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We have just got back from holiday.  Not just any old holiday... a trip down to Wellington and back in a campervan!!   We started up in Mangawai a week and a half ago, and then made our way south stopping at Huntly, Ohakune, Wellington and then back up through Palmerston North and Napier.   It was a whistle-stop tour.  If we could do it all again we would definitely take more time, but in saying that by the last night we were ready to come home.  Travelling with kids is tiring, but then who would want to stay in one place all their lives?  Not me!

Some of the highlights were taking the kids to Te Papa, Wellington in general, and Napier.  I also made a gem of a discovery (thanks Mels) in Palmerston North.  Surprised? Well just wait till you read the special post I have in the works!

So I'm home.  Surrounded by things to be put away and washing to be folded.  In a house that is badly in need of a good clean. I'm torn between jumping right back into normal life again, and running back to that lovely wee campervan.  But of course I don't actually have a choice.  At least Paddy still has a week off work.  We can have one of those "staycations" or whatever they call them over in that crazy country.  Yes, one of those holidays where I finally get to weed the garden and clean the blinds... and maybe even start our tax return, if I'm lucky. Yipee!!

today

Everybody is sick, except me.  Since Greer's birthday everyone has succumbed to a wretched virus, one by one.  I'm the last woman standing, hoping like heck that God's birthday present to me tomorrow will be that I DON'T get sick.  So far, so good.  Just tired, exhausted, bored and slightly grumpy.  The first few days I did ok.  If I can say it humbly, I think I was doing a fairly reasonable impression of Florence Nightingale.  But I didn't realise, all those two days ago, that I actually had it easy.  Kids when they are really sick, like glazed-eye, refusing to eat sick, are actually quite easy to look after. They just lie around watching TV or listening to books or music and they don't do much else.   They also have the lovely effect of drumming up all available maternal affection.  Yes, I loved my kids on Tuesday.  I also loved them on Wednesday, and possibly Thursday too. 

But today?  Today Florence Nightengale was called off to another assignment and her ugly step-sister moved in.  I guess it was to be expected.  She couldn't stick around forever.  Anyway, the baby got the bug and refused to be put down.  And I challenge any saint to stay saintly when you've got a permanent appendage weighing 10kg on your hip.  Moreover, this permanent appendage prefered her carrying person to either be moving, or sitting in front of the television.   Force me to sit infront of the TV, when loud and boring kids shows are on?  I'm in prison!   This 10kg appendage was not interested in sitting in front of the computer, not at all.  Not a blog reader, my one year old. 

Then, just as Florence Nightengale was heading out the door, my poor husband gets sick.   Really sick.  Shame, he missed out on Florence completely.  He was lucky to get a cursory glance from the ugly sep-sister as she walked briskly down the ward.  At one point he was heard asking me, in a feeble voice; "How am I going to be able to get hold of you?" as if I was heading off on a weekend trip, not just deserting him for another room!

But what really sent Florence heading straight for the train station was that the kids started getting better.  Yes, they did.  The little blighters actually got well enough to have opinions, refuse requests, to annoy each other, and to generally to a great job of getting on my nerves.   They could have tried the patience of a saint, if she'd stuck around long enough.   Greer was using all the energy she'd saved up being meek on the couch by having one melt-down after another.  And Isobella made it her day's mission to cough incessantly without covering her mouth, and to leave half-used tissues strewn from here to Antarctica.  Truly. 

How did I survive?  I'll tell you.  I got a call from my Dad to wish me happy birthday for tomorrow.  And that made me smile.  I bought some clothes online with birthday money (thanks :-})  Then I lit a prayer candle, for myself. I put Abigail in the high chair (finally, detached!) and set her up where she could touch the buttons on the dishwasher without even trying.  I then ignored the other two and cooked dinner.  And I cooked it for myself.  Not caring who would eat it or refuse it.  I stood and looked out my favourite window, just above the kitchen bench, and realised it had been a really beautiful day. 

There are many, many things I could wish I had been doing today.  Like being outside, like being alone.  Like being efficient around the house and getting "stuff done".  I could get really imaginative and wish I had been at the library, or in here writing, or in bed reading...  And if I wanted to, I could now transpose all those wishes onto tomorrow, my birthday.  I could fill myself with countless "if only's" and think up the most perfect birthday.  But none of it would be possible.  Tomorrow I get the privilege of being nurse-mother-wife again, hopefully this time more Florence than ugly step-sister.  It will be another ordinary day.

While I was looking around blog-land tonight I found this quote.

"Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, savour you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it will not always be so. One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky, and want, more than all the world, your return."  - Mary Jean Irion

It was a nice moment, reading that.  It reminded me of what I always know, but often forget.  It saved me from wasting my thoughts on tomorrow.  It sent me here, writing this post, rather than into the kitchen to do dishes. And writing this post has re-fuelled me and left me peaceful and content.  I'm grateful.

guess what this is!

So you knew the idea was still hanging around somewhere... I told you about that here.   You knew it was part of a dream I wasn't sure of the form of, or the taste of, but longed for anyway.  You knew I was confused about how and why we'd done it in the past, and didn't have any idea whether we'd ever do it again in the future. Remember?

Well. Since those formative wonderings, the idea of homeschooling has come back to life.  You could say the dream has gradually taken a form I can see and describe.   It all started with that post, and those tears of joy I told you about watching the girls sitting doing "school" work up at the table.   It was followed soon after by a week at home for Isobella where she was too sick to go to school, but not sick enough to be on the couch all day.   I told her if she stayed home she'd need to "do some school" so I found a maths website on the internet for her, and it all started there.  From the hours she spent loving that maths website, she went on, mostly self-directed, to writing stories and typing them out, to reading old readers, to pulling out her old maths text book and doing some of the pages, to more reading... and more writing... and more internet maths. This went on for four days, and every day she became more content, happier within herself, and more proud of her work.  It got to the point where I said to her "you know this is what homeschooling looks like," and she replied, in so many words, "let's do homeschooling again Mum."

You need to understand that the week wasn't perfect.  I spent the first morning she was at home wondering constantly what was happening at school and what she was missing out on.  I got over that.  The second morning I lay in bed and thought about the prospect of being at home all day with three kids, no kindy, no activities, and had a moment of panic.  Where had my peaceful house gone? I got over that one too.   Then there was Thursday, my "writing" day. My treasured day, the gift that school had given  me, the day to myself (shared with Abigail) that was going to enable me to write the book.   Well Thursday turned out to be lovely, and I still got a bit of writing done.  By Friday I was in heaven.  I couldn't take the smile off my face.   I felt incredibly, deeply peaceful.   It was a peace that came from being free from the tyranny of getting to school in the mornings and being tied to pick-up time in the afternoons, a peace that came from spending the week doing something I now realise I love, a peace that told me my dream of a different life for our family was alive and well, and it took the unexpected form of homeschooling.

So that envelope in the photo above is our application to homeschool Isobella.  It spells out, in tidy-looking tables and concise paragraphs, how and why we want to homeschool.  It will be in the post today!

Four

She's four and the world is her oyster.   Amazing things are almost within her grasp, like words, like numbers.   "What is one plus three?" is an incredible question.  Her eyes light up and her fingers start counting each other.   The smile of satisfaction says "I know things!" She was given two colouring in books by her cousin, one a girl's one, so "girlish" and one a boy's one, so "boylish." Ofcourse. She is figuring out about the world.  She has discovered that her sister is her friend, her ally, that things are better when they're done together.  (Like going to to the toilet!)  She says "I don't feel four, I feel three!" but everything about her says four.  Everything about the way she walks and talks says "watch this space."

The night before last I was up until 2am making soup and the birthday cake.   It was a ridiculous chain of events, a comedy of errors, one of those nights where you have to laugh or you'll cry.   Isobella was sick, and up six or seven times in the night, and I had a one year old friend for about two hours from 11pm while the soup was cooking and I hadn't even made the icing yet!  When Paddy came home from work he got Abigail to sleep, but no sooner had he done that than I woke her up turning the beater on to make butter icing!  But it had to be done, the cake must go on...

Her birthday was lovely.  No actual party, but lots of fun and family...  I asked her at the end of it what her favourite thing about the day was, and she replied "my cake!" without hesitation.  This is exactly the kind of thing a mother knows instinctively, even at 2am.  

Happy birthday Greer-bear.   We love being your family.

ps.  It really helps to have an auntie who can make balloon dogs!!
pps. It also really really helps to have a husband who can rescue the decoration of said cake when it's 2am and the eyes are blurring...  all props go to him :)

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