Jam Session

I regularly read the wonderful blog of an amazing homeschooling mom with a houseful of musician children. This is the kind of family who goes and plays music for dying members of the community and at nursing homes, among a million other worthy and community-minded activities that leave us looking rather wanting, to be honest. I try not to be jealous, but rather inspired, which I usually am. I do admit, though, that I feel just a twinge of jealousy when I hear of all the amazing music they play. Today, however, I was roused off the couch by the sound of the jam session in my driveway, which has so far lasted for about and hour and a half! I see great things ahead.

Walk Tour of Portland Bridges

Today we went on a wonderful guided walking tour of Portland bridges and the area surrounding the river between the Broadway and Morrison bridges. We started at the Max station by Lloyd Center, rode it down to the Rose Quarter, and ended up walking over 4 miles and crossing 4 bridges.

Our tour guide, Peter, was a wealth of great information and stories about the art we saw, Portland history, and the buildings and bridges we saw. It was rather terrifying standing in the middle of the Broadway and Morrison Bridges, but I just kept a death grip on M and tried think of things other than children plunging into the river and whether I should jump after them if they did. (I shouldn’t, since I can barely swim, but I can’t imagine standing there and doing nothing). Fortunately A was happy to keep a respectful distance away from the railing.

We had some really good luck, in addition to the great planning of our tour guide. The weather was actually perfect, overcast and cool--no rain, no wind, and no sun beating down on us. Also, while we were walking along the Eastbank Esplanade, the paddle- wheel steam boat fired up, let out some truly remarkable toots, and headed downriver, where both the Burnside and Steel bridges opened up for it. We also saw a sea lion swimming around in the river. A great time was had by all.

Attitude

Boy, I really woke up on the wrong side of the bed today. I went out for a walk/jog, and only went about 2/3 as far as I usually do, even though it was cool and moist and really quite nice out. When I came back home the kids were full of ideas of things they wanted to do today, and it just felt like a big list of demands. This was purely my own fault, that I felt put upon by these requests. First of all, we do almost always have some activities we three do together on my days off work, so naturally the kids assumed that I was going to do some things with them today. If I want the day off from activities with the kids, I can just say so--no need to act put-upon or resentful. 

In any case, I told them to think of what they wanted to do while I took my bath, and we'd figure out a plan for the day when I was out. I laid in the bathtub and felt sorry for myself while they came up with a list full of worthy activities (M: make a crystal, bake something yummy; A: watch a DVD about Queen Elizabeth I, play a bean bag throwing game she likes, do an art project, make a list of places on the map for her to find, and all dance together). I couldn't get interested in any of their ideas, even though I actually checked out the Queen Elizabeth dvd for myself.

In fact, I was tired and grumpy and wouldn't have minded doing any one of those activities normally, but was just feeling buffeted by their "demands", which of course weren't demands at all, just requests. In my head I'm adding all the other things I had to do: make breakfast, clean the kitchen, go grocery shopping, make lunch, clean the kitchen again, make dinner, make sure the kids take baths, make sure A practices, do a little math practice, and I really wanted to go to OMSI to watch the landing of a probe on Mars...). My whole attitude was stupid, though. Of course I couldn't do everything the kids wanted to do and get everything done on my list, so my job was to sort through the to-dos for the day and come up with a plan that would work and that would leave me feeling neither exhausted nor resentful nor neglectful. 

It is easy for me to think that I have to do everything, but actually the other members of my household are quite cooperative when it comes to household chores. We actually wrote out a schedule for the day, which made my schedule-loving daughter's heart sing. In the end, the kids each got to do two of the things they wanted to do (M: crystal, making something yummy (Dutch baby for breakfast), A: bean bag game, and the Queen Elizabeth dvd). They also helped by making breakfast, helping with dinner, bringing in and putting away the groceries, and doing the dinner dishes. I got most of the stuff accomplished that I wanted to do, and got to watch the Queen Elizabeth dvd (which I had also wanted to watch, actually) and take a 3-hour nap!

After dinner M took at least and hour to do the dishes, while I relaxed on the couch and tried to read, in between his conversational gambits (covering Dracula (from numerous angles), speculations about whether a really strong metal could disable a metal detector, rabies, speculations about whether someone will someday discover something that goes faster than light, etc. etc.) and A practiced her piano almost the whole time. Talk about diligence. A used to have such a hard time playing with the metronome. In fact, for the first couple of years of piano lessons there was usually absolutely no relationship between the metronome's clicks and the speed of her playing. But tonight she played several pieces perfectly with the metronome, at many different speeds, and switched between clicking on eighths to clicking on quarters. Truly, tremendous progress.

Anyway, today was a good lesson in how my feelings of resentment and being put upon are purely of my own making. I just need to do my job of balancing my needs with those of the household, and I can't get dragged down by thoughts of all the things I'm not doing. I'm doing enough.

Vashon Island

Last weekend we went to the beautiful Vashon Island, off Tacoma, WA. We had a fabulous time with four other families from our homeschool group (alas, we were missing 2 families). We stayed at the hostel there, sleeping in teepees and fixing our meals in a kitchen that was in building made of whole logs from the property. We actually had the use of two kitchens, and there was a third building that had a piano in it. The feature that probably got the most use, however, was a huge grassy field--probably 200 yards long and 100 or more wide. A was wishing that Capture the Flag was an Olympic sport because she thought we could put up a credible team (she suggested Zac for captain, by the way, for his calm head and good sense of strategy). At one point they tried wheelbarrow tag, though it didn't last all that long (see above). We spent one afternoon at a beach at low tide that had a tide pool (? I guess it was a tide pool--it looked like a stream but was salty) filled with various types of crabs and little fish and other miscellaneous wildlife. We even found a couple of small razor clams that we got to see live, in action. The kids made a bunch of little pools that they filled with living creatures they collected, along with rocks, shells, driftwood, and seaweed. They probably gathered up at least 50 hermit crabs amongst them all.

It poured rain on the last night, which highlighted the down-side of staying in teepees, but it was actually nice to have something to motivate us to get up and on the road. It is perfect to be able to leave with no regrets that we were going back to our warm, dry house. I'd love to make that trip an annual event, but unfortunately the woman who runs the place is selling it after this summer, and I doubt it will remain the reasonably priced hostel that it is now.

Sunny Skies

I consider myself someone who is perfectly happy in gray, drizzly weather. And yet, I've been rather grumpy these last couple of weeks, and the grumpiness kind of melted away when the sun came out.

M planned out his agenda for tomorrow and had me write it down for him so he doesn't forget:

1. Run through the sprinklers

2. Bake cookies 

3. Lay in front of a fan and listen to a book on tape

4. Make one of the crystals in my crystal kit

5. Go to OMSI

6. Eat the cookies.

If I was setting the kids' agenda, this is just the kind of list I'd want to put together. Sometimes I fret about not doing enough structured schoolwork, sometimes I'm perfectly content doing maybe 3-5 hours worth of structured school work per week, and sometimes it seems like most of the structured work is a waste of time. The thing I repeatedly come back to, though, is that a reasonable amount of structured work is good, and it is good to take breaks from it. When the kids are filling their time with baking, doing science experiments, drawing, writing stories and plays, playing outside, using their bodies and imaginations, living in the physical, natural world or the world of imagination, I'll almost never interrupt them to do schoolwork. But my kids also like to use the analytic/academic parts of their brains, and sometimes they look to me to feed these parts of their brains, and this is when structured school work is just the ticket. Also, there are some particular skills I think it is important to learn (like basic math), so we find a way to fit those things in on a fairly regular basis.

On beautifully summer days like today, after what seems like 10 months of cold and rainy weather, playing with friends, spraying each other with the hose on the trampoline, swinging, watching ants wrestle crumbs along the driveway, and laying around in the shade staring at the trees are exactly the right things to be doing.

A Beautiful Day

Yay, I played chamber music (string quartets) today for the first time in about 3 months and it was just glorious. Not that we sounded glorious, exactly, but it was so much fun. And we did have some pretty good moments. Even imperfectly played, the second movement of Dvorak's American gives me chills. My calluses are almost completely gone, and my fingers were the first to give out (cello strings are much bigger than violin strings!) I've got to get practicing again. And, a new violinist sat in for our second violinist who is out of town, and she was wonderful to play with. She is looking for a regular group and is wanting to play piano trios, so I'm going to try to set something up with her, me, and a really wonderful pianist I worked on the Schumann quintet with a couple of years ago. I'm not sure how to squeeze it in, but I've just got find a way. I've improved a lot in the upper registers in the past 5-10 years, and I don't want to lose what I've gained.

My husband and I also played some fiddle-guitar stuff that sounded not too bad, considering I'm a cellist and not a violinist and don't have a very good violin. A little screechy and out of tune on my part, but we had a great time, anyway.

The kids and I cleaned the house like crazy this morning--skipped church to do it. Since we usually have people over every week or so, we manage to clean it about every week, but we haven't had anyone over for several weeks and things were looking pretty bad. This was one of those perfect days when I had time to do all the things that I really wanted to do--played music, worked in the yard, cleaned the house, finished our read-aloud sitting outside in the shade on the trampoline, had a delicious dinner. I guess we didn't get any schoolwork done, but it still felt like a productive and good day. 

Something to Add to the Resume

Here is yet another example of the boundless talent that can be found at our house.

His lips are a little tired by this time of day, but still--don't you just want to scoop him up because he's so darn cute?