Dreaming Big

I've always been one to dream big. When I was younger I was often mocked by friends and family for my lofty goals. It was not until I was an adult that my tenacity and goal orientation (obsessed focus) paid off. My impatience and my big dreaming.

But first let me tell you about my day......
7 AM load car with sleeeeeepy, cranky girls. It is raining.
7:10 AM Pull over to feed, discover milk duct yeast infection.
7:20 AM Pull over, change Blueberry's diaper, discover that what I thought was yeast infection was actually red paint from painting night before.
7:25 AM Finally leave DM city limits and head south to meet Realtor at farm previously mentioned (the big pond with house restored by Amish people....)
8:20 AM pull into town, easily find road, 30 miles short of Google maps? Ok. Turn in, read addresses, check maps, assured farm is 1/2 mile away down this road.
8:21 AM Road turns into Grade B access road. I can see the farm. Turn in.

8:22 AM Get stuck in mud. Call Realtor who says he's on his way and going to help us. Call Dearest. Get mocked by Dearest and his co-workers. I hand Lil'Bug a chunk of cheddar cheese:

8:40 AM Realtor arrives. Verifies stuckness. Heads over to the neighbors to borrow truck to tow us out. Yay. I get to meet my possibly new neighbors. Lil'Bug proceeds to spit out cheese go and paint her car window and seat. Car smells like cheddar and......poopy diaper? Gah. Get out, sink 6 inches into the mud while sloping around the car to get out Blueberry and change her diaper AND then feed her.
9:20 AM Get towed out. Still raining. Follow Realtor to farm. Get reassured that every southern Iowan gets stuck in the mud at least once.
9:30 Amish family is home. I somehow must have violated every single etiquette rule ever. I try and photograph house, not very successfully.

9:50-10:30 AM Head outside to photograph farm buildings and lake. It is still raining. End up with not very many, not very good pictures, find a beehive, and get soaked up to my waist, but at least no longer as muddy. Listen to Lil'Bug throw a couple fits.

Yes. That's honey.

10:30ish AM Get back on Hwy 14 and head home. Car starts to shake over 35 MPH. Alignment messed up durring tow? Gah. Drive home taking back roads going 35 MPH. In the rain, pulling over to feed, re-diaper, find pet cricket, cry in the rain.
12:55 PM Get home. Wet, muddy, cranky. Dump kid in bath. Answer phone. Try to download photos to dump to flickr (if you know my account, the pics are there now) but computer freezes and eats them, deletes from my camera. Gah.
2:PM Retrieve pictures from obscure folder on desktop. Sarah calls.
Rest of Afternoon:
Sarah arrives to take pictures. Hold squirmy baby while shoving toys and bins and tornado tots into places behind camera to photos can get taken. Done. Eat chocolate, drink tea. Answer Dearest's 35 million+ phone calls to me to ask questions about the farm and the pictures.


Get excited about the farm. Decide to go back tomorrow to take better pictures and such.

Dream Big. Start picking out house colors.

Check Up!

Blueberry's well baby check: 13.5 lbs, 24 inches. She grew 3 inches since our last visit? Yup, and 2.5 lbs. She's been busy.

All systems a go. She's a thriving, squishy, big, healthy baby. She even laughed for the Doc. :)

As a side note: We no longer use the silicon breast shield. I had her off of it at 5 weeks, but we needed to go back for a while due to severe pain (incorrect latch). Once I healed back up, I taught her the correct latch and we're back off the shield. Yay! She's 14 weeks now, but things take time. I forget that sometimes.

How We "School" Part 3: Lessons

Lessons. Lil'Bug has taken lessons. How is this exactly unschool? To unschool is to embrace what and how you learn from life and naturally, right?

Sure, but there comes a point when you want to master something and you seek out teachers, or perhaps taking a lesson sounds like a fun, dare I say it, social thing to do.

Here is where the difference, at least for us has occurred.

Lil'Bug took music lessons. Really, music lessons is redundant in our family because we have a music room and she has access to about 15 real instruments and 30+ of her own toyish percussion things. But she wanted to take lessons, which as a three year old means singing and dancing and playing with toyish like percussion things only with a room full of other three year olds. Fine.

Here is where we take a different approach. One lesson we had a substitute teacher whose style of relating and rule sets were different from our regular teacher. In our regular class, Lil'Bug always played helper and assisted in handing out things and cleaning up. The new teacher balked at her efforts to help and explained "nicely" that Lil' Bug would get an instrument when she sat down and waited. Lil'Bug stood there stunned for a bit, but processed it and sat down. And yet, the teacher made a point of handing sticks to everyone, including me, before giving them to Lil'Bug very last and saying to the class that she got hers last because she sat down last.

What? That was unkind, but apparently acceptable to everyone there. Well, except for my sweet tot who set her sticks "nicely" down and left. Walked out of the classroom.

I followed her out and sat down with her. She explained that she didn't like the teacher, thought what she did and said was rude and unkind. She wanted to go home.

So we did. I agreed with her AND if I was in her position I would be allowed to choose to quit. As adults, when someone treats us poorly we have choices. Why not let her choose how she wants to be treated? Because she is a child, should she suffer the ill treatment of someone just because they are years older than she is? I don't think so. Sure, I paid for the class, but that money was already paid and gone and certainly not worth the price of humiliation for my child in front her parents and peers.

So we quit. She tried going back once the regular teacher was back, but it was never the same. So that was that.

Some parents I have talked to said they would make their kids stick it out, finish what they start. Some said they would have confronted the owner and/or the teacher. And some agreed with my decision. I learned a bit about myself and my kid that day. She could have thrown a fit, but she simply walked out and clearly articulated her needs. What would have happened to our bond and her trust in me if I had ignored it? She looks to me to be her hero, her helper, her teacher, and her friend. But most of all, her mama.

So, back to lessons. We also do swim lessons, she calls them that. Really it is swim play and she asks me to teach her things or spot her while she tries out "dangerous tricks." She trusts me to not let her drown. She trusts me to catch her. I think she calls these swim sessions lessons because she has been taught to by PBS kids shows and peers that when you learn something it is a lesson. Schoolish thinking.

Lessons, just a word, but we have decided to make it our own. It is our way of countering the culture of schoolish creeping in.

How We "School" Part 2

This is really more about how we found community. When Lil'Bug was a little over a year old I sought out homeschool groups online and park days to attend. I attended these with another mom who had a slightly older child, still not of official schooling age.

I am so very glad I did search because of what I learned. Some of the groups showed disdain and suggested that I go find a toddlers moms group. I tried those, but most of the kids were heading to public school and while I have no problem with that, I also needed others to talk to about our choice.

Our choice is different even to the traditional school at home community. We unschool.
Finding unschooling community is really important. I found another great local support group, and they were inclusive, but the majority were school at home and there was a lot of unspoken disdain towards unschooling. Especially when it was time to talk curriculum. Perhaps it was just me feeling left out or uncomfortable, but when failings of various methods became topic, I couldn't help but join in with statements about children learning naturally vs forced useless subjects; the negative feelings swelling up in ME ultimately led me to back away. I wasn't adding anything good, just salt to the pot. With the unschoolers, learning naturally is a priority and a goal worthy of working towards.

Then I found it, a park day hosted by unschoolers. That has made all the difference. Why?

1) Other moms to chat with
2) Other kids to play with
3) No age segregation, the 3 year olds are welcome to play with the older kids and vice versa
4) Sunshine

I could go on and on.....Lil'Bug asks to go every week. The games they invent there come home with us. She climbs trees and explores and buries treasure and trains as a Kung Fu Master Princess Warrior and and and.....

A couple weeks ago the only kids there were unschooler boys over the age of 11. They welcomed her into a game of Frisbee, helped her with her fighting moves, and discussed with her the merits of root beer. The next week the only kids were all under 7 and the wild game involved dragging tree limbs to build a house in the woods.

I breathe a sigh of relief when I sit down with the other moms. My doubts are eased when the kids strike up a conversation with the group, adults and kids, about kayaking or peaches or politics....these always unschooled kids are not wild, strange, unsocialized recluses but rather articulate, civilized, and engaging young people. Compared to them I am the strange, unsocialized recluse.

I get asked the question by others all the time, you know, THE question about unschooling: how do you know it works? Part of what fuels my confidence is this weekly burst of exposure to other families and the large range of children thriving in this method, really, this lifestyle.

More than that, I feel at ease when breastfeeding or talking about cloth diapers or chatting about local foods and my aversion to corn syrup and oil. Or bees. I had a 45 minute conversation about bees recently. I have all these interests and once a week I can sit down with IRL moms and no one gives me a hard time when I say I aspire to be a sheep farmer or I want to dye my hair purple again.

I look forward to Thursday afternoons almost as much as Lil'Bug.