aka hanging out with my Oma and making Vereniki
For the first time ever, I’m feeling an end-of-the-school-year pressure. I feel behind. Especially in the subjects that are supposed to have taken us a year. Math. Science. History. Grammar. We aren’t ‘nearly done’. It is our first year switching away from learning all the year through and taking many small vacations, stopping and starting curricula as we finish. In other words, its our first year trying to ‘do school’.
It’s stressing me out. How can we have so many lessons left? Are we lazy? Are we mentally lagging? What the heck?
And it’s coinciding with a lovely visit from my Oma, someone we see perhaps once a year. There’s every reason in the world to kick back and hang out.
Stress is the tension between two standards, it seems to me. The tension between the list you make and the time left in the day. The perception of what you desire fighting with the reality of the possible. Stress isn’t just crisis or having lots to do; people rise above and thrive time and time again. It’s a mental state that brings you into conflict within yourself.
I don’t have answers for myself just yet. I don’t have a way of bring the mental tension under control, of reconciling the pulling forces to find a place to rest in between. I’m just breathing deeply, connecting with now, forgiving myself, and moving within the moment.
And snitching vereniki.
Handmade Homeschool 
I have never “done school” in the sense that you mean in this post. And I’m starting to wonder whether the reason for that isn’t so much what I claim (that I don’t believe in ‘school at home’ and that a fluid, dialogue-based learning style is what works for us) and more that I am lazy and my whole approach (my lack of insistence on seatwork, times tables, memory-slogging) is going to end up cheating my children of a good education.
My favourite two words from your post are ‘forgiving myself’.
PS: as to your comment on Half Soled Boots, what a great idea – I should bring Ken to the next homeschooling meeting.
I think that lazy is not a word I would apply to you…But you are starting a new way of doing things, and that takes some adjustment. Both in method, application, and thought.
Oma is way important. And, if it’s not required by law, why worry about a schedule? You’ve done great without it this long why mess with success? Love your guy’s hair!