a kaleidoscopic mind

on a good day that's the way i prefer to think of what is going on in my head--colorful, fluid, energetic, and whimsical. on bad days it's all spasmodic and unsteady. flipping and flitting hither and yon, unable to settle on anything engaging enough to offer a substantial foothold. my days fly by. i'm with the kids all day and yet their unflagging growth and changes are sneaking up on me, surprising me, daily. the boy seems suddenly so big. his grey blue eyes have gathered themselves into the most beautiful almond shapes. his nose is longer and straighter (as are his very sturdy legs) and his hair is thick and tousled. the girl is wild, sweet, funny, engaging, and at times, completely unhinged. her vocabulary is astonishing, her independence admirable. there is something about her that often causes me to stop what i'm doing and wonder who she will become.

tonight while we were eating dinner she sat there with her hair hanging in her face, slowly moving her arm in wide circles, saying, quietly to herself, "ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...." as if she were casting spells. a clairvoyant, perhaps? seriously, peeps, she freaks us out sometimes. she's not even two yet. i love it when she says, "me do it meself!!!!!" or when she yells, "no! don't talk me!" because she's tired and simply can't deal with even one more word.

every day we rush out the door to school. even the girl takes a backpack and lunchbox. she's not happy unless she eats half her lunch on the way there. sometimes she wears the boy's engineer's cap. backwards. she and the boy get right to work and i head upstairs to my office where i do administrative stuff--bills, letters, website maintenance, filing, paperwork, laminating, and paper cutting among other things. i'm also working on cooking lesson plans, art projects, the garden plan for the spring, fundraising, grant-writing, setting up a PTO, and trying to figure out how to squeeze in writing a chapter about the stuff in my latest book for some kind of academic encyclopedia. i watch my amazon.com sales rank wondering when/if there will be a royalty check because we could surely use one. between lunch and running home to put the girl down for a nap i worry about J because it's that time of year again when he could slip into darkness. the school has lots of bills. we have lots of bills. i get edgy.

the kids and their parents all seem to love the school, and in those moments when i can step back and look at everything it is incredibly satisfying to see how it is all coming together. the kids love their little cooking lessons and even though we still don't have a swing set they are finding the most wonderful ways to amuse themselves while outdoors. without the distraction of fighting over the swings they play the way we used to. they use their bodies and their imaginations to create games and put on little "shows." most of them cry when it's time to leave. even the ones who stay for after school care.

we don't get home most days until nearly 5pm. i race around making dinner, cleaning up the morning's mess, and throwing in loads of laundry. then it's dinner, baths, and kids to bed before i collapse in a heap to watch endless back episodes of Lost and 24 and knit a little. there hasn't been much time to relax, but on the days when things go smoothly it is satisfying. almost as satisfying as seeing the boy's latest artwork

(it was a shamelessly bad segue, i agree, but i'm so happy to see something other than trains in his drawings that i feel compelled to share them with the rest of the world.)

Comments

[Colleen]

Those drawings look pretty sophisticated to me!

[liz]

What colleen said!

[the Mater]

You just provided a wonderful glimpse into your hectic world. I love that the school is starting to generate a positive energy even though it's such a hard endeavor. It's a labor of love though. I'm actually starting up the first-ever college-guidance office in my new position and I love the challenge. I don't have to worry about putting dinner on the table and give baths at end of day though. Hope you take vitamins.Your son's "digger" shows a lot of detail, maybe he will be an engineer one day. God bless all you momma bloggers - you barely have time to breathe let alone write down your thoughts. BTW, I have plenty of old journals that look just like yours :>)