Mothering Many

Now, I try not to rant about my kids on the blog. Truly, it’s just not seemly. But I was just handed an insult that was too much to take without letting off a little steam. And it really sounded like an innocent, even pleasant, question; “what did you do this weekend?”

Well, let’s see, dear. You left here Friday night and you had to scale a small mountain of your laundry to get to the door, and there were boxes stacked 4 high all along the kitchen wall. You came in on Sunday night, and you could actually get in the door without crippling yourself on dirty clothes and a quarter of those boxes had disappeared. Plus I had dinner almost ready for you. What do you think I did this weekend (aside from working my “outside the house job” from 9 till 4 on Saturday) eat bonbons and order Ferrari parts?

Oh, to be an oblivious teen once more!

I’d love to tell ya’ll what a fun time we are all having today, but I can’t. I have one sleeping, one outside and the rest farmed out here and there, and I am pressing on with my previously outlined agenda. But I do have a blessing to share. With all the cleaning and purging I have done over the past few months, I have realized how blessed I am to have healthy, happy children. You’d think that in a household this large, we’d have a slew of medical equipment, but we don’t. We have one nebulizer from Drama’s last crazy bad milk allergy episode, and that’s it. And I haven’t had to use it in three years. Blessed indeed! And now, back to the mines for me, cause the dryer just shut off.

So, apparently, we like to sleep. Especially in winter. With the curtains drawn and the heat on, we like to burrow into the blankets and hibernate. Today was one such blissful day, and the house stayed quiet until the amazing hour of 8am. Oh, I remember the days when it would have taken silence until 10am to thrill my little sleepy soul, but with the new public school and job lifestyle, 8am is good. Really, really good. Much better than the 6am stumble out, switch on the home lighting and start poking people agenda that I follow Monday through Saturday, LOL!

Today I am taking a much needed at home day to get caught up on stuff that has stacked up since my last “home day” on December 1st. I’ve been taking the kids to various appointments on my off day lately, and it’s really beginning to show in the stack of laundry that’s blocking the front door. And the stack of blogging that waiting to be done. And the stack(s) of boxes waiting to be sorted in my kitchen.

Enough sentence fragments from me for me, I clearly gots stuff to do!

I think Christmas must be the most stressful time of year for me, as far as organizing goes. Football season is pretty crazy, but it’s because of the go-go-going. Christmas, however, requires a degree of organization that is quite scary. It’s not just a matter of scoping out the Black Friday sales. I have to make sure that eight children have the same number of presents, and that the same amount of money was spent on each of them. It was a lot easier when they were younger and they liked what mom said they liked, but now that they are older with their own interests and over-developed senses of irrational pubescent and prepubescent tastes, it’s not as simple as 2 baby dolls and several hot wheels, yanno?

This year, I have a little extra time, because we are celebrating in January when The Clone will be home. I am getting so excited to see her! She’s actually bringing the boy she’s been dating for years home to meet Mama. How this can possibly be, I do not know. Surely she is still seven years old, slithering out from the cave she made of her bunk bed with a blanket, right?

So, four months ago I posted that I had enrolled my kids in public school. And then I went more or less silent, not just here, but on all my blogs. I recently started posting on my musings blog again, and I am trying to get back in the swing of things on the others as well. It’s hard, you know, trying to juggle everything. But that’s enough whining about that, right?

Anyway, the kids are doing great. Stuntman has managed to receive the principal’s award for all around excellent character, scholastics and general awesomeness. And, yeah, I did tell him I’d like to meet that boy he was in school, because I figured I might like him pretty good, LOL. Diva is doing much better after a somewhat rocky start, and Spidey was promoted a grade after three weeks in school. Batman was put in 1st grade which was no great surprise, given the lack of due diligence that both of us gave his reading progress. It didn’t seem necessary to push him that hard when I thought I would have him for at least several years, but the slow and sure method did put him a bit behoind his age mates when he entered public school. They all seem to like their teachers and get along well with their peers, so I think we can safely say that the “socialization” argument against homeschooling is a load of bunk, which we all knew anyway, but there, it needed saying and I said it.

Country is a sophomore this year, and my friends and I are trying to help her understand the differences between high school and college and help her explore her options. As far as I know, she is still undecided, though she has mentioned a couple of options. One thing that might appeal to her is online education, since she could work independently on it. Online ed has come a long way in the past few years, and there are even programs for Masters degrees online. And in some pretty nifty disciplines. The only catch is, the girl will have to go to college on a scholarship if she goes. Now, don’t get all bent out of shape over that. I was told when it came time for me to go to college that I’d have to figure it out, because there was just no money for me to go, and I turned out ok. No degree, but more than enough credit hours for one. Or two

I’m not quite sure how to go about getting a scholarship for online schooling, though, and I guess I need to figure that out. After all, I have a houseful of kids who will need educating, right? Right! I’d prefer that they end up with something a little more prestigious than a degree from the school of hard knocks.