The Walking Challenge, a year in review

Well, it has been the full year for our walking challenge, and here are the results: We FAILED.

The backstory:

Last Thanksgiving we went on a Black Friday hike with my mom and the kids, on a busy and popular trail.  The kids were, in my opinion, ridiculously lame about it and whined and sat down and claimed to be unable to walk on.  I have a crazy inner drill sergeant in my head (who yells, and I know that's not nice, but well ...) and before you could say "she's gonna blow!" there I was giving my children the full brunt of it.  "You think this is bad?!!!! Alright - if you can't handle this then clearly you need to WALK 100 MILES!"  Or something like that.  And so we had the challenge; we would walk 100 miles before the next Thanksgiving.

Here's the post I wrote about it last year, for the fresher perspective on how it went down.

I set up an excel spreadsheet and instituted a policy of one diet breaking treat for every five miles logged (diet breaking in the sense that I let the kids have gluten after five miles - our convoluted dietary story can be another post for another time).

We were amazing at first.  I was getting them out and making them walk local trails about three days a week, even through the cold winter weather.  Then it started to be an issue ... how much time did we really have for this? 

Then we ran out of local hikes that we hadn't done already, and that was a downer ... driving farther afield took even more time and then we couldn't do that on a weekday. 

All of these are nothing but excuses.  Excuses! screams my inner drill sergeant.  But you know what?  I'm OK with that.

We walked 50 miles together this year. Only half of the randomly selected huge scary goal I pulled out of my a$$ when my kids irritated me. We didn't count any miles I did by myself, and we didn't count miles done by bike.  We did some urban walking - especially when on trips to Portland and Boston - but mostly we explored all the walking trails in our town and did some close-by hikes.  And the kids got better at it.  They have more stamina, and they have a reference for long walks.  How long will this be?  Oh, about as long as the loop around the creek.  When will we get a break?  When we see a nice spot for getting out our sandwiches. 

We went out together again this Black Friday.  The kids wanted to drive out to a cool trail we had done earlier in the year, but the website warned it might be closed for the season, so we opted for a close stand-by trail.  The kids weren't thrilled to be doing "this one again!", and my daughter bailed and sat down and we finished the last half-mile or so without her and then collected her again on our way back. 

But, folks, we did a 4 mile walk together without much fuss or bother.  I didn't freak out - I'd come to understand what motivates the kids and when they can't be pushed any further.  The kids whined but not too much.  They know the drill now.  And we talked about it and decided that this year we want to do another challenge - 60 miles, so just 10 more than we did last year. 

That, I think we can do. 

In our Homeschool: A Little Change Does Us Good

A few posts ago I lamented that things had become rough around here: kids fighting more with each other, kids complaining and being rude to parents, parents rushed and cranky and yelling at kids, and general deteriorating conditions all around.

At this point, as a veteran of many such episodes throughout my life as a parent, I know what these symptoms point toward.  We get like this with each other when the routine that shapes our lives is no longer working, and when no one is getting their needs met well enough to feel resilient to the little irritations that are an inevitable part of life.  When my children were very little it was easy - if we started to all feel cranky with each other it meant I needed to take them outside to a playground and run and play until they were exhausted, then bring them home and take advantage of their rest time to read a book or put my own feet up (or get some work done, but no matter what, it was Fill Their Tank, then Use that Time for myself).

Now that they are older it's not as simple as outdoor play until they drop.  They want different things now, like for us to play video games with them, listen to a story idea that they thought of as they lay in bed this morning, or help them sew a costume for their medieval role play game that they have made up with their sibling.  That's the kind of involved quality time they want from me.  But they also want space and autonomy now!

They want long stretches of uninterrupted time on the computer, or alone in their rooms with an audio book and their lego collection, or out in the woods pretending to stalk deer.  And they want to have a lot of choice about what they are learning and how and when.

The other part of the puzzle here was that I took a sabbatical from work this year, and during that time our expectations of what would get done in a normal "school" day (many of which are also "work days" for me when I am NOT on sabbatical) ballooned into a much larger thing.  Now that I'm back at work, the expectations for homeschooling time still stayed high - and it's been too much for me to really keep up with so I always feel rushed and harried and like I'm failing at Doing It All, Well.

So, clearly time for a change!

We have scrapped our old routine, and are instead doing:

1.  Morning Basket



This is one of Charlotte Mason's ideas.  In our interpretation, it is a basket that I fill with different things each week, such as: literature to read out loud, poetry to read out loud, flashcards, sketch books and drawing exercises, educational board games, music to listen to, art books to do picture study with, etc.  These are all the lovely things that sometimes end up feeling like "extras" when we are too invested in "getting curriculum done", and they are also the sort of things that we would want to do together.  We sit down with our basket at the table and spend just about 45 minutes with the contents, give or take depending on the day.  We do it first thing after morning chores and breakfast, so we are all fresh and don't feel too rushed yet.

2.  Daily Files



We had been using an assignment chart that showed all of the months assignments, but a few things were happening: they wouldn't check off something they had done, they would check off something they hadn't done, we would fall really far behind and I would feel the pressure to make them catch up, they would look at it and feel overwhelmed and not sure where to start and freak out.

The daily files are a nice solution to those problems: there is a file for each kid for Monday-Friday and I've torn out the pages from the math books, etc. and put them in for each day. I also write out a short checklist of things that need to be done that don't fit in a file (music practice, language CD's, stuff like that).  When the work is finished it is handed to me to quickly assess and then either recycle it or 3 hole punch it and add it to the growing portfolio of finished work.

They have a very simplified view of their work: what is in today's file?  So far they are cruising through this work on their own without it being a time burden to anyone. 

3.  Unit Studies

Instead of plowing through curriculum for science and history, we are going to do monthly unit studies for each of them, on topics of their choosing.  They will work with me to choose a topic, I will get a bunch of resources from the library for them, then they will work for about an hour a day for 3 weeks on studying the topic how they wish.  Week 4 will be Presentation Week, with a written report and one or two other projects being completed and presented by Friday of that week.  This autonomy and interest-based work makes them much happier, which of course makes us all much happier.  (Their topic choices for November?  He chose "written languages around the world" and she chose "Norse Mythology").

After only one week of the change, so far we are really happy about it!  Sometimes you just need a Change.

The path can be rough at times

I'm going through a rough patch with my kids and our homeschooling.  The going has gotten tough, so the tough get ... cranky?  tired?  ... creative?

These times come and go, and I know what I really need to do is shake our routine up, put in more fun, change the schedule, or something like that.  But I'm too tired to be creative right now, and I wish they would just ... just conform to the routine we have right now and stop making waves. 

Of course, that's not going to happen.  My children are not exactly great at conforming or not complaining to me when they are unhappy (that's not to say they can't cope in social situations where they have to conform for others - they can - but with me they are going to complain eventually).

Big breath.  In. Out.  Ok - I can do this. 

Why Are We Maxed Out? (a book post)

I took this book to the middle school Con (conference/weekend at camp) that I chaperoned last weekend: Maxed Out: American Moms on the Brink by Katrina Alcorn.  The title of the book on my lap started some conversation among the parent chaperones taking a brief break on the porch of the dining hall (2 other moms and a dad).  Why do we feel so maxed out?  What forces push us into pushing ourselves to the brink?

I noted that often it seems to be a sense of competiveness that does me in - I simply have a hard time seeing anyone else do something (anything) without an inward thought of "I should be able to do that too".  The mom who is also incredibly fit and athletic?  I should be able to do that too.  The other mom who does lots of volunteer work?  I should be able to do that too (along with the fitness, this is additive and I don't give up the old goals as I pile on the new ones).  Clearly, this is unsustainable!

Another mom noted that she doesn't feel competitive, but rather overwhelmed with all the possibilities.  There were so many options available in life, and it made it hard to choose just enough without ending up with too much to do.  The other mom disagreed with both of us and noted that for her it was that there were just a lot of obligations and not really anyone else to do them.  Kids have to be picked up if there is no bus, family members have to be cared for, chores have to be done, money has to be earned and managed. 

In a somewhat stereotypical turn of events, the dad in the conversation didn't really relate to these notions of pressure that we moms were talking about.  I'm sure many dads do feel maxed out, but at least in the circle I talk to it seems to be based on actual external events far more than it is for us moms.  We seem to be doing it to ourselves in addition to taking on the external realities.

The author of this book is the creator of the blog "Working Moms Break" which I've been reading for some years now.  The blog talks a lot about the realities of balancing work with motherhood and on trying to make American work-culture more family-friendly.  The book is much more of a personal story, though, with only short side-bar conversations about the big picture of what is happening for other parents and how American parenting and working compares to other parts of the world.  And, as a personal memoir, of course the issue for the reader becomes how much you can relate to the point of view of the author. 

Just as I found when I read Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In, I could relate to some aspects of Alcorn's tale but not to others.  It would be easy to pick apart this story and call the author out with phrases like "just suck it up" or "plenty of people have it worse than you, so stop complaining".  But that's not the point at all - this is her life and I really can't judge another person and how they feel.  Alcorn was driven to panic attacks and illness by her efforts to be a working mother and had to step back for the sake of her own sanity, basically.  I have been there too, feeling like I was drowning and just desperately needing a way out.  I have struggled with the constant back and forth of "maybe I should just quit my job" when the juggling act gets too frenetic or exhausting.

Ultimately, Alcorn's story doesn't give me any answers for my own situation, anymore than Sandberg's did.  Whether I respond to the pressures by leaning in or by admitting that I'm maxed out, I think the real issue is not whether I measure my life against another woman's but whether I can STOP DOING THAT.  It's their life, and this is my life.

I'm sometimes Maxed Out because I try to be Everything to Everyone and because society is only too happy to let me do that.  I'm also maxed out because there are real barriers out there (sexism, opportunity costs, or as the narrator of a nature documentary I watched as child noted "it is harder for the female members of the group to keep up while also carrying the young")  I can Lean In and push harder against the barriers, but here's another truth I have learned in my life - at some point will and desire are not enough.  At some point the sacrifice of yourself and your health are too much. 

We need to keep talking about this, and the personal narrative has its place in the conversation.  Alcorn's is a perfectly decent addition to that part of the discussion: well-written, representative of a slice of the population, and trying for some objectivity.  It could be a great spur to conversation, such as the one I had on the porch.  If nothing else, bringing the pressures out and talking about them takes away some of the sting.

What I'm Reading: Plath, The Book Thief, and All Joy, No Fun

A glimpse into my recent life as a Reader.

The Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath were interesting.  As the collection is organized chronologically, I wasn't sure whether I was just warming to her as I plowed through the collection or whether I was noticing her own maturation as a poet - but the beginning of the collection did not impress me and I had to read many poems before I started to warm to them.  Her reputation is so huge, but I've never read the actual poems before, so it was good to actually go to the source material.

Meanwhile, The Book Thief took me a ridiculously long time to finish because I bought it on my kindle ... which the kids keep "borrowing" and not bringing back to me.  When I did get a chance to read it, though, I loved it.  Narrated by Death and set in Nazi Germany, the book could have been one huge cliche.  It escaped that fate, however, and managed to both surprise me and bring me to tears.  So, so good.

And finally, I managed to finish All Joy, No Fun this week.  The author set out to write a book about parenting with a different question: instead of asking what effect it has on the kids, what effect does modern parenting have on the parents?  Riffing off a study that showed that parents had lowered rates of happiness and well-being compared to peers without children, the book explores many of the issues of modern parenting through both qualitative case studies and reviews of more quantitative data.  There are some very thought-provoking things in this book if you are a parent, especially a parent of the middle-class variety (which the author does state in a disclaimer was her primary focus).  I was left with some deep musings about the modern phenomenon of the "useless" child - the child who does not contribute to society or the family through labor of any kind but is instead the receiver of care, goods, resources, etc.  I might have more to say about that in another post.

The reading continues!

A New Family Fitness Plan

I would really like for my kids to grow up fit and healthy, and I know that a big part of that is building habits.  My husband and I have very different fitness habits - he grew up without any exercise habit and never participated in sports while I grew up with heavy participation in dance and a daily home fitness routine.  Although we are both capable of falling into a slump of inactivity for months on end, I'm still about 300 times more likely to choose to exercise than he is.  The habits I built early on in my life are still pretty easy to pick back up again.

But despite knowing what did work for me, so far in my kids lives I've focused more on giving them what I didn't have in my childhood - team sports.  As a homeschooled child, I didn't have easy access to school sports, and my parents don't enjoy sports so they didn't go out of their way to find them for me as a child.  Dance, gymnastics, rhythmic gymnastics, and martial arts were all physically demanding activities that filled my time as a child, but I never had a team and I never was very good at the hand-eye coordination needed for ball sports (you'd think rhythmic gymnastics would have helped - it should have - I wasn't very good at it).  I felt like there was a lack in my own life, so for my own kids I've made sure they had a chance to try out team sports while they were young.

It may have been a good thing to get the early exposure, but it hasn't taken off with either of them.  My son has said flat out that he is "done with sports" as he enters middle school.  My daughter still has some sports on her (way too long) list of extracurriculars she wants to fit into her schedule (and out of my educational budget) but her interests are veering toward theater and arts and we all agree the money and time would be better spent giving her those opportunities.

Hence the need for fitness that doesn't cost anything and can be done on our own, or in other words we're going back to my roots.  Using my exercise habits and history as a model, we are getting up a bit earlier at least three mornings a week for a Family PE Class at 6:30 am.  This early hour lets my husband participate and still have time to shower and rush to work on time.  For 30 minutes we are doing a little cardio, a little calisthenics, maybe some yoga, and some stretching.  I'm making each morning a bit different by adding in things like:

• Running laps around our house (opening all the gates made an awkward but adequate loop path)
• trampoline jumping 
• rotation stations with hand weights and resistance bands (I only own one set of equipment, so we had to rotate)
• Videos
• Grass Drills, army style
• Crazy Dance Party
• Playing the Fit Deck game 

The beauty of this is that not only is it free, but it's getting the whole family more fit at once.  It's time we spend together, we're modeling the good habits, and it's the sort of habit that the kids can carry on in their lives no matter where they live or what resources they have access to.  Going to a gym is very nice, and I've always enjoyed when I have a gym membership and when it has been convenient to find time to go there, but you can't top working out at home for convenience and likelihood that you'll actually do it.  

So now I'm adding fitness coach to my job description as a homeschooling mom!

Workshop Weekends

My son had a great idea recently, which he named "Workshop Weekends".  Basically, he thought it would be cool if his dad spent some time on the weekend making stuff with the kids.

Now, my husband is no craftsman. He's thrown together some raised garden beds and some animal housing and so forth, but he's still learning too.  But the stuff they end up making isn't the point of the exercise, at all.

The first weekend of this produced wooden swords and shields and a little fairy house.  I can't wait to see if this continues!

Lessons Learned in June

My monthly reflection, looking back at the month just past with an eye toward lessons learned and challenges faced.  What did I learn in June?

• Although the process of trying to go back to work and still keep up all my home duties started in May, June kept up the relentless grind of a long long To Do list and family needing me for things at the same time I had paid employment work sitting there needing to be done.  I am learning that I need to put everything in its own place, with a designated time for each, and put on blinders to what is happening outside of the designated task at hand.  I cannot worry about my laundry to fold if it's time to do school work with the kids, or worry about the kids being bored when it's time to be focusing on my church work.  Carefully balanced compartmentalization is the skill I am trying to work on.
• Simple routines are better than fancy schedules for getting my family to help.  I overshot by making a complicated chore chart, which the kids couldn't keep track of and so I was always having to check if people had done their chores.  It wasn't working, so now I'm focusing on just one chore - the after dinner dishes.  The kids each will wash the dishes two nights a week, and their dad will wash them one night a week.  Keep it Simple is my new (old) lesson to re-learn.
• Baking cannot really only be done once a week.  I had designated Mondays as "Baking Day" because it is my day off work and it seemed like it would be good to start the week off with bread and muffins, cookies and homemade granola bars.  But really we just gorged on baked goods on Monday and Tuesday, and then whatever was left went quickly stale.  So my new idea that is working out much better was to add Baking to my daily morning chores.  I get up at 6am and do: 1.  put away the dishes from the drain racks, 2. wash any dishes still dirty, 3. make coffee, 4. bake something, 5. throw a daily load of laundry in, 6. fold laundry on the drying racks, 7. hang the new wet laundry up to dry.
• We need to create more products to show what the kids are learning, I realized when I was trying to gather up samples for our end-of-year assessment through Northwest Untest.  We learned a lot, but samples to show for it were a bit weak.  The kids and I talked about it, and one idea they want to implement is to keep a daily Learning Log journal and write down what they learned at the end of each day.  That's lovely, but I think I also need to assign more reports/report-outs of some kind.
• Screen time (specifically in the form of Disney sitcoms) was creeping up to unacceptable levels.  Although I can watch those shows with my kids and think "it's no worse than what I watched as a kid", I still don't like the disrespectful way they seem to start treating me after too much exposure to that stuff.  Those shows are undermining the values that I'm trying to instill, it seems. So I re-instated the 1 Hour Limit for television/youtube/movies (not for gaming - we decided passive vs. active applied here not just whether it involves a "screen").  The limit has been really good for the kids.  They are playing with each more.  They are building things, creating, drawing, reading.  They are also demanding more of our time and attention (play this board game with me, go on a bike ride with me, etc), and I realize part of why screen time gets out of control is because I am too busy/tired and it's always easier to just let the screen hypnotize my family than it is to stay actively engaged.

Now, onto July!

Lessons Learned in May

What did I learn last month?  Once again, I'm using this space to reflect back on the previous month for lessons learned, challenges faced, and ideas gleaned.

1.  The process of re-entry into home life (from the road), into normal homeschooling routines (from the roadtrip style learning), and into church work (from sabbatical) has been exhausting, but not nearly as stressful as it could have been.  I have actually found myself keeping some of the let-it-go/let-it-be calm that I found during my sabbatical.  I want to commit myself to remembering what this feels like, and striving to be accepting of life as it is.

2.  The concept of "Scruffy Hospitality" floated through my feedly this month, just as I was also pondering whether I could embrace my home as it is.  My husband told me at one point this month that if there was a home-dysmorphic disorder (like body dysmorphic disorder) then that would describe the way I always see the house as much worse than he thinks it really is.  Now, I don't know which of us is actually seeing it realistically, but maybe that's not the point.  Maybe the real point is that it hasn't done me much good to be always unhappy about the cleanliness of my home.  I gave up on trying to have a magazine perfect personal appearance, and it was a good thing for me.  I'm going to try and give up the idea of a picture-ready home at all times, as well.

3.  My kids keep surprising me with how independent they are growing.  My parenting role is changing rapidly, and I find it bittersweet.  Mostly sweet.

4.  I've tried to "give up processed foods" in my grocery shopping, and this month has been a learning curve on that.  The first week or so the kids felt like they were starving.  Now, although I miss the ease of breakfast cereal and I'm spending more time cooking than before, we are all pretty happy.  But what counts as "processed"?  Dried fruit and roasted nuts have been one of our arguments.  Yes, they are processed, but I think we will keep them in our diet.  Giving this effort a label or strict rules will probably not work.  The effort to make our diet healthy, environmentally sustainable, ethical and fair, tasty, and affordable will continue.

Another good month in the life!

Happy Mother's Day

 Happy Mother's Day!  Today, you can find me over on my other blog, The Childrens Chalice, writing about a Mother's Day that extends that love out into the world.

Weekly Book Post: Notes from a Blue Bike

I was sitting on the beach in Indiana Dunes State Park, watching my kids play in the sand, when I finished Notes From a Blue Bike: The Art of Living Intentionally in a Chaotic World by Tsh Oxenreider.

It was both a perfect and a frustrating vacation read: perfect because as the author talked about traveling with her kids as part of her intentional life I could nod along and say, "yes, it's a wonderful bonding experience"; and frustrating because discussions of food choices and budgeting made me want to make intentional changes in our life in those areas, and we can't really do that in the midst of a road trip.

This memoir, by the author/editor of the community blog The Art of Simple, encourages us all to choose how our families will live, rather than be swept along by our culture.  Oxenreider was inspired by her experience living in Turkey with her young children to seriously reflect on how we live in the U.S., and decide to carve a countercultural path for her family.  The book is divided into sections based on the major life-issues the author has had to grapple with: food, work, education, travel.  Their choices are very different from mine (for instance, they can't even keep a pet because it would interfere with traveling - I find traveling nerve-wracking and am torn over the carbon-footprint of air travel and I have 20 chickens and 6 goats, etc. back at my home place), but it makes me wonder about what my major areas of intentional living are.

The book reads like an extended blog post from the author's blog.  If you are a fan of the blog, you might enjoy this extended version and the big picture frame it gives to Oxenreider's journey.  If you are looking for something more in-depth or with practical how-to's, you will need to look elsewhere.  Oxenreider doesn't try to give directions to others for their intentional lives - she acknowledges that everyone's choices will be different.  Instead, this is a personal tale told with the hopes of inspiring others.  I was inspired - you might be too!

37 Educational Goals For My Children

I was visiting with some homeschooling friends today and mentioned that I had "non-optional" educational goals for my kids.  I misremembered them as being a huge number (107 I said confidently), but later in the day I looked back through my journal and discovered a much more reasonable number: 37.

So here are my thirty-seven educational goals for my children, which I wrote down in 2010 when they were seven and 4 years old:

1.  Have lifelong fitness and healthy habits
2. Know how to find the knowledge that they need
3. Feel OK joining in on a pick-up ball game
4. Know the basics of riding horses
5.  Be able to ride a bike and drive a car - both safely in traffic
6.  Feel compassion for others
7.  Take personal responsibility
8.  Be honest, of good repute, and trustworthy
9.  Be happy and self-aware
10.  Understand science and how things work
11.  Love nature and be nature-wise
12.  Be able to make plans and set goals and follow through on them
13.  Read and write well enough
14.  Understand statistics
15.  Be math competent
16.  Know history well enough
17.  Love literature and story
18.  Be able to defend self and be safe
19.  Be able to cook
20.  Be able to grow food
21.  Be able to "keep house"
22.  Dress well-enough and be able to take care of clothing (clean and repair)
23.  Speak at least a bit of other language(s)
24.  Perform the basic home maintenance tasks
25.  Perform the basic car maintenance tasks
26.  Have a sense of family and close family ties
27.  Appreciate beauty, wonder, and awe
28.  Be a healthy sexual being
29.  Have good manners
30.  Appreciate community and work well in it
31.  Swim well
32.  Play a musical instrument (well enough)
33.  Understand geography and appreciate world cultures
34.  Have some "woodcraft" and survival skills
35.  Have spiritual depth and grounding
36.  Possess good communication and interpersonal skills
37.  Have good gun safety and competency

Looking back, it is a pretty good list. :)  I think I might refine some of these a bit, with what I know now, but overall, this still holds strong and describes my priorities for my children well.

Weekly Book Post: Mindful Parenting and How to Live in the World

Last week I read two more books that encouraged mindful living: Mindful Parenting by Kristen Race and How to Live in the World and Still Be Happy by Hugh Prather.

The first book is a mix of information on brain research and psychology, recommendations for common stressors, and then techniques and exercises for mindfulness suitable for various different ages.  I found it to be a reasonable, "middle path" in its recommendations, and to be practical and easy to understand.

A quote from the book:

But there is only so much you can control from the outside.  No matter where you are, there will always be stressors, and if you don't have the tools on the inside to manage the stressors in your life, your external environment becomes irrelevant.

Prather's book is a meditation on choosing happiness through mindfulness and gradual enlightenment.  It is about happiness from within, not dependent on external circumstances.  I found parts of the book very thought-provoking, and a few practical ideas for keeping my focus on my intention throughout the day.

A quote from the book:

True happiness is flexible because it is geared to an inner state that can be controlled and not to the world, which never can be.  There will always be interruptions, and this must become unimportant.


Both have been good resources for my continued journey to a more enlightened and mindful inner self.

Weekly Book Post: Hands Free Mama

I've just read Hands Free Mama: A Guide to Putting Down the Phone, Burning the To Do List, and Letting Go of Perfection to Grasp What Really Matters by Rachel Macy Stafford.  There is also a blog of that name.  I absolutely recommend the book to folks like me, that is to say to moms who are prone to taking on too much and trying to be too "perfect".

But first, I had a few immediate reactions to some aspects of the book that might trouble some readers:

1. The author is very clear that she believes in God and is comfortable using language such as "God-given talents", or "what God wants from me".  I know many readers who are put off by any mention of religious language in a book like this, but I would note here that Stafford's mentions of God are always personal and do not play into her advice to others.
2. This is also pretty clearly a story of privilege.  Obviously, only some moms have the option of putting everything else to the side to focus on their kids.  If the phone and the To Do List are for work, you probably shouldn't just forget about them or you'll soon be looking for a new job.  But, once again, I don't see Stafford trying to say her way is the only good way.  She is telling a personal story, with tips and exercises for you to use to reflect on your own personal story, but the implication isn't that we all need to live exactly as she does.
3. And, lastly, this book is all about the Mamas, and doesn't talk too much about what Dad is doing in this picture (let alone any other possible family constellation).  As many have noted, there is a very fine line between reassuring moms that they are important as moms and leaving moms holding the bag all alone for everything that needs to be done and every sacrifice for family and children.  Some good thoughts on that issue here (long, but good) at Raising Faith.

With all that out there, now I'll say that I really, really liked this book.  I would - almost - add it to my "life-changing" shelf, but the verdict is still out on whether or not it does change my life.  But it's safe to say that it was the right book for me at the right time with the right message, and that I was deeply moved by it.

Rachel Macy Stafford starts off by describing herself during her "distracted days" as being that woman who was praised for her ability to "do it all" and took great pride in her busyness.  Then she had a moment of epiphany, or as she describes it a breakdown, and was brought to a screeching halt by the realization that she was missing something - she was missing profound connections with other human beings, she was missing the beauty of sunsets, she was missing chances to love.

As she says in the book, she was "managing life instead of living it".

So she decided to go Hands Free, and for the rest of the book she tells stories about that journey and its challenges and rewards, and gives little prompts for reflection and challenges for others to try and put this practice in effect in their own lives.

(One big practical idea she mentioned was creating a "life list", or a sort of mission statement for your own life calling, and then using that as a guideline for what to say "yes" to and what to say "no" to, in order to not get overcommitted.  I am a huge "list person", so this idea appeals to me and I'm working on my list right now.)  

The book will not appeal to everyone (see list of problems above), but if you are either a similar or a sympathetic soul to the harried do-it-all supermom of suburbia, I would put this book into your hands.

"There will never be a finish line.  But there is something far better.  Every single time I let go of distraction to grasp what really matters, I am embracing life.  And life will embrace me back."

--Rachel Macy Stafford

The place of sports in our lives

I never played sports when I was growing up.  My parents, the radical homeschoolers and classical musicians that they were, had no interest in sports, and so we never pursued them.  My experiences were of ballet, musical theater, a bit of gymnastics, some competitive rhythmic gymnastics, and a tiny smattering of martial arts.  Competition was all individual, and intense.  And I never knew what it felt like to be on a team (no, being in a musical or a dance group didn't feel the same) until I joined the Army when I was eighteen.

As parents, my husband and I have always talked about giving our kids the things we most treasured as kids and also filling in what we perceived as the gaps.  Since we are very different people and had different childhoods, that produces quite the list.  Neither of us did sports, though, so we had that in common when we've tried to fill in that gap.  We started off with Tball, then baseball.  I got us all mitts, and it is one of the parenting accomplishments that I am most proud of that I actually stuck with playing catch with my kids and can now catch a ball at least some of the time.  Since then the kids have chosen to try basketball and volleyball, and once again the parents have had to figure out a new sport and some very basic competence with a different type of ball.

All sorts of studies and books about raising girls suggest that there are huge benefits to team sports for them.  My kids are both playing sports through the YMCA, which heavily emphasizes good sportsmanship and other good values over "winning", and I think it's been really good for both my son and my daughter to experience being on a team.

Neither is a gifted athlete.  Neither is particularly competitive or aggressive, either.  But they have worked hard and improved their skills, at times really enjoying themselves and definitely feeling the thrill of accomplishment when they master a new skill.  And I'm satisfied that when they are eighteen years old they won't flinch and say they've never had a ball thrown at them in their lives.  We aren't fanatics about it, and I don't ever want sports to eat up all our family time, but I do want my family to always be physically active, always playful, and always trying to push ourselves to improve.  So far, that's been found in the arena of youth sports.  Soon, as my son gets older and the schedules get insane (why no "relaxed and casual" middle school sports?  Does it have to become such a big deal?), we'll have to find another way to accomplish those same goals.  But for the elementary years, Y sports have been wonderful for us.

How do you do sports and physical fitness in your homeschool?

A Willy Wonka themed Birthday Party

This week my daughter turned 8, and we celebrated by doing a Willy Wonka themed birthday party.  Although it was a lot of work, this theme was tons of fun:

• It was a co-ed party and this is a great theme to appeal to both boys and girls
• There are movies and soundtracks that make great background for a party
• It is obviously going to be a ton of sugar

First, we made Golden Ticket invitations.  I found some fancy templates out there on the nets, but we opted for the easier solution of just printing the invitation information on white paper, and glueing that to a rectangle of shiny gold cardstock from the craft store.

When guests arrived they were asked to sign a contract, just like the kids had to do before they went on the tour of the factory.  It was all birthday jargon, like "by signing this contract you agree to wish H. a very happy birthday from now until blah, blah, blah it went on and on.  All the guests signed it, and that makes a nice memento for the birthday child to keep.

Then they could enter the "chocolate room", which was just a spot I had set up with a chocolate fondue and stuff for dipping.  This was a lot of fun, until the kids dropped so many mini- marshmallows in there that the fondue got gross.  But by then we were moving on to the next activity, anyway. :)

We had the older Gene Wilder version of the movie on for background, and the kids watched it off and on - they seemed to know which scenes were their favorites, and of course we turned up the volume for each of the Oompa Loompa songs.

I had a game ready for each of the four characters other than Charlie:

1. For Augustus Gloop we did a eating game, with donuts tied on strings from a broom handle, and the kids had to try and eat them without using their hands.
2. For Violet Beauregard we had a "juicing" game for when she turns into a giant blueberry, and the kids were blindfolded and given stick pins to try and pop balloons.  The balloons had candy inside them, so when they popped they got to eat the candy that fell out.
3. For Verucca Salt we had a "sorting room" game, and I had a bunch of plastic easter eggs with either real peanuts in the shell or those circus peanut candies in them.  This was a bit post-modern, because no one could agree which was actually the "good egg/nut" and which was the "bad egg/nut".  
4. For Mike Teevee, we had a cardboard box made to look like a TV with holes for targets, and they shot a nerf pistol at it.

After the games were all done and the movie was over, we had cake and ice cream, and then we had a "candy shop" as kids exited and so more candy served as the party favors.  Sugar overload was a serious issue.

The cake could have been really fancy, but I opted for a simpler cake and just decorated it with big candy and a chocolate "river" down the middle.

Weekly Book Post: Cinderella Ate My Daughter, What Money Can't Buy, The Burning Bridge, and The One and Only Ivan

This week I finished four more books, and started a few more as well.  The new additions to the currently reading pile: The Book of Job: When Bad Things Happened to a Good Person, Gone Girl, and Growing Souls.  

And here are the books I finished this week:

Cinderalla Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture by Peggy Orenstein has caught my eye in many bookstores - how could it not with that great title and the frothy pink cover?  Now I finally found time to read it, and I'm glad I did.  The Disney Princesses, Barbie, Bratz, Wonder Woman, Twilight, and more are analyzed and critiqued by Orenstein, a feminist child of the 70's now trying to raise a young daughter.  She also looks to current research, interviews marketing executives, internet website designers, and more.  It's a fascinating discussion, but never preachy or too self-righteous.  Here the culture is critiqued, but not completely rejected, and the path she recommends for parents to take is very much a middle path.  I liked the book very much.

What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets by Michael Sandel encapsulated something that has been increasingly bothering me, namely that our lives have become too commercialized and the way we eat, the way we dress, the toys we buy our kids are all based on such heavy consumerism.  Sandel, a political philosopher and professor at Harvard, explains this as "market triumphalism":

"... without quite realizing it, without ever deciding to do so, we drifted from having a market economy to being a market society.  The difference is this: A market economy is a tool -- a valuable and effective tool -- for organizing productive activity.  A market society is a way of life in which market values seep into every aspect of human endeavor.  It's a place where social relations are made over in the image of the market."

Throughout the book, Sandel presents cases where the market is intruding into areas of life which were previously governed by a different norm: waiting in line, procreative rights, naming rights, access to medical care, and more.  His analysis makes the economic argument clear to me, as well as the moral, ethical, and social issues.  The only flaw with the book is that it gets repetitive, with the same conclusion about the over-reach of economic-thinking being written over and over again after each example.

Then the two children's literature books the kids and I listened to in the car this week:

The Burning Bridge by John Flanagan is the second book in his sprawling Ranger's Apprentice series, and it is my opinion that the first two books are the best.  This adventure finds young Will off on a diplomatic trip to neighboring Celtica, only to discover that the country has been invaded by their mutual enemy Molgarath and his mind-controled Wargols.  Will heroically foils the invasion plans, but subsequently gets captured by Skandian raiders and hauled away on a wolf ship, a true cliff-hanger ending meaning that we will have to listen to the next book in the series too.

The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate is the story of a silverback gorilla living in a mall.  The story is loosely based on true events that happened in our area.  My kids didn't want to listen to this one, because they were afraid it would be too sad, but I had heard so much good stuff about this book I insisted.  In the end, they loved the book - it's sweet and funny, and although there is some sadness it is handled lightly and deftly.  A truly lovely book.

Weekly Book Post: Superior Wives, Talking to Teens, Serving with Grace, and Squire

Another week in to the year, and I've finished another four books.  (I'm still on track with my 14 x 14 in 2014 Reading Challenge!)

The first was a disappointment, and I'm sorry I made myself keep reading it, just hoping it would get better: The Superior Wife Syndrome: Why Women Do Everything So Well and Why - For the Sake of Our Marriages - We've Got to Stop by Carin Rubenstein was a series of anecdotes gleaned from responses to one single internet survey mixed with personal opinion and a snarky tone.  The final advice basically boiled down to "stop doing that" but lacked any really helpful tips or practical solutions.  I thought the sarcastic title would just be to catch the attention of bookstore browsers ... but no, not so much.

A much better book was How to Talk so Teens Will Listen by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish.  Faber and Mazlish were required reading in graduate school, and I hand out copies of their books to volunteer teachers and parents at my church.  This book updates their work to include teenagers and some of the special concerns (sex, drugs, etc) that parents have with teens.

Serving with Grace: Lay Leadership as a Spiritual Practice by Erik Walker Wikstrom is a new group read for the leadership at my congregation, and it is a lovely book.  This is a different way of looking at the work that needs to be done ... that the journey is the point of it, the growth and the relationships along the way, not the outcomes.

And then we finished our family read-aloud: Squire by Tamora Pierce.  We all love Pierce's wonderful heroines and the magical medieval world she created in Tortall.  I grew up on the Lioness Quartet, and loved Alanna.  But, much as I love Alanna, I think Keladry (the heroine of Squire) may actually be my favorite.  She is just so darn real ... just a real honest to gosh, good-hearted, brave, solid character.  And I love that my kids love her too.

How the Walking is Going

So you might remember that I (without really meaning to) laid down a new walking challenge for the kids.  The original threat intent was to hike Every Day.

Every Day is not possible, sadly.  There are so many days that are already overfull with Stuff To Do, or days when Someone Is Sick, or days when The Weather Sucks.

But we have managed to do at least one hike a week, and it's been good.

There has been a simple walk around the lake, with a quick sighting of an invasive species, the nutria:



And a quick hike on a loop trail in the city that provokes the question "what is that stuff growing on these sticks?" (really, if you know please tell me!)




There have been extremely cold hikes where we had to walk fast just to keep warm.



And hikes where a sign at the trailhead warning of a cougar sighting spooked my daughter out and made her jump at every rustling fern the whole way.

There have been many opportunities to learn more about our local ecosystems and do some nature study.




We even managed to do one of our hikes so quietly that a pileated woodpecker flew right up to us before it saw us and swerved.  The loud beats of its wings were startling in the quiet forest.



And the kids are impressing me.  They really didn't want to do this, and they were not good walkers.  Now, they have both developed better attitudes about it, become more interested in what there is to be seen along the way, and have better stamina.  This time together can be a great chance to talk, hold hands, indulge in imaginative storytelling about the landscape around us, and just be present to our own bodies and the nature around us without the distractions of toys, entertainment, books, etc or the self-consciousness that comes from being in society.




Walking is one of my new favorite things!

A new walking challenge

On Friday, as is our custom when we are home for the Thanksgiving holiday, we went on a family hike.  Not a big one - most of the really cool trails are already under snow and my kids are woefully lacking in proper gear right now - but still enough of an outdoor experience to refresh us after eating too much good food on Thursday.

It should have been no big deal: a nice wide graveled path, less than one mile round trip, with a scenic goal and a nice place to mess about before making the climb back up.  But it, apparently, was a big deal to my daughter, who was so distraught about walking she pitched a fit on the trail on the climb back up.

That hit some kind of crazy trigger for me, and I did what a parent needs to be careful about.  I Laid Down the Law.  "If you can't handle a small hike we are going to have to Hike Every Day.   STOP FUSSING."

Later, at lunch, she said (loudly, in a restaurant, earning me Mother-Of-the-Year in most of the patrons eyes, no doubt) "The only thing that would get me going is Mommy threatening me."

These are my cardinal parenting rules:

1.  Pick Your Battles.  (In other words, is this really important or not?  Think it through - don't make everything a battle of the wills.  Cooperate, delegate, vote, listen, negotiate, be flexible.)

2.  But Always Win.  (As a parent, you still need to maintain your authority.  Don't give the kids authority over you. Maybe it's a Win-Win, but just don't Lose your position as the Parent.  That's your job, to be the Parent.)

3.  Don't Go Back On Your Word.  (Sure, if you've really made a mistake, call a family meeting and admit your mistake and negotiate a change.  But never make an idle threat - never say something and then just pretend you didn't say it.)

So.

I said it.  And we're living with it.



The next day we were back from the holiday, and we went on a short scenic walk in town.  And we made a goal: we are going to try and walk every day until we have logged 100 miles.

It will be good for us.  There are worse things to have lost my Mommy cool over.