Renovation

It was 11 years coming, but it's finally begun ... the kitchen renovation. We spent yesterday and this morning madly packing away the entire contents of our kitchen into boxes and setting up a tiny area in the dining room for some small appliances, dishes and food storage. The kids helped scrape the old vinyl tiles off the floor. I managed to bake 8 loaves of bread, two pizzas, two extra pizza shells and a double batch of baked beans. Then, at around noon, the three friends we've hired to do most of the big work arrived and divested us of stove, oven, sink and running water.


We have a laundry tub and garden hose arrangement on the deck for washing up. Meals are pretty much organized and manageable on an outdoor propane stove and in the microwave. We'll survive.

The guys doing the work were great about showing the kids what they were doing and how all the tools work. Blake started the day with a little "in-service" talk, showing off what he was going to be doing. Later Barry began chiseling mortar and bricks apart and looked up to see Noah standing there watching him with safety goggles on. Barry sighed, grinned and quickly put his own eye protection on.

We expected the unexpected in removing the old flooring and cabinetry, and we haven't been disappointed -- rat-gnawed wiring, detritus under the cabinets, sorry-looking insulation, bits of concrete in the wrong places, awful smells. But nothing insurmountable so far.

It doesn't look like Fiona has chicken pox after all. I think she's got a cold and more than her fair share of bug bites. But we may never know for sure.

The New Deal

Three months ago at a family meeting we came up with a 'rule' for practising that actually worked, and that everyone was happy with. If you miss your practising, you don't play on the computer the next day. It was Noah's idea. We discussed this as a question of balance. If one day is balanced in favour of unstructured play and computer time, it makes sense to right the balance the next day and stay off the computer. During the first couple of weeks there were occasional missed practisings (sometimes Erin or Noah would only manage one practising on a particular day) but after that the practising was quite consistent.

But then the computer was out of commission for 3 weeks; the kids hardly missed it at all.... and interestingly they were just as good about doing their practising, even without the computer contingency. But then the computer got fixed a couple of weeks ago and we experienced a bit of a novelty effect. And this week at our meeting they asked for a change to the practising and computer rule. This week they want a maximum of an hour at a time on the computer (then they must take a break and let others take a turn if they wish). And they want to do their practising without reminders, pressure or coercion. And, of course, if this doesn't work, we deal with it at our next meeting and change the rules.

So far Erin has mostly practiced just fine. Noah has practiced about half the time, and Sophie has missed three or four days in a row. I have managed to stay pretty low-key and am determined to wait out the week, no matter how abysmal, and see what the kids decide at next meeting. I know it'll be clear to the younger two that this is not working. An imposed solution will not be as effective as something they participate in coming up with.

Pox?

None of the kids in this family have had chicken pox, despite many casual exposures. Chicken pox has been running rampant through the community for the past 6-7 weeks and I was hoping it would arrive in our home, but after all the end-of-term performances.

Fiona has been snotty, cranky and mildly febrile for 24 hours and has a few suspicious-looking itchy spots. This may be it for us. The other three will then get it within 14-20 days. The timing is great - no groups lessons, rehearsals, performances, art classes or soccer games to miss. Everyone better in time for the summer music camp weeks.

In the midst of whatever it is she's got, Fiona has had long spells of being her usual funny self. When I pulled up her shirt to look for more spots, she looked down at her flat chest and commented "I don't have any breastfeeders." Breastfeeding is still a central theme in Fiona's life.

As I type this, Noah and Sophie are perusing a "book" that Noah made with folded copier paper, a construction paper cover and a stapler two or three years ago. They are enjoying poring over his rudimentary spelling and printing. "Rainbow" is spelled "RAMBO". Noah made dozens of these books at that age; I'm glad this one survived. It's wonderful for the kids to see clear evidence of their academic progress. Without artificial milestones like "passing Grade 3", these tangible indicators of progress are worth their weight in gold.

Today we moved the dining room into the family room and moved the fridge into the dining room (even cleaned it in the process!). Tomorrow the kids are looking forward to tearing up the old flooring in the kitchen. We've been packing boxes of kitchen stuff and hiding them in the attic. Tons of work still to do, but the renovation should begin in earnest in a couple of days whether we're ready or not.

Thanks for coming!

One of the kids' friends showed up for a sleepover fresh from School Track & Field Day. A homeschooled friend, no less, who thanks to a receptive teaching staff, joins the schoolkids every now and then for fun projects and activities. Anyway, she showed up with 5 ribbons. Apparently everyone got at least four. Some got more, if they'd placed well in races and competitions. Her ribbons all said "Excellent", except for one which said "2nd place". An "excellent" ribbon was a 'participation award.'

At the end-of-year soccer wind-up a couple of days later, every child received a commemorative medal. Erin, Noah and Sophie compared this approach to that of the track and field day. Did the track & field ribbons meant anything in terms of the excellence they superficially stated. What did "Excellent" mean if "2nd place" was better? Was there any value in a "Thanks for Coming" award if there were real awards to the winners? Were the soccer medals awards or souvenirs? Did calling a ribbon an "Excellence Award" make it more or less meaningful?

A couple of days later Noah asked Sophie who her best friend is. The idea of comparing and rating came up again in this context. I expressed my discomfort with the idea of rating friends as "Best", "Second-best" and "Third-best". What if, I said, you were kicking the soccer ball around after practice with a couple of kids, and you told one "you're my best friend" and the other "you're my 'thanks for coming' friend" -- how would those kids feel? Sometimes a "thanks for coming" award is demeaning or hurtful. The kids laughed at the idea of a 'thanks for coming' friend.

"Grandma gives 'thanks for coming' awards" said Erin with a smirk, referring to the stickers that are dispensed at the end of violin lessons.

"True, she does," I said, "but she doesn't try to pretend they say anything about the worth of the lesson. They don't say 'excellent', and she doesn't give out 'first class lesson' stickers some of the time."

The kids all seemed to understand the difference, even without me articulating it. There is no implied comparison or judgementalism in grandma's "Thanks for coming" stickers. They're just part of the ritual of lessons. A souvenir, like the soccer medal.

The kids have latched onto the "Thanks for coming" phrase though, as a humourous put-down. It fits in anywhere they want to say "nice try, too bad about the results." Now they just quip "Thanks for coming."

All of this is particularly funny because it was about a week ago, before all these discussions, that Fiona began shouting out "Thanks for coming!" any time she's taking leave of someone. She goes to grandma's house, has a nice long visit, and upon leaving, cheerfully shouts out "Thanks for coming, grandma!" She soaks up social niceties like a sponge, this kid, but she doesn't always quite sort out their precise social contexts on the first go around.

It was odd that this one phrase should take on two quite different, but equally funny, significances in our family in one week.

A Big Ride

The kids wanted to do something special on the first day of summer. I suggested a bike ride out to Three Forks along the highway, and then back along the Galena Trail. Sophie wasn't sure she was up for it, being the least experienced cyclist. Nevertheless I spent an hour reattaching the baby seat to my bike hoping she'd rise to the challenge. She did. I took her up the driveway hill so that she could show me that she's learned to use her coaster brakes to slow down. This is a skill she didn't seem to have a couple of weeks ago. We checked -- she could do it.

So we headed out. The ride out along the highway was mostly uphill and very hot with full sun exposure. We soldiered on and were all very pleased to drop down into the creek basin at three forks, getting off the highway and onto a gentle single-track trail.



About half way back, the trail crosses Carpenter Creek. The kids always love the cable car, and this was, I believe, Fiona's first ride. The trail was beautiful, in good shape, and absolutely deserted. Because it's an old rail grade, most of it runs at a steady 3% down-grade, which was just perfect for Sophie as she's on a gearless little-kid bike. I had forgotten how narrow and precipitous the trail was beyond this point. Sophie had fortunately proved herself very reliable at riding a straight and narrow trajectory on the highway so I didn't worry about her. As it turned out it was Erin who went over the bank when Noah, trying to ride a radical high line around a curve, clipped her back tire. Both kids were a little shaken up by the mishap, though no one was hurt and Erin just slipped 6 or 8 feet down a weedy slope. Still, they know that parts of that trail, especially just below our property, drop off cliff-like into the creek canyon. They rode very conservatively as we went past the canyon.

The whole ride took us about 3 hours and the kids were very proud of their stamina. This is by far the longest ride we've done with Erin, Noah and Sophie pushing their own wheels. A litre of ice cream disappeared in fairly short order upon our return.

Tonight the kids are still full of energy and are running about on the lawn, eagerly trying to soak up every last minute of the longest day of the year.

Morning Rounds

Most mornings Fiona and I go outside together and survey the world. These days our first stop after letting the chickens out is in the garden. Every day there is something new -- enough rhubarb for yet another crumble, garlic setting flowers, raspberries filling out, strawberries red enough to eat, tiny carrot sprouts all in a row.

Here Fiona is inspecting the snow pea blossoms. She's just walked through the hoop-and-chicken-wire tunnel and is under the runner-bean frame. The scarlet runner beans are poised to begin their growth spurt. We expect they'll grow at least 3-6" a day over the next two or three weeks.

Things are growing like crazy down at the GRUBS garden too. The club seems to have found its stride. There's excitement and familiarity to the routine of our meeting weekly. We work to develop the site, pull weeds, notice the new growth and explore a new activity or two. Today we moved some of the compost pile, installed a notice board, the kids picked and ate some lettuce and radishes, we collected, identified and sketched some wildflowers, watered and weeded the little plots, and the younger set made summer solstice paper plate suns with pastels and tissue paper. Then we headed up to Mick's organic market garden for a tour where everyone was able to sample some baby carrots and snow peas and help do a bit of weeding in the greenhouse amongst the tomatoes and eggplants. GRUBS comprises a huge range of ages (2 to 12) but it really seems to work.

Tonight we were back down at the GRUBS garden and its adjacent beach taking full advantage of the long day. The kids swam and played on the beach and the lawn; I sank a fencepost and transplanted some feral raspberries into a corner of the site. At 10:10 pm it's now time to complete the day. Fiona and I will go out in the last light of dusk and shut the chickens in.

The laundry joins the dishes

This is my new laundry airer. Actually, this is my laundry. The airer is what the laundry is hanging off, and you can't actually see it. This photo is angled up towards the living room ceiling. The airer is a pair of cast-iron end arms, four wooden dowels spanning the distance between them, a single and a double pulley to serve as anchors in the ceiling and a length of long braided rope that goes up from each end of the airer, through the pulleys, and down to a cleat on the wall. I got it installed during a week of pouring rain, which pleased me to no end. Outdoor line-drying was out of the question and I have maniacally been lowering, unloading, reloading and hoisting my airer all week. Our vaulted living room ceilings are very high, and all the warm air accumulates in the triangular space the ceiling encloses in front of the woodstove. In the winter time, this will keep all the wet winter clothes, all the mittens and boot liners and snowsuits and hats, up out of the way as they dry. When the airer is pulled up as far as it can go, you have to make an effort to look up to see the clothing at all.

So will I swear off the automatic clothes-dryer just as I've sworn off the dishwasher? I don't know. I will say that there is a lovely rhythm and routine to loading and unloading the clothes airer.

Today was violin recital day. Noah blew me away with his viola rendition of the Bach Gavottes from the end of Suzuki Book 3 (adapted from the Bach Orchestral Suite No. 3). Powerful tone, committment, musicality, confident posture and even some pretty nice trills. He really turned it on. Gosh, I was impressed. Sophie and Erin did fine too, but Noah's performance was the one that made my jaw drop. Now we are home and relaxing, our window sills filled with all the lupin-dominated wildflower arrangements we put together for the tables at the recital. I remember the smell of wild lupins from last year's post-recital evening.

Turning the corner

It's summer in just over 48 hours. And as the seasons turn, I feel a tremendous sense of relief at turning the corner with our activities roster. In the past 7 weeks we've had an orchestra concert, the last of the art classes and an art show, a zillion soccer practices and games and the final soccer wrap-up barbeque, piano recital, the last of the piano lessons, Erin's rehearsals of her piano piece with orchestra and the performances... and all the usual stuff including the garden going in, the annual accounting and tax deadline, and the GRUBS club in high gear. With tomorrow's end-of-year Suzuki performance party, the last of the extra activities fall away and we are free to slide into summer.

For weeks I've been putting the kids off when they ask about doing this or that: "Wait until after all our stuff is done." The kids all have big lists in their heads of things they want to get to in the weeks to come. They want to devote a day each week to hikes/bikes/canoe trips, to major/messy arts and crafts, to building projects, to child-led cooking & baking and to the beach. I know it will be easy for things to slip into lazy days of chaos and serendipity at home; that's nice in its own way, but they're asking for some help getting some of these things organized and done, and I'll do my best to help. We may end up having a fair bit more self-designed structure to our summer than we've had to our 'school year'.

Erin's Bach Piano Concerto performances were great. The KiwiVine Guest House we stayed at in Nelson during the final onslaught of rehearsals was excellent. It was private, well-appointed and very kid-friendly and comfortable. We were there for four nights and it felt just like home. We had a lovely relaxing time and I think all four kids really enjoyed the time. I worried a little that the week would seem so focused around Erin's needs, but we had so much child-led time and relaxing that everyone felt quite happy.

Musically things went very well for Erin. Her movement was dead easy to put together with the orchestra and she played nicely, very much in control and with a sense of musicality. She also had the chance to deepen her relationship with her teacher and to hang out a little with the two older pianists she was sharing the concerto with, something she somewhat surprisingly quite enjoyed. She suffers not a speck of performance anxiety, but normally she is so unaware of the importance of the audience that she looks almost sulky and lazy as she takes to the stage. But suddenly with these performances -- Wow! She was wearing a sophisticated-looking formal dress and it was as if she'd suddenly gone from being a sulky child to a charismatic young woman. She walked smartly on stage, smiled welcomingly at the audience, bowed and took her place at the piano with calm assurance. Afterwards she smiled and bowed graciously and exuded some real Stage Presence. I felt like I was watching someone else's kid. She looked like she actually cared ... both about the audience and about her performance for them.

Fiona has been incredibly needy for the past week and a half. She's still a chipper little thing most of the time, and funny and enjoyable to be around, but she seems to want to nurse and hug her mom almost full-time, day and night, lately. I hope she'll get full of whatever it is she needs and things will settle down again soon -- it's exhausting for me.

The kitchen renovation, after being put off for a few weeks, is set to move ahead in a week or so. That will carry with it its own sort of chaos... missing plumbing, no stove, no cabinets, drywall dust, outdoor food preparation and the like. But after surviving the past few weeks this seems like small potatoes.

News Clips

Lately my blog entries have been more reflective than newsy, so I thought I'd remedy the situation with a few News Clips.

A month ago I got most of my hair chopped off. I like it ... it's sort of medium-short, down to the angle of my jaw. The other day Fiona was asked to say something funny by some members of Erin & Noah's soccer team. She said "Mommy's hair funny, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!" That got a big laugh from everyone. At least she's no longer asking me, in all seriousness "Mommy, are you a boy?"

Erin has had a couple of rehearsals of her Bach Piano Concerto in E major 'siciliano' movement with the Nelson string orchestra and it's going swimmingly. Her memorization is excellent and it's absolutely no problem to put together with the orchestra. At the last rehearsal she actually added some phrasing and dynamics, wonder of wonders! She has a lovely dress to wear for the performances, a fairly slim-tailored black velvet one with a lacey ivory white bodice. Nice and formal without being kiddie-pageant little-girlish, or flamboyant and slinky. Unfortutely we haven't found shoes yet to go with it. Besides Walmart, local selection is virtually non-existent.

I did an uncharacteristically sensible thing and booked myself and the kids into a B&B in Nelson for the four days leading up to the Concerto Concert. We'll be staying at a family-friendly guest house run by some homeschooling acquaintances of ours. This will allow us to avoid four additional back-and-forths to Nelson that week for the cascade of final rehearsals (generally speaking more than 2 trips to Nelson a week is considered unacceptable to the kids) and to have relaxing days uncluttered by all the extra things we get busy with at home (soccer, GRUBS, housework, playdates, errands, etc.). I think it will be a very nice time.

Our new minivan finally showed up and it's fantastic. So quiet, a dream to drive, and incredibly flexible in terms of seating and payload. We're also getting at least an extra 150 km on a (marginally smaller) tank of gas. Our trips to Nelson are so much nicer. We can converse with each other. We can listen to music or audiobooks without having to crank the stereo up so loud over top of the road & engine noise that we all go into sensory overload after 20 minutes and have to shut it off.

The soccer season is more than half over. I pushed Noah a little to join up because he clearly enjoyed kicking a soccer ball around at home, but was leery of the team/competitive mentality. He agreed to try it for three practices, and was instantly hooked. Erin didn't want to sign up until she discovered she'd be on the same team as Noah so she was in. Sophie didn't want to sign up until I explained that she wasn't expected to already know how to play, that the whole program was about helping kids learn to play. She's on a younger team which is a good fit for her. They're all enjoying it even though it's taking up a lot of time each week.

However, there's that whole winning/losing thing. Fully a third of their soccer time is spent in games. There's no attempt to compile 'league standings', score is kept in a low-key and somewhat informal way (they stop counting if one team is wiping the field with the other) and it's understood that the teams vary a lot in age and ability due to the varying size of the communities and schools involved. Still, when the two local teams were formed, the kids were divvied up on the basis of personality i.e. aggressiveness. Erin and Noah ended up on the team with all the less aggressive players, and all they do is get creamed in games (10 or 12 to 0 or 1). I think the idea of putting the less aggressive players together makes a certain amount of sense. The rowdiness, rudeness and physical hits of the "other" team are not contaminating the experience of these more sensitive kids. On the other hand, Erin and Noah and three or so of the other kids are pretty decent players, while the majority of their team-mates are either afraid of the ball, uninterested in soccer or totally distractable. We drove 2 hours one way last week to another town for a special game that was supposed to be more evenly matched, but the opposing team got a little mixed up over the format of the game and included, unbeknownst to us, four pretty adept players from an older age-group. So the kids got trounced again.

Erin and Noah aren't overly upset over all of this; the losses kind of roll off them, which I'm a little surprised and very pleased about. But a number of their team-mates / friends are feeling pretty depressed about the losses and that's affecting the whole 'team morale' and everyone's enjoyment of the whole experience.

The problem to my mind is not with the composition of the team or with the poor matching of the opposing teams, but with the focus on weekly competitive games. During practices the kids are perfectly happy to scrimmage in a flexible way with other local kids without rigid team assignments. At "home", they often divide into three teams and rotate playing A vs. B, B vs. C then C vs. A, five minutes at a time. There are goals and there are saves and they are serious about the play. But team assignments are flexible and no one group of kids gets consistently beaten. They learn and take a supportive interest in each other's successes, often high-fiving members of the opposite 'team'. Their coach is just amazing at nurturing this kind of environment. To me this is the ideal format for these kids. The mood becomes much more upbeat by the end of the week's two practices, but the games on the weekend make it tough to stay motivated.

Ah well, overall it's still been a great experience for them.

The kitchen renovation is showing signs of being imminent. Our entire kitchen will be gutted sometime in the next month. This is something that was in the ten-year plan when we moved into our house eleven years ago. Plumbing will be moved, bricks and concrete footings will be broken up and removed, floor leveled, walls insulated, flooring replaced, drywall finished, cabinets replaced, peninsula built, new range and sink installed, pantry built etc. etc.. The two guys who were hopefully going to do the lion's share of the grunt work have somewhat unexpectedly got very busy, and Chuck is facing the prospect of having to work full days in the clinic plus on-call (rather than the half days he currently works) as the clinic moves to Electronic Medical Records. We're still planning to go ahead in about a week, but just writing it here I'm beginning to wonder if we should wait another month. We'll see. We've put together a couple of the lovely IKEA cabinets and they're waiting hopefully in the dining room along with the cork flooring.

Our garden is basically in. With most of our gardening energy going into the GRUBS garden site in town, we've planted a little more conservatively than in previous years. Still, I'm feeling quite good about the home garden, which had gone quite feral in the years I had three very young children. I've made a lot of small cumulative gains in the past three years and have had to put much less energy into preparing the beds this year than in past years. The onions/garlic/shallots, peas/beans, squash/cukes and lettuce/spinach are all up and growing well. The perennials (raspberries, asparagus, rhubarb, strawberries, etc.) are all showing increasing productivity one year to the next.

I think that covers most of the newsy stuff. I'll probably be back in Reflective Mode by my next entry.

The Light Box

At a yard sale last weekend I picked up a light box for $3 and knew exactly what it'd be for. It's a flourescent-lit box about 12 x 16 x 2" that's got translucent white plastic on the top. It's intended for photographers to use when examining and sorting their 35 mm slides or negatives. But I'd always wanted one for the kids to use when tracing.

Mona Brookes (of "Drawing With Children" and 'Monart' fame) mentions the usefulness of tracing when kids are beginning to work on realistic drawing techniques, especially if they're perfectionists. The idea is to start with a stack of drawing paper, setting one sheet aside for the final product. You then work on a drawing until you're not happy with part of it, at which point you trace the 'good parts' onto a new sheet and continue from there. And so on, until you're happy with an entire picture ... and then you take your reserved sheet of paper and trace your drawing onto that. The tracing gives plenty of chance to feel and repeat the execution of certain line shapes, and mistakes aren't some awful dead end, just another step along the way.

The kids gravitated right to the light box. They threw magazine photos onto it and traced out the contours. They're having to make decisions like how far to extend the line that defines the nose, where the contour becomes just a blend of shades. The subject matter has been somewhat bizarre, to say the least. Erin especially is choosing head shots of fashion models in ads from the throwaway waiting room magazines we get. She generally mocks anything of this ilk, having coined the word "beautyish" for "aspiring to the aesthetic standards of the shallow and ridiculous fashion industry". But she's always been fascinated with drawing faces, though she's not been particularly adept at them and hasn't wanted any help to improve. Now, I can only imagine that by repeatedly creating line drawings from large-format facial photographs that she's discovering things about the lines and shapes and proportions that make up the human face. I'll be really interested to see where this goes.

Teaching vs. Parenting

This morning we held a family meeting under the apple tree, and among other items on the agenda was our regular touching-base with whatever structured learning work the kids are doing. I went from one child to the next. I asked Erin how she felt about how she was doing with this sort of work and she explained that right now she's working on Food and Music Theory. I asked what she meant by Food and she didn't want to explain exactly, but she said that so far she'd finished with Bedtime and Nails. As is the norm when discussing things she takes seriously with this kid, I had to guess at what she was saying, and presumed she meant resetting her bedtime for a more reasonable hour (something I wrote about recently in this blog), and stopping biting her fingernails. Food presumably meant working through some of her picky-eating tendencies, and Music Theory was fairly self-evident, as she recently promised her piano teacher that she would do 20 minutes a day of theory bookwork. Math and Housekeeping, she explained, would be next, once she was done with Food and Theory. I found it interesting that as an 11-year-old unschooler, she still makes no distinction between the structured (i.e. goal-directed, self-motivated) work of quitting her nail-biting habit and the structured (i.e. goal-directed, self-motivated) work of music theory bookwork.

A related issue came up on the Unschooling Message Board I oversee at iVillage. Another mom posted:

"I went to a mom's group and the topic was using books to teach your children to read. Most of the ideas presented were things I just did when playing with my kids. But I never considered it teaching them to read.

"... do you think your children just learned or did you teach them? Also do you think maybe the difference is in the definition of teach? "

I too have told people that I didn't do anything to 'teach' my kids to read, yet when asked for suggestions for reading-readiness activities, I discover that over the years I've done lots of things that other parents would consider part of a 'teaching reading' program.

What I think is going on in my head relates to what I think of as the crux of unschooling. It is absolutely parallel to what occurs in fully unschooled children. They see no distinction between living and learning, between work and play and education. They don't know that figuring out the origin of the word 'gargoyle' is language arts, history and mythology. They don't know that making a picture with a compass and ruler is geometry and art and fine motor skills. It's just life.

Similarly, an adult who is fully in the unschooling mindset and whose child is of the same mindset sees no distinction between living alongside a child and teaching, between work and play and education.

Just as children are hardwired to learn (naturally, unconsciously, simply in the course of life), adults are hardwired to teach (naturally, unconsciously, simply in the course of life). It is only when we make the choice to separate learning from living that the distinction between teaching and parenting becomes relevant. When we don't cleave reality into Learning vs. Living, there's no need to cleave our parental interaction with our kids into Teaching vs. Just Being a Parent. The line seems artificial, fuzzy, and beside the point.

Heaving a sigh...

... of relief. We survived the past week. Tomorrow is a completely free day. We haven't had one of those in weeks. Most days we've had at least two, and sometimes more, outside activities. In the past week: two concerts and all the organizing/packing/traveling that those entailed, one extra rehearsal, violin & piano lessons, soccer practices and games (4x per week total), art class, group class, choir rehearsals, GRUBS, trio rehearsal. In the midst of it all Chuck was gone to Vancouver for 3 1/2 days so it almost all fell to me. We made it to everything, didn't forget anything crucial, and didn't kill each other in the process. Not only that but we managed to spend some nice down-time together one afternoon that really recharged us. I'm getting better at focusing us on the routines and expectations that make coping easier and the kids are getting so much more understanding and willing to pull together.

It wasn't easy, and I did have a near-meltdown one morning as we were supposed to be leaving for a rehearsal & concert and two of the kids, both of whom happen to have massive layers of dirty and clean clothes strewed permanently on their bedroom floors while their mother waits for the 'natural consequences' of such mess and neglect to reveal themselves, complained that they couldn't find any dark-coloured socks to wear with their black pants and shoes. Yes, complained, as if it was my fault. Me who had been up since 5 organizing and packing and making lunches and assembling photo displays. But as I say, no one killed anyone. And more than half the clothes were tidied up the next day.

We are all enjoying our less scheduled week this week. And I mean enjoying. We are appreciating the time we have at home in each other's company and feeling that it's a precious thing to have. We've been reminded how important it is.

Fiona was a delight at both concerts. She had a bit of company from Sophie, who didn't play at all in the first concert, and only played a few numbers in the second. But really Sophie was a companion, not an overseer, and Fiona was a perfect member of the audience both times, with no intervention required. How is it that I am so lucky four times over to have children who can be brought to classical music concerts and behave impeccably at age 2? How wonderfully odd are these children?

Fortunately / Unfortunately

The kids invented a new game this week called "Fortunately/Unfortunately". It's a round-robin story-telling game. The difference is that the contributed lines of the story must begin, in alternating fashion, with "Fortunately...." or "Unfortunately..."

"Unfortunately the car was made of cheese and it melted."
"Fortunately I was really hungry, so I started eating the cheese."
"Unfortunately the cheese was rotten and made me very sick."
"Fortunately I was near the Aw-school hospital."
"Unfortunately when I told them what was wrong they just said 'Aw'."
"Fortunately I was feeling much better by then so I left."
"Unfortunately I fell down dead on the doorstep of Aw-school."
"Fortunately Athena brought me back to life."
"Unfortunately I am so evil that this was a bad thing."

And so on. The kids can play this sort of game for hours. Even Fiona was offering up contributions tonight:

"Fort-n-y Daddy is bad!" [laughing herself silly]

They have many other oral games they like to play. "Ask Anubite" puts Noah in the driver's seat having fun with free-association weirdness and big words. "The Question Game" is their co-operative open-ended version of Twenty Questions. They do regular round-robin storytelling and a looser co-operative form of story-telling. And they love making up wacky lyrics for songs they know (including every song they're singing in their various choirs).

We are getting a new minivan in the next week or two. What I'm looking forward to the most (besides not having to get the brakes re-adjusted or fixed on an emergency basis all the time) is us all being able to converse in the vehicle. The kids will be able to play these games all the way to Nelson and back. The new Sienna will be much quieter (smaller engine, less road noise, better sound insulation) and unless Chuck is along we will all be sitting in the front two rows of seats so we'll be close to each other. The Ford simply doesn't allow for conversation in transit and that has made our trips to Nelson every week much more challenging. We've felt positively spoiled the few times we've taken Chuck's truck to Nelson in that we can actually interact with each other without twisting around and shouting and repeating ourselves.

The new van comes at a good time - our Nelson trips will become more frequent through late May and June as Erin begins rehearsing her Bach Piano Concerto movement with the orchestra.

Rhetoric and gardening

Somehow when I was growing up it became a sort of family sport to expound with great assurance about things you knew rather little about, reporting vague impressions as well-founded facts, expressing momentary hunches as well-considered theories. The idea was to see if you could fool your listeners into believing that you were as much an expert and authority as possible. If challenged, you then went into defensive rhetoric mode, justifying your previous comments ... and if you painted yourself into a corner, you'd then smirk and confess "well, actually, I just made that up," and everyone would laugh. My brother Jeremy and I were particularly good at this game.

Echoes of this skill, I confess with some embarrassment, still show through in my contributions to message boards and e-lists. I usually make an effort not to mis-state facts, but I find I have this inclination to write responses that begin "I have this theory that...." and then make up the theory on the spot.

Just over two years ago I wrote something on a message board where a homeschooling parent was asking for help in nurturing study skills. I jumped in with a "theory" and its derivative advice. I've lost the original post, but I found an e-mail I sent elsewhere a week or so later which referred to the post:

"Someone in a homeschooling context recently asked me for help in nurturing study skills (by which she meant diligence, persistence and problem-solving skills). My advice? Take up Suzuki music lessons and gardening!"

The funny thing is that expounding on theories and giving advice I'd never thought through until that moment often provides me with some pretty interesting food for thought. Sometimes the theories my message-board rhetoric-loving alter-ego floats contain snippets of thought-provoking wisdom, and I think this must have been the case above, because I returned to think about my "advice" plenty in the months to come and it's ultimately had a dramatic influence on my behaviour and focus with the kids.

Here we are 2 years later and organic gardening and its related environmental education is where a huge proportion of my parenting / homeschooling energy is going. We've got a kitchen garden, a vegetable garden, a water garden with separate areas for the kids, new fruit trees, a fairy garden area, a worm bin, and an entire community children's garden and the GRUBS club being created to support that. We've reached the point where I'd describe our homeschooling approach as being centred around musical instrument study and gardening.

The littlest choir member

Mondays are our "Nelson days". Today was a typical one. We leave home at 9 am. From 10:30 to 12 noon we have appointments and/or errands. Then we eat lunch (I pack a lunch at home ... soon we'll be eating in the park; through the winter we eat in the van). Our weekly family meeting occurs at lunch, sometimes at a café if we have enough extra time for coffee or steamed almond milk. Then we grocery shop. After that it's off to piano lessons. Noah has his lesson. Then while Erin's having hers, Fiona and I run Noah and Sophie to choir. Boys' Choir is first. Then Fio' and I run back to pick Erin up. Sophie starts Girls' Choir. I get to choir practice with Erin and Fiona. Erin is in Intermediate Choir which rehearses last. After the last choir rehearsal, we head home, arriving at about 7:09 pm. A long day! Fiona (almost 27 months) is generally a cheerful tagalong. She knows the routine well, and though nothing directly involves her, she has great fun feeling like she's a part of the whole day.

Today when we arrive at the church during Girls' Choir, Fiona asks "My turn choir?"

"Yes, when you're older you can be in choir!"

"My turn choir," she says, nodding.

Girls' Choir finishes. Erin goes up as the Intermediate Choir assembled. They start their warmups.

"My turn choir," says Fiona. "You take me mommy."

"Maybe when you're bigger. That's Erin's choir," I whisper.

Choir rehearsals are held in a nice large church sanctuary. Two or three parents are usually there to listen. The kids are well-behaved and hard-working. The Intermediate Choir numbers about 15 girls from age 11 to 15 and they are way up on the raised area behind the altar, in the choir pews.

Fiona begins toddling up the steps towards the choir. She sidles into the middle pew, the one behind Erin, right at the end, about 3 feet from the last choir member in that row. She's quiet as a mouse. She sits there with a serious look of concentration on her face, watching the director, listening to the choir, with her tiny little feet sticking out straight just barely beyond the edge of the pew.

Allison, the wonderful choir director, makes a little comment to the choir about how quiet Fiona is.

"I have a 3-year-old," she says, "and I wouldn't even want him in the building during a rehearsal. Look how perfectly quiet she is. Amazing!"

But that's just the beginning. The first warm-ups are over. Fiona's still sitting, paying close attention. Allison gets the girls to stand up to sing a first piece. Fiona stands. And stays standing for the 5 or 10 minutes they work on the piece. She's so tiny I can only see the top of her head behind the pew in front of her. Allison can't believe her -- she turns around a grins at me. Then they sit. Fiona turns around, climbs up on the pew (it's a long way up for her!), and sits.

I'm just grinning from ear to ear. Sophie and Noah are laughing quietly. Fiona is so sweet. The choir is working section by section on parts-singing. She's still sitting up there, ever so seriously, doing what she calls "my turn choir". I quietly sneak up the steps to the end of the pew.

"Are you done?" I whisper to Fiona.

"No," she whispers back. I sneak back down.

The choir is smiling, loving this. They stand again to sing. She stands. They sing for a long time. It's a couple of hours past Fiona's usual nap time and I can see she's flagging. She's still standing but she's laying her head on the seat. They sit. I look at her, smiling, and give her a little wave.

She's been up there for about 20 minutes. She decides her turn is over and toddles quietly back down the steps. Sophie walks out to meet her and give her a hug. The choir girls are just in raptures over the whole thing, so the whole choir and the director are waiting for her to take her seat in the audience before going on with their rehearsal. At the last second, Fiona trips, the combined effect of new sandals and the sloping of the church aisle, and hits her head on the first pew. There's a small gasp from the choir. Fiona holds in the wail until I get her out of the sanctuary -- well, almost, anyway.

A few minutes later she's happy again, with a small egg in the centre of her forehead. "I do my turn choir," she tells me, with a big grin on her face.

After rehearsal is over, Allison tells me how amazing Fiona is. I laugh and jokingly say "Yeah, but by the time she's actually old enough to be in the choir, she'll probably be a hellion."

"Ah, maybe," says Allison, "but at least we had today."

Indeed.

Reading aloud

Maintaining the kids' interest in being read aloud to as they grow older is something I've been working away at. I'm of a mind to think that the key is to treat reading aloud as something families do, rather than something parents do for children who can't yet read (at least at that level) on their own. In other words, I think that if you create a culture of reading aloud in your family, one where adults read to adults and kids read to adults (for mutual pleasure, NOT for evaluative purposes) and adults read to kids, then children will be less likely to abandon the ritual as they grow in maturity and age. They won't see it as something that "little kids get from their parents when they can't read to themselves yet", but something that "human beings often enjoy doing together".

So I try to include Chuck in our readalouds with from time to time. Often that's tough, as our 'down-time' and bedtime schedules rarely coincide with his. But I'll sometimes save an interesting magazine article to read at supper time. Or we'll share a favourite audiobook with him (perhaps not necessarily at the same time, but we at least share a common exposure that way). And when we're on vacation we always all listen to the readalouds. Chuck and I used to, before kids, read aloud to each other on long car trips, and we share this with the kids.

Two message boards I'm a part of recently had polls asking how often parents read aloud to their kids at bedtime. On one general parenting board 53% said "never". On another over 90% claimed to read aloud to their kids "with some regularity" and this was a poll concerning kids who were already reading independently. The latter was an education-focused board for parents of gifted children. Stark contrast, hmmm? I wonder which direction the causality runs?

I think that reading aloud to independent readers is very important. It allows you to share a common body of knowledge and vicarious experience with your children, to pass along your own love of certain books and favourite authors, to spend time being with your children, to expose them to themes and subject matter that they might not choose to read on their own, and to 'read a little over their heads', expanding their comprehension and vocabulary far more than will happen just through independent reading. Two of my kids were reading independently at 4, and I just never would have entertained the thought of giving up reading aloud at that age... thankfully that early start got us all over the hump of believing that reading aloud is just a helpful thing parents do before their kids can read independently.

I know that families with children in school have a tougher job finding time for reading aloud, and I can't presume to truly understand the challenges of scheduling and time constraints facing families with kids in school. I can't help but wonder though whether, while it's presumably more challenging to find the time, it's perhaps even more important that they do, because relative to families that don't do school they have so little shared experience and so little shared time. Reading independently, though important, does not fill that void.

At the risk of appearing dishwasher-obsessed, I will mention that hand-washing dishes as a family creates a wonderful opportunity for shared reading aloud. One person can be appointed the reader-aloud, while the others wash/rinse/dry/put away the dishes.

Jim Trelease's "Read-Aloud Handbook" contains some very compelling arguments and statistics about the importance of reading aloud as a family. The read-aloud bibliography is also great. Highly recommended.

Another full day

Life is very full lately. There's soccer, three times a week for Erin and Noah, once a week for Sophie. There are Suzuki violin lessons and an upcoming regional concert, with extra preparation for that. There's community orchestra, and an upcoming concert, and extra repertoire to prepare for that. There's GRUBS, just about ready to kick into high gear. There's our monthly visits to the nursing home to play music, and the preparation time involved in that. There are piano lessons. And choir practices for each of the three kids. And we're attempting to trade in our minivan and buy a new one ... extra trips to Nelson for appraisals and the like. And trips to Trail for the music festival. And Chuck out of town for six days over the next couple of weeks. And a garden to put in. And a summer music camp to plan. And a chamber music concert for me to rehearse for, and (hopefully!) practice for. Not to mention a lot of book-keeping and tax preparation to catch up on.

I need to cut myself some slack. And the kids too. Tonight they're playing extremely boisterously in the living room, rather than practising, as they really ought to be. We were up early and on the road by 7:30 a.m. for the 2-hour trip to Trail for the music festival. We've always given it a miss in the past because when we've observed we've found the atmosphere quite sterile and with competitive overtones. But our piano teacher really wants Erin to participate fully next year, so I thought we'd test the waters this year. I registered Erin & Noah as a piano/viola duet, and Noah & Sophie as a piano/violin duet, performing pieces they've been playing competently for months now (Dvorak's Humoresque and Bach's Minuet 1). They put a little extra polishing effort into them, and off we went. Erin & Noah were in the "under 12" class, and Sophie & Noah were "under 9's". They were the only duos entered in each of these two classes.

We arrived in time to hear some advanced teen violinists in the Unaccompanied Bach class. The playing was mostly quite impressive, and the adjudicator was encouraging and insightful in his comments. Erin and Noah were keen to listen to the whole class and the feedback. Then my kids played. They did really well. Noah filled the church with his big viola sound. Erin had no piano stumbles. Sophie carried herself very well, and Noah, who had a tiny memory lapse on piano covered it so well that I don't suppose anyone noticed. What was most impressive was how well they listened to each other.

The adjudicator was very positive and encouraging. He had some useful comments about playing chamber music as opposed to solos. He loved Noah's viola. He awarded my kids "Certificates of Merit" and a bit of scholarship money and invited Noah and Sophie to play on the Honours Concert, an invitation we declined because of the additional travel involved.

Overall it was a very positive experience. The observation of advanced students was an excellent opportunity, the kids played well and felt good about what they'd done, the adjudicator was kind, encouraging and helpful, and there was some tangible affirmation of the kids' abilities. I think they'll feel fine about participating more fully in the festival next year.

Then we headed for home. We stopped at home to change out of recital clothes, grab something to eat and then head out for soccer practice. Then home to catch up on the dishes and cook a quick supper and ... well, they're giggling and running around in the living room now and there I'm going to leave them. They have a game out of town tomorrow morning, a couple of activities on Sunday, and then an extremely full day in Nelson on Monday.

The kids need their down time. They're so much happier, and so much more productive, when they get it. I was proud of them today, not only up on stage, but listening in the audience, and on the soccer pitch.

I'll start working in half an hour or so at winding them down and then it's a night to choose a new novel to start as a readaloud. Avi's "The Barn", which we finished in four nights, was brilliant but very sad for me as it reminded me of providing palliative care for my dad. I'm sure the kids felt the same thing. There was no animated chattering or questioning at chapter's ends like usual.

A Dishwashing Convert

I've won one convert in the dishwashing-by-hand campaign. Sophie is my tireless helper. She really enjoys the quiet time with me, the suds, the warm water, the gentle clinking of dishes, the conversation. We're going on four days without using the dishwasher, with just the two of us working with occasional help from Noah, whose appreciation of the process seems to be growing as well.

Child-led bedtimes

I guess way back when Erin was born I missed reading that book about getting your baby on a schedule. When Erin was an infant she had her own ideas about when to sleep and when to wake up and I never thought to try and change her mind -- I just adapted. She was never much of a sleeper. She catnapped on my shoulder, she wanted nothing to do with a crib. At 18 months she gave up naps. By age 2 she was sleeping less than 10 hours out of 24. Throughout most of the past 11 years she's gone to sleep for the night after 11 and woken up no earlier than 8. For the past three or four years her sleep hours have generally been between 1 a.m. and 10 or 10:30 in the morning. I've occasionally joked that she homeschools because she refuses to do mornings. She always manages to be up in time if our schedule demands it, but her general preference is to sleep well past 9.

So imagine my surprise a couple of weeks ago when I realized she was actually in her pyjamas ready to go to bed before Sophie and Noah were ready for their bedtime story. It was only 10:30 pm! I commented about the early hour, and she said "Haven't you noticed? I've been going to bed half an hour earlier each night for the past week."

Three days later she was heading for bed at 9 pm. I was flabbergasted. I asked her whether she was going to bed at 8:30 the next night. "No," she said. "Now I'm going to work on falling to sleep within 3 hours of going to bed."

And so she did. Now when I get up at 7, she's sitting at the dining room table reading magazines and drinking tea. Why?

"I like getting up early."

She's been incredibly disciplined about it. She rushes to her practising directly after supper so that she'll be done in time to head to bed by 9. She comes in the door from orchestra rehearsal and heads straight to bed. She leaves in the middle of a video if it's 9 o'clock. She bought herself an alarm clock this week, because she's discovered that if she sleeps past 7 am she has trouble falling asleep by 9 pm.

It's truly amazing what children will choose to do when we trust them to make good decisions for themselves.

Goodbye Stikine

I was throwing pizza dough and decided to take a tour around the property while I was doing so. I walked out behind the garden and spotted Stikine, the 13-year-old deaf, arthritic family dog lying in an unusual place under the trees. Suddenly I thought "he's dead." I don't know how I knew. I walked over and sure enough, he was lying peacefully at the edge of the forest, having laid down to draw his last few breaths there in the shadow of a 100-foot white pine. I don't know how long he'd been dead, but not long.

I called the kids. They had watched their grandfather die at home 18 months ago; they're comfortable with death. We had been talking about Stikine getting old, and the fact that he probably wouldn't be around for too much longer. They were sad, they came to see him, and pat him one last time. We buried him a dozen feet from where he died.

We'd already been looking for a new young dog, but our search will intensify now. A dog gives me a lot of peace of mind when the kids are outdoors without me; I know cougars generally avoid human beings, but there are rare exceptions. And I appreciate the effect of a barking dog in keeping bears at bay ... away from compost and the fruit trees and the garden and the garbage.

But we sure miss Stikine. He'd been a part of the fabric of our lives for so many years.