Archive | October, 2011

The Downward Spiral: An Exhausted Mom’s Confession

October 31, 2011 By Melissa

I blogged Thursday about meeting everyone’s needs when you have a breastfeeding baby and older children. But what about meeting our needs? The moms?

I’m making a confession. I am struggling. I’m not sure what to call it yet, but I am exhausted. I am mentally and emotionally spent. I am on a downward spiral, getting close to the guilt-ridden ‘D’ word – depression.

It’s hard to admit.

I want the world to think I have it all together. I want to be one of those moms. The ones that execute beautiful homeschool lesson plans every day, grow their own food, bake meals from scratch, keep the house spotless, have obedient, happy children, and manage to look gorgeous while doing it.

The reality is that I am currently struggling with our homeschooling direction. The thought of even simple lesson planning makes me tear up and my throat feel tight with anxiety.

I don’t want to admit on Twitter what kind of food I often feed my kids.

My house is in such disorder I want to scream most days, and if anyone is going to stop by it throws me into a panic.

My children seem to ignore every word I say.

I’m doing good if I get a shower, much less look presentable.

The reality is that I have had more than one breakdown this month. I feel like I am drowning, and I don’t know how to come up for air.

I’ve been in similar places before, and I know from experience it’s hard to take even one step towards improvement. I tend to just shut down. I am going to fail at everything anyway, so why bother.

But I know that not moving will just lead me further into this downward spiral I’m currently on, so I’m going to try to do something. I’m trying to keep my goals simple:

Honesty

I’ve been honest with a few of my close friends, and now with you in this post. Just putting it out there and admitting where I am is a start.

Connection

When I get in this spiral, I tend to pull back emotionally from everyone, even those I love the most, like my children. I want to make the choice to say yes to them whenever possible. To smile at them. To look in their eyes and remember who they are and how much I love them.

Plan

I’m going to try implementing a written schedule for myself. I’m hoping that having things on paper will help me to actually do them, but I’m not sure. I do know that what I’m doing now isn’t working.

Eat

I need to remember to eat, both physically and spiritually. It’s very easy for me to get busy fixing the kids’ breakfasts, then worry about getting ready for our day, and not take the time to feed myself. Then I feel awful by lunch time, but I am normally the last one to eat then too because I am again trying to get everyone else fed. So I’m going to commit to eating breakfast each morning, whether I feel like it or think I have the time or not.

I need spiritual food even more than I need physical food, and sadly that is something I am guilty of pushing even further down on my priority list. I’m going to try to spend time in the Word every day, even if it’s just a verse or two.

I hope that if I can make the steps above I can slow down the spiral. What do you do when you are feeling burned out and at the end of your rope? How do you take care of your own mental health while taking care of the needs of your family?

Read full story · Comments { 8 } in Homeschool, Keeping it Real, Motherhood, Parenting

Schooling Saturday: Better Late Than Early… I think.

October 29, 2011 By Melissa

Welcome to our Schooling Saturday feature, the place where Melissa updates about her family’s homeschool year, Jeniffer shares how she is preparing to homeschool Abby, and where we both share fun ideas and resources we think you will enjoy as you learn with your children.

I love books, and I love to read. My mom read to me a lot growing up, and I essentially taught myself to read before I started school. It just came naturally to me. I’d heard that same refrain repeated over and over. “Raise your children around books, read to them, and they will probably just teach themselves to read!” So I hardly thought I was unique.

When I had my first child, I started reading to her practically from birth. She’s always loved books, and even as our family has grown, reading has been an important part of our days. I’ve always felt like this was one of the most important things I could do to foster a lifelong love of books in my children, a view that was reinforced after reading The Read-Aloud Handbook several years ago.

My mom reading to the girls on a recent visit

I decided a long time ago to take a very relaxed view on teaching my children to read. I wanted them to initiate. I wanted it to be stress-free and fun. I was comfortable with a later age for beginning reading. Many of my cousins didn’t read until they were well past the “typical” kindergarten age, and they are great readers who read often for pleasure now as adults. What more could I want?

We had lots of fun in kindergarten. We read books, did Five in a Row, continued learning our letters, but did no structured phonics, because I could tell that my daughter really just wasn’t ready for it yet, and I was ok with that. First grade started, and my daughter started showing a large interest in learning to read. She didn’t just want me to read to her, she wanted to be able to read books herself. So we began working a little more earnestly on all of our letter sounds, using various resources, including starfall.com. We had lots of fun! She took a phonics class through a local co-op with a very similar approach to what we were doing. She was SO excited when she finished her first reader! I just knew we were well on our way to a veracious reader.

Now it is nearly November of our second grade year, and we seem to have hit a wall. We are both very frustrated. She no longer is happy practicing in her readers, even though she is still on some of the earliest ones. She wants to read chapter books, like American Girl. But sounding out simple c-v-c words can be torturous at times for both of us. I try to keep things very stress-free. I tell her its ok if she wants to take a break, but I do let her know that if she wants to be able to read it will take practice and may involve some hard work.

So this is where we are. I don’t think there is anything wrong with a seven year old not being able to read fluently. But when the seven year old desperately wants to be able to read and is struggling, it hurts my heart, and I am so scared that the beautiful world of books will start to be dreaded instead of longed for.

Any ‘been there, done that’ homeschooling mamas have some encouragement or advice? Anyone else there with me?

Read full story · Comments { 5 } in Homeschool, Read Alouds, Schooling Saturday

Confessions of the Pocket-Challenged

October 28, 2011 By Jeniffer

In some ways, this is a confessional post. I’m not an all-knowing cloth diaper genius, that’s for sure. Most of what I know has been handed down from listening to lots of cloth diapering discussions and paying attention when people ask questions. I actually started my cloth diaper research after Melissa had Isaiah, which was over 3 years ago. I’ve been hooked ever since! But as far as my actual experience goes?

I’ve only been cloth diapering Abby full-time since around May (part-time since she was about 8 weeks old.) I had the cloth diapers to use, but it took a while to get into the new mommy groove. And we had stacks. and. stacks. of disposables given to us. When I did cloth diaper, I was mostly using flats, though I did have a few (four) prefolds, a discontinued Swaddlebees pocket, and a Bummis AIO (super cute Dr. Seuss print).

And this worked.

Then I won a fitted and bought another. And I won an AIO. It was nice having options to my flats! But it was work. Folding, pinning, snappi-ing, and then the cover. All the while, my little girl was becoming more and more squirmy. Then she outgrew her pocket. Then her first AIO. I grew to hate diaper changes.

Then Melissa received a box. A magical, sparkly-puffed box full of fluffy cloth diaper goodness!

Ok, it wasn’t magical, per se. But it was pretty awesome.

See, inside of this mystical box of fluffy goodness there lay 10 girly diapers. And Melissa doesn’t have girls in diapers. Who does? Oh, that’s right. Me.

Melissa's girly dipes

She let me have 8 of them, saving 2 for a friend who had given her some prefolds, and then gave me 2 white diapers. And hemp inserts. And a wool cover. OMG. I was in fluffy paradise!!

But of these 10 diapers, only one was an AIO. All of the rest were pockets. And I had had only one pocket diaper for Abby. And she had outgrown it in spring!

While we were sorting the diapers, I asked Melissa how to stuff them. For realz. Don’t laugh. When I had tried stuffing, they got all jumbled. They weren’t my favorite because of that. dreadful. stuffing.

Melissa laughed and called me “pocket challenged.” Then she admitted that her inserts never really lay completely flat either, which made me feel SO much better! Here I was, trying to make sure my inserts lay perfectly flat…silly me. Well, after a few weeks of using almost nothing but pockets, I’m certainly not “pocket challenged” anymore!