Itchy

I have a very bad tendency to spread myself mentally thin. I take on so many projects in my head (even if I'm not actually doing anything) that I become overwhelmed, which is usually quickly followed by feeling angry and then feeling out of control.

I have lots of wants, lots of things I'd like to do, all piled on top of an extensive list of things I need to do, but are a whole lot less desirable to start than the likes and wants. And when I begin trying to mentally sort it all out I hit a pretty thick brick wall of frustration.

Then I want to run away. I talk to my husband grad school in another state. I suggest he take up long haul truck driving (he does have the license for it) and we all live on a big rig and travel the country. I think about just leaving, just me, and going away somewhere, like Europe or Antartica (a la Where'd You Go Bernadette - I feel a certain kinship with the title character).

What usually happens, though, is I get mad, have myself a mini break-down and a bit of a cry. I leave, though my body is still there. I just can't be present. If I'm lucky, like I am today, my husband's home and I can get in my car and drive around by myself. Today, I drove to a gas station and bought pretzels, chocolate, and milk. I ate in my car. Then I came here, to the library.

I don't know if I feel better. I feel...okay. But I also feel like I'm wasting time, and those wants and like and needs are still pressing in on me a bit, though perhaps they are a bit more barricaded and I'm safe for a bit longer. I feel like I need to get something done, but I just don't know what that something is. It's like having an itch. You feel horribly itchy, but no matter where you scratch, how hard, how long, it just doesn't go away. The itchy feeling overwhelms you until you just want to curl up in a ball.

Here is a list of all the things I'd love to do, which I keep thinking about, but can't seem to settle, can't seem to start, for lots of different reasons (and often because they contradict themselves):

• Homeschool E. and M. either for a year or two or forever
• Teach full time
• Stay with Adult Ed. 
• Get my certification to teach at a Waldorf school
• Move to another state
• Live off the grid
• Buy a new house
• Write a book
• Have a veggie garden
• Have chickens and pigs and cows
• Live in one of those crazy tiny little houses that are only, like 500 square feet or something
• Be debt free
• Start a private or charter school
• Work in education at the state and then national level
• Actually have enough inventory to open my Etsy shop for realz
• Put together the nursing cover I designed (yes, I designed a nursing cover)
• Learn to knit really, really well
• Go to graduate school (Harvard and Antioch University are calling my name...)
• Hike places
• Travel internationally
• Travel nationally
• Sleep

You see what's floating around in my head? These aren't the things that I sit back and think, "Oh, someday..." This is all what I want now, knowing full well I likely can't have half of these things now, if ever. Yet in my head they stay and scramble to sort them all out or tell them to be quiet for a bit. And it so badly pulls my attention away from tasks at hand, people at hand, that I sometimes wonder if I'm starting to become transparent, because I am so not there. 

I often wonder when our futures will look more clear. I don't know what's going to happen a year or two down the road and perhaps it's that which makes the above list so insane. There is so much flux in our lives I wish I could just make one big huge change or have something big and huge to work towards in the not so distant future to help bring my whole life back into orbit.

Yes, I think I'm missing my gravitational center. Now I need to go find it. 

Crowning Achievement (Har, Har, Har - Pun!)

I've been oggling sweet little birthday crowns that every Waldorf mama I admire seems to have for her little ones. I finally decided I need to make a couple for my babies and happened have just the right amount of felted wool sitting in my big box o' fabric, waiting to have something done with it.

After about two hours of work, I finished up a crown for my soon-to-be birthday boy.

Here's M.'s crown, all finished:

The pattern was freehanded, but I was inspired mostly by these crowns on Frontier Dreams. What I'd really love to get more felt and add little pictures and things, or at least make the letter on the front solid rather than sort of mosaic looking (I didn't have a large enough whole piece of leftover felt to do so this time). I think for now, particularly for M., I'll likely leave it a bit plain, at least until his likes and interests become more clear, though I suppose I could put boobies on his crown, but that might look a bit weird to those outside of our immediate family.

I'm in the midst of sewing E.'s together, which will look very similar, but the purple felt will be in the front (her favorite color). She's quite excited, but somewhat disappointed she has to wait until spring to wear hers. Apparently it's very unfair that her little brother gets to celebrate his birthday first - after all, he is little shouldn't his birthday be last? (I seem to recall having this same sentiment when I was her age and I had to get ready to celebrate a new little brother's first birthday before my own.)

I love this sort of project. It requires very little skill on my part, but it still looks so nice. I'm a strong hand sewer (but don't put me in front of a machine), and making this crown strengthened that skill all the more, especially since I backstitched for the first time since I was probably ten or eleven to secure the band in back. Some embroidery would look lovely on there, I think, and I did pick up some matching thread, but I couldn't find my needles...and I'm not really sure on how to embroider (but I have a book!).

I have a couple other little projects up my sleeve, including a really cute one for Valentine's day. I'm hoping as I go through my very large box of fabircs and crafty bits I'll slowly add some lovely things to my children's playthings and to the very little art in our house - something I'm desperately trying to remedy. Desperation works nicely in creating a bit of beauty.

Trees for the Forest

Back in August and September I wrote about my reservations about E. starting school (here and here). My husband had suggested over the summer that maybe we keep her home a year and have her start Kindergarten late. I don't know what I didn't like about the idea more - starting her late so she was a year older than all her classmates or not being able to throw ourselves into the excitement of her first year of "real" school.

Now I'm wishing I listened.

It's not that E. isn't ready intellectually for school - she is. She's extremely bright and willingly does her school work. She's socially ready for school. She loves her school friends and from what I've seen and been told, they love her. She doesn't have behavior issues, either. She's been "clipped down" (a discipline system involving clothes pins, animals, alliterations, and a little bit of public shame...I have very mixed feelings about this whole deal) only twice the whole school year, and it was for excessive talking (certainly not a quality she gets from her mama).

No, there is something deeper here, something that really bothers me, because when a kid like E. comes home every day exhausted and starts each day begging to stay home, even after half the school year has gone by, there is a larger problem. And all I can look to for an answer to the problem lies within what I hear coming out of my girl's mouth.

"Mama, school is too long!"
"Mama, I'm so tired!"
"Mama, I didn't get to play today at all. There's no playing at school."

Imagine, for a moment, being five or six again, and imagine spending a whole day in a place, away from your secure little home with your mama and daddy, where you are expected to work for much of the day. Didn't we dissemble child labor some hundred years ago? Isn't the minute work of cutting and pasting and putting together something that went away with little hands at the conveyor belt?

Yes, yes, I know I'm exaggerating a bit, but again I say put yourself in the little light up sneakers of that five or six year old that is within you and imagine what effort it must take to be at work for four or five hours out of your school day. And to think that this is only the beginning of the school journey - it's not as though things get any easier after Kindergarten. Don't you think all this would leave a not so sweet taste in your little mouth when it comes to school? Do you think you'd want to come back every day if hours of academics you weren't ready for was all you did?

And that's just it - our little ones aren't ready for many of the academics that are presented to them in Kindergarten today (never mind that these are full days that are stuffed full, rather than the formally traditional half day). Concepts within language arts and mathematics that five and six year olds aren't ready for yet are being pushed, and are pushing out exploritive learning, arts, and movement. What kids need the most at these earliest stages of "formal" learning - hands on and physically and intellectually engaging activities - have all but disappeared.

I'm starting to feel desperate and sad. I don't know what to do for E. What changes can be made at the level of her classroom are limited, and what am I against the whole school, against a district, a state, a national policy? The only truly beneficial things I can think of is to take her away.

Now, I don't know what we will being doing. I don't know if we will home school. I don't know if we'll look at the very limited options for private schools in our area. I don't know if we'll just stay where we are and do our best to soften the blow that school will deliver and try our damnedest to protect E.'s intellectual curiosity. I just don't know.

Do you?

(If you're curious to hear more about the changes happening in education these days, this article featuring a talk given by Diane Ravitch on Common Core is fascinating.)

Waving the Checkered Flag

I don't suppose the word "busy" sufficiently describes my life right now. It's something like driving a race car (or, at least that's how I imagine it to be, having never actually driven a race car before). We're going terribly fast, with lots to look out for, but somehow, we're going about it all quite smoothly - and keeping our fingers crossed we don't crash.

The last few weeks have finally given themselves over to something resembling a rhythm. I didn't quite realize we were in the midst of it until sometime early last week as I was doing the dishes that were sitting in my sink after breakfast. M. was playing over by the big double doors as he's wont to do, E. had only recently been dropped off at school, and I felt peaceful. And I was doing the dishes...by hand!

I hate doing dishes and usually avoid it at all costs, yet here I was with the hot water pouring over my hands and scrubbed a bit of breakfast off a plate. I was relaxed in a way I hadn't been in months. And while things certainly aren't perfect - we have a few things on the horizon that need a bit of tackling and untangling - everything feels good.

Deja Vu

Two years ago I lost about forty pounds between January and May. I ate well, exercised, and felt so amazing and so proud. That May, I got pregnant and promptly began to put weight back on, little by little. When I had M. the following February, I very slowly took the weight I gained during my pregnancy off.

Honestly, if I had exercised and ate right just as I had before I had gotten pregnant, I'd lost my pregnancy weight a lot faster, and then some. Instead I fell back on old and very bad habits, and while my weight went down, I'm finding myself, two years after the beginning of my initial weight-loss journey (which I started mainly in preparation for pregnancy), about ten or so pounds heavier than I was when I got pregnant.

So, here I am at the beginning of a new year, having committed myself to making better choices with my food and my activities (and with a very early birthday gift of snowshoes coming from my parents), and I'm wondering if I can't have that repeat success of a couple years earlier. If I lose a similar amount of weight between now and May, just as I did before, I'll weigh less than I did in high school. I know my weight, in the end, is less important than continually making healthy choices and creating healthy habits for my family. But...I care about that damned number on the scale and on my pants' waist band.

I don't think forty pounds is my goal for May - I think that would be a huge and overwhelming task. But I also think it would be good to have a number, or at least the idea of a number, tucked inside my head as I move ahead and will eventually need to look for motivation. I'm just not sure what that number will be, or how I'll go about this losing weight thing again (except for, obviously, in a safe way).

We'll just have to see what happens.