Sleeping face-down on Mom’s crossed legs is SO two days ago. Face-UP is where it’s at.

This afternoon Elliora fell asleep in the car on the way home for a few minutes, which normally doesn’t affect her napping. But today when I brought her inside and nursed her, she didn’t fall asleep like she normally does. She was wide-awake and happy. I mentally shrugged, figuring she’d go to bed a bit early tonight, and we got up to play.

When her slightly-earlier-than-normal bedtime came around, she happily nursed and easily went to sleep, not even making a peep when I put her down in her bed. I went off to meet a friend at Starbucks for some companionable side-by-side laptopping, confident that she’d stay asleep…only to text my mom an hour and a half later and find out that she had awakened ten minutes after I left and had been awake ever since.

So I wasn’t surprised when she had a hard time going to sleep after that. I wasn’t even surprised at how hard she was fighting sleep; Elliora is very strong-willed and has been able to keep herself awake since she was born. What did surprise me was that when she flopped into a position face-up on my crossed legs, she relaxed and immediately went to sleep.

Nothing regarding this kid should surprise me anymore when it comes to sleep, though.

I’ve been gradually cutting down her night-nursing for a couple of months now, working my way up to eight hours without nursing. I did the same thing with Annalie, who was much more interested in nursing than Elliora ever has been, at about the same age. After a couple nights of her waking up and being denied a chance to nurse, Annalie just kinda went, “Oh, I won’t get fed if I wake up? All right then, I’ll just sleep,” and she stopped waking up at night almost entirely. The times she did wake up, it was easy to settle her back down by just patting her on the back and whispering to her.

Elliora, on the other hand, shows no sign of being even close to sleeping for eight hours without waking up, or of being willing to settle back down with just a touch and a reassurance. She does go back to sleep without nursing, so I don’t feel like she’s missing that. It’s more like she just isn’t a big sleeper. Annalie is like me: once we’re asleep, we’re out for the count and it’s hard to wake us up. I think Elliora just might be more like my brother: he has a hard time going to sleep and a hard time staying asleep, waking up more than once most nights. He’s been like that since the day he was born.

Elliora will sleep from bedtime (usually between 7-7:30) till around midnight without waking up about half the time. (The other half of the time, she might wake up once between bedtime and midnight, or she might wake up every hour on the hour. We never know which it will be.) She wakes up almost every night around midnight and usually takes about 10-15 minutes to settle back down with one of us picking her up and cuddling her. Just to keep things interesting, on some nights nothing on God’s green earth will calm her down for an hour or more.

Regardless of when or how often she wakes up, if we don’t pick her up, she will stand up in her crib and screeeeeeeeam and wake Annalie up. If we try to leave her in the bed and just pat her on the back, we have to physically hold her down to keep her from getting up, which makes her scream more, which wakes Annalie up. Annalie, very understandably, gets grouchy when a screaming baby wakes her up from a sound sleep.

The rest of the night is pretty unpredictable. Elliora usually only wakes up once between midnight and 4am, and can be settled back down with 10-15 minutes of cuddling. Or she might wake up every hour and need 10-15 minutes of holding each time, or she might just wake up and be awake for an hour or two.

Elliora has slept entirely through the night, from 8pm to 7am, exactly once in her life, on a night when we hadn’t done anything differently from any other night. So we know she can do it, but we have no idea how to make her do it again.

I would happily let her sleep with us and cuddle all night, but if she’s in bed with me and I won’t nurse her, she gets monumentally annoyed and will scream her annoyance for a long time. She’s also quite strong for her size, and trying to hold onto her when she’s struggling is difficult and exhausting. The times I have stuck it out and let her cry in my arms without giving in and nursing her, she’s screamed for two hours or more. Usually if I nurse her, she’s fine and will go to sleep eventually, but if I nurse her in bed I’ll probably fall asleep, and since she’s learned how to crawl we don’t feel safe leaving her in bed with us all night while we’re sleeping. She’s an explorer and she takes every chance she gets to wander off.

What it all comes down to is that Elliora is incredibly strong-willed. She isn’t a sound sleeper and she isn’t very flexible about her sleeping habits. She’s very good at letting us know how she’s feeling, and when she’s mad she screams about it.

It’s already gotten so much better than it used to be with her, sleep-wise. But there still isn’t much consistency, and that’s both baffling and frustrating at times. We know it won’t be this way forever, and we’ll deal with it like grown-ups and do our best to gently teach her, when she seems ready, how to sleep through the night without the all-night milk bar or on-demand snuggling. But we’ll still be really happy when she’s sleeping through the night consistently.

What about you? Does your kid have a sleeping habit that mystifies you, or drives you crazy? Or do you have one of those mythical kids who sleeps beautifully?

I’m SO close to 10,000 comments on this blog! Will this post be the one that gets the 10,000th comment!? I think it could be…and that 10,000th commenter will win a piece of custom-painted pottery, or something crocheted, or maybe something else entirely. It’s just my way of saying “thank you” for all for the great comments over the past four years. So gimme your two cents, and YOU could be lucky #10,000!

And Troy’s here! Yay!

And where she lost her first baby tooth, right next to the new gap, the new adult tooth is coming in. This tooth just fell right out as Annalie was wiggling it. She and Elliora and I were just lounging around on the bed, hanging out, and suddenly Annalie said, “Hey, my tooth just fell out!” She actually had to search for it on the bed because it fell right out of her mouth.

In other news, we have not dropped off the face of the earth. We’re still here, still chugging along. How about a list?

• Elliora is growing and changing every day—she will play happily in the exersaucer long enough for me to get Annalie’s lunch made, and she flips herself over like it’s nothing and can almost hold herself upright in a sitting position.
• Annalie is extremely glad spring is here at last and tells me at least once a day that spring is her FAVORITE season. She spends a lot of time outside these days, wearing whatever she wants.
• Troy is still working crazy hours and getting home just in time to put Annalie to bed most nights. When he isn’t working he’s awesomely doing all the laundry in the house or unloading the dishwasher or doing our taxes.
• I am spending lots of time reminding myself that I am not just spending hours nursing and holding a baby when I could be doing something “more useful,” I’m preparing Elliora to meet the world as a secure, confident person, and even managing to get a bit of crocheting done occasionally. I’m also trying to figure out how to parent two kids without losing it or driving one of them to a life of crime. So far so good, mostly.
• Troy and I have gotten about halfway through Season 1 of Fringe—a show I’ve been meaning to watch since it premiered—thanks to Carrie lending us her DVDs! We are quite enjoying it. I actually know some of the stuff that’s coming down the road because I’ve watched a couple of random episodes at my parents’ house, and it’s interesting watching these early episodes knowing about the weird stuff to come.
• I really do intend to care about blogging again someday; it’s on my long-term to-do list. For now, though, eh. It’s just on the back burner. I think about things I want to blog every day, I just don’t quite get around to it. I miss it though. If you miss hearing from me feel free to check on my Flickr, which gets updated a bit more regularly.

Wow, this post was all over the place. Sorry about that. I’m also sorry if you’ve commented on this site recently and not gotten any reply from me even if you asked me a direct question. WordPress has decided to stop emailing my comments to me again. Probably I need to update to a newer version. Who knows.

What’s new with you?

It’s ironic (or is it?! I’m always fuzzy on the definition of irony, thanks to Alanis Morissette) that the day after writing a post about how much easier our lives could be if I just remember to be more playful, I am writing a post about how my parenting report card today would be stamped with a great big FAIL.

Today I lost my temper at Annalie over something kind of stupid. She threw a fit over having to leave the house for dinner, then got mad because she had to put on long pants (a fight I have with her EVERY SINGLE DAY, every time we need to leave the house, oh my goodness does this kid ever need to live in Southern California). Then it went even further downhill, probably largely because she was hungry, which was why we were leaving the house to get some dinner.

I was hungry too, and I have the same tendency to be 300% more irritated by life when I’m hungry, so it took a lot of effort for me to stay calm. But by golly, I did. I spent 20 minutes patiently, calmly talking to Annalie. I reminded her she was hungry. I pointed out that 45F isn’t warm enough to go outside in a skirt and tank top. She was not entirely happy but had simmered down and even put on tights and was ready to leave.

And then she changed her mind. I don’t even know exactly what it was, but something set her back to square one and she told me, in that hmmph-so-there voice that is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me, that she wasn’t leaving the house ever again and I couldn’t make her. Then she laid down on her bed and grabbed the headboard like I was going to have to pry her off.

I saw red. I yelled at her. I pushed her down the hall towards Troy and stomped into my room to count to 100. I rested my forehead on the wall and took deep, shaky breaths. I listened to Annalie wailing, to Troy talking to her, to poor Elliora strapped into the infant seat, crying her head off. I hated myself just a little bit.

I pulled myself together and joined my family. I took Elliora out of the seat and comforted her. I hugged Annalie and asked her how much better she thought I felt now that I’d yelled at her. She said she didn’t know. I told her, “Not better at all. I feel worse. How do you feel?” She admitted she felt worse too. We all calmed down and talked and apologized and forgave. We went to dinner and came home and Annalie went to bed happy and serene while I laid on the couch and nursed Elliora and had a good cry.

I think what’s going on right now, mainly, is that Annalie is dealing with not having me to herself anymore. She is understandably frustrated at having to share my time, and that it often seems like the lion’s share of that is going to Elliora these days. Lately Annalie has been unusually snippy with me and angry at me. I know it’s all part of the process of learning to deal, and I’m glad she is taking it out on me and not the baby (with whom she is unfailingly gentle and loving), but it’s still trying. And today we were both hungry and I was tired and breastfeeding hormones probably played a part and just arrrrrgggghhhh.

On top of that, school has been challenging. I’ve been trying hard for the last month to get back into a routine with school, and Annalie is fighting me every step of the way. For every hour of school we do, I spend easily another hour convincing her. It’s exhausting.

Part of me thinks it’s no big deal. She is in first grade; putting the curriculum on hold and unschooling for another month or so won’t hurt her. We still read books every day, and she reads and writes plenty on her own. We talk about time and dates and prices and measurements every day, in real-life situations at the store, while cooking, while planning a trip. Now that the weather is warming up, and Elliora is a bit older and doesn’t hate the car quite as much, we can start going to the library regularly and hitting the museums again. We can keep plugging away at our year’s curriculum right through summer if we want to. We’re going to start using Time4Learning as a supplement (thanks, Yara!) and I’m hopeful that it will be a good fit for Annalie’s learning style and our needs right now.

[I am a bit apprehensive leaving the negative stuff about homeschooling in this post because I've gotten some pretty negative responses from people about this kind of thing in the past. Please know that I am not saying homeschooling is too hard for us, because I'm not; I'm saying that right now homeschooling is challenging but we are persevering because I want to teach my kids about perseverance and flexibility just as much as I want to teach them how to read and write. If I honestly thought homeschooling wasn't working for us anymore we wouldn't be doing it. It's as simple as that. And I want to be honest about our struggles because if someone else is struggling in their homeschool at least they won't read my blog under the erroneous impression that homeschooling comes easily to everyone else in the world but them.]

On top of everything else Troy’s job is crazy busy right now and he’s basically leaving for work before we get up and getting home just in time to tuck Annalie in at night. As you can imagine this is stressing all of us out for various reasons.

I’m truly okay now. I talked to Troy and my mom and Brenda and Madge. Brenda and Madge both told me that when I lose my temper at my kid, it’s an opportunity for me to help her learn how to deal with anger and angry people, and also a chance to teach her about how even her parents aren’t perfect. (Gasp! Shocking but true.) My mom and Troy both had good ideas for ways to help Annalie learn to deal with her frustration. They all reminded me that things will get easier and I know they are right. I am stretched pretty thin right now, with nursing a baby and homeschooling a first-grader and attempting to keep the house in some kind of order on days that are too cold for Annalie to play outside, and I need to be as kind to myself as I would to anyone else in this situation. So I’m trying.

Sarah commented on the last post that Annalie’s vocabulary is so good for her age that it’s easy to forget she’s just a little kid. I confess I have the same problem sometimes. Annalie is so mature and smart and empathetic in some ways, but in other ways she is still very much six-going-on-seven. I am guilty of expecting too much of her at times. Especially since Elliora was born, I think, since in comparison with a four-month-old Annalie seems impossibly grown-up. But she’s not. She’s still a kid in need of snuggles and silliness and reassurance and guidance and tons of patience and understanding and love. Though really, what adult doesn’t need those things too?

Tomorrow is another day. It might bring more temper tantrums, it might not. Either way, we’ll handle it and I will attempt to remain calm and remember that we’re all doing the best we can under the circumstances, knowing it will get easier eventually. Or I’ll get stronger in the process. Probably both.

How are you today?

And so am I, after three straight days of the same hospital room, which I wasn’t allowed to leave because of how contagious RSV is. We’re all happy that the whole family is at home again to start the new year. Thank you so much for all your encouraging comments, emails, prayers, and wishes! Once again you all have reminded me that internet people are some of the awesomest people around.

I have every intention of blogging again tomorrow, but it’s fairly likely that it will slip through the cracks. So I’ll say it now, just in case:

Happy New Year! I hope 2011 brings each and every one of you delicious food and laughter-punctuated conversation with good friends, chances to sleep in and hug your loved ones tight, the determination to reach your goals and the flexibility to know when it’s time to change plans, and plenty of joy and wisdom.

As I mentioned in my last post, Elliora is big into cluster nursing right now. That means we end up sitting on the couch all evening, every evening, for hours. Theoretically, that would be a good time for me to edit photos or blog, right? Since I’m just sitting here anyway, and how hard could it be to use a laptop when you’re nursing a newborn?

Apparently, for me, it’s medium difficult. Nursing not only makes me sleepy, it slows down my brain. Also, typing one-handed is kind of annoying. If I do anything on my laptop during the evening nursing sessions, it’s mainly just surfing around. I don’t even do much of that, really. Mostly I just sit and nurse and cuddle my baby girl. And I don’t feel even a tiny bit guilty about it.

I know that some of you are anxious for more baby pictures, though. And hey, look! Here is a post full of them!

Brenda took the photo of the top of Elliora’s head the day after she was born. I love that photo.

Here I am with Mini-Troy. When she wrinkles her nose like that, she looks just like her dad.

I found this soft apple-green yarn months ago, before I knew if I was having a boy or girl, and loved the color. I wanted to make the baby her own cuddle blanket, like the one I made for Annalie when she was a baby. I finished crocheting the last round of the border in the hospital the day after Elliora was born. I have vague plans to make a few small purple flowers and sew them to one side of the blanket (because E’s middle name is violet, see?) but who knows if I’ll ever get around to that. So far this blanket’s name is “green blanket.”

This is the photo Brenda based the banner on. (Oh. I have a new banner now, also courtesy of Brenda! You can still see the Elliora one here.) The super-cute dotty coffee-cup onesie (isn’t that just the perfect onesie for an Actually baby!?) was a gift from Anna.

I’m so glad Bug and Brenda got the chance to meet Elliora before they had to go home. Her timing in being born really was perfect.

I love both these photos, neither of which I took. My mom took the one of Annalie wearing my boots. When Annalie saw it, she said, “Oh no! All the cereal boxes on the counter behind me ruin the photo.” I had to laugh, but I told her nah, that ten years from now it will be interesting to see what the boxes looked like when she was a kid. And I love how Brenda captured both Elliora’s and my profiles in the photo on the right.

Here’s what the new paint in our bedroom looks like. Yay! I had actually gotten kind of used to the the Palm-Beach-fake-tan-foundation color the walls used to be, but I like this blue-gray color so much better.

Troy took this photo of me and Elliora napping on the couch, with Katy snuggled up to my arm. Katy really wants to snuggle with Elliora. I have to keep telling her she can’t sit on the baby.

Baby hands! I love ‘em.

Elliora has proved to be just like her big sister in one way: she doesn’t really want anyone holding her but me. Annalie was a total mama’s girl till she was three or four months old, when she would allow Gramaw or Daddy to hold her for short periods of time. I’m hoping Elliora’s mama-only phase doesn’t last quite so long. I can already sometimes hand her off while she’s sleeping, but usually she wakes up within a couple of minutes and protests loudly that she’d like to be returned to her mother, thankyouverymuch. The minute I pick her up again, the squawking stops like a switch has been flipped and she sighs in relief. It’s pretty funny. (Not that I blame her. I am pretty awesome, after all.)

Ultrasound techs commented more than once that my baby had her legs crossed. Now Elliora often crosses her feet when she’s nursing or sleeping. So ladylike.

Elliora likes to suck on my finger, grab another of my fingers with one hand, and spread her other hand over her eye. That photo was taken only nine days ago and already Elliora looks bigger and older to me.

Looking at this photo, it occurred to me that I could take a series of photos of Elliora next to Katy, like we did with Annalie and the bear.

Sweetie. She really is.

This one’s a sweetie too. She has been such a great big sister so far, with only occasional flashes of annoyance at the baby’s crying. She helps pick out Elliora’s clothes almost every day, and has helped out during many diaper changes. She’s been excited about having a little sister for so long, I’m glad that she’s enjoying it so far. I’m sure the fact that her sister’s birth has meant a vacation from school hasn’t hurt any.

Of course, even having a newborn can’t mean a vacation from Christmas, not when we have a six-year-old who loves the holiday. So a few days ago Troy and Annalie set up the tree inside and put up lights outside (hmm, I need to pop outside one night and take pictures of those) and hung up the stockings.

Thanks to these two elves, it’s beginning to get very festive around here.

Some more self-portrait—taking with both my girls one morning when Elliora was awake and happy. (Speaking of self-portraits, the next run of 7 Days starts this Saturday, the 18th. Consider yourselves reminded.)

Hee. Elliora looks like she’s either getting ready to ROCK, or trying to sign ‘I love you.’

Whew. That was a lot of photos. And I’ve barely scratched the surface!

Halloween seems like it was so long ago. But I feel I should blog about it for the grandmas. So!

On Halloween morning, we made pumpkin-shaped pancakes with chocolate chips for eyes. No actual pumpkin was in the pancakes, though. I should have used this recipe from Zakka Life but I was lazy and just used the store-brand pancake mix and food coloring.

But they were still mighty tasty.

Pumpkin-carving time! Annalie designed her own pumpkin, as she has done every year since she was 3 1/2.

This year, she asked if she could help carve it too. So she did! She carved the eyes and nose, with a little help from Troy, and she did a great job.

Gumball supervised.

Pumpkin braaaaaaaiiiiins!

Um, Troy? Perhaps it’s time for a short break from the pumpkin-carving.

After a refreshing Twizzler and a rest in the sun, we got back to work.

Troy and I worked at carving our pumpkins. I even carved a little one for the baby, at Annalie’s request.

Kristen commented on Flickr that she loved that the baby got a punkin too. I replied that to Annalie, this baby has been a real member of the family, included in all plans and stories and holiday traditions, since way back in May when we told her that she’d be getting a baby brother or sister around Thanksgiving. She’s got big plans for them to have sisters-only secret handshakes, sleepovers, and makeover parties.

Trick-or-treating time! Annalie was a Sock Hop Sweetie this year for Halloween.

She fell in love with this costume the minute she saw it at Target, which kind of surprised me. She oohed and aahed over the various princess ones, and seriously considered a Daphne (from Scooby Doo) costume, but the minute she saw the bobby soxer pictured on the label of this one with her hair in a high ponytail and a scarf tied jauntily around her neck, she forgot them all.

She went with the one high ponytail on Friday, when we went trunk-or-treating, but for some reason on Halloween she decided she wanted two low ponytails instead. After I finished curling her hair, she surveyed herself in the full-length mirror and declared, “I look CUTE!”

I sort of dressed up as Juno for Halloween. I found an orange-and-white striped shirt on clearance a few weeks before Halloween, and I had bought myself a cheap black hoodie jacket at Old Navy, hoping it would get me through whatever cold weather we had before I had the baby so I wouldn’t have to buy an expensive maternity coat, and the costume just sort of fell into place. I really should have been wearing a short skirt over my jeans and carrying around a blue Slushie. But eh. I’m eight months pregnant and I don’t even really like Halloween all that much. Half a costume was enough.

On the way home, we saw that one of our neighbors had set all this stuff out labeled “Purple Heart donations”. I so badly wanted to sneak off with the KitchenAid mixer for a friend who had just been talking about wanting one, but Troy wouldn’t let me, even after I told him I’d make a cash donation to the veterans. He’s an upstanding citizen like that. And honestly, I probably wouldn’t have really done it. I’m an upstanding citizen too, even when people leave expensive kitchen appliances sitting out on the curb. Sigh.

We didn’t really do a whole lot of trick-or-treating. Annalie was done after going up and down two streets, so we headed back home. We lit our jack-o-lanterns and a fire in the fireplace. We ate roasted pumpkin seeds and played a board game. Occasionally some trick-or-treaters would come to the door, and Annalie would hop up to answer it, offering them the bowl with a cheerful, “Take a few, there’s plenty!” Even with her generosity, we still had a ton of candy left over. Oh darn.

From Juno, the Sock Hop Sweetie, and Captain Awesome, a belated Happy Halloween! Hope yours was as good as ours.

I guess I forgot to tell you guys, we have a tree swing now! That’s in addition to the tree rings in the video in my previous post. If you follow me on Facebook, you might have caught my recent hand-wringing about swingsets. We’ve been talking about getting Annalie a swingset since we moved here, but hadn’t really done anything about it. When we changed the calendars from September to October, I realized time was growing short if we wanted to get one before this winter, so I started researching possibilities online.

And then I went crazy. Do you have any idea how much most good wooden swingsets cost!? It’s completely ridiculous! Since we’ll be moving in a couple of years and moving the swingset wouldn’t be feasible, we didn’t want to spend that much. We looked at the cheaper metal swingsets, like the kind we had when I was a kid, but those seem so flimsy and not very entertaining compared to the neighbors’ swingset that Annalie can play on anytime. We looked on Craigslist, we found some free plans for DIY swingsets, we talked it over…and we decided maybe all we need for now is a tree swing.

We have a big chestnut tree in our backyard that we thought would do nicely for a swing, so we went to IKEA and bought a wooden swing for $15. While we were there, we decided on impulse to buy a $10 set of rings, too, since Annalie loves the rings at gymnastics so much. Troy picked up some cable and clamps, and he and Annalie got busy trimming some branches that were in the way.

While Troy trimmed extraneous limbs and took down old Christmas tree lights (the plastic was so degraded they just broke off in Troy’s hands), Annalie was gathering chestnuts and I was taking pictures and trying not to trip on all the spiny cupules. These things are what the chestnuts grow inside, and in late September-early October they fall off the tree and become trip hazards.

Oops. So much for avoiding the spiny cupules. Even though I was wearing good shoes and walking really carefully I still managed to step on one, lost my balance, and fell. Luckily, I just landed on my knee and the ground was soft. After ascertaining that I was okay, Troy asked, “And is the camera okay?” It’s really kind of amazing, considering how often Troy has seen evidence of my klutziness, that he ever bought me a nice camera. Luckily I have not done serious damage to it. Yet.

Annalie helped Troy tighten the clamps onto the cable to form loops.

Getting the cable up over the supporting branch was fun. It’s about 18 feet up, and the ladder didn’t reach. So Troy tied the loop in the cable to a long piece of bright green twine, and tied the other end of the twine to a wrench. It only took him about five tries to get the wrench over the branch for the first cable, and I think he did it in one or two tries for the second.

Then it was just a matter of threading the cables through the swing and the red plastic rings that came with it. And a test swing by the engineer, of course.

Then it was time to swing, woohoo!

Troy put the rings up the next day, and Annalie’s been using those a lot too.

I think we made the right decision. Swingset, schmingset! Give us our tree swing and rings, and we’ll all be happy.

Well, and maybe a porch swing under the deck for me to sit on. That’s next!

Our homeschooling year has officially started.

It started unofficially as soon we got home from California with Troy taking Annalie, at her request, to the Museum of Natural History, the Air and Space Museum, the World War II Memorial (“You know that memorial with all the flags and fountains, that’s for a war that happened when Grandpa was a baby?”), and the Pentagon 9/11 Memorial. I say, when your six-year-old asks to visit museums and national memorials, you grant her request and pat yourself on the back for getting the school year off to a good start with a kid who’s eager to learn. (Note for next year: apparently Labor Day is a good day to visit those places; Troy said even though they were all open to the public hardly anyone else was around.)

I had originally planned to start doing daily lessons with Annalie the day after Labor Day, using our new Sonlight Curriculum, the entirety of which for the whole school year is pictured above on a shelf in our dining room. But even though I had received the boxes from Sonlight a week or two before we left for California, I never got around to opening them before we left. I wanted to give them my full attention, and in the days before our trip I was too scattered with laundry and lists and emails and planning. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to wait till we were back home from our trip. That’s the beauty of homeschooling, after all: I get to do things on my schedule.

Once we were back from our delightful, exhausting, jam-packed-with-friends-family-and-fun, mostly-yet-to-be-blogged two weeks, I decreed that we needed a few days to rest and ease back into real life. We caught up on our sleep, did some laundry, went to the grocery store and got back into the swing of meal-planning and -making. That Thursday was the emotional roller-coaster of Annalie’s first gymnastics class. I thought Saturday would be a good day to unpack our box of books and materials, but what with one thing and another Saturday got away from us. That seems to happen a lot with Saturdays.

Sunday morning, we went to church for the first time in weeks, thanks to all our travels at the end of summer. We spent some time relaxing at home, we ran some errands, and before I knew it the day was nearly over and we still had not opened that box.

Troy mentioned the box of books to me a couple of times over the course of the day, because he knew I’d planned to unpack everything and get myself organized that weekend. I had breezily agreed that yes, I was planning to do that, and then changed the subject, because even though it was bugging me and I knew I wanted to do it, I’ve suffered from Opposite Disease my whole life. I reminded Troy of this the last time he mentioned unpacking the school books to me—snapped at him, really, the poor guy. His only crime was knowing me and my tendency to procrastinate too well. So when he protested that he was only trying to help, I immediately apologized, hugged him, and said, “You know what? If you really want to help, could you come right now and help me clear off the dining room table so we can unpack the freaking box?” And of course he did exactly that, because he’s awesome.

After we cleared the table in about five minutes flat, I told Annalie that we were going to open the box of school books. She said, “All right! I’ve been waiting and waiting for this. Can I help!?” I told her, of course she could help, these were her books! Can you guess what happened then?

She sat at the table with us for the next hour and a half as we unpacked and went through all the books and supplies. She was particularly interested in the science and history books, but was also very excited to see that Charlotte’s Web was one of her read-aloud books, and when she recognized Put Me in the Zoo and Little Bear among her reading books. Can you guess what happened next? Because it surprised the heck out of Troy and me.

I said that I needed to go through all the books and check them off on the invoice, to make sure we weren’t missing anything. Annalie said, “I can help! I’ll read the books to you and you can check them off.”

I blinked at her. Was this the same kid who gets squirrelly if I ask her to read the “DONT WALK” sign at a street crossing, a sign that she knows perfectly well what it says? I was pretty sure it was the same kid.

I told her I would love it if she read the book titles to me, that it would be very helpful. I expected her to read two or three and then get tired. But she stuck it out and read almost every book title to me. She needed help with some of them, but she read or sounded out a good three-fourths of the book titles almost entirely on her own. She was up almost an hour past her bedtime but I didn’t care at all, because she was voluntarily reading something. Once she rubbed her eyes, and I said if she was tired we could put her to bed. She admitted she was a little tired but she wanted to keep going till we were done. Oooookay then, keep reading, kid!

She keeps doing stuff like this, insisting she can’t read and then casually reading an entire sentence somewhere before back-pedaling and insisting that she really can’t read, she just looked at the words and guessed, that’s all, honest! It’s hilarious and touching at the same time.

I’m not sure what her mental block about reading is, because she clearly has the skills to read. It’s more like she isn’t ready to read on her own, like she wants the security blanket of having someone there to read to her. We’ve reassured her many times that no matter how good she gets at reading, no matter how old she gets, that we will always happily read to her if she wants us to. We encourage her, applaud her successes, and try not to pressure her into reading more than she wants to. Because she will read when she’s ready—or, apparently, when I need help comparing the contents of a shipment against the invoice. But you know, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if she goes back to insisting that she can’t read tomorrow. And that’s okay; she’s only six years old. She has years and years of learning and reading ahead of her. It’s okay if she wants to stay a kid a little bit longer.

[Warning! Long aside about homeschooling philosophies and the benefits of delaying education ahead! I was totally planning to write a quick breezy post about our first few days of the school year and I have no idea where this came from except yes I do. I am opinionated as heck and am pretty much constitutionally incapable of not sharing my opinions with the world. Feel free to skip the next four paragraphs if you want to. You'll know it's safe to start reading again when you see photos.]

I was just talking about this with Bonnie the other day, actually. She was telling me that although she does not consider herself a wholesale follower of the Waldorf education philosophy for a variety of reasons, one of the things she does like about Waldorf is that it strongly encourages delaying formal math or reading lessons until children are at least 7 or 8 years old, until they are fully awake to the world.

This echoed a discussion I’d just been having with Sonja and Brenda about how some European countries similarly delay lessons until those ages, thinking that for younger kids playing and exploring the world is more important than an early knowledge of letters or numbers.

And you know, as someone who’s worked with all ages of kids in a variety of settings over the past 20 years, I can see the merit in that way of thinking. Preschool-aged kids vary wildly in their ability to sit still, to pay attention, to master the fine-motor skills necessary to move a pencil across the page, to grasp abstract concepts like the fact that 2+2=4 or that the letters “c-a-t” represent that furry, pointy-eared animal that purrs and meows. But by the time kids reach second grade, the playing field has leveled for most of them. The kids who were singing their ABC’s before they were potty-trained are probably still at the head of the class, but now most of the kids who were struggling to write their names in kindergarten have probably caught up to the pack and are reading and writing just fine…that is, if they weren’t labeled as “special needs” and made fun of by the other kids because they were “slow.”

This is not to say that some kids don’t have learning disabilities or other geniune special needs, because of course some of them do, and receiving specialized help is a necessity for them. But much like the probable over-diagnosis of ADHD in our culture, I’d be willing to bet that many kids who struggle early on would struggle a lot less, which would breed confidence and further academic success, if reading instruction were delayed until they were older. (Insert disclaimer here about how I’m not a professional of any kind, just someone who’s spent a lot of time with a lot of kids. Thank you for not throwing rocks at me; it would only damage your own computer monitors.)

Anyway! Pay no attention to that wild-eyed idealogue hunched over her laptop.

We started lessons using the curriculum materials on Tuesday. We’re starting off slow, since Annalie has never been in a formal classroom setting before, and only did a devotion and a couple of subjects from the lesson plan, history and reading. Today we added science to the schedule. At Annalie’s request, we did two days’ worth of science lessons, because why not? Again, that’s the beauty of homeschooling. Tomorrow we might add math, we’ll see how it goes.

Did I mention the lesson plan? The best thing about using this particular curriculum, in my opinion, is that it comes with a complete 36-week lesson plan, which will totally save me when I have a newborn in the house. That’s the main reason I decided to use a pre-packaged curriculum this year instead of going with the unschooling approach I used last year: I am having a baby smack in the middle of the school year and will need the structure. Even when I’m sleep-deprived and breastfeeding every 90 minutes and doing quadruple the usual laundry, I won’t have to worry about figuring out what we’re going to do for school. I’ll just need to open the binder to the right week and look at the plan.

One of the things we did that first day was a spelling pre-test, and Annalie aced it. She was very proud of her 100% and gold star. She specifically requested that I take a picture so she could show her grandmas what a good speller she was on her first day of school. Then she put down her dry-erase board and asked me in a serious, concerned tone, “But when is recess?” That’s my girl, keeping her priorities straight.

I wasn’t exactly worried about homeschooling this year. After all, I’ve been homeschooling Annalie her whole life. I am confident I have a broad-enough knowledge base to teach a first-grader the basics and maybe even a few frills. I have no doubt that homeschooling is the right choice for our family at this time.

It’s just that this year, it felt more official, what with having to file a Notice of Intent to Homeschool with the local school superintendent; not to mention knowing that at the end of the year I’ll need to either provide standardized test results showing that Annalie is in the top quartile of kids her age, or a letter from someone with more edumacation than I (i.e., a Master’s degree) stating that she is learning as she should. And it’s not that I have a problem with keeping the Man informed, or that I’m worried Annalie won’t learn this year. It was just unfamiliar territory, this whole curriculum thing, and it made me slightly uneasy.

But now that I’ve familiarized myself with the materials a bit, and now that we’ve done a couple of days’ worth of lessons, I’m wondering why I wasted time worrying. We will kick butt at this homeschooling thing. I’m pretty sure we could finish the school year by March, if we really wanted to. We most likely won’t, because we’re going to make time for field trips and baking and traveling (gotta take the new baby around to meet far-flung family members) and photography and hanging out with friends.

And recess, of course. We’ll always make time for recess.

p.s. New banner! This is one of my favorites. Thanks, B!

When we were in California last week, we went along to one of Bug’s gymnastics classes. Annalie wasn’t able to participate because she wasn’t in the right age group. Even though she enjoyed watching, she was pretty disappointed about not being able to join the class. I told her that when we got home, I’d look into gymnastics classes for her here, which I did. A local kids’ gym offered a free introductory class, so I signed her up. When I told her, she was very excited.

Today, the day of her free class, she asked me all day long, “How much longer till my gymnastics class?” She talked excitedly about all the things she would learn and how much fun it would be. We discussed how when she was in class, she’d have to listen to the instructors, and that Troy and I wouldn’t be in the class with her but we’d be sitting where she could see us.

I was privately apprehensive about how she’d do, because she’s always had a bit of trouble adjusting to new situations. She’s gotten better as she’s gotten older, though, and she was really so excited about being in gymnastics class that I thought this time she just might skip the usual pattern. And Annalie loves to move and climb and jump, and has a lot of natural athletic ability, so I had high hopes that gymnastics class might be just right for her.

We arrived early for her class, as instructed, in order to sign some paperwork. We sat and watched the end of the class before Annalie’s through the big windows. Annalie had been impatient and practically vibrating with anticipation on the way to the gym, but once we were sitting there she confessed she was feeling a bit nervous. Troy and I assured her that was okay, that everyone gets a little nervous sometimes, especially before doing something new. We reminded her that we’d be right there, that she could look over and see us anytime she wanted to.

When the class started, she ran onto the big red mat willingly along with the other seven or eight girls in her class. They did warm-ups and safety exercises as music played from the stereo. About 15 minutes into the class, the girls all ran over and sat down against one wall. I took a picture of Annalie sitting there, looked down at my camera, and looked back up to see that she’d covered her face with her hands and was crying. My heart sank a little, but I was honestly surprised that she’d made it that far into the class before the tears came.

The instructor noticed right away that she was upset and asked her if she wanted to go see her mom. Annalie nodded, and walked quickly out of the room. I met her at the door, nodded at the instructor when he quietly said she could come back in whenever she was ready, and picked Annalie up as she wrapped her arms around my neck and buried her face in my shoulder. We headed into the small kitchen next door so we could have a bit of privacy. (When it comes to crying, Annalie is just like me: the worst thing is if people are looking at her.)

I sat down in a chair and held her in my lap, rocking her as she hiccuped and cried for a couple of minutes. I told her that her daddy and I were so proud of her, that she’d looked like she was having such fun while she was in class, and that she’d done a great job following instructions, especially considering she’d never been in a gymnastics class before. I rubbed her back; I reminded her to try to take deep breaths; I offered her a drink of water.

After Annalie had taken a few sips of water she looked at me, her woebegone little face red and tear-stained and said, “I don’t wanna go back in there. I just want to take gymnastics with a friend, like Bug! Don’t make me go back in, please!”

Immediately, I flashed back to the hundreds—possibly thousands—of pep talks my mom gave me as a kid when I didn’t want to try something new, or didn’t want to go back in the room with all those staring eyes, or whatever. I’m sorry to say that I was stubborner and more fearful than Annalie is; often my mom could not talk me into doing whatever it was I’d decided I didn’t want to do. I would say it took me until about the age of nine to reach the point Annalie is at now, where she is sometimes scared of a new thing but can often be persuaded to give it another chance. My poor mom. How did she do it!? I don’t know, but she set me a great example for dealing with my own frightened kid. (Mom, thank you for being so patient with me and not forcing me to do all those things I wasn’t quite ready to do! As for telling my third-grade teacher that if she wanted me to do something new, she couldn’t ask me to do it, she had to tell me…that was very sneaky of you. I’m impressed against my will at that trick.)

I told Annalie that I understood why she didn’t want to go back into the class, that it was scary to do new things, and now she was a little embarrassed because she’d cried, right? She admitted that she was. I said I really did understand, and that I would never make her take another gymnastics class if she didn’t want to…but I wanted her to finish this class. I pointed out that she only had about half the class time left, and that I thought she would really enjoy getting to try out the rings, or learning how to do a cartwheel. And I knew that when she was done, even if she didn’t want to take any more classes, she would be so proud of herself for doing something she was a little scared to do. I reminded her that every time she does something she’s a little scared of, she gets a little bit braver.

Annalie tearfully insisted that she didn’t want to go back in the class. I hugged her and told her I knew she didn’t want to, but that I thought she needed to. She sighed a big shuddering sigh. I suggested that we go back out, and she could sit in Troy’s lap and watch the class for a few minutes before going back in. She agreed.

Annalie sat on Troy’s lap tensely, watching the kids in the gym doing cartwheels on the air mat. She repeated her wish to just go home, and Troy told her basically the same things I’d just said in the other room. After another minute, Troy suggested that he walk her over to the door, and Annalie stood up with him but immediately said, “I can’t go in there looking like this!” and scrubbed at her face with the tail of her t-shirt. That very nearly broke my heart, because she sounded so grown-up yet so young and vulnerable at the same time.

Just then, one of the other moms sitting there asked me in an aside if I thought having a friend in the class would help. She offered to call her daughter over and introduce her to Annalie. I said I thought that would help immensely.

She followed Troy and Annalie over to the door, opened it, and called her daughter Jamie over. She introduced them and explained that Jamie was scared when she first came to gymnastics too, but now she liked it and maybe she could help show Annalie the ropes. Jamie nodded, grabbed Annalie’s hand, and said, “Come on!”

All I can say is God bless Jamie, and her mom for suggesting the idea, because for the rest of the class Annalie had a friend.

At first Annalie didn’t want to do anything. She just sat and watched the other girls use the springboard. The instructor kept an eye on her, not ignoring her, but not pushing her to join in. And Jamie didn’t hover; she participated in the class, but she kept going back to check on Annalie, sitting next to her and talking to her. When the group moved over to the low balance beam and uneven parallel bars, Annalie sat against the wall at first, but Jamie persuaded her to come try walking along the balance beam, even holding her hand as she did so. As she jumped off at the end, Annalie was beaming from ear to ear, and she looked over at us and gave us a thumbs-up.

After that, she practically skipped back over to the wall with Jamie, where they stood for a minute, talking animatedly. Then Jamie went over for her turn on the bars, and Annalie followed. When Jamie was done, the instructor asked Annalie if she wanted to try, and I could see Jamie nodding encouragingly at her. Annalie stepped up and gave it a shot. (See photo at the top of this post.) Since it was her first class, and most of the other girls were more experienced, Annalie wasn’t able to do what they were doing. But the instructor suggested she try something else, and Annalie surprised him by being able to do it on her first try. Her grin as she high-fived him was like the sun coming out from behind the clouds.

When they moved on to the next station, Annalie excitedly tried doing cartwheels with another instructor’s help, and she went back again and again to the rings. She came over to the window several times just to wave and smile and give us a thumbs-up or the I-love-you sign. Another girl in the class, a couple of years older than Annalie and Jamie, helped her out once or twice and asked Annalie her name. By the time class was over, Annalie practically bounced out of the room and over to us, exclaiming, “I just LOVE gymnastics class! Can I come back next week, and the next and the next? Please?”

As I filled out the paperwork and paid for the fall semester of classes, Annalie’s instructor came out and told Annalie he was proud of her for coming back to class even though she’d been a little nervous. You could practically see Annalie grow an inch taller when he told her that. He reminded Annalie to do her homework, and as we left everyone said they’d see us next week.

On the way home, even though it was past her bedtime, we stopped and bought Annalie a chocolate milkshake to celebrate the success of her first gymnastics class.