I am sitting here drinking a cup of coffee, twice warmed in the microwave. The babe-in-belly has the hick-ups. One child is dressed, 2 are not. I am in yoga pants. The girls are playing legos together. It is almost 9. This is my life, pretty much every day.
Some days I think I home school because I hate mornings. Though I say that tongue in cheek, there is some merit to it. My family thrives on "slow". My girls enjoy being at home creating games for themselves, helping me tend house, playing outside. We spend our days building, creating, learning, all at our own pace and on our own schedule.
Every so often I feel like a sucky home schooler. We only "do school" three days a week. And then only for about an hour and a half. Surly my kid is going to bomb first grade and I will have no one to blame but myself. I am setting her up for a life time of struggling to keep up. And then we do an end of the the year "kindergarten assessment". Eliana can read, she can sound out words she doesn't know, she can tell time and count money. She has good hand writing. She understands how to read a map and globe, she knows the difference between countries, continents, states and city. She knows what plants need to grow, parts of the body and what they do, understands habitat and climate. She blew through the assessment so does that mean I am done with kindergarten?
I worry my kid is going to be backwards socially, we all remember the kids in high school with velcro shoes, bad hair and no sense of style. Worse yet, they didn't seem to notice or care. This may be my kid, and I think I am ok with it. I will be thrilled if my girls don't feel the need to look like every other 13 year old girl. Despite that, my kids have tons of time to interact with kids of all ages. We do AWANA, playgroup, story time and soon, martial arts. My girls have no problem interacting with kids and adults of all ages. But my days move slowly.
My children have no ability to rush, they posses only one speed, and it isn't fast. I can't imagine if I had to get out of the house in a timely manor every day and give MAD PROPS to all you moms who do it. I suppose that the day will come when we will have to learn to move faster, be busier, go more. But right now, I think I will finish my cup of coffee. I will clean up breakfast while listening to music and dancing in the kitchen with my 2 year old. My 6 year old will work on sweeping while my 4 year old mops behind her. I will fold and put away our laundry. Maybe we will walk to the park today, plant our tulip bulbs or plan our garden. I think we will read Eliana's new kids National geographic and work on her AWANA stuff. We will stay in our jammies until 10, eat a snack, have a play date.
The rest of my children's life will be lived on a schedule of someone elses making, if right now I can give them the gift of slow, I think I will.
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