a beautiful mess

We had endless days of sunshine in April, and I spent most of my extra time in the garden.  Digging new ground takes quite a bit of work.  With only a shovel and a hoe it is slow, back-breaking work.  Square meter by square meter.

We removed the grass and uncovered rusty nails the size of a baby's arm, tin foil, old plastic pots, and stonework.  We pulled up nettle roots and an army of cockchafer grubs.  We dug up kitchenware, half-burnt logs, and the remains of a forgotten compost heap.  We watered the soil with our sweat by day, and discovered our bodies awash with a multitude of harvest mite and midge bites by night.

We also cleaned the greenhouse, overrun with moss and algae from years of disuse.   Without an outside tap, this meant lugging bowl after bowl of hot water and scrub brushes from the kitchen sink down the hill to where our greenhouse rests near the back garden.  Once the sun could shine through the streaked glass, we started on the soil.  We discovered that soil that hasn't seen rain for several years actually repels water.

Tucked around the side of the greenhouse we found a large rain barrel.  It was full to the brim with a thick layer of slime on top and smelled strongly of algae and something I couldn't put my finger on.   Next to the barrel was a coiled up hose, and we used it to siphon some of the water out.  The pungent smell only intensified, so we tipped the barrel over and let its contents run down into the small apple orchard.  In the bottom of the barrel remained the carcass of a large rat.  What wasn't already decomposed was still bloated.

We lugged more water from the kitchen faucet.  More buckets than we could count.  We dug in large amounts of compost, and still the rising dust choked my lungs.  It wasn't perfect, but we planted.  Slowly at first.  A few purchased starts, some seeds.  We cleaned off the potting table and began in earnest, sorting seeds, checking the calendar for optimal planting days, filling our pots, watering, and waiting.  Slowly, ever slowly, things started to grow-- both things we planted and seeds that had been waiting in that soil for years.

And naturally, we weeded, both inside and out.  We pulled out dandelions and couch grass, horsetail and bindweed.  And then we pulled out an inordinate number of weeds we could not name.  The more we weeded, the more weeds seemed to grow.  Gardening is like that.  Initial effort leads to the need for continued effort.  It is never finished.  That's not the nature of gardening.

But after weeks of steady work, we have something to show for the effort.  We have a garden teaming with both vegetable plants and weeds.  Though the forces of nature are forever trying to enclose itself back upon our work, we now have spinach, salad greens and arugula ready for harvesting.

Despite the fact that it was a heck of a lot of work, it still doesn't look like much.  I could get down and capture the magnificence of individual plants, particles of soil where the weeds have been cleverly pinched out.  I could find the right angle and photoshop around the edges so you can't see the dying cucumbers or the teeming piles of rubbish in the neighbor's yard.  I could show you the overflowing colander of freshly washed spinach leaves, the bright arugula pesto, or the delicate ornamental salad arranged on our best plate with just a trickle of mustard-laced balsamic and fresh mint.

As bloggers, we do that all the time.  We aim to inspire through minutiae, through cleverly focused shots of our food, our children, our clothes, and yes, even our gardens.  Even though the big picture tells a similar story, we can't see it.  When we pull back our focus, the line between extraordinary and ordinary gets blurred, and suddenly we are drowning in the mundane everydayness of it all.  We are small.  Our accomplishments are dwarfed by the lens, so that we appear puny in our normalcy, by the realness of it all.  And we are not anything, if not extraordinary.

I just don't have the energy lately to appear extraordinary, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

With the lens pulled back, this is my garden.

As you can see, it's far from perfect.  It's actually somewhat of a mess.  It's a beautiful mess, though.  A mess with a history, wrought by countless hours of sweat and tears.  A mess with promise, possibility, and potential.

Oh, how it reminds me of homeschooling.

Life and butterflies

Sorry to have disappeared for a bit.  Our last two months were filled with a lot of things-- travel, snow, holidays, illnesses, celebrations, and of course homeschooling.  I also finally finished painting all the wooden furniture as a protection against future mold.  While I prefer the color of natural wood, I will admit that I am really liking the bright new colors.  Lime green and turquoise make me smile.

In my last post I mentioned a possible move on the horizon.  In the end, we decided not to take the job offer up north.  Making decisions about our future is often agonizing-- weighing all the pros and cons, ifs and whats.  I often feel like we're living in some alternate retelling of the Grimm's tale The Fisherman and His Wife as we weigh things like cost of living, location, homeschooling environments, and lovelier views over the landscape.  And where does it all stop?

I'm not going to deny that, like the fisherman's wife, I have often wished I could control the rising sun.  However, I don't think this makes me any different from the other people on this rainy island.  At the end of winter we're all a bit sullen and desperate for warm sunshine.

As luck would have it, these early days of March have been quite sunny.  The kids and I are loving sitting in the sunshine every morning.  It's a bit blinding at times, but I'm not complaining.  I feel like a bear unfurling from her wintery sleep.  It's amazing how a few days without clouds can be so rejuvenating.

Inside this den, my days have been so busy.  Homeschooling my three has definitely become more than a full-time job.  I know that others manage to homeschool even more children than I have and still find time to blog, but for the life of me I can't figure out how they do it.  I have some theories (mostly involving gremlins), but suffice it to say that I wish I had more time in the day to share the wonderful things that are happening over here.  These children continually leave me awestruck by their growing minds and abilities.

We've also taken a couple of field trips with the not-quite-local homeschooling group.  One of which was to the little butterfly house in Stratford-upon-Avon.  I'm not sure what I loved more-- seeing all the amazing butterflies or being so warm that I had to take off my sweater.  It was a nice change!  The last time that happened we were in Italy.

This is the life!

Speaking of change, there is more of that afoot.  I'm reminded of a card my mother-in-law gave me while we were sorting and packing for our move to Switzerland five years ago.  It said, "If nothing ever changed, there would be no butterflies." --Our lives are so full of transitions, I think of that card fairly often.

Einstein recently received some grant funding that necessitates a temporary move to Italy for some unknown quantity of time this summer, and he has also been invited to apply and subsequently interview for another job-- this time on the mainland.  It's almost funny.

All of these transitions definitely make me think about butterflies-- do they know what's happening when they closet themselves up?  Are they cognizant of their own form metamorphosing... of what their future holds?

I watched some of them emerge bleary-eyed and soggy from their chrysalises, and they didn't quite seem to have it all together.  I can relate to that.  Some of them found a perch where they could drip dry, but some of them didn't.  They fluttered about in a wild panic, but were weighed down by their damp wings.  They hit the stone walkways with an inaudible whack and just lay there stunned by their own predicament.  One minute they are a fat caterpillar, the next minute they're stewing in their own soup.  And next thing they know? They are airborne into a completely different creature. What am I?  Where am I?  What has happened to me?

Again, I can relate.  Moving overseas with children has some stinging similarities.  So I hung around the chrysalis cage for awhile and gingerly picked up my fallen comrades.  Not all of them were going to make it, but a few of them gave it another try.  They latched onto a branch and hung there in stunned silence, feeling the heat warm the last few drops of soup from their bright wings.

My own wings have finally dried out after this last move, and it definitely shows.  We have been getting a ton of homeschooling done lately-- meaningful, artistic work that leaves me speechless at times.  In our enthusiasm we are making huge progress.  It's the kind of progress one can only make in times of complete stability.  Who knows how long that will last around here, so we're making the most of it...

Kind of like these cute ants.  Steadily onwards.

Eating our dragons

Lately the air has turned chill, and the last few days the wind has been blowing a bit wild.  There is a definite bite to it.

The cats picked up on the seasonal change immediately.  They've been running wildly through the garden and bushes, up and down the trees, and throughout the house in the middle of the night.  They've been climbing up the bookshelves, knocking things off, and chasing each other across our beds while we sleep.  When they woke me that first night, I wondered what had gotten into them.  But the next day it was obvious to everyone.

The wind has gotten inside them.

This same wind, the one that takes gentle cats and turns them into demons possessed, seems to have also gotten into my children.  Not one of them could sit still the last few days.  They were looking for reasons to argue with each other, with me, even with themselves.  I was bewildered by their change in behavior until I looked at the calendar and realized that it was the end of September already.

The wind, the sudden bite in the air, Michaelmas... it all adds up.


After much dragon-like ado this week, Friday we settled back down to our normal routines.  Then in the afternoon I told them a story, and we made dragon bread.  Everyone worked with such care and creativity on their breads, shaping their dragons just so.  I think these are the loveliest dragons yet-- so different from each other.

And that's how it should be.  We each have our own dragons, our own short-comings, our own temperaments.  And when they get the best of us, we have to slay them.  Only then can our true selves, our golden goodness shine through.

The first picture below shows all five dragons, while the second picture shows just the kids' dragons.  The last picture is after baking.

The main lesson work this week was perfect for Michaelmas.  I wish I could say I planned it that way, but it was all sheer coincidence.  Sunburst learned about the reformation and how Martin Luther stood up to the wicked pope Leo X.  Moonshine finished the tale of the Ramayana and Rama's fight against Ravana and his league of demon warriors-- very much like dragons themselves.  Kitty Bill's story was much more mild.  He heard the story of Mother Holle, a perfect example of two types of behavior.  I love that the second sister started out with good intentions-- I will work hard!  But even by the second day those intentions were overcome by her own laziness.  Who can't relate to that?!

Kitty Bill helped me make the golden rice, a regular tradition for Michaelmas-- rice cooked with turmeric. With Einstein's help in the kitchen, Moonshine treated us to a mesmerizing Indian-themed meal of Chana Masala and a variation of Korma that she called Hanuman's Delight.  One taste and we could all see that it was aptly named; it was so delicious!

Now that the weather has had a few days to work within our spirits, the cats seem to be quieting down.  I hope the children aren't too far behind.

The letter "P" and the number 15

Today's post is brought to you by the letter "P" and the number 15.

I didn't quite tell the entire story about our "first day of school" ceremony.  From my post the other day it sounded really magical and amazing, didn't it?  It was all that, I assure you, but real life is never all sweetness and rainbows.

The whole story is something quite different.  Somewhere between the sweetness and the rainbow we had a bit of chaos.  We went directly from singing to shrill screaming, crying, and panicked voices.  There was a rush of adrenaline, the scattering of children, and the sucking in of breath.

Sounds pretty curious, doesn't it?

It was all the cat's fault.  Remember how he was bringing frogs into the house?  This past weekend he figured out how to catch birds, and he went a bit crazy.  Three birds in two days.  On Sunday he brought a baby wood pigeon to the back door and left it in a pool of its own liquid.  Not nice.  Later that afternoon he snared a European robin.  We were not happy with him, but not surprised either when he darted through the middle of our rainbow ceremony with a juvenile wood pigeon in his clutches.

Darn cat.  Sunburst ran after him screaming at the top of her lungs and waving her arms wildly.  The other two children followed suit.  And somehow they managed to separate both bird and cat, and Sunburst hauled the cat off to lock him in the house.

The poor bird! The cat managed to rip out all of its tail feathers and a good portion of its flight feathers.  The good news is that it was alive and it could walk.  We watched it hobble off and hide under the evergreen, surely trying to recover from the shock of almost being eaten by a ferocious beast.  We gave it some space and returned to our ceremony, a rainbow after the storm.  When we were finished, the bird was gone.

We looked and looked, but couldn't find it.  We hoped it was safe-- what else could we do?  We went inside and carried on with our day, keeping both cats locked inside for good measure.  We looked again throughout the day, but since there was no sign of the pigeon, we attached several large Christmas bells to the cats' collars and let them back outside.

With giant bells, the cats are absolutely pathetic.  The entire neighborhood can hear them coming.  They can barely manage to catch bugs, let alone birds.  That is until yesterday, when our male cat finally found the one bird he could catch-- the one he already rendered flightless.  He darted by the kids with the same wood pigeon as before in his mouth.  This time we cornered the bird and caged it.   I read that it takes anywhere from three to six weeks to regrow tail feathers, maybe even longer.  If the bird lives that long, then hooray.  I'm skeptical, but I'm not sure if we have any other options.  At least it's eating.  For now.

So the letter P is for.... Pigeon.  Of course it is.  Oddly, the first two letters Kitty Bill drew this week were W and P.  Wood Pigeon?!  Talk about a weird coincidence.

The other strange coincidence is that Einstein and I are celebrating our fifteenth wedding anniversary this week.  Fifteen years!  And it all started with a pigeon-- more specifically, a rock pigeon.  We were sitting at an outdoor cafe, completely blind to each other's existence, when a friendly pigeon hopped up on Einstein's table and stole the straw from his iced coffee.  He sat there playing tug-o-war with this pigeon, and I found the entire thing hilarious.  He heard my laughter and turned, smiling at me, and we were instantly smitten.

We actually celebrate Pigeon Day every year, and it falls during our wedding anniversary week.  Only this year we have an actual pigeon.  It's a little worse for wear, but it's still a pigeon.  As you can see, we have no choice but to try to save it.

After fifteen years of marriage, Einstein and I look a little worse for wear, too.  No marriage is perfect, but most of the time it feels pretty close to that.  Like pigeons, who mate for life, we're in it for the long haul.  Until we're bald and flightless... and then some.

So the letter "P" and the number 15... and I suppose "W" deserves some credit, too.  Wedding anniversary.  Wacky week.  And when the post is delivered in the morning, I'm sure I'll have to answer the question, "Why on earth is there a pigeon in your foyer?"

Homeschooling and synesthesia

This morning I came across a new study in the journal PLoS One from researchers at the University of Amsterdam that involves creating synesthesia in non-synesthetes.  After a lengthy chat with Einstein, my resident cognitive scientist, I can see now why it's important work; one result, one small crack in the pavement, leads to others.  But as a homeschooling mother of a synesthete, my initial reaction was bewilderment.  Why would you want to turn anyone into a synesthete?  In my opinion, navigating such a thick world of sensory impressions makes everything harder.  Everything.

And then I realized that I've never actually talked about synesthesia in this space.  Not even once, although my homeschooling thoughts have been consumed by it for a couple of years now.  The more I learn about it, the more there is to learn.  And the longer I homeschool, the more I realize how every part of the child comes into play in education, and nothing can be taken for granted or overlooked.  Especially when it comes to the senses.

Moonshine, my "middlest child" as she calls herself, is a synethete.

In simplest terms, this means that when she senses one thing in the world, she has a strong and  involuntary additional sense perception.  Not exactly simple, is it?  Synesthesia itself is very ill-defined.  The range of cross-sensory possibilities is too large to fully identify and not always consistent between synesthetes.  According to the wikipedia entry for synesthesia, there are so far over 60 reported synesthetic relationships.  Who knows how many forms there truly are and to what effect any of them have on a synesthete's abilities to navigate through the world.  I suppose that's what science is trying to figure out.

As a homeschooling mother of a synesthete, I'm trying to figure out the same thing.  Now that we've identified Moonshine's synesthetic tendencies, what part do they play in her education?  Are they a hindrance?  And if so, how can we turn them into a benefit?

Like the researchers, my first task was to try to understand the parameters.  This wasn't easy.  I'm not sure that I still understand the scope of Moonshine's cross-sense perceptions, but the more common ones I have managed to identify.

For example, Moonshine senses colors with letters and numbers.  They have a name for this form-- grapheme-color synesthesia.  For example, if you asked Moonshine the colors of the alphabet, as I did, she would tell you that the alphabet looks like this:

Or actually, she would argue that the color palette I used isn't quite right--the hue differences are inadequately represented and some of the color combinations I came up with (ie. dark purple) hardly come close.  But overlooking the palette shortcomings, this is how Moonshine senses the alphabet.  We've quizzed her randomly over a two-year period, and it's always the same, without fail.

She senses numbers in color, too.

The list goes on, and again, the hues aren't perfect representations.  Luckily, she's forgiving and understands the palette limitations of the app I was using to recreate them.

To me, it all seems fairly random.  (While G is green, O isn't orange, P isn't purple, R isn't red, and B isn't blue.  The numbers seem random as well, until you get to double digits, and then a pattern seems to emerge.  The teens seem to take on the color of the second number.  Beyond that, they appear multi-colored, with the first color dominating the number, and yet not overpowering the other color(s) completely.)  But to Moonshine, and other synesthetes, there is nothing random about it.  This color perception is a "truth" that they feel to their very core.  And of course, it's made even more interesting because while two synesthetes might agree on a few letter/color perceptions, no two will agree on all of them.  And to take it a step further, some synesthetes actually see the colors when they are reading, while others only sense them inwardly.

Now, if you're an educator, perhaps you have already begun to recognize how this sense perception might lead to difficulties, especially when it comes to reading or mathematics, and especially for those synesthetes who actually see the letters and numbers in color when they read.  It might not make a whole lot of sense to synesthetes when the sum of two yellow numbers is actually a blue number.  You can understand how the sense perception might dominate the equation, especially when combined with another form of synesthesia called personification.

In personification, letters, numbers, colors themselves, months, days, even toilets might elicit a sense of personality and gender.  For Moonshine, this is one of her truths that we face on a daily basis.  Almost everything is imbued with personality, gender, and color.  It's fascinating and mystifying and completely overwhelming at times.

In my recent attempts to understand and explore this personification sense, I took notes.

All letters have gender, though some of them are a bit androgynous.

Although not a complete list, all numbers also have gender.  For Moonshine, there is definitely a pattern to it when you get to double digits.  The teens go by the gender of the second digit, while the 30's and up go by the gender of the first digit. The 20's are girls, even though 2 is a boy.  Go figure.

Both letters and numbers have personalities as well.  And again, these personality perceptions are automatic and intense-- they're nothing short of "truths" for synesthetes.  I asked Moonshine to tell me about the ones that were most interesting.  Here's what she told me.

This is where it gets a little more confusing.  I had to ask a lot of questions to fully understand what was going on here.  In the first row, E and F love each other.  Their relationship had stumped Moonshine for years until she discovered that some boys marry other boys, and then the relationship between E and F made perfect sense to her.  They love each other as if they were married-- even if I did draw the heart in the wrong color (apparently hearts are red and they are not outlined in black).

In the second row, it's clear that L and K are enemies.  Moonshine had me write the gender names in their correct colors.  Boys are blue, girls are green.  Apparently lowercase L is a girl, which takes us back to the androgynous business. You can also see that the symbols (+, =) have color representations. 

The third row is interesting because both 3 and 13 are horrible, and while both numbers are green, horrible is a yellow word.  While letters have independent colors, words tend to take on the dominant color-- it's almost like a math equation of sorts.  To me, it's something I have to go and add up-- 3 yellows, 3 greens, 1 light blue, 1 black-- uh, okay, maybe yellow dominates because it starts with a yellow?  But to Moonshine, it's automatic.  She doesn't stop and count-- she senses the word as yellow without thinking. The drawing of Z is also fascinating, because the personality changes with the angle of the top line.  This is not something I would have ever thought about had she not pointed it out to me.  Because we're doing Waldorf education at home, it brings up so many questions I have about sense perceptions of different form drawings.

Just as letters and numbers elicit colors and personalities, so do months.

And days of the week.

And colors.  Moonshine senses the rainbow, for example, like this:

Fascinating, no?  I noted an inconsistency where Moonshine told me that Purple (a 2yo girl) is the youngest, but then informed me in the next breath that Yellow is a baby.  Maybe you're wondering about that, too.  In any case, I'm told that Purple is the youngest child-- and babies don't really count in that ranking system.  Babies are babies.

But what about toilets?  I told you that some synesthetes perceive personification with everything.  And by everything, I meant just that.

My drawing of the large and small wine glasses isn't so great, but I think you get the general idea.  And if all of that wasn't fascinating enough, food and soap also have gender and personalities.

Peas are mean girls?!! It is enough to make my head spin at times.  And if everything is imbued with sense perceptions for Moonshine, including music, what do you think that does to her learning?

There is an effect for sure.  She has always been dreamy, but now I can't help but wonder how much of that is her navigating these automatic sense perceptions.  In my mind, it must be a noisy sea of color that she has to wade through whenever she's faced with anything-- from words she reads or ones I read to her, to math problems, to music and foreign language (in which words present in different colors than in English), to spelling... it's endless.  And how much of that time is spent trying to make peace with things in the wrong color?

She points them out to me in the world.  Just yesterday we were shopping for clothes, and Moonshine remarked that the sizes (numbers) were color-coded in the wrong colors.  And when something is represented in the correct color, it's almost a relief to her.  When she tells me about it, it's as if her whole body relaxes, and she often wonders aloud, "How did they know to make it green or yellow or...?"

In hindsight, this explains so much about how Moonshine experiences the world-- why she fell apart at age two when we changed the color of our roof; why two seemingly identical purple balloons are very different; and why having to change her shirt in the middle of the day is a shock to the system.  

For Moonshine's synesthesia, this is just the tip of the iceberg.  There is still more to come.

Of mould and mayhem

If it's not one thing, it's always another.

We have moved countless times over the last few years, and the above statement seems to hold true for each one of them.  Every move is completely different, and yet each one is riddled with some kind of mayhem or another.  It doesn't matter where we move to or how much planning we've put in.  Something always manages to go completely berserk.

Like the year the car transmission died and we were stuck in a hotel for an entire week on the outskirts of El Paso.  Or the year we had to stop every five miles because the van overheated.  Or the time the computer in our car melted, we crashed into a hotel canopy, and I had the police called on me for not accepting ice cream from a strange, hairy man with a large dog in a deserted park. Seriously.

Traveling always has its ups and downs, but after we arrive things usually calm down.  Not always.  The same year our car's computer melted, we had no transportation and our temporary accommodation had surreptitiously been taken over by someone's mother-in-law.  But usually, once we get into a place to live and begin unpacking, things begin to settle down fairly quickly.  Not this time though.  This move takes the cake.

After Stratford, the hotels were all booked so we spent a week on the floor of another professor's vacant rental apartment before moving into our new house.  The first week was dedicated to unpacking, and except for a lack of cupboards, it was going fine.  But then the trouble started.  One morning I went to open the curtains in the kids' bedroom and discovered mould growing up from the baseboards across an entire wall.  We had been in the house less than two weeks, and despite cracking windows to air out their room, there was mould.  I quickly pulled their wooden dollhouse and other toys out of this alcove and freaked out a little bit, before I went back in armed with bleach.

Over the next week, we found mould growing in every room-- in windowsills, doorjambs, on ceilings, on baseboards, behind furniture, mirrors, and creeping up my nature table and homeschooling bookshelves.  The bottom of my bookshelves held all of our loveliest picture books-- Beskow, Von Olfers, Ott-Heidmann... and seagrass baskets filled with games, math manipulatives, and early readers.  Those baskets were completely saturated with mould.  I ended up tossing quite a bit and saving what I could.  It was heartbreaking.

Meanwhile, we couldn't get internet access because we couldn't open a bank account.  Despite our finances, good credit history in two countries, and a UK job contract, we couldn't readily find a bank that was willing to open an account for us.  Finally, we found one, and promptly ordered internet.  But the internet company forgot to send us a router.  And when it did finally show up, we plugged it in and discovered that the gas boiler was off-gassing in the office.

As soon as one problem was fixed, we faced another: missing items from our move, a second invasion of mould, (including under our bedroom carpet), both faucet handles and door handles snapping off... things just kept popping up everywhere.  And then our gas boiler died, twice, which meant that while it was no longer off-gassing, we were without both heat and hot water.

It's an extremely old boiler, so new parts have to be crafted with fairy magic, or something like that.  We were instructed to arm ourselves with space heaters.  The kids were cold, so we set out to the store to buy some and discovered that our new bank cards didn't work.  In fact, our entire account had been fraud blocked, as I would find out the next day, because I tried to pay the rent.

And that was only our first month in the new place.  Since then the bathroom light fixture exploded in a haze of melted plastic.  The boiler keeps shutting off, not quite enough to require replacing, but enough to make things a little complicated.  The sewage line has backed itself up twice, to which the local plumber tells us that our lines are bad and we can expect to call him out a few times a year.  The mould, or "rising damp" the locals call it, seems to be waning, though I'm sure it's just waiting for me to look the other way.  And I'm not even going to mention the explosive kitten diarrhea...

If nothing else, moving is an adventure.  I'm not sure what the take-home message is, but as far as homeschooling goes, I'm sure the kids are learning a lot.

Been a LONG time

Four months later... sheesh!

When I disappear for awhile, it's safe to say that stuff is happening.  Sometimes that stuff takes up all my attention and patience, and blogging has to take a back burner. This was one of those times.

We're still homeschooling though, in the midst of a whirlwind of trials.  When everything else is going haywire, homeschooling is the one constant.  I think we might be getting pretty good at it.

Where did I leave off four months ago?  Oh yes, February, and my broken nose!  That was a crazy time.  It's healed now.  Thanks so much for all the well wishes.  You all know how to a make a mama smile through the pain.

At the tail end of the broken nose ordeal, all hell broke loose.  Events happened.  I don't know that I can say more than that at this time, though I'm sure to touch on it in the future.  Needless to say, said events catapulted Moonshine into the thick, murky waters of the nine-year-change.  Nurturing Moonshine through this change has been an entirely different experience than what we had with Sunburst.  Much harder.  Much more volatile.  More tears than I can possibly count, and with good reason.  It's hard to wake up and realize that the world isn't as nice as you thought.

She's good now.  We're through the thick of it, at least.  Other life changes are simmering, big ones, so I'm sure we'll see more fun times ahead as she finds her equilibrium.  Thank goodness we're homeschooling!

Perhaps one of the greatest attributes of Waldorf homeschooling is being able to greet each individual child's stages of growth with curriculum.  Not at a random moment within a given school year because their age dictates it, but exactly when they'll benefit from it the most.  And that's what we've been doing this spring-- Old Testament stories.  Nothing says wake up and smell the nine-year-change like the banishment from the garden of Eden, the death of Abel, and so on.

Meanwhile, Sunburst has been living and breathing everything Rome.  The brutality and betrayal within Roman history has made for an interesting counterpoint as Sunburst watches her little sister move through such a strong undercurrent.  I didn't expect that, and I certainly didn't plan for it.  But the timing was perfect!  There are much greater lessons to be learned from history than just dates and facts.

We've done other things here and there, as well.  Kitty Bill is playing t-ball and loving it!  Moonshine is enjoying cursive handwriting and housebuilding, and as always, math.  Sunburst thinks her geology/mineralogy block is the best thing yet-- and that also comes at just the right time, because we're facing another huge upheaval.

Our job here in Switzerland is ending early.  We learned about the possibility this spring, and it has been looming and growing ever closer until the possibility has become a certainty.

Einstein's boss has been offered a prestigious position, the top of his field, at a fat cat research facility in Berlin.  He has invited Einstein to come along.  It's a lucrative job, a huge career move... and yet, it's Germany... where homeschooling is illegal.  I'm not at liberties to say much more than this, but I know that other homeschoolers can understand how the mere idea wrenches our hearts.  And thus, Einstein has been actively pursuing other options for us.

He has been away more often than he has been home, and that has been a strain on all of us.  He has been flying all over the world interviewing for jobs, attending meetings, conferences, writing books...  Finding a job in this economy is tough.  Finding a good job, a perfect job, a job that pays enough to keep the kids out of school where they belong... that's even tougher.  But we think we've found one.  Unfortunately, it's not back home.  This tears the kids up, but there are no positions to be had in the US right now.

Hopefully we'll have definitive news by the end of this week, just in time for summer holidays to kick in.  Between you and me, I'm looking forward to a few days of respite from all the stress and worries of reality.

Oh, and special thanks to those of you who have been emailing me, prodding me, to get back up on my blogging horse.  I appreciate your kind words, and I'll do my best to stay astride.  Hopefully I'll be back in the next few days to share some visuals.

Thanks for sticking with me.

Long, toxic day

I had hoped to blog a pile of backlogged stuff today. I had also hoped to teach today. None of those things came to fruition. Today we woke to the banging of pipes before our house filled up with smoke and I had to load the kids, rats, and birds into the car and leave. We didn't actually go anywhere, just down the road a bit. Where can you go with a car full of caged pets? Nowhere, really... well, maybe Petsmart. But no, not in Switzerland.

My house was pretty toxic for hours. The workers claimed to be cleaning the boiler or something to that effect in an apologetic broken mixture of English, French, and German. All I know is that it was awful, and so we sat around in the car reading and knitting. It was cold and overcast, so when the sun finally came out the kids ran around and visited the horses. I made trips back to the house to open windows and turn on fans and forage quickly for snacks. I ended up with an insane headache in the process, but by three o'clock the air and smell had cleared enough for us to bring the pets back inside and have lunch. And by then I was too exhausted to do anything.

I had such fun lessons planned for the day... but this is the kind of curve ball that life throws sometimes. Homeschooling is never separate from life. Imagine the kinds of things kids can learn from strange situations like this. Had they been in school, they would have missed the whole thing.

Instead, they learned about the dangers of smoke inhalation, engaged in a discussion about carbon monoxide, and while we've never talked about fire drills, they got to experience one without all the bells and whistles. (Note to self: check batteries in smoke alarms.) And what a surprise that my children can actually put their shoes on and get outside quickly. Some days have left me wondering about that, but now I really know it's possible.

While we were parked down the road the kids watched a horse being trained. They deepened their friendship with the woman who works with horses. Now that their German has improved she appears to be friendlier with them (and me, too). She met the rats and gave us a free outdoor cage for them, and then invited the kids to help groom the horses. Finally befriending this woman, after trying for one year, was a very big deal.

Our local homeschooling friend showed up around 2pm (there is only one other homeschooling family in our state), and she brought me an essential oil mix that I could drink for my fierce headache. I have never actually imbibed essential oils before, so that was pretty strange but also wonderful. I'm looking forward to buying some at the store next time I go to town.

We also learned the German word for parakeet - Wellensittich - and the German word for carbon monoxide detector - Kohlenmonoxid Detektor. We made a cursory search for one awhile back, but we've never been able to find them in the stores here like you can in the US. Now that I know what it's called... maybe that will help, because I think we really shouldn't go another day without one, especially since the oil boiler lives under our daughter's bedroom. And today we learned just how paper thin our floors and walls really are.

Long, toxic day. Thank goodness for unschooling. We learned so much.

Eye update

My eyes are still terribly sore, so I'm only popping in here for a second. But I wanted to say thanks for the kind comments and wishes and prayers. I really appreciate it so much!

I made it through my second round of tests, and they can't figure out what happened. I had the symptoms of a sudden retinal detachment or tear, if I understood him correctly. But after scads of testing, he doesn't see it. I've had some chronic twitching under my eye for the last few months, too, which is maybe related to eyestrain? Or rat allergies? Completely inconclusive results. If my symptoms continue they said the next step is an MRI.

I don't wear glasses, and if I did the prescription would be minimal. I had my eyes checked for my driver's license just last year and the doc shrugged and said, "Eh, maybe just don't drive at night."

Now that I've been in for the testing, my eyesight is awful. For three days now everything is blurry-- both near and far-- and my eyes ache. I can't handle bright lights or read or look at the computer screen for more than a few minutes or I get a splitting headache. I'm just walking around holding my head. I don't know if this is a reaction to the testing medicine or what, but it's really scary and confusing. And of course the doctor gave me a prescription for glasses at the end of my second appointment.

Today I took that prescription into an Optik to order glasses. They took one look at it and said my prescription was very strange and probably wrong. After I explained my symptoms and my normal eyesight, they said it was most assuredly wrong and strongly recommended I get a second opinion. So I will undergo more testing next week.

Meanwhile, life goes on in a very minimal fashion. Including homeschooling, or what I can see of it.

Summer begins

It feels a lot like summer over here. The dog days feel like they are upon us. The pools are open, the tomatoes are in full bloom, the mustard greens are bolting, and the eggplant leaves are covered in little black hoppers. Forget the delicate Spring flowers, they are beyond dead.

But what about this school thing? Are we ready to put our chalkboard and crayons away and call it quits? That's the talk on all the Waldorf message boards: how are you celebrating the end of the school year; or we have x,y,z to finish up; or should we even take a break at all?

To me this schooling thing doesn't have such a clear division. That's the unschooler in me. I know we're going to learn loads this summer, but as a mom who is offering that "school-like" experience to Sunburst, I get what they're saying. Do we go out with pomp and circumstance? Do we worry about marking off everything on our lists? How far and how long do we push the school envelope?

Surely there are things we haven't finished around here. We officially started our first grade lessons in November after welcoming a new baby into our lives, selling our house, and moving out of state. Those things took priority over "school" and Sunburst spent August and September teaching herself to read with McGuffey Readers and knitting up a storm.

Sometime in late October I purchased a first grade syllabus from Christopherus Homeschool to see what a first grade year entailed. It turned out to be a great resource. Although I didn't exactly follow the lesson examples, it did give me some insight as to what we might want to cover. According to the book I seem to have left out a whole section on fairytales and handwriting, learning word families, and another maths lesson. We started late, so inevitably we were bound to leave things out. Will she be damaged forever? Probably not.

As much as I'd like to press on, as much as Sunburst would probably benefit from the lovely fairytales and handwriting practice, I don't see how we could do it all as a homeschooling family. If you follow a Waldorf curriculum there's just so much to pack into your day. If we kept school hours without interruption, maybe we could do it all, too. But I'm living in the real world, washing dishes and folding laundry and changing diapers. I'm fitting in lessons as I can, when Kitty Bill is napping or squeezing them in between snack time and dinner preparations. It's not easy, but it's fun.

If I really pushed myself, would it still be fun? If I scheduled every second of my day to try to find more time, would any of us enjoy ourselves? Hurry up and eat. Hurry up and learn. That's not my agenda at all.

Summer seems to be here. It's not holding back waiting for us to finish up our lessons. The warm days are calling us into the garden, out in the yard, onto the swings, and out on the lake. It's just as difficult for me to focus on lessons as it is for Sunburst. So we're done. We've begun scheduling our summer fun-- circus day camps and fiber arts lessons. We're going to have a blast.

And strangely enough, this week's entry for Ruldolf Steiner's Calendar of the Soul seems to validate our inability to focus intellectually and our need to move on:

  The senses' might grows strong
 United with the gods' creative work;
 It presses down my power of thinking
 Into a dreamlike dullness.
 When godly being
 Desires union with my soul,
 Must human thinking
 In quiet dream-life rest content.

English translation by Ruth and Hans Pusch