Community Through Co-op

There are easily a hundred different models for homeschool co-ops— probably more. Deciding what our group would look like was largely a process of elimination; knowing what we wanted as a primary purpose automatically excluded several kinds of co-op settings. The key for us was building a community that took educating our children seriously, but primarily sought to live life together. We wanted literature selections and science experiments… but really what we envisioned was the relationships being formed between families.

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A New Focus

The silence is deafening, isn’t it?

No matter how much I try to get back into blogging about our lives, it just doesn’t happen. Part of that is simply the fact that I can only really tell half a story here; my adult children deserve to control who and when they share the details of their lives. The other part is wrapped up in the fact that I’m no longer really sure what bits are even of interest to those outside the walls of this house.

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Not Back-To-School Photos

Every August, as we mark what can kind of be called the first day of school, I stage photos. I line my kids up (barefoot, because they’re always barefoot) in the same place, holding a sign. They smile. I post it somewhere, file it away, and look back on it as an ebenezer of my kids’ growth.

This year, I forgot.

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Alice

Six months is a long time in anyone’s life, especially when the sum of your entire experience isn’t yet 20 months. I spent so much time in this space sharing the hard parts of Alice’s first year and grappling with her intense personality. Six months further on and I am delighted to report that while no one will ever mistake Alice for an easy-going people pleaser, she is a fun, spunky, precocious toddler who brings joy and laughter to my days.

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Once Upon A Time

Once upon a time, I updated here three times a week. I admit I feel a bit sheepish sticking my head out and waving after SIX MONTHS have passed. I guess this is the price one pays for a “late in life” baby added like a cherry on top of kids flung far and wide. I don’t feel too bad about this; my favorite blogger, Ginny Sheller, has done the same after her own little man made his way onto the scene.

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The Longest and The Shortest Year of My Life

Alice celebrated her first birthday nearly a month ago, and I wouldn’t be totally honest if I didn’t admit that the day was filled with a mix of emotions for me. On one hand, a year is never quite enough time to bask in the beautiful moments of life getting to know a new baby, so that sweet sadness of letting go of the first twelve months was palpable. On the other, the exhausting and draining first year was over, which left me relieved.

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Abundance

Each new season of parenting has made me look back on the one before and wonder how, exactly, it was that I thought the milestones would eventually crawl to a stop, or that I would suddenly have free hours each day to fill with diversions. It’s not happened yet. Maybe it will someday. But I’m beginning to doubt it. Each subsequent month seems to reveal yet another major event up ahead, and me? I’m along for the ride.

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And Then, We Were Grandparents

In August of 1992, when I met a certain floppy haired, too-skinny boy who had a fondness for English shoegaze bands and Doc Martens, I had no frame of reference for what life would look like five, or ten years down the road. I definitely didn’t see our wedding, our children, our struggles, our successes…

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