LOST A SOCK

Got Kids?

There are people in this world who are just meant to have kids.  Lots of them.  The noise level doesn't bother them, mostly.  The messes-- the learning materials, are something we learn to embrace.  The rewards are so overwhelming some days that you wonder how on Earth you got so lucky to be called to this family, this place, this time. 

We are meant to have a large family.   

When we got married we said we would wait something like three or five years before having children.  (Aww hell, who remembers anymore?)  It was what everyone accepted as the norm, to give us the chance to buy a fun car, vacation and go out to dinner whenever we wanted. 

We tried to wait, and we did the above mentioned things that young married couples are supposed to do by American standard ...until we couldn't any longer.  We didn't make it a year, I think eight months or so, before we started trying for a family.  We celebrated our second wedding anniversary very quietly in a restaurant where our brand new baby boy slept, for once, peacefully in his infant seat.  We were a changed couple forever.

Something funny happened to us with the birth of our third child.  We knew we loved being parents, we knew we were a strong couple both in spite of and because of the ups and downs that come typically to a marriage over the years, but we realized, as a family of five, that we are really, really happy with where our life is headed.  We don't just love kids-- we really love kids.  I don't know the exact moment when I figured this out, but one day it was like waking up to see blue skies and sunshine for the very first time, and knowing for sure that, yes, this is what we are called to. 

Kevin and I are family people.  We enjoy our family time to no end-- watching our kids play their sports, reading together, taking vacations and day-trips and dancing around the kitchen while making dinner.  We understand, and care deeply about the AIDS crisis that is devastating our adopted African country.  We know we are called to an effort, not just to bring a couple of the 147 million orphans worldwide, to the United States to grow up, but to work towards a solution for a country- a continent, that is being wiped out by poverty and disease.   

Figure out what makes you come alive, and do that.

I took the above picture last night, just after our social worker left.  During our homestudy visit our kids did what they do.  They demolished platters of fruit and cheese and crackers, made messes and pushed one in front of the next to tell the new visitor what they knew.  Marin passed out the contents of the paper recylce can to her brothers, Jack gifted my very long (previously recycled) list of Things to Clean to the interested lady.  (Gahhhhh.)  KJ showed off his Bakugan abilities, Jack melted down over an empty Honey Nut Cheerios box, and Marin tipped back my (again, previously recycled) McDonalds pop cup-- straight out of the trash during our interview.  My youngest two emptied the lower kitchen cabinets that they empty every day because it was apparently time to play House.  (Apartments, really.  Marin lives in Tupperware, and Jackson Pots and Pans.)

All of this, while completely normal to those of us in the throes of early parenthood, made me nervous under the watchful eye of one who has been charged with the job of writing a report about us. 

Within a couple weeks our homestudy will be complete, notarized and in our hands.  We now begin the gruelling process of filing official government paperwork with the United States and individual authorities, and will finish putting our Dossier together.  Once that is all sent out, we wait to be approved, and we wait for our child to be referred to us.  Then we must pass court, and travel to Africa. 

Baby steps, right?  One official document at a time, one child at a time.  For now, anway.  (Eeeeee!  A baby!  We are really, really "having" a baby!)

A Few Things

I am breaking up with winter.  It's March now.  Enough already, right? 

I could watch them paint all day.  This day, we were studying watercolor artists.  My home, and especially their bedroom, is covered in kid paintings.  I could watch them create all day.

All day. 

Here, his fishes and their seaweed dinner.

We are down to eleven eggs.

I thought that my seven year old could help me turn them last night.  They need to be turned three times daily.  He picked up one of his favorites, the brightest pastel green one.  He brought it closer to his face to have a look, and then it slipped from his hands. 

It was one of those moments where I wanted anything but to be the adult in the room.  Six or seven days from hatch, I figured the little chick couldn't make it, and with all of the blood coming from the egg, I knew there wasn't much we could do.  

I am now the sole egg turner.  I am ridiculously careful.  And still utterly mortified.

My children miss the Olympics. 

The snowboarding, specifically.

I am told that we will be seeing the sun, here in the midwest, over the next couple days.  It has been grey here for thirty-seven months, I think.  If I may make a request with the Powers That Be, now, I would like it to be a super blue incredibly sunny sky capable of melting the remaining slushy crud on the ground.  And make it pop up my tulip buds, too.

I had a few sad days, recently, and out of the blue my four year old showed up with a card for me. 

Okay it was a birthday party invitation that never made it into the mail last December, but he filled it out for me with his own letters, just the same.  It reads:

"Dear Mom,

I love you.

And I know you will turn to the dark side.

Love,

Jackson"

It was perfect!

I have been playing Pink's Glitter In The Air song on repeat all day.  It has nothing to do with the above picture.  Unless you can imagine me twirling on silks above my children to get this picture.  Then it totally does.  I've watched it seven thousand times on YouTube today, here. 

I need new music for a CD.  We've been spending lots of time in the car lately.  What do you have on repeat?

The Babies are here!

Har har har har, gotcha!

Our babies are a long way off, still.

Our chick eggs were delivered early this morning, though!

Twelve warm, delicate little eggs.

We've spent the better part of the day checking the incubator temperature and moisture level, and reading egg and chick library books and doing egg and chick-related projects, and again checking the temperature, temperature, temperature.  It must stay at a constant 99-100.5 degrees, and in spite of the mad cleaning rampage that is happening in our house at the very same time, I think I will be glued to our incubator this week.  Just to check the mercury, again. 

There are other babies, too. 

Randomly falling asleep in our hands as we play with them.

 

Happy to converse with toddler cohorts, and to receive lots of little girl kisses.

My mom and dad's black lab delivered seven jet-black little puppies a few weeks ago, and while they've been squeaky and smushy and cute since they were born, they have now become infinitely more interesting to my children, as their eyes have opened and they are learning to walk. 

 
 
So dark their sweet little features can barely be seen as they sleep, as if they fell from the sky.

Oh no, this family of five (and one old dog, one old cat, twelve unhatched chicks) will NOT be taking a puppy home.  Nor will we be keeping any of our chicks. I believe my plate is full at this moment.  And so is my back yard.  And our bedrooms are about to fill quickly, as well.  These baby animals are fun for the short time that they remain ours.

As the four of us, myself with Marin strapped to my chest, and the two boys trailing by hands, made our way through the county courthouse for the ninety-seventh home study document required a couple weeks ago, we must have been a sight.  Comical and kind comments abounded as we passed through one hallway after the next, about how full my hands must be, and what a crowd we are.  And then again last week, through the overcrowded hospital waiting room for my bloodwork, and through our family doctor's office for my adoption physical.  I give a smile in appreciation. 

We travel in puffy coats and clunky boots and winter hats, and with miscellaneous action figures and board books and little red boxes of raisins, a bit like a noisy herd.  Growing families are every bit the norm in libraries and at playgrounds-- places frequented by mobs of children.  But when we are the exception to the norm- at ten a.m. in an elderly-filled hospital waiting room while most children are in school, we are doted upon.  Countless silver-haired women smile at my baby girl and quietly lean over to share with me stories of raising their own children.  These have grown to be some of my favorite moments as I am allowed somehow to reach back in time to the very best part, as I am always reminded, of these women's lives.  It is a priviledge to join this very long line of mothers, and to do what I find best for my family, best for our changing world.

Our babies are coming, and my hands will be more full, as will our bedrooms and our back yard.  Raising one child is no easy task, nor is raising three, or imaginably, five or seven.  But if my hands are full, and my days are filled, my heart is even moreso. 

When we reached the car after our most recent courthouse adventure, I called Kevin to tell him that our local background checks were finished, and to share with him our hallway experiences.  I looked forward to next year, when we will repeat these trips-- with three by hands, and a fourth member of our crew being worn on my chest, as we prepare for number five.  Next year another sibling will hatch chicks with us, and excitedly wait for spring with us, and play with Gramma and Papa's eight black labs.  (Oh right, sorry, they are sooo going to give most of those adorable, squishy puppies away.  Wink wink.)  It just keeps getting better.

In which I am positive spring has not come early

As I watched the snow melt last week at a blistering thirty-five degrees, and Groundhog Day skeetered on through, I thought for sure that Spring might present its pretty little self early.  Tulips and green grass and and tree buds, oh my!  Just what I needed!  A quick winter!

 

What the hell was I on?

We live in the Midwest.  And we are less than ten days into the month of February.

 

If you're going to marry anybody, it should definitely be your best friend.  The brides at their wedding site.  Seven months to our their big day, if you're keeping track.

Two weeks ago we chose the agency which will conduct the Homestudy for our adoption (our actual adoption agency is based out of another state, and your homestudy agency needs to be within your own state) and it has been a paperchase of an extreme kind ever since.  Before our meeting downstate next week, Kevin and I must assemble financial documents of all sorts, write essays and provide family histories three generations back, provide documentation of child and pet immunizations alike and make it through seventeen kinds of background checks.  (Fine. Five. But it feeeeels like seventeen, finding that fine line between smashing the prints OFF of my fingers, and sharing my fingerprints with the FBI, and all.) 

I must admit that the OCD part of me really enjoys assembling all of the necessary documents into neat piles and giant envelopes and plastic drawers-- and knowing that each little page brings us closer to our baby is quite exciting.  The copier we bought at the beginning of the homeschool year?  Han-dee!  Unfortunately the wintertime trips involving coats, mittens, car seat buckles and snow with three small children, again and again to retrieve this page or that, are a bit less fun than the organizing part.  Though, eh, the boys have come to love sauntering through the metal detector at the county court house by now.  Ha!

I've decided to keep a timeline for our adoption over in my sidebar, to mark the larger steps of the process.  Its something I've found so interesting as I read other bloggers who have brought their children home.

In the wee hours of tomorrow morning Marin and I will embark on a mission of a different kind: the one to figure out what has been causing hydronephrosis of her good kidney, and exactly the severity of it.  She will be given IV sedation and then radiologists will inject nuclear medicine into one of her arteries to watch it travel through her kidneys.  Up until now Marin's urologist has been watching the kidney through renal scans every few months, but at this point he felt it was time to be a bit more invasive.

I am nervous about the test tomorrow- about her being under general anesthesia for a few hours, and about the IV's and the process of going under.  It was awful when we did this last year.  But more than that, I am worried for the outcome (though, obviously, completely beyond my control.)  We made it through last year's surgery with an end in sight-- believing that she would be okay, and that it was a pretty easy fix.  One point five kidneys was totally doable in my mind, and once the surgery was over it would be smooth sailing.

I am not as easy with investigating the whole kidney we have left.  I am even less okay with the possibility of another surgery, and have a million questions to what losing another part of these important organs might mean to her future.  Not knowing is always difficult, right?  I look forward to a bucketful of answers, at least, and possibly a barrell of good news.  And sunshine and beams of rainbow colors.  Or something.

Tonight after seeing KJ and Jack off to their aunt and uncle's house for the night, in preparation for tomorrow's procedure, I enjoyed the quiet of our house for approximately twelve whole minutes.  Marin and I looked at each other, puzzled with what we should do for the next six lonely hours, and I promptly bundled her up and took her out into our latest blizzard, in a very large, far too empty vehicle.  I embraced the fact that I will always be a mother who misses her children when we are apart, no matter how badly I long for the occasional ten minutes of quiet, and I have easily come to the conclusion that a quiet house to me is everything that child-induced chaos is to the quiet-lover.  We were meant to be a large family.  I've always known it, even in moments I forgot it, and I love every time I know it more.

Please do send positive vibes in our direction, for little Sissie Pie, if you get a moment.  While I do not anticipate a hospital stay, we did end up with one last year, so who's to say what will come of tomorrow?  Sunshine and rainbows after all is said and done, I hope.

During which I prove to you that Excitement is my middle name

When I thought about posting an entry today, I thought to myself, Hmm, loss for words.  (Still.) (You know, because you totally couldn't figure that out from my last entry on a toddler tearing flower petals to smithereens, oh the dramz.)  So I quickly popped through my most recent picture uploads, and, eh, homeschool, homeschool, homeschool, painted bathroom, growing toddler, toddler drinking water, toddler spilling water, toddler standing unsupervised on kitchen chair.  And proof that I should keep the markers out of reach.  Fourth child is doomed. 

Out of curiosity I jumped back to late last winter to see what the excitement was all about, and whaddya know, I was at a loss for words then, too.  And trying to figure out how to feed the baby (who never stops eating nowadays) and what to do about our school situation (hooooomeschool!)  Also, I had just painted something else, because that is apparently what I do with my Januaries. 

The year before, in the early part of 2008, I was eating my way through winter and spring and summer because I was newly pregnant, and also I was falling apart.  Side note: would someone please grant me permission to Explore All Caloric Possibilities this year as well?  Addition to the family and all?  Yes?  I didn't paint anything in the winter of 2008, just having spent all of the fall previous doing so.  Whew.  (Holy crap, some of those rooms have already been painted twice since then.)

In the winter of 2007, I painted...the old house!  Also, I had a toddler back then and was trying to lose weight.  Surprise, surprise, sur-freaking-prise.

In 2006 I was a different girl altogether, just getting my blogging flippers wet.  I didn't paint anything.  I wasn't losing weight (yet.)  I did have a teeny tiny baby.

February 2010:

OMG, I are so predictable.  I painted mah bathroomz.

 

Finally has pretty tilez.

And in the interest of a nice rhythm to life, I am not pregnant and do not have a brand new baby this winter, though we are waiting for one.  I am forever dieting and oh so tired of writing about it, and we solved the Great Public School Debacle in the most fun way possible:

Figure out what makes you come alive, and do that. 

In this case, painting solar system murals as often as possible.

 
I've recently torn closets apart because it is very much the quiet February thing to do, and I have a new little buddy to pack those little boy hand-me-downs away for. (Pink containers yet to be purchased.  We are equal opportunity adopters and hand-me-downers.)

 
Hi, I am growing up at break-neck speed.

And one year ago we were talking, lots, about surgery.  And next week, another MAG-3 on another kidney, hoping that the procedural outcome can be different this time.

 
Another day, another story.  Another room to paint, twelve more calories to count.  Waiting for babies.  Waiting for warm, sunny walk-the-trails weather.

 
Doing what we must to get through the long, grey winter.  

(Don't judge a sister.)

Better Days, The Second

Okay, for real this time, I am claiming a quiet upcoming week for myself and my family. 

In the last seven days...

...we have had both of our bathrooms torn apart and (eventually) put back together, simultaneously. 

...My laundry room was showered from ceiling to floor in toilet water. 

...Twice. 

...We applied for our passports, mailed off a second batch of paperwork to our adoption agency and scheduled our upcoming home study. 

...We shared our plans with family (and now you) that we plan to do back-to-back adoptions, this year and next.  Praying that everything falls into place.

...We said good-bye to my grandfather.  His eulogies were incredible. 

...Marin and Jack came down with RSV or something like it, and Kevin suffered something intestinal-related. 

 
...And my daughter has agreed to having her hair played with, periodically.  (EEE!)

If not for double indoor soccer games and a 4H meeting on my agenda for first thing tomorrow morning, I might actually spend the day in pajamas.  Maybe I still will.

**

Thank you all for the kind comments and supportive emails over the last few weeks.  It has been surreal, for sure.  I couldn't possibly express the immense gratitude I feel for being part of this incredible community, and having friends like you.

Irish eyes smiling, and that

(It was not apparently in the cards for me, to be an easy week.) 

My grandfather, known by all of us who love him as Papa Tipping, took a bad fall yesterday.  His leg needed to be amputated, with surgery scheduled for this morning.  He's gone into renal failure, and he had a stroke, paralyzing the left side of his body.  He cannot have the surgery because he likely wouldn't make it through, and the doctors are giving him a few days left to live. 

   

My Papa was a good man.  He worked at a Steel Company in Chicago for many years, and then moved on to be a janitor in one of the public schools.  He lost his brother, Uncle Bob, when he was only thrity-nine years old, and he talked about him always.  There were three brothers left after that, Howard, Ed and Bill, and he was very proud to be one of them.  When I was a kid he would bring us cartons of leftover chocolate milk and sing songs to us about our names.  I loved the wooden desk in his room, full of old pictures and papers and trinkets.  He spent a lot of time there, watching the original Whammy game show and cooking shows, and my gramma was forever ribbing him about knowing how to cook just about anything, but never actually making a thing.  He turned his Chicago back yard into a giant garden with grass only around the perimeter, and I remember pulling cherry tomatoes and green beans off of the plants and eating them, so fresh in summertime.  He enjoyed strange things like pickled herring, liver sausage sandwiches and cow tongue, but growing up in a house where sugary cereal was outlawed, I knew exactly where the box of Frosted Flakes was kept at Gramma & Papa's house, and they welcomed me to it.   

My Papa loved his black labs, and the country, and while he raised rabbits for a while, what he really wanted were chickens.  He was so mad when they finally moved to the country, right around the time of my wedding, and then found out that chickens weren't allowed in their subdivision.  My sister talked about painting them on his garage.  We lost my gramma in 2002, the month before KJ was born, and he's had a very hard time since then.  He loved his great-grandchildren, telling me always what he thought they would grow up to be, but I don't think he enjoyed anything as fully as he did when they still lived in Chicago, and before my gramma died.

I hope from here that his journey to God, and to my Gramma and to his brothers and his children, is easy on him.  I hope that he finds peace soon, and a whole flock of chickens in heaven.

***

Updated to add, he passed away just before ten o'clock tonight.

Better days

This post was almost titled The No Bullshit Adoption Disclaimer.  Two days ago I wanted to come here and scream from the tops of my angry lungs, that anyone who was here to mock my family, disapprove of my family or dislike my family for the recent decision we made to grow our family, with, yes oh yes, a baby from Africa, needed to just leave.  I told a girlfriend of mine, at one point, that I was going to have a bright white t-shirt made for wearing as I walked down every street and through every store aisle that simply read Fuck You in bold lettering.  I felt hot-cheeked, ear-smoking mad at the whole country for a little while (hello, misdirected anger) because I could neither believe nor accept that we are still judging people based on the color of their skin in such a free, opportunity-filled place as the United States in the year 2010.  I was hurting for my baby, and hoo boy, I was pissed. 

I took time to work through it, and I found solice in those closest to me.  And I let it go.  Being angry or holding on to sorrows will hurt only myself and my family in the long run, and I want most of all to put my energy into what is good in the world, and to focus on our baby, our orphanage, our life's newest purpose.  There are people around me, both physically and all over the World Wide Web who have extended their hands and hearts to us (you guys!) and that support is more valued than I can ever explain, most especially in the midst of life's thunderstorms. 

I posted news to my facebook account early today, that our adoption application was accepted and we are now on the fast track to our baby.  Then the kids and I headed out to spend an afternoon with some of our homeschool friends-- one family, ironically, who is also looking to adopt internationally.  Kids from Marin's tiny size all the way through age ten or twelve, black and white, spent the afternoon playing together, and I swore that all felt right with the world again.  I hope this incredible, yet simple afternoon is what I remember most after a difficult few days.

Then I returned home to an inbox full of supportive comments and excited emails.  It was like Christmas morning, friends. 

For as long as I live, I never want to be void of the fact that all over the world, there are children in serious need.  If I've ever felt a calling for myself, I am pretty sure that this is it.  When I pull Marin up onto my chest, and we snuggle into our cushy rocking chair beneath her warm pink blanket, the fact is never lost on me that there is an outrageous number of children who have no one to love them in the way that mothers love their babies.  I have heard stories lately, as Kevin and I immerse ourselves into the world of adoptive families, of adopted babies crawling around floors of their new, safe homes looking for crumbs to eat, unable to trust that a next meal will come, and in the same, panicking as they are placed in their cribs, not knowing when someone will come back to hold them again.  That somehow sounds so dramatic to type, but God help me, how awful that it is reality at this very moment.

On multiple occasions in recent weeks, both Kevin and I have been asked by several people why we chose to adopt from Africa, and not here in the States.  I think it is a fair question, and I am relieved to know that there are many people in our country, such as my Aunt Kathy, who (did) adopt within the United States, and people like my mom and dad who foster parented.  At the end of the day for Kevin and I, though, once we had decided that for sure we wanted more children, and that a fourth c-section would be too risky for me, both of our minds went immediately to Africa.  For the millions of kids living on the streets and in packed orphanages there, even the most basic necessities such as clean drinking water, medicines and meals are unavailable.  If these kids can make it to adulthood, there is nothing even close to the hope for a prosperous life there, like what is offered by our country.  Part of me wants to ask in return, Why not Africa? in the most respectful way.  Countries there are full of such culture and beauty- what an addition to our family!  I also think that being born a US citizen and growing up with all of the freedoms and conveniences that we have in our country, we easily forget how pampered we are.  By the time we reach adulthood we've usually become so obsessed with The Pursuit of Happiness, and the constant pull for Bigger and Better, that we forget to count our many, many blessings, and spend far too many of our days griping.  Guilty as charged, here.  In the last couple years I've chosen to focus on my life's positives as often as I can be conscious of them, and it has brought me to the strong conviction that my many blessings also charge me with the responsibility to help, and help good.

I know that this is serious stuff, and so heavy, but as often as I've thought about children in Africa, and about the people suffering in Haiti this week, I realize that I remain quite new to a whole world recently opened up to me, and I am extremely sensitive.  I can't see from here how I will ever become a bit more dulled, but I suppose just as with motherhood in its brand newness, I may someday feel every tiny emotion slightly less, but also become more able-handed with what I know from experience.  I thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking this journey with us, and I promise that Lighten Up will make it onto my to-do list, and soon.

Hard Days

 
:: Thinking constantly about the families in Haiti who have had the carpet ripped out from under them.  Feeling the pain of the adoptive families on message boards I visit, as they wait helplessly to go rescue their children, some of them desperate to know if those children are still alive.  Praying and wondering what will come of a place already so afflicted by poverty, now in physical ruins.

:: Worrying quietly for Marin as she soon faces another round of testing, another MAG-3, and what if another surgery on what was once thought to be her good kidney?  Wondering what it will mean for her future, knowing that somewhere there must be reason and goodness in this.  Searching to find it, and safety.

:: Realizing for sure that not all of our friends share our love and excitement for the future of our family, and learning how to let go for the right reasons. 

:: Sitting in the emergency room with Jack this evening, waiting for x-rays on his (not broken) arm, thinking again about the children in Haiti and the injuries they suffer from, only without the comfort of a quiet hospital room and proper medical attention, or even the consolation of parents and families who didn't make it.

I am so thankful for what I have- for the general health of my family, the feeling of security and the ability to dream, and the freedom to act on those dreams, that living in this country provides.  I am so grateful for the people in my life who hold my hand through these times, and for the healing that another day will bring.

Half-way Point

It is mid-January, which means by my late-night exhausted math, we are about half way through our first year of homeschool.  And how did THAT happen?

Looking back on our first half year, I can acknowledge both our bumps in the road, in settling into brand new roles and a new routine, and I can celebrate what wonderful memories we've made, and how much we have all learned so far.

 
When deciding if we should really take the plunge into homeschooling last year, there were some things I did not worry about.  (Amazing, right?)

I didn't worry about the potential cost of an All-Right-There Curriculum, because I knew I could compile one on my own relatively easily.  I did not worry about what it might cost to keep the kids home, paying for workbooks, trips and project materials, because the money I would save on nasty old school lunches alone, and on fund raisers, should make up some ground.  (Also, I am terribly cheap frugal, and can find twelve ways to do just about anything at a discount.)  Plus, I would be spared from hunting down a daytime babysitter, a near impossible feat, for my two smaller children while I chaperoned such trips, because I could take them on the trips...because they are the class!  Win-win!

 
I didn't worry about my sanity.  Okay, fine, I did a little bit.  I had just gotten the taste, that year of kindergarten, for what it would be like less one child during the day.  It was quiet.  But it was also more lonely for both Jack and I, and it kept us from spending days seeing the world because we were always tied down to working around school hours.  And that kinda sucked.  As did the homework. 

I am quickly coming to the conclusion that I am a good mom, a better mom, to wild screaming masses.  I enjoy a full plate (heh, in more ways than one) and I get a high from the every minute multi-tasking that is required in raising multiple children, and homeschooling.

 
What I did worry about was how our kids would socialize, living on a street with slim pickins' for playmates, without a church community, without school classmates.  I still spent the early portion of the the year concerning myself with that, all the while running to library classes and basketball and swimming, to local parks and to playdates.  Finally I joined a second homeschool group, realizing the first was just not a good fit for the ages of our kids, and a plethora of opportunities and a world of new friends from far and wide opened up to us. 

 
The boys jumped straight from basketball into indoor soccer season, and we joined a roller skating class, which offers us weekly exposure to fifty plus homeschool children, as well as their moms and dads. 

 
Toddler size four skates, please.

This class rocks my socks in ways I couldn't have imagined, as a throwback to my own childhood bliss of Pac-Man skates at the Friday night rink, as well as the time I get to spend talking to moms who do what I do every day.  In my experience so far, I have come across parents who are dedicated to their kids and to their spouses, and who really understand and excitedly share the common goal of raising well-rounded, simply good families.  I could eat them up.

 
We've now come across offers for music classes, art classes, science & environment classes, 4H, you name it.  There really is no way to fit all of the possibilities in, and so we pick and choose and thank our lucky stars that it is all out there for us. 

Studying the forms of matter?  Experiment with what you've got plenty of. 

I also worried, when weighing the good against the bad last year, how I would care for a baby and manage a preschooler while conducting many hours of school for a first grader each day.  And thankfully, it turned out to be simple, once we nailed a routine down: breakfast, play and Wii in the first two hours of the morning, and time for me to pull the house together as well as our homeschool list for that day, all before Marin goes down for her nap.  Between ten and eleven we begin our school day- KJ, Jack and myself, and because Jack knows no different he joins in for most everything we do, from science experiments to workbook pages chosen for his ability level. 

 
It takes us only three to four hours per day to accomplish what we need to because I am able to work with each of the boys at their own pace, so there is no waiting for the rest of the class to finish, or to over-explain anything that is clearly understood the first time.  Each of the boys are just about a year ahead of their respective grades.  Marin wakes from her nap somewhere in the range of almost finished to finished, and then we either head out to one activity or another, or I have time for laundry and dishes, checking email and the stock market, and spackling walls.  Our schedule is super flexible, which I love, and the only thing that remains mostly out of the equation at this point is time for me to sit down (which, heh, is how I end up with 2am time stamps on blog entries).  I think of it as practice.  These will likely be our calmer, quieter days, with only three to care for.

 
Part of me wants to say that yes, for sure I will take this on again next year and the one after that, but with the way life has presented us with one thrilling curve after the next lately, I will remain non-committal, promising only to take this year by year, for as long as it works, for as many children as we bring into our family.