Homeschooling from a newbie perspective

I started homeschooling the Pudding the first week of September. Dilbert and I had been thinking about this for a very long time and decided that this year is our trial year. We had several reasons for doing this and here they are:

1. Neither of us had particularly great experiences in public schools. Dilbert liked high school but not for academic reasons. I didn't really like any of it and was labeled "learning-disabled" early on which I think could be more accurately called "learning differently."
2. Both of us had a few great teachers, but they stuck out like stars in a sea of darkness. We didn't want to trust our children's education to people who might just be the lights of an airplane.
3. We are both very conservative and don't really like the idea of our kids education being a matter of labor union policy and political debate.
4. We think we can do a better job at home.

Those were are reasons for starting this little journey. Having done it for all of three weeks now I can add a 5th reason: It's totally fun.
I'm sure there are super moms out there who are constantly planning activities for their little ones, making sure they experience the full spectrum of what their world has to offer. Occasionally I've branched into super-momhood but usually it's just getting through the day. However, now that Pudding's education is in my hands, I'm finding all kinds of things that I thought about doing before can now be classified as "educational" or "field trip" or "learning experience" and woven in with what we are doing at home.
For example, this week we've been reading about the ponies at Assateague island. We've found several reference books in the library on this subject and Pudding eats them up. So we read about ponies for about an hour every day (that's a lot of ponies). Then in Math we just did a color by number picture of a pony that got Pudding to focus on differentiating between the different numbers. Then we went to Frying Pan Park and saw all the animals but spent most of our time with Jesse and Michael the old Percheron horses. They are as gentle as kittens but still big enough to make quite an impression on Pudding. We talked about how old horses can get and what horses used to be used for and why people needed big strong horses like Jesse and Michael and what sort of work they did. Then we talked about how horses bodies worked (they have multiple stomachs) and what they ate and why. So there we had reading, geography, math, history, agriculture and science all out of one topic. Best of all, I didn't have to cajole or beg her to pay attention to any of it because it's what she's into right now. I couldn't teach like that if I had even 10 or 15 other kids to look after much less another 20 or 30 as some Kindergarten rooms do.
Then this afternoon we went over to a very wooded park to pick leaves which we will identify in the morning when we do some science. Maybe then we'll count all the maple leaves or draw letters on them or I'll teach her how to press them so that they are preserved. The possibilities are endless and it's exciting to have this much room for creativity. I'm a little ashamed of myself for not taking advantage of it sooner.
I'm sure there will be ups and downs on this process but so far so good. I'm just enjoying the ride.

Crazy freakin people

Tonight was a rough night. By night I mean evening to those without children. By 5:30 my kids are usually fed and starting the long slow process towards bed at about 7:30. As I type this it is 6:50 and Dilbert is upstairs negotiating the Tyke into bed. A process that is not going well from the sound of things.
The children were unusally crazy tonight and Dilbert and I had inordinately short patience. I sat the kids down to a small snack at 4:30. This keeps them occupied while I tried to cook diner. While the onions were softening and the chicken was browning the Pudding began doing her drunken party girl impression. I repeatedly told her to calm down and not act so crazy but it didn't sink in until one of her wildly flailing arms connected with a glass sending it to shatter on our stone tile floor (I hate that tile for many reasons, this is one more reason). Now there's glass on the floor, milk on the floor, glass in the cat's bowl, milk in the cat's bowl, and my chicken is finished browning and beginning to burn slightly but I don't have the next thing ready to go in the pot because I'm on my hands and knees cleaning up the spilled milk and glass shards and trying to convince the Pudding to stay in her chair so we don't have to fish pieces of glass out of her foot. It was about then that I bellowed for Dilbert to come and assist me.
My dear sweet Dilbert is a very helpful man but is sometimes just a touch clumsy. He finished wiping up the milk on the floor then started bringing the cats dishes over to the sink to be washed out. The cats water dish looks a little like an office water cooler, a big jug inverted over the bowl. When that is dropped from the height of 4 feet, it creates quite a splash and a much larger mess than the small glass of milk does. Also, a mop, when repeatedly run into a full bag of garbage that is waiting for "someone" to take it out, will tend to break said bag of garbage, causing a bit more mess than was originally there.
At that point, Dilbert cleaned up what he could then took the kids to the other room so that I could return my kitchen to sanity. Once everything was mopped up and back in order we all felt a bit better. The Pudding asked me if I still liked her. That was a bit tough to here because you always think that your kids can see how much you love them. I told her that I always loved her and that her doing a silly thing didn't change that. I tried explaining it to her like this.

me: Sometimes mommy makes mistakes or does something wrong and you still love her, right?
Pudding: (silence)

So, I finally have the soup simmering, the kitchen is back in order and I head to the living room to let the floor dry out. The Tyke is playing with our home phone and the Pudding won't leave him alone. She kept trying to sneak it away even though I was right there to make sure he didn't call China. Dilbert kept warning her not to try it and she kept doing it. This should have warned us that diner was going to be interesting at best.
We get to the table and at first everything is fine. The tyke is playing with his rice and chicken. The Pudding is saying she doesn't like it but there's nothing unusual about that. Everything is normal, right? NO! The Pudding begins throwing a fit about not wanting to eat. This get's the Tyke upset and starts crying too. Chocolate milk is given as a reward for a bite of chicken and calm is returned briefly. Then the Pudding starts telling Mommy how it isn't which is not a thing we allow in our house. That went something like this.

Me: Pudding, eat your rice, it's very good for you.
Pudding: (Screaming) NO IT ISN'T, DON'T SAY THAT TO ME!

The Chocolate milk was taken away at that point.
Twenty minutes later she was in jammies, read too, sung too, hugs given, kisses received, good nights said and covers tucked in. The Tyke took a few more minutes but they are both now sleeping and I hope, for their sake and mine that they don't wake up until morning because I think I'm going to need that long to recover and be a good mommy again.

To my brother, who now reads this blog

Yes, that's right, this one is for you.
My brother whom I'm going to call G.I. Joe (Maybe just Joe, it's faster to type) for our purposes here, is a complicated individual.
I always find it difficult to explain him to people who don't already know him. He's a very smart guy who usually didn't do very well in school. He's a studious guy who couldn't ever get his homework done but spent hours reading the Illiad just for fun. He's a funny guy but you might not want to meet him in a dark alley. He's both a Doberman and a kitten, but you never really know which one you're going to get.
He's returning soon from his third tour in Iraq. I am so proud of him for his service and I'm so glad that thus far he has come through unscathed. I'm also glad that the army has been a place for him to find success. He's always been a tough person to peg. He doesn't fit in the usual boxes that we assign people. When he was little, they put him in special ed but he was smarter than everyone else there. They put him in the regular class and he couldn't keep up. I'm glad he's found a place that fits him.
The last time we saw each other, I was pregnant with the Tyke and the Pudding was just barely two. We were at my mom's house and Joe took the pudding out in this little inflatable boat on the pond. I was so worried because she was so little. She sat there by his feet (his feet came up to her shoulders) and just looked around at the water and at Joe. He was so gentle with her. I couldn't hear every word but I could hear his tone. It sounded like he was very patiently and quietly pointing things out for her to look at and telling her about them. She still remembers that boat ride a year and a half later.
I remember other things about Joe that aren't so nice. I know he has a mean streak that is pretty easy to find. I know he can be violent and erratic and childish which makes his gentleness all the more amazing.
When Joe, the Bear (our youngest brother, he knows how he got that name) and I were all little kids, we had a rough ride. We saw our parents marriage fall apart, felt the violence and anger that came from that. We lost a brother, the Bear's twin, at only 4 months old. We did the divorced kid shuffle and learned to live as brother and sister with people who were not our brother or sisters and were asked to call someone mom who was not mom. We did all these things together and only we know how we got through them and lived to tell the tale, or not.
That is the great thing about having siblings, the thing that an only child has a hard time understanding. We have someone who went through the same hardships, the same ups and downs, the same weirdness from parents. While we may not have experienced it all the same, but we know on a biological level that we are the same. We are different branches of the same tree. Whether at Mom's house or Dad's house, we had each other as a constant. We know why we became the people we are.
Anyway, this is for my brother Joe. From one branch of the tree to the other, I'm glad you're who you are.