Smrt Lernins

Today’s question is from an anonymous commenter on Formspring. S/he asks, “How do you find time for your relationship with your husband when you’re so busy with your kids? In a world where divorce is common, how do you keep that spark there? What do you talk about in the evenings? Do you ever find homeschooling consumes you entirely?”

What? What’s that you say? I can’t hear you, as homeschooling has eaten my head. *crunch crunch*

In all honesty, homeschooling does sometimes consume me entirely. It takes up most of my morning and afternoon. Planning takes up a portion of my evenings. Homeschooling certainly takes up a large percentage of my thoughts. I spent a neat little chunk of time writing about homeschooling.

Homeschooling hasn’t been the biggest stumbling block in our marriage this past year+, though. The thing that has really been draining is parenting in general. I have spent the last five straight years pregnant, breastfeeding, or a combination of the two. We have three children, ranging in age from 17 months to almost ten, plus a beagle. Someone always wants something from me. I’m tired and drained, physically, mentally, and emotionally, much of the time. I’m tired of people touching me. I have stints of a lot of anxiety, both generalized and specific. I can’t use the bathroom without a pottience or someone banging on the door, hollering through the door, sniffing and scratching at the door, crying “Mama! Mama! Mama!” outside the door, or getting into a fight downstairs. We’ve had one or more small people sleeping in our bed with us for the last four years. Mix that up with Officer Daddyman’s work (very late nights) and the homeschooling in the morning, and sometimes it does feel like the whole world, or at least the portion of it occupied by our children, is trying to come between us.

Keeping the spark is hard. A lot of the time, I couldn’t care less about the spark. I’m starved for a few minutes of intelligent adult conversation far more than I’m starved for romance. I sometimes trend towards not making enough effort, because I’m just too lacking in energy to care. Even in the less sparkful times, however, I always find Daddyman interesting. I like talking to him. I’m interested in what he has to say, whether it’s stories from work or explanations of a game system he’s working on. I like how he seems interested in all the probably-boring stuff I did during my day. I stay up almost every night until he gets home, even if that means forgoing a couple extra hours of sleep that I probably need. We spend a little time talking, maybe watch an episode of whatever show we’re watching on Netflix (right now it’s Studio 60 on Sunset Strip), maybe eat a little snack. Sometimes we have Quality Adult Time™ together. Sometimes we just have time together.

We have periods when we spend a lot of time together, periods where we drift too often to our separate computers, but mostly, I like Daddyman more than I like just about anybody else, and he seems to like me pretty well, and I think that’s what keeps us going. I like parenting with him, having general life stuff with him, having conversation (however trivial) with him. We actively work on getting it together and keeping it together. We’re honest with each other and we try to lay it all out there so nothing is hiding, building up resentment. Every once in a while, we have great big fights and great big make-ups, and that’s always nice, too, in the long run. It’s a work in progress, but I think any good marriage is. I want to keep working to find ways to make it better. I want to keep working to find ways to not just keep the spark, but to want to keep the spark. I see us making a lot of improvement in that area. I think it will keep getting easier.

Ultimately, I don’t think homeschooling is any more (and probably less) of problem in our marriage than any thing else. It’s a common interest and a shared project, and it means we’ll nearly always have something to talk about.

Captain Science was an early reader.

He knew all his letters, upper and lower case, by 18 months and recognized that they went together in a pattern, and that the pattern meant something. He started reading shortly after he turned two. I actually doubted the accuracy of my memory of this, so I looked back through pictures and found one of him and Nana sitting on the sofa shortly after his second birthday, playing their word games on the Magnadoodle. She would write words and he would read them. It started with simple words like cat and hat, but I remember that these particular pictures were taken on the day she wrote–and he could differentiate between–worm, work, and word. It was slightly more than a week after his second birthday. By three, he could recognize or sound out most words. He could pick up nearly any book in the house and read it by four.

Reading is still one of his favorite pastimes. It’s his refuge and escape when he’s stressed. At times, it’s his compulsion — he’s the kid who has to read it if it’s there. Cereal boxes, junk mail, my computer screen if he’s nearby (I have to be careful!), cookbooks. I understand that compulsion well, because it’s one I share with him. I can’t not read, either.

I sometimes wonder why he took so naturally to reading. While there’s no denying that he’s a very gifted child, giftedness doesn’t always manifest as early reading (and early reading doesn’t necessarily indicate giftedness). Sometimes I imagine that a love of reading is like a nutrient, and it passed to him in utero through the umbilical cord or he drank it in when he nursed, like feeding the trained planaria to the untrained ones and having the untrained ones know how to run the mazes. Only not gross like that.

It might be because he saw reading all around him and absorbed it through some strange sort of literary osmosis. I would read while I nursed him, read whenever I had a spare moment. I read to him, Nana read to him, and the Granny Brigade (an assortment of great and great-great grandmothers and great-great aunties) read to him. My room has always been filled with stacks of books. I stick them everywhere, on the off chance that I’ll need something to read while I’m in that particular room. We have kitchen books, office books, a stack of bathroom books underneath the sink, bedroom books, basement books, and even a few car books, which I don’t read while driving, of course.

We’ve had to take his book light away, because he was staying up until the wee hours reading (and was a bear as a result). We have to check his room often for boys awake at 11pm, crouching by the door to have enough light to read. We have to police the number of bathroom trips after 10, because they’re to read, not to tinkle.

That’s a wonderful “problem” to have, isn’t it?

Lest you think that homeschooling is a mom-only only, here’s a great big Smrt Learnins shout out to all the fathers who are involved in homeschooling, whether as the primary educator, as a part-time homeschool helper, a single-subject teacher, or just the cheering section for their homeschooling partners.

I don’t know what I’d do without Officer Daddyman’s support. He was the one who first got bitten by the homeschool bug and he was the one who made me believe that we could do this without totally messing up our kids. So far, he’s been right! He helps Captain Science with math, runs a board game class/club for our co-op, engages in the curricula, and even started an account on the Well-Trained Mind Forums. What’s not to love about a homeschooling daddy?

We moms can do it alone if we have to. We can homeschool without the support of a partner if we need to. We’re grateful for the guys in our lives who DO support us, though. Y’all make it easier and a helluvalot more pleasant!

At Smrt Lernins, we think dads (and step-dads and granddads) who love homeschooling are awesome dads!

Tank is concerned about peepee* oil.

He has it on good authority that peepee oil might be covering Mexico and killing people, the fish, dolphins, and sharks. He seems to be the most concerned about the sharks.

He is worried that the peepee oil means we won’t be able to go to the beach again. He’s probably right.

He wants to know if the peepee oil will get into Lake Acworth. I assured him it wasn’t very likely to.

He would like to know how we plan to clean up the peepee oil and how long it will take. I don’t have any answers for him.

Tank is very sad about the peepee oil.

I haven’t shown my children any pictures of the beaches of my childhood, like Gulf Shores, covered with tar balls and pools of BP’s oil. I haven’t shown them the pelicans, the state bird of my birth state, foundering with oil-covered wings. I haven’t shown them dead dolphins being fished out of the Gulf. I have tried to explain that many people will lose their jobs, that many animals will die, and that the Gulf coast may not ever be the same — certainly not in my lifetime, probably not in theirs, and possibly not even in their children’s.

They’re children. To them, time means nothing. They are confident that someone smart will find a way to stop the oil and clean up the mess. With the boundless faith that well-cared-for children have in adults, they believe that they will grow up in a world that is safe, clean, and full of dolphins. That’s what grownups are here for, right?

Right?

*BP

Homeschooling has its many obvious upsides: customized curriculum, flexibility of schedule, ability for students to advance at their own pace. I have also discovered many benefits I hadn’t expected, however. These are some of the benefits that have revealed themselves over time.

1. Fewer lice scares. What public/private school student hasn’t brought home at least one “We have lice going around! Oh no!” note at least once during their school years? This isn’t much of an issue w/ the homeschooled student. Sure, they could pick something up at co-op, but where are those kids going to get it? With smaller groups (and, admittedly, the hippie homeschool tendency to wash hair a little less frequency) in a carefully controlled setting, lice isn’t going to be spreading through the homeschool community like wildfire.

2. No (social pressure-laden) fundraisers. I know that some co-ops or homeschool groups do fundraisers, but not like public/private schools do fundraisers. Fundraisers are serious business in public and private schools. Wrapping paper, candy, cookie dough, frozen pizzas, flower bulbs: the list goes on and on. Note after guilt-inducing note letting you know all the prizes your child will be missing by your failure to adequately pressure your friends, neighbors, and relatives into buying multiple items from your little darling. You don’t want your baby to be the only one who didn’t get the key chain and teddy bear, right?

3. Ever-ready errand boy/girl. There’s something to be said for having a child in the house who is big enough to respond to, “Go grab the whatever-it-is-I-need from the car.” Sure, this isn’t something you, as a homeschool parent, should abuse, but it’s nice to not constantly be running up and down the stairs all the time. Besides, it’s lots of extra physical activity for your child. Mark it down as P.E. and you don’t even have to feel guilty.

4. Also, ever-ready manual labor. The kids are home during the time of day that I’m doing chores or running errands, which means I’ve got extra sets of hands when it’s necessary. Sure, doing the grocery shopping may have been easier with just the baby, but that meant balancing both baby and bags of groceries to get into the house. Homeschooled kids are there to help you carry in those bags! If you haven’t figured it out yet, household chores are also a great way to break up the monotony of the school day and to drive home the valuable lesson of the careers to which one may aspire without finishing a decent education. In other words, kids who pitch a fit over doing math or writing can scrub a bathroom or rake a yard to get the full experience of why we pushy parents think learning is so important.

5. Fewer birthday party invitations. If you don’t realize what a blessing this is, you have never had a child in public school. The obligatory birthday invitations mean hundreds of dollars spent on impersonal gifts for children your child doesn’t even play with outside of school or risking the possible social ostracism that comes from failing to appear at all the right parties. The other upside of this is that you are equally freed from the obligation of inviting 19 near-strangers into your home or rented bounce house facility once a year. The controlled social sphere of homeschooling means smaller, more intimate parties. Be happy about that.

6. You do not, in fact, gotta catch ‘em all. A controlled social sphere also means your child’s exposure to the “kid crack” phenomena of Pokemon, Bakugan, Yu-gi-oh, and all other collectible card games is significantly more limited. Few parents really want to get their kids started on these games (Which the kids don’t even know how to play. It’s just about the having), but they’re aware that knowledge of games like these (and ownership of the cards/toys) is like currency in a public school, and they don’t want their kids to be the socially impoverished ones, begging for little Pikachu scraps off the elementary lunch table. As long as you keep them off of Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network, homeschooled children don’t have the same exposure to these games, and aren’t as likely to get caught up on the frenzied need to have them. Homeschooling, I choose you!

7. Minivan Expectations. No one will make “oh, you poor, unhip thing” faces over your choice to drive a minivan. Everyone knows that homeschoolers drive minivans, even if they only have one or two kids. Homeschoolers are not expected to drive SUVs, Camrys, or muscle cars. If anything, there might be some confusion as to why your van is a mini and not a conversion.

8. Floods. Not the natural disaster, but the pants length. By the end of the season, pants are hanging a few inches above the shoes and shirts are cutting off a few inches above the wrist. In a public or private school setting, this means either replacing the garments for the few remaining weeks of cold weather or dealing with the disapproving looks and comments directed at your slightly bedraggled-looking offspring. When you’re homeschooling, no one cares if your kid is wearing floods. Being slightly ill-dressed is part of the social expectations for homeschoolers, so you’re disappointed nobody by meeting those expectations and rising above expectations if your kid is wearing pants that fit come March. It’s win-win.

9. Never again be perceived as idle. While a stay-at-home-mom may be perceived (incorrectly and unjustly) as “not working” or “doing nothing all day” or “getting to stay home and play with the kids all day,” a homeschooling stay-at-home-mom is perceived as undertaking a momentous and time-intensive task, one that most parents of public/private schooled children believe they could never, themselves, manage. Fewer people will make assumptions about your availability (“Well, you don’t do anything all day, so you can do this favor for me!”). Lackadaisical housekeeping will be viewed, not as a sign of laziness, but as a natural byproduct of the tremendous effort expended planning lessons, directing learning, and grading and filing papers. Don’t disavow anyone of that belief; You’ll ruin it for the rest of us.

10. An excuse for weirdness. When your child does something unusual, socially awkward, or just plain bizarre in public, you can easily soothe observers’ distressed looks with a slightly dismissive hand wave and an, “Oh, don’t worry. They’re homeschooled.” This also works pretty well to explain weirdness in homeschooling parents. A woman muttering to herself in the aisles of Borders book store is creepy. A homeschooler muttering to herself in the aisles of Borders book store is just planning for next semester.

Our 2010 census came today and I couldn’t be more excited. So much in my life has changed since 2010 and so many answers are different for me. In 2000, I was unmarried (still had my maiden name), cohabitating with Captain Science’s Y-chromosomal donor (who misidentified his race on the census in order to perpetuate a series of lies he’d told me), was just pregnant with Captain Science (I don’t think I even knew it yet), had never given birth and had no children living with us (we had my ex’s older children every other weekend), lived in an apartment (one-bedroom, rundown, trashed).

Captain Science and the Tank were very interested in the census, so we decided to fill it out as a family activity. We talked for a while about what the census is so important — that it’s a way of counting people, of knowing what kinds of people lived in the United States, what kind of families people had, whether an area needed more schools or more police or more roads. They seemed to grok what a bunch of adults couldn’t, that the census is how we understand our nation’s size and diversity, not some sort of sinister way of prying into our personal lives.

Since I was the one filling it out, I was “Person 1″ for the sake of the census. I asked the questions, and the boys gave me the answers…loudly. We had some initial squabbling when the Tank insisted my first name was “Mama” and Captain Science kept telling him it wasn’t, but we ironed that out pretty quickly.

We discussed what “sex” means (as in one’s biological sex). What is male? What is female? What sex is Person 1? The Tank initially thought I might be male, because “male” and “Mama” both start with a “M” sound, but he agreed I am a girl or woman, so if “female” means girl or woman, that must mean I am female. The Tank also thought my age was “eighty-ninety,” which is his catch-all term for old. Nope, sorry kid. Only thirty!

Next up, whether or not I am of Hispanic or Spanish descent. Captain Science wasn’t sure why that might be relevant. I asked him what language our family might speak if we were Hispanic or Spanish in origin (answer: “Spanish?”), and explained that if there was a chance our family spoke Spanish, there’s a chance we might need Spanish-language services. If we spoke Spanish in our home and called the police, we might need someone there to understand us.

Next question: race. Both boys were quick to guess “white” for my race (which is accurate), but I still read the whole list of possible races. The census has many, many options for race, with the obligatory “other.” I explained that you didn’t have to just pick one race, either, because many people have family from different races and ethnicities. They thought it was great that you could pick all of those options. We talked about whether our individual worth would change if our race were different, and they agreed that it would not. We talked about whether we’d still be beautiful people if our race were different, and they agreed that people of all races were beautiful, and thought it was really neat how many different kinds of people live in the United States.

The Tank was a little confused by the question asking if we stayed or lived somewhere else, because we’d just returned from a week of being taken care of by my mother while I was dealing with the worst part of my pneumonia. He thought we might live there a little bit, too.

After we finished Person 1, we did Person 2 (Daddy). They thought it was silly that he would be listed as my husband or wife and that I couldn’t just pick one option. They answered that he was male, that he was the same age as me, that he wasn’t Hispanic, that he was white, etc. So on and so forth for Persons 3-5, with the one exception of the Tank guessing that Babypie was my husband. Weird.

We discussed the difference between “biological son or daughter” and “adoptive son or daughter.” For each of the kids, I asked, “Did you come out of my uterus?” and the boys would say, “Yes!” After Babypie’s questions, the Tank became very excited and yelled, “Captain Science, me, and Babypie all came out of the same place!” Yes, yes you did.

After Persons 1-5 were completed, we sealed up the envelope. It took all of ten minutes and that’s with the help of the boys. Now we are counted. We’re part of our national numbers. That’s no small thing.

This is the only census we’ll likely take with all of us together, in one home full-time. By the next census, Captain Science will probably be off to college. By the one after that, we might even be empty nesters. A lot changes in 10 years and those changes matter.

Do you count?

Attention North Metro Atlanta area homeschoolers! Patchfire and I are organizing a Pi Day celebration on March 14th (obviously), at 2pm at Swift-Cantrell Park in Kennesaw.

Bring your favorite Π-themed foods and activities to celebrate that magical irrational number! Pi-shaped cookies? Pumpkin Pi? Bring nibblies to share!

Because we are fair-weather friends, this is a fair-weather event and will be canceled in the event of rain, slushy GA snow, tornado, or any other bizarre meteorological events.

Those of you on Facebook can RSVP here.

If you aren’t in our area, you can organize your own Pi Day event for your local homeschoolers.

Captain Science is spending the night with Nana, which elicited much weeping and wailing from the Tank, who would only be pacified by the promise of making cupcakes after dinner. Since I didn’t feel like making frosting, we made Sugar Cookie Cupcakes (a Smrt Mama original!).

He had the Very Important Job of putting on the sprinkles just before baking. He also licked the spatula, which was helpful of him.

How did they turn out?

The Tank approves

The final product

You know you want a piece of these bad boys

Want to try them at home? They’re easy to make, taste just like sugar cookies, and (if you’re on Weight Watchers) 3 points a piece, since the following recipe makes 24 cupcakes. They’re thinner and more dense than the average cupcake, but fluffier than a sugar cookie — perfect way to satisfy the craving for both!

Sugar Cookie Cupcakes

• 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
• 1 1/3 cups sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup milk
• 2 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 large eggs
• Decorative colored sugar or sprinkles

Preheat oven to 350 degrees (325 convection). Line cupcake pans with paper liners.

Combine flour, sugar, baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Add butter, milk, and vanilla. Beat for 1 minute on medium speed. Scrape side of bowl with a spatula.

Add eggs to the mixture. Beat for 1 minute on medium speed. Scrape bowl again. Beat on high speed for 1 minute 30 seconds until well mixed.

Spoon cupcake batter into paper liners until roughly 1/2 full.

Sprinkle with colored sugar or sprinkles if you don’t plan to frost.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Cool 5 minutes in pans then remove and place on wire racks to cool completely.

It snowed, big fat wonderful snow.

Captain Science scooped up an armful.

The Tank thought it tasted pretty weird.

It got heavier…

And heavier…

Until the whole world was white.

And I was there, too.

Our scientific snow measurement device. Very high-tech.

We wracked up another 1/2-3/4 inch before temps fell below freezing and the snow petered out for the night. So exciting!

The stockings have been dumped, the presents unwrapped, the ham and fried turkey eaten, the wine drunk, and the Christmas cds put away for another year. Wii-related gifts came in piles, Captain Science’s iPod Touch was a huge hit, Babypie loves her new Waldorf doll (made by yours truly), and the Tank has more new dinosaurs than any little boy’s heart could ever desire. Tomorrow, we shop the post-Christmas sales, but after that, I begin the process of planning the next semester’s schedule.

I hope all my readers had a delightful Christmas (or any other winter holiday you celebrate) this year.