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academic edge he already lives in a language rich environment with adults that pay attention to him and include him honestly the teaching is just a lot of fun for both of us the moment it becomes work we will change it up i imagine the unschooling people have a similar philosophy with their older kids and i can really get behind that learning should be fun one of the nice things we ve arranged these days is for attic man to do the entire bedtime routine so that i can go to our community garden plot in the evenings it s been so nice to get my hands in the dirt i ve planted peas broccoli romaine lettuce okra tomatoes peppers rosemary cilantro green beans and cosmos for the ends of the rows and i m planting more today i may run out of garden before i can use up all my seed packets and the snapper this morning playing happily in his room he hasn t called for me yet so i m enjoying the time to myself he has never done that before so life is good posted in parenting planet sster teaching the prairie the snapper 1 comment art day with tantrums april 29 2009 by boomerific first it was the battle over changing his pull up before nursing then over helping make pancakes he declared the dry ingredients he was stirring mine screaming what to have for lunch what to have for snacks not going onto every porch of every house we passed and a dozen other little things but the schedule for whatever reason is making the craziness more bearable i have a suspicion that it makes me feel in control of the larger aspects of the day i build in a lot of choice and flexibility for him but the flow of the day is in my hands before if he had a tantrum over not wanting to get dressed it unraveled the whole day i got really tired of failing at managing a small tyrant today we did an art lesson after a lovely trip outside we chased the garbage truck all the way to the end of our long road and back on collage with pieces of interestingly texured paper it was a lot of fun except that i should have kept it to about ten minutes he started acting up after that which isn t surprising given that it was almost lunch time and he must have been hungry after all that running our nap didn t go as scheduled because he slept in so late this morning i m amazed i didn t lose it without that good chunk of time to myself i did leave him in his room for quiet time and listened to make sure he was safe so at least i got to sit down once again he was crazy happy about circle time again he requested it several times through the course of the day one time he asked to be the teacher and gave me stickers for sitting nicely he picked the song and read a book to me it was too cute i m feeling a lot less stressed and angry since we started this i know we ve only tried it on two days but i have high hopes posted in parenting the snapper 2 comments success so far april 27 2009 by boomerific we had a nice day today we started with circle time which the snapper just loved then had a snack and free play he chose to color the majority of the time then we had our music lesson which consisted of banging on all the pots pans and lids in the kitchen to bob marley it was so much fun he helped me make lunch peanut butter on celery we also had roasted veggies and afterward we had reading time and i nursed him down to sleep after nap we had a snack and then did the hokey pokey more free play during which he requested music again and got the pots and pans back out he even asked to have circle time twice more once before his nap and once in the afternoon we did little songs and poems or read a story it cracks me up how much he loves sitting on a small rug with his hands in his lap i think it s the combination of attention and structure as well as familiarity as they do circle time at his daycare i had fun and the day went a little faster i got all my chores done and aside from morning and evening tantrums unrelated to our schedule the snapper was reasonably well behaved i hope wednesday goes as well i bought some new art supplies for art day so it should be fun posted in parenting leave a comment parenting revamp april 25 2009 by boomerific the last ten months of life with the snapper have been extremely trying last june just as we were being hit by the flood he hit 18 months or rather 18 months hit us he began tantruming hard daily hitting and biting and being oppositional to most transitions and parental directions that summer i spent weekdays without attic man as he was interning in another city so the entire task of managing or surviving the snapper s behavior fell on me with a little respite on the weekends fall came with attic man home but doing his busiest semester yet we were both extremely stressed out through the fall and spring semesters which probably didn t help our very sensitive boy who began to act out even more minus the aggression which is now almost gone and have the occasional three week long bout of insomnia i got used to it taking 2 hours or more to get him to bed and rising with him as early as 4 30 to top it off he has been sick three times since late january a week each with the flu and is just getting over a bad cold we ve worked hard on the sleep and between that and him being past the two year sleep regression he is now going to bed at a reasonable time with me out of the house and attic man running the show and waking up at an equally reasonable time i feel like a new woman once i was rested i started to finally think rationally about my out of character feelings this past months i am a person who has always loved children always done well with them and has always imagined her fall back job as nanny as i looked into part time employment opportunities for the fall i found my eyes wandering to the nanny ads then i realized how crazy that was a miserable pt sahm looking for more work with children during the day i began to think about how i would approach a nanny job i would see it as an opportunity to make an impact in the education and development of young children i would make up a schedule i would seek out interesting and fun and wacky field trips i would design funky art projects have dance parties and be mindful at every step of their developmental needs like a smack on the forehead i realized that i ve become bored as a pt sahm and that while my child is certainly strong willed my unhappiness may be contributing to his behavioral issues even if becoming more structured does not settle him down it will at least settle me down enough to calmly approach his needs i m thinking of starting by trying to keep his daycare schedule here at home we already keep his naptime the same with circle time in the morning and the same snack and lunch times i think circle time would help ground us both and set the tone for the day i m also going to be more intentional about hitting the major areas of his development language music movement art and math um really just counting we ll have naturally occuring lessons on safety and kindness of course as we have been i have to face the fact that i am a teacher at heart and i need to be working this like a job to be satisfied i m also going to be more consistent with his potty training he is in underwear at home and in pull ups out and at night i need to work in regular times to ask i never ever force and re do his rewards oh and the tv is so going off i may consider adding it back in a teensy bit as a reward but it s off entirely for at least the first week except for 5 minutes at bedtime which is something he does with his dad and i m not going to mess with success especially if it s not my routine here s an idea of what i might be doing i am going to have to tweak it but it s the general idea monday a m rise and immediately remove pull up go to potty put on underwear nurse breakfast clean up and get dressed currently he will refuse to take his pull up until as late as 10 a m which is just so gross also we don t usually dress unless going outside but i m going for structure here 9 00 circle time sing what is the weather and use weather stickers talk about the day of the week the color or number of the day etc you know all that sesame street stuff i have to work some of this out it will be really short 9 30 snack nice day 9 45 11 30 outside rainy day 9 45 11 outside with galoshes or inside free play 11 11 30 music activity 11 30 12 mama makes lunch the snapper helps if she is feeling brave 12 12 30 eat lunch 12 30 3 reading time nap 3 4 snack movement dance party yoga running around the apt etc 4 5 30 free play reading together music activity if we ve been outside in the morning evening routine which attic man runs and involves going to the playground while i garden tuesday daycare wednesday same as monday except focus is on art thursday daycare friday same as monday and wednesday except public library for p m free play time our library is less busy on friday afternoon and we ve had no success at all with preschool storytime on wednesday mornings also perhaps a field trip for the morning this is just a rough sketch and i will be really flexible the idea is just to be intentional and have a plan however malleable the touchstones will be circle time mealtimes and naptime i ll do housework during free play naptime will remain my time to chill out monday is launch day posted in parenting the snapper 1 comment thanksgiving november 27 2008 by boomerific sixteen persons six j j l c e s of them under seven five of those six mobile under one roof i somehow find myself simultaneously glad for just my one and longing for many more happy thanksgiving apologies to the fam for getting the count wrong posted in i m not supposed to blog about my family parenting planet sster 4 comments thankful november 26 2008 by boomerific that i m here posted in i m not supposed to blog about my family planet sster leave a comment november 23 2008 by boomerific once upon a time before the boy i lived on a country road just outside a medium sized town in western pennsylvania our family lived on an acre of land huge seeming to a child with two maples a crabapple a line of pines with one fabulous douglas fir a few leftover plum and pear trees from an ancient orchard and a huge garden between the pines and the woods the property to the north was flanked by a lovely apple orchard and the fence separating the two lots was braided with grape vines our ranch house was bordered on every side with some kind of intentional vegetation including a small plot on the south side i claimed for myself without having to ask or anyone minding for the purpose of nurturing perennials to which i was partial over my parents annuals at the front of the house my classmates smoked to rebel i planted perennials from the time i was eight and a half until the day we drove out of the driveway in a moving truck when i was seventeen this yard was where i spent most of my time out of school sometimes i played basketball and football with the neighborhood kids but mostly i spent that time alone outside feeling at home rooted we could see every kind of weather from the large picture window in the living room that looked to the west and the mile of woods that separated our road from the development that marked the beginning of the town when i wasn t in the yard perched in my spot in the crabapple tree where i wonder if j hearts r is still inscribed i was in those woods walking the path that overlooked the ravine redirecting water that filled up the channels made by logging trucks mapping the clumps of trees with names and purposes and breathing i managed to acquire an old camera at that time and started taking pictures of every place and every angle of light i loved i loved every sort of weather especially the temperamental days when the wind would take my breath away or when the rain seemed to be desperate to wash our house down the hill or mountain as it would appear to an iowan the snow sparkled on a sunny day in that place and if the wind got to be too much in winter there was always the hollowed out shelter of the huge old pine tree made by removing a few dead branches there is no better shelter in this world than the base of an evergreen when a winter storm is moving in when i got to be a little older and the woods became smaller to my now adolescent eyes i started four mile walks on the country roads further east of town past farm houses and fields and mainly on late spring days it was near the end of that time that i met a boy who loved the outdoors every bit as me maybe more somehow my passion for the incredible weight of the earth merged with my passion for this person that understood me even when i was saying nothing more than breathing we met in school but fell in love while sledding in the winter hiking in the spring and fall and canoeing in the summer this boy a budding geologist took me to the national forest and taught me about rock formations and river basins and about towns that had been washed away for not paying attention and the cliches are all true colors were brighter and every rock tree and stream was richer deeper yesterday or two days ago i see now as the hour is getting late it went off like a bomb i forgot in that time to preserve my own private spiritual connection with the earth i transferred it to my relationship and when that relationship ended i let it die not all the way but in a way that i couldn t mourn without mourning the boy and now even after all this time i have been trying to live my life without that connection and rootedness that went so far beyond both the physical earth and my inner spiritual life no wonder i ve felt depressed rootless and lonely even as outwardly my life has become a success i don t know how it could not have happened i learned early to let myself die to boys when i dated robby i loved saxaphone music when i dated the boy i listened to mahler in my age i ve learned to let attic man s interestsinspire rather than overtake me and i ll be forever indebted to him for introducing me to live jam band music and rather black brand of humor but i need to recover the me that predates boys and the me i most want to return to is the me that sits in a crabapple tree at sunset singing a hymn i m no fool i can t erase that boy nor that time in my history and i wouldn t if i could but it is possible to recover some of that rootedness in a way that will feed me now and allow me to be what i yearn to be for myself and for other people i m not sure where to go with it but i think i might start just by being outdoors as much as possible giving up some housework for long walks or as we did the other day tree communining in our lovely park and shooting for a hike every weekend when possible i also need to consider more seriously our more permanent home when those jobs finally materialize and where it would be best to live for my health i need mountains baby and trees what should have happened what the boy would have liked to have happened because i know ...