Booties

My triplets were born 6 weeks premature. L weighed 4.5 lbs. E weighed 4.75 lbs and N weighed 5 lbs. They were tiny creatures and I was a first time mom lost without a sail adrift through self-doubt and sleep depravation. To say that having three infants rocked my world is a definite understatement. I was in survival mode and struggling to get from one day to the next. If it weren't for all the help I got from my family, I wouldn't have made it through that time. Recently I found a box that brought all those memories flooding back to me.

When they came home from the hospital I kept their booties in a box that I had labeled, simply, "Booties". It contained only the premie size socks. There was a box next to it that I had labeled "Bigger Booties". It contained only the standard newborn size socks.

I was totally out of sync with reality. It didn't occur to me that there would be anything past the bigger bootie size. I was incapable of looking too far down the road because the notion of the future would overwhelm me, so I only focused on the here and now. I didn't label the sock box with typical 3 month, 6 month, 12 month size notations, just "Booties" and "Bigger Booties. The only trees in the forest of my reality that I could cope with stopped at "Bigger Booties".

I think I have the same sort of reaction to the long term idea of homeschooling. A common question I get is, "How long are you going to do this?", "Are you planning on homeschooling through high school?".

When I field these questions I get tunnel vision because homeschooling is like taking a drink from a firehose. There is so much to consider and think about that you can't take a big gulp or it would knock you right over. Booties, Bigger Booties. Baby steps, baby steps. I can only wrap my brain around one year at a time. Anything more than that makes my head spin. I do know that, for my family, it is working. I also know that I'm following a curriculum guide that is written for those who homeschool long term. So the forest has been mapped out for me while I focus only on my current trees and as long as it is working we will continue.

However, some days are better than others. Today it seems aliens have descended on my house in the night and stolen E's brain. She awoke completely incapable of recalling any of her addition facts that she had memorized for the past year.

Poof.... they are gone.

We now have to back up the bus and return to previous chapters in hopes that it will jump start her brain into recalling that which she has forgotten. I suppose the silver lining is that if she were in a traditional classroom, the teacher couldn't back up the bus for her. In fact, it might even take a long time to discover that she needed to stop and be retaught. Instead, she'd have to float along with the rest of the class and we'd have to work hard to help her while her classmates moved ahead. In the mean time, she might decide that she isn't good at math or that it is too hard for her. With homeschooling I can slow down and camp out here in her book while I reteach and get her back up to speed. She doesn't know that she's ahead or behind. She just knows that it is time for math.

The challenge for me is not to get frustrated and question everything I've been doing with her. I have to keep my focus and stop looking too far down the road. I now know that I've got to find a new way to package her lessons while I make a tin foil hat to keep those brain sucking aliens at bay.

The "Booties" box and the "Bigger Booties" box. Those boxes are gone now but I suppose the imaginary boxes on my shelf today would read, "First Grade", "Second Grade".