These Days

These days, I’m hungry.  Always.  Hungry.

At 1 week, Bjorn weighed in at 7 lbs, 11 oz, down 3 oz from birth, which is normal.  At 2 weeks, he was up to 9 lbs, 1 oz.  He’s now 3 weeks old, and I don’t have a scale, but he looks and feels bigger every morning.

I’m just so hungry.  This boy is determined to eat every moment these days.

He’s starting to get little elbow dimples.  It’s adorable.

These days we are doing school.  Even though it’s work, I don’t regret this decision to start early for a moment, even after having a baby.  My kids have had some topsy turvy days the last month or two, and it was wearing on them.  Being shuffled around houses of family, out of routine, with different rules, being entertained constantly…they need some grounding.  They are having so much fun, and have returned to their normal school routine with a big sigh of relief.  Things aren’t perfect, but they are better and more sane when we have routine.

When I exasperatedly asked Knut a week or two ago, why the kids were hanging on me so much, he responded “They miss you, Gretchen.”  I asked how that could be since I was constantly at home, and they were constantly around.  How can they miss me when I just wanted a break from them.  “You’re here, but you’re not here.” was his response.  As soon as he said it, I knew it was true.  My kids missed hanging out with me, doing our thing.  They behave better when we are doing our thing.  It kind of came down to dealing with them in a thought out, planned, and fun way, or dealing with them in a discipline/punishing/acting out sort of way from them being needy.  I picked the first choice.

It may sound like a stupid decision, but I know my kids, and I know the limits of my sanity.  People think that homeschooling moms don’t feel the end of summer “man alive, my kids need to be back in school!!” push like other moms do.  We do feel it.  At least, I do.  Even though we are the ones teaching them…they need some focus.  So school it is.

These days I’m watching less t.v. at night, and reading more.  I’ve been on a continual non-fiction path the last few years, and had a lovely dive into some light but lovely fiction when I read Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society recently.  It reminded me how much I love good fiction.  So I started reading some of the kids’ fiction books in preparation for school, and it just wasn’t hitting the spot for me.  But this last week I picked up Hannah Coulter as “anything from Wendell Berry” has been on my reading list for over a year.  I keep hearing his name over and over again in reading circles.

This book is like a big sigh of beauty.  It’s not too heavy and makes me fall asleep, or too cheaply written either.  It’s good and lovely.  It’s one of those beautiful books where the characters are instantly your friends and you don’t want to read it too fast, because you want to hang out with them for as long as you can, but you don’t want to put it down, because it’s just that good.  So when the kids are in bed, and I should probably be trying to catch up on sleep, I read a few chapters, and feel the beautiful words seep into all my broken cracks of the day.  Oh, this book is lovely.

Knut is building a woodshed in the back of the house, out of scraps from other projects in the last few years.  We have some scraps of metal siding from when we redid the barn siding, and he found some old poles from the feed lot his dad had when he was a kid.  So that’s what he’s been working on these days around the house.  Next he intends to fix up the foundation of the old summer kitchen, which will be great.  The little kids have loved helping him with that during their free time, and I’m loving them all being outside with him during their free time.

The big kids haven’t been wanting to work outside as much.  One of Knut’s skiing buddies who also goes to our church, loaned the big kids his 3D printer for awhile.  This friend is a former biathlon olympic competitor, and is going to learn how to fly helicopter’s next, and is the prime example of someone who just does things and just keeps learning and being curious.  He seems to bring that out in my kids (and Knut) as well.  David and Knut took a class about 3D printers at the library earlier this summer, so David has some idea of what it can do.  This printer is different than the library’s, though, and Silje and David haven’t actually figured out how to use it yet.  But they’re learning a lot via YouTube and just trial and error about 3D printing and related technology in the meantime, so it’s all good.  When Knut’s is inside from the woodshed project, I’m sure he’ll figure it out for them.  Right now they’re doing what I call “The Edison Technique” and figuring out 1,000 ways something doesn’t work.  I think we just need to have the owner of the printer over so he can show them.

It’s been very handy to have something to dangle in front of the kids saying, “As soon as you finish your school, you can tinker with the 3D printer.”  I feel like the smartest and most devious homeschooling mom when I dangle learning in front of my kids as bait to get their schoolwork done.