That’s a wrap

What a week this turned out to be. It had some ups and downs but all in all, we had a good week. As you may have read earlier in the week, we started using a unit studies curriculum and got off to a bit of a rough start. As the days went by though, we finally hit our stride and fell into a rhythm that feels right for us. We’re not doing every lesson in the book but we’re reading some great stories and having some amazing conversations and BONUS, I’ve seen the creative spark ignite in the boys again. We had all been in a kind of slump and this little jolt seems to be just what we needed. Example for you. Today, Ryan was bored out of his gourd and was looking for something to do. NOw keep in mind that this house lacks nothing for these children to do. They have a Wii, an Xbox 360, Gamecube, DS’s, computers, DVD’s. And they have no limits on any of those things. You might think that my kids spend all day using the variety of electronic equipment available to them but NO. Today, Ryan dug through our “activity closet” and found a set of Magnetix that had been put away several months ago. Excitedly, he and Iain opened the box and began a project. They wanted to see how long a strand of Magnetix they could put together. After getting all of the pieces out and connected, they could see that it was REEALLLY long but that wasn’t good enough. They had to get out the tape measure and see how many feet long it was. Which led to seeing how long the room was and figuring out the difference between the two lengths. The principles of unschooling never cease to amaze me. This was the really shiny moment in our week.

Last night, we had kind of a scare which we can laugh at now but terrified me quite a bit when it happened. Sean and I were sitting in our family room watching The Office when we heard an extremely loud thud and crash from upstairs. We ran at lightning speed up the stairs and could hear a child crying hysterically in the bathroom. Ryan, our 6yr old met us at the top of the stairs, “Momma, I think we’re going to need our house insurance.”

I looked at him like he was nuts because I couldn’t imagine what he was talking about. When we got to the bathroom, Iain was crumpled up in the tub, the metal shower rod was bent and pulled out from the wall and he was crying a lot. Once Iain got calmed down a little, we were able to gather bits and pieces to put together what happened. Apparently, Ryan was “dropping the kids off at the pool” and was bored while he was sitting there. So what does he do? He asks his older brother to entertain him. At first, Iain says no but Ryan starts to get mad so Iain gives in. Iain stands on the edge of the tub, grabs the shower rod and then hangs from it. Well, it tore out of the wall, and Iain hit his head on either the tile soap dish or the edge of the tub and got quite a goose egg as a result. I don’t know if you’ve ever dealt with a head injury but they can be really scary. We had to wake Iain up every couple of hours last night to get him to walk around and talk. Someone had to sleep with him to make sure he didn’t throw up in his sleep or have any major changes. We have to do it again tonight, too. Thankfully Iain is much better today. Right now in fact, he and his brother are playing Tony Hawk and are taking turns “owning” each other. Whatever that means. It was a scary thing to go through last night though and I’m so glad that Iain is ok.

Truth be told, I’m pretty terrible in those situations and don’t handle myself well. Sean had to tell me more than once to calm down so thank goodness he was here or else the kids could have been mentally scarred by the whole experience.

It feels like we did a lot this week. We reconnected as a family and reignited our passion for exploring ideas. In spite of the bumps and bruises both physical and otherwise, I think we had a great week and am looking forward to a great weekend, too.

🙂