Toby gets a whole post!

beautiful photo by Muggs Bees Photography

Toby. My sweet little guy just doesn't get much air time here on ye olde blogge.

That seems to have something to do with the tsuris scale, I suppose. Tsuris being the Yiddish term for woe or troubles. Tsuris being one of my loudest inspirations for writing, that would leave my dear Toby out in the cold. He's my EASY child. My Wakes Up on the Right Side of the Bed child. My golden-hearted child. Though not completely trouble-free, he is remarkably healthy and content with life.

Toby's my baby. Number 3 following two boys with some BIG personalities and needs. He is the little brother, sometimes the annoying little brother. (I laugh loudly when Harry comes to me complaining of this or that that Toby is doing to drive him crazy. "But...but...YOU do that all the time!" I splutter. They are very similar in some ways, some annoying ways!) He is all heart. He is all sweet. He has a very active inner life. I often feel I need to hold him down to earth like a helium balloon...or he will float away. But, despite all this and despite those charming freckles and that adorable dimple and a silly, almost naive way about him, he often surprises us with an astute observation, his sophisticated vocabulary, and his deep compassion for others.

Toby turned 12 today. This morning I had to wake him up early-ish, for Hebrew school, and as I sat down on his bed he rose up sleepily to hug me. We fell back on his giant stuffed penguin (Agent P) and snuggled for a while, both of us amazed that he was the grand age of twelve. It feels grand, it feels much more mature than 11 or 10 or all those years before it. It's a precipice year, preteen, on the verge of the very next big move. He will become Bar Mitzvah just one year from now. He'll read from the Torah and teach from the Torah. It's a grown up thing to do. But today we snuggled and that was perfect.

When Ben had his first hospital stay, for brain surgery back in 2006, Toby had just turned 5 and was in preschool. He and Harry stayed home first with Grandma Joyce (Mark's mom) and then Nana (my mom) as our one week in the hospital turned into four weeks and then two months. Toby was their shining little beacon of hope and happiness. Both grandmas told me he was enduringly cheerful, calm and grounded. He happily went off to his wonderful preschool in a little red cottage on a sheep ranch/commune in the little hamlet of Bodega every day. He even gave his navigationally challenged grandmas directions there when they became disoriented. His sweet little voice was on the other end of the phone when I'd call to check in. He missed me, yes, but he was doing fine and in fact, was buoying up his grandmas and his brother with his positive strength.

                                  This is a video Harry took in 2006 when Nana was staying with them during 
                          Ben's hospital stay. It was a miraculous occurance of snowfall in Sebastopol. 
                          What I love is hearing their voices, especially sweet little Toby...and Harry, 
                          too, before his voice changed!

When Toby graduated from preschool he was thrilled to come home to homeschool with his brothers. Since he never went to an actual "brick and mortar" school (as we strange homeschoolers call them) he was never tainted with the "if it looks like school and smells like school, it must mean coercion" mentality. Hence, since his first day homeschooling he has been open to many and most opportunities and activities. "Yes!" is his most frequent answer when asked, "How about x?" And because of this he's done Aikido, nature studies, 4H, ceramics, math, art, crafts, geography, cooking, animal care, walks, hikes, biking, board games, video games, card games, D&D, chess (he taught ME how to play), LARP, and more. This year he's studying French (he wants to be a French chef, apparently), the science of the origin of life in the universe and on Earth, Hebrew preparation for his Bar Mitzvah, boys' book club, and ballroom dancing (following in his big brother's footsteps). Toby learned to read when he was 9, late for the school standards I was taught as a teacher and reading specialist. he learned to read playing Pokemon, Monopoly and Apples to Apples. He learned because he was ready and wanted to learn. I didn't teach him. Had he gone to school, though, he would have been labeled slow and "at risk." I know this because I worked with those kids when I was teaching. Instead, he came to it when he was ready and had no thoughts of having a disability. In fact, the issues he had early on have gone away with time, and no intervention, no beating down of his self-concept ever happened. His sweet and golden nature remains unscathed.

It's been very important to me to protect that in him. Toby is my brand new shiny souled boy. I never really thought about reincarnation until I got to know my kids, but clearly, it exists. Ben was born an old soul. It shined out of his eyes the first day I met him. Seeing the road he has to walk, and how he walks it, it's more clear to me than ever that he has lived many lives and in this life is doing some "time." Harry feels like a fairly new soul to me, but not brand new. He has an enduring innocence despite his age, being a first child, having had some hard knocks and a dark side to his emotions. But Toby...Toby has always seemed "ding free." He emerged with a sweet, untainted heart. He does not tend towards cynicism, sarcasm or ill humor, like the rest of us in the family! He never intentionally hurts anyone, he never lashes out. It's as if he has no experience with the harshness of life. He almost can't see it, or can't register it when he does.

Watching him navigate his relationships is a learning experience for me. It takes a loooong time to draw the last straw from his back, as it were. He rolls with the punches, is incredibly tolerant of difficult behavior in others, and is quite loyal. Recently, I asked him about a boy in one of his classes who I had heard was disrupting class. Was it bothering him, I asked. "Oh no," he said. "That's just who he is. It's fine with me." He is very social, is online with friends playing games most days, his voice ringing through the house as he chats and jokes and giggles.

He is mightily connected to his brothers, too, worrying deeply about Ben when he's going through surgeries, and shedding tears when he thinks about Harry growing up soon and leaving us for his grown up life. (That probably won't be soon, but that doesn't matter, to Toby it will be soon enough.) He hates being pushed aside by them, and he loves to bug them, as most little brothers do. But it gives him unparalleled joy to be included in their play, their circle and their arms.

When Toby was being born he just wouldn't come down the birth canal. He seemed to be in distress every time I pushed. It turned out that his umbilical cord was tied in a knot. Our Mien babysitter told me it was auspicious, though I don't remember what for. Apparently, the Egyptian ankh is likened to an umbilical cord in a knot and might be thought to represent the flow of Life from the Divine to the Human the way life flows from the mother to the child in utero. Toby and I talked about it today. He's definitely not someone who turns himself into a pretzel to satisfy other people's expectations, and he doesn't get tied up in knots about much of anything. But Divine Life Force, I can see that. He's got soul that kid.

The Importance of Digging

LEGO Bar Mitzvah boy made by Harry 

This piece has just been published in the HomeSchool association of California's monthly magazine. I thought I'd share it here, too...

When my oldest son, Harry, was in preschool (in the years before the idea of homeschooling was even a glimmer of an idea in our brains) we decided to keep him there for an extra year, to delay his entering kindergarten. We were not aiming to give him an academic edge, we just felt he needed another year of digging in the sandbox, another year of enjoying his passion.

Digging figured largely into his array of interests. Big diggers, shovels, sand, dirt. For years he collected information about all the large earthmovers. We had a sandbox, we went to the park and the beach. Dig dig dig. Holes and tunnels, moats, and waterways. When we moved to the country seven years later we lured him with images of acres of dirt to dig in and an old blue tractor he could learn to drive.

That passion for digging and machinery was closely linked to a love of Duplo, then Lego, trains, monster trucks, and…I’m sure none of this is particularly unfamiliar to you, right?

When building with Lego wasn’t enough (and by “building” I mean inventing new and amazing creations, not the ones from the instruction manuals, which were promptly lost and rarely built more than once; big Lego sets were for scoring huge quantities of cool pieces), Harry began to search the web for inspiration and found customized Lego. He learned to use a dremel and drilled miniscule holes into the sides and heads of mini-figs (little Lego people) into which he glued extra arms and horns. He bought and learned to use a sticker making machine to make new decals for the mini-fig faces and bodies as well. He ordered special parts and used them to create whole new categories of custom Lego pieces.

Recently, I was organizing some of our digital photo and video files and found “piles” of movies he’d made years ago with Lego stop-action animation, silly animated movies with action figures, and plain old silly kid comedies. I thought about the huge bins of foam swords and modified-Nerf guns cluttering every corner of our house. I thought about the three bins of “dress up” clothes we keep around for impromptu theatrical productions and the bin full of multicolored rolls of duck tape, mostly down to their last few feet. And then I thought about the wood scraps turned into boxes and frames, the PVC pipe turned into potato cannons and marshmallow shooters. Materials. Not only does Harry have a huge love for creating, he loves his supplies.

Many of Harry’s passions (one could call them obsessions) have an artsy-craftsy look. Beyond the Lego customization, he has delved into polymer clay, duck tape (he’s taught classes at the HSC conference several times and sold his duck tape rose pens at the MAKER faire once), chainmail, computer graphics, and PhotoShop. This kid is always coming up with a new hobby, a new outlet for all of his ideas, a new item to collect. At age 12 he reinvented one of our favorite games, River, Road and Rail (from Ravensburger), into a travel edition with magnetic board and pieces. He wrote an article about it which was published in MAKE magazine. Very cool for my budding inventor.

This passionate explosion of creativity has never looked orderly. After all, A.A. Milne said, “One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.” His room is chaotic, paper scraps, ruined duck tape pieces, and foam litter the hall outside his room, the rug under the project table (I mean, the dining room table), and the deck. Some projects are completed, some not. Harry is an odd kind of perfectionist who, unlike me who spends untold hours trying to choose the exact right font for a poster, expects things to be perfect the very first go. His work sometimes lacks precision and fine detail. But he’s often already on to the next invention, the next solution to a puzzle, the next opus, too busy to worry about that.

There was a time when I wondered what would come from this. For some reason, it didn’t occur to me that this love of materials and building and creating would be able to manifest anything worthwhile. For some reason I looked past his constant stream of creations and forgot my mantra “it’s the process not the product that counts.” As he moved deeper into his teen years, I kept worrying about college and careers. I fretted, “What does all this Lego mean?” When I stepped back I could appreciate that creative energy that surged through him, but up close my academic sheriff was clacking in my ear about what hard-core subjects was he mastering and why wasn’t he interested in chemistry and when would he buckle down and study math?

And then one day a few years back I had a realization. He and I sat at the kitchen table chatting about the previous two weeks and what’d he’d been working on. I had been away dealing with a family matter, and we are unschoolers, so his time was his own then as always. What had he done? He’d Steampunked a Nerf gun, he’d created some goggles for his Steampunk costume, he’d worked on his chainmail tunic, he’d made something in his dad’s workshop in the basement, something about a saw. My brain was going straight to “What will he do for a living?” when suddenly it hit me.

Harry in his Frogoggles and a bleached design shirt.

“How would you like to check out some backstage theatre classes at the JC?” I asked him. “I think you would love making props, costumes and sets. And I think they would love you!” (I’ve always felt that one of the down-sides to homeschooling was the lack of a marching band, but it suddenly hit me that there was also a serious lack of a theatre arts department and had he attended a brick and mortar high school he’d definitely be hanging out there backstage!) Three months later he walked into the Props class ready to build props for the upcoming shows. He came home saying, “I sat there in that class tonight and realized this is what I want to do with my life.” At age 16 he was the youngest in the class, but he already knew his way around the power tools (see above) and even helped show some of the other students how to use them.

Now, two years later he has taken props (three times), set design, lighting, and acting (as well as anthropology, 3D art, American Sign Language, and more). He was the assistant props designer for two shows last year, the spot(light) op(erator) for a show the year before. He gets glowing reports from his theatre arts professors and knows that ultimately this is what he wants to do with his life.

(Interestingly, that lack of attention to detail? That’s the right mindset when creating on-stage props. Who can tell that a line is wiggly or a drip of paint escaped the outline from 40 - 100 feet away?)

He’s still bubbling over with enthusiasm about all things crafty. And Lego still sits in large bins in his room. There are times we still hear him, at age 18, sift-sift-sifting through the multitudinous plastic pieces, a new building plan coursing through his brain. He has plans this fall to do an apprenticeship with a contractor who runs an intentional spiritual community in Hawaii. For two months he will be meditating, doing yoga and learning to build houses. (Did I neglect to mention that one of his passions is meditation, something he’s been practicing for the past seven years?) We never know where each new creative pursuit will lead, but at least now I finally thoroughly accept that it doesn’t matter, because he’s living in his passion.

today

Ben with Tess the day she arrived.

Today I am:

{blue} The morning feeding out in the pasture felt huge and empty without my girl Tess. It's impossible to not be reminded of her in every little thing. In time I know this will pass. But for now I am aching.

{quiet} Boys still sleeping, heavy fog outside. Weed is no longer calling for his girl. Even the birds are quiet this morning.

{planning} A long list of sewing and knitting projects ahead. Organizing my craft areas (again). A workshop I'll be teaching for new homeschoolers at the HSC conference one week from this morning.

{exhausted} From days of crying and saying good bye to my horse.

{expectant} Picking up my little one (not so little, I'll admit) from a week at camp. I'm expecting big smiles and lots of dirt!

summer garden expectations

I was so happy that we finished a project this year. I asked for a garden this spring and that's exactly what I got. I showed you pics of it back after I first planted in June and now it is in full festoon. We harvest the beans, nasturtiums, herbs and squash every other day and still more come. I get so much pleasure from the snaking vines, the scents, the 8 foot tall towers of sunflowers. But, I am not a perfectionist in the garden. I've read some books, looked over the seed packets, and still my garden has issues. I am trying to look at this in a philosophical way and I'm learning about expectations.

I almost gave up on the beans. I almost pulled them out at one point in early June. They looked so wilty, so weak. And then, finally, they took hold and VA-VA-VOOM! Holy Moly! My beans are insane producers. I love hunting for them, my hair falling in my eyes (ok, I hate that part), searching through the dense underbrush of bean foliage and nasturtium tangles. There are always a zillion hiding out deep in that forest. Every day I get a full bucket of beans and then I make a marinated bean salad that is perfect summer potluck fare. Garlic-Dijon-Champagne vinaigrette over green and yellow beans (recipe below). Marinate all day. No cooking necessary. Crunchy, garlicky goodness!

The Cinderella pumpkin plant, below, is immense, taking up a full 12 foot bed. One seed made that plant. One little seed. I am awed by that kind of power. There are so many shoots and new pumpkins that I'm constantly cutting it back, giving some hope and energy to the ones already developing. It's hard for me to prune my veggies. Must be something in that that I could psychoanalyze, but suffice it to say I hate to minimize potential harvests. What I've found though is that some plants need the sting of the pruning sheer to flourish. The tomatoes are covered with blossoms but no fruit has appeared. The tomatillos are covered with empty paper lanterns but are waiting for the juicy green fruits to fill them from the inside out. Now that I see the wasted opportunity, I actually appreciate the idea of gardening with some reserve, with some self-control. It's like having a good sense of boundaries with your kids. A little uncomfortable to have such hard edges sometimes, but it's what they need to feel safe and to ultimately flourish.

When I planted the garden I had a combination of anxiety and impatience. Anxiety that nothing would grow and no patience to wait the time necessary to fill the empty spaces in between the plants. (I used to be like that with boys too, hating to wait for them to call me back, anxious about the future and the past until I'd talked to them again. It's been a long time since I had to play those games, and luckily, the guy I eventually got didn't seem to mind at all when I called him back right after a date!) So I planted plants in those in between spaces and now there are corners of the garden that I believe are suffering from claustrophobia. The bush beans are starting to keel over and the squash has stopped producing new fruit.

Of course, it's late August and we've barely had a handful of long, warm days. The wind from the ocean blows every afternoon and often brings a heavy wave of fog with it. There are mushrooms sprouting in our brand new organic compost + soil mix. I water by hand, but I'm never sure which things need more and which less.

But I guess I'm feeling sort of Zen about it. I accept it as it is. No need to improve. Everyone's having issues with their tomato crop this year. You can see many of my tomato plants have keeled over, musty and skeletal. I am thinking about planting a winter garden soon. My palate down in the garden needs some cleaning out. Lettuce, winter squash, maybe some Brussel sprouts. Lots of possibilities.

Honestly, I'm just glad we got through our challenges this past spring and were able to put a garden together.

I think the garden is helping me to deal with dashed expectations. Or maybe I should say "altered". This is somewhat of a struggle for me, the perfectionist homeschooling mom. I hate to live with no expectations, and yet every time I make a to do list for the boys or pile up a stack of books and materials to share with them I find that their agenda is apparently different from mine.

This year I've been collecting books that seem to relate to this place, our land, Mother Earth, Northern California. I have a strong urge to get us up and out of the house and to focus our attention on the horizon as well as the minutae around us. On our table is An Everyday History of Somewhere and Keeping a Nature Journal, a stack of brand new spiral bound sketchbooks, and some watercolor pencils. I have dreams of hiking and spotting jackrabbits, sitting quietly and watching hawks and vultures soar overhead. Honestly, we could sit on our deck and do some of that, but I want us to venture out a bit as well. 

We homeschool year round, meaning we don't stop in June and start up in September, but we've been so out of kilter with Ben's surgeries, camp, camping trips and the like that we are not in a rhythm other than being in an unsatisfying one for me. I've started waking the boys up a bit earlier (9 am, not so early!) and writing a to do list of sorts on the white board the night before with things like: "Some things we may get to..." at the top. Maybe I'm not being forceful enough, but I've learned this much at least: If I force it they definitely don't show up!

I started reading An Everyday History to them yesterday. They were oh so resistant. For three days I'd written it on the white board and they'd avoided it in one fashion or another. But finally, I made them sit and listen yesterday. And guess what? They LOVED it. Toby has to figure out sitting quietly and focusing, but they all were intrigued by this lovely storyteller's history of the native peoples and animals of Northern California. Today I didn't need to coerce them at all and they even asked when we'd be reading it.

Tomorrow we head out to the annual California Homeschool Association conference in Sacramento. A weekend of fun, inspiration, and time in the pool with our friends. I haven't been looking forward to it nearly as much as in years past, but I'm starting to get excited. This year I'm volunteering in the exhibition hall rather than going to the lectures. This year I'll hang out more than soak up new information. I know more about what I want from our homeschooling life already six years into this life. But still, I'm trying not to have too many expectations, even low ones, of the weekend ahead, and yes, of the year ahead. I'm trying to let my garden teach me something. Having expectations often means having dashed ones.

That's such a negative, glass-half-empty kind of outlook, you know? Instead, I can choose to embrace the uncertainty, I can choose to wait with quiet patience and embrace the anxieties that go with not knowing what will come. I can also trust that if something fails, something else wonderful may fill the void left behind. I can do that, I'm sure.

Tomatoes are usually our favorite crop. But this year it's the beans.

Garlic-Dijon-Champagne Vinaigrette Beans

Ingredients:
Bucket o' beans
Nasturtium flowers for garnish
Dijon mustard
Champagne vinegar
Olive oil
Garlic
Salt and pepper

Trim beans. Place in a large ziplock plastic bag. In a bowl mix 1 T mustard, 1/2 c olive oil, 4 T vinegar, and 2 chopped cloves of garlic. Mix till they are fully incorporated. Pour into bag. Squeeze out air, zip closed. Toss until beans are covered with marinade. If there doesn't appear to be enough marinade, add more olive oil and vinegar. Marinate several hours in the fridge. Turn a couple times throughout the day.
To serve: Place in a serving bowl, pour marinade over beans, salt and pepper to taste and decorate with clean nasturtium flowers (I soak these in water to make sure the ants have evacuated!).

Catching up

Foggy summer morning in our new garden.

I would have to agree with my friend Sarah who said recently that the longer you stay away from your journal the harder it is to return to it. I have definitely been remiss with this blog but life has a way of getting in the way. I have been overwhelmed by the minutiae, and unable to find enough time to gather my thoughts, cull through them, and focus on this task.

Truth be told, the main reason I didn’t write a post just after Jasmine’s wedding was that the only thing I could really talk about was slugs. Yes, slugs. SLUGS. With all the wet weather and then the warmth, the slug population in our area has skyrocketed and there are slugs everywhere. In the garden, on the front porch, all over the hay barn, on the wheelbarrow, inside the grain bin, inside the grain bag.

There were so many all over the hay barn, that I adjusted how I dressed for the task of feeding the animals every morning: cowboy hat pulled snuggly down to my ears, flannel shirt buttoned up to my neck, collar up, even as the weather warmed up. The thought of one of those slugs being shaken loose and falling onto my head and down into my clothes almost kept me from the job. They are baby slugs or a small variety, but their tininess doesn’t make them less disgusting to me. People keep saying, “Too bad you don’t have chickens” but if I did I’d then have to face the fact that chickens eat slugs and then I eat their eggs…better not to know.

Slugs on the outside of the hay barn as seen from the inside.

Above L, the hay barn. Above R, slugs as seen on the outside of the barn.

It offended me to follow such a pretty post with a post about slugs. But for a bit, that was all I could think about. So I didn’t write.

Almost three weeks later the slug fest is pretty much over and I feel that there’s enough space between the slugs and Jasmine’s wedding to proceed.

The slugs (guess I am not quite done) have been ravaging my garden as well. Despite the copper tape edging all of my raised beds and the saucers of beer that I’ve put out, there are nibbles taken out of almost every leaf and some crops have had a hard time overcoming their place in the late night buffet. The weather has changed enough that I think we’re getting ahead, the garden is bursting with new growth. I almost wrote “Maybe there’s enough for everyone” and then changed my mind. There’s not. I’m selfish about my garden. I want it all for us humans at Three Boys Farm. The tomatoes, the beans, the lettuce, the tomatillos, herbs, and nasturtiums. The pumpkins and cucumbers and squash. The flowers that the boys planted. I want it all for us! That’s why Mark and Harry built so many gorgeous gopher-proofed raised beds for me this year. No sharing! Once we start harvesting, if you’re human come on by. If you’re slug or gopher, this offer is not for you.

Summer is officially here. The camping trips, beach days, afternoons at the pool or the Russian River, and Fanwar (LARP: Live Action Role Play) events are filling the calendar. The boys sleep late while I go out to feed the animals and water the garden. I love this weather as I have always loved the beginning of summer, when you can really appreciate the change of seasons.

People ask me if we stop homeschooling for summer and I usually respond that our whole year looks more like most people’s summer vacations, so no, I don’t tell the kids, “It’s June. Stop learning.” and when September comes around, “It’s September. Start learning.” Our homeschool life IS learning. Wherever, whenever. We’re not gathering every morning to say the Pledge of Allegiance and the boys don’t sit in desks doing penmanship. There are no timed quizzes and there is no extra-credit busywork. By my bedside table are some new books that are inspiring me about science and nature journals, and one called Macbeth: for Kids to get us prepared up for the Sebastopol Shakespeare Festival next month. But no, we don’t stop for summer.

I saw some school kids the other day in town, a small gang of teens in cut-offs and tank tops, and they had the definite look of kids just set free from school. A wave of recognition swept over me, a sensation I remembered very distinctly, that feeling one has the first week of summer break. It’s pure freedom. No homework, no early morning bus rides. No pressure. I grew up in Santa Monica and those first weeks of summer were amazing because we’d grab our towels and hit the beach, just a few blocks from my home. This season was such a contrast to the rest of the year, not to mention the weeks preceding the last day of school/first day of summer break that had so much anticipation built in. The weather was warm and the ocean was calling to us.

My kids don’t have that definition in their lives even though our activities change during summer. Their lives have so much more freedom on a regular basis that they don’t chafe at the end of spring to be set loose. That makes our life different from a school-based life. Better in myriad ways, I believe, than it would be if we were sending them to school every day. But I still felt the nostalgia for the traditional when I saw those kids in town the other day.

Harry’s bags are packed and his hair is newly shorn for three weeks at Camp Tawonga. We’ll be taking him to the camp bus pickup tomorrow morning. This summer he’ll be an S-I-T, Specialist in Training, his ultimate goal is to be the arts and crafts counselor one day. We’ll miss him, but it will be a great experience for him and he has always loved Camp Tawonga. Toby will join him in a week, and is thrilled that his big brother will be a “counselor” while he’s there.

The rest of the summer holds three camping trips (two to Mendocino and one to Yosemite’s Tuolumne Meadows), cooking camp for Ben at Sur la Table, and the Homeschool Association of California’s annual conference in Sacramento.

Oh, and a surgery for Ben.

Three weeks ago we took another x-ray of Ben’s spine and found that his curve has progressed to 27 degrees, up 12 degrees from the last x-ray. This is a sign of growth. As he grows the rod is holding his ribs down and so we need to get him to Shriners Philadelphia so Dr. Cahill can get in there and adjust it. Just a centimeter…or should I say, a WHOLE centimeter! We just got the surgical date (July 30) this week and have begun to make the arrangements. Ben and Mark will be going while I’m in Yosemite with the other guys. We had two choices of dates, July or early October and the latter just felt too far away with the amount of change we’d seen in 7 weeks. Also, Ben had already opted out of the Yosemite trip, so it wasn’t a real conflict for him. Well, on one level, anyways.

I called the Ritz-Carlton yesterday. It was just like I remembered. As soon as I said who I was (speaking to the general manager’s assistant) I was greeted with, “OH!! How is BEN?! Everyone is asking about him!!” Within minutes the wheels were in motion and a “superior” room was booked for us and I was arranging for our star to have a tour of the restaurant kitchen one of the days he’s there. Those folks are so incredible. They want to do anything to make Ben happy, it’s truly incredible. Ben and I were interviewed recently for the Philadelphia Inquirer about our stay there, since now the hotel has developed a special program called the Medical Concierge, to help people staying there who are in Philly for medical treatments. Ben’s quote is priceless (“They treated me like a god”), and his story was the lead story in the article. His picture (from my blog) graced the front page of the newspaper. If he was a rock star there before, he’s a mega star now. I’m sure he and Mark will really get the royal treatment.

That helps a bit, but this is Ben’s personal rollercoaster of emotions and he’s having a hard time of it. Just when he was feeling really good physically (running around and battling with foam swords at Fanwar events, and rolling and jumping into swimming pools), he’s facing down his demons again. July 30th is just around the corner, but it feels like February 15th was not so long ago. This surgery should be much less difficult, with fewer hours under anesthesia, only a day in the hospital, less pain, if all goes well. However, as much as he enjoys seeing his friends and fans and being pampered at the Ritz-Carlton, I think he’d trade it away in an instant to have what he calls a normal life. He’s had seven surgeries in his 12 years, with more to come, and that is bitter for him. For his mama, too.

If you’ve made it this far through my post, I will say thank you. And, I promise to try to keep up with my posts, even if it means following up beautiful and sweet with disgusting and slimy. This, is my life. I need to appreciate the definition!

Outta the mouth of my babe: homeschool life

We went to the farmer's market the day after I returned home from England. One of the vendor's looked at Toby and said, "Are there parent conferences at school again, or are you...homeschooled?"

Big smile. "I'm homeschooled."

"Oh, then you must be very smart. Homeschoolers learn so much, don't they?" she said.

"Well, the world is our classroom," I said.

"And every day's a fieldtrip," Toby added. I swear I didn't put him up to it!

So, here's our new homeschooling motto:

The whole world is our classroom, all our work is homework, and every day's a fieldtrip!

We started a nature table last week. It was wonderful scouring our property for Mother Nature's treasures. We collected specimens and then identified them on the internet. (LOVE the internet!) The snake skin was a gift from my friend Kathy. It's perfect, even has little eye skins!

Another new development is Ben's blog, MrCool's Food Blog. You must check it out.

And to think a couple weeks ago when I asked him to write a few paragraphs he ran away from home, temporarily.

Sigh...

Reading list

I saw this stack of books at a friend's house yesterday.

She's a new homeschooler.

It begs the question all parents considering homeschooling ask themselves: Should I homeschool my kids or should I just commit myself now to the insane asylum?

Truth is, though, that for many of us, that craziness came from trying to make it work in the "system." My feeling about it five years in is: homeschooling isn't perfect, but it certainly is an amazing journey to embark on with your family.

One thing I know about my friend is she is definitely prepared!

One Small Change

Remind me not to eat a lot of delicious, handmade, dark chocolate truffles late in the evening. Oh, and large chunks of bittersweet chocolate with almonds dipped in whipped cream. Spent the hours between 12:30 and 5 a.m. sleeping fitfully with a racing heart.

But, that at least led me to the quiet of the office and my favorite blogs...which led me to new blogs...which led me back to my blog. So, there's a silver lining after all (and I love dark chocolate truffles and bittersweet chocolate and almonds and whipped cream...and thank you Joanna and Mia for the New Year's Eve treats!).

My blog treasure hunt led me to Hip Mountain Mama's blog and her challenge for 2010: Make One Small Change. I like that, because small and personal is the only way I feel I can make a positive difference in the world these days.

Ever since having kids, in fact, ever since being pregnant the first time I have felt incredibly vulnerable. All protective force shields were not only down, but non-existent. I sheepishly (at times, anyways) admit to hiding my head in the sand to survive. Limiting the input. I haven't watched the news on TV in 16 years and if for some reason I allow it to slip by me I regret it for weeks. TMI. Too much information, as the boys would say.

It being January 1st, and a new decade at that, it seems reasonable to set some fresh goals for myself. I'm not much into resolutions, but I find the inspiration in the date to be powerful enough.

So here's the challenge and below you'll find my first One Small Change that I plan to make for January 2010:

from Hip Mountain Mama's blog...

We want to challenge each of you to make 1 change each month leading up to Earth Day (April 22, 2010). It can be small or it can be huge, but all we ask is that you decide on something you will do to make a positive green impact and follow through with it. If everyone makes 4 changes between January and April, this can have a huge effect...

How does it work? On January first (or soon after) you will decide on what change you want to make for that month and blog about it. For the entire month you will be conscious of this decision and follow through with what you decided on. Then on Feb. 1 you will write another blog post explaining how the month went with your new green change and also write about what you will change for that month. You will do the same on March 1st and April 1st, then will have one final post on April 22nd listing all the changes you made and the differences it made in your life.

So, my first change is this:  Educate the kids about the topics of frugality, sustainability, and responsibility.

I think living by example is the best lesson. Lectures bomb, let's face it. Yet, I allow my many, many projects and responsibilities to distract me from being an example to my kids. I want to be less wasteful and more respectful of what we have. I want us to eat up what I buy at the market, what I know is delicious and healthy. So much good could come from just that intention. BUT...but...but...homeschooling keeps things crazy busy around here, not to mention the animals down in the field , the messy house...I allow these distractions to rule the day. Hence, we eat out too much and spend waaaay too much money on that. Money we need to be saving for other things. And we don't even eat up the food we have in the house. Throwing away moldy food kills me. Composting a full head of cabbage or flacid carrots, because I forgot about them in the fridge kills me. In addition, the beautiful and bountiful veggie garden we had going in 2008 never even got off the ground in 2009 (being distracted by huge health concerns is a reasonable excuse, yes, yes...) and it threatens to not get going in 2010, as well. Plus, for the holidays I made gorgeous market bags for my cousins, even a few for myself, but I forget to take them to the market myself! Ironic?

This year, with Ben's surgery coming up, will be challenging. No question about it. Making any positive changes, especially when I won't be at home for at least 3 weeks, will be tough. But I'm not off the hook, even with all we're going through. And mostly, I want the boys to become more aware of what impact our lives and choices have on the planet.

One small change, each month for 4 months.

Wanna join me?