Three Plus Two

Unraveling

I'm unraveling.

 A 3/4 inch portion of my C-section incision has not healed yet.  I have a gap in my abdomen and last week it got infected.  I feel like a sweater with a stray thread.  One tug and I might come apart completely.

There's a story in that somewhere, but it's not one I want to tell now. 

I did some internet research on this situation and discovered that it's not that uncommon, especially when "glue" or sutures are used instead of staples. What is uncommon, I think, is when your incision won't close and you've just had your seventh child and you are scheduled to move 1000 miles in 3 weeks and there is no company paying for your move, so you have to do all your packing yourself, and it's just you and your husband and 7 kids aged 13 and under and that open slit in your belly, which kind of makes you sick every time you look at it.  The doctor treats it like it's no big deal... but it is a big deal if you (like me) are in that situation.  And it is a big deal if you (like me) are the child of a woman who died in childbirth.  And the nurses on the phone start to sound more worried when it's taken an extra 10 days and still not closed. 

Sometimes when you unravel, you realize the sweater you were knitting was lopsided, with one arm too long and an uneven number of stitches up the side, and maybe it was time to pull it all out and start all over anyway.  And if only you could have noticed that before the thorns caught hold of it and you tugged open that hole! 

Well, hopefully the unnecessary things are unraveling, too.  The "trying to be someone I'm not".  The "I'm really worried about two mortgages."  The "why don't my kids ever listen to me".  The "there's so much to do around here and this place is always such a wreck!"

There's only so much stress you can knit into a life before everything comes undone.

I don't know what God has in mind for us.  I do know that moving was an answer to prayer... long and constant prayer.  And I know that God's time is not our time.

But I do hope that God will consent to put a few more stitches in this worn-out sweater.  It may not be fancy, but when the frayed sleeve is repaired and the hole patched, I think it will be sturdy, warm, and useful, and will fit me just fine.

Summer School

I'm trying to keep everyone somewhat busy and yet still do a lot of sitting (and nursing).  "School" is therefore in session... sort of.  I'm reading aloud in the mornings and requiring math of the big kids and some phonics of Farmerboy (starting next week, after I get our Explode the Code online account set up.)  That's it.  But here's what our days have actually been like...

What we did yesterday:

• Read aloud 1 chapter of Minn of the Mississippi, 1 chapter of Robin Hood (the Howard Pyle version - forsooth!) in the morning, You Can Name 100 Dinosaurs to Chipmunk and Pip at naptime, and at bedtime Andy read 1 chapter of The Buffalo Knife, by William O.Steele (to everyone) and a chapter of Mattimeo, Redwall #3, (just to the little boys).  
• Gareth read The Tombs of Atuan (Ursula K. LeGuin) to himself.
• Katydid wrote... something.
• Boys all built Lego castles.
• Katydid made sandwiches for lunch and brought them outside for a picnic while I nursed the baby.
• A discussion about the physics of trebuchets at lunchtime.
• Everyone played in the hose... for hours and hours.
• Gareth looked over his new Life of Fred: Beginning Algebra.
• Katydid did a couple of pages in her Key to Decimals workbook.
• Katydid and Farmerboy made an "ocean" in a big Rubbermaid container.  Then Farmerboy made his own ocean in a 2 liter bottle (i.e., water + dirt, rocks, shells, sticks, etc) and noted later that everything had settled to the bottom.  Had a discussion about sediment.
• Gareth and Katydid played Wii Secret Agents.
• Everyone except Gareth (who had a doctor's appointment) spent a good long while watching the Giant Ocean Tank webcam at the New England Aquarium... and also grousing about how their mother had already packed all the ocean books.
• Kids decided to watch Finding Nemo.  Gareth and Andy went to Scouts.

What we did today: (I'll try and update tomorrow, since we still have an evening to get through!)

• More webcam watching to start the day.  The nurse shark with the ripped fin was somehow christened "Fred". 
• Scrounging for unpacked books resulted in a little information on tidepools, coral reefs, and sharks.
• The latest "cliffhanger" chapter of Mattimeo narrated to me by Farmerboy (don't worry; I don't assign narrations of bedtime reading!!)
• Taught Katydid to make fried eggs.
• Read aloud Little Farm by the Sea to Chipmunk and another chapter of Minn of the Mississippi, roughly half a chapter of Robin Hood.  It's not bedtime yet, but I expect that Andy will continue to read from The Buffalo Knife and Mattimeo (especially since Farmerboy is adamant about NOT MISSING any of these books.)
• Katydid drew in her nature journal.
• Gareth worked on a map for the novel he's writing.
• Lots more play in the hose.
• More model "oceans".
• Discussion about how the oil spill might affect migrating birds.
• I boiled a batch of eggs.  (Hey, that was a big deal.  I have a 3 week old baby.)
• Katydid worked on decimals some more and Gareth started on chapter 1 of LoF: Beginning Algebra.  He got frustrated when he saw how much there was to chapter 1, but felt much better when we looked at the table of contents and realized that if he did an entire chapter a day he'd finish algebra I in 12 days.  We're shooting for 45 minutes/day.
• I read more of Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything and discovered that lichens are so slow-growing that big ones are probably hundreds or thousands of years old.  Had to stifle the impulse to run out to the woods and see some really OLD lichens.  I was sitting on the couch, nursing.

But what's his blog name?

Thanks to everyone who left such kind words at his birth!  It's somewhat ridiculous, but I have spent the past 3 weeks trying to decide on a blog name for him.  Poor kid.  It was hard enough for his father and I to agree on his real name.  Now he's nameless in cyberspace, too.

 

 

In other centuries, mothers did not follow their children around like papparazzi either.

(But he's so darn cute!)

More on Unschooling

A few links:

• Want to Get Into Harvard?: Spend More Time Staring at the Clouds   (HT: Kind Conversation Unschooling Group )
• Is Catholic Unschooling Worth It? from Leonie's blog, Living Without School, which is itself an excellent resource
• Unschooling Math... not so much for unschooling math (as I don't really do trigonometry for fun, like the author of the article on this page does) but for what it says, by implication, about the importance of the environment and parental interests in unschooling success.  If you are not the sort of person who does trigonometry for fun, can you unschool math?     

A couple of books:

• Better Than School and Child's Work by Nancy Wallace.  OOP now, but available used. Two of my favorites. 

A lot of thinking, but alas, nothing I can synthesize.  Gareth is reading the Iliad during our "break", and Katydid learned how to knit.  Now if only some of us would want to do trigonometry for fun.