Moments: A new year, a new rollercoaster ride.

This school year will be quite a bit different than every year that's preceeded it. Let me 'splain.


If one should come a'knocking on my door during the hours of 8-4, there will be only 2 present in the school room. Just my second grader and myself. Everyone else will be at away-school. Over the last year of home schooling, I've found that though the desire to school the kids here with me is still strong...and I believe more than ever that it can be the most excellent way to raise healthy, well-adjusted adults....where the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak. My hope is that during this year, as I only need to focus on one child's education, I will get a bit of a sabbatical from the last 10 years of having a houseful of kids 24/7. Perhaps this will enable me to find the inner strength to bring the youngest kids home with me again in the future.

Our family's foray into the public school system has been a mixed bag. This summer I find I'm having very large regrets as I look back on the older 2 girls' experiences in high school thus far. My two greatest fears have been 1) that they wouldn't fit in and would feel the rejection I felt as a highschooler, always the wanna-be, and 2) that they would become part of the 'in crowd', a clique I never participated in, the queen-bees. Both of those fears have come into my reality, and there have been many days of 'scooching' through, trying to figure out (and failing so many times) how to parent teenagers who attend the public school.

Of course the knee-jerk reaction is to just bring everyone home again, keep them sheltered and protected, and bake cookies all day. Then that still, small voice says "Get Real". My girls don't want to come back home to school. Especially the queen-bee. So it looks like we will continue slogging thru the muck of cultural pressures, turbo-hormones, and just plain old life with teenagers.

In the mean time, I will give my all to tomato-staking my 2nd grader, a term I latched on to after reading another mom's experience with a son who needed a bit of extra attention.

I've revised our curriculum (see links to the left), and re-organized my life to accomodate 3 schools plus my homeschool. I face this year with not a little trepidation, as I know having kids in the public school system will drain every drop of emotional reserves I will be (hopefully) depositing in my 'bank account' during the 6 hours of relative quiet each day. But the choices have been made, registrations filled out, checks written (public educations is FAR from free) and uniforms and supplies purchased. At this point, I'm buckling my seat belt, white-knuckling the safety bar, and preparing for yet another thrill ride in the amusement park of parenting. Won't you join me?