I'm the Mommy!

I'm loving my kids this week and practicing being more present than ever. It's been super busy being like a single mom this past two weeks since Cliff has been in Sioux City working. So I needed to get my attitude in better shape. Scott Noelle's site, Enjoy Parenting dot com has been mentioned in a lot places I frequent on-line. So this week I spent some time listening to his intro on podcast about the Groove Network. Here's the link if you're interested. I was so entranced and learned some new tricks! I am impressed with his site and love what he's done. If anything ever happened to my husband, I'd want to clone Scott! Not that I hope anything happens to my hubby!

We've been getting the house cleaned up and deleafing the yard this week. We just want to have fun with Cliff this weekend and not have to worry about much else. Holden and I attacked the front yard the other day and some neighbor kids pitched in without even being asked. Most of the leaves have bit the dust. Most trees are looking quite bare in these parts.

Holden and Camden fought over who was going to use the mop the other day. And I was able to vacuum without anyone argueing about wanting to help. That was a first in a long time. Holden picked up things off the floor without being asked so I could vacuum. Funny how that works sometimes. We have a pretty cool relationship! We have our moments but we always work things out. He asks me for help and I do it with a smile mostly. I don't guilt him about much, if possible either. Reading and learning about how other unschoolers interact with their kids in non-cohersive ways and very compassionately has made a huge impact on my life and relationship with my kids. I'm loving being the mommy right now (for the most part).

Camden is such a cool little dude too. We checked out some movies from our library and one of his favorites was a Curious George, the monkey show. It turns out I have two pretty smart monkeys. Camden (2) figured out how to get it from the case to playing without my help. I heard him saying he wanted to watch it and before I could finish what I was doing across the hall he had it playing. LOL.

Holden's favorie movie this week was "Jimmy Neutron." I had my doubts about the movie but I watched it a few times too and it gave us a lot to talk about. There are a few interesting lines like, "what's the point of being a genius if I can't go out on a school night." The dad was supportive of his inventions but his mom seemed annoyed with his genius. The school attitudes and weird teacher reminded me so much of what school was like for me at times. The cool kids didn't like Jimmy and he was called Nerdtron. When Jimmy got grounded the parents told Jimmy they were only hard on him for his own good and stupid lies we were all told as kids. Jimmy ended up sneaking out of the house too. The movie was very interesting though for a movie for younger kids. It was not what I expected. And I think it helped Holden to see how differently we do things than other parents and kids who go to school have a lot more rules and restrictions. It gave Holden a lot to chew on and he learned a lot of new concepts about science, aliens, earth, inventions, carbon life forms, and lots of other cool stuff. Not that I was hoping to accomplish any of this with the movie. I just wanted to have fun and we did. We just happened to stumble onto some bonuses. I woudn't say it was a favorite movie of mine or unschoolish but it was a fun movie with a lot of unspoken cultural biases that I was able to talk to Holden about.

Holden is really trying hard to understand days. He wants to know when his dad is coming home so we have been talking about that a lot and marking off days on the calendar. I took out our globe and flashlight for the sun and showed him how the earth goes around the sun once in 24 hours. It was a cool visual. I think he is catching on.

It's been quite chilly here this week so we're excited about warmer weather coming this weekend and Cliff coming home tomorrow night! Tomorrow should be a fun day overall. A special trade is going to take place tomorrow as well that we are excited about.

Now off to bed for this tired mommy!

Photos: the boys being interested in Cliff fixing the vacuum (6/2005); Cliff, Heather, and Camden two weeks ago--Holden (4.75) was the photographer.