Life and Death

The decision to keep LucyLearnsALot out of school for the next year was not an easy one.  Or one that we even got to make without a degree of coersion.  We felt strongly that she was ready to join her friends in a structured class environment and to learn things beyond what we've been teaching at home, but unfortunately the school system disagreed. 

In short, we live too far away from work to send her to school near our house, but the schools near our work won't even consider taking her.  Faced with this flagrant lack of cooperation, we did what any sane parent would do: we decided to homeschool and built our own curriculum.

Oh, I mean insane.  Insane parents do that.

Sure, parents homeschool all the time.  Parents who are actually home to parent.  Moms and dads that aren't out of the house for about 60 hours every week.  If you think about it mathmatically, though, one week is comprised of 168 hours, so 60 is not really that much.  Who needs sleep anyway, AMIRIGHT?

Over the last month-ish, I've been slowly piecing together a series of lesson plans.  As I go along, I've become more at peace with the idea of teaching her myself, since I like the idea of  an element of exploratory self-guided discovery as a part of a learning agenda.  I am totally ready for this.
Until I got to the first lesson: death.

Lucy like to play roughly with her brother.  She likes to sit on him and put various things around his neck: her hands, cords, blankets, etc.  We have to watch them carefully while they're playing and strip them of anything that can be used as a garrote while they're playing unsupervised.

I'm a lot like a prison guard.  I might put that on my resume.

The other day when Lucy grabbed her little brother by the neck and threw him into the couch, I'd had enough.  She took a nice, long time out and we had a hard discussion about what happens to her brother when she puts her hands around his neck.  It ended when I told her that when her brother can't breathe for too long, then he would go away forever and she would never see him again.  I didn't stop describing the finality of choking her brother until she was bawling.

Later that same night, we were exploring some information that she wanted to know about seahorses.  For some reason, this has become her favorite animal (this week).  One of the videos we watched showed a seahorse having babies.  It was my opportunity to explain to her how the male seahorses are the ones who have babies, which is different from other animals. 

She was so fascinated that she wanted to watch an elephant have a baby too.  And fish.  And bunnies.  And dogs.

We talked a lot that night about how some animals grow babies in their tummies and eventually push them out of their vagina (hiply referred to in my house as the 'gina) and other animals lay eggs that the babies grown in and then hatch from.

Our night of fun ended when she asked, "How you put babies in the mama?"

I bailed on that answer.  I figured I'd already covered life and death in a matter of just a couple of hours.  Sex can wait.

The Koala Bear Diet

I love Nick Jr.  Most of the time.  Most of the time, they play fantastic programming that helps my kids learn an amazing amount of information.  Sometimes, though, there's a 30-odd-year old dick on there singing about wanting to be a polar bear.

I've always had a certain amount of hatred for grown-ups who sing kid songs.  Even when I was a kid, I wondered how the hell their life went that wrong.

So now PennyPretender wants to be a polar bear.  That leads to this discussion:

PennyPretender: Mama, I want to be a polar bear!
Awesomeness: Ohmigod!! Then go be a polar bear!  (I was eating dinner.)
PennyPretender: Mama, you want to be a polar bear too?
Awesomeness: No, honey.  It's too cold where polar bears live.  Snow is too cold for me.
PennyPretender: What kind of bear are you?
Awesomeness: I would be a grizzly bear.
PennyPretender: And what kind of bear is brother?
Awesomeness: He can be a koala bear (no lectures about what constitutes a "bear").
PennyPretender: So, I am a polar bear and you are a grizzly bear (it actually sounded like "greasy bear") and brother is a koala bear.

So, now that we had that all settled, I thought I could go back to eating dinner.  I was only right for about 10 seconds before FreddyFishNabber decided to steal his sister's Goldfish crackers.

PennyPretender: NO!  NO!  THAT'S A BAD KOALA BEAR!!  Mama, tell Koala Bear that koalas don't eat fish, they eat leaves.

Uh, yeah.  It's one of those moments when I want to concentrate on being super impressed about the fact that she knows what koalas eat, but can't because I have to mediate.  Explaining to a 2-year old that he's going to have to munch on koala-appropriate leaves is not an option.  Explaining to a 5-year old that koala bears sometimes eat fish seemed like a better idea at the time.

PennyPretender: Daddy! Daddy!  I am a polar bear and I live in the snow.  Freddy is a koala bear.  He eats leaves and fish.
Mr. Awesomeness: Koala bears don't eat fish, where did you hear that?

I'm hiding.

This is almost like the time that she ate stale popcorn out of the backseat of the car and I absent-mindedly told her that, "When things don't taste good, they're probably not very good for you."

Parenting Fail # 163.

I Just Don't Know

I haven't been able to (yes, yes, I'll get you some juice) write much lately and I (stop biting my arm) really don't know what the (are you okay?  where's the booboo?) problem is. 

I have (no, we don't take off our peedy diapers and put them on Mama's laptop while she's typing) plenty of time and the kids (get that basket off your brother's head!) like playing together (give your sister back her train!).

Mr. A helps keep them out of my (is it time for PerpetuallySickPetunia's medicine?) hair so I can get stuff (GET OFF THE COUNTER!!!) done.  NappyTimeNorman still takes some (SHHH! No screaming while your brother's sleeping.  Let's play in your room.) pretty good naps.

It's just so (stop using my arm as a monkey bar) amazing how lazy I've been (get off my neck, you're choking me) lately about keeping (yes, we'll watch Team Umizoomi in a minute, Mama's busy) up with my blogs.  It's, like, worse than (quit crying in my face...I said in a minute) usual lately.

Maybe (aw, do your teeth hurt little buddy?) it's because I've been (GET OUT OF THE BLINDS YOUNG LADY!) sick this last week...

I mean I feel (where's your panties?  you had them on a second ago) much better and I'm getting plenty (stop pushing the couch into your brother) of rest.  There's really nothing (PUT DOWN MAMA'S WII!) stopping me from getting anything (I hear you, I'll get you a sandwich in a minute) done.  I just need to find (do you have to go potty?) some inspiration.  I might just (NO! NOT ON THE FLOOR!  WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU!!?)...

I give up.

Daddy's Little Girl

Yesterday, at preschool, some little girl shoved our daughter. It was bound to happen. She was isolated from other kids for so long, that she gets a little overly friendly (stalker!) when she's playing. She also doesn't communicate very well, so the children don't understand her.

I understand. Mr. A, on the other hand, does not. I was informed of the incident when I checked on her at lunch time. I called up Mr. A right away:

"Did they file an incident report?"
They always do.
"Did they write the name of that little shit on the report?"
No, they're not going to do that.
"I'll shove that little shit."
You're not going to shove a 3-year old.
"I'll shove her mom."
No, you're not going to shove her mom. No one's getting shoved.

I have a funny feeling that he won't be so concerned when it comes time for Baby Boy to go to preschool. The conversation will go more like this:

"Did he shove him back?"
No, he didn't.
"What a pussy! He didn't kick him?"
No, he didn't.
"How could he just stand there and take that? Have I taught him nothing?"
He's 2. What are you teaching a 2-year old about fighting?
"Maybe it's time to start him in karate."
Ugh.