The Luckiest No Matter What!

I saw a meme recently that really super triggered me. The meme said something to effect of "Parents please stop calling what you're doing homeschooling- unless you are planning the lessons and grading the assignments, you aren't teaching. What are you doing is called parenting. " I tensed up, I felt myself get hot. I read that post over and over again becoming more and more uncomfortable with it the more I read it. Pandemic Teaching Isn't Normal Teaching A lot of people 'liked' the post. I get it, I really do. The teacher that posted it was well intentioned I know. She was trying to share her feelings, I assume, about how frustrating it is for people outside of teaching to think they have ANY idea what teachers actually do. Unless you have been a teacher yourself or worked in a school you don't have a clue. Not.A.Freaking.Clue.  Teachers are educated and experts and, unfortunately, are very used to having to make magic happen in situations that

During the spring shut down, we worked primarily at our breakfast nook table and dining room table. It was okay, but I realized, the more weeks we were out of school, how distracting that area was. My kids were just steps away from food and toys. Not to mention, for a good chunk of their day, someone was cooking something near them. It was way easier sometimes to watch mom making sandwiches than it was to finish a journal entry. The Space Because of that, we've been working to clear out our main room in the basement so that we can do learning from there. I wanted the space to be inviting, comfortable, but devoid of as many distractions as possible. I also wanted to be able to spread out my three humans so they had an area to clearly focus without getting too distracted by each other. Little by little we've been organizing, sorting, and getting rid of things to make that space work. Restructuring this room isn't necessary, but it has felt really good to feel product

Dear Baby of the Family, I miss you terribly right now.  As a parent, when you know your littlest is also your last, you hold onto everything with a firm love grip. You know it's the last crawl, the last middle of the night feedings, the last first smile or laugh or word. Babyhood and toddler life slip farther away with every passing day. There is no next time around.  The last baby gets a few perks that maybe other siblings don't get- more alone time, more one-on-one, and the attention from a parent who is watching everything with eyes wide open as if not to miss a single thing. Oldest children get all the shock and awe- everything is new, often times surprising. With the youngest, you anticipate, you get ready, you don't want anything to pass by without you taking in every part of it.  If things were BC (before Covid), my littlest would have his mama to himself for some blocks of time- while one older brother was at preschool for a couple of hours and other two brothers

The past couple of years, I've spent the summer doing 'camp days' with #hundboysx4. I'll come downstairs in the morning and announce, "It's MOVE-IT MONDAY" or "Get ready for a WACKY WEDNESDAY." If you want more ideas of camp days like this, read more about it here . That's been going really well and kids really like it. It gave a little focus to our days and also kept things fresh. This year, for so many reasons, I decided I wanted to be just a bit more structured and do a little more intentional educational activities. We were already knee deep in a routine where we spent some time in the morning doing school-ish type things because of in person school being canceled since mid March. Since we don't have many places to go or other activities like sports or camps, I felt like having something for 1-3 hours each day might make sense. As I was planning for what that might look like back in June, Carter ended up being my muse.  He was i