Topics in this post: motherhood, daily life, homeschooling, and a bit of photography

    Here it is mid-April, and I’m finding myself with a long list of “I want to dos,” but none of it is getting done.  This is becoming a theme on my blog isn’t it?  Simply put, life with a baby and three-year-old equals a life in which very little gets done.

    The weather in Georgia is beautiful this week.  A bit on the warm side, but not hot.  All the flowers and trees are blooming, and one day last week I woke up with a thick coat of yellow pollen covering our back deck and front porch.  This was the same day my three-year-old came down with a cold.  I thought it was allergies at first, but each day someone else in our household got sick until we all got sick, and I am pretty sure wasn’t allergies.  Now we seem to be on the mend, which is a big relief.  I am looking forward to getting out to work in our yard and pulling some of that wild grass that is taking over my flower beds.  It’s funny how it’s easier to clean up my yard than it is to clean the inside of my house.  When the boys are outside, they are entertained by Mother Nature.

    Luckily we were well enough yesterday to attend the homeschool field trip to the William Harris Homestead that I spent several months coordinating.  It was a huge success, and I’m tickled that it went so well.  I had approximately 100 people attend, and I have received numerous compliments on the tour itself.  Of course, that is not my doing.  It is thanks to the hard work of my mother’s cousin, Dotty Zazworsky, the managing director of the Homestead, and all of her staff.  I’m going to write about this field trip in my next column in the Barrow Journal, which is due to come out in print next Wednesday, April 21st.  You could also read it online sometime next week too.

    I’ve been wanting to post more regularly on this blog, but there are two things preventing me.  One, I don’t have time to write, and two, I don’t have time to take many photos.  I do still take photos, but I don’t carry my camera around with me as much because I have a baby I need to carry, and handling both is troublesome.  (I do manage it at times, however.)  It’s not a bad thing to take a break from taking photos.  One of my goals is to further organize my photographs using Aperture 3.  I love this program, and it’s a great tool.  But it’s only a great tool if I utilize it as such.  So, I’m slowly going through my photographs, adding keywords, deleting bad photos, creating smart folders.  It’s a long process, especially with my limited time, and it’s made easier by me not taking a lot of extra photos.

    I can, however, tell you what I am accomplishing besides taking care of these little people.  I am still writing my weekly column for The Barrow Journal, and this is probably why I don’t write here as often.  It takes up all the free time I have in the evenings.  I try to write a little bit every night because I never know when a child is going to interrupt my schedule, so I don’t want to wait until the last minute.  Though there are some weeks when writing it is a challenge due to time and thinking of a subject to write about, I find it a challenge that I enjoy.

    I’m also thinking more about homeschooling.  Recently I finished reading Mary Griffith’s second book, The Unschooling Handbook.  I had already read The Homeschooling Handbook, and I think these were very good introductory books for me as I begin this journey.  I believe that my approach to homeschooling will be very eclectic, and I’m hoping that a routine will be created naturally just as it has naturally occurred with everything else that we do.  I have learned that when I try to push my idea what our daily schedule should look like, I start to feel like a fish swimming upriver.  When I relax, I usually find that though we may not do things like I think other mothers do it (which is silly, isn’t it?), we have a routine that is comfortable and works well for us.

    I enjoy reading FIMBY by Renee Tougas, and I especially enjoyed her post the other day about how her homeschooling family works out their schedule.  Though I don’t think I’ll ever be as organized as she is, it excites me to think that someday we’ll have our own thing going.  I say “someday” because right now, with the baby and three-year-old, I have to take baby steps to finish anything besides the basic child and house care.  For example, I have been working on this particular post for four days, and as I type, my three-year-old, who is suppose to be in “quiet time” (that is an hour each afternoon that I make him play by himself), is doing everything he can to get my attention.  Luckily my baby can sleep through the noise.

    But I’m grateful that during these baby-toddler years, we have already decided to homeschool, and I have plenty of time to prepare for it.  By reading and making connections with other homeschool families, I already feel comfortable that homeschooling will work for us.  I don’t feel the anxiety that I hear many other new homeschool mothers feel when they start out.  I’m not worried about what curriculum I’m going to use because I doubt we’ll need one during the early years.  I’m just going to take these little bits of time that are granted to me and slowly keep reading and inspecting different ways of homeschooling, and most importantly, I’m going to remember that my son is learning all the time anyway.  Children have inquisitive minds and they want to learn.  Given a nurturing environment, they will (hopefully) learn to love learning.

    What are you doing and thinking about during these spring (or fall - depending on where you live) days?