Introducing: Emma

"I made a new friend today, Mama!" he exclaimed as I picked him up this afternoon from his day of elective classes including Young Authors Class and Crafting Class.  We try to really make a point that the world is full of friends to meet and make, and it's like a treasure hunt finding them out and cherishing them.

"She's right there," he said as he buckled up in the back seat.  She?  I looked to the sidewalk where the children were waiting for the slow stream of parents in their various vehicles to creep up and collect them one by one under the teachers' ever-watchful eyes.  "Emma's the one in the purple shirt."

I saw just the back of her head with a blondish pony-tail pulled into a rubberband and wispy tendrils falling over her ears and neck.  She wore a faded lavender tee shirt and equally faded jean shorts with denim ruffles at the hems.  She was talking with expressive gesticulations to the teacher in her line, and I only got a glance and the overall impression that she was a spirited little girl.

"I'm proud of you for making friends with a girl.  That's a big boy thing to make friends with all different kinds of people," I said over my shoulder as we  drove on.  We've had some little issues with him in the past not including girls in play or treating them respectfully.  He's expressed that pink is stupid, glitter is stupid, princesses are extra stupid (except for Princess Leia, of course), and above all, girls are not as cool as boys and can't be friends with boys.  As you can imagine, this was very distressing.  I was deeply worried (in my extreme, over-the-top way as I do) that we were raising a bigoted male supremacist little boy who would grow into a bigoted male supremacist man who would never get married, and would become a lonely hermit in a house full of cats and comic books kept in protective vinyl covers.   Aaron, on the other hand, said it was a boy thing and he'd out grow it.  So to learn today that Andres had made a friend with a girl was (in my mind) sort of like North Korea giving South Korea a hug.   If I had bottle rockets laying around, I would have set them off in celebration.

"Yeah, she drew me a picture."  He pulled a crumpled up piece of paper from his backpack and passed it to me. At a stop light I looked at it.

"That's me," he said pointing to the boy figure.  "I drew the Lorax, and she drew me."

But what struck me was not only did she draw Andres as a stick figure with his hair in his eyes and a nice little smile, but under that she drew a large heart with an arrow going through it, and had written inside the heart was a single word: LOVE.  He didn't even notice it until we got home and he was gushing over her picture and he started reading it out, and looking at me with a puzzled expression, a bashful grin spread across his lips.

"She's a good writer," he said putting the letter back in his back pack.

His first love note from a girl.

So it begins.

The Boy Behind the Name

Raphael Lukas Villanueva

His name is angelic.  It's ancient Hebrew origins can be translated roughly to mean "God Heals."  And it's true to his character.  He's completed this family perfectly, he's soothing.  Some people have asked us why we didn't give Raphael another "A" name, worried that he'll be left out, as if we named Andres to fit in or match us.  It wasn't vanity, it just happened that way, and Andresjose Amadeo has an awesome one-of-a-kind Old World Castilian name that honors both sides of his family.  It's rather fitting that that initials for our first child are A. A., mirroring our own first names, and even more so that it happened to be so on accident.

But Raphael Lukas came to us after crisis and loss, and we were given his name early in his pregnancy.  It wasn't until after Raph was born that we realized how perfect his name was.  Something akin to a phoenix.  Beautiful new life rising from smoke and ashes.  According to the Catholic Church, Archangel Raphael is the patron saint of doctors, travelers, lovers, sick people, blind people, young people, those afflicted with mental illnesses, and shepherds.  And Luke is our favorite gospel, as through his writing we can see clearly how he was so tender-hearted and real to life.  Paul called Luke the "beloved physician," and he was in fact a healer.  Of course, we didn't know any of this when these names were given to us.  And it didn't occur to me until about six months ago that his initials R. L. mirror exactly our middle names (Reymundo and Leigh).  He's not left out at all.  He's been given a holy and awesome name weighted with hope and responsibility.

Raphael, I worry, gets the short end of the stick sometimes in our little quartette.  His easy-going nature lends itself to be easily taken for granted.  He's two, so there's that, but overall, he's a very cool guy.

Since Andres was at school this week, three hours a day Raphael and I have been spending a lot more one-on-one time together.  It's been such fun to see him bloom into a person who is not only soothing and easy, but has a personality that cracks us all up, and a heart that's pure gold.  He absolutely loves babies, and sometime gets in trouble for playing a bit rough with them in the nursery at church.

As a student of language acquisition, I've really enjoyed both boys' stage of verbal output.  It's such a window into their little psyches!  I know that according to the textbook, he's delayed in his language skills, but if it wasn't for the book Scientist in the Crib that I read for a college class on language development, I'd be a bit worried about the number of actual words he can produce.  He talks a lot, frankly, I can't understand most of it.   His words are still onomatopoeic in general, like "maow" for kitty, or "woof-woof" for dog.  And if it has a beak it's a "quack-quack."  Dinos are "rawr!"  Anything with wheels is "rhoom" and "yummy" is food.  He's pretty clear when he says "don't want that," or "night-night" but still doesn't know which answer to give to a question (especially if he doesn't understand the question), and will usually default to "no," which is pretty smart, if you think about it.  Other than the symbolic sounds of things, there are other words he uses that don't quite make the connection, but thanks to his older brother, The Translator, we've been able to deduce that "dut-dut" is Batman, "dit-dit" is Superman, "wah-wah" is a fish, and "dah poopy" is the diaper, regardless if there's poop in it or not.

Lately, he's been punking me.  Yes.  Punking.

"Raphie," I say as I notice an ominous bulge at the back of his diaper.  "Will you please come here?"

"No."

"Do you have poop in your diaper?"

"No, Mama, (undecipherable babble) quack-quack in dah poopy!"
Translation:  No, Mother, but I happen to have a duck in my diaper!

His eyes sparkle something wicked mischievous, and his little cheeks dimple with a huge grin.  I laugh (because it's funny!) and ask again if he has a poopy diaper.  He goes on to include each barnyard animal in turn, and even dinosaurs and fish, or sometimes Batman or a car in his diaper, each time both of us bursting into laughter, before I ask again.  Funny guy!  He's like his daddy in that he's so clever and has a roaring sense of humor!

He's been praying at dinnertime, too.  This melts my heart.  He speaks softly, slowly, reverently, as we hold hands over the food, and he rambles on and on, with no end in sight, like he's giving the Pope a benediction.  His words are mostly nonsensical, but it's the heart and tone in his prayer that makes me shut my eyes to the tears welling.

One day that Andres was in school this week we went to the park and found Wish Flowers, or more commonly known as dandelions (unless you're a home-owner, then they're called weeds).  And is there anything more adorable than a two year old blowing the dandelion seeds with puffed up cheeks and stern effort?  As they drifted out into the big world, he lifted his pudgy little hand and said "bye-bye baby!"  Indeed, seeds are babies, too.

And he's a Villanueva.  By that I mean he'll come to visit us one day when we're withered and gray, maybe even bringing his own children, and have in the trunk of his car his guitar or whatever his instrument will be, since he's predestined and arranged at the genetic level to show up and make music, like they all do.   Tonight Andres was having a hard time going to sleep, and asked if Aaron (practicing his chops downstairs) could play guitar in their room to comfort him.  Aaron started strumming in the key of D and Raphie, laying behind the bars  in his crib started singing, to Aaron's amazement in the perfect key of D as well.  It was bluesy and soft, but he had a song in his heart, and he was singing it out!  And he sang and sang!  God bless him.  He loves music.  It moves him, and it's beautiful to see.  Aaron was deeply affected by that moment, singing a gentle duet together in the dim room as Andres finally nodded off to sleep, so impressed that Raphie was vocally tuned in.  I pray these two can grow their music up in our home like a garden of sound.

I took him to the community pool yesterday before we picked up Andres from school and I've never seen anything like his pure and unadulterated love of swimming.  Where Andres was timid and fearful of the water (and still largely is) Raphie leaps into the water like an eager frog.  He doesn't wait for me to catch him, and doesn't cling to the edge of the pool.  He's at one with the water.  He loves it.  Loves it.  He jumped in with his little man chest puffed up, climbed out and jumped in again for forty minutes straight yesterday.  I stood there mostly unwanted but still mostly needed to help him as he surfaced then rushed to the edge to climb up and jump in again.  I wish he had a little more respect for water, because of the danger factor, but there's something adorable about about a small little boy leaping with great joy into the water with wide eyes and a dimpled smile.  As much as he's a typical funny, gentle, musical Villanueva guy, I'm glad to see that he has my profound love of water flowing strong and deep in his viens.

It's been great having a little time each day together to play and bond, just the two of us.  He's so fun, and has a strong yet gentle spirit like his Papa.  The first day was like an awkward first date.  I had played trains with him, did two puzzles, and read three books in the first hour, then was out of ideas.  But he's been a good teacher, again like his Papa, being easy and gentle, forgiving and encouraging.  I'm sure he knows I'm learning how to mother him without Andres around, and he shows me a lot of grace.

Homeschool Therapy

"We don't make mistakes, we just have happy accidents."  ~ Bob Ross

It's been a wild 10 days of homeschool around these parts.  It has really challenged me by questioning myself as his teacher or if the homeschool route is right for our family at all.  It also helped me in that I have had to force myself to evaluate my reasons for homeschool, and be able to verbalize core values as to why we are doing this.  There's been some tears (mine) and frustration (mine again) and lots of ranting (as ever, me).

But here's where the problem lay:  pace and load of work to complete, and my maniacal reaction to both external expectations (i.e. the program's daily schedule) and internal expectations (to be perfect).  The daily plan the online k12 academy has prescheduled for us requires 5 subjects at an hour each per day.  So, the poor child was on the floor with his ruler to measure his shoe at 9 at night before going to bed to complete the science component of his daily agenda, after three and half hours throughout the day for his other subjects.  It looked like this in just his math:

Day 1:
Learn to count to 50

Day 2:
Learn to write numbers to 50

Day 3:
Learn to count to 50 by 10s

Day 4:
Learn to count to 50 by 5s

Day 5:
Learn to count to 50 by 2s.

Seriously.  Math is not his strong suit and to master the learning goal before we moved on to the next day was excruciating.  Good thing he's smart and remembered his numbers from our pre-K days in May (!!!) he could still count to 50 and write the numbers, phew!  But skip counting was brutal and required lots of practice and playing with the plastic manipulatives and memorization before he could be ready to move on.

Language Arts was the same way, having him begin the earliest stages of sentence diagraming before he had truly mastered what a sentence looked like!  But me, being me in all my broken glory, was determined to have him follow that stupid schedule because he would be going to school and a teacher would be able to tell if he had fallen behind!  Here ya go, Andria, shovel another heaping spoonful of stress to your plate.

He's rocking the casba in reading, though, and he loves reading to us at night before bed.  Since he was eighteen months old he has always fallen to sleep in a nest of books that we have had to slip out of his fingers, from out behind his head, or from under his little arm, before we went to bed.  Bibliophilism is rare in boys, something more common with girls, and more natural for girls to acquire reading earlier, as it's biologically the way their brains are designed.  But he's a storyteller at heart, and books are his favorite thing in the world.  So his passion to read well spurs his learning, and he's doing amazingly well.  No sweat there!  We can zip through reading in about 20 minutes.

After falling painfully behind in History and Science (entirely online texts and activities) I decided to bottle up my rage (always a good idea, right?) about the unreasonable volume of online content and save it for our conference with his teacher this week.  We're pretty stern about screen time with the boys and the fact that the program requires us to read from the computer and have him watch lame little videos on the computer, and click his way through assessments on the computer, rounding it out to about two hours a day online.  The program was not realistic at all, went against the grain as far as our values regarding screen time, and I was ready to drop out.

In fact, Wednesday was such a horrible day in school (because the child is simply NOT ready to diagram sentences!) that I was honestly convinced I could NOT do this job and we needed to march right into Riverview Elementary and register him for kindergarten on Thursday.  I called Aaron at work sobbing, and he patiently encouraged me, and reminded me to hold out until we had the teacher conference.  He also was honestly impressed with how well Andres and I were doing, and had admitted he expected me to be calling him about once a day since we started, and since this was the first time in 8 days, he felt we were a raging success!  My husband is gifted like this.  He's a blessed soul, a glass-is-half-full kind of guy.  This is one little reason (of countless) God created us for each other.  Where I saw Andres' chances of ever going to college go down in an inferno of fire and sulfur because he couldn't count by 2s to 50 on Day 5 of kindergarten,  Aaron saw a son learning new things and feeling proud of his work, and a mom working hard from the deepest corners of her heart to teach her child.  He's a good, good man, and has such clarity.

I also called my friend Rachel, in her second year of homeschool, and she listened to my ranting then gently offered encouragement and perspective.  Yes, these days happen.  They happen in public school, too.  And she helped turn my head from frustration with myself, to identifying my disillusion with the program.

The following day the boys and I went for a walk to that special little park near our house, and it just so happens to be down the road from Riverview Elementary.  On the way there, the playground was full of children, their squeals and voices filled the air, and the three of us, Raph in his stroller, watched in silence as we passed.  We relished the warm, pine scented zephyr pushing over the bark chips at our little park for an hour before it was time to return home, and Andres asked if we could go inside the school on our way home.  To myself I thought "sure why not?" considering how badly it went the day before we might as well consider it as a viable and realistic option.  So we entered the doors and made our way through the lunch lines of kids waiting to get into the cafeteria to reach the front desk.  The secretary was pleasant enough, and an odd expression crossed her face when I mentioned that we're presently homeschooling, but were thinking of enrolling.  But I expected that.  She politely handed me a registration packet, but I got the overall feeling that it was not a good fit.

But here's what broke my heart.

As we made our way to the doors as exited, we bumped into a little friend we know from church.  She waved at Andres and he waved back.  Then behind her, about three kids back, a boy made a mocking face at Andres and waved a fleshy, floppy hand at him.  "Bye bye" he said with a castrato voice.  A couple boys around him snickered.  And my child smiled warmly at him and said "bye."  When we made it through the myriad of kids, he asked me why that boy waved to him, since he didn't know him.

"He was trying to be funny," I said.

I walked home praying.  Part of me worries that Andres isn't around the larger culture enough to pick up social nuances such as when he's being teased, for instance.  I also wonder what he would gain from being in public school, how it would change his personality or hinder/distract him from learning, or how he could face the challenges and grow by fighting his way through.  It was feeling like both choices were wrong, and I started to dispair.

After the carnage of homeschool Wednesday, we needed a cozy, easy day where we could snuggle in and reconnect; we needed triage.  And it was lovely.  We worked on handwriting and read together.  And I loved it.  I love watching the magic of reading emerge in him.  And then I felt that I had my answer, and the struggles I had were much deeper than what I thought.  The struggles I had were mine. There is no wrong answer, because I've learned first hand how God can take big mistakes and use them for good in our lives, if we let him.  That I have always struggled with being part of broken home, and never really having a normal (read nonalcoholic) family, or even a respectable family, my own insecurities of apartness are impressed (unwillingly) onto my children.  And my fears of Andres being marginalized, or being lesser in some way, less prepared to operate in the "real world" or get a "real job" or become a productive, functional citizen in society because he's homeschooled, surfaced.

This morning we all loaded up at 8:20 to make the conference with his teacher.  (Aaron was able to take a vacation day to make the meeting because he wanted to be there for it.)  She was really awesome, and let Andres play with legos as she spoke with me and Aaron.  She shared with me that other parents were overwhelmed with the online feature and reassured me that it is only a guide, and that really, I should be just doing (here's the kicker) about 5-10 hours a week TOTAL at home, since he spends another 5 hours with her.  So you mean I don't have to do 5 hours a day?  Nope.  The breakneck pace online is NOT to be followed ver batem, and she won't be correlating her activities and explorations with the schedule in that program, but will be monitoring his progress to make sure he IS progressing, keeping in close contact with us as she observes him in class. So, in two weeks Andres is nearly a third of the way through kindergarten. She gave us total peace of mind, and we left feeling recharged and energized, eager and excited for this year in Kindergarten.  She reminded me that education is real world, that he can learn at the grocery store (which we use as a learning tool for conversations on everything from health and counting to agriculture and economy), at the park, on a hike.  This is exactly what we had wanted after all.

The truth is we simply are not a normal family.  Aaron and I have always done things skewed, and not just out of order, but angled completely differently.  We're alternative.  Not bad or wrong, but different.  And at the end of the day, how can I expect my alternative child to be confortable in his skin if I can't model that?  And how can I encourage him to follow his heart and listen to God's voice if I myself am filled with questions and doubts?  We're a weird, indie, artsy family. And this crazy journey in homeschooling is teaching me that it's okay.  Go with it.  Groove with it.  Dance with God.  And let Him lead.

The Teenager

It's almost 9 pm right now as my fingers tap away at the keys, and at this time thirteen years ago we were either standing in the reception line shaking the hands of our 400 guests, or in the limo en route to the reception hall after instructing the driver to take us for a drive with the sun roof open so we could get some fresh air, watch the stars come out, and just let it all sink in:  we were married.

Our married life together is officially a teenager now.  Still young, but old enough to hit some major growing pains, and gain an understanding of our independence as pair.

And we no longer have the blissful arrogance and naïvety of young twenty-somethings, but we do have a couple more wisdom marbles in the bag.

We didn't go out for a rollicking dinner date out, but stayed in for a simple frozen-bag-to-crock-pot meal with the boys.  I don't even know what the special flower is for thirteen years, or if we're supposed to give each other traditional clocks or whatever like they have in the books (Google, I just found out, says it's supposed to be "fabric," as in {ah hem} tablecloths or neck ties).   But I like our plan of going out Payday Friday night to see Dark Knight Rises and grabbing some grub on the run much better.

I thank God for you everyday.  You're my best friend, and it's been such a blessing to grow up together, side by side.  I'm so honored to be your wife.  You've made life a beautiful adventure, and I so look forward to all our stories together not yet told.

September 10, 1999.

Labor Day Weekend

When I smell the change in the air on a late August morning, the earthy, robust aroma of leaves and soil and sunshine, I awake.  It's my time.  Summertime, as much as I love it, fades to innocuous, nondescript muzak as autumn pads onto stage like a male lion or a grizzly bear or some huge, warm-blooded, nobel beast stealing the show with it's sheer presence.

Where I'm from September is the time of grape harvest.  Old Man Dale across the canal would harvest his 15 acres of grapes when school started, and the perfume of ripe, purple fruit was intoxicating as we lumbered home on the bus.  Sometimes late at night after the adults fell asleep, we four kids would grab that large Tupperware that Mom used to pick beans in the summer and hold under our mouths when we vomited when we were sick and sneak over to Dale's to Moon Harvest.  Mom didn't need to ask where the bowl of grapes came from the next morning.  She'd scold us and tell us not to do it again.  But every August or September, there would be that juicy aroma coming from Old Man Dale's vineyard, and we would succumb to delirium.  And another bowl of grapes would appear overnight.

And in my heart, Labor Day was the official harbinger of Autumn.

This is the second Labor Day weekeend we've congregated in Tumwater with Aaron's parents and five siblings, their partners and children.  Mario and Jane have an enormous house that manages to fit all 20 of us for three days, some out-of-staters stay a week or longer, and despite the usual and expected dynamics of a massive family gathering, this year was better than last year, and on the cusp of Grandpa Joe's funeral, it was a much-needed time to reminisce and reconnect.

Sweet Melissa and precious little Matthew.

I've been part of the Villanueva clan since 1996, and have watched Aaron's three younger sisters, go from elementary school, middle school and high school girls to married women and moms.  They are fabulous mommies and their children are gorgeous, and they're blessed with partners who complete them perfectly.  And as for Aaron's brother and older sister, I have a special connection with them as well, living closely near them in Seattle for three years.

I know I've mentioned Aaron's family is musical, but it's hard to appreciate unless you've witnessed it first hand.  A gathering usually has an unspoken arrangement to bring your instrument, because spontaneous song is perpetually bound to happen.  These guys were playing real musica here, Aaron and Rita's husband Nic on guitar, and Isaac and Mario on percussions.  It was rich.

Little brothers are always little brothers.  

For the gringos in the family lacking that musica gene, we can get down "Hee Haw" style on the jug.   Here David blows my mind on not one but TWO jugs, and the wine bottle's even empty yet.  

As adults we have all been scattered around the states, and I looked around the packed house realizing to my amazement, that we have all grown up.  And our combined 6 children play together like a crazy mob, all looking like cousins by their eyes or their mouths or some correlating feature, especially Bella and Andres, who in a parallel universe are siblings.

So we spent Saturday afternoon and night chatting, supping, sipping, and making music, as is the Villanueva custom.  But Sunday morning, we knew we needed to get the boys out because without a yard to run in and only the garage as a makeshift playroom, they needed to be able to be themselves, wild and loud,  without getting in trouble.  So we went to Olympia to see what we could find.  We didn't really have an agenda or plan, but just felt spontaneous adventure calling.  We found our state's capitol.  It was like a castle to the boys, and they had a lot of fun exploring inside.  After the visit to the capitol, we stumbled upon a super cool Harbor Day celebration along the marina.  

The garage was turned into a playroom for the kids.

Sunday morning we needed to get the boys out of the house full of stimuli and headed up the road to Olympia. 

I was grateful for the wide open lawns that let them run ferral and free.

Lucky for us the capitol building was open to the public that day.

Picking the found father's nose...generating some laughs from Mom, which in turn caused...

...Andres to pick our founding father's nose.  I fear a terrible statue tradition is starting here.

I love this shot of Andres taking in the massive domed ceiling of the building.  He was impressed.  

We viewed the Vietnam War Memorial.  It was deeply moving to see all those names.

Here on the boardwalk along the docks, Andres spotted tiny fish and crabs, not to mention the mussels covering the dockposts.

We perused the tent-shops and watched Scottish Bagpipers, finally grabbing some grub before making our way back to the car.  

Not before playing a bit on the toys.

Grandpa and Grandma had had a very busy and emotional two weeks, as well.  And yet they managed to find time and energy to read to Andres and  Bella.  

When we got home Monday, I was surprised at how quickly the boys pulled out their capes and masks to play outside. After a hectic end of summer, it felt like things were finally getting back to normal.

Whatever our normal may be.

Summer didn't simmer down for us, it raged to a boil with three weekends back-to-back out of town and the emotional tumult of grief and family reckonings, both done and undone, hard on the boys' schedules and thus hard on us.  In less than a month we've said goodbye to a loved one, attended a funeral, went to a reunion, had house guests from Spokane, and started homeschool.  In a few days Aaron will be back at school and things will continue to change.

Nothing stays the same.  That's what autumn reminds me every year.  And that is a good thing, a great thing, and a sad thing sometimes.  But I relish it.  I pour a cup of tea, and snuggle in with a good book or hunker down at the computer writing my own stories.  I inhale this amazing season of the year and fleeting season of life, and watch in amazement the mysterious and miraculous alchemy of changing leaves.

First Day of School

Andres-Jose's 1st Day of Kindergarten Interview Questions:

1.  What's your favorite movie?  Batman, the one where he's throwing a batarang on the DVD cover.
2.  What's your favorite toy?  This one (pointing to Cars movie toy cars)  I love these guys.
3.  What's your favorite book or story?  This one!  Super Friends Monster Madness!
4.  What's your favorite breakfast?  Granola with milk.
5. What's your favorite vegetable?  Is dragon fruit a vegetable?  No?  Okay.  Carrots, because Bugs Bunny eats carrots and I love Bugs Bunny!
6.  What's your favorite color?  Red, black and yellow.  (Okay, plural works.)
7.  What's your favorite clothing?  T-shirts.
8.  What's your favorite song?  That song that Raph likes, his favorite song is my favorite song, too.  Pumped Up Kicks?  Yeah.  Pumped Up Kicks.  It's cool.
9.  What's your favorite sports?  Football.  Seahawks.
10.  What's your favorite day of the year?  Christmas!
11.  What's your favorite dessert?  Ice cream with rhubarb sauce and cookie crumbs (rhubarb crisp).
12.  What do you want to be when you grow up?  A paleontologist.  I love dinosaurs and want to study them!
13.  Where's your favorite place to go?  Ian's house.
14.  What's your happiest memory?   Going to the dino show with Gramma Pam.
15.  If you could be an animal, which one would you want to be and why?  I'd be a cheetah because I love them and they're fast and blurry.
16.  What do you love the most about your brother?  I love Raph because he's learning to talk and he's very nice and he comforts me at bedtime.
17.  What's the kindest thing you've ever done for someone?  I gave Ian my toys that he wanted.
18.  Who's your best friend?  Ian Votrobeck.
19.  What's your favorite TV show?  Wild Kratts!
20.  What do you want to learn in school this year?  I want to learn about dinosaurs!


It was definitely NOT an ideal first day of homeschool.  I wish I could say that I awoke to early autumn sunshine and birdsong, but rather I jerked out of bed with a nauseating qualm that was oh-so familiar.  As a teacher in middle school for 8 years, the first day of school was always a nerve-wracking day.  Was I prepared enough?  Would the students like me?  Would I like them?  I was hyper-conscientious of unwanted boogies in my nose that may be viewable to the public, triple checking my slack's zipper and blouse's buttons to make sure all undergarments were appropriately concealed, and running several tech checks on the doc-cam or other in class technology items that I would be needing for the day.  I was shocked to have the same feelings on this, the first day of homeschooling.  my.  own.  child.

I called the office that coordinates our materials and curricula for the year yesterday to inquire about the time of the ice cream social three days from then, only to discover to my horror that school started the next day.  I was utterly unprepared.  I suppose I expected an orientation on the curriculum. Or I thought we would have learning plans and teacher conferences first.  I was outraged that 1) no one had notified me the date to start teaching was September 5, the same day as the classes start in schools in our district, 2) that we had not been prepared as to HOW we should use the 70 pounds of books that UPS dropped off a couple weeks ago, 3) that we hadn't even met with his teachers and didn't know who they would be yet, and 4) was completely unaware that 75% of the work in this program is done ONLINE.  My nausea was valid.  This was a mess!  I was up until 1 am trying to log into our account to prepare for the day, and it wouldn't let me in at all, supposedly because school didn't actually start until today.  I wasn't able to even see what I was supposed to teach, and from my materials we received, there were too many gaping holes, too much missing content and directives, that even I--a certified public school teacher with a decade of working with schools and students--could not navigate my way to a lesson plan or daily plan.  I was panicking.

Until this morning.  When I lurched out from my cozy sheets to log into the slowwwwwwest program in modern age and discovered to another horror that the day would require 3 hours of online tutorials in addition to 5 hours of teaching content, totaling eight (yes! 8) hours!

Was it too late to walk to Riverview and register him?  No.  It wasn't.  But it wasn't where I wanted him, either.  Panic and dispair smothered me.

So, I hammered away at it this morning, skipping over most of the tutorials and digging into the books and various manipulatives, {finally having access to badly writ online lesson plans} and once Raph was down for the count after lunch, AJ and I could get to work.  We broke out Handwriting Without Tears, and we did math.  I was very pleased to see that although a little rusty, most of his skills that we worked on from January to May were solid and surfaced after a little grease.  Then he rested for an hour and I watched a DVD about using their phonics kit, which helped a lot, and we ended up really enjoying that piece.  Then Raph was awake and it was time to play outside, while I investigated the History component online.  Okay, great.  The ENTIRE history lesson was online!  Lame!  (We ended up skipping that lesson.  I don't want him logged onto the screen all day.  I try hard to limit his screen time so we think we'll need to invest in a independent history curriculum that is textbook and hands-on based.  But I digress.)

We still had history and language arts (literature) to do, and after dinner we rushed our 35 library books back to the library lest they follow through with the threat to charge us $387.15 for missing or lost books.

But here's where I noticed the difference.  

He reached for my hand as we entered the library, his smaller feet in stride with mine.  He held the door open for me.  We sat with crossed legs on the floor of the nonfiction section of the children's books with 15 minutes until the library closed, flipping through the books around us and chatting randomly about Harry Potter, Sitting Bull, and Sikhs.   Peacefully.  Friendly. Lovingly.

On the way home he and I laughed, genuine light-hearted laughs, about little things and simple things.  When we came home, exhausted from our first day of school and with me (perhaps him as well) very ready to wrap it all up, we charged through our literature lesson (also lamely online) with flying colors to shut down around 9 pm.

And my personal goal this year is not only to teach him to read, but teach him to love learning through reading.  So I encouraged him to read to us for 20 minutes tonight (and nightly from now on) from a book of his choice, expecting a battle to ensue because he's tired and I'm tired and we all just wanted it over by this point.  But he jumped up and grabbed his BOB books, and he read to me.  He read with eager joy, with pride, with focused effort.  He was reading!  And stunned at the sudden fluency he was demonstrating, I summoned Aaron who snuggled in with us to listen to the child read yet another BOB book.   At the end of it, Aaron wrapped his son up and with chins on shoulders they both shut their eyes, silently relishing the moment, soaking it up, breathing it in.  And I, the Mom, felt my own eyes burn and brim with tears at the beauty I was witnessing.

At the end of the day, and it is late in the course of a long day, Andres has been my teacher.  It's not about the best lessons, or the preparation, or the effectiveness of chosen curricula.  Don't get me wrong.  That stuff counts for sure.  But it's  not a deal breaker.  It's him.  And me.  And life skills.  And life.  And love.  And our family quartette drawing into each other and God in stormy times and quiet times.  Working through it.  Together.

And I think I need to remember I'm still just as much a student as he is.