, last year we did 4 shares total–two from each of these farms; and we’re likely to go back to that next year since we will not yet have our own gardens to the point of supporting us. Wait-wait-wait… I digress..
I’m looking forward to Fridays. Especially if they’re sunny. And clean.
Educated Adventures 