A Day in the Life

My morning…August 29, 2013

Got up, gave the baby to Brian, went to the bathroom, charged my phone, got baby, fed baby, brian got up.  I had coffee and made my way to the computer.  I typed and typed.  Lauren ate and fed sarah.  Jacob ate said sarah, I wish I didn’t have sisters.  50 sentences…I will be nice to my sisters.  He hands her a paper and says here you write sentences.  Me…you don’t have to write them.  She is still writing them.  Copy work…a full page/ read/ concreted words.  Lauren misspoke again, I corrected.  The bigger they are the harder they fall.  I wrote it she said it again.  She draws in her journal…I didn’t tell her.  Sophia is drawing on the shower board with a dry erase marker…I didn’t tell her.  Now they are making up stories about Lauren’s picture.  An orphan under our bed stealing stuff because she is poor.  Playing with the baby.  I didn’t tell them.  Olivia I love you, I love you, says Sophia.  Ian woke up.  Rasberries..that is the sound of me farting…Sophia.  Oh, your so cute baby.  My darling.  Jacob is drawing, drawing drawing…his life.  Always everyday some part of everyday thousands and thousands of pages, packs and packs of copy paper.  Me to Ian…do you want to do school? that nasty word, I used it.  Ian- I just woke up.  The boy who comes home from tutoring without eating lunch and goes directly to his room to continue what he loves, driven to do, created to do.  Dry erase board divided in half and creativity is going fast…nobody told them.  I need to count to 14- Sophia.  Oh, I can write them for you on the board- sarah and you can say them.  My…I didn’t tell them.  I only get one?  Oh, you can have more…here…sharing…I didn’t tell them.  Jacob the pancake extraodinaire…mom what does it mean when the recipe calls for margarine or shortening…well me- it doesn’t necessarily mean it goes in the batter, it may go in the pan.  Jacob-ooohhhh.  Can I buy a non-stick pan, a sifter, a waffle maker,…a kid who has tested about six or more recipes and frantically searching for the perfect pancake.  He’s made them at least a 100 times already in our house and he has become proficient in it.  Nobody made him do any of this or told him to do it.  He asks questions or asks for tools we give it and or he finds more stuff online or in a book to go on and RUNS with it like a small snowball going down a steep mountain of snow ever accumulating in to something greater and greater.  Wow…Sophia, is on the piano going over her five finger run I showed her because she asked.  I didn’t tell her.  She is now rolling her fingers across over and over.  Pattern playing.  Experimental playing,,,up an down…down and up .  I didn’t tell her.  This is my day, this is my life.  NO tv, no computer, no phones, no video games just raw interest, creative thinking seekers…I am not orchestrating this.  You can’t orchestrate this…you just remain available, offer tools or give intial thought or love what you are doing in the now and show it!!!!!!  Now she is singing…Sophia.  Mom, I want to learn a song.  Okay, twinkle twinkle. The first four notes.  Thumb thumb pink ie  1  2  1 2 Twinkle twinkle.  Mom, okay I practiced enough.  Okay.  I let it go.  

The Great Pendulum of Freedom

The girls are all curled up on the couch with their dad watching little French speaking children talk to their parents in these cute little home videos on youtube.  They love to hear the kids talk in their native language and some are so articulate at such a young age that it makes it all the more intriguing for them to watch.  Maybe they will all pick up some French in the mean time.  Who knows?  The boys are at a friend's house for the weekend.  I hope they have some much needed fun and freedom. 

Freedom.  They were always free.  Not free to be stupid and endanger themselves etc., but free in the areas of life they should be allowed to roam, be and do.  My kids, unfortunately, may not have always felt that way, but I hope they do now.  Freedom to walk and breathe how you may in society comes from God not from man or amoeba or parent.  Well, an amoeba may prohibit your freedom but it certainly doesn't grant it.  Or it may if it does not consume your well being.  Oh, anyway...

The older they get the more they want to branch out and drift away and I wonder why.  When I was their age I couldn't wait to be on my own so why this process comes as a surprise I don't know.  I shouldn't wonder.  I should realize that this is so totally normal.  Swinging, drifting.  Isn't that what we want?  We parents wait for these moments our whole lives for our kids to be totally self sufficient and able to slide away from us and stand on their own two feet that never seem to stop growing.  Anxiety builds in them to become older and to be able to do more and more adult things.  They dream of the perfect car and the freedom they'll achieve once they can drive.  Drive where?  Away.  Away from me to somewhere or someone else.  It's good.  It's normal.  My son longs to travel the world wide.  And I don't doubt for a minute that he will.  That's him, that's how he is.  

I thought it wouldn't ever come, this independence day. Slowly more and more of the younger children, my children, are joining the ranks of that ever swinging pendulum toward the self sufficient model.  And just like they didn't need my help much for learning how to hold up their heads or how to eat or how to walk, stand or crawl, in many ways they did not need my help for these times of finding who they are and gaining confidence.  I had a hand in some of who they are, but who they are was stretched out in front of them like a never ending road needing two feet to travel upon it with or without my help.  And that pendulum of freedom swings.  It picks up a steady beat to swing to and stays constant, it's relentless actually.  But a pendulum swings away and it always swings back again.  It will take them away, but it will always bring them back.  At least that is what I hope.