Homeschool for the Next Year

I'm taking a break from thinking about renal failure because, you know, life goes on and one must continue to raise children, figure out school, track down the checks your city's tax collector never cashed and mow your grass. Especially in Pittsburgh, in July. The weeds are out of control!

Homeschooling is something we do because our kids asked us to do it, and we are able to accommodate them right now. Prior to Western States last month, we had plans to continue to travel a lot and were booking places all over Pennsylvania and West Virginia for the fall, and Florida for the winter. Visiting state parks, doing junior ranger programs and checking out rocks and lizards and birds was definitely a big part of our homeschool curriculum during the last 2 years. I didn't have to do a ton of planning...it's pretty much show up and learn together. I also appreciate the necessary minimalism that camper life requires. I tend to plan too much content, and this can put pressure on the kids, as well as just cause me to have a lot of on-going and unfinished projects laying around. However, what I have learned about setting parameters for homeschool while traveling, can also be applied at home. 

I'm currently working through the Brave Writer intuitive planning workbook, which is helping me to identify the unique strengths and needs of each kid. With a 6 year span between oldest and youngest, I have always been able to see the different academic skill levels they have, but now I'm thinking more about learning preferences and the little things that can derail each kid. Surprise! (not really) Our kids are really different from each other. One likes to have a very detailed list of everything that needs to be done and will tackle that first thing in the morning. Another child is completely overwhelmed by a long list and just wants the next thing on the list. Show the whole list, and it becomes overwhelming.  I'm also trying to identify the work environments that help each child be most efficient. Listening to music vs. quiet. Different types of seating. Time of day. I'd really like to get out of the mentality of doing everything as a "pack." 

On everyone's list was to add some in-person activities to meet new people. The local homeschool co-op is  still doing virtual classes one day a week and then a half day of outside activities. I just started the process to join and the kids are excited about the proposed classes. The boys also want to stay in gymnastics and Laurel wants to keep Girl Scouts and horse-riding. 

Poetry teatime has been a universally popular weekly event for us and will take place on Tuesday afternoons. This is hands-down my favorite homeschool ritual.

M is going to continue with the synthesizer and music stuff he has been doing with the kids. He is also the best one for picking out games and playing them with the kids and teaching them to bake and cook. For years, he has been reading aloud to the kids at bedtime and I think one of my favorite things about his style is that he picks completely different books than what I would choose. Running With Sherman by Christopher McDougall and Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck were two books he read on our cross country trip that we all really loved. 

I'm "X-ing" off Sundays as my day of rest. I love this habit! It really helps me to have a specific time of the week to do non-Mom or non-homeschooling things. I will read frivolously, nap excessively, paint without a lesson plan and sit on my porch and go on bike rides or hikes with my friends. The kids also like to have a day free of chores and school. 

Also on the list of priorities for fall is healing and reconnecting with each other after a traumatic summer. I anticipate that with time, I will write more about this process. Right now, it's still unfolding, and very raw.

The Lows Are Low

There was a small plane crash in Truckee yesterday, very close to the playground where we hung out at a lot. If I were still there, it would definitely have felt like another apocalyptic sign, like when a brush fire ignited on the mountain next to Boomtown a few days before I was set to move the camper there. 

But from where I'm sitting this morning...watching Shadow chase a fly around the dining room while I sip a cup of tea...everything feels sort of normal and boring. Has it really only been a month since the race? We would have been arriving home this week anyway. The 2,500 miles of country we were supposed to cross slowly, stopping at the vacuum cleaner museum in Idaho and looking for wild horses in North Dakota, instead passed underneath us in hours, as we flew back home in separate groups. 

M is at a very boring wait-and-see part of his recovery. We can make no plans for the future, because there are several very different paths in front of us. We just have to do the laundry and take the kids to the dentist and figure out how to adapt to these circumstances. Sometimes it feels fine, like we have a handle on everything and an appropriately cheerful outlook. M ordered button down shirts to accommodate his port. I found sodium free seasoning at the grocery store. The kids are digging our new cable tv subscription. So many channels! Shadow loves being back at the house. IT'S FINE!

We have a saying in our family that all feelings are acceptable but some actions must be controlled. I forget where I picked up this phrase, but we usually apply it to kicking your brother when he steals the Lego you were saving for your creation. I'm definitely harboring some resistance to this new reality. I hate it, actually. It's ok to feel that way. I still have to do the laundry.

Let Me Catch You Up....

Well.

Let me catch you up....

We were having a fabulous time in Truckee, getting excited for the race, and planning our route for the way back. We managed to find a reservation at the KOA in Salt Lake City for the July 4th weekend, which we knew the kids would love (swimming pool!) and had a lot of neat roadside attractions and state and national parks to check out on the northerly route home. We had plans to drive out of Truckee on June 30. 

Race day happened, we had a really fun time, M managed to finish the race, but became life-threateningly ill with rhabdomyolysis in the days that followed. Many terrible things happened over the past three weeks, but many amazing things happened as well. Family and friends rallied around us and helped in so many ways. We are now back in Pittsburgh and M is starting dialysis here, we're figuring out how to feed him a renal diet, getting used to living in a house again (it's so big! so many rooms! the toilet doesn't have to be manually emptied!) and in the process of meeting a new medical care team. 

I'm not going to lie, this kind of sucks. There's an afterglow of relief when your loved one recovers from a near-death experience. You can really only think about the next hour, sometimes the next minute, in the critical care unit. Making it through that feels triumphant. We were filled with gratitude and rightly so. But when that part was over and the dust settled, we had to deal with the messiness of an unexpected illness in a faraway city. Right now, the people are in Pittsburgh, but the cat is in California and the camper and car are in Nevada! Our kids experienced a lot of trauma from the way things happened and our separation. We're all alive, and M is feeling better every day. But you can be grateful and excited and frustrated and sad and angry all at the same time.

If you read this blog, you know we love road trips and outdoor adventure. This particular trip was many years in the making. Lots of saving and dreaming. So many times in the weeks leading up to Western States, we looked at each other and said, "This is it. We did it. Everything we said we wanted, we have and it's amazing." And it was, and nothing crappy that happened since then can erase the memories we made over the past few months. 

Stay tuned for more stories of the adventures that happened along the way. And I am so very grateful to everyone who reached out to us during a very dark hour. Thank you.