What Do I Want For My Kids? What Do I Want For Our Days?

My question at the end of my last post was:  How do I transition in all of this? How do I grow with my kids and this new season of life? How do I move forward this school year? What do I want our week to look like?

My goal was for a slow and peaceful childhood. But something I didn't talk about was that I also want them to have to work some struggle muscles. Some of the reason I chose a more traditional, curriculum based homeschool model (over radical unschooling or whatever) is that I want my kids to realize not everything worth having in life is going to feel easy or fun. I want to work those struggle muscles and for them to see that they can do hard things. I want them to have self-discipline that not everything is all about them or easy breezy, feel good fun.  I want them to have the experience of  navigating something arbitrary and distasteful and having new skills or understanding because of it. Not to create hardship for the sake of hardship but to develop their character and help them have some recall to draw from into adulthood.

I need to find the balance between wanting them to dig in for the joy of learning something they're passionate about. And understanding that sometimes you just need to buckle down and memorize stuff so you have it handy and can use it in other ways throughout your life. Like maybe we need to incorporate math drills and maybe they need to write that paper on Louis & Clark or book report on Sarah Plain and Tall because it works "muscles" in both their character and brain. I may not align with any single educational method but I don't feel that I've gone completely awry in some of my more arbitrary requirements of them. I just struggle to teach or require the arbitrary because I struggle to teach things like they do in school. I was never good at school! 

Old pic, that's Joy4 (now almost 6) standing on the chair

So what does that mean for our school week this coming year? What do I need to do to ground us? What do I want them to learn? What do I want us to gain in this year? How can I use school as a source of connection and balance the arbitrary with the joy? What do I want our days to look like? What actually works with the real flow of our schedule and our family's lifestyle? 

I don't know. 

Schedule-wise I know the kids do best when I'm up and ready to go by 8a.m. and that's more doable now that I'm generally getting decent sleep. I'm usually awake and drinking my coffee by 7:30. 

Things that I don't enjoy about our school days previously have been: having 2-4 kids waiting on me to help them with questions. I do not enjoy bopping from kid to kid while someone acts out in the background (because they've been waiting 15 minutes and can't move on) or the boys start fighting or making tons of noise. I leave each school day frazzled and feeling grumpy because it was 2-4 hours of chasing my tail while I try to help them answer stupid questions in the text I wasn't assigned to read. I'm a bit bitter about the last school year or two in particular if you can't tell. 

Hard to believe this baby is starting 1st grade...but he's been the main source of the chaos the last 6 years!

I have come to dread school because it's just this constant relentless chaos of questions and drama and kids at loose ends and me struggling not to snap at the same behaviors we've dealt with 229 times already that week. 

So that's not working for me. 

How can I manage this better? What do I want the days to look like? 

What's worked best is to set aside an hour for each kid in the day and that's their hour to do their focused school with me. We go into my bedroom with their school basket and they get that hour with me all to themselves. But I do not have an hour to give anymore! I won't ever use a curriculum that require a full hour or my holding their hand. What would work even better is if I focused on explaining the next day's assignments to them so that they could get started earlier the next day and know what they need help with when it comes to their turn and time with me. We can bop those issues right off and be more efficient and focused. 

So what would my ideal day be this year?

My ideal  school day would be...

7:30: Wake up by then at the latest
7:30-8:00 coffee and quiet time
8:00 get breakfast together...bake the muffins, make the pancakes..make sure the smoothies.
8:30 chores...chickens, dog, cow...garden.
9:30ish Family Style Work: Read aloud, History read aloud and project. Science on the alternate days.
10:30 One on One  #1 I work for 30 minutes with AJ. She's usually the most anxious to get her work done and usually needs the most hand holding.
11:00: One on One  #2 I work 15-20 minutes with RJ she's usually at a place where she's looked everything over and has questions.
11:15 One on One  #3 I work for 30 minutes with PJ she's usually done everything she can, read her reading, done her math...and she needs help with language arts/grammar and maybe some math questions Her work usually doesn't take very long. 

And then this is the part of the day where everything falls apart. By lunch time I'm fried. It's been too much peopleing, so much thinking and questions and talking. I want a long break or I need to run errands or there are basic household things we've got to take care of ASAP...

Ideally we'd do...

Noon-ish. Lunch break  

12:30: One on One  #4 School with IF
1:00 Rest Time Mon Take RJ to Violin. 
2:00 Kids check off last of their chores before computers can be used. Friday Take RJ to violin

3:00 Free For All and Errands 

As far as a rhythm to our week? 

Mondays: RJ has Violin and currently every other Monday we have to drive down and get milk. Though that won't be an issue when we have the cow. 
Tuesday: Bread Baking. I need to teach the kids how to do this. We could focus on a baking project on Tuesdays.

Wednesday: It could be library day, we were doing Thursday but middle of the week would work better. 
Thursday: Bread baking day
Friday: Homeschool Park Meet ups  11-2 and then RJ has violin 2:30-4:30

Reading all that it makes sense why I'm tired. I think I have a better picture of what I want to do so that's good. Next post I need to work through exactly what curriculum we're going to use and how I hope to use it....Later. 

Big Changes 2020...Hunt for Home!

 You can read Part 1 and Part 2 of our Big Changes 2020 posts in those links!

It's really strange moving to an entirely different area. It was fun driving into our development...Suburb? I think they call it a "Deed Restricted Community" but it takes 30 minutes to drive across whatever this thing is, neighborhoods are different down here! I remember thinking, "This will all be familiar to me in a few weeks but right now I have no idea where I am or how to get anywhere, how strange!"

You have to use navigation to find your way to the grocery store. You don't know how roads connect or if there's a shorter route. You have no idea what direction your headed in relation to the nearest city or what the name of the highways are. Thanks to my hours and hours scouring Zillow and Trulia for a rental and housing options had gotten me fairly familiar with the different areas of the county. The search was on again for a place to settle. I don't want to give too much information about where we've landed on here but I will say it was just the general feel of the area that got us here. All of Ryan's family is in the Orlando area of Florida, we have some friends in Central Florida and I have some family in the Tampa area but none of those areas appealed. We came to this area and we just knew it was home. It's hilly (for Florida) there are pine forests everywhere and it's just gorgeous, it was very different from our palm tree, scrubby and flat Florida experiences of the past, it felt like home. The counties down here are quite big, it can take over an hour to drive across them and while we knew we wanted to be in this county, we didn't know where. 

 

Our dream list was at least 2 acres of land but Ryan really wanted trails to wander so upwards of 9 would be preferred. We were really hoping for water access (knowing that we could get water for the Berkey water filter something was wrong with the well was of interest). We wanted to be near the forest but have some open area for any animals we kept. We needed to have at least 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms and the property couldn't be too far down a dirt road (we have a minivan and a small car and no desire to upgrade). That's a tall list. 

Once we were settled we started driving around to places listed that might work, most were miles down dirt roads! Some were obvious flood risks, others were too far from any family (we really wanted to be within  2 hours of Ryan's folks). I had come across this listing so many times since February. It's nestled in a vast forest near several large lakes but the top view shown on the listing was this bizarre property line.

3 acres with access to a 14 acre lake...but look at the odd shape!

 

I couldn't make heads or tails of the strange lot and it just didn't seem like it would work, it was only 3 acres and it says that it has an electrical easement on the border of the property, if there are giant power lines, no thanks!

But we drove out to see it. We walked the property lines and thought, this is odd. But the more we walked it the more we loved it. The power lines are very small (just a line and a telephone line) and the property is surrounded by national forest and the power just runs to the few properties near by, really the easement is only on a very small corner part of the property. It is on a dirt road but the driveway is only .2 miles down the road.

We went back to visit again the next day. We liked it even more! It has an area down by the lake, an open area for animals to graze, a foresty area and a HUGE (hundreds of acres) of pine forest across the dirt road. As we were leaving a little 2 door coup came puttering down the dirt road! The neighbor down the way (a retired couple) said that they've lived there for years and have had no problems with the road...a neighbor further back has a tractor and he levels and rakes the road every few months to keep it nice and smooth. 

We went back the next day with Ryan's parents and had them take a look. The neighbor (with the pool you can see pictured, they are actually the sellers) was outside and we chatted with her. They are retired and had 5 kids (she loved seeing that we had 5 kids too), the property has been in his family for over 50 years and our lot was the original site of the cabin (which burnt down some years ago) that his family kept there for when this was their hunting and fishing land. They were originally from up north and would come down for family trips when he as growing up. The little lake is spring fed, has small gators that usually stay to the other side of the lake, it has bass and cat fish and they enjoy taking a row boat out and fishing in all their years they've never had a problem with alligators or snakes.

The property is situated out in what looks like the middle of nowhere but it's 5 minutes from a little shopping center and only 25 minutes from downtown! And it's only an hour from the beach and an hour from Ryan's family! His parents were extremely impressed with the entire property.

We put in an offer the next day. 

The public forest bordering the property goes on for a few miles and ends in a series of large lakes

 

The little lake next to the property, it's lower in these pictures though we've gotten quite a bit of rain since then.

More forest

More lake views

Our offer was accepted and after 2 months of hoops and paperwork we sign closing papers next week!

Now for the house! We looked into so many housing options for this property, we priced out what we could afford, what we were willing to invest and what would actually work for our family. We are a one income family, we work and school from home. We looked into stick built homes and were unhappy with our options. The companies were not well reviewed and had issues with BBB. We looked into modular homes while they were better reviewed and we trusted the building process more, the savings was only a few thousand dollars and we simply could not get the amount of house we needed. We found a manufactured housing company that we researched thoroughly (rave reviews online and from every company we've talked to that works with them, no listings with BBB)and we decided that it was our best option.
There's a stigma with "living in a trailer" b the more we researched the more we realized that manufactured housing ahs come a long way in the last few decades. The model we found and the company that builds it seems amazing. You'd never know it wasn't stick built. We've decided to upgrade  the roof to reflective aluminum, raise the ceiling height 2 feet and upgraded the insulation to the highest density possible. We'll eventually add some really nice permanent brick skirting for the house. It's a 5 bedroom 3 bath house with two living spaces and enough space for us to continue to grow (not planning on more kids but I mean physically, these kids take up space!). It's not exactly what we planned but it seems like the most solid investment. We really don't want (nor can we afford) a half a million dollar mortgage. Our main focus is having a house that fits us and that we can start a little mini farm moving forward, come what may. We hope to put a great big deep front porch on the front of the ranch style home and focus on making it a welcoming place to visit. We'll have a guest bedroom/home office and an extra bathroom to accommodate visitors. We're really excited!

The Future!

I hope to kind of sit down and plan things out a little. I hope to create a food forest, we want to get chickens and maybe ducks and goats. Lots more blogging as a I learn and figure all that out over the next few months!

It's definitely going to be very different from the city life we enjoyed before...To the forest and life by a Florida lake (gators, snakes and all) to new adventures!

What our old walks looked like.

Big Changes 2020 Part 1

 It always cracks me up how badly I am at blogging. I'm not trying to cultivate a following so I'm not going to feel badly about my inconsistency. Life is busy and blogging as it is now known has become such a vapid and shallow thing the last few years. I truly don't have the skills or the desire to invest in what it requires, it's all about social media engagement and 99% of the interactions take place on Instagram. I enjoy scrolling through pretty pictures as much as the next person but at this point, I don't have the time or the energy. I just want to write.

Which brings me to now..Sort of...

This year has been insane for pretty much everyone, it's held true for us too: 2020 has meant some wild changes. But let me back up, Spring of 2019 we began seriously talking about a potential 1,000+ mile move. I felt so torn, I didn't want to leave my Mom (who lived next door), we had really close friends and I hated the thought of leaving them. But we were feeling stuck and also nudged and all sorts of unsettled so we began to seriously pray about our next step. 

If we go even further back to a few years ago we had a seed of an idea for a church plant laid on our hearts. We felt clearly that God wasn't calling us to plan it where we were. We began to ask where we were supposed to go and God kept nudging us to Florida. Florida was our "Never Will I Ever" state, years ago we joked about how much that was not happening. Face Palm. At the time I didn't like heat, I would miss Autumn and Winter too much and FLORIDA??? Blegh! It is a swampy, shrubby, flat place full of alligators, fire ants, giant spiders, flying roaches, poisonous snakes...And hot and muggy all the time, why would we go there??

And yet every door and window pointed to Florida. The Summer of 2019 brought the realization that we were moving there eventually, we knew that is where we were headed. The Autumn of 2019 brought the realization that a move that big was just impossible. How could we do it? How could we possible get the house ready to sell? How could we afford moving 7 people that far? We made a list for the house and started checking things off (it  was a long list). We took the move off the table though, it wasn't happening for at least 2 years.

January of 2020 we still felt a very direct and pressing direction from God to not get comfortable, to start moving towards this change. We told the kids that we were planning to move to Florida sometime in the next year. In February we went down to Florida for a work trip. We took 3 or 4 days at the end of the trip to scout out potential areas to live. The kids were excited, we've spent a lot of time down here over the years and they've always loved visiting. They love the big skies, the beautiful lakes, beaches and family time. That is a draw to being down here, we have just as much family (even more if you're doing math) down here than anywhere else.

February 2020 a Florida Beach Day

Then March 2020 

The day before our state locked down my Mom and I ran out to a little country store to stock up on baking supplies. I was looking at the lovely array of spices when my Mom said "Why Hello!"     

       It was the realtor friend she had recommended to us a few months before. She introduced us and I was able to talk to him about our hope to sell our house "If and when this all settles down."

The next day our world locked down, "Shelter in Place" was declared in our state. We questioned everything through those weeks, would we still be able to move? Would life ever be the same? The oppressive nature of the lockdowns in our area had us feeling very unsettled and extremely stuck. Every thing was closed and when would it open again? I couldn't really clean things out and take things to donation centers but I felt clearly to start organizing and packing, "Start here and keep moving forward!" 

So I started packing and packing....and packing.

Over the 2 months of lockdown we packed and cleaned, patched, painted, repaired and filled up the garage with junk. In early June I called a junk hauler to come take all the crap away. He happened to be a realtor and walked through our home and gave us an estimate. He also said that real estate was opening the next day and we could have this place on the market in a week if we wanted. The next day? It was opening? YES! But we didn't feel a peace about using this guy, I felt clearly we should call my Mom's friend. I contacted the realtor I met in March and asked him to come see the house ASAP. We had the house on the market within 2 weeks. Within 3 days we had had 26 showings and 15 offers, by the end of the 4th day we were under contract. BOOM. We were doing it, we were really moving to Florida!
`Part 2 Coming Soon...Florida!

Setting Goals

I want to make some changes. We've been drifting and surviving with the last 40+ days of "shelter in place" happening in our region. We're tired and drained and Hubby and I are trying not to stress, trying to just take life a day at a time.

But there are three small changes I want to make to how we function, three little intentional changes and I want to get back into some sort of school routine.

First change: I want my dining room table back!

Can you see that mess on the dining room table in the background?


I am going to remove the book shelf in the picture and I'm getting the three kids (who use their computers at the dining room table) individual desks. Two desks will be where that long desk is in the picture (it's a virtual image, I was trying on all sorts of desks on the amazon shopping app!) and one will be in the corner across the room.

I am really hoping giving each child an area to store their school stuff will help  and it will keep my dining room table clear for family meals. I plan on using these baskets (well bought locally)
on the shelf for each of them to store their school books and binder in so that it's all together in one place. They won't arrive for at least 2 weeks so that kind of stinks, but once they do I'm excited to get my dining room back!!!

Second Change
Everyone has an assigned seat at the table and everyone eats at the dining room table, no exceptions. We've gotten super lazy with this because the dining room table is almost always covered in computers and school stuff.  I want us to sit down and eat together and I want it to take less effort to happen.

Third Change: Daily Themes
I did this years ago and it was fantastic and I'm not sure why I stopped...Probably Joy4's arrival...a lot of things stopped when he arrived.

I need to think carefully about daily themes and keeping it workable given current events (like we can't have a Library day right now...but maybe some thing else). I think I will write another post on this subject another time. Right now a little 4 yo is asleep next to me and I need to go get the 1 year old to go to sleep too....More later!

Seasons Shifting

I always feel this way when I am pregnant, but this time it's been hitting me especially hard.

Heading into the home stretch of this pregnancy and I think it is hitting me for real: this is it for me and babies. The end of an era. 11 years of baby building...13 or 14 probably by the time that Baby5 weans (if all goes well with nursing). I am tired. Not just physically from the pregnancy (though I after all these years my body has been growing babies from nothing into big happy toddlers, I am feeling depleted there too!) I am feeling tired trying to keep every thing running. Between homeschooling, keeping the house and laundry kind of decent, and a busy toddler: so much work!

It's funny and it's probably completely mental, but I feel like in choosing this fifth baby- in taking the leap into "look at that big family, they're crazy" territory. I mean we're not the Duggars by any leap. But when people notice my belly and ask me if Sunny is my first or second (usually I am out alone grocery shopping, or all of my children have blissfully abandoned me at the playground) and I say "Actually, he will be my 5th." I get these stunned looks. It's quite amusing! I am pretending it is because they thought I was 24 and look far too young to have so many children (almost a decade past that, and I look it too) and not because they are judging my birth control choices (he was specifically planned and tried for, thank you very much!).

I am probably putting too much pressure on my self, more than I ever did when I had a couple kids. Are their nails all clean? Did they brush their hair and teeth? Are they wearing ripped clothing? Are their glasses clean or do they have 3 weeks of gunk on them? Do they smell good? When was the last time every one showered? I really need to get a better schedule 2 of my kids hate bathing in the winter and will try to fly under the radar until it can't be missed...Usually when I am running through this mental checklist and it's too late to hose them down.
We chose a bigger-ish family but they are all loved, nurtured, cared for and generally clean- see? 

The fact of the matter is things have shifted in life the last year or two. HubbyJoy is super busy with work and I can't depend on him like I used to. I mean he tries and he is far from being uninvolved, but when he has a client waiting on stuff the Honey Do List waits for quite a bit longer than Nesting Mama can stomach sometimes. So I have been reorganizing a lot mentally this year. Handing off some basic household chore to the oldest two kids has helped keep things going fairly well.

Handing off more of their education to them has been freeing as well, actually it is amazing! I have daily requirements that they meet before they can do any thing with screens: big motivator. Most days they knock out the list before 9:30a.m. and we sit down for 30 minutes and I have them narrate what they are reading about and go over their math questions and science material with them. It definitely lightens my load.

There are definitely areas we could improve in educationally, but that isn't this season, we're getting it done and they are all learning and growing, this list is good enough for now.

Which brings me back to sweet Sunny Joy. He's due in May and I can't remember ever feeling like this about a pregnancy. 

Done, numb, apathetic, exhausted, giving myself pep talks, unable to wrap my head around the fact that I am doing this again. 

I wanted this baby. Last summer I had a dream about little boy, it wasn't Ziggy. That little guy in my dream had a name I had never considered for any of my kids before, he was a lot like Ziggy but completely different and the were playing together. I told God in the dream (and in many conversations afterwards) that I felt a little selfish asking for one more little boy in our family, but I wanted that one, his little arms around my neck were so real and his name was exactly right and fit so perfectly into our family convictions. HubbyJoy and I talked about it for weeks and kind of came to a point where we knew I was ovulating soon, we knew the window in which the spacing would be anywhere near what we wanted was closing. So we decided to go for it. 

If we had known how insane the next 4 months would be, there is no way we would have tried for baby! My wisdom teeth were impacted and causing severe pain, as soon as we realized there was no turning back on that move I kind of panicked about dealing with that through the first trimester. I scheduled surgery to have them removed immediately. That took 2 weeks out of my life by the time I was recovered.
I was getting back to normal and feeling good and took a job doing before and after school care for our neighbors again. That was going to be a tall order with homeschooling, I honestly didn't think we would get pregnant after the surgery stress and I was kind of second guessing our decision, it wasn't a good time for a pregnancy. 

Famous last words. The day before I started watching the kids, on Ziggy's second birthday actually, I got a positive pregnancy test. 

A few days after the neighbors started with Before and After school care, they announced they were moving in November, and would Mom like to buy their house (some thing we had talked about and planned to do the next year)? Which meant we were buying this house! It would be all ours well before the baby arrived. What an answer to prayer!! 

What a freaking headache. If you've ever bought a house and gone through mortgage paperwork,  you know what a completely thrilling experience it is. So many phone calls. So many emails. So many forms. So many phone calls. phone calls phone calls. Oh my goodness it sucks. 

Add into the mix that HubbyJoy was taking a Seminary course 1 weekend a month all Autumn in preparation for his Ordination (also scheduled for some time that Fall) and on top of the mortgage process, on top of a pregnant sick wife working part time, on top of working full-time himself. 

A test of our endurance. 

We closed on the house in November and moved Mom next door the next week. It has been wonderful having our own home, it was desperately needed and it was on the table for next summer but the fact that it worked out so soon was completely God and an answer to our over-crowded prayers. This house is the perfect size for all of us, even a little bit big. We are feeling little nudges that we might not be here forever (and that makes me sad because I love this house) but for the next several years this will be our home. 

All of that adjustment it is no wonder I am feeling a little bit of a hard time connecting with this little guy. 

I wanted him, I asked for him, but I am having a hard time wrapping my head around how soon he will be here. And that my Ziggy Joy won't be my "baby" anymore. Maybe it is all in my head. Maybe because he was my baby boy, but in some ways I am feeling like I did with my oldest when I was pregnant with my second, can I love another little boy this much? Ziggy was a breath of fresh air, a little joy ball, a baby I thoroughly just enjoyed.  He has been such a little sweet bear that just oozes love. I am so tired, what if Sunny is a fussy baby?  What if we don't connect as easily? What if I have used up all my baby love? 

And I know love grows, it surprises you, and it is different every time and that's okay. Still a lot to process. 

I didn't get around to what I wanted to reflect on in this post, which is that I am also feeling really ready. I see how big my older three are getting and I am ready to be done with babies and toddlers. I am ready to be able to go and do stuff as a family with out worrying about diaper blowouts, milk leaking and soaking my shirt, with out some one melting down because they are missing their nap, with out having to be hyper vigilant because toddlers are unpredictable. 

I think about the fact that I am about to be doing these scooter walks with my big kids with a toddler and a baby in tow. 

With Ziggy I felt all the pluses and no minuses for adding another baby to our family. I saw love grow in a way I had never witnessed and it has been an blessing to watch it blossom over the last two years. With Sunny I am again watching love grow. But instead of feeling that it is all gains for every member of the family, I am seeing that continuing this baby season of our life past Sunny, I will be limiting and changing some goals and ideals and I am not sure I am willing to do that. Pregnancy isn't easy for me. I am sick for about 4 months every time, I deal with hip and back pain, hormonal mood swings, and horrible insomnia which leaves me feeling tired and frustrated. My births are for 4/4 for being longer and dramatic. I am really not looking forward to the process again and I hope we can go out with a decent experience on that front as well. A post on that another time.

I am ready I think to move on and maybe there is a bit of denial and grief that Sunny is "it" and I wish I had more to give him and could slow time down and savor this. 

But mostly I just want to get him here, and know that we are complete and moving forward. I am so ready to know him. Also a post about him another time. 

A Beginning

Blogging seems kind of ...dead. I know there are a lot of blogs out there, popular blog, blogs with hundreds and thousands of readers a day. It seems though that so much of it is run by social media and that's just not really my thing. Don't get me wrong, I waste as much time as the next person scrolling through Facebook, laughing at stupid posts, sending hugs to friends having a rough day, making connections outside my home in private groups.

I haven't blogged much since Baby Four arrived 2.5 years ago. I used to use blogger to document snippets of family life for posterity but I mostly use Facebook for memory keeping now (and the options of downloading whole Timelines into Memory books, which I plan to do one of these days, really!).

The thing is, I do need the outlet, a space to think about stuff - regardless of who reads it. This is probably the worst time I could possibly take on a new blog, Baby Five is due in less than 2 months and there is so much to do between now and then!

Life is very full, just keeping every one fed and alive and the basics of life feels like a full time job. I have been thinking about relationships in my life, relationships with in my family, and being intentional about the choices I make in fostering relationships. Being intentional about what I take on and commit to. I have been thinking about the shift I feel as my bigger kids get older and we start quickly sliding towards middle school and puberty. I have been thinking about this shift to Baby Five and how hard it has been this time to find time to connect with him. How hard it has been to even wrap my head around the fact that in a blink I will have his sweet smelling head tucked against my cheek. I will be up nursing again at night. I will be doing the teething thing again. And all in the midst of that I am going to still be juggling the midst of "this". This life is big.

Add to it that there are so many "shoulds" pushing and pulling us, we should be getting involved here, or we should be doing more of that, especially when it comes to homeschooling. We're closing in on the end of our 5th year of homeschooling and I am starting to feel those "shoulds" and pressure more than ever, my oldest will be in 5th grade next year. How can I best prepare her? Am I giving her enough to stretch her wings and take on some personal responsibility and independence?  She's such an amazing individual, and I never know with her how hard I should be pushing her, or where I need to wait and let her work things out in her own time. I mostly lean towards waiting with her, she's a slow bloomer and that's okay. But am I doing her a disservice, is she too comfortable? I won't even touch the other side of the spectrum that is Child Two. That girl! She is the catalyst to so much that drives this family, and that's okay but a post of it's own!

I need a space, a corner of the internet to make some space for joy. To focus on my personal goals.

How can I do that? What are those goals? How do they align with my convictions for my family? What exactly are those convictions? I hope to kind of start chipping away at those in the next few posts.

Baby 4 (really, a great big toddler) is waking from his nap and I don't know how much more time I will have to write before he wakes up and wants to be the soul focus of my attention, he's good like that. He doesn't take distracted Mama when it comes to after nap snuggles.

More later...