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Oct. 9th, 2015 01:31 amThe burgeoning independence of my younger kids is so adorable.
Elise (8) has started making herself salads. Ever since she realized she could do this, she does it at least once per day. She includes things I might never think of, like raw broccoli and sliced peppers. She's so proud of herself every time.
Today I taught her how to make herself a cup of tea. Soon after she was sitting there at the dining table with a salad and tea, giddy with her feet swinging.
Jake's 10th birthday is just a few days away. He decided he wants to invite some people to go see Hotel Transylvania 2 together, on the day. Some of them are former classmates, so today around the time that school dismisses he and Isaac walked there with the invitations to hand out. It's half a mile down on our same street, but you can tell they felt like it was a grand adventure. Which was heightened when a torrential downpour started on their way back home and they arrived laughing hysterically and soaking wet.
Isaac's cell phone is in a bag of rice.
Isaac was going to heat up leftover soup, today, and turned on the wrong burner - one that was under the soup tupperware. So we had one of our annual "house filled with toxic plastic smoke" evacuations. At least it's slightly less hot these days.
I have some field trips lined up for Jake and Elise and am hoping they pick up some homeschooled friends they can see during school days semi-regularly. One is to a library for a geode and crystal thing, and the other is to a little farm and pumpkin patch that has a whole slew of activities planned for everyone coming. I also joined every local-ish homeschool related fb group that exists.
I am kind of embarrassed to say one issue I'm having is that I just don't want to have to hang out with a lot of local homeschooling moms. I want to find activities where either I can find people I actually click with, which would be great, or I can drop the kids off and pick them up, which is also fine. I really desperately don't want to get back in the swing of regularly spending hours with people I just don't relate to and/or who I'm not comfortable with, because I "have to," while the kids run around nearby. The field trips we have coming up are ones that involve groups I'm not familiar with, so maybe I'll actually make some friends. I miss a couple of PATH moms up the road who I use to love catching up with, but their kids have aged out of school altogether and people are moving away.
This is hard to explain - I don't dislike moms as a group by any means. But, I'm way past the point of trying to make friends with other moms just because they're also moms. It's like if I like someone and get along well with them, and they happen to have kids, great!
I often find my relationships with childless people to be a lot less complicated. They don't have any kids to bring or get a sitter for or keep them from being available! They also haven't had to navigate, and potentially become completely lost in, the identity crises that come from having so much of your time, energy, and resources being devoted to your kids.
I suppose I've always been out of step. When I was a teen mom, I didn't know any other mothers, at all. I didn't even have the internet. When I started homeschooling and attending LLL, later on, I was still 15+ years younger than everyone else in the groups, and in a lower socio-economic bracket. Now, it seems like everyone my age is having babies. But we haven't had diapers in the house in over 5 years, and I have definitely Moved On from the pregnancy/birth/breastfeeding mindset and perspective. I am the Girl Anachronism!
Other local homeschooling moms, here in our town - at least the ones I've been exposed to - are mostly cleaning houses or working evenings and weekends to make homeschooling possible, and they rarely if ever drive up to Miami, and being in college seems pretty weird to them. I got a lot of "must be nice" comments when I mentioned a roadtrip and we were asked what things were over and over when I brought food to a place - about, like, a container of Sabra hummus (they had never heard of hummus! Or Fresh Market...or a french press for coffee...or chai...)
I don't know if I sound horrible, but I don't want to spend all my time explaining stuff, or apologizing for things. I'm tired of friending people on facebook and seeing that they're really into protestant christian minion memes, and direct sales of Thirty One/Herbalife/Jamberry.
Yesterday was Grant's birthday and I went all out on his dinner and cake. Everything came out great. The day before, his best work friend gave him a Super Mario chess set and took him out to dinner, and then he arrived home to a kid-made banner and a pile of presents. He's also gotten cards in the mail from his mom, his dad, and his sister. The day itself was lowkey but nice; he took the day off and we did things like go out for Indian food for lunch, and get the gas powered weed eater he wanted since the electric is a huge pain and apparently he's in full swing, ultimate suburban dad mode now :)
I really want him to feel loved and worthy. I think about this a lot. He has some self worth issues and they rear up in random ways, one of which is this tendency to be like, "my birthday doesn't matter." Except that his birthday is the anniversary of the day he came into the world, and he's basically the best thing that ever happened to me - he's pretty amazing all around - soooo..... Tres important.
My Research Methods class continues to be top notch. Since having to do the training for the Human Behavioral Research lab certification, and doing studies on campus, I've had to register for a Qualtrics account and design a survey, write debriefing material for a study, and use SPSS to run statistical analysis to include in a paper. Every task we're set is wildly intimidating at first, which makes me feel like a serious champion whenever I conquer another one.
I have a B in Stats so far - next test next week.
I took a moment to relish, earlier, that I was looking at an entire paragraph written in french and could piece together what it meant. That wouldn't generalize to any french paragraph, but it was still encouraging. When composing my discussion board posts, I now know when Google Translate is telling me the wrong thing ;)
Biopsych is hard but great. I've gotten 100 on the last few quizzes and those quizzes are BEASTS - I was missing one question every time, the first few weeks. When you miss one on a 4-5 question quiz, it really counts. Piling up some hundreds is good.
I had a harrowing experience at the gynecologist. It was just shit, basically my cervix is really far back and tilted backwards and so in an effort to verify my IUD placement during a pap smear, everything from yanking to forceps was tried before we settled on "I'll just go get an ultrasound."
But, my period is somehow miraculously falling cleanly between that pap smear and the ultrasound, so yay?
And, I'm finally starting to really feel better from the illness mentioned in the last entry.
Elise (8) has started making herself salads. Ever since she realized she could do this, she does it at least once per day. She includes things I might never think of, like raw broccoli and sliced peppers. She's so proud of herself every time.
Today I taught her how to make herself a cup of tea. Soon after she was sitting there at the dining table with a salad and tea, giddy with her feet swinging.
Jake's 10th birthday is just a few days away. He decided he wants to invite some people to go see Hotel Transylvania 2 together, on the day. Some of them are former classmates, so today around the time that school dismisses he and Isaac walked there with the invitations to hand out. It's half a mile down on our same street, but you can tell they felt like it was a grand adventure. Which was heightened when a torrential downpour started on their way back home and they arrived laughing hysterically and soaking wet.
Isaac's cell phone is in a bag of rice.
Isaac was going to heat up leftover soup, today, and turned on the wrong burner - one that was under the soup tupperware. So we had one of our annual "house filled with toxic plastic smoke" evacuations. At least it's slightly less hot these days.
I have some field trips lined up for Jake and Elise and am hoping they pick up some homeschooled friends they can see during school days semi-regularly. One is to a library for a geode and crystal thing, and the other is to a little farm and pumpkin patch that has a whole slew of activities planned for everyone coming. I also joined every local-ish homeschool related fb group that exists.
I am kind of embarrassed to say one issue I'm having is that I just don't want to have to hang out with a lot of local homeschooling moms. I want to find activities where either I can find people I actually click with, which would be great, or I can drop the kids off and pick them up, which is also fine. I really desperately don't want to get back in the swing of regularly spending hours with people I just don't relate to and/or who I'm not comfortable with, because I "have to," while the kids run around nearby. The field trips we have coming up are ones that involve groups I'm not familiar with, so maybe I'll actually make some friends. I miss a couple of PATH moms up the road who I use to love catching up with, but their kids have aged out of school altogether and people are moving away.
This is hard to explain - I don't dislike moms as a group by any means. But, I'm way past the point of trying to make friends with other moms just because they're also moms. It's like if I like someone and get along well with them, and they happen to have kids, great!
I often find my relationships with childless people to be a lot less complicated. They don't have any kids to bring or get a sitter for or keep them from being available! They also haven't had to navigate, and potentially become completely lost in, the identity crises that come from having so much of your time, energy, and resources being devoted to your kids.
I suppose I've always been out of step. When I was a teen mom, I didn't know any other mothers, at all. I didn't even have the internet. When I started homeschooling and attending LLL, later on, I was still 15+ years younger than everyone else in the groups, and in a lower socio-economic bracket. Now, it seems like everyone my age is having babies. But we haven't had diapers in the house in over 5 years, and I have definitely Moved On from the pregnancy/birth/breastfeeding mindset and perspective. I am the Girl Anachronism!
Other local homeschooling moms, here in our town - at least the ones I've been exposed to - are mostly cleaning houses or working evenings and weekends to make homeschooling possible, and they rarely if ever drive up to Miami, and being in college seems pretty weird to them. I got a lot of "must be nice" comments when I mentioned a roadtrip and we were asked what things were over and over when I brought food to a place - about, like, a container of Sabra hummus (they had never heard of hummus! Or Fresh Market...or a french press for coffee...or chai...)
I don't know if I sound horrible, but I don't want to spend all my time explaining stuff, or apologizing for things. I'm tired of friending people on facebook and seeing that they're really into protestant christian minion memes, and direct sales of Thirty One/Herbalife/Jamberry.
Yesterday was Grant's birthday and I went all out on his dinner and cake. Everything came out great. The day before, his best work friend gave him a Super Mario chess set and took him out to dinner, and then he arrived home to a kid-made banner and a pile of presents. He's also gotten cards in the mail from his mom, his dad, and his sister. The day itself was lowkey but nice; he took the day off and we did things like go out for Indian food for lunch, and get the gas powered weed eater he wanted since the electric is a huge pain and apparently he's in full swing, ultimate suburban dad mode now :)
I really want him to feel loved and worthy. I think about this a lot. He has some self worth issues and they rear up in random ways, one of which is this tendency to be like, "my birthday doesn't matter." Except that his birthday is the anniversary of the day he came into the world, and he's basically the best thing that ever happened to me - he's pretty amazing all around - soooo..... Tres important.
My Research Methods class continues to be top notch. Since having to do the training for the Human Behavioral Research lab certification, and doing studies on campus, I've had to register for a Qualtrics account and design a survey, write debriefing material for a study, and use SPSS to run statistical analysis to include in a paper. Every task we're set is wildly intimidating at first, which makes me feel like a serious champion whenever I conquer another one.
I have a B in Stats so far - next test next week.
I took a moment to relish, earlier, that I was looking at an entire paragraph written in french and could piece together what it meant. That wouldn't generalize to any french paragraph, but it was still encouraging. When composing my discussion board posts, I now know when Google Translate is telling me the wrong thing ;)
Biopsych is hard but great. I've gotten 100 on the last few quizzes and those quizzes are BEASTS - I was missing one question every time, the first few weeks. When you miss one on a 4-5 question quiz, it really counts. Piling up some hundreds is good.
I had a harrowing experience at the gynecologist. It was just shit, basically my cervix is really far back and tilted backwards and so in an effort to verify my IUD placement during a pap smear, everything from yanking to forceps was tried before we settled on "I'll just go get an ultrasound."
But, my period is somehow miraculously falling cleanly between that pap smear and the ultrasound, so yay?
And, I'm finally starting to really feel better from the illness mentioned in the last entry.
