Enjoying a quiet moment

Bean left Thursday for his first ever east coast vacation. He hasn't wanted to talk to me yet so apparently he is having fun. Monster spend last night at Nana's house so husband and I enjoyed a night out on the town. Probably the last we will have for a while as we will (hopefully) get a placement soon. It's amazing how little time one spends with their significant other. Work, kids, life, always make it hard to connect with husband and it is always nice when all that can go away for just a few hours and all my attention can focus on him.

It is hard to believe that we have been together almost 10.5 years. The craziest part is I still am head over heels in love with the guy. I actually think I love him more now than I did a few years ago. Well, maybe not more but it has changed. Our love is not new and exciting anymore. It is like that old quilt you have that your great great great grandmother hand made. Its worn in places but still beautiful and so damn comfortable. You know every piece of fabric, every design on it. It's the blanket you sleep with every night, the blanket you go to when you need a little extra comfort. Ok, so this is not the most glamorous comparison but...it fits.

Our love has evolved and changed as we have evolved as changed as individuals and a family. That is the key to a successful partnership (I think at least). The ability to adapt/evolve/change/grow with your partner. It hasn't been easy. Every relationship goes through growing pains. There were plenty of times that I wasn't sure we would pull through but we did. That is pretty amazing when you think about. Husband was 17 and I was 15 when we started dating. You changed a hell of a lot when you are that age. Yet, somehow, we managed to make it through the teenage years, the college years, and now these years together. And you know what? Every year gets better....

Summer is approaching

Holy crap! There has been sun the last few days and I think my body is about ready to explode from vitamin D. The boys and I have been spending almost every available second enjoying the outdoors. These weather is making my crave a whole lotta land out in the country. I CANNOT wait until we can move out of suburbia and enjoy our own slice of acreage heaven. (Just another year, just another year, just another year, Dear God, just another year PLEASE!). All in all though, it will be a little bittersweet moving out of this neighborhood. We have make some great friends and I love that there are kids for my kids to play with. But darn it, I want goats, and chickens, and a huge garden and I want my boys to have room to roam and get messy. OH! I want a mini-pony and a piggie too :)

Before the boys come charging down the stairs ( I can hear them waking up now), I should give a quick update. Monster has weaned himself :( and! he no longer sleeps in the crib. I have taken it down and am preparing myself to post it on craigslist. They grow up so darn fast. Luckily, I have surrounded myself with fertile lady friends and I have an abundance of babies to pick from when I need a little baby time (this sounds slightly creepy. Sorry!).

Bean is still a giant. He is like those really big dogs that thinks they are lap dog size. He jumps around on you, thinking he weights A LOT less than he does. I have the bruises to prove it. His love of dinosaurs is starting to wean. He is into power rangers, super heros, etc. Normal boy stuff. He has this invisible friend named, Loker. He never plays with Loker (at least they never play when I am around) but has these great stories about what he and Loker do together. Its truly fascinating. Loker is the same color as Bean but his momma and daddy are brown. Loker is sometimes 5, sometimes 13.

This weekend, we had our first foster kid after a 4 year break. and a teenager at that. 13 year old boy. We survived! They eat a lot. A LOT. 13 is a strange age. 13 year olds are still kids but wanting, yearning to be treated like older teenagers. Not sure I am ready for all that drama. He did a great job and I think he really liked sword fighting with the boys, especially Brandon. Kids really like husband. Its one of my favorite qualities about husband.

This week, Bean leaves for a week long vacation on the east coast with Aunt Susie. He is very excited and has been counting down the days for a while now. I remember when I was younger and got to vacation at Aunt Susie's house. I can't believe that it is already Bean's turn to do this. She always planned the best activities. My whole family is truly blessed to have an Aunt Susie in our lives. Really, every family would benefit from having an Aunt Susie.

Unschooling

So, I know I said I was against unschooling. I had the standard, "the kids are never going to want to learning anything. They are only going to sit around and watch tv. Blah, blah, blah.". Well, I decided to do some research into unschooling because one should have a stance against something until they fully understand an issue.

I've read a few books (God bless John Holt) and visited some websites and email groups and I am hooked. The idea behind unschooling is fantastic! Children will retain information far better if they are passionate and interested in the subject. Lets be honest with each other for a minute, can you really remember the stuff you learned in the 12+ years of school? Do you remember all the dates of wars, presidents, geometry, etc? After spending 6-8 hours a day, five days a week, for 12 years in school, how much of that stuff did you retain? Were you actually interested in learning about it? Or were you just going through the motions (at least most of the time) because that is what you were supposed to do?

I love learning. I enjoyed school but I struggled in a lot of subjects because I was bored. I didn't like reading a book because that was the book we were studying. The beauty with unschooling is that you and your child can run with their interests and cover all the basis around that subject. For example, lets do dinosaurs because our house as been dino-obsessed for months now. Obviously, you cover science, math (measure dinosaurs, fossil discovery, timeline, etc), language arts (write dinosaur stories, read dino books), thematic play for younger children, history (duh), art, etc. When you approach school this way, it is absolutely insane how much your child retains. Bean is a budding paleontologist. Give him a pictures of a dinosaur and chances are he will know its name, what it ate, and quite possibly the period it lived.

John Holt is the founding father of the unschool movement. I'm reading "How Children Fail" and this quote from him really stuck out:

"Children in school are like children at the doctor's. He can talk himself blue in the face about how much good his medicine is going to do them; all they think of is how much it will hurt or how bad it will taste. Given their own way, they would have none of it.

So the valiant and resolute band of travelers I thought I was leading toward a much -hoped-for destination turned out instead to be more like convicts in a chain gang, forced under threat of punishment to move along a rough path leading nobody knew where and down which they could see hardly more than a few steps ahead. School feels like this to children: it is a place where THEY make you go and where THEY tell you to do things ans where THEY try to make your like unpleasant if you don't do them or don't do them right."

We are a big book family. We head to the library at least once a week. I'm always reading 2+ books at a time. We stumbled across a fantastic series of of short chapter books called Dinosaur Cove. We have been rocketing through them at lightning speed. Bean loves them, of course (boy loves himself some dinosaurs). I love that when we finish a chapter, he begs me to read more. It is a thing of beauty! Monster is the same way with the books he likes. Every week, one book we get always stands out for him (this week is Ten Little Fish). After we finish reading, he says, "More?". I just can't resist. We will read that book 5 times in a row :)

This week I did two new things. I made a sourdough start (I am currently trying to make it into the "sponge" now so I can make bread later) and yogurt (not in the crockpot.) Crockpot yogurt didn't get very thick and I was curious if it would thicken using a different method. It did. It's quite thick and creamy and beautiful. Go me!

Ok, Monster is awake now so I shall sign off until another time...

Saturday Morning Hike

Husband and I decided to pack up the boys and go for a hike yesterday. We brought the magnifying glass so we could take a closer look at any fun things we found along the way. Bean enjoyed pointing out evergreen trees and deciduous trees (its damn cute hearing him say "deciduous"). Everyone did amazingly well. Monster was happy in the baby prison until the last 1/4 mile. I then made the mistake of freeing him, thinking (I'm not sure why I would think this) he would happily follow us back to the car. Needless to say, we made it back to the car but I was holding a screaming 18 month old. Husband and I are looking forward to another Saturday hike next week :) Hopefully the kids are too because I think our new Saturday routine is going to include hiking.

I am loving that spring is right around the corner (right, Spring?! I can't take anymore winter). I enjoy that I can hear the birds in the morning while I drink my coffee and read my book (yes, another book about homeschool. I'm an addict) before the kids get up. I cannot wait until the kids and I are able to spend the majority of the day playing outside (I am very much looking forward to my sweet tan!).

My wonderful mother-in-law is watching the boys for us today so Husband and I rearrange the house and get it ready for the home-study and safety check we have for our foster parent certification this Friday. We our moving our bedroom downstairs to the master bedroom (So long playroom). On the plus side, we will finally have our own bathroom that we won't have to share with the kids. SCORE! I'm so ready to be done with this house. We originally planned on living here for a year, two years tops. We have been here almost 4 years. Yuck! Hopefully, we only have another year (oh please, oh please, oh please) until we can pack up and go.

Pippi Longstocking

While the kids are in the bath, I like to read a book while supervising that they don't kill each other. The other day Bean asked me to read out loud my book. As my book was about unschooling and not what he would find interesting, I started to read a chapter from Pippi Longstocking. He was hooked. He asked me to read it to him during bathtime, lunchtime, and before bed. I was amazed how much information he retained.

Once he asked where all the pictures were and I explained to him that this was a big big boy book and there wasn't a lot of pictures so we had to make the pictures in our heads. Bean found this concept entertaining and would screech happily, "I'm making a picture in my head, Mama! Whats yours look like?" when we were reading.

Yesterday we finished Pippi Longstocking and as a treat we watched Pippi Longstocking the movie. Bean was in heaven. This kid LOVES watching anything on the TV. I mean anything. If I have the news on, he will become a zombie and watch it.

As we had finished Pippi, we started reading the complete book of fairy tales by the brothers grimm. There are some fascinating stories in there! Once again, Bean surprised and impressed me. I really didn't think he was paying much attention to the stories in the bathtub as he was splashing around with Monster but in the car while talking to Husband about his day, he started to tell him about the fairy tales we read!

Monster is getting much better with words (thank goodness! He is getting increasingly frustrated by not being able to communicate his wants/needs). He loves to mimic sounds that Bean makes. They have a lot of fun copying each other. The other day I was telling Monster how we were going to visit Bubbie and Poppy soon and go on an airplane. He through his hands up into the air and started to make airplane sounds. Apparently he is very excited about going on an airplane. I, however, am not looking forward to going on an airplane trip with that kid. I'm pretty sure he has already written up plans on how to break into the cockpit and fly the plane. I apologize in advance to all passengers on our flight.

St. Patrick's Day

Yesterday we had a milestone. Sawyer got his first library card yesterday. He asked the librarian on his own if he could get one and they happily helped him get one. He was so proud of himself and he was able to check out the ridiculous amount of books we picked out with his library card. I'm not joking. We have an insane amount of library books. We probably have close to 100 things checked out from the library. We are book nerds.

Now a milestone for me :) I have been challenging myself to find new friends and meet new people to help myself get over my shyness. Today I am packing up the kids and carting them to Omsi to meet with a rad lady and her equally cool kids. We met through a homeschool group. Our kids are similar in age and have really hit it off. This is our second "mom date". I'm stoked. I love being a stay at home mom and I love spending every day with my kids but sometimes I need to remember what its like spending time with someone over the age of 4 that is not my husband (but who are we kidding, he acts 4 most the time).

I've decided to make a traditional Irish American dinner tonight. Corned beef and cabbage, mashed potatoes, and Irish Soda bread (the real thing, not the stuff with raisins and caraway seeds). I had a whole weeks worth of cool St. Patrick's day and Ireland activities to do with Bean but, of course, he wasn't interested. So I guess I will file it all away and hope in a few years Asher will find all my hard work and research fascinating ;) I mean really, what young kid doesn't want to learn about Ireland and St. Patrick's day?!

Update and library day

I have been a complete slacker. I have ignored you completely and I apologize. Almost everyday I think, I should blog about that and of course, life happens and it never gets done.

Let us do a quick recap and get everyone up to speed:

Bean is almost 4

Bean loves dinosaurs and can tell you amazing facts about them. He can identify and correctly name numerous types of dinosaurs.

Bean enjoys dictating stories for me to write in his journal

Monster is almost 18 months

He says more, water, Mama, Dada, no, up and is learning signs

His green blanket is his favorite thing in the world

Monster is fiercely independent yet a huge mama's boy

He is very opinionated

We are a few weeks away from becoming certified treatment foster parents

We are still homeschooling and plan on keep homeschooling

Husband is still working and loving his job

We bought a van (gag) and are actually starting to like it (double gag)

I'm sure there are so many more things I could mention but my mind is fuzzy this early in the morning despite being almost done with my cup of coffee. Sometimes I really wish I would allow myself to have two cups a day....

Today is library day. We do to the library at least once a week. This is an adventure that Bean really looks forward too. He likes to decide what types of books to get. He is finally comfortable walking up to the librarian and asking where he could find the books he wants. Monster spends his library time attempting to break out of his prison (stroller). Once he is finally freed he runs around like a crazy man, screeching, climbing, pulling books of the shelf, etc. He is a tornado of chaos.

As difficult as Monster makes this trip to the library (I am almost always sweating by the end of the trip from stress and the exercise of keeping up with Monster), I also look forward to library day. I love picking out my books (mostly home school books with a couple Sookie Stackhouse novels. What a guilty pleasure). Between all three of us, we bring home WAY to many books. It is just so hard to say no to a good looking book. I also don't want to deny the kids books. I love that they want to read and learn so why deny them a book they want? Luckily the car is never parked to far away because the book bag is pretty damn heavy by the time we leave.