Smrt Lernins

Patchfire asks, “Some homeschooling advocates have complaints against colleges that require additional information and/or standardized testing from homeschooled students that they do not require from students that have attended accredited institutions. Essentially, the colleges wish to corroborate the parent-issued transcript. To clarify, the colleges are not requiring stated minimum scores or higher scores from homeschooled students; they merely want evidence of the testing. Is this discrimination?”

No.

Come on, really? People are calling this discrimination? Parents are mad that colleges won’t just believe what they say about their student’s achievement without any sort of corroborating paperwork or testing to back it up? Really?

These colleges aren’t making homeschooling parents (or students) jump through extra hoops. They aren’t asking for this stuff to punish homeschoolers or give them grief or because they get a laugh off of them. It’s not even because they think homeschooling parents are inherently dishonest. They just have no way to know from family to family what the standards are for any given subject, how rigorously or extensively any subject is taught and tested.

Public schools must meet certain standards — whether you think they’re high enough or too high, there ARE standards set for them that they must meet in order to keep accreditation. Private schools must also meet certain standards to keep accreditation. Accreditation is how those institutions receive external validation of their academics. Coming from an accredited school certainly doesn’t mean that a student is smarter or better educated, but it does generally mean that the student meets a minimum expected level of proficiency in certain subjects. It’s as simple as that. When public institutions make it up as they go along (“it” being grades, testing, whatever), they tend to get busted for it — hard and publicly. Haven’t you seen news segments on school systems being caught messing with standardized testing or failing standards and losing accreditation?

Standards can vary wildly from parent to parent, however, and educational method/philosophy to method/philosophy. There is no overseeing board for all homeschooling parents. There is no Department of Homeschool Education that sets minimum standards for performance. Parents aren’t assessed yearly under threat of funding revocation if their students aren’t demonstrating certain skills or testing to certain levels. Individual parents aren’t accredited. Because there isn’t a process by which parent-teachers can become accredited as individuals, they are asked by some schools to provide some other example of external validation of their academics. This isn’t asking something extra; it’s just asking the parent directly for what a larger institution would be expected to provide on behalf of the student: a means of demonstrating the means by which the student came by a set of grades.

If you’re sitting around feeling oppressed because the college won’t just take your word for it on a transcript, it’s time to suck it up and get over yourself. Your word isn’t infallible. Why on earth should the college treat it as such? Not all parents are honest with themselves about their students’ abilities. Public schools (and private schools) may not provide an ideal education for all/most/some (take your pick) children, but those types of institutions do have to answer to at least some sort of higher authority and adhere to a specified minimum set of standards — at least if they want to remain accredited, which most of them do — two things that many homeschooled parents do not have to do.

You chose to take/keep your child out of “the system.” Well, most colleges are part of “the system.” They will set expectations based on that system. If your child wants to be a part of that system, they’ll have to demonstrate they have met the standards set by that system. It’s great if they scored well on their SAT/ACT, but that’s only a part of the admissions process. Transcripts are another big part of it, and if the student (homeschooler or otherwise) doesn’t come from an accredited school/program, that student should expect that have to demonstrate that his/her abilities and knowledge are at least at a level that one would expect from an accredited program.

One of the costs of homeschooling is that sometimes you might be expected to provide a little extra proof for the grades you give your child, especially when that child is using those grades to apply to college. It’s not even a particularly high cost of homeschooling. Providing proof that your kid took the occasional standardized test isn’t a particularly difficult thing to do, either. Put on your big girl panties and deal.

It’s almost December and that means it’s time to start obsessively thinking about next school year’s curricula. Captain Science starts “middle school” next year (6th grade) and I really want to up the intensity and quality of some of his subject areas. We’re perfectly fine with continuing with what we’re already doing in some subjects, but in other areas, he definitely needs more/better/morebetter than he’s currently getting. This post is mainly me thinking out-loud (or thinking out-type) about what we might do.

PLATO Science has been passable, but it’s not rigorous enough for middle school and beyond. I’m strongly considering the Duke TIP Independent Learning class Foundations of Modern Biology: Genetics, Evolution, and Ethics for Captain Science’s science next year. It’s geared for grades 7-10, so it shouldn’t be too difficult for him by next school year. I think it will give him a tremendous foundation for understanding evolutionary science from multiple angles/perspectives. I love that it presents evolutionary science within a sociocultural context (TIP lists it as both a science and a social studies) and that it includes a literary element, through The Time Machine. I don’t totally love that the course is $55, the text book is $26, and the reader is $62, but that’s probably a small price to pay for a thorough introduction to biology. I’d probably pick up What Darwin Saw: The Journey That Changed the World as a read-aloud to include Tank (and Babypie, if she’s interested) and Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith for Captain Science. I was going to save this one until we got to that period of history, but I think the added contextual benefit of including this w/ his biology course makes it a well-timed choice.

I’m quite happy continuing with the Michael Clay Thompson language arts courses, but I’d like to integrate some literary criticism, some comparative literary analysis, and so forth. I think I’ll have to home-brew that one, just like I’ve done with history so far. I have an ever-growing list of things he needs to read. I’d also like to incorporate more creative writing into his language arts.

History…I have no idea! I really want something more thorough than we’re doing now. The History: The Definitive Visual Guide has been a nice spine, but we need something more thorough as we move forward in history. We’ll be covering the 1600s and onward, and I’d like our first pass of US history to be a strong one, providing a sound foundation for his later AP US History coursework. I think the only way to do that is through a lot, a lot, a lot of primary sources and well-written secondary sources. I have a feeling we’ll be relying on a “spine” text less and less as we move forward.

We love Life of Fred and I imagine we’ll continue with Life of Fred: Advanced Algrebra and Fred’s Home Companion: Advanced Algrebra. I do think that this Math and the Cosmos unit looks really neat, however. It might overlap nicely w/ the algebra skills he’s learning or give us something to work on as he wraps up Advanced Algebra.
Again, I think TIP does a great job of integrating multiple disciplines into one course.

Foreign language — definitely starting by next school year. Patchfire pointed me in the direction of Instant Immersion. At $50, compared to Rosetta Stone’s $200ish, I think it’ll be doable to have Captain Science take the Japanese course and for us to be able to afford a tutor at least once a week. I might see if there’s anyway we could go through my former high school’s Japanese language program for a teen tutor. Alternately, I’ll see who I can find either at the local university or through our network of Japanese speaking locals.

I’d love for Captain Science to be able to afford to take the online critical thinking course offered through Online G3, but I think that w/ the other stuff I want us to buy, the cost is prohibitive, especially since this is one elective of many we’d like to do. I will probably snag him the Critical Thinking textbook and develop a lesson plan for it.

I think we’ll continue with computer programming, but I don’t know where we’ll go once we’ve wrapped up KidCoder. Maybe check out the TeenCoder series? Maybe he’ll be ready for something much more robust by then.

It’s hard to project exactly what we’ll be ready to work on by then. As for Tank, he’ll have to have his own post, outlining K-garten plans, though I can’t really do those until I know where he’ll be in terms of reading and math readiness. Yikes. So much uncertainty, but so many fun options!

Today was Captain Science’s 10th birthday. I’m a little less emotional this year than I was on his last birthday, I think because 9 really felt like the “halfway to adulthood” point and that was a lot harder than the “double digits” thing. Still, it feels like each birthday comes faster. Each year passes a little more quickly than the previous year. Captain Science felt like a baby forever; Tank was a baby for a middling time; Babypie’s infancy was over in a breath. Now all three of them seem to get older exponentially, not in a proper one-year-at-a-time fashion.

They’re born, these tiny little creatures, and then you blink and boom, they’re sitting, crawling, walking, talking.

Blink. Toddlers.

Blink. School age.

Blink. Puberty is right around the corner.

I’m afraid to blink, because before I know it, they’ll be grown and gone.

Every blink is a tremendous leap of faith that you’re not screwing it up horribly. It’s a prayer that you and your child make it through to that next blink mostly intact, mostly sane, mostly happy, mostly moving forward. Parenting can seem like one of the poorest investment portfolios, because, if we do it right, we aren’t the ones who see the “return.” We don’t see the outcome, at least not long-term. I know that’s how it should be, but 18 years seems too short a time to adequately prepare your children for another 50, 60, 70+ more years of life. I think, as a parent, you wish you could see ahead to the end, make sure you’re doing the right things so that it will all turn out ok for your kids. Maybe if you knew what they’d come up against, you could better prepare them to face it. You do the best you can with what you’ve got, but you never really know if it’s good enough.

Am I really preparing Captain Science to be ready to face the world more or less on his own in only 7 or 8 more years? Am I teaching him enough? Instilling the right habits? Modeling the right kinds of friendships and other relationships? Loving him fiercely enough? He’s suddenly closer to being a man than he is to being that tiny baby I brought home 10 years ago.

How can any parent really be up to that task? How can we make them ready for adulthood? How can we make ourselves ready for their adulthoods? I guess we can’t–not really. We just have to try our damnedest to get them through one blink at a time.

Here is the third in my series of WAHM-made Christmas shopping suggestions, for those of you looking for The Big One. This list will help you find that one awesome gift, the central focus of your child’s holiday extravaganza, that “best thing ever” item that your child will be talking about for months, maybe years, to come. Of course, kids aren’t the only ones who enjoy opening that one special gift on Christmas, so I’ll be sure to include gifts for the big, big kids on your list, too!

You can read my previous list of gifts $25 and under and stocking stuffers to get an broader idea of what craftsparents have to offer your family this Christmas!

Standard Disclaimer: None of these recommendations are solicited in any way. This list is based solely on items I think are cute or that we have and love ourselves. All of the products are made by small businesses owned by mothers, father, and/or grandparents who are trying to generate an additional source of income. They’re all made by hand (ie. not mass produced) and often of “green” (eco-friendly) materials. Many WAHM-made items are one of a kind or limited production items, so if you love it, snag it while you can! Of course, many WAHMs will gladly make customs, so if you can’t get the item you want, don’t despair. Email them and find out if they offer customs options

• Imaginative play doesn’t require batteries. It doesn’t need flashing lights. All it takes is that perfect toy to help spark your child’s creativity and get that little imagination going. Help your little one imagine an exciting fishing adventure with this colorful fishing set from Bright Life Toys (fabric/felt, ages 3+, $45). Currently out of stock, but likely to be back in time for Christmas, is the popular campfire set (fabric, ages 3+, $35). Pair the fishing and camping sets with a mini pop-up tent and create the ultimate imaginary outdoors experience!
• Every child needs at least one well-made, beautiful doll. I think Waldorf dolls, with their all natural materials, wool stuffing (warms to your child’s body temperature), and simple faces make a wonderful companion for any child. They’re worth every penny, as each one is carefully handcrafted and unique. Here are a few of my favorites: 16″ Lea (ages 3+, $189) or 20″ Marina mermaid doll (all ages, $135) from Polar Bear Creations; 15.5″ Madeleine (no age listed, $175) or 18″ Phoebe (no age listed, $180) from Wool Creations (who also has custom slots available; 13″ Snuggles (age >3, $50) from Willow’s Nestings.
• For your little ones who love toys that move and go, a handcrafted wooden double decker car hauler or construction set ($38.50 each) from Grandpa John’s Wooden Toys could be just the ticket. These things are indestructible and absolutely lovely.
• If you have a husband, boyfriend, father, older son, or any other man in your life who uses a bladed razor to shave, spoil him this holiday says with this Sky shaving set or Embers shaving set (acrylester, chrome, nylon bristles, $94.00 each) from Thornbush Pens. Sets include razor, brush, and a stand to keep them in perfect position. Consider pairing them with one of the shaving soaps ($4/bar) from Country Soaps by Marlene and a green stoneware shaving mug ($28.50) from Virginia Wyoming Eclectic Pottery studio for a thoughtful gift.
• Got a crafty knitter mama on your gift list (or maybe you’re a crafty knitter mama and need to point someone in this direction)? A good project bag is a must for an on-the-go knitter — it prevents tangling, protects your projects from kids and pets, keeps you from losing all those pesky stitch markers, and just makes the whole shebang a lot more portable. For the sock knitter, this pink anime Kipster Knitting Project Bag ($34.50) from Zoe’s Bag Boutique is an adorable way to tote an in-progress pair. For larger projects, like longies or a child’s sweater, this pink flowers Chaco Project Bag ($27.50) from Chaco Creations can hold 2-4 cakes of yarn and all the tools you need. For full-sized projects (and the full-sized patterns that may come with them), Chaco Creations also offers the Santa Fe Backpack ($55), large enough to accommodate even the biggest projects. Fill that bag with pretty multi-colored stitch markers ($3/set of 5) from Paty’s Loveys, some festive Candy Cane yarn ($20/skein) from DiscoBabyKnits at Tiny Lady Cooperative, and a Namaste circular needle case ($20) from Nurturing Threads.
• The perfect gift comes in many colors. Pair all the part of this Rainbow After the Rain set (all ages) from Beneath the Rowan Tree and your little gift-receiver will get to enjoy all the colors of imagination. The set pieces are listed individually and include a wooden rainbow stacker ($12/five pieces), a set of 6 11″ “fairy silkies” (handkerchief sized playsilks) in a rainbow spectrum ($16.50/set of six), and a set of 6 35″ playsilks in a rainbow spectrum ($55/set of six).
• This Lotus Flower Family Garden Necklace (sterling silver, $48)from Anna Ourth Jewelry is a beautiful way for a mother to commemorate the births of her children. The lotus blossom pendant comes with three stamped name charms (additional charms can be added for $5 each) with birth stone crystals. A classic, lovely gift for any mother or grandmother.
• Maybe Santa is bringing your child or grandchild (or godchild or…any child!) a new play kitchen. What could be a more perfect gift for the budding chef than this Little Baker Cookie Set ($40) from Nana’s Toy Box. A festive gift box comes filled with a gingerbread apron, a wooden rolling pin, a sheet of pretend rolled dough and uncooked cookies, and four decorated play gingerbread cookies. A “delicious” treat!
• If your child is more interested in the pastoral than the pastries, this beautiful wooden farm set ($40/11 piece set) from Anne Moze All Wood Toys could fill up his/her barn! This hand-carved, hand-painted set includes a farmer and his wife, a milk cow, a goat, a rooster and hen, a goose and gosling, a sow and her piglet, and a little dog, too!

These are just a few samplings of the wonderful WAHM-made items available at sites like Hyena Cart and Etsy. Give yourself time to search and explore; you might find something even better than what I’ve listed here!

[This should have been posted yesterday, but see previous entry -- I still say it counts]

I’m thankful for many people in my life: my children, my husband, my parents, my grandparents, my brother and his fiance, my mother-in-law (and I’m also thankful she’s so sane), my friends, the homeschool community that has embraced my family. I could write a post every day for a month and not run out of people. I think that’s the mark of a truly blessed life. It does make it difficult to choose who to write about for my final “I’m Thankful for…” post.

Instead of writing something really profound about the amazing people in my life, I’m writing about a little incident that happened a couple days earlier and scared the ever-loving-PANTS off of me:

Officer Daddyman typically works late nights and I’m often in the bath or even in bed before he gets home. The other night, I was taking a hot bath, drinking a glass of wine, and reading Beatrice and Virgil, when Badge, our dopey but lovable beagle, let out two little “alert” barks. The “alert” bark sounds like “brorf” and is the noise Badge makes to let us know someone or something is walking down the street past our house. He alerts for passing people, other dogs, cats, etc. This isn’t unusual. After the alert barks, however, he did something he never does — he started making a low, rumbling growl.

The growl went on and on, got deeper and louder, and had a tone I have never, ever heard him use. I got out of the bath and had started drying off to see if maybe a cat or possum was on the porch, bothering him, when he started making the biggest, loudest, fiercest bark I’ve ever heard him make. He sounded like a Rottweiler, and a particularly large and ferocious one, at that. I popped my head out of the bath and saw him standing, body rigid and hackles raised…

Right in front of our front door.

I tossed on my clothes and made my way quietly down stairs. Badge had stopped barking and laid down in front of the door, facing it, still on alert. He stayed there for another five to ten minutes, before he finally relaxed with a “wuff” and went to lie down in his bed (the super plushy one that officer Daddyman bought him).

I don’t know what was out there, but I have no doubt that if Badge viewed it as a big enough threat to his family to go all Big Bad Dog on it, that it was a threat to his family. He was rewarded with several treats, many pats, and lots of “GOOD DOG!” praises. About a half-hour later, I heard coyote howls outside and it set him off again. I have no idea if it was a coyote in our driveway or something (or someone) on our porch that had him upset earlier, but whatever it was, the sound of the world’s most terrifying beagle made it scamper good and quick.

So while I have many wonderful people in my life, for that moment where I was home alone late at night with my kids, I was incredibly grateful for my doofy, goofy, dumb-even-for-a-beagle, but braver than all get out beagle-boy, Badge.

Yesterday, my unbroken NaBloPoMo streak was broken by the frustration that is “my internets is down!” Instead of writing about our beautiful Thanksgiving, which was as awesome as I’d have hoped, I’m going to celebrate this Black Friday by bitching about AT&T’s technical support and technology in general.

I’ll preface this by saying that my daddy is an executive director at AT&T. He has worked in the industry for about five million years, long before personal computers came about. That whole “Al Gore claims he invented the internet” thing? Well, my daddy actually built the internet, or the physical framework for it, anyway. When the first home computer came out, he brought one home, disassembled it, and put it back together…and made it faster. There is nothing my daddy cannot fix, computerly-speaking.

My daddy talked me through as much troubleshooting as possible over texting, then directed me to tech support. I called tech support and, after navigating an absurd assortment of menus, managed to get a woman who identified herself as [possibly] Eva. I wrote down “Eva” on my little note pad, in case I needed to know. I didn’t realize until a little later into the call that possibly-Eva had an accent of a type with which I am not familiar (she turned out to be in the Philippines) and she pronounced a few words oddly, so her name might not have actually been Eva at all. I’ll continue to call her “possibly-Eva” for the duration of this post.

Possibly-Eva didn’t seem to know very much about tech stuff for a tech support call center. She was clearly working from a script and any variation from that confused her. We spent an hour on the phone together before we got disconnected and she didn’t call back, despite asking for a call-back number in case we got disconnected. The high points of that hour included her insisting that “admin/password” were a very good username/password combination, because I won’t forget them, her coaching me through reconfiguring my router so poorly that my father had to spend an hour reconfiguring it again today, and her asking if I could “go upstairs and ask [my] dad for the router information” (to which I responded, “Um…he doesn’t live here, because I’m in my 30s, and this is my house.”). A service ticket was never opened for my issues.

My father had to call the support center himself to even get a service ticket. Let me remind you, he’s an executive director in this company, and they didn’t want to give him a ticket. He had to call again the next day to get a technician out to my house, at which point he was told it would be another four days before that would happen (and he did something he rarely does and which I never ask him to do, play the “do you know [x very high level manager over the technician's department] — well, he and I are peers and friends, and I’m happy to escalate this to him if I have to” card). A tech was at my house a few hours later, which is apparently a miracle. He was very nice, fixed some problems outside, fixed some problems inside, and when he left, the guys (my daddy and Officer Daddyman) turned out computers nothing would work. *headdesk*

They work on it for another half hour and can’t get it working. They go back over and work on it later and VOILA! It works.

We come home from my parents’ house and my laptop works on the newly reestablished network just fine. Daddyman turns on his computer and tries to connect and CRASH, there goes the network. Texted my daddy, rebooted the router, but nada. At my daddy’s instructions, turned off Daddyman’s computer, rebooted the router, and as you see, I am now online.

Beware: Officer Daddyman’s computer eats the internet! This is most definitely an Eff Off Friday.

I am thankful for Babypie, my only girlchild, my beautiful 20-month-old spitfire.

I have always wanted a daughter. I think it’s a testament to how close I am with my mother and how many wonderful memories I have of mother-daughter activities. I knew from the moment I got pregnant with Babypie that I was carrying the little girl I had hoped for; I felt it in my very soul. My pregnancy with Babypie was difficult — no complications, but constant exhaustion, nausea, no appetite. Her birth, even though my labor was only about 6 1/2 hours long (making it my second longest or second shortest, depending on how you look at it), was the hardest of my three children’s. Her right hand was up by her ear the whole time, a position we call “Babypie phoning it in” and which she still does when she is sleepy, and I had horrible back labor, my first experience with that particular hell. She finally came out, all 9lbs 4oz of her, and was so red and round and squishy that I dressed her in strawberry prints from that day forward, my little Strawberry Pie. Her nose was absolutely pug; she looked like Piglet from classic Winnie the Pooh, and in the video Daddyman took of us immediately afterbirth, I kept saying to her, completely thrilled, “You’re so funny-looking!”

Her nose is still a little pug, but she doesn’t look like Piglet any more.

I think, after Tank, God or the Universe sensed I needed an easy one. Babypie was the easiest baby. She was born sleeping at least 5-6 hours each night. She nursed like a champ. She was alert and interested in everyone, but not fussy or discontent. She enjoyed being held by all her family members, brothers included. She was smiling within moments of birth, usually in response to familiar voices. I had a hard recovery and it took me a while to feel “right” again, but Babypie was so sweet and snuggly and easy to care for that I didn’t have any additional stress or strain due to caring for her. She ate and grew and got ridiculously fat and developed three enormous dimples in her cheeks, plus a scrumptious cleft in her chin. I dressed her in lots of pink and strawberries, because she was all mine and I could do ridiculous things like that.

She kept on growing and growing. She started learning all manner of things in leaps and bounds. She didn’t talk quite as early as Captain Science, but was still saying a few words by seven months old. She sat a little later than Tank, crawled at roughly the same time, but learned to walk at nine months old, thanks to Patchfire’s daughter, Purple Child, who is (also an early walker) four months older and Babypie’s best friend. Babypie would pull up on PC and “cruise” along with her while she walked. Thanks, PC! I was not at all prepared for a baby of that size to be walking around, but Babypie is her own person and doesn’t really care if one is prepared for her accomplishments or not. She kept on walking, kept on talking, and her vocabulary expanded so quickly that I eventually stopped keeping track of all her words — she simply said too much.

One thing about Babypie: Babypie is fierce. A former friend once made a snide remark about certain people not realizing their children look mean in pictures. It wasn’t hard to figure out who she was talking about — I don’t think we had a picture of Babypie for months where she didn’t look like she was baring her teeth and possibly about to bite someone. It wasn’t hostile, though. Her smile was just as fierce as the rest of her. Her big white teeth and rather broad mouth made her huge smile into something of a savage smile. Nothing stops her. Nothing slows her down. No one is more determined than my Babypie. She’ll take a tumble and keep going. She can do anything the boys can do, whether she can actually do it or not. Her battle cry is, “And ME!”

She’s also a snuggler and loves her Mama (and especially her ninnies). One of her favorite people in this world is her great-great-Aunt Elaine. She loves going to visit Nana and Papa. She adores her brothers and her Daddy. We went through a bad couple of weeks where she refused to go to bed until Officer Daddyman was home from work, meaning midnight or later. She “calls” her Daddy on her play cell phone and has long conversation with him. She gives him commands that he usually follows. Babypie is the boss of everyone. She was born to be the boss of everyone and she doesn’t understand why everyone can’t understand that. “Yesh!” and “No!” are staples in her vocabulary, because they are words of command/direction. Despite her bossy fierceness, she’s also the prissiest little thing, with this funny little prance-walk-strut that she does when she’s feeling full of herself or wearing her pink princess dress with the giant fairy wings. She’ll run around in her fairy dress with a sword in one hand, a car in the other, and her water bottle and her baby doll stuffed down the front of her shirt. That’s just how Babypie rolls.

Nothing about this fierce girl has been a disappointment. She’s a delight and a joy nearly every moment of the day. Sure, she’ll run me ragged and exhausted, but she’s so funny and entertaining while she’s doing it, I hardly notice how tired I am until we both drop. She has the best sense of humor, tells little baby jokes, makes up funny stories (sometimes about Beasts that poop in her pants), wants to be involved with everything we’re doing. No baby could be more fun than Babypie. She is the perfect compliment to her brothers. They’re a perfect unit of three, even when they fuss and fight and squabble. She brought something to the dynamic that can’t be replaced. She’s Captain Science’s ally, Tank’s sometime-nemesis, and they are both her heroes.

She’s the daughter I always longer for and more, my amazing number three, my boisterous yet dainty Strawberry Girl. I am so grateful for the opportunity to be the mother of this child.

All my babies — I love them equally and in their own special ways. None of them is like the other, but they are all treasures to me. I have never done anything as meaningful and rewarding as being their mother. I can’t imagine I ever will do anything better than that.

I am thankful for Tank, my 4.5 year old boy made of one part sugar, one part sass, one part gunpowder, and one part kinetic energy.

Five and a half years after Captain Science was born, Tank rocketed into our family…and I do mean rocketed. I had just enough time between pregnancies to completely forget what to expect, which is good, because Tank’s was completely different from Captain Science’s. I had it so easy — almost no sickness, plenty of energy, no swelling, and all the weight gain going straight to my belly — that I think I was lulled into a false sense of security. I was certainly not prepared for Tank’s explosive entrance into the world. Good thing I was planning on a homebirth, because I never would have made it anywhere else! I went from “oh, I might be in labor” to Tank’s head popping out in its entirety as my water broke. Rocket man from the beginning, he’s lucky his Nana was able to baseball slide and catch him before he took flight.

No, he hasn’t slowed down since.

My Tank was not an easy baby. He took right to nursing, which as a relief, but the sleeping thing was another story. At a month old, he turned into the shrieking colic monster. At around four months old, he decided he could only be nursed lying down; I had to trick him by latching him on side-lying and then sitting up. I don’t think he was put down for more than a few minutes until he was nine months old. He was a funny baby with a huge, gap-toothed smile, but he also had a serious furrowing brow, which earned him the nickname “Dubious D.”

If Captain Science taught me flexibility, Tank taught me patience. Everything was on his time table and his time table was completely different from what Captain Science’s had been. He sat unassisted well at 3 1/2 months, crawled by around 5 months, but didn’t walk until 13 months old…at which point he took off running. He said just enough words by his second birthday for it to be “enough” words, then his vocabulary exploded overnight. He decided to use the potty at 19 months old, changed his mind after a week, then completely potty trained again at 22 months (this time, thankfully, for good). He demonstrated excellent gross and fine motor skills from an early age, draws beautiful and intricate pictures with an excellent sense of color, but still has only the vaguest interest in learning to read (though he really loves knowing how words are spelled). For Tank, the parts are so much more interesting than the whole.

Sometimes I think Tank is my maternal grandfather reincarnated. He has the same booming Ballard voice, the same dark good looks, the same roguish grin (often coupled with a “I know what I’m getting away with” wink), the same BIG stage-like presence. He’s not a large kid — tall enough, but with a slight build that makes him appear smaller than he actually is. I try to remind myself that my hoss of a younger brother (the original Tank, btw — Tank’s nickname is technically Tank Junior) started out that way, too, and could pick me up and carry me around by 14. Tank resembles his uncle quite a bit. He also looks a heckuvalot like Officer Daddyman, especially his mouth and those brows.

Tank wakes up early and hits the ground running. He goes non-stop until bed time, when it’s a struggle to get him to stay in bed long enough to actually fall asleep. Tank wakes up during the night to demand repositioning of his blankets, the hall light turned on, a drink of water, or an answer to any of a number of odd questions. Nothing in the world can convince him that 3am is a less-than-ideal time to ask about what ants eat or whether or not ghosts have their own planet (and what it looks like, and what they do there, and how we get there). He is full of questions, day and night, and he expects a serious and thorough answer. He’s highly observant, especially about the number/volume of things/people and their social relationships. From an early age, he could sort items into perfect even piles for people to share. He asks insightful questions about why people act how they do.

One of Tank’s greatest ambitions in life is to turn “hive” and “pay hootball.” He threw himself into soccer this year with abandon. He loves homeschool ice skating day, and even though he falls down, he gets right back up, because something as insignificant as a little gravity can’t stop him. He will run around the house when he gets excited until everyone watching him gets dizzy. He loves riding his bike. He will play hard until forced to stop. I can’t stop him from leaping onto and off of things, turning things over, dumping things out, scaling the cabinets to find a hidden piece of Halloween candy. He talks non-stop, even though most people can’t understand a word he’s saying. He is movement and energy in a boy shape. Sometimes he’s selectively deaf (two hearing tests have confirmed that any hearing problems he has are selective) and exceptionally naughty. Sometimes he’s the sweetest boy, wanting to sit in my lap and cuddle me.

Last year, when Captain Science start homeschooling, Tank wanted to badly to stay home with us. He enjoyed the little preschool he attended for a few days a week, with his best friend Dimhibbins, but what he really wanted was to be here with us. More than anything else, Tank loves us. More than anyone else, Tank adores and wants to be like Captain Science — so of course, he torments and annoys him endlessly. Tank waffles between devouring workbooks and snubbing anything resembling curriculum. He’s a Gemini, though, so duality is his way. He keeps me on my toes, which is something I probably needed to get better at, anyway.

He’s a delight and a joy, a handful and then some, a bull in a china shop, a little artist (sometimes of walls and his body, too), and an unbroken spirit. I wouldn’t trade him for anything else in the world, and I am so grateful for him.

I didn’t go all out and do a full month of thanks, but I think the days leading up to Thanksgiving are a good time to express my gratitude for some of the most awesome people in my life: my three children.

I am thankful for Captain Science, who is turning 10 on Sunday. Double-digits, as he has pointed out several times in the last few weeks. That’s a Big Damn Deal(tm).

My pregnancy with Captain Science took me by surprise and I wasn’t quite prepared to be a mom at 21. Luckily, after a loooong labor and a hard first few weeks, we got it together pretty quickly. I spent the first 4.5 years of his life as his only parent–my ex-husband left when Captain S. was 7 months old and his infrequent visits petered out to nothing and then into a request to give up parental rights–with the help of my own parents, until I remarried and Officer Daddyman adopted him.

Captain Science was a pretty easy baby, incredibly (almost frighteningly) quick to learn. I could usually reason with him, which (I learned w/ child #2) isn’t all that typical. When he was really set on something being a certain way, though, he dug in his heels and nothing could convince him otherwise. He spoiled me in the “parent as teacher” department, saying his first two words by six months (Mama and “NO!”, used correctly), learning his upper and lower case letters by 18 months, reading simple words by two, and able to read most of the young reader books in the house by three. He potty trained completely in two days. He did so well in his pre-K that his teachers encouraged me to put him somewhere more challenging, because, “He already know everything we teach.” He was always a little gentleman, introducing himself politely with a firm handshake. He loves his “women,” as he collectively referred to me, my mother, my grandmother, and my great-grandmother — yes, he was lucky enough to spend his first three years of life as the sole member of the 5th generation of five living generation.

When he got older and went to first a Montessori and then public school, things got harder for him. His nature was too sweet to understand the bullying nature of children under poor adult supervision…or the bullying nature of petty adults in positions of power. He was on an asthma-maintenance medication for several years that contributed to the anxiety and a growing depression; we immediately took him off the meds when we figured it out. He skipped a grade and could have skipped another, academically, but emotionally, he was still a little boy, not ready for the meanness he encountered. He continued to perform well in school, but he became withdrawn and unhappy. My happy and outgoing boy was slowly becoming sullen and introverted. We put him in therapy, only to discover that the terrible social dynamics at school were his only real source of unhappiness. Home was where he felt secure. We made the decision to start homeschooling.

Oh, my Captain Science! I never would have taken that leap if he weren’t exactly the kind of boy he is. I couldn’t let the public school system systematically destroy all his beautiful quirks and uniqueness. He needed more security and more academic challenge. It scared me to death to consider it, because it was big change, and I feared change, but Captain Science has been challenging my preference for stasis and pushing my beyond my boundaries since he got here. For him, I could do anything.

Now, a year and a half later, we’re so much happier. Though we have frustrating days, homeschooling has brought us closer and made both of us lightyears happier. I enjoy him. Captain Science is a remarkable boy, growing into an equally remarkable young man. He has his moments of moodiness, when I jokingly call him “Book 5 Harry Potter” (CAPSLOCK HARRY!!!) and moments of selflessness, like how he cares for his younger sister. He loves Legos and computers and science and reading…always, always reading. He can’t sit down at the table without reading the cracker box or pass by my desk without picking up any flier or magazine. He loves language, both written and spoken, and plays with it well. He writes creatively far above his age.

He is a truly delightful boy and I am so grateful that he came into my life.

He also just came over here and said, “What’s a parasite?” What? “Something you see in Paris.”

That’s my boy.

While I don’t believe in a God that is particularly meddlesome, I do believe that God or the Universe sometimes sends a you a message when you need to hear it.

Just now, an affirmation from Louise L. Hay appeared at the top of my Facebook news feed: ‎”I am safe; it’s only change.”

I’ve never done well with change. As a child, I dragged my heels over anything new. I liked to wear the same things, eat the same things, do the same things in the same way at the same time. I have ever been a creature of routine bordering precariously on a creature of habit. New things are scary.

Having children has helped someone with the fear of change, because you have to be adaptable when you have children, but I am still resistant to it when it is presented to me. Daddyman jokes (accurately) that he knows I’ll always put up a huge fuss about new things when I find find out about them. I stomp my feet and insist I won’t go along with it, but when it comes down to the actual time of doing, I’ve usually adjusted to the idea and am able to handle it just fine.

The message from Louise Hay reminded me that I don’t really need that have that period of resistance. New may be scary, but scary doesn’t always mean bad. Reading that affirmation gave me a warm, safe feeling in my chest. It was exactly what I needed to see today; not because any change is looming on the horizon, but because it could be and I’ll have to deal with it when it comes. Won’t it be less exhausting if I didn’t have to freak out about it? Wouldn’t I be happier if anticipating the very potential for change didn’t send my heart racing and my head pounding? I think I would be.

I’m going to post this affirmation on my desk somewhere, so that the next time something new comes up, I have that little reminder that the world isn’t ending, the poles aren’t shifting, and I’m not falling into an abyss. It’s only change, and we’re always changing.