9.16.2009

under the weather...

...my oh my, has it really been 2 whole months since i've posted? apparently so...

...but, i have been happy to have some new friends stop by my quiet little blog and leave some very sweet comments... so i wandered over to their blogs...

...you can find them here: one thing. and roadways...

...and now, thanks to them, i feel re-inspired to share my life again...

...just for what it is at this moment...

...and at this moment... i have been feeling a little under the weather...

...so i thought i'd share a few rainy day photos...


...making egg carton boats...


...twirling...


...dancing...


...testing boundaries...


...enjoying nature...


...i really love rainy days...

...don't you?

7.14.2009

UNSCHOOLER'S MONDAY

so, lots of people think that unschoolers dont DO anything all day long.
they aren't doing curriculum, or sitting in a classroom for 8 hours with 30 other kids, so their 'education' must not be valid, right?

well, let's talk about what we did here today.

there was cooking and cleaning, taking care of 2 new baby kittens, feeding, playing, petting, changing the litter box,
some swimming and snorkeling in the pool, some playing and talking with a much missed family member that's in town visiting and staying with us, preparing and planning for pottery night/tie dying/potluck, learning to cook a vegetable curry, tie dying, and pottery making, eating, laughing, and talking with friends, playing outside together, cleaning up together.
talking on the phone, making plans with other friends about tomorrow nights midnight showing of harry potter, which we are dressing up for and attending as a group, sending emails making plans for thursday's lunch and swimming play date with a new unschooler friend at the home of an unschooling alumni/goddess, making plans for visiting the aquarium later in the week with our life long unschooler/babysitter, watching some nice 'educational' videos, sesame street, baby signing time, and meet the fockers (for the older people), and making plans to visit a local beach for our weekly unschoolers park day gathering!
i'm sure i'm forgetting some things, and i know i've left out lots of details, but hey, it's 2 am, and i just now found the time to blog for a moment, after choosing to leave the rest of the email answering, and date making, and planning for tomorrow when i am rested and refreshed again.

but, what about socialization?

YEAH, RIGHT!

6.26.2009

BIRTHDAY PARTY IDEAS?

for at least a couple weeks now, i have been trying to figure out what my soon to be 9 year old wants to do for her birthday.
i mean i have been following her around, interupting her imaginary play, barging into the bathroom and cornering her in the tub, asking her what she wants to do for her birthday. and every time i ask, the answer is different.

we are 8+ hours away from all our relatives, but she wants to invite them all to come to her party.
she also wants to do a friend party with our friends from park day, which will be the day before her birthday, and she wants to have everyone she's ever met to come swimming at our place, and she wants to go to the horse/circus show, and to have a special dessert date with mommy and daddy at a fancy restaurant, and a slumber party, oh, and a kitten.

did i miss anything?
probably.

oh yes, and an ice cream bar with every flavor and possible topping ever invented.
did i mention it has been over 100 degrees here for about a week now?

anyway, i have myself tried to figure out a way to entice local circus performers, musicians, jugglers, flame spitters, and upright frogs in leotards, to come perform at an evening party in the park- where there would be twinkle lights and lanterns hanging from every tree, everyone would be dressed in mardi gras masquerade attire or jester suits. there would be guys in top hats riding giant unicycles, and mermaids swimming in the pond, and doing flips for us as the fireworks show lights up the night sky. there would be fountains flowing with delicious frosty beverages of every variety, and rabbits in velvet coats with brass buttons serving delicious and beautiful exotic hors d'oevres of every shape and color, all to the symphony of amazing joy inducing background music from the various musicians scattered throughout the party.

i truly cannot imagine where that child gets her flare for the dramatic!

so, now less than two weeks away, we really have no concrete plans and no clue as to what to do!

i have figured out that the only relatives who could possibly attend are my mom and my dad.
oh yes, and their significant others.

they have been divorced since i was ten years old, and haven't stopped fighting since.
i actually chose not to have a wedding partly because i didn't want them in the room together on our special day.
the thought of mediating a wedding cake fight about the wrongdoings of the last 20-30 years while having my wedding dress torn apart and a slew of people hauled off in squad cars was just not fitting in with my vision of a dream wedding!
but, i digress.

i need to figure out what to do to make my special sweet girl's birthday as special as she is to me!
any shared brilliance would be so very appreciated!

i need indoors, at least partly, like i said, it's REALLY hot.
i need fantasy and fun and friends and family and food and ice cream.
i need location.

i need more money!

6.25.2009

THE JOYS OF MOTHERHOOD

Joys of motherhood

2 yr old playing peekaboo with cartoon faces on a plastic suitcase.
20 minutes of snuggling, singing rockabye baby, counting to three with eyes shut game, playing peekaboo. on bathroom floor.
smacking table to get lamp to come back on, turning around and getting surprised and screaming when it goes off again,
laughing, giggling, surprised with delight, getting angry, screaming "c'mon dammit", and finally getting it to come back on!
the concentration and focus , the intention of putting away the make up and jewelry, the frustration of the zipper getting stuck, hearing your children, truly absorbing what they are feeling, helping

one on one energy exchange, fully being present in your child's reality for a few moments,
children need true connection, there-ness, with-ness, exchange, eye contact, flow

yelling 'i not dingy', full out full volume emotional discharge, honesty, defense of one's self, selfness
young children are not selfish, they have 'selfness'
they believe in their right to have their needs/wants/desires met.

being 'in' the world of a child, remembering what it 'felt' like in a child's mind, your inner child, connecting to that place of childhood, the infinite existence of ourselves through our children, seeing your child as your younger self, believing that you are nurturing and caring for your inner self, if not that, then what? we are raising a piece of our own bodies, our own dna, our own programming, generations of genetic code, makeup, input, reactions we can love our inner child, nurture our own unmet childhood needs through loving and giving to our children what we missed as children

we each have a deep inner longing for the things that we innately knew were lacking from our own childhoods, that child in us can become complete through our expressions of love to our children,
neglecting our unmet needs does not heal them, when we acknowledge our empty spaces, we create the ability to fill them.
denying them attention in the light of day, and the birth of sound through identity, a name, a recognition, we are perpetuating their continuance through the next generation of ourselves.
we can be assured that denying ourselves those unmet needs, we are handing these same empty spaces down to our children.

open yourself, sit on the floor, imagine there is not limit to your day, there are no clocks, or appointments, or schedules, nobody needs anything, no meals to cook, no shopping or errands to run, no cleaning to do, laundry can wait, dishes can wait, enter fully the world of your child for a few minutes (at first), then practice increasing the amount of time that you can stay in that state of awareness.

children live fully in the now, before they know of time, or worry, or pseudo responsibility.
we as adults have to take classes to re-learn this perfectly natural capability that we are all born with.
we read books, take classes, attend seminars, and retreats, we buy gym memberships, and always seek someone else to show us, to teach us, HOW to live in the moment, the power of now, the secret,
but we must only be still fully, and long enough to realize that it was within us all along, we are by nature programmed to live in the now, and by society programmed to abandon it completely
we must only return to our own true inner nature to find that stillness, that sense of joy and wonder, that full out, complete, total being-ness, the true POWER that is in this exact moment, and that the secret need not be any secret.
it is within us.

6.18.2009

WOULD YOU REALLY KISS A BUTTERFLY?

they're so pretty, right?

how about now?

still wanna suck face?

6.03.2009

KINETIC ART











who knew glow sticks could be so much fun?
and soooo pretty!!!

5.21.2009

10 Unschooling Myths Debunked

Ten Unschooling Myths Debunked
The unschooling approach is gaining popularity, but with that comes a lot of misinformation and several inaccurate myths. From legality concerns to college admissions I'll set the record straight for you with this list of ten common unschooling myths.
http://www.associatedcontent.comarticle/665797/ten_unschooling_myths_debunked.html

5.12.2009

LOVE VIA PARSLEY

Random hugs from the universe while chopping parsley!


5.11.2009

MY 'DREAD'FUL MOTHERS DAY

so...
my husband and oldest daughter conspired to go to the grocery store to get 'toothpicks' (flowers) so they could finish making flautas, hid them in the back seat of the truck, brought out the 'trash', (put ice water in a vase to keep them fresh overnight).

then in the morning, hubby woke up early, snuck outside (i was sleeping on the living room floor with the girls), brought the flowers in and put them on the table so they would be the first thing i saw when i woke up! TOO sweet, right?

but wait, there's more...

i have had a three week long love-hate relationship with getting dreads in my hair. i'd love them and how wild and crazy they were one day, but i'd wake up the next morning to these flat roadkill looking rat nests sticking out everywhere.

it took a few AWESOME friends DAYS of working on them, spread out over two weeks to even get them all done, (man the looks i got from all the crafty old ladies when i went to Micheal's half dreaded/half straight hair).

then i had to wash them because my head was itching like mad, and half of them came undone and there were wild stray hairs everywhere.

rather than the cool alternative hairdo i had dreamed of, i looked like i had escaped from a mental institution and drifted between dumpsters and random park benches for a few weeks!

i had just about given up on them, and was resigned to the fact that i would have to cut them or try to comb them out.

but my sweet man wouldn't hear of it! he knew how bad i have wanted dreads for about ten years now, so he said he would see if he could help; then promptly went to get some aloe vera gel, came home and worked on my hair for about 5 hours!!!

can you believe that?



needless to say, i feel very loved and very lucky to be the mother of two amazing daughters with this one of a kind man!

5.08.2009

TOPSY TURVY TOMATO TUTORIAL

How we made our own homemade version of the topsy turvy tomato for the back patio. What worked, what we could've done better.

Supplies:
*Plastic 'terra-cotta' type pot from Home Depot
(it came with a little black plastic piece in the bottom, this is necessary)
*Soil/Potting Mix
*Tomato Plant
*Herbs (for top of pot)
*Twine (and someone who knows how to tie knots)
*Hook to hang it from (very important when you are holding an upside down tomato in a pot)

First, we made the hole at the bottom of the pot bigger. Big enough to fit the tomato plant through, but small enough so that the little plastic piece stays in. ( Didn't get a pic of that step, but you can see the pot in the background of the first pic.)

This is the little black plastic piece that was at the bottom of the pot. We cut it from the outside edge to the middle so that it could open like a pacman mouth, and that's how we slid the tomato plant into the middle of it:


Next, we put the tomato plant (with the black plastic piece around the base of the plant) through the bottom hole of the pot:


This is what it looks like inside the pot:


This is what it looks like from below:


Made twine 'hanger' (you'll need to do some creative knot tying here), to wrap around pot lip, slid up bottom of pot:


Then, I held the pot while hubby screwed in the hook to hang it from.
Tip: Do this step before you put the tomato in! :o)


Hang it from the hook, fill with dirt, put herbs in top of pot, and water!


Sit back, enjoy some watermelon...

And wait for it to grow!


Here it is after a few weeks of sunshine and water:



We spent as much or more as we would have on that infomercial brand, but ours has a place for herbs on top, and I think it looks MUCH nicer than the other one! Wouldn't you agree?

HAPPY PLANTING!

5.07.2009

LIVE GUPPY BIRTH

Here is some video of a very cool educational experience at our house!








Oh yes, and does anybody want some fish?
;o)

5.06.2009

SWAMP NATURE CENTER HIKE

Welcome Committee

Crawfish Hole and Diagram

Reptilian a Trois

Corn Snake Cuffs

Bees on Thistle

Wild Snake Way Too Close

Spider Lillies

Crawfish Hole in the Wild

Blue Jay Feather and Wild Girl

Red-Eared Slider Turtles

Tree Trunk Love