Fall is coming and some Kidney news

I just logged off the orientation for the homeschool co-op we just joined. I did not plan to join a co-op because I thought we would be traveling to amazing places all fall and winter (I've had my heart set on returning to St. Augustine for years). But after the craziness of this summer, we all thought it might be good to hit pause on the travel-schooling. When I submitted my application to the co-op, M was still on dialysis and even a weekend away seemed impossible. I am happy to report that his kidneys are doing great. He will have a lot of monitoring over the next few months to make sure he's fully recovered, but as for right now, dialysis is a thing of the past and he's free to put salt on his food again (thank goodness). He can even do some light exercising again (also thank goodness for that). Next up is to wean off all the prescription medications he was put on during his hospitalization. 

An Odyssey

Taking the kids to a play has been on my list for a long time, but the pandemic put a damper on this for the last year and a half. Last week, I saw an ad for a production of the Odyssey that was being performed outside. My kids are all very familiar with the story, so I decided to take a chance and bought tickets for all of us to go. It rained all week here, but the skies cleared on the afternoon of the play. We took a picnic dinner to the park and watched a beautiful sunset right before the play started. This version of the Odyssey was told from the perspective of the female characters, and Odysseus was not really portrayed as the hero he usually is. They performed on an ice skating rink and the audience sat on bleachers for a slightly elevated view. There was no intermission and it was almost two hours long, with the final scene involving the entire cast and audience leaving the rink and hiking up a hill to see Odysseus reunite with Penelope. It was amazing! The kids followed every word closely, leaning forward in their seats and laughing and clapping along with the audience. All three kids know the stories from the Iliad and Odyssey pretty well, as well as Greek Mythology in general, so they were well positioned to understand an alternative perspective on the story. I didn't really know anything about the company, Quantum Theatre, but they are known for their progressive story-telling and using unusual spaces for performances. 

To prepare for the play, we read the playbill, which was available as a digital copy before the performance. We looked at the photos of the cast and the characters they were playing, read some reviews of the play and discussed appropriate theater behavior. We did our best to round up some slightly fancier-than-usual clothes, and fixed our hair (helped tremendously by fresh haircuts from Julie). 

In terms of Covid safety, they did say that all cast members were all vaccinated and that unvaccinated people should wear masks. The seats were movable and we were encouraged to "pod" up our seats by moving them closer together and leaving space between parties. The whole thing was outside. 

I could not have asked for better circumstances for a first theater experience, and I'm truly looking forward to going again. 

And So We Walk

Our summer travel itinerary is usually defined by trail races, or training for trail races. Necessary features of a campground for us were always more about the proximity to a minimum of a few thousand acres of state forest than any type of amenity like hookups or cable! Running is life, must find trails. I rolled my eyes sometimes when M would nix a place I thought looked cool because it only had 10 miles of trail. But for the most part, this parameter took us to really beautiful places that had good hiking, fishing, wildlife viewing and less crowded places to camp. On our last road trip we opted to stay 25-50 miles off the freeway and even though this added slightly to the travel time, I would do it again. 

With the race schedule cleared for the foreseeable future, and also the lack of either a travel trailer or vehicle (ours are still parked in Nevada), we have taken to exploring surrounding neighborhoods on foot. Most evenings you can find us walking in the cemetery or up to Squirrel Hill for some Italian ice. A few months ago we bought the kids pedometer watches and they love to see how many steps they can get.

Solo Time With the Kiddos

Like most people, we spent a lot of time together over the past year or two. Some of that was by design, but we got a little more than we bargained for with the pandemic. I dropped Max and Laurel off at my parents' house yesterday and I think it was the first time Max and Marko had been apart in a really long time. They gave each other big hugs and a secret handshake, which I thought was pretty adorable. The reason I dropped those two off was so M and I could hang out with Marko, doing the second of three "solo" nights with the kids. M is cleared for light physical activity and italian ice is renal friendly, so we went for a walk to get some dessert. We also visited the used bookstore and the game shop. The people at the game shop taught Marko and M how to play a new game. We bought Wingspan to try. We played a lot of cards on our road trip, but didn't have any strategic board games with us. When we got back here, we realized with everybody being able to read and do basic math now, we had outgrown a lot of our board games. Luckily (or perhaps dangerously for our budget), we are within walking distance to a very cool game store.

We did a "soft opening" for homeschool this week. We are reading the Dart and Arrow books for this month but only discussing the Juicy Questions. Marko and Laurel started working on the next math course on Khan Academy. I downloaded their social studies and science textbooks and they started reading them and doing a few of the worksheets that come in the teachers guide. We are using the Core Knowledge Series and the entire curriculum is free to download, although we don't really follow it that closely. We are swimming, biking and hiking for exercise. We are doing the activities from Brave Learner's "One Thing," and the theme is simple machines. And of course, we are doing poetry teatime. 

Even if we weren't all recovering from the trauma of M's injury and our subsequent separation and sudden end to our road trip, I would still probably want to ease into homeschool. However, it is a particularly useful approach right now because we are taking a lot of time to rest and relax, cry, and talk about what happened. Alongside that very necessary process, we are slowly adding back in things that we truly enjoy doing for school and hobbies and life. 

I have to constantly remind myself to not rush, to keep the margins around activities empty, to avoid worrying that we aren't doing enough. It can be very hard for me to not compare myself to my friends and their kids, many of whom are doing really cool things with their careers or hobbies, have nicer houses or things, or are planning awesome adventures. JOMO over FOMO (Joy instead of Fear of Missing Out). It is possible to celebrate other people's choices and be really happy for them, without needing to keep up. It sounds a little ridiculous that I struggle with this, because this blog is a testament to all of the awesome in my own life. But for every single thing that I have chosen, I had to give up pursing something else. There are only so many hours in a week, your money only goes so far, your mind can only handle so many inputs. 

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. 

Sister Time

Although we talk on the phone almost daily, I haven't seen my sister in 3 years. I am so happy that we were able to coordinate and meet up here in Truckee. 

Truckee is the best. It's exactly the right town for us to ease out of the pandemic and run races and camp and meet up with our besties. Also, it's very windy all the time and all activities are outside so the mask mandate is ending, but there's not too much to worry about with Covid. 

Things have been a little tumble down around here. We got our car back (yay!) and bought a new camper (wait, what?) and M is still figuring out his new job and we don't have any sort of structure around homeschooling. Amazing things continue to happen, though. The other day we went to down to a creek near our camp and Omar pulled out a little bag of equipment and taught the kids how to pan for gold! 

We tried to fish today but didn't catch anything.  I am looking forward to a session of our Auntie-Niece Book Club where we will actually be in the same room! Zoom is great, but being together is better. 

Homeschool - How is it going?

We're not doing too much formal homeschooling right now. Our lives have become very unstructured. We are basically just reading a lot and wandering around looking for places to swim or run or fish. 

Brave Writer has something called One Thing, which is basically a themed collection of resources. This month the theme is sand. There are articles, videos and activities to do, and you can post your thoughts or pictures of activities on a thread in the discussion board. I like that it's something all of us can do together and other than wrestling with internet, it's extremely low-effort on my part. We observed a lot of sand and sandy soils and sand dunes and dried up lake beds on our way here, so the kids made a lot of connections to the material right away. I failed to document this, as we hit our 180 required hours in April and haven't done much documenting since then. But it's also nice to disassociate learning from school sometimes. Humans are wired to learn, we just do it all the time, not always for credit or for a particular reason. 

The other day Max used some modeling sand to construct a relatively accurate model of the United States (although it was a mirror image). He placed two markers...one on Pittsburgh and one on Truckee. It's pretty impressive that a five year old could do that with such accuracy and I was relieved to know that he was paying attention to our travels beyond counting down the minutes until the next time he gets to play Nintendo Switch. However, I didn't even pull out my camera to take a photo of his rendering, so it'll be lost to the ether. We are never short on geography activities for our portfolios, but I am sketching out some ideas on how to document the next year and hoping to get some technical support from M. 

Truckee Life This Week

The past week has been a whirlwind of activities, or at least it felt like that...I'm not actually sure we did all that much. It just felt like a lot because we are not used to hanging out with other people. My friend Leah came to Truckee with her family for a week. They rented a cabin not too far from our campground and we spent lots of time hanging out, sharing meals, hiking, swimming at the lake, playing video games, and building puzzles. It was totally crazy, because there are even more kids than there were during our last cabin vacation two years ago....she had a baby in November, so now we each have 3 kids. Our previous two cabin meet-ups took place in Pennsylvania as they have family in Philadelphia. Those cabin trips were characterized by cool, gloomy weather, with some epic rainstorms and flooding. We spent a lot of time trying to light wet campfires. This time, the weather was very dry (no fires allowed here!), but varied widely in temperature. It was 90 degrees last week one day, and last night, it dipped to 35! It's so funny to me that we have our down coats and bathing suits out at the same time. They left today after we had one last playdate at the Truckee Regional Park. It is cool and partly cloudy with gusty wind, and her baby fell asleep in my arms while I was carrying him around the playground. I was surprised at how fast he warmed up to all of us and let him hold him. Her almost-four-year-old has grown so much since we were last together. He said so many hilarious things and was fun to play with. Her oldest is just a little older than Marko, and plays very well with both Marko and Laurel. My kids really wanted to learn how to play Dungeons and Dragons and while we were not able to get a full game going, he did help them with character development and understanding how it works. It is amazing to me that Leah and I have been friends for 17 years, that we have all these kids now, that our spouses are so similar and get along well and that we managed to pull off another transcontinental reunion, despite the pandemic. 

Last week, M took our Yukon in to the dealer in Reno to check the AC, which we realized wasn't working when we started driving in hot places. We also wanted to make sure the brakes were ok after all the steep grade towing. Due to a number of things we ended up not having our car back for 10 days! Luckily we had a rental and this did not put a dent in any of our plans, although the kids complained mightily about having to ride smushed together in the backseat. He is on his way to Reno now to get the car back. 

I was finally able to connect with our homeschool evaluator and mailed our portfolios off to her from the Truckee post office. We'll have a zoom meeting where she will interview the kids and then hopefully send off a positive report. Everyone wants to carry on with homeschooling for the next school year and I already have our books and materials picked out.

It feels very quiet all of a sudden without our friends around, but we're eagerly awaiting the arrival of our next visitors, my sister and her boyfriend!! They also rented a cabin nearby, and we look forward to lots of fishing, swimming and boating together.