Dessert Before Dinner

Yesterday evening my children asked me to have ice cream at 6:00pm. The Oldest One's guitar teacher was on his way over and I was getting ready to fix dinner so that we could eat around 6:45 after his lesson was over. My first inclination was to say no. We can wait to have ice cream for dessert, after we had eaten our healthy food first. The boys stepped up their requests and added, "Please Mom! Just this once!" And it occurred to me...What is the big deal about waiting until after dinner (sugar soon before bed) to eat a sweet treat? Does it have that much effect on how much other food they will eat an hour later? What is the ultimate difference in eating ice cream instead of say, a chocolate and peanut butter granola bar, which I would have had no problem with them eating at that moment. Would the joy they would experience at this novelty and the feeling of me being "with them, not against them" outweigh any consequences of eating dessert before dinner? And by teaching them to wait to "suffer" through the healthy stuff to get to the good stuff, am I teaching them that eating healthy is a horrible thing to endure before getting to the sugar-laden treat?

Within the 30 seconds it took for all of these questions to swirl in my head, I decided to say YES to life, to say YES to abundance, and say YES to dessert before dinner. The results were beautiful to behold. They shrieked in delight as I spooned the ice cream into their bowls. They proudly showed the guitar teacher has he entered our home and shared their good fortune with a big smile on their faces. The Youngest One asked me to help him finish a dinosaur jigsaw puzzle he had been working on earlier that day and we sat down together, ice cream in hand, to complete the task. They both willingly asked to help clear and set the table for dinner, something that isn't normally part of their responsibilities. And as for that healthy food? They ate up a normal amount for each of them, both tasting their baked potatoes, eating their salmon and all of their broccoli. After dinner, it was an hour of creative pretend play outside while I read a magazine on the patio. Pure magic.

We all scream for ice cream!

When thinking about what transpired with one little YES to life, it occurred to me that I was not only saying yes to dessert before dinner. I was also saying yes to them trusting their own bodies and what they needed and wanted. I was saying yes to embracing joy and spontaneity and flexibility. I was saying yes indeed ice cream and vegetables are both part of our diet and one doesn't have to be a reward over the other. And ultimately, I was saying YES to abundance. We do not need to live in a world of scarcity, where there is only a certain amount of food you can fit in your tummy so you better make it count. In the world we live in, there is room for broccoli and ice cream. There is enough for everyone, so no need to hoard, block, compare, or compete. Although we probably will not be eating dessert before dinner every night, the lessons learned from this experience were too sweet to refuse.

May your days be filled with ordinary magic and extraordinary beauty.
Namaste~
Amber

Cinnamon Nut Butter Dates

I am the first to admit I am not the world's best cook or an aspiring chef. However, my husband is now paleo, my son tries to eat a low-gluten diet, and I am a vegetarian that tries to eat very little dairy and gluten and as much raw foods as possible. We all strive for as organic and local as we can get as well...unless we are lazy and order a pizza. :) Since my family has gone down the road of dietary changes, I am finding myself tweaking recipes beyond recognition and coming up with things that taste good and meet our needs. I wanted a place to record these recipes to come back to time and again (without losing the piece of paper) and a way to share them with others. What better place than my blog? So, here is the first of my tweaked, yummy recipes which I call Cinnamon Nut Butter Dates. (Anyone have a more clever title?)

Ordinary Magic: A Day in the Life of an Unschooler

Have you ever had one of those days where nothing special happens but ordinary magic is just woven through your day? Today would be one of those days.

The Oldest One (6-years-old) woke up and immediately started building with Legos, asking me to come into the room with him to read my book. With coffee and a copy of Homeschooling Our Children, Unschooling Ourselves by Alison McKee, I settled down as he focused on his creations. After a few minutes, he looked up at me and I said very matter-of-factly, "I am so glad you get to be at home with us more now during the day. I just love having you here with our family." He smiled and said, "I know...I love homeschooling! No worksheets!" (This is a deal that we had made when we withdrew him from his kindergarten public school classroom two months ago.) "You really didn't like those worksheets, did you?" "NO! They were too easy! Just circle this...write this number there," he explained. "I don't like Fill-in-the-Number, but I do like...what do you call it? Fill-in-the..." "Blank?" I guessed. "Yah! Fill-in-the Blank!" I asked him if he remembered the Mad Libs that we had done before and pulled out the Lego Star Wars one sitting on the shelf next to me. "I love those! Can we do those today?" he asked excitedly. "Sure!" I replied. "How about right now?" So, we spent the rest of the morning before breakfast coming up with nouns, adjectives, verbs, plural nouns, and the like to fill into the stories, making us both laugh as they sounded silly with the random substituted words. The Littlest One (age 4) woke up and wanted to do it too, so until our child care friends arrived, during their nap time, and even during the Oldest One's tball game (to keep the Littlest One busy on the bleachers), we discussed the meaning of these parts of speech and thought of examples for our silly stories. 

When our three toddler friends arrived for our child care day, we went out into the backyard and spent two and a half hours outside. We made homemade sidewalk chalk paint by mixing corn starch, water, and food coloring and painted on the concrete. We picked dandelions and measured how long the stems were using a ruler. We had to add the first 12 inches to the remaining length of these super tall flowers. Then we compared the results of the flowers, noting which one was longest, shortest, and subtracting the number of inches from one another to know how different they were in height. Nothing like math learning with dandelions! 

Artists Busy at Work

The Oldest One also brought out paper, scissors, and tape and made decorations for his club house (aka the dog igloo that the dog never uses). He made a sign that read, "Get Out Eli", which made me smile because he hasn't been doing a ton of writing lately and my first thought was...'Well, at least he's writing!' The Littlest One pulled out a big cardboard box from the garage that we had converted into a house with doors and windows. He then got another piece of paper and pen and marched over to where his brother's sign was hung and used it to copy "Get Out" for his own sign. They helped their dad bring their chicks from their warm spot in the garage to the side yard for a few hours in the sun on the warm day and ate snack on a blanket spread out with the toddlers. A beautiful morning outdoors!

Inside as I prepared lunch and their dad read to the toddlers, the boys took their paper and markers to the kitchen table and started making pictures for the three sets of grandparents that we mail cookies to each month. (I had this bright idea of a 'Cookie of the Month Club' for Christmas thanks to Pinterest. It is very lovely in that the kids get to think of their grandparents and help bake cookies and go to the post office to mail them each month, but honestly...it takes some convincing to get them to write a letter that often at this point. So...a picture and a few words is enough.) The Oldest One wrote 'I Love You' on his own and signed his name and the Littlest One had drawn a picture of Darth Maul and asked me to write it on a separate piece of paper so he could copy it. (Can you tell we have some Star Wars obsessed kiddos?) It was nice to see them drawing and writing more, as it had been a couple weeks where it seemed that the only thing that they were interested in was Lego building and playing 'Batman' with Imaginext toys. Two months in to this method of homeschooling and I am starting to see the ebbs and flows of learning that is natural for them. 

After completing more Mad Libs, the boys went with their Dad during the toddlers nap time to mail the cookie packages. Our afternoon progressed with the Oldest One reading a Level 1 book aloud to one of the toddlers after he told me he didn't want to read out loud to me, but maybe he could read to our little friends. I read Green Eggs and Ham to both boys along with some other toddler-specific books to the whole group. The Littlest One dressed up as a ninja and a cowboy...actually, a cowboy ninja. He then drew another picture for another grandparent and asked for my help in writing our address on the envelope. "601 what?" he asked. Although the address was written from right to left and way too large to use in a real mailing, I was proud of his initiative and accuracy of letter writing. We sang and danced to music, they did more Lego building, and then rode bikes outside before dinner and a Tball game. This evening before bed we snuggled up and I read the same book that the Oldest One read earlier that day by the Littlest One's request. Then we read an entire Magic Tree House book about polar bears, which we have been studying on and off for the past couple months. It was fun to compare that book to the one written about the polar bears by Magic School Bus we had read last month. 

Early Childhood...ALL of Childhood Matters, Indeed!

So, at the end of the day, I cannot say that anything extraordinary happened. I spent time with three toddlers and a preschooler and a kindergartner all day. The boys did some math, reading, writing, science, art, building, gross motor activities, spent a lot of time outside, and interacted within the community. However, the atmosphere or attitude while completing these activities throughout our day was one of freedom. Of joy. Of curiosity. Of gratitude. Of love. And that is the magic of it all. 

May your days be filled with ordinary magic,

Amber

Skid Steer Math

It was 9:20pm and I was busy cleaning up the dirt that covered our kitchen counter and floor from starting seeds for the garden when I heard the Oldest One yell from the bathtub, "MOM! Does 52 times 7 equal 308?" Dang, I thought...Is he right? I laid down the dust pan next to the 62 little peat pots and grabbed a pencil and paper to take with me to the bathroom.

I wrote down the math problem and discovered that he was really close for doing that equation in his head at six-years-old. I told him that the answer was 364 and asked if he wanted to see how I figured that out on paper. He eagerly said yes and I talked him through my thought process. Then he asked what would happen if the bottom number had double digits instead of being just seven. We agreed upon a number to test and I again talked him through the steps of multiplying 52 by 12.

He then asked me, "How much do you think a Bobcat costs? Could I earn enough in seven or twelve years to buy one?" Before our seed planting that evening, we had been at a community event in our city called "Tons of Trucks" where children were encouraged to climb inside big city trucks, construction vehicles, emergency vehicles, and the like. The Bobcat skid steer was his favorite and he declared he was going to save up his money to buy one. "Not to work...just to drive around for fun!" he explained. "OH.." I said. "That is why you were asking if there were 52 weeks in a year earlier...you get $1 a week for chores. And then you figured out that 52 plus 52 was $104 and that might not be enough money for your Bobcat. So, you thought maybe seven years would be enough, right?" "Yep!" he replied. "How much do they cost, anyway?" I told him to finish his bath and we would look it up once in bed. And wouldn't you know it... it would take him over 38 years to earn enough for that Bobcat with his current wages...since the used one we found online was $2,000. Discouraged, I told him that there were plenty of opportunities to earn more than just $1 a week once he was old enough to mow lawns, raise chickens for eggs and sell them, babysit, have a paper route, or whatever. He began making plans for his egg business this fall as we turned out the light.

Before taking on this homeschooling journey, I wondered how I could keep the Oldest One motivated to learn. I have an entire Pinterest board dedicated to Math Learning, with really fun games to teach adding, subtracting, multiplying, percentages, and fractions. However, it is life, real life, that inspires learning...that opens up opportunities for us to make sense of the world through math, science, reading, writing, and the like. The Oldest One doesn't need a "math activity." He needs a listening ear and a person willing to provide him with the tools he needs to answer his questions when he asks them. The learning will naturally unfold from there.

Constantly learning,
Amber

P.S. The Oldest One also discovered that we had 62 peat pots to fill by multiplying the 10 pots within each tray by the 5 trays we had in one mini-greenhouse before adding it to the 12 we had in the other. This was before agreeing with me that his little brother filled 60% of the pots and he 40% because the Littlest One did three trays and he filled two. He didn't want me to explain how I got to 40% and 60% out of 3/5 and 2/5...he already knew. And for the 4-year-old Littlest One? He was watching and listening...and absorbing all that he needed to know in that moment.

Learning to Trust

"Do you trust me?" the Littlest One asked, four years old, legs barely hanging over each side of the big, old tree trunk stretched across the muddy creek flowing rapidly below. My heart leaped again, this time not just from my unnerving fear that he might fall in, but also from the fear that I might not trust him...might not trust myself. And this concept, trust, was the exact thing that had been surfacing in my mind and in my life over and over for the past several weeks.

I knew my answer to his question was a pivotal moment to our relationship. I wanted to be honest with him. I didn't want to try to deceive him with a false sense of my security. It was more than MY trust that was needed. I wanted him to value trusting himself. Listening to his own inner knowing would carry him over the eight feet stretch of rushing water, not whether I said he could do it or not. On the other hand, how could I admit to not trusting him...when it really wasn't about him at all. How could I admit to not fully trusting myself? Too many "Be careful's" and "Don't do that!" and "Don't go too far/Climb too high/Run too fast's" in my formative years had tamed my inner child long ago. Although lately, by focusing on setting my children (as well as my inner child) free, the need to listen to my instincts and shake off the fear has been growing stronger.

With earnest eyes on me, I finally replied, "Do you trust you?" "Yep!" he said with a big smile. "Well, good. That is what is most important!" I responded. With that, he began scooting his way across and down the slope of the fallen tree, beaming with pride as he stood up on the other side of the creek. "I did it! I did it!", he cheered. "I knew I could and I did!"

And then it was my turn. I had planned to go a safer route, but at that moment...in that wild space...I knew what needed to be done. I swallowed my fear, swung a leg over that big old log, and began scooting across as my children squealed in delight and chanted, "Go Mommy, Go! Go Mommy, Go!" I reached the other side and stood up with pride. I did it! I did it! I didn't think I could at first, but I did! And I was set free...

Namaste~
Amber

Gratitude and Grief

To my sweet baby soul~

Your presence came to me today
like a slow building tidal wave
like a lump in my throat that wouldn't go away
like a deep seeded longing
like an overwhelming sense of gratitude beyond measure.

I lit a candle for you
as I played with your brothers
as I sang with our little friends that are the size that you might have been now
as I blinked back tears and held you close to my heart.

I thought two years since you left me would be enough time to heal,
to move on,
to be able to hold space with a sense of absolute closure.

And although the hurt is a dull ache rising up and out,
instead of a pain that splits my heart in two or a bottomless pit that has no end...
as it was before...
the sorrow is still there.
The pain is still there.
The love is still there.
The gratefulness is still there.

Your short existence carried a lesson oh so big
one that I continue to learn each day.
I carried you in my womb,
though I didn't feel worthy of such an honor at the time.
Now that I carry your memory and wisdom in my heart,
I strive to be the mother you deserved to have.
I am becoming the person I was called to be.

Thank you for opening up the door to my inner knowing.
Thank you for sparking the growth within myself I so desperately needed.
Your light shined the way onto the holy path that I now humbly walk.

Eternally grateful I hold you lovingly in my heart,
Mama

Set the Children Free

I am not perfect.
I never claimed to be.
However, I simply will not rest
until we set the children free.

Free from injustice.
Free from shame.
Free from unnecessary suffering.
Free from emotional, mental, and physical abuse...
for the damage is all the same.

A soul born on this earth
with her light shining strong and bright
can be quickly damaged, dimmed, and shut off
in the hands of those who do not know right.

And as for those souls who have been here awhile
and suffered so much in their youth
It's so important to rekindle their flame
to heal their inner child too.

For the babies who cry alone
for the mamas and daddies, too.
For the children who are hit with hands or words
for doing what little kids do.
For the ones who are made to feel
as if who they are doesn't count.
I will not rest until they feel in their bones
that their value is an immeasurable amount.

Namaste~
Amber