The Fairies Are Coming

At least I hope so. My daughter and I spent the afternoon making the coolest fairy house ever. We are reading the Daisy Meadows books starting with the rainbow fairies. In the middle of Amber the Orange Fairy the idea to build a fairy house struck me. We started on the structure then headed out to Michael's Crafts to purchase some essentials. We had a great time creating it and are excited to do more. I've even come up with ideas for making fairies! Fun, fun, fun!

My new desk job

It's not what you're thinking. I'm still a SAHM, but we've had some changes in our lives. My daughter has a rather unusual eating issue. Unusual in the fact that up until less that three weeks ago she didn't eat. Not really anyway. Her intake consisted of milk (unpasteurized/raw whole milk), prune juice (to keep her regular) and the occasional carb (pasta or bagel) in very limited amounts.

We have seen numerous experts with no change. Nobody really knew what to do. All the experts kept telling me that I shouldn't talk to her about our concerns around her eating. They told me that I shouldn't tell her why she is seeing all the professionals. They told me she was too young to comprehend. A dear friend gave me the confidence to talk to our daughter. And she understood. On her level. But she understood. I told her that we are going to try new foods and eat healthy & nutritious meals. She understood and she was okay with it. Wow! Trust your instincts mom. You know your child. You talked and she got it!

Well here we are almost three weeks later. She eats a very limited diet, but is eating so healthy! She tries new foods everyday. The challenge is speed. Now, I am not looking for her to eat fast, but she eats really, really slowly. Breakfast (two scrambled eggs) takes about three hours. Lunch takes about two hours and dinner about the same. I have tried encouraging her to eat faster and swallow sooner only to discover that she has some gagging issues. So, here I sit at the dining room table for hours on end while my child eats - my new desk job. On the up-side I'm getting a lot of knitting time which is good since I am just learning...and I get to post to my blog. The bottom line is that I am ecstatic that she is eating and I need to focus on the joy of that.

My First Rambling

I tend to be a rambler...especially when I am just starting to share. So get comfortable because I don't know how long this will go.

It has been an interesting journey and the journey has just begun. I'm not sure where I'm going with this blog, but I wanted to put my thoughts out there and share our life experiences. We made the decision to homeschool in March of 2007. After shifting things in our life we were able to pull our daughter out of preschool and began homeschooling in mid-April. We all couldn't be happier with our decision.

Being the researcher that I am, making the decision wasn't the end of it. It was such a process for me it is hard to summarize it here. I scoured the internet, joined a bunch of Yahoo groups, read lots of books (love John Holt) and talked to other homeschool moms. During this investigation unschooling found me as well as Unconditional Parenting.

I have found that this way of life is definitely a lot more work and involves an amazing amount of trust...trusting your child, trusting yourself, trusting the process. It has been the hardest thing I have ever done. It is also the most worth while thing I could ever do.

So now that we've covered unschooling how about a little non-belief? I am new to the realization that I am a non-believer. I'm not sure why, but it's hard for me to call myself an atheist. I've been a Jew my whole life. Not a religious Jew, but a Jew nonetheless. I haven't really believed in God for a long time but it never occurred to me that I was an atheist.

Years ago I went to a rabbi and asked if God is God, why does he need us to kiss his ass? I mean really, is he that insecure? Every prayer is a prayer telling God how great he is. Come on? Seriously?I got a response from the rabbi, something about how it's really for us - to remind us how great God is...blah, blah, blah. I left feeling unsatisfied. I didn't stay at the synagogue much longer.

Then I met my husband, a non-Jew and an atheist and the love of my life. We met in 2000, got engaged a year later and married a year after that. We had a non-religious ceremony that I wrote myself and it was quite lovely.We now have our daughter who is almost 5 years old. We follow some Jewish traditions in our home. We light candles on Friday night, we have a seder at Passover, we dip apples in honey on Rosh Hashanah, we light candles on Hanukkah and we still eat our traditional "break the fast" meal of bagels and lox on Yom Kippur even though I no longer fast.

We don't have Jewish friends and honestly I've had very few Jewish friends my whole life. I want our daughter to know other Jews and to learn about her heritage without the religious pressure. I don't want to force anything, even non-belief, on her. We have a Humanistic Judaism synagogue in our town. I think that we are going to join so we can find a Jewish community. I still have a lot of questions about how to "do this". I have read some of the revised prayers and I like the changes. It's going to be a transition.

That's probably enough of a ramble for now. Welcome to our unschooling, family loving, non-believing, crazy, fun life blog. There will be ups and downs, but it's a great life and we are living it fully.