Potty Learning Blues

I'm really hitting that point of being at wit's end.  My son just doesn't want to use the toilet.  We've done everything for him.  We've bought him special underwear.  We got him a seat for the toilet with a special step stool and everything.  We've even tried to bribe him to use the toilet instead of a diaper!  He was making so much progress, then all of the sudden he doesn't want to do it anymore.  It's too much work.  He'd rather be lazy, or that's what it seems.

This whole thing with having accidents, I know some people would say he's deliberately soiling or peeing in his underwear to rebel against us.  I've been told he's being willful.  I've been told he's doing it deliberately to stand against me, his own little act of rebellion.  I don't think that's so much the case at all.  He looks shocked when he has an accident and gets all upset.  I honestly think he doesn't mean to do it, he's just not paying enough attention to when he needs to use the toilet.

I've been told more times than I can count that I should shame him into using the toilet.  I should make him feel so bad about himself that he won't want to do anything else.  I'm really tired of this shame based world that we live in.  Yes, shame works, but shame could also lead him to hiding his dirty underwear or his blankets because he had an accident and is too afraid to admit it.  There is always the possibility that there's some deeper reason why he doesn't want to use the toilet.  With how much we have to fight him to change his diaper, I wouldn't be surprised.  That would explain why he goes through phases of doing incredibly well and then phases of not wanting to try at all.

Of course, it's also going to be harder for him right now.  We've got a lot going on right now.  Summer is a chaotic, crazy time.  We had someone move in with us in May, which always changes the routine.  Then both our new room mate and my partner got jobs about the same time, so we really had a lot of change go on.  Sleep schedules were disturbed.  Chaos ensued.  In truth, we're really not back to normal yet.  We'll probably be settling in somewhere around September, not for a lack of trying, but because things keep changing.  Things always move so rapidly in the summer.

I'm not really looking for advice.  I'm not looking to have anyone help me out on getting it done.  I'm really just kind of frustrated and venting.  My older son is four and still doesn't want to use the toilet.  My daughter was the same way, refused to use anything but her diaper until she was four and a half.  I just don't know if I can do that again for my littlest.  I don't think we can afford to have another one in diapers until after age four. I really hope my youngest doesn't follow the trend.

Maybe some of this is just coming out of my own exhaustion.  I'm trying to juggle a lot of things right now, from settling into a new routine to writing jobs to an attempt at my first novel for Camp NaNoWriMo to managing finances and catching up on bills to organizing and trying to get back into greener trends.  I think I just need to take a break, step back, and realize that it's all going to work out in time.

Texas Heat and Steam to Burn...

Texas weather is horrible.  By June it feels like it's 110 degrees out.  August only gets worse.  The humidity isn't much better.  I thought Massachusetts summers could be bad, but these are pretty brutal, but they have nothing on Texas.  I'd heard a lot about how Texas has a dry heat, but the people who always preached that must have been from West Texas because it's certainly not that way in Central Texas!

Summers in this area just aren't for kids.  The peak burning hours are brutal.  You can almost feel the sun burning your skin.  Unfortunately, shade isn't easy to come by.  Rainy days rarely happen, but it's so hot that no one wants to play when they're outside.  You can easily burn yourself on the pavement or any of the playscapes at the playground.  It's just not a fun time.  Yes, you can wear sunscreen and bring lots of water, but it's still pretty miserable.  This leads to kids being trapped in the house all day long, bored, and unable to blow off any steam.  Let me tell you, this leads to LOTS of running and craziness in the house.  I feel a little bad for our downstairs neighbors.

I would love to take the kids for evening walks, but this neighborhood isn't really the place for it.  Let's just say we don't live in the best of neighborhoods, and it seems like things are just steadily getting worse.  It's not easy to manage three kids on a walk at the best of times, never mind when you're wondering about the strange cars that have been driving by.  Yes, it's about time we upgrade our neighborhood.

The kids really need more freedom to get out, you know?  They need more space to run and play like kids.  It's days like these that I miss Massachusetts the most.  Yes, it's freezing in the winter, and driving in the snow isn't exactly the most fun when you're worried about your kids in the car, but I'd rather take that to these brutal Texas summers.  I'm not a fan of hot and cooped up kids.  It's much easier to bundle them up and toss them out in the snow than it is to explain to them why they can't go out and why playing in the water won't help terribly much.

For the next couple months we may focus on doing a lot of interesting homeschooling stuff, just to give the kids something to do.  I know it's not going to help their need to run around and enjoy the summer weather, but it's about all we can do.  Maybe if I can find enough things to keep them interested they'll be okay with not being out and doing nearly as much until it's a little more tolerable.

NaNoWriMo...Camp...?

I've known about NaNoWriMo for a couple years now.  I've been meaning to jump on board with it.  This year was the year.  I'm going to do it.  It would be good for me, but it also means something to my kids.  If they seem me working on this, well, maybe it will inspire them.

Then I heard about Camp NaNoWriMo.  It's two months of NaNoWriMo in the summer.  The site has a cute summer camp feel, and it looks like this is the first year they're doing it.  I've been feeling inspired lately.  I've been meaning to write a story.  It's in my brain, but I just have to write it.  In theory I could write both segments as one story and end up with a story about 350 pages.  That's a pretty average size novel in my experience, but that might be on the long side.  I don't know how it all pans out.  What I do know is anything I write is definitely not going to be something I try and sell.  I'm not that good of an author, and I know first attempts at novels rarely sell, so I don't think I'll even try.  Hell, I might not even be able to do it, but I've got to try, you know?

So, what is this whole NaNoWriMo?  Most of the people I know will be reading this already know.  It's National Novel Writing Month.  The idea is to write one 50,000 word novel in the month of November.  That's an average of about 1667 words a day.  To someone like me that can easily throw that into one blog post, that's not really a lot, but in putting it into story format it just might be.  I've got a lot of work to do if I'm going to make this work.  I guess it's a good thing it's summer.  I'm not focused on homeschooling so I can really take the time to write.  I might even be able to carve out some time at Starbucks to escape and get some work done.  I'm excited and inspired.

This is going to be a huge step for me as a writer.  It's not even about my abilities, or how good of a story I'll write.  It's really about accomplishing something, about saying I've actually done something with my life.  It's a goal with a very definite deadline.  If I can pull off a 50,000 word story in a month, what else am I capable of?  There's no time like the present, right?  So we'll see what I can come up with.  My focus is going to be July (even though I've missed the boat on the start date) and see what I can come up with.  After that, maybe I'll take on August?  Maybe I'll start a new story?  Maybe I'll just shoot for November?  Most importantly, if I can do this, I'm more than ready to take on a new challenge.  If I can do this, there's no question on whether or not I can take on the challenge of school!  If I've got that kind of dedication, school should be that much more realistic of a goal, right?  What a way to inspire myself as well as my children.

It's Summer Time!

So, we've been away for a while!  It's summer, and that happens.  We're doing all kinds of crazy things and life is being kind of chaotic.  We've had a lot happen!

So, I don't know where I was at when I last wrote (and I'm feeling a bit too lazy to look!) but a lot has happened.  It's been quite the adventure for the whole family.  There's been some good, some bad, and some just plain crazy.  We're making the best of it all, and it's made for some interesting times.

On May 1st we had a fire at the house.  We're still not aware of how it started, but the porch lit up and though we tried to put it out, it ended up getting out of control and the fire department had to be called.  The kids got to watch the front porch get hacked up with axes and a chain saw as they tried to get under the cement to get at the flames.  Thankfully the damage wasn't so bad, so we're still able to live in our apartment.

This is when we found out we had the landlords from...well...somewhere not nice.  Our front doorknob started falling off every time we tried to use the front door.  They tried to look for a way to put the fire damages on our renter's insurance, which was illegal.  When we caught on they tried to tell us the fire was our fault and we had to pay out of pocket for the damages.  They refused to let us see the fire marshal's report, which told us something shady was going on.  It took them over a month to fix our door knob.  The damages from the fire still aren't fixed.  In all of this, they decided they were going to sell the building.

Just after all of this went on our air conditioner went out.  Now, in other areas of the world, this wouldn't be such a big deal, but in a house that was in the high nineties all day long, that's kind of a big deal.  The baby had a horrible heat rash that was starting to consume his whole body, so we had to seek refuge at friends' houses so we wouldn't all be sick from the heat.  The most they could offer us was to move into the apartment next door, but for all that work we were going to get no compensation and needed to waste a lot of time and effort that we really couldn't expend at the time.  It would mean transferring our utilities and everything as well.   It would just be a lot of hassle and we opted to wait until they could fix it.

So, after all of that, the building was sold.  Wouldn't you know it?  The door knob was fixed the day it was sold.  The air conditioner was fixed in the next couple of days.  It's been nearly a month and the fire damage is getting fixed now too.  It's all going to look even better because we're getting a new coat of paint too.  I'm actually pleased with this new landlord.

That's kind of been our early summer, and part of the reason we've been so busy.  Hopefully we'll be back on track before summer is out!

Public Tansportation, How I Miss You!

Gas prices throughout the country are soaring.  It's costing more and more just to fill up even the most efficient cars.  My little car (which is thankfully pretty efficient) cost me $50 to fill up and the low fuel light wasn't even on yet.  It's a little scary to think how much I'm going to spend just getting to the places I need to go to for the next year.  It's a little crazy, and if the gas prices don't come down, I'm going to wish I could sell my car and get a cheaper one, but that would mean used with significantly less gas mileage.

Back home I didn't need to worry about gas prices.  I was able to take the subway or the bus anywhere I needed to go.  With a pass I could take as many bus or subway rides as I wanted.  There were some times when I took the bus somewhere just to go there.  Why not?  The bus would run whether I was on it or not, so why not take it, go on an adventure?  I used to make a point to take the bus and subway enough that I was saving money by buying a pass, even if I wasn't going anywhere I needed to go.  It was freeing.

That's one thing I miss here in Texas.  I miss being able to walk to the grocery store.  I miss being able to take the subway and just go anywhere I feel like going.  It was nice to have so much convenient and easy to get to.  I know living on public transportation wasn't always a great way to live.  It could be a hassle, especially with kids, but I still miss it.  It was still a more efficient way to travel and I loved having the freedom to leave without having to worry about the skyrocketing gas prices.

Instead of living somewhere with public transportation, I live in Texas.  Their idea of public transportation here seems to be nearly useless.  Perhaps in the city it's better, but in the area we live in it's entirely useless.  Instead you have to drive everywhere, and nothing is nearby.  Nowhere is really within walking distance and if you do choose to walk, people look at you like you're crazy.  It's really frustrating.

Boston, I miss you.  I miss the convenience of your public transportation.  I miss living in a walking city.  Texas will never stand a chance in comparison.

Sustainability Tip: Planning Ahead to Repurpose and Reuse

The other day I was going shopping for my kids for Easter.  We usually don't make much of a big deal over Easter around here.  My aunt sends all sorts of stuff for the kids for Easter (which is fantastic) so I don't make too much of an effort.  Usually I make a bigger deal about Ostara (the Pagan version of Easter).  The kids especially like that because it's a special family holiday.

This year I decided to do something different.  I'm actually going to make Easter baskets for the kids.  This year Easter was almost a full month after Ostara, so I wasn't able to find as much to put together for the kids this year.  Surprisingly they seemed to come out with a lot of things late this year.  Usually they've got stuff out plenty early, but I guess Easter isn't as big as I remember it being, or maybe in Texas it's just more of a religious holiday.  This year has been a little different, so we decided to do Easter instead this year.

As I went shopping, I had a few things in mind.  I wanted a focus on arts and crafts and things that could be reused.  Everything should have some greater purpose than just being something cool for Easter.  I'm trying to avoid candy, but there's going to have to be some favorites from my childhood.  I think it's important to hold on things from your own childhood.  That's how traditions are started.

When I arrived at the craft store, I had a plan.  I needed some Easter eggs.  My aunt usually sends some, but I wanted to have a few more on hand.  I'm going to be picking up some special things to put in the eggs from me, maybe some small things of paint, or perhaps I'll could put in small seed packets so we can start a container garden.  I've got some ideas.  After the eggs I moved on to some crafts.  I got a kit to make a foam critter wall hanging for each of their rooms, a little kit with an Easter egg ornament to color, and one special craft for each of the kids.  My daughter got a bracelet making kit and my son got a stained glass window set with Snoopy.  Last, I decided to actually get baskets this year.  I'd seen the spring buckets in the Easter section, but my aunt always sends some.  I didn't want to get the typical basket with the bright colors and the huge handle.  They're not terribly practical.  Instead I picked out some cute square baskets that happened to be on sale.  They're very similar to the baskets people use as organizers in rooms.

Obviously the crafts stuff has a purpose, but what about the rest of it?  I've already mentioned the egg shakers.  We're going to find some gravel and seeds to make some of our own.  The baskets are also going to become homeschooling baskets for each of the kids.  While the youngest is a little too young to have his own homeschool basket, I can keep it for when he's older.  For the time being, we can use it to put his blocks in there or something.

When shopping for holidays, it's best to think of things that can be reused in some other way.  Easter baskets are a great item to make other use of, especially if you shop wisely.  In my case I could get one in the colors each of my children prefer (well, a color my daughter at least likes because they didn't have purple).  If you choose your items well, they can be functional and fun.  All it takes is a little preparation!  Planning your seasonal purchases not only saves you money in the long run (because of those impulse buys), but also allows you to plan for the most reusable items!

Why I Do It

Today I decided I'm fed up with my daughter and her "I can't read!  It's too hard!" game.  I can't tolerate it anymore.  I'm seriously tempted to put her in school so she knows exactly how nice I'm being.  She screams at me daily that I'm mean because I expect her to read at the level I know she's capable of reading at.  She'll tell me she can't read a word she reads ten times every day because it's "too hard" and she "doesn't get it".  I'm just so fed up!

A friend of mine told me that I might be better just to put her in public schools, let her find out the hard way how easy she's really got it.  He has a point.  Being in school and having to work six hours out of every day, get up before the sun rises, and then come home to have homework on top of it all would be a great way to show her exactly how easy her two to four hours of homeschooling on a normal day really is.  She'll recognize how nice it is to eat when she wants, nap when she's tired, and take breaks whenever the mood suits her.  She'll start to understand how nice homeschool play dates really are.  There's a lot to be said about public schools in that regard.  She'll have so much less time to screw around the way she does.  It'll be nice for her to see that I'm not really being so mean after all!

That's when he added the part that made me want to scream with frustration.  This one phrase, no matter how who says it, always makes me want to scream.  They seem to think that this is such an easy and logical conclusion that everyone must simply agree!  "It will free up a lot of time too."

Really?  So, instead of getting up when my older boys get up, around eight in the morning, I'll have to drag myself out of bed at five am to get dressed, make sure my daughter eats breakfast, is dressed in an appropriate way, and has all the supplies she'll need.  After that I'll have to walk her down to the bus stop, or drive her down to the school myself.  Once she's done with that, I'm a little more free for a while.  I've got the rest of the afternoon, mostly, to homeschool my older son and manage to run all my errands,  Then I have to make sure I'm there to pick her up.  This means I have to give up homeschool play dates and field trips because I have to be home in time to pick up his sister.  If I was going to send them all to school, then I'd have two school drop-offs to worry about with an elementary school student and a preschool student.  I'd have to drag out the baby for both cases.  Then it would be time to bring the kids home and my daughter's incredibly frustrating fights over homeschool would start again with her homework.  By the time that was done I'd have to cook dinner and it would be time to send all the kids to bed.  I'd have to go to bed not long after that.  My life would be run around school schedules, days off, summer vacation, and everything else.  Then there would be possible calls about grades, behavior, getting my children into the programs they needed to be if they don't get into them.  Over half my day during the week would be run by school.  My whole life, in truth, would revolve around school.

Let's look at the flip side of this scenario.  As things stand I can get up with my kids around eight.  We spend the morning doing our school work.  In reality, homeschooling takes an average of two hours out of any day, though sometimes we push it and go for four.  We generally do that before lunch and the rest of the day is pretty free.  We rearrange our schedules as need be for appointments and homeschool events.  Sometimes we even skip school during the week all together because the time gets made up on weekends or over the summer.  We tend to work more in the summer than we do in the school year because it's just too hot and miserable to go out here in Texas.  We'd all rather just stay in when it's cool.  I go run my errands when I need to during the day, sometimes I even wait until after dinner so I can go by myself.  If I really need to I bring the kids along because it's a good place to learn some life skills.  You can learn a lot at the post office, grocery store, or wherever else.  We just take our lessons on the road those days.  Typically our home schooling is done while we're running errands rather than at home, so I end up being able to kill two birds with one stone.  I have more time to knit, write, relax, and I feel less stressed about everything because the only schedules I have to keep are those of my own making.  It's positively freeing to be a homeschooling family because I end up spending very little of my time dedicated to educating my kids.  On top of that, I end up getting a lot more "homeschooling" done than I intend to on any given day because we end up doing arts and crafts, play games, or get into discussions.  In truth, I only spend two to four hours actively educating my children on any given day, but my children are probably being educated close to twelve or thirteen hours on any one day.  Of course, it's hard to prove or estimate for certain because a lot of it is things none of us really spend much time thinking on, but there's no way to deny it's happening if you take a good look at our family life.

Then there's the cost of homeschooling.  Everyone says homeschooling is so expensive.  Many curriculums will cost you nearly a thousand dollars per child.  If you've got two or three kids to worry about, that's a lot of money!  That's a cost you incur every year, though in some cases you can get away with passing the books and assignments down if you're thrifty.  You just don't get any of the help with the costs from the company providing the materials.  There's the cost of arts and crafts supplies and other things that might not be included in your program as well, travel for homeschooling events, maybe the cost of a local co-op.  Community sports, art classes, and everything else that many homeschooling students do for socialization come at a cost as well.  If you think about it, homeschooling isn't always cheap, though there are some families that manage to be thrifty enough.  The truth is, you're never going to be able to homeschool for free.  There will always be costs for travel and supplies, but you can make do with a lot of things that are really inexpensive or all together free.

Public schools, on the other hand, are not as "free" as everyone thinks they are.  Public school comes with a lot of hidden costs.  School supplies in this area are more than a little insane.  Children are required to have two sixty-four color boxes of crayons last I saw.  They had requirements on glue sticks.  There's always going to be pens, pencils, sharpeners, and erasers.  I think they were required to have markers as well.  Each student was required to bring a box of tissues and Clorox wipes as well.  The Clorox wipes bothers me because I know what's in those chemical cleaners and I'm not comfortable with my child using them as though they were nothing.  There's the obvious need for backpacks, notebooks, paper, folders, and all of that as well.  Many of these items can't just be carried over from last year.  They need to be replaced yearly.  If you catch everything on sale you're easily looking at over a hundred dollars in school supplies to start the year for each child.  This always drove me nuts because I didn't understand why a child couldn't come in with a tin of last year's crayons and call it good.  It seems so wasteful to just replace the crayons every year because last years crayons work just as well as new ones and generally aren't all used up.  They don't even do anything productive with the old ones, such as use them to color wax for candle making.  It just seems very wasteful.

Yes, that still seems like a low cost in comparison to a homeschool curriculum, but if you look at it, a homeschool family can get along just fine with less than that.  After all, there's no real need for new backpacks, folders, and all of that.  You buy it when you run out or have a need for something you don't have.  All of that money spent on two boxes of new crayons of a specific count or higher every year could be put towards an inexpensive arts and crafts project or be put towards admission to some field trip.

Schools charge for field trips too, so school supplies aren't the only expense.  If the kids are doing something outside the classroom they have the cost of field trips, possibly lunch out, and other sorts of things.  That is, if a child is lucky enough to have their class go on a field trip.  It seems like down here most students spend their whole day in the classroom.  My kids go on far more field trips than your average school student!

So, after all of those expenses, you then have the cost of new school clothes.  Yes, kids need new clothes pretty much every year, but homeschool kids can get away with a lot more.  If my daughter wants to wear her nightgown to homeschool every day, she can.  If she only wants to wear hand-me-down stuff from her friends that's all ripped up, she can.  If she decides for whatever reason to shave her head or get a mohawk (which I kind of hope she never does!) she can without the school telling me I have to make her wear a wig.  Her clothes don't risk becoming a red-flag for the school's dress code if she's wearing jeans that were all ripped up, or that she or one of her friends have decided to draw all over because they felt like it.  There's no pressure to buy brand name clothing or something with Hannah Montana plastered all over it because it's trendy.  As a result, most of our new clothes have been hand-me-downs in all kinds of condition, and I don't care that my daughter's style seems to dictate "the more used and abused, the better".  It also means that I don't have to worry about having "school clothes" and "play clothes" for my kids because I don't care too much if they beat up their clothes.  Rips can be patched.  Stains aren't something to worry much about and in some cases almost seem to be badges of honor.  Clothes get retired when they're worn out, but it takes a lot of wear to put them into the retirement pile.  They see some great use before that.

In truth, I think I'm better off with my kids not being in school.  I get more out of all my time and energy spent.  My kids learn more even when I'm not trying to teach them.  The schedule is super flexible.  I spend significantly less money.  In the end, I think we're all happier about it!