After 5 years of being a stay-at-home mom, I found the wonder of mothering slowly starting to get crowded out by the mundane feeling. I realized our world seems to surround people with the negative, and complaining about blessings seems totally acceptable. So I decided to fight against that "normalcy" and focus only on the positive. I look back to my first year as a mom when everything was new and keeping house was fun and I aim to have that attitude again. This blog is my outlet to showcase the daily miracles that surround me in my blessed life as a stay-at-home mom so that I will never forget the wonder of it all.



Monday, September 26, 2011

Thank You

I purposely didn't blog for a few days as I just took some time to step back, to think, and to leave my camera behind.  Yes, I could have taken pics when Lissy helped me harvest our sunflower seeds....meticulously.  :)  And yes, I could have shared with you pics of our FULL day out on the coast, just the five of us, soaking up sun, play, books, good food, and much needed family time.  And yes, I could share with you Kian's baby doll I'm racing to finish by his SECOND birthday this week.  But instead, I decided to just forget it.  I left the camera behind and just soaked up the weekend.

I also did a lot of thinking.  First of all, thank you to ALL of you who replied to my two "frustrated with homeschooling" posts.  The outpouring of love and support was so surprising and uplifting.  I won't go into much detail, but I will tell you two things I realized.  One, I attended public school from preschool through college.  Then, in college, I was trained to TEACH public school.  Though I always hated all the testing, bookwork, and standards while I was credentialing, its all I know.  I have known NO different.  I was a student of this method, and a teacher.  We always knew we wanted to homeschool and I knew all those things I hated would not be a part of our day, but it is all so ingrained, I have a hard time stepping back and knowing how to do it differently.  So, I plan to read some books on unschooling and other methods (suggestions?), and find some inner courage to throw the "system" aside.  Two, I need to deal with a few discipline issues with Logan.  I love him.  I love who he is.  I don't want to wish that he was more bookish, making homeschool easier.  I love that he is such a free spirit.  He is more naive than his peers because he is so free and happy.  And I love that about him.  Yes, that makes accomplishing NEAT work a bit more of a task.  I need to hover a lot.  But I need to realize that comes with his free nature and I definitely don't want that to change.  I need to teach him to take pride in doing neat work, but I also need to step back and let his free spirit just go, or I'll stifle it.

So, that's what I've learned, through your wonderful support and through a lot of thinking this weekend.  On Friday we put the books aside and welcomed in Fall by starting to do lessons revolving around Fall.  Just simple stuff I found online and fun activities.  Felicity and Logan were thrilled and kept talking about all the changes Fall brings.  Then that night out to dinner, Logan started pumping out written letters all over his coloring place mat.  I nearly cried.  The letters we fought over last week came flooding out under the more relaxed turn we took on Friday.  So, there in the restaurant, we unschooled and challenged he and Lissy with more letters to write. 

I think we will find our way.

Now to see if I can return those textbooks.  :)

By the way, my wonderful friend Kim did an interview with me on her blog today.  I thought I'd have a wonderful "WELCOME FALL" post for her blog readers to see when they came over from her blog.  Alas, this is life right now, and my blog is all about our lives.  So, Simply Blythe readers, sorry you caught me in a bit of a struggle, but welcome, and I hope I don't scare you off.  :)
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