Late January--getting into our stride

Last week was so full, it felt like two weeks in one. Despite the extras of more-- doing a yoga demo for Constantine Middle School girls' group, bowling with friends, going out to lunch with another friend on another day, working around my doing Thai bodywork one afternoon, picking up our vacuum in Kalamazoo-- the kids got their work done.

Madelyn learned how to do reporting and composed a family newsletter. Nate had to contend with doing neat, correctly-spelled writing because I wouldn't give him a pass on the erratically-paged, semi-decipherable essay he wrote at first. He resisted; I put my head down and kept vacuuming (that's how I stay strong--by cleaning something). When a fifth grade neighbor saw Madelyn's writing project, he pronounced it, "Cool." She beamed.

For history, we watched a video about the human origins (National Geographic: The Human Family Tree). Madelyn said, "We have a HUGE family!" Some of it is a little dry and beyond their comprehension, but it's laying ground for big ideas. This is the stuff I had to wait until high school to see--if there was time and a reason to view it.

The kids are learning Judo; it  is teaching them self control and physical confidence, as well as some Japanese.  Madelyn can tick off 1 - 10 in Japanese, but still gets our address confused with our phone number (!?!?!?!?!?!)

The best --and sometimes worst-- part is being with them through every phase of every day. There are gems in the monotony, though, like when Nathan cautioned against my being anything "like a 20-ish mom who's concerned about fashion" because that's not "the kind of mom [he] wants to have." He would prefer I let him worry about what's cool.

What a relief.