Nine

Time is racing by. Today, I looked at my sweet, beautiful, radiant 9-year old daughter and had a momentary freak out.  She is nine.  NINE.  When I was nine, I definitely began feeling the early surges of independence.  At times I was fully compelled to rebel against authority, whether it was a teacher, an adult in charge, or my parents.  I was obsessed with horses and the idea of a boyfriend.  I was completely enamored with my friend Suzanna, who breezed in and out of each day with authority and confidence.  I risked punishment to do what I wanted to do, and did it even when I was commanded to stop.

I wanted my parents to understand me, and to listen to me, and to tell me that I could go right on ahead and do what I wanted to do.  But my Dad was mostly absent, as he traveled extensively for work, and my Mom was fundamentally unable to understand my desire and need for more control of my life.  This was the year where she and I began to be at odds with each other more often than not. It was the year I began to be grounded.   It was the first time I based my decisions about what to do based on whether or not I would get in trouble. It was the year I began to be spanked with a wooden spoon because apparently the force needed had somehow grown greater.

When I look at my precious daughter, I am blown away by how big, yet little she is.  I see the age of nine as another year of experience, another year of growth.  But the time it has taken to get to age nine seems about a fraction of nine whole years.  It seems like it’s been about 2 years, maybe. 

So, when I see this great kid growing up and being NINE, and I think about where I was emotionally, physically, and relationship-wise when I was nine, I am completely blown away.  She is much more innocent that I was.  Still very much dependent on me for the tiniest of things.  Very much unwilling to spread her wings of independence, and, in fact, not willing to even consider them.  At this moment, I am so thankful that I can still help her with so many things that I wouldn’t have ever asked help for at her age.  I'm gracious for the opportunity to observe her growing at her own pace, and without the bulk of the demands and situations that shaped me by my 9th year. 

Kids grow so fast.  I knew time flew before I had kids, but it seems like once they are a part of your life, the calendar hits rocket-speed, and only continues to go faster.  I am hoping I can find ways to span moments into lifetimes more often, so that all this doesn’t just pass me by.

I promise to work more on being the kind of perfect parent I want to be, because my precious, beautiful, amazing, quirky, funny, silly, and brilliant girls deserve that more than anything else.

Today, I am very much feeling the passing of time, and feeling a little blue about it. And I rarely feel blue...

Ch...Ch...Ch....Changes....

I have not created a post in a long while.  The holidays, illness, work, and more illness has interfered with my ability to stay on track with regular posts.

So much change seems to be going on within the lives of my kids, and in me, and it is not easy to document all that I want to with regards to life learning.  I have been reading so, so much about radical unschooling lately, and every day I want more, more, more to fill up my brain so that I'm at maximum capacity with understanding all that I can about trusting my children, responding to their needs and desires, bringing them a world of interesting things, and being a nurturing and responsive parent who is not critical, cynical, or mean.

This winter has been challenging in some respects because we've not had much snow, we've had a lot of very cold weather that makes being outside unpleasant, we've had two different viral infections, and I think all of us are a little stir-crazy.

The upside has been going to my nephews basketball games, where the girls can meet up with friends and new acquaintances, and play in a completely different setting of the gym.  It's been loads of fun to watch them explore the gym, talk to policemen, interact with young teens, kids their age, and all those in-between. 

N. got an iPod Touch for Christmas, which she requested, and uses every day.  It was definitely the perfect technological tool for her.  She can take pictures and videos, watch TV shows and movies, listen to and sing along to music, and play games.  Some of the apps are so creative, and it's fun to see how she transforms her own pictures into creative works of art.  Now if only I could figure out how to communicate with the router so she can get online with it!

N. is also changing in big ways.  Being 8 is such a profound time.  She suddenly has a personal awareness of her place in the world, and a much vaster comprehension of her likes and dislikes.  Emotionally, this awareness can be challenging.  She misses her best friend so much that it hurts physically.  Then the mundane reality of conflicting schedules, illness, and other life stuff causes great big emotional reactions when things don't really go her way.

I can recall being 8 pretty vividly.  But being in school, and being a minority, made things challenging for me in ways that are much different than what N. is experiencing.  For me, I had so much freedom and desire to be outside, and I was all the time.  We rode horses every day, rode bikes, played in the mud, made our own adobe houses, and hotwheels tracks out of dirt embankments.  We played in the river, and just explored every inch of every place we called our own. My desire to be with my friends was generally met easily and without much conflict.

N. prefers to be close to home, and her discomfort and anxiety levels escalate when things get pushed outside her comfort zones.  She has a great desire to see her friend each week, but between families getting sick lately it's been hard to get together enough.  Hopefully nicer weather will bring more ability to get together.

Little S. is expanding her horizons as well.  She's suddenly, and overnight writing letters and numbers.  She has been enjoying me reading to her before bedtime, and she's been pretty easygoing and even keel.

My biggest dilemma is working and not being able to be present enough for my kids each day.  All the illness meant much more time together, and I did relish every bit of it.  Just being sweet, and caring, and giving to them when they were feeling bad meant so much to me.  I have wished for decades now that I could be the one who stays home, but alas, it is still not meant to be.  This aspect to our life-learning journey is the most difficult.  Add to that my extremely gung-ho attitude when it comes to my own interests, and it makes for some feelings of guilt and many questions of how things will evolve.

I'm very excited, however, to learn that there will be 3 Always Learning Live Unschooling Conferences in Albuquerque within the next 1.5  years.  I'll post more about that as I learn more.