I've just read my last post and reflected that I still feel exactly the same about having a kid at school. The main thing that has started to get to me though is the sheer time taken up by having one child gone for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. It's just too much. We feel like we hardly see him. And he doesn't have time to do anything.
A friend of mine said on facebook recently that her kids were driving her crazy. All I could think was, how different people are. I'm missing my one-child-at-school to pieces and her 3-children-at-school drive her crazy. She gets much less time with them than I get with mine, too (even with Firstborn).
Oh yeah the good news, having had parent-teacher interviews, is that he's doing really well at school, so I guess the teachers will think we must have been swotty homeschoolers. Clearly, unschooling makes you clever, because he's doing brilliantly despite having MISSED OUT on all those hours of essential schooling that all the other kids have been doing.
In other news, there have been massive earthquakes, but I'm sure you didn't come here to read about that.
And in other news in our family, hmmm well, not much happens really. Oh yeah, I've been sick as a dog for nearly 2 weeks, so that was quite chaotic with the house turning into a pigsty, kids cooking all the meals and doing all the washing and the dishes, too tired even to sit up and read Lord of the Rings to them so they ended up watching TV. Sea documentaries of course, on DVD. Not actual daytime TV.
I also did a 4 day tramp at Lake Waikarimoanna which I've deliberatedly misspelled so no one can google it and end up here all randomly. That was the start of getting sick, walking in the cold when I had a cold. Man it is cold there. And rainy. Pretty though.
News about the kids. Daughter turned 7, but her birthday was cancelled because of aforesaid sickness. She still got a couple of presents including some Disney colouring books which she is totally adoring. I need to show you a photo of how awesomely awful they are. Especially after she's coloured them all in fluorescent colours.
My daughter was totally OK with me graffiti'ing her colouring book with feminist slogans. She's awesome like that.
[Just realised you can't read it. So the one on the left said something like "Aurora often dreams about ensnaring a prince" and I changed it to "Aurora often dreams about instituting a liberal democracy when she inherits the Crown." And on the right it was something like "Aurora is thinking about how to look pretty while getting banged on her wedding night" so I changed it to "Aurora is thinking that the objectification of women is morally indefensible".]
Daughter is also really into learning the piano and practises about twice a day. She always asks my permission to practise. She's awesome like that.
Pozz and Daughter are both doing drama and they totally love it, as in, they want to run and get in the car early and are asking me the time all morning till it starts. This is the first time my kids have been like this about anything, other than Rainbow's End.
After drama we sit in this nice park with the other home ed families and have a picnic together, while the kids all run about like crazy in the trees. This is my favourite part of the day. And then we head off to gym with some of the other home ed families. The sucky part is that Pozz doesn't want to do gym so instead of me getting to knit and chat to other mums, I sit with the one who moans about how bored he is and how he wishes we could just drop Daughter off. But the cool part is that Daughter loves gym and I love that she is now old enough to enjoy her own stuff after years of being dragged to all sorts of things.
Speaking of being old enough, here she is BIKING TO HER FRIEND'S HOUSE. She was so cute about it too, saying, "Bye mum!" in that confident way that kind of makes you want to cry, because you know you've done your job of raising them all independent and all, but it means you're kind of out of a job. No more holding my hand tightly and fearfully. Off she goes.
I love how much she loves her bike too. We never walk to the shops anymore. She always bikes.
(By the way, my local shops have the most awesome name which makes them sound like a village in a Jane Austen novel. I don't like having to call them "the shops" in my blog because they're not just shops - they're also the library and the doctor's and stuff, but I don't want to put my location on my blog. Maybe I should just say "the village". Yeah. She bikes to the village.)
Pozz is really into fashion. He's trying to look like David Bowie. It's quite scary.
We're up to page 806 of Lord of the Rings. It's still really good.
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2 comments:
"She was so cute about it too, saying, "Bye mum!" in that confident way that kind of makes you want to cry, because you know you've done your job of raising them all independent and all, but it means you're kind of out of a job."
Yes, I know exactly what you mean. Heart-rending...and the kids don't even realize what it means to a parent, to them it's normal. Just reading this brought back some bittersweet memories.
Awesome coloring book graffiti - I did snort/laugh out loud.
Thankfully no well-intentioned friends ever gave my girl a disney coloring book. But if they had, I think we wouldve had fun drawing 'punk' clothes and outrageous hairdos over the pictures.
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