Not big enough for that many kids

It is a common assumption that the more kids you have the larger your body will be. How often does a woman without children here people say, "Wow, how do you do it and you work 40 hours a week?" or "How do you keep your figure after all those hours in the office?" I suppose the fact that a woman's uterus fills up and grows to accommodate a baby, and most of the time the rest of her body too, that it is uncommon to return to your size post baby.
I have spent too many years obsessing about the size of my back end, calves, upper arms and hips. I have spent days arranging naps and playdates around my chance to exercise. Fighting with myself to get up earlier than I would like, feeling guilty when I don't. I have wasted too much time staring at a shape that will forever be MINE. Have you read, The Shape of Me and Other Stuff ?
I only say this is a common assumption that you must be large to have had more than one child based on the obnoxious amounts of comments I have received over the years about the way I look. Some sound down right disappointed that I am not FAT!

Made Over 1.

Driving home from church this morning I talked with my brother in law as I drove, listening to the previous night's escapades of catching up with old friends. Seems my brother in law called it a night earlier than the rest of them and I picked on him for being "a light weight". I even carried it on a little further and continued my insults, friendly picking and nothing out of the ordinary for our relationship. But his response was different then the usually bantering back he says, "This is how you talk when you just got out of church? oh you Catholic keeping up with the guilt and…"

Here is where I was interrupted, as I typed, by my father. Not wanting him to see that I was writing, for fear he would ask to read it, I stopped and "x'd" out.

I don't remember the rest of the conversation from the car very clearly for as you will read something far more serious happened that day. The point I was getting at, I think, was that how pathetically sinful I am and he assumed that church is supposed to make me saintly. I vowed to remember we are Christ's hands and His words. How can I accomplish what I am set out to do while picking and teasing? How I wished I could explain that "church is for sinners". Whatever it was that I was aiming to get across to myself, to him and to you is heavily overshadowed by the events of that day.

After church and after picking on my tough enough brother in law I was in a mood. I was in the kind of mood I think many poor women must get into. In church all around me, in the pews, under the pews and throughout the pews all I saw was clean, and it wasn't my fmaily. Within my own family I saw, ragged hems, worn knees, stained fronts, smelly shoes, messy hair, mismatched socks, used clothes, used purse, used books, sweaty hats, dusty lives, unclipped fingernails, and faded colors. I desired a clean, white, shiny, crisp t-shirt, I wanted a life make-over.

After church that day my parents treated us all to a new bakery along with our friends, we cleared out the shop of every morsel of sweet and frosted goodness they had. We sat in the grass in the back. We drank coffee, they all talked about life while I wished for a new one. After my eldest son broke a chair that I'd asked him not to sit in and we boxed the leftovers we chatted in the parking lot, "What are you doing later today?" Catherine asked. I replied, "Can you come over and give me a make over, a LIFE makeover?"

I went home and continued with my dragging my feet attitude. I called my sister, "I need a life make over!" No one seems to take me seriously, they think I am melodrammatic and carry on, but I don't say things like that unless I think I mean them. She asks what it is that I want and I flippently say " a clean white shirt…" and then she carries on with all sorts of ways to achieve this, visualize the shirt.

The thing is I don't have the time or money for what I am looking for and maybe I am looking for an illusion?

I fussed about the lack of housing possibilities, I cried as I put my baby down for a nap, feeling extremely sorry for myself. Later that day, in an attempt to bring some joy to the day, we took the kids to the beach for a picnic dinner. We hadn't even made it to the shoreline before we got a phone call, within an hour my husband was fatherless, my children grandpa-less. This was not the make over I was looking for.

Why am I homeschooling?

In my garden, right smack in the middle is a Bee Balm plant, it is red. It is there because I love the smell. It is also an attractant to butterflies and hummingbirds and I love the idea of a garden being a mini (micro) ecosystem, but not to the extant of inviting the deer.
The children and I have watched as hummingbirds dart, settle, suck and flee. We have watched them fight with the each other, claiming their nectar than chattering away noisily. This spring I discovered that, although the garden seemed dead, there was a distinctive smell of potpourri. I was tickled with the joy at the lingering scent of last years Bee Balm and went about collecting an apron full of spent seeds. That night I tucked them under my pillow and dreamed of warm days and warm soil.
In the corner of my garden as you enter, a little to the left, tucked behind the door, a tall unidentified herb has been growing. I knew my girlfriend gave it to me, I was pretty sure it was an herb, yet to taste it left me uncertain.
My mother is visiting and knows more about plants and gardening then I. The other day as I left the garden and the ever neglected plant behind the door I noticed that it was crowned with a purple flower identical to my "center of attention" Bee Balm. My mother recognized the square stalk as the same family as the Bee Balm but was unsure what it was, especially after I kept insisting that it was an herb, savory maybe.
I may have looked it up in 6 months or so but my mother learned it's name while reading about the Native Indians of this area-it is Burgamot. Burgamot, like the tea in Earl Grey. Now that we have done a little research and filled our heads with it's medicinal and practical uses I am quite pleased to know that my Bee Balm is so much more than a smelly center piece.

But I am not writing any of this to talk about red flowers but about why I am homeschooling.

My father asked, "So, why are you homeschooling?" I gave him a generic answer, maybe a standard "you'll understand this one" answer. I said, "ummm, because there are like almost 30 kids in a class." He said, " Well there were 40 when I was a kid." I looked at my mom for her to roll her eyes at his exaggeration and she said, "or 50, it was Catholic school and they filled the seats. I don't remember any kids ever getting out of hand or out of line." So I continued knowing they would like this one, " Well, you can't go to church in the morning at public school." and " I don't like the curriculum." and " I haven't been pleased with what I see, I mean even the Christmas shows are unimpressive."

What was I talking about? What I wanted to say was, "They ask for all of our time and there's no time left for Jesus. " I mean it isn't about being impressed it is about lacking meaning. My kids are gone from 8-4pm when they have been in school and then we squeeze in sports and homework, where is the time for family?

I am homeschooling because I want my children to have a Burgamot moment, unplanned, undocumented- real learning. I want them to discover and follow their own rabbit paths. I want to foster in them a love of learning with Christ at the heart of it all. I hope they will become life long learners, educated by their experiences with a Catholic world view. I don't want the government's agenda to be more important than God's.

I want my children to understand and act on, "I am, I can, I ought and I will" and recite that motto as they look at the tasks in front of them, as they are challenged and as a response to their calling.

I am . . . a child of God, a gift to my parents and my country. I'm a person of great value because God made me.

I can . . . do all things through Christ who strengthens me. God has made me able to do everything required of me.

I ought . . . to do my duty to obey God, to submit to my parents and everyone in authority over me, to be of service to others, and to keep myself healthy with proper food and rest so my body is ready to serve.

I will . . . resolve to keep a watch over my thoughts and choose what's right even if it's not what I want.

I want my children to run and play. I want them to be responsible to their family. I want them to be confident and unconcerned about what is cool or not cool to wear and be thankful that they are dressed. I want them to learn in the warmth of our home.



Charlotte Mason says it much better than I. She said that children have the need to be stimulated from an early age by a broad curriculum, not simply to be trained to read, write and count. She believed the best curriculum was one that contained the best literature, the best art, the best contemporary science and nothing mediocre.

A “living” education as defined by Charlotte Mason is one where a child is exposed to and acquainted with a large and various amount of “things and thoughts“. The child is educated through the use of many living books, the study of nature, physical exercise, handicrafts, science, art and music. Charlotte Mason taught that ideas were the food of the mind and that it was of the utmost importance that children be given a wide and varied diet of this essential food. Through the use of living books, real life experiences and conversations, a child’s mind should be fed on the good and the sublime, the honorable and true, because, as Miss Mason writes, “out of our ideas comes our conduct of life.”

“It is for their own sakes that children should get knowledge. The power to take a generous view of men and their motives, to see where the greatness of a given character lies, to have one’s judgment of present events illustrated and corrected by historic and literary parallels, to have, indeed, the power of comprehensive judgment these are admirable assets within the power of every one according to the measure of his mind; and these are not the only gains which knowledge affords.” (A Philosophy of Education pp. 302-303) (borrowed from Mater Amabilis.)

It isn't the same to know about something as it is to know something. A text book teaches a student about a certain subject where a first hand account, "living book" presents the intimate reality of a particular subject. A walk in the woods is to know the woods, to smell it, feel it and learn to love it or dislike it. To read about the woods and the many varieties of life there is to learn something about it but never to experience knowing it and therefore to make an opinion about it.

I want to raise my children. I want to see them nourished by the soil that we fertilize with prayers, penance and praise!