Home Life

Tuesdays are my solo trail run day. Wednesdays are our mom-kid Wedventures. Saturdays are our family bike rides. We adventure hard, and then we stay home the rest of the time (minus a weekly grocery trip and Jeff working from his empty classroom at the high school because it's bigger and quieter, with faster internet). Our three adventures per week are keeping my travel itch scratched just enough so I feel an unexpected, slightly precarious balance in my life. Maddening online kindergarten policing on one hand, intense mountain adventures on the other. It works. 

Balancing impossibility with intensity is surprisingly effective. That's also kind of the secret to parenting our high-spirited Amber. She stars in most of my day-to-day pictures because we are [usually] buddies and she needs more supervision than Jay and Rose. 

Two weeks of around-the-house snapshots and memories, annoyingly loaded in [mostly] reverse order:

Amber began learning a new skill last week: toe typing. She's self taught. And very innovative in her methods of keeping online kindergarten interesting.

Amber lost her second top front tooth at the end of September! She was so excited and now has an awesome gummy lisp. Pro tip: telling a five year old to smile yields mixed results.

Rolling her bike through the mud.

Jay, "walking to class" on the stilts.

Red sunrise. We had a brief bout of smoke but it faded within a day. Relief.

I tuned Jay's bass for the first time last week. It was HARD! My fingers were raw from merely plucking those thick strings, and my ear found it difficult to listen to the deep deep notes to see if they were in tune. But we got there in the end and it sounds awesome!

School. Most of my pictures are of Amber because Jay and Rose are holed up with their computers for half of each day.

School girl!

Amber, practicing her handstand.

Cartwheel!

Superhero jump! I think she called this particular jump a Captain Underpants jump.  She yelled "Tra-la-laaaa!" as she launched herself across the room.

School.

"I wanted to see how the mud felt on my skin." She's wearing shorts, not pants, by the way.

Some days I cut Amber off of her school iPad early and we go on a walk.

She wrote her name in the dirt: that's my kind of school.

I had her sketch one of our neighbor's chickens. That's my kind of school!

I spelled CHICKEN for her and she labeled her drawing. THAT is my kind of school. It was a successful morning. Every now and then I send a message to Amber's teacher telling her that even though Amber completes maybe a quarter of her massive list of iPad assignments each week, she is still schooling very effectively.

A rare lunch where everyone ate at the same time.

The three pumpkin seeds we planted (all in the same hole) have taken over our entire garden. Jeff likes to go out and tally them up. His last count revealed a whopping 30 pumpkins out there! 

Peaceful backyard scenery.

Ambike

Amber had her 6 digit i-Ready passcode memorized within the first week of school. 

In order to avoid the anguish of doing handwriting worksheets on the iPad, we got a little handwriting workbook called "handwriting with no tears." Amber loves it! Our morning routine includes: a page or two of the handwriting workbook, sight word practice, and storytime where we read our daily 3 stories and one poem. Amber loves our 30 minute morning routine! I love that it replaces 2/3 of her iPad assignments!

Amber is at such a GROWING stage. She is slowly getting more responsible and better at sticking to a task till it's done. I have been making sure to give her one chore each day just like Jay and Rose, and it makes me happy to see her complete her chores! Right now her chores include: fold and put away laundry, vacuum her bedroom, clean the bathroom mirror, unload the silverware from the dishwasher, and dust the family room surfaces. I keep reminding myself that slow and steady chore training is WORTH THE EFFORT. My efforts are finally starting to pay off!

Evening back massage.

Jay has always liked sunlit carpet.

Each day is full of demands and dozens of tiny tasks, but every now and then, everyone is quietly occupied at the same time. When that happened two weeks ago, I put my feet up in the pretty sunshine by my open window and listen: to chirpy birds, ticking irrigation, an airplane passing overhead, my own breath. On this particular day, I admired the bouquet from a kind friend. I watched the squirrels feverishly gathering walnuts under the tree outside. I smelled the fresh autumn air. Calm and peace come unexpectedly and fleetingly, but they come.

 

Full-bedroom blanket fort!