I brought the weather back with me!
Joked this past weekend that I at least wanted to bring back the breeze. This has been a lovely spring - in like a lion in March with fun winds, a showery April, but like any Floridian I'm getting ready for the other sweaty shoe to drop and the temps to crank up. Did not expect the cold snap as I was leaving work last night (granted, at the ungodly hour of 8:00 p.m.); was in a short sleeve top and capris and freezing my niplets off! Well, wasn't THAT bad, and anyone who knows me knows I ain't complaining. But it did get down into the 40s, and this morning dawned cool with a light breeze that's promising to pick up later. Sweet! Now if only I wasn't chained to a blasted computer...
Mom J. asked me this weekend if I was thinking of homeschooling. She's a public school teacher's aide for special needs kids by trade, so I certainly wasn't going to malign public schooling in front of her, but it got me thinking. I hedged, citing the fact that it'll certainly depend on where we are 5 or 10 years from now, because as it stands, as the breadwinner with more likelihood of maintaining a solid job with bennies, it's a less feasible proposition. But with planning from me and better health on Husby's end, who knows where we could be in 5 years?
But watching Kylie this weekend helped me realize that I really am interested in unschooling or more Waldorf-style philosophies, as well as more natural and organic eating habits, or else the habits they're starting in her wouldn't make me so nutty. She seems to be developing "on time," which I'll admit surprises me considering the amount of time she spends watching TV (and the chemicals that hit her system in utero). But if a kid that size gives you a brown stare, it should be because of their 2-second attention span, not because they've learned to zone out already. Then there's the food issues...I got her up on Saturday morning and fixed her some milk and let her putter around, but for some reason she was showing almost no interest in the milk. Turns out that's because someone (Nana/MomJ.) had the bright idea of adding strawberry or chocolate syrup once, and now that's all she'll drink. The kid's 20 months old! As a treat when they get older, sure, but geez...and in a similar vein was a conversation Les and I had, where he thinks he remembers having Coke as early as age 6; he was justifying them giving her little sips of iced tea or Coke occasionally, because it's the way they were raised, so they're just unknowingly passing on not-necessarily-great habits. Well, I was raised on 7-up and as a treat at that, didn't look sideways at caffeinated drinks until high school. There was always Pepsi in the fridge, but that was for the adults (to go with their rye). So we were raised a bit differently, and it made me realize that if I really want things to change, I need to start talking it up more now, making small changes now, so that I'm not a complete hypocrite come parenting time. So that's getting more thought this week...and more investigation; I want to find library books on the subject, so I can actually research and stop feeling like I'm being judgmental without backing. Every time I feel myself being too critical, in my head there's the "yeah, well, just wait til you're a parent" thought. That's certainly viable, and it helps me hold my tongue when necessary; but once I'm there, I want to have the knowledge to make the right decisions, not just wing it based on how we were raised. Again, the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results.
This was also brought on by a friend's blog. Her son attends the local Waldorf school in Mendocino, CA, and he loves it so much, he has trouble finding enough to keep himself entertained on the weekends, never mind spring break. Makes her a little nutty, but it has to be heartening, especially considering what they shell out a year for that school. It's quite hard to imagine affording a private school tuition (or two) when you presently live so paycheck to paycheck you're barely making ends meet, but that would be one solution to the inability to homeschool question. It's certainly not an impossibility, just something that would require a helluva lot of planning, credit repair, and budgeting, which needs to happen anyway. Hmm...
Biggest Loser finale tonight! Go Ali!
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