Screen-Free Week: What We’ve Been Up To

/ Lindsay / 1 Comment

So far, at the halfway point (Thursday afternoon), screen-free week has been going great! I’ve obviously written a couple of blog posts; I also have to check email and Facebook for the store; and have had to check Facebook as my friends and I are organizing a getaway for this weekend via Facebook. However, I haven’t watched any TV, nor has Neko, and I’ve drastically cutback my time online. I have only been checking essential Facebook notifications (not groups, etc), and have only gone on Pinterest to plan activities for today.

This week, instead of staring at screens, we have:

  • gone for walks, in the sun and the rain, to the library, the grocery store, the park and the fire station (unfortunately all the firefighters were out on a call, so we couldn’t get a tour).

Neko and Mairead on the way to the playground on a rainy Monday.

  • made oil pastel trees – this kept the girls occupied for a full hour while Finn napped on Monday! I love the way they turned out.

Making oil pastel circles to cut out.

Neko with her finished tree, and mine.

  • played with friends, every day.
  • had a bath, with hot chocolate, after a long bus trip home and transfers in the rain.
  • read lots of chapters of Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
  • baked a cake in the Easy Bake Oven (TM).
  • listened to music and danced.
  • drawn pictures.
  • made cornstarch/baking soda modeling clay.

Playing with modelling clay.

  • cleaned the bathroom (Neko. Seriously. We decide not to watch TV for a week and you volunteer to clean the sink and bathtub? Do you think we’ll ever watch TV again? She did a decent job, too.)
  • packed for the weekend (Neko is going to my parents’; I’m going on a girls’ weekend.)
  • made rock candy! (It was easy to entice friends over to do this one with us.)

Our vats of very sugary solution – to become sugar crystals clinging to a bamboo skewer! AKA, “rock candy.”

  • learned about the letter ‘X’ (via Jolly Phonics).
  • built marble runs out of wooden train track (much trickier than it sounds, and yet, it kept Neko amused, both with Mairead and later, solo, for at least a couple of hours – and she didn’t even get frustrated!).
  • put up the backless, window-mounted birdhouse. Hopefully some feathered friends will decide to call it home so we can observe them!

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were spent whining to watch TV (Neko, not me). These three days confirmed to me that screen time is, in fact, a habit. I mentioned way back when that we used to have a routine in the mornings – Justan and I would stay in bed far too long, while Neko watched far too much TV. It was really negative, with negative behaviour to go along with it. We cut that out and it was immediately apparent how much of a habit it had been. Cutting out TV for even these few days has confirmed that it’s a habit for Neko, and for us. It’s been nice to do other things instead.

However, I’ve missed Facebook. I had a relapse tonight. I get a lot of joy and laughter from my friends on Facebook. I also get a lot of news from Facebook. I have very politically aware friends, on whom I rely heavily to keep me up to speed on certain issues. I, in turn, keep my friends up to date on the issues I follow closely. I was on Facebook a few times a day, for very short periods, to take part in the planning of the event this weekend. I also have to keep tabs on my business page (though my business partner has done most of that this week). However, I wasn’t checking any non-essential notifications. I did have a relapse tonight, though. And it was great. I do need balance with social media but generally I feel I have it. Also, I’ll be off Facebook for the most part, all weekend, as I’ll be at a cabin in the mountains with good friends and plenty of wine and food.

Tomorrow morning, Neko leaves for my parents’ place. She probably will get a bit of screen time, however they don’t watch much TV there, and because it’s spring, they’ll spend a lot of time out in the woods and pastures. If it rains all weekend (like it has most of this week), I’m sure she’ll get more TV – but I don’t feel right sending her to my parents for free childcare and then demanding they keep her amused on my terms all weekend!

I hope you’re all having a great Screen Free Week (or a great week, screen and all).

The Unschooling, Unjobbing Life: Making it Work

/ Lindsay / 2 Comments

If there is one thing our life is not, it’s predictable. Acknowledging that each of us leads a very different life with very different challenges thrown in, let’s just assume that if you’re reading this, your life involves some level of unpredictability. Maybe you’re a doula, or you or your partner are on-call, or you only have one car, or you are a contract worker who doesn’t receive paychecks on a reliable schedule. Well, pretty much anything that could be unpredictable in our lives (aside from the roof over our heads and the number of people in our family), is. I’d like to share with you some of the strategies that we’ve found to help us, to the point where things in our life generally run smoothly.

First, there are a few variables that will generally play into how unpredictable life can be. I would identify these as follows:

a) work (fixed schedule, on-call, contract/freelance, travel)

b) children (illness, etc)

c) childcare (especially if it needs to accomodate an unpredictable work schedule)

d) transportation (unreliable vehicles, public transit, carpooling, one car family, cycling)

e) money (unreliable/unpredictable paychecks, self-employment/contract work, chronic shortfall)

f) health (dealing with chronic illness or that of a loved one, or just health in general or low immunity)

These are all points that need to be considered when putting plans into place. The first thing you need to do is think about your own worst-case scenario (no… not death. But a pretty bad day.). For us, that is both parents at work, no pre-arranged childcare or our pre-arranged childcare falls through, low on cash, short notice, and Justan needs the car very early in the morning so I have to get Neko to childcare and back to the store in time to open up in the morning, without a car. Have plans A, B, C and at least D in place for each factor so that you are never left hanging.

Our situation is that thanks to Justan’s career in the film industry, we sometimes have as little as an hour’s notice that he’ll be headed to work. He may be working in town or out of town, for anywhere from an hour to two weeks. We only have one car, and our budget and scheduling constraints make part-time or full-time childcare less than ideal, not to mention the unschooling which requires that Neko is hopefully somewhere where she’ll get similar stimulation and socialization as she would at home. If both of our jobs also paid very little, the entire balance would be off and the situation would not work; however Justan’s work pays very well which makes the volatility worth it. That said, it has taken a LOT of getting used to, and I have never been able to find any articles or guidebooks out there to help me through it, so I’ve had to figure it out mostly on my own. I would love to see a book on managing finances when both partners are self-employed, but all the financial advice books I’ve read seem to assume a reasonably consistent wage.

Work

Try to match one parent’s work schedule to your childcare schedule. That parent also needs to think about transportation to childcare, and from childcare to their job. For us, I have matched my work schedule to my childcare schedule (after lots of tweaking, and seeking out the right situation). Justan’s work is the more unpredictable between the two of us, so I’ve set my store schedule to match the one that works for my childcare swap. If one or both of you is doing freelance or contract work such as writing, design work, or something else that you can do on your own schedule, this is a lot easier to do, as you can schedule client meetings, interviews and work time for whenever your childcare happens to take place. If both parents are freelance with flexible schedules, and can get your work done in 30-40 hours per week, building your schedule around one another, and tag-teaming on chores around the house might be a great option.

Neko and me in one of many family photo shoots that Justan was out of town for. Photo Credit: EpicDanger Photography

Children

As for the unpredictable nature of children, mainly meaning getting sick or hurt, this is where you’ll need to have some sort of emergency contingency plan built-in. For us, this doesn’t come up much as we have a very healthy and generally cautious child. However, when she does get sick, we assess the situation and talk to Nicole (our childcare swapper) and decide whether she wants to expose her kids to whatever it is; and we decide whether we have the heart to send Neko to someone else when she is sick. The nice thing about the childcare swap is that both families feel more like a big, extended family than childcare. When Mairead and Finn get sick I generally just tell Nicole to send them anyway – chances are we’ve already been exposed to the bug. We have chosen a few times to avoid the bad, puking bugs, largely because Justan happened to be off those days, and we had the option. We also have other friends that we can check with if needed – we would pay them to take Neko, but it’s an option when we don’t have anywhere else to send her. Our worst case scenario in this case (and my business partner, Jaime, has had to do this once if I remember correctly) is that one or more kids is sick and we simply can’t work that day, and our partner is either away or can’t get the day off work. This is when we have to scramble to make it work at the store. It’s very stressful, but we’ve always managed, even if it’s by the skin of our teeth. I once received a customer complaint after I took 4-year-old Neko to work with me after an employee flaked out on us and Jaime couldn’t come in because her oldest daughter was throwing up – I wish that customer could have known how close we were to having the doors closed that day! Some days, this is just the life of a small business owner.

Childcare

Which brings us, of course, to childcare. To me, this is the number one key. I need to know that I have Neko somewhere where she is happy and enriched. I like consistency for her in this aspect, because so much of our life is ever-changing. She handles it well (thankfully she is not a kid who requires a strict routine, or we’d have to make drastic changes), but I feel a lot better knowing that she is going to the same place on a regular basis and that she is happy to go there. This has been a long time coming! Up until last fall, we had cobbled together childcare at a dayhome (this also worked well, largely because my dayhome provider is amazing, and would let me know when she had extra space available and was open to drop-ins – she also lives five blocks from my house so was very convenient), through another swap (which was also great), and by paying friends to take Neko on the days that we needed it. Paying friends worked all right as well, except that I always felt like I was bothering people.

If you do only need care once in awhile, paying random friends can work well. There are a few keys, though, to success (success being defined as actually finding care for your child, and also not losing friends). First, it doesn’t hurt to have a large network of friends. If they have kids, even better. No friend network? Or all your friends are without children? If you can find a local parenting group, that’s a good place to start. I belong to the Calgary Attachment Parenting Group and have since I was pregnant, and thank heavens I do. Let me be clear, here – do NOT join a group just so you can find people to provide childcare, or to help you move. Gross. I shouldn’t have to state this, but I’ve seen it happen – joining a group, or making friends, just so you have people to help you out, is gross. People will pick up on your ulterior motives, and you’ll be right back at square one. No, only do this if you actually want to make good friends, and if you expect to ever get help from anyone, understand that you need to be happy to help others and expect nothing in return. This also means that even if you help people all the time, you can’t get all passive aggressive and up in arms if people are unable to help you when you need it. But a lecture on appropriate actions within a friendship is better left for another day, so I’ll continue on trusting that you know how these things (these things being mature friendships) work.

Okay, so let’s say you have friends now, and that you are generally liked and trusted and that you help people out when they need it. Now to find childcare, possibly on short notice, possibly in a pinch. Here, social media is your friend. I’m going to assume you’re on Facebook or Twitter or maybe even some sort of forum. If you’re not I’ll let you adapt this to your more Luddite lifestyle. Here is where we post with hope but without expectation. If you have a partner (or several?) and they can post as well, fantastic! I usually say something along the lines of, “Would anyone like a Neko to join them, 9-6 on Wednesday?” Simple as that. I may, though, sweeten the deal with whatever I can. “Will pay,” with or without the amount, doesn’t hurt. Or maybe, “I’ll take your kid(s) for a day in exchange!” This is usually appreciated. Or maybe you’ll provide dinner afterward, or you have something else to offer. Barter. Whatever you can give.

The next step is really, really important. If no one responds, leave it at that. Please, for the love of cats, do not post a passive aggressive response along the lines of, “Well fine then, I guess I can’t work on Saturday.” It is not your friends’, nor anyone else’s responsibility to sort out your life for you. (Sorry about the lectures… I may have seen this happen before. It’s painful to watch. Don’t be that person.) This is your puzzle to solve and this is why you have Plan B (or C or wherever you are along the spectrum at this point in your day). Our next Plan when no one responds is to lay out our next options, depending on the situation. Can we reschedule some aspect of our work? Is there someone whom we think might be happy to take Neko who might not be on Facebook, or may have just missed the post? This is where we make a couple of phone calls just to check. I would also check with our dayhome if I needed to. And get creative! There is always shuffling you can do. Maybe someone can only take the kid(s) for part of the day, or it’s dependent on something. Think outside the box – what can be shuffled or adapted to make it work? There have been lots of days where Neko has been in the store with her LeapPad or a DVD for the first or last hour of the work day.

My personal favourite set-up for childcare, not in any small way because it accommodates our unpredictability, is the childcare swap. I’ve already written an entire post on this so, rather than reinvent the wheel, how about you go read that here.

Mairead, Neko and Finn spend a lot of time together, and it shows in their closeness and their bickering.

Of course, a more traditional route such as a dayhome or daycare may work well for you, if you have a younger child. For the older, homeschooled child, things like classes, a blended program (where they go to school one or two days a week and school at home the rest of the time), or working on projects while you work are all options. This summer, Neko will be attending a couple of daycamps and sleepaway camps, and come fall she’ll be in classes through the Calgary Homeschoolers Association ever Tuesday.

You can also look at the options for taking your child(ren) to work, depending on what you do. If you choose and design your own space, take this into account when you do so. Developing a child-friendly space can be worth it!

I should also add that if you find yourself the sole parent much of the time, either because you’re a single parent or your partner is out of town often, it is really worth it to hire a babysitter to come one night each week. Even 2-3 hours gives you enough time to go unwind with friends or alone, and take a deep breath. Work out, grab a coffee, see a movie, or just wander through the grocery store without the incessant whining. It’s also a good idea to have at least one (ideally three) babysitters whom you can call when you’re in a pinch for a nighttime event or job.

Transportation

The underlying context to transportation is proximity. This is the first thing you should always look at when making fundamental changes (moving, choosing a job, and so on). We live five minutes from my store, so taking a bus or cab isn’t out of the question for me. The location of our childcare swap partner is another five minutes along the same road. It’s all workable. Don’t pick childcare or work or a house that is way out of the way unless you have two reliable cars, a lot of money, or just plain aren’t living this lifestyle.

We have one car. Usually we can make this work by having one of us drop off the other, or one of us use public transit. One really helpful development has been that now when Justan gets a job out of town, he either carpools or requests a rental car. If you are a one-car family and one of you periodically or regularly works out of town, this could be worth a try. This has been life-changing for us – in the past, when Justan would go out of town and take the car, I would be without a husband and without transportation, but would still need to get to work, take care of the house, and do all the other things I am committed to normally. Let’s just say I drank a lot of wine then.

Now the one-car issue is more of a problem when Justan is in town, and working. For days that we can’t shuffle things to make them work, I again have a number of contingency plans in place. First is the bus. I know my transit schedules and I know them well. I know the exact times I need to be at the stops to make things work the most efficiently, and which stops and routes work best depending on the situation (do I have Neko with me or not? Are we going in in the morning or afternoon?) and weather. I got the free Calgary Transit app for my iPhone (a smartphone also makes our life a lot easier, as we can locate each other at any time, and change plans on the fly) and use it often. I also always carry a pair of headphones in my bag so I can listen to music or play games on my phone on long bus rides, in case I get bored.

Bus Bingo!!

Finn, Mairead and Neko on one of our epic bus journeys. Bus bingo helps!

When I’m completely stuck, we cab. The downside to this, at least with younger kids, is that you may not have a carseat available. I didn’t cab much when Neko was under booster seat height/weight, but I may have once or twice when I absolutely had to. This is our we-missed-the-bus-and-if-we-wait-for-the-next-one-I’ll-be-45-minutes-late-for-work option. It’s expensive, and you may lack a child seat, but when worse comes to worse, it’s good to have cash or a credit card (with available space) in your wallet so you can call a taxi. Another reason I need my cell phone! And did you know that by dialling #TAXI (anywhere in the USA and Canada) on your cell phone, you’ll be connected to the first available taxi company? So handy.

Another tool I have worked into our transportation options is foot power. When Neko was younger, I had a child seat on the back of my bike and would ride the approximately 15-20 blocks to the friend’s house where Neko was going for childcare at the time, when we didn’t have the car. From there I knew which bus to take to get to the store on time. Now, when I bus to Nicole’s, I find it just as fast, or faster, to run the 4K from her house to the store as it is to wait for the next bus and catch that. If I commute on foot to and from her house in the morning and afternoon, I also get in an 8K workout that day! (Not recommended unless the distance is comparable to something you would normally do.) To make all of this more possible, it pays to be prepared. On the bike you want a small backpack packed, and while running I find it ideal to have nothing on me in the way of a bag. Keep supplies for your child (clothes, diapers, bottles, etc) at their childcare, and keep extra clothes and some food at your place of work. When we had a freezer at work I would keep one dozen Amy’s frozen burritos in there and a jar of salsa in the fridge, so I always had lunch on hand.

If you see this girl running along Glenmore Trail in the morning, I’m on my way to work.

Money

Tricky one! What a loaded factor. Obviously I can’t speak to your money issues, but I can offer a couple of tips.

First, plan for the worst case scenario. Have I drilled that into you yet? When choosing a place to live, assume you’ll be making the smallest amount you could make in a year, just shy of forcing you to change careers. I won’t go into safety nets like insurance and such here, but basically build in as many safety nets as you can. You have a kid(s) relying on you now. While you may be able to survive with rotten teeth, freezing to death on a bare mattress, I doubt you want that for your offspring. When we applied for a mortgage in 2005, they approved us for $200,000. We scoffed. We couldn’t afford to pay that much in mortgage payments each month! In the good times, sure, no problem! But it’s not always good times. And we knew that as soon as things dried up for a period of time, we’d be behind on mortgage payments. We chose a house for $145,000 in an area of town with more… er… “character” (we love it, by the way), with just 650 teeny tiny sq-ft of space and a nice, spacious yard, and we have thanked our lucky stars ever since that we bought the house we did. There was one year (I think it was 2009) where even this felt like too much. Justan was out of work for six months and to say we barely scraped by would be the understatement to end all understatements. If we’d had a 30% larger mortgage we wouldn’t own a home now. Make do, make it work, and make the best of it. Same goes for cars, using savings to go on vacation, and so on. There is a reason we don’t have a second car!

This quote is on the wall as you enter the Africa exhibit at the Glenbow Museum. I love it.

Second, stock up on food. We belong to a food co-op, and I also freeze a ton of produce in the summer. We have a few months’ worth of food in our basement (this works well both for disaster/zombie prepping as well as a freelancer’s lifestyle!), including dried beans and legumes; flours; dried and canned and frozen fruit; tea and coffee and juice and almond milk; pasta and rice; canned beans and sauces and coconut milk; frozen meat; frozen broth; tortilla chips and crackers and rice cakes; popcorn; oils; sweeteners; and so on. This winter, Justan was pretty much completely without work for three full months and we survived off savings, credit, my small wage, and our food stores. We could have survived on the food stores a lot longer – we just ran out of money to pay bills and the mortgage. But we never went hungry! What a huge load of stress off our backs.

Third, yes, put aside savings. Whenever you can, either pay down debt (highest interest rate first!) or squirrel away money in savings. You’ll never regret putting money in savings or another form (again, making space on that credit card) that you can access when the going gets rough.

Fourth, if possible, find one steady source of income. Having even a bit of money that is guaranteed at the same time every month or couple of weeks makes a big difference. If you can’t find this, then look at how much you have coming in most months, and tweak the budget until you can live off as little of that as possible. Then stick to that budget and put the rest aside, so that on the months you make less, you can still have that steady income. We’ve determined the amount of money it takes us to live comfortable and without worry (this includes some new things – clothes, etc – and going out to movies, dinner, and so on as well) and we make sure that is what we get each month. That way, more money stays in Justan’s business’s account for the hard times, or for a bonus, or for taxes…

Fifth, say it with me now, contingency plans! Here is where unjobbing shines. Know your options! Networking is great. Talk to people and over time, collect ideas for places where you could do temporary or seasonal work when you’re in a pinch. Always have job options on hand. During that six months that we came close to selling our house, part of our survival depended on being paid cash under the table (shh) for landscaping work I did to help a friend out with her landscaping business, and Justan working with a neighbour with his playground building business. I also babysat for friends whenever possible. These little skills and services can float you through the hard times. If you have to, make a list of skills you’ve got, and people you know, and take note of any opportunities that might exist. If those people can’t give you work, they might know people who can.

And sixth, barter. Have skills and items available to give or lend that will get you services and items in return.

Health

I won’t actually speak to health, because it’s so varied and you know your own situation. I will say, though, that you must allow for proper sleep, and nutrition. Being busy is no reason to cheat yourself on sleep or food. Make plans in advance, have nutritious, frozen or takeout meal options in mind, and be sure to get the sleep you need, or you’ll pay the price, and it will make things so much worse in the end.

In closing, I’ll say that tonight, we had a worst case scenario night, and it all worked out just fine. Are we tired? Absolutely. But it worked out, we got where we needed to be, we did what we needed to do and no one was especially stressed out (except Justan, but that was because a key piece of equipment broke down, which made his life a lot more complicated). If you’re currently struggling to make a complicated situation work, I hope that some of my suggestions have got your wheels turning. Often, things can work out, it’s just a matter of a little creative thinking. Planning and a long list of back-up plans are crucial, and you may find yourself sitting on a bus with your child patting yourself on the back for having so many effective back-up plans. I’d love to hear about strategies any of you have put into play to make your unpredictable life more manageable!

Screen-Free Week!

/ Lindsay / Leave a comment

Neko and I have decided to challenge ourselves by taking part in Screen-Free Week. I will need to be online to work, and on my computer when I want to work on my novel, and on Facebook just a little to keep up on events (and update the store’s page). But neither of us will be watching TV or movies. The week runs April 30-May 6. If you’re taking part, please let me know in the Comments! Wish us luck!

Oh, and I may, possibly, break this next weekend as I’ll be away on a girls’ weekend. If everyone else is watching a cheesy movie, I’m not sitting in the other room. More likely, though, we’ll be playing games and dancing, so it shouldn’t be an issue.

Neko’s First Cosplay at the Calgary Comic Convention

/ Lindsay / Leave a comment

(This title is funny because two years ago I didn’t even know what cosplay was. In case you’re also in that boat, it’s a contraction of costume play, and it means, as far as I can tell, dressing up as favourite characters, usually from comic books or science fiction.)

Neko had been counting down the days to this weekend for over a month. Each day she would ask us, “How many more days till the comic book thingy?” She and Justan had attended “Comicon” together before, but had to miss it last year. He told her that on the Sunday of the convention, there would be a family costume contest, and that she could wear her Totoro Halloween costume for it. He also looked at the class options for the Sunday and she decided she’d like to take one called “Drawing With Katie Cook,” led by an illustrator who also works on the Clone Wars series.

Here she is in her Totoro costume, Halloween 2011.

It was a good thing all the excitement was on Sunday (well, for them – for the rest of Calgary, a lot of the excitement was on Saturday, when the entire cast of Star Trek – The Next Generation was in attendance). They headed down to the exhibition grounds right after lunch on Saturday, to find huge line-ups. After waiting in line for a substantial amount of time, they learned that the fire marshall had shown up and declared the venue too full. No one was to be let in for the remainder of the day. The people who were already inside could stay; however if they came out, they wouldn’t be readmitted. Neko was pretty heartbroken but Justan promised her they would try again the next day.

So, on Sunday, Neko got into her Totoro costume and they headed out early.

Wait. I just realized some of you might be saying, “Hey hold on, who is this Totoro you speak of?” Well, he’s a fuzzy, adorable monster type character from our favourite animated kids’ movie, My Neighbour Totoro, from our favourite studio, Studio Ghibli in Japan (Disney owns the North American rights).

On the bus on the way to Comicon – if only it were a cat bus!

Justan tells me that lots of people were asking to take Neko’s picture, and that she did great on stage when she presented her costume to the audience. She had to go up on the stage for about 20 seconds to show everyone her costume, and I think she did a great job (I saw the video footage) – she even made sure to throw in a big high jump just like Totoro.

She brought her cat bus along for good measure. Justan tells me he forgot to bring out the umbrella though. And she’s not wearing her paws in this shot.

She received a participation prize, but it was a Baby Alive type doll, with which she was thoroughly unimpressed (grateful to receive it, but not interested in opening it); she’s decided that she’ll give it as a gift or we’ll donate it at Christmas time, so another child who likes baby dolls can enjoy it.

Neko and Justan thoroughly enjoyed their weekend together, and got to see all sorts of interesting characters and booths.

Sometimes I Worry… But Then I Remember…

/ Lindsay / 1 Comment

Sometimes I worry about unschooling (I know… all us unschoolers do!). I worry that because we don’t do any (or at least not much) formal instruction, and no worksheets, and no sit-down time where I walk Neko through equations and participles and such things, that she might fall behind her peers. When she shows an interest in learning to read or write, or figuring out math, we follow that interest. We have a Reading Eggs subscription that she uses a couple of times a week, and there are tons of workbooks and math games and reading primers available within the house. We read together every day, and even loosely follow the Jolly Phonics program. The opportunities are there.

Of course, I know that at six and a half, I have no reason to worry. I have plenty of unschooling friends with older kids, who describe to me on a regular basis how things have gone in their house – one kid picked up reading easily at age four, the other didn’t find that it really “clicked” until about eight. No matter the age they’re describing, it’s always the same story – they didn’t push any of the academics, they let it happen on their child(ren)’s own timeline, and provided materials to meet the child’s interest as well as a stimulating environment, then one day the child took interest and BOOM!, in about two weeks they were reading proficiently.

I’ve also seen plenty of evidence that basic math is better off learned naturally rather than through rote learning.

So, the logical part of my brain knows we’re fine. I have complete faith in what we’re doing.

And yet, I have more friends that are sending their kids to school. Friends from the States whose children learned to read in preschool at age four. Whose five year olds can recite the 5o states (I can’t even do that! Not all of them!). Who post on Facebook wondering if anyone else’s child is having trouble with their grade one homework of reading one chapter per night. Neko’s not even reading Hop on Pop yet!

I think about our impending homeschool facilitator visit, and what I’m going to tell her. Our board is very unschooling-friendly. It’s why I chose them (for those of you in Calgary, we are with Home Learning Connections). Our facilitator is hands-off, unless I need her – then she is available. We’re left to do our own thing, which is what I want. The last time she came, I told her about our regular activities, and our philosophy on Neko learning reading and math when she’s ready, and our facilitator was very supportive. So it’s not that there is any worry of her actually saying, “But you’re finished Grade One and your child can’t read! FAIL!” Still, I have nagging doubts in my mind that question our path.

Then I remember… I look back at all the things we’ve done this year.

Sledding.

Countless playdates.

Cat yodeling.

Tickle fights.

Blanket forts.

Days spent at my parents’ ranch.

Meetings to plan our little off-grid house.

Runs for fun (complete with setting up Neko’s own Daily Mile page).

Lots of neat crafts.

The girls working on their Sharpie tie dye shirts.

Sleep-in days.

Sliding, fully clothed, down a handmade mudslide along the river bank. And on and on. And I realize that given our schedule, we wouldn’t have been able to do half of these things if we had been sitting at home doing worksheets.

I understand that some homeschoolers (lots of them, probably) have time to do both. I’m not saying that just because you’re doing worksheets, you’re not having fun. (I also understand that there are plenty of kids out there who enjoy worksheets and the like and do them by choice.)

But for us, given my work schedule (one full day and two half days each week, plus stints of working from home worked into each day), and us having two extra kids in the house another day and a half each week (when I would prefer to not attempt to make Neko sit down and focus on worksheets, though I suppose I could if I needed to), I really prefer to use our time, while she’s six years old, to slide down mudslides, tromp through the woods, watch old Lindsay Lohan Disney movies while eating pizza, watch silly YouTube videos, go on playdates, do cool crafts and play at the playground.

Don’t let my face scare you. That’s just the gears going, trying to reconcile “Parent Trap” Lindsay Lohan with the current train wreck we see in the tabloids. The pizza (Coco Brooks) is delicious.

I picture myself when she is 10, or 12, or 20. This usually happens when I’m thinking back on Neko at age two or three and reminiscing about how cute and funny she was. She was also a total pain in the you-know-what and I am enjoying six so much more, but she was admittedly hilarious, and we had a lot of fun. I think a lot about how glad I am that we spent as much time together as we did, because we’ll never get to live that age together again. I’m thankful that I nursed her as long as I did; I’m thankful I didn’t need to go back to work full-time (well, really, I worked a TON of hours each week developing the store, but at least it was flexible and I still got to spend lots of time with her); I’m thankful that we went on dates and did silly things together.

I reflect on my favourite memories…

Taking a week to go camping on Summer Solstice when the rest of the kids were still in kindergarten

Having pancakes for supper in fancy dresses at a local pancake house when Justan was away for weeks and we just needed a break

Visiting a photo booth together; going for tons of playdates at our friends’ farm right outside the city; checking out new playgrounds with friends. And I realize that these will be some of Neko’s favourite memories, too.

That’s when I tell myself: It doesn’t matter that she can’t write a sentence yet, or count by twos. Like learning to walk, or talk, these are skills that will come. In the next year or two, most likely. If they don’t, then we’ll look at focusing a little more. But for the rest of our lives, we’ll have these memories to look back on. And then I feel really good about what we’re doing.

Boats! (Or, Oh How I Love Spring)

/ Lindsay / Leave a comment

A love of running water, or so the story goes, runs on my mother’s side of the family. My grandmother, my mother, I and now Neko all have the utter inability to resist running water of any sort – melting snow creating rivers, melting ice creating paths through the still-frozen ice, springs, creeks, rivers, anything. I’ve been known to stop on the side of a mountain road just to inspect a spring runoff creek running in the ditch.

So when a spring dump of snow brought a big melt the following day, sending rushing rivers through the gutters, I could only think one thing: BOATS!

What is more fun than building boats, then floating them down streams? I would argue, pretty much nothing.

My recipe for boats? Styrofoam meat trays (we don’t have many, but I save the ones that pass through our house), toothpicks or bamboo skewers (to be the flagpole of course!), wine corks (for this… we must drink more wine!), string (to retrieve the boats when they go off course), and anything you have around that is light and might be nice for decorating the boats.

In the end, we discovered that the streams didn’t exist in our own neighbourhood (we were in a different quadrant of the city when we spotted them in the morning), however, all you need is a bit of a puddle to have a satisfying boat-floating experience.

We ended up with Neko’s styrofoam-basket-boat with a half, popsicle stick roof, and a flag; my wine cork and popsicle stick boat; and a styrofoam meat tray each for Mairead and Finn.

My best tip? Use hot glue. Seals up the holes, holds things in place, and of course, impervious to water. Fantastic!

Happy spring, everyone!

Two Days in the Life

/ Lindsay / Leave a comment

What might a day in the life of an unschooled only child look like, on a day when her mother is working? Well, like one of these, perhaps.

Currently, on Mondays I need to be at my store at least 3-5 hours. Ideally this will be 12-3, but it’s flexible. Yesterday I had a chiropractor’s appointment in the morning in the same building as my store, and we had the opportunity to join some friends on a nature walk in the afternoon, so our day looked like this:

7:45 am Mom gets up, meditates, does yoga, makes tea, eats breakfast.

8:30 am Neko wakes up, eats breakfast.

9:30 am Mom leaves for the chiropractor and to work at the store for a bit. Neko and dad stay home, Neko watches a bit of TV.

10:45 am Mom comes home, picks up Neko and dad, and we all go to the Weaselhead, a beautiful park here in Calgary that follows the Elbow River into the Glenmore Resevoir and is made up of some really nice woods.

11:00 am – 2 pm We spend a couple of hours roaming the woods in the Weaselhead. We look for deer prints, point out chickadees, see ducks in the river and check out the field where the wild strawberries will grow in the summer. Neko hides in the bushes and we find her every time, which makes her mad. An old friend of Neko’s comes along and the two of them spend the walk beside each other talking quietly – later she tells me they mostly talked about Narnia.

The kids playing on a log down by the river. Sorry about the creepy ghost faces on the kids besides mine.

2:15 pm Dad and Neko drop mom off at the store to work some more. Then they go to the library to pick up some books we had on hold; to Toys R Us so Neko can spend her $20 gift certificate from Nana (she chooses a stuffed cat that meows, purrs and walks); and home for some crackers and cheese.

4:00 pm Neko and dad pick up mom from the store. We get home and Neko runs off to play with the twins from down the street, who are nine (and frankly, not very nice to the six-year-old – cue conversation about how we let others treat us, and how to stand up for ourselves). She plays in the park with them for about an hour. Then we eat delicious Pumpkin Dal over brown rice. She then plays with them for about another hour.

7:00 pm Neko watches a bit more TV.

8:00 pm Neko has a bath, then dad reads a chapter of Prince Caspian to her while mom goes for a run. At 9:00 her eyes are closed before her head hits the pillow.

Today, Tuesday, I had to work all day, so it went more like this:

8:45 am We all wake up. Justan and I didn’t sleep at ALL (weird mutual insomnia) so we are beat. We all stay in bed until 9:15 and snuggle.

9:30 am They drop me off at the store for the day. They come home and eat breakfast. Neko watches The Cat Returns (a Studio Ghibli movie).

12:30 After lunch, they pay a visit to a cool playground near my store. Next, they have to meet up with someone Justan works with.

2:30 A visit to the Glenbow Museum in downtown Calgary, taking in the exhibits and making masterpieces in the art room with watercolour pencils.

4:30 pm Home again. Neko plays with the girls down the street again for about an hour.

5:45 They pick me up from the store. We come home and eat pizza (bought frozen from our favourite local pizzeria). While the pizza cooks, Neko practices typing words in Pages on my laptop.

6:45 pm We go to the park down the street with Neko because she wants to show us the big pine tree she can climb. She can climb really high! We play in the playground for a bit.

7:30 pm We come home and practice writing. I say word combos out loud and Neko writes them, then makes them out of pipecleaners. She gets bored with this and plays on Reading Eggs for a bit.

8:15 pm I read a chapter of Prince Caspian to Neko, she eats some almonds as a bedtime snack, we snuggle and she’s off to sleep.

So there it is. A bit too much TV sometimes (though she watches more on days Justan mainly has her), usually lots of time outside, plenty of socialization, no worksheets, no real structure (she’s a kid who does fine without a routine), and I spend my days wavering between feeling guilty for not giving her more math and literacy work, and confident knowing that she’ll pick it all up when she is ready – maybe in the fall. Maybe when she turns seven. Right now we have lots of time. And she’ll have these sunny days with her friends, and her mom, and her dad, to look back on, always.

Here’s What Happened While I Was Gone

/ Lindsay / 2 Comments

Oops, bad blogger. So, Justan (that’s my husband) went away for about seven weeks. He came home for 1-4 days a couple times in there for a total of about six days, but mostly, Neko and I were on our own. I had all these work engagements scheduled (classes, speaking engagements, trade fairs and so on) during the first couple of weeks, so those two weeks were really stressful. But mostly I just didn’t feel like doing anything by the end of each day, after being “on” all day. So, I didn’t write blog posts. Sorry about that! I’ve got a little rundown here of some fun things that we did, some of which I wish I would have blogged at the time. In fact I might still do separate posts for some of these because there are lots of photos and I want to write more detail.

On February 10th, we made personalized muffins. Mairead and Finn were over, and I made a basic muffin batter and let them each choose two fruits to put in (we had a variety of dried and frozen).

The muffin making process.

We ended up with blueberry-strawberry, strawberry-apricot and blackberry-raspberry. Yum!

On the 13th we were up in Red Deer, where Justan was working on a Hellman’s TV ad. It was a TV spot about a Red Deer school that had decided to get rid of their deep fryers and only serve fresh foods in their cafeteria. If you’re not getting this, Hellman’s pitch right now is that they are mayo made with whole ingredients and therefore… a health food? Anyway. We won’t get into that. It was fun to see the commercial being filmed, because it featured a monster truck crushing a deep fryer, which is something that is, of course, on everyone’s bucket list. It was a neat morning out for Neko and for me. I would have done a blog post just about this, but my mother in law doesn’t have WiFi, so I felt a bit lost while we were there and didn’t get around to accomplishing anything online when we got back.

The deep fryer in its final moments.

I wanted a somber feel for this photo. This is immediately after they killed the deep fryer. Death by monster truck.

While we were at the school, Neko took the opportunity to play for a while. There was a big stack of strawbales that they had initially used to conceal the monster truck, and first she played on those. Then, she used the teeter totter to catapult her stuffed animal and we learned about levers and fulcrums.

Mid-air!

As some of you may have heard, winter skipped Canada this year. February 16th felt like April. So, we invited friends over and went for a walk. We have some really beautiful river parks in our neighbourhood, and we love to spend lots of time in them. We see wildlife like beavers, bald eagles, deer, assorted other birds and coyotes.

Can anyone out there tell whether this is a bald eagle? I find it easier to tell when they’re flying.

We checked out Homeschool Day at the new Telus Spark Science Centre, and I won’t include much on that here, because it deserves its own post, especially since there are lots of people out there interested in reviews. Sure, it was a month ago, but it’s still worth writing about. But here is my favourite shot from that day:

Neko watching the marble as she and her friends test the marble run they built. They did a great job!

Another favourite activity of late was Sharpie tie dye. A friend posted it on Facebook, and I’ve also seen it on Pinterest. It was a huge hit! We’ll definitely be doing this again. Find detailed instructions here: http://theartgirljackie-tutorials.blogspot.ca/2011/10/tie-dye-t-shirts-with-sharpie-markers.html.

The girls tie dyeing their shirts with Sharpies and rubbing alcohol.

Random Fun Round-up

/ Lindsay / Leave a comment

I’m going through pictures today of fun things we’ve done lately and I’m feeling too lazy to group them into separate posts by topic. So, this is  a quick round-up of fun things we’ve done lately.

Last Friday, our friends Jessica, Madison, Annika and Emily came over while Mairead and Finn were here, and we all made meringues. It was a first for all of us, and lots of fun. Technically, we were doing it as a science experiment (learning about how beating the egg whites creates air bubbles which make the meringues fluffy), but it was a darn tasty one.

Beat egg whites, add sugar, and maybe some colour, and maybe even flavour.

They have to bake for a long time at a low heat, so the wait before we could enjoy them was difficult for the kids.

They had fun, though, hanging out with each other.

We all enjoyed them after they were cooked. Here is Finn trying a vanilla meringue.

From the truly random file: Neko staged an epic battle between good and evil in our bathroom, then laid it all out for me and explained just who was whom.

Best quote (as she was picking “teams”): “Spongebob: always evil.”

A big highlight of our month in January was when our great friend Andie stayed with us for a week, on a visit from her home in Australia. Neko loved having someone around who would play “store” with her, and Andie and I went out dancing and stayed out late too many nights on the weekend. We had a ton of fun and we were all exhausted!

We all played Just Dance 3 one night, and worked up a sweat. Andie went right home to Australia and bought herself a copy.

While Andie was here, we had to take her to my store, Babes in Arms, so she could see it. Neko got ahold of the camera and took some photos of me while we were there.

Talking about cloth diapers!

And then I tried Neko in the Boba to see how a 43 lb kid felt in it on my back. The verdict? Super comfy! (This photo, by the way, caused some controversy on the Babes in Arms Facebook page!)

Not that I normally wear her on my back… but hey, as the owner it’s my job to test these things out!

On Andie’s last night here, we learned to play Le Havre (we’re suckers for nerdy German board games). Not Neko… we were confused enough as 30-somethings.

Justan and I are a little befuddled over this shipping and receiving business.

And one last random, fun shot. Last week I realized that, because Neko has a loft bed, I could take two sheets and tuck them between the mattress and frame at the top, so they would hang down and make one giant fort. I had considered it before but for some reason thought that because it would just enclose the space under her bed, where they can always play, that they wouldn’t be interested. But they happily (and quietly!) played in there for a couple of hours! Awesome!! The only caveat? They demanded I keep delivering them carrots to eat. Consider it done!

My eager carrot consumers peek out from their castle.

Saturday: You Are Here for a Reason

/ Lindsay / 4 Comments

This post is the eighth in a series of eight concerning Deepak Chopra’s Seven Spiritual Laws for Parents. For the original post and summary, click here.

Saturday is a day of Dharma. The message today is, “You are here for a reason.”

This day is really neat. It’s the day we look at our own unique talents and find ways that we can use them to make the world a better place. Neko and I had a conversation about her talents and why she might be here – we agree that one of her gifts is a love for animals.

In the future, there are so many fun things we could do on Saturdays. One thing that I would really like to do is to volunteer on that day.

Here are my ideas:

a) list your unique talents – it’s fun to sit down with your child and talk about your unique talents. They might point out a talent of yours that you wouldn’t have identified, and vice versa. How could these talents or gifts benefit others?

b) volunteer your time or efforts – this is especially great if you’re using your talents, but if one of your talents is being personable, or attention to detail, or something else that is applicable in a variety of situations, that leaves you with tons of options for volunteering opportunities!

c) think of ways you changed the world today – this is a nice “lying in bed at the end of the day conversation. Can you think of someone to whom you made a difference today?

d) learn about a famous person who had a purpose in life – read a short biography of someone who had real purpose in their life – Louis Pasteur? Martin Luther King? Mother Teresa?

e) spend time doing something you feel you have a talent for – by practicing what we love, we can enter a state of flow. This is similar to meditation, and is good for the body and soul.

f) tell your child ways they have improved your life today

g) tell your child the story of when they were conceived/born/adopted/came into your life – a big part of your child’s life story and purpose is where they came from and how. Reminisce about these memories with your child.

Movie ideas: Surf’s Up, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Happy Feet, Kung Fu Panda, How to Train Your Dragon, The Muppets

Book ideas: Oliver Button is a Sissy (Tomie dePaola), Augustine (Melanie Watt), Class Clown (Robert Munsch), The Happiness Tree (Andrea Alban Gosline), One (Katheryn Otoshi)