Well here we are, two days into our new school year. And I.am.tired. I am trying to approach things with a different perspective than I usually do. I tend to be pretty black and white – either it is failing or it is working. Either it is easy or it is impossible. Either I should give up or it will just come easily. I’m trying for the grey area. I’m giving it time, giving it a chance to ebb and flow. Not jumping to conclusions and refusing to give in to my exhaustion.

Noah loves loves LOVES his online learning. He could totally do hours a day and I know that really it isn’t as much as he’d like. But it is a good balance for us. We are also reading and doing projects and yesterday he was all “I know its my day to fold laundry but I want to learn to DO my laundry, beginning to end” and who am I to argue!! So that means that Addison is the only child left in this house who relies on adults for clean clothes. Am I lucky or what?!

Teegan’s school stuff is going much better than I expected. He’s so super-smart and fast at this stuff. But it is still a TON of work for him and for me. A ridiculous amount. Much more than ANY public school offers their students and ANY public school parent is expected to do. There are meetings a few times a week, study halls twice a week, kids are expected to do at LEAST 30 minutes of physed a day (which frankly is not at all a problem but do YOU know any middle school that still requires 30 minutes a day of physical activity and no, lunch does not count). The book keeping and planning and printing and preparing is a lot to handle. Today we got a few boxes of material FINALLY so Teegan spent the bulk of the day catching up on stuff from yesterday that he could not do. He’s a trooper though and I know that this is just an adjustment and that eventually the prep won’t be nearly this bad, we’ll be beyond the learning curve  and the work flow will, well, flow and I will not feel guilty skipping stupid lessons or redundant meetings. There are plenty of shortcuts that we can and will be taking as soon as I figure out how it all works. I feel like now, a dozen times a day, I say “Ok so tomorrow we know not to bother doing xyz”.  It will get easier. And now Teegan is reciting latin numbers and  talking about his cool spanish  lessons and I  feel like it is already  more beneficial than not. And maybe, just for fun, I’ll scan in his self-portrait he drew today. It is really……something!!!! ha.

Dalton has the lightest work load and probably complains the most (Sorry D, you know it’s true!). Some kids are just like that and he’s mine. He also really dislikes change so today his new math curriculum came and he was none too happy with it. So I got to hear the running dialogue about why it sucks, why he hates it, how he knows it all, it is boring, he doesn’t understand how to answer the questions. Fun stuff. Then there was the writing angst because the boy hates to write and there does not exist a writing method, source or program that would not be met with writing angst. But for all his whininess, he is also such a good kid. He made me a hot lunch which was probably exactly what *I* needed to make it through the rest of my day. And he is also fast to transition from grumpy to happy again and he is almost always eventually very reasonable about things and easy to work with. I’m glad his curriculum is slow to arrive so he can ease into things. I know this will be a super-challenging year for him but I also know he’ll do it and do it well. I just have to keep my own earplugs in and we’ll be happy!!

Addy, though, she is not doing so hot. she hates all this attention shown toward anyone but her. To be fair she did much better today than yesterday. Yesterday she literally kept up a constant “Don’t talk to him, talk to me!” chant through most of the day. She took almost no nap both days which also does not help. Today she had gymnastics – the first time in a month. I was anxious about how she’d do since she was having such a hard time going into her class the last few weeks before our vacation. I don’t think she is quite over it but she did much better. she didn’t cry. She whined, she pouted, she refused to participate if her coach was not present. But it is a vast improvement over her absolutely refusing to go into class. And of course, like usual, after the first 10 minutes of warm-ups are over, she is happy as a lark to do the actual class. this fall her class is (so far) tiny – just one other girl and her favorite coach. But warm-ups are in a big group and she just does not like it.

And finally me. I am super-tired. I mean just totally beat. And starving. I’m not used to this much activity – mental and otherwise – and it is going to take awhile for me to get used to it but I’m looking forward to it. I am LOVING my iphone for portability. I just feel really stretched in all directions. This week I finally stepped down from my position as leader of our local homeschool group. I had not been active all summer so it was probably overdue and there are some simply awesome ladies doing so much more, all the time. But also with Vietnam adoptions set to end next week, this is a big week in adoptionland.  So that is taking up some of my mental energy as well. The diet is going very well, no surprise, its only 2 days in and I had already made many of these changes recently anyway.  Exercise is not something I’m going to focus on until I lose more weight and adjust more to this new homeschool schedule. Otherwise I’m meeting all my goals, more or less. I know it will just get easier and that I need to fight through burnout so that these new things can become habits.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 26th, 2008 at 5:33 pm and is filed under Health, Homeschooling, Parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.