As your crayons, markers, and paints, we wanted to commend you for the passionate and endless ways you have used us. Most art supplies are created, packaged, and fated to be sent to homes for ordinary purposes such as coloring books and construction paper. The majority of paints have an even darker fate: a home where the mother puts them away in a cupboard out of the children’s reach. Can you imagine? But not you. When your mother tucked us away, you faithfully retrieved us, spreading paint all over the blank canvas of your body, carefully reaching between your toes, and even the bottoms of your feet (to make sure we painted the floor when you walked). Genius! You, Blythe and Olive, knew the world needs color, and your mother must have recognized this too. Why else would someone paint their house in shades of white and light neutrals or have entirely white bedding, except to create a place for us, the tools of your artist expression, to shine? Even when she and your dad insist they intended the blank spaces of wall and cloth for their own beauty and design, you know better. Yep. You joyfully persevere in full force, swirling with varied intensity all over those forsaken places. And when they repaint the walls or use those horrid Magic Erasers, it increases your resolve to start again or try a new space, such as the windows, your clothing and toys, and of course, our personal favorite, the interior of your mom’s car. We, your loyal art supplies, want to reassure you: we value this, even when your parents do not.  And of course, we will highly recommend you to our relatives, the permanent and even more versatile art supplies, who can thrive well beyond the Magic Eraser.

With deep gratitude,

your washable art supplies

p.s. Forgive us; we should have included your mother’s make-up in this letter as well. In lieu of our oversight, we’ll include a lipstick-used-as-paint picture. I don’t think they’ll mind.

p.s.s. Blythe, we’re sorry. Your parents had “discovered and dealt with” all of your projects before we could document them. We’ll try to arrive more quickly to scene next time.

When people ask me, “How did you decide to homeschool?” I’m still stumped. Usually (because I don’t go into as much detail with everyone), I  begin with you, Liam, and the conversation I had with your pre-K teacher so many years ago after you had told me you didn’t like school and just wanted to stay home. I didn’t understand: Your teacher, also an artist, adored you, always doting on your love for storytelling and art. She would tell me, “I give Liam as much time as possible in the art and writing centers because he doesn’t seem to want to do much else.” You have always been fearlessly independent, easily engaging new people, so I knew this dread of school was due to neither a fear of leaving me/home nor a lack of affection within your pre-school environment. Dad and I went back to the drawing board, so to speak. We had friends who had or were planning on home-schooling, and this was the first time I actually began thinking about it as an option for you. I started reading, of course. First, I borrowed, So You’re Thinking About Homeschooling: Fifteen Families Show You How You Can Do It by Lisa Whelchel, a fast read through several different families’ style of homeschooling. Who knew home-centered education could be so diverse? Then I read Susan Wise Bauer’s The Well-Trained Mind, and I was hooked, although I wasn’t entirely quite sure to what. You finished your pre-K year, and I began to teach you how to read at home. You’ve always loved learning, Liam. Always. Voraciously absorbing anything we would read to you, I naturally assumed teaching you to read would be easy. Nope. Lesson #1: Don’t assume. You have thus far been the most difficult of our three readers to teach, in part because you hate sitting for a formal lesson of any sort and another part because you would try to read to too fast, leading to tracking issues. We solicited help, and you spent three months meeting weekly with a reading specialist, whom you loved! You learned how to read with more confidence, and I observed and learned how to channel my inner elementary school teacher squealing voice of encouragement.  Lesson #2: Always encourage. I now have to tell you to stop reading: before breakfast, at the table, when it’s time to clean up from our day, or get ready for bed. You and Burke both enjoy reading enormously (can you feel me grinning?). Lesson #3: Revel in accomplishment, no matter how small.

This brings me to our current topic, worksheets. Remember how I mentioned your loathing of most formal lessons? Well, that more appropriately applies to the “m” word — math; you languish at the very mention of it. You see, most of our “school day,” we read, recite, and discuss ideas, while you all build with blocks or Legos or draw or paint. Math is the one area of our day you have to deal in absolutes — either the answer is right or it’s not. And you desperately HATE being wrong. Lesson #4: We all fail. Trying to engage you, I’ve experimented with many things these last three years, such as standing, laying on your stomach, or sitting on a bouncy ball during our math lessons; changing the time of day; or even as of late, changing to a computer-based curriculum (enticing because you hardly get to be on the computer). But still, you wither. The truth is we learn quite differently, Liam. I gladly would sit and listen to a teacher, complete whatever work(sheet), and move on. You want to participate, always questioning. You want to touch and build and play. You still have an insatiable love to learn. You want a conversation. A story. A Lego sculpture. A play. Not a worksheet. Not a fill-in-the-blank. And certainly, not a “lesson.”  I love this about you. I love how you inspire those around you to learn and explore and see the world differently.  Yet, some days I am ready to pull my hair out watching you will yourself against a sheet of paper. I mean it’s just a worksheet. Why is this so hard? You understand the concepts. Just do it. Lesson #5: You are not me. And this is a hard lesson, still. The goal is not to conform you to me, seeing the world the way I do. Instead, our goal is to help mature and develop/flourish you into you (whomever the Lord has created you to be), and that requires faith. So I recite to you what I often need to hear myself: “The Lord has made us different people and put us in the same family. So there’s something in you to teach me, just like there’s something in me to teach you. And sometimes. Just sometimes. We all have to do things we don’t want to do. For you right now, Liam, it’s this math lesson.” You sweetly ask for me to pray for you. I later talk with Dad; I talk with Nina; I talk with other home-schooling moms; and I read more, wondering if this process really is for us. I read The Dumbest Generation by Mark Bauerlein, Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher’s Journey through the World of Compulsory Schooling by John Taylor Gatto, How Children Learn and How Children Fail by John Holt, The Montessori Method by Maria Montessori, and The Core by Leigh Bortins. I feel more resolved, encouraged, and confident. And sometimes our “great ideas” agree, like last week when we declared that from now on all of your (including Burke’s and Blythe’s) finished math worksheets and scratch paper must be used to design new paper airplanes. (And thanks to the modern era of the world-wide web and google, we have instructions.)

Below are pictures from some of our “school” days within the last year, also your sketches on our chalkboard, with pencil, pastels, or a pen. I included the picture of our geography map from last year, when we were learning the European waters, and you showed me how they each resembled a sleeping dragon, a space ship, a Pteranodon, etc., an enlightening moment for me as to how your spatial-oriented brain works.

So what else could be a perfect way to segue into the second part of our holiday with my family than taking Blythe to her first Nutcracker ballet at the Bass Hall? Kristen, Blythe, and I loaded into the car, while Mark and Tim loaded the other with the rest of the crew, and we headed to Fort Worth to meet my mom, Pam, the sisters (sadly, minus Kayla), and two nieces for a magical afternoon of dancing flowers and snowflakes, the Sugar Plum Fairy, and of course, the Nutcracker himself.  They even had “snow” falling on the crowd this year during the Snow Queen’s dance! Again, I have pictures thanks to Kristen! Starting with Blythe sipping her hot cocoa on the way there and sleeping on the way home. Nice. We had such a restful and enjoyable time over our holiday season, regardless of what can only appropriately be called a rumpus.

A Friday ritual. A single photo capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor, and remember. (inspired by soulemama)

But, seriously, how can I begin to describe the blessing, laughter, and immeasurable delight I receive as a mother in return for what may appear to onlookers as utter insanity? Well, I just don’t know. But I do know somewhere in this process–in this laying down beneath blankets of legos, dress-up, laundry, meal preparation, potty training, lesson plans, and other miscellaneous clutter–I’m learning more about Jesus, about Love.

(this one’s for you, Tif.)

Cheers to 2012 and to life! This life that pulls and fills and exhausts, only to leave me bloated with unspoken words at the end of the day. And the next. And the next. Until now. I’ve sat down so many times to record something, anything really. Maybe it was the time Olive found a grub worm in the backyard, and Liam encouraged her to eat it by asking,”Olive, do you want to live the home life or do you want to live the wild life?” (Thank you, Bear Grylls.) Or maybe it was when I had the kids at Starbucks and turned around to find Blythe had stuffed her shirt with the paper shreds from one of the buckets exclaiming, “Look, mom! I have boobies!” Or maybe it was when Burke told us he wasn’t going to work when he grows up; instead he would live in a giant hole and discover a dinosaur bone when he needs some money to eat. Or maybe when Olive covered herself head to toe in fuchsia lipstick, or markers, or paints. Or was it when the kids dug a pit the size of a small pond in the backyard?  Or how about when Mark asked Burke if he sins, and he responded, “yeah. but not as much as Blythe.” Or when Olive called her younger, but bigger cousin Shepherd “a tiny guy.” Who knows. It’s now mostly lost to our personal Dark Age, a time without many words or pictures. Regardless, here we come, out of the dark. Happy New Year!

The kids celebrated by making kites out of trash bags and running in the sun–a glorious way to greet a new year.