Labor Day

Today is Labor Day and as with most holidays of this nature one of us was working, this time it was Gary. It felt like an everyday and that was sort of ok with me until the neighbors went off to the beach and I started to feel yukky, fevery and tired then I began to wonder about what I was missing. All around me today people were headed to the beach and headed to something fun and cool and me and the kids were stuck hanging around the house. Jonah ran a fever which lead me to think less that I have Lyme Disease and more that he and I have a virus, we slept together for three hours while Molly listened for the girls and the girls watched an enormous amount of TV.
This is all ok, right?
I hate TV. I hate the thought of TV and my children sitting in front of the TV even once in a while and then I hate that I hate it that much........
ugh, I can't win!
So the next door neighbors are back and it is almost 7 and the kids are all outside playing like crazy. In two days they will go back to school and although I am relieved for the peace, there is another thing that the world is doing and we are not. The idea of picking out a cute outfit and getting new notebooks and having that first week is somehow appealing to me today. Definitely not appealing enough to actually go through with it all but you know kind of appealing.
Sadie just got off the phone with her friend Sophie. They talked about some of the homeschool kids that they know that will be going to school this year and when I asked her if she thought about it she looked at me bewildered.
She told me that this new friend that she made from down the road told her she was the luckiest person in the whole world, in the whole world. When she asked him why he told her because she lived in a place like a fairies house and because she never had to go to school.
I did buy them all some new outfits and some new notebooks but my kids don't really care about those things, they are way too busy playing.

JONAH!

Sometimes lately Jonah drives me crazy. Like today for instance, he and the girls and I were walking along the boulevard and he thought it would be a good idea to run toward traffic. When I chased him down and got to him he told me he was not my friend.
Not my friend!
Luckily God made him so beautiful and perfect in every other way. I cant help but forgive him, I cant help but cherish these last few moments of babyhood as I watch his fat feet fade to big boy toes and his chubby cheeks thin out. As I watch his baby language turn in to statements and facts and I grapple with my last child growing up. As he begged to be carried for that last long stretch of the boulevard today I made it a growing mantra to love this moment as it could be the last time he really wants me to do this. In Buddhism challenging people are always seen as opportunities to learn and I have Jonah to thank for many lessons. He has taught me tremendous patience and compassion and forced me to wake up to the present moment. I am so grateful.

I found our camera that apparently we had lost in our move but I had failed to even notice it was gone! Here are some pictures off of it from two years ago! Wow, how fast time goes by.....

Perspective

Life is so mysterious and unpredictable. One moment the road can be moving along without a hitch and the next there is a storm of unforeseen events all lined up like Jonah's little dominoes ready to tip over one at a time. Yesterday I woke up with a ton of energy and tackled the day. I exercised with vigor and finished my list and created more lists to complete. I balanced my check book and thought about upcoming expenses and then moved on away from the worry.
Today I woke up with a sense of dread. The sky was dark and the weather was shaky and the birthday party we were planning to go to fell through. On another day this would have been a wonderful opportunity but today it was a stuck in the house feeling, Gary walking out the door early for the whole day and night looking back at the five of us wondering what to do.
It wasn't a disastrous day. This is really my point. I guess I imagined it would be a disaster with my mood in the morning and the overall feeling in the house. Sadie and I had a moment to have a really good talk about some of the struggles that she had recently with friends and I mean we got some really deep seated issues out on to the forefront. Jonah and I snuggled and played a lot, we read some books and he went to bed relatively easy for me. Nora was a little wild today but it wasn't like a disaster, just not the day I had planned in my head.
One of my favorite quotes is by John Lennon and it goes "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." It is from the song "Beautiful Boy" and I always loved this quote. That's the way life is.
I had been counting on a lot of extra money over this week by taking a bunch of shifts with Emergency Services. Last night I was the only clinician on call and I didn't get called out once. Today I am on call from 5-12 and I showered and was ready to go out at 5 but I haven't gotten called and it is close to 10.
This is the way life moves. In my Buddhist group we use the phrase "the stormy seas of samsara" to talk about life here on earth and I feel like seeing things from this angle is surprisingly refreshing. It is what it is and as the mystery unfolds so does my perspective on my life, the life of my children and humankind.

Learning

I went for a long walk with a wonderful homeschooling friend of mine who has three teenagers and is, in my book, a wonderful mother. She is kind of like a mentor to me because her children are all older than mine and she has walked the homeschooling path for all those years so her wisdom is extremely valuable to me. We went for a walk in the woods in Gloucester and I had Jonah in carriage and Sadie on bike. We were there because of my concern over Sadie who would be technically going in to 3rd grade this year. I have been so worried that she is not learning enough and that we are not doing enough for her. I have wondered for some time now whether we will not be able to go the "unschooling" way and that I will need to buy a curriculum this year. So I have spent the summer looking at different curriculums including Calvert and Sonlight and Abeka. Last night amidst a glass of wine I almost broke down and bought the Calvert one but I figured I would pay a visit to my friend first.
So we walked and as I was asking her about advantages and disadvantages and what 3rd graders need to know and what we should do all year long Sadie and Jonah played poosticks in the storm drains, noticing all of the bugs and snakes in the drains and talking about different types of wildlife that could reside in such a place. Sadie ran off at one point to discover a toad in the woods and brought it promptly to show Jonah. Sadie and Jonah played by the pond and Sadie found a mysterious thing in the water that turned out to be bait and hooked it to a stick and rigged one up for Jonah and they played fishing for several minutes all the while I am hemming and hawing about how little they are learning and what I am going to do with our days this year. Sadie told my friend all about her summer camp in the woods and pointed out all the birch trees and the different types of butterflies we saw. She talked about the American Eel she had discovered at camp and went hunting for snakes. She threw rocks in the water and saved a few that she would like to take home and identify.
When we got home, Sadie wanted to go to my Buddhist meditation group. She pleaded and begged to come with me. Saturday I had taken her to an adult yoga class because she promised to do yoga and be still and respectful and she was! She loves yoga. She asked me if she meditates everyday for weeks can I bring her then?
At the end of my day I am still a little worried about next year. What if we get caught up again in my own self doubt. Another good friend of mine in my Dharma group who also has teens that have always been homeschooled offered to bring me the Oak Meadow third grade curriculum. Maybe we will try that.
Today I learned a lot.

I went to see the homeopath that Jonah had such luck with a few weeks ago. I went again as a skeptic, reluctant to believe in any of this hocus pocus stuff, while still benefiting from Jonah's happier disposition thanks to Medorrhinum. I went because of some of my own issues, including incessant worrying, insomnia and a sense that I always have to be perfect all the time. He was so nice to me. Again, it was like it was worth it to just go and spend time with him. I feel like he truly knows me. He gave me a remedy called argentum nitricum and with no exageration that evening I felt better, calmer, happier. Weird.
So life has been moving on for the last two weeks. I feel this overriding sense of calm that goes really deep inside myself and those around me are benefiting wildly.
Two days ago I broke out in hives all over my sternum and chest, up and around my throat. I felt horrible, tired and hot. I took everything I could think of just so I could manage working through the itchiness and heat. I took Benedryl and Clariton and got all of these different rubs. It helped a little bit. I had no idea where they all came from. I thought and thought about what I had eaten and where I had been but nothing new. I was confused. Finally Gary told me that I should call the homeopath and so I did. He told me that he thought this was normal and that it was my body's way of releasing the emotional stuff inside of myself as I was letting go physically of all of that worry and anxiety and control.
So weird.
He also told me it would be a better idea if I did not try and suppress all of this physical activity with drugs, that I had to actually go through it all and feel it. Ugh, that sucks! So here I sit, itchy and tired and so amazed by the power of our physical selves. I think a lot lately about what I do in my work and how backwards western teachings are about so many mind body things. I feel changed and new.

Sadie at age 8

Sadie turned eight on the fourth of July. She is at an in between age. She has been really cranky and angsty lately and so I gave her some extra space with a new bedroom. Sadie goes in to her bedroom on the early side and writes in her diary now and she does things like read books and play with her dolls, the same dolls that had been strewn through the house for the last several years that I lovingly put together and created a space for in her room. She has Kit and Kaya and Elizabeth and they are with her in to the evenings now. She is at an age where she waits for her older sister to come home as if royalty is arriving and when she sees the look of disappointment and dissatisfaction on her sister's face she is quick to put the same look on her face, so quick to be a teenager, still can be found in my bed at night time telling me to sing her a lullaby. Molly thinks I am coddling her. That makes me sad. Sadie is at an age where she begged and pleaded for earrings and we talked about the pros and cons, the pain and responsibility and then she when she told me she was ready, firmly, strongly, we traveled to the mall to get the earrings and she backed out in the final hour whining and complaining that it was going to be too painful and when they had wrapped up the earrings that we had to buy anyways and I was asking Nora if she would like to get her ears pierced while we were there she turned back and had the lady pierce them anyways, despite her fear. Sadie is at an age when all the ten and up girls that hang out in our group of homeschoolers are around she is so cool and all that and whatever and then just like that when she has only little Hayley from next door who is 4 years old she can be found out there playing dirt with her and reading Clifford books again. Sadie got an MP3 player from my dad today in the mail, late for her birthday. She got it and I thought, "Damn, now I have to go in to that world." My father, the king of not knowing what to buy has introduced an MP3 player in to my 8 year olds world. She has been mad about it all night, not mad like angry, mad like insanely happy. She waited at the door to tell Molly who of course shrugged her off and couldn't care less and bragged to Nora all night. She made me hook it up which I am currently doing and I spent hours downloading songs for my 8 year old to listen to. I had fun doing this which of course was surprising to me. I downloaded tons of songs by her father which of course was a pleasure to do but then I downloaded some of my favorites too. I downloaded some Family Folk Chorale songs and some Cat Stevens songs and Grateful Dead and the Beatles. While I was doing this Sadie was watching Thomas the Tank Engine with her 5 year old sister laughing and talking about all of the trials and tribulations of that train Thomas.