I am always pleased and delighted to see the support on this board!
Jo… don’t worry about offending me (or however you put it…) There is a part of me that laughed when I read how you envisioned me. And I do have days where everything is going great and things do go really well… and days when, as I said, the kids sit and watch TV all day while I snooze on the couch. I am happy to say that the number of those days are fewer this year than they were last year when I was pregnant. (Actually, I was “this close” to being put on bedrest twice during my last pregnancy, so at least I had an excuse.
And yes Jo, I live in a place with cold winters… My husband doesn’t want me to say where we live (you’ll notice I never even mention the province….) – but there are jokes with the name of where I live that have to do with the cold. And when we are in summer, we have a million mosquitoes, or later in the summer we have wasps. So although both my husband and I have been scouting leaders (and are still involved) I am finding nature study immensly hard to do!
I get frustrated with my husbands work schedule as it really is a bad one…. but then I remind myself that when I had my 2nd baby, my husband started long distance truck driving. I had a toddler and a newborn, and he was gone up to 28 days in a row. At least with his current schedule I can run quickly to the store without taking all 4 kids! (I have to time it right….) And sometimes on his day off he will send me out to see a movie!
I do have friends who wonder how I do it… and sometimes I don’t know. I struggle with the things that I wish I was doing better. I get overwhelmed with some of the things that I really NEED to be doing but aren’t (diet, excercise, etc). as well as the things I WANT to do better – better at raising my kids, better at keeping the house clean, etc. I have high desires.
I think the thing that keeps us going as well as we do…. I pray daily that Heavenly Father will help my family thrive in spite of my weaknesses.
btw – for those of us feeling like everyone is doing fantastic in their homeschool and they are aren’t…. read the book “Lies Homeschooling Moms Believe” by (William?) Todd. My husband has told me to carry it around with me! (which means he read at least some of it…lol.) It is a breath of fresh air, telling us that there aren’t any perfect homeschooling families (although it always seems like there are), not to compare your weaknesses with another’s strength (ie, while you are seeing my kids all playing violin and are beating yourself up because your kids can’t even point out a violin…. I am looking at all the fantastic crafts and hands-on stuff your kids do that I never get around to doing… [the “you” here isn’t anyone specific – it is an example…]) and tells about the time his child asked a friend over to supper… and then said “I hope you like cornflakes…. we have cornflakes for supper a lot”
So here is my real moment. Yes my kids play violin, and we practice most days. (not many of those practices are the happy playing of the violin that is desired in the suzuki method!) Many days it is either practice, or homeschool…. but not enough energy to do both! I am totally inconsistant with habit training, and it shows. My kids do watch TV, generally a couple of shows a day (and somedays even more….) – generally something like the Food Network, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Cyberchase, and Mythbusters. (I must have a science minded boy… almost everytime he watches mythbusters, he makes something from that show out of lego, including a working rube-goldberg (sp?) machine.) My kids also get to play the WII on occasion… liking the Lego games, like Lego Pirates of the Carribean, Lego Harry Potter, etc. If they are playing “pretend”, it is likely Pirates of the Carribean, Harry Potter, etc. I spend way too much time on the computer, and although I wish I didn’t, I do yell at the kids at times. I love them dearly and would do anything for them I could (well, anything that would be good for them…) Oh, and my husband offered to buy me anytype of mop I want if it will help me mop the floor more often. (How is that for real!)