Homeschooling: the "home" part

(P, experimenting with the anti-christ, I mean, glitter. After his bottle filling fun with Uncles Seth and Ian in the woods, there has been a frenzy of concoction fun here at home. His first, a "snowglobe" almost did me in. After it came a pom globe, featuring poms, more glitter, rhinestones, toothpicks....)



I've heard rumor that the masses imagine homeschooling as this: kids sit at the kitchen table with their workbooks while their caregiver plays teacher. Perhaps there is a blackboard, maybe not :)

I don't know anyone homeschooling like this (although they do exist:) and we certainly don't. But I typically post about our outings these days, assuming our parents are well experienced in what life at home with a kid looks like, (having done it almost a dozen times between them all) but novices on the NYC outings scene.

And then, last week, after a loooong day at home (P was down with a cold) I thought I might be mistaken :) My mother's house, heck, E's mother's house (and there were seven of them) never looked like this. I remember these things quite clearly :)

Despite the fact that I had tidied and cleaned during every spare moment of my day (you know, the times you aren't fixing food, helping someone eat said food, cleaning up from eating the food, playing on the floor, getting out the paints when the play moves from the floor, grabbing rags for the paint that has then moved back onto the floor... all of those times) the house looked like the remains of a Kansas tornado.

And I, the unshowered one, slightly resembled the male star of Twighlight, bed head hair and skin all a vampiric glow. Oh, wait, that's all of the freakin glitter, embedded into every nook and cranny of my existence.

No, my mother's house never looked like this. And there were four of us.

This is all before lunch. Waaaaay, before lunch. And yes, the space starts out tidy each and every morning...



Lest you think the mess is confined to the floor, it creeps its way onto every counter, every table in the house, every day... Here, the craft table, mid-concoction amid mounds of more mess:



So, in my sleep deprived state (having been on booger duty for a few nights in a row) I caved into my husband after the Little Man finally gave into sleep. How, how, I asked, can I suck so thoroughly? I know mothers who sit and drink a cup of joe in the morning! I know mothers with clean houses! I know mothers with multiple kids, who work!!!

He murmured all of the right words. Reminded me that we both had basements and bedrooms to which the clutter and curios of childhood were religiously relegated. That we're trusting this mentoring bullshit (oops - did I say that? hehe, back to my Mama mantra....) to establish natural cleaning help in the Little Man rather than daily chores. (And P really is starting to take responsibility, I see that, as he runs to the cabinet to grab a rag and dry a spill. He is, I, know.... He's just really not into toy cleaning, yet...) The back patting helped, a little, but I still felt a titch like a child messily playing house, compared to my own mother, and hoped P didn't notice :)

A day or two later, we were able to return to our afternoons out, limiting our mess making to a part-time job. Half day messes I could manage after bedtime books. This, along with a good night's sleep (and a god-given break on the glitter) helped immensely. Nevertheless, I'm forever amazed at how quickly P's play fills every foot of floorspace..... and forever in awe of both of our moms...