What to Say About Five Kids at Home 24/7?

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Prologue

Once upon a time, quite some time ago, there lived a fair maiden by the name of Lydia. She had the potential to be pretty, one might say, with her long, brown curls and blue eyes, but years of hard labor had darkened her skin and destroyed her once beautiful hands.

As far back as she could recall, she had been enslaved to the king and queen of France, her home country, and worked countless hours tending to the horses. She did not mind the work at all: she had learned to love it, even if it had provided her with no money. However, the queen grew jealous of her beauty and sought to destroy her sunny disposition by whatever means possible.

So, Lydia was often given more work than the other servants and was not respected at all, and on this note begins this particular tale.

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One brisk evening, enveloped in the French winter of 1127, Lydia was walking to the stables to groom the horses. She was deep in thought of the previous night, her seventeenth birthday, when she had received a Bible from her friends. She had always been a Christian, and was elated to read it. 

Suddenly, she stopped, and if anyone had been looking on at the scene, they would have been almost as horrified at her expression as she was at the sight before her. There was a new groomer tending to the horses, and she had no doubt in her head that this was the queen’s doing. She had loved this job: in her eyes, it was a small ray of sunshine, a tiny delight in her miserable world. 

Lydia ran. She dodged other servants and dashed up several flights of stairs until she stood in front of the large, wooden door that gave way to the throne room.  She knew that if she seemed upset, the queen would be even more proud of herself.  She realized she had to seem calm and composed, even if she was about to cry.  Lydia opened the door.

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Wondering what happens next, hmmm??  Me, too!  This is not my writing, but a little noodling around by my eldest, written in about 20 minutes of spare time.  Needless to say, I am very much looking forward to reading more of her words and encouraging in the upcoming months the pleasure she takes in spinning a yarn.  

To summer, which starts tomorrow in our household, I say welcome.

Someone out there just read those words and - upon considering how life might be with five active kids, a large dog, and a perennially tired mom cooped up in the house for the summer - flinched slightly.  I understand how it might be possible to envision tedious misery, squabbling, dirty diapers, and persistently messy rooms.  And to a certain degree, all of those moments will happen, but I do have a plan, and I have learned from hard-fought experience that a plan is key.

What's on tap for summer 2014?  My 12-year old wants to work on writing, so she is starting The One Year Adventure Novel, a curriculum to take her through all the steps of storytelling, with the end product being a self-written novel. She is fired up to begin and has already decided on the setting and era.

We will also be doing Geometry with the oldest two, for which I am detecting a high degree of interest. I picked up the book last week and a certain someone discovered it, whisked it away, assembled a notebook, and completed the first lesson.  The two younger kids will be doing Saxon math with their big brother/sister tutoring team, the cheapest and perhaps best help I could possibly rustle up.

Science also made the list: the whole gang is doing Oceanography 101.  I purchased the text and we have plans for field trips (hey, this is Florida!) as we get deeper in the curriculum.  This topic has particularly captivated my third child, who is a tough nut when it comes to academics but is passionate about shells, water, and anything critter-related.

On the sports front, my fourth child passed his swim team test last week and is officially joining his siblings for swim workouts and meets three to four times a week.  This piece of the plan is a critical way to take the edge off of the abundant energy present in my household.  All four are also slated for triathlon activity, having been inspired by the tri the older kids completed this weekend.  I even found them sneaking a Sharpie and body-marking the baby and themselves, for which they were roundly scolded (although I admit I was extremely amused.)

In between all of this structured brain and body activity, there will be lots of cannonballs in the pool, sleeping in, badminton rounds in the front yard, lego constructions, sidewalk chalk, and pillow forts.  All the while, Kate Middleton will be wondering where in the Sam Hill all her quiet doggie-napping days have gone.

Summer 2014, bring on your happy, hot madness.  This mama is ready!

The Beautiful Mind

When I was growing up, there was a magic number in my brain that quantified who I was, which happened to be my IQ score.  I'm not sure how I came across it, but it stuck with me.  It became a defining factor in how I perceived myself. And in retrospect, I am angered that my mind was ever defined by a number.

Yet, history repeats itself as this week I am getting data back on my kids that seeks to define in a standardized way what is contained in their minds.  For instance, yesterday, Madeleine had to head over to the local public middle school to take a tedious three-hour algebra exam that is offered statewide with the intent of capturing whether the subject was sufficiently mastered to the satisfaction of the government powers that be. I have difficulty believing that this score will reflect the true depth of her conceptual abilities, but will rather be a superficial measurement skimming along a breadth of skills.

We also have started to receive from our school the Stanford Achievement Test scores, which are intended to help us as parents know that our children are progressing according to grade level and are an expected and appropriate endeavor for any academic institution.

So I'm looking at all these scores on the page and the National Grade Percentile Bands and Clusters and Performance Standard Categories and rows upon rows of digits, digits, digits and I want to ask this important question, of myself and the IQ number I can't shake (along with my own SAT), as well as to my children:

What test can quantify the mind, placed within us by God himself?  

Who can truly assign a number and a ranking to this complex masterpiece we have been given?  

Because every single day, I see in my children the Beautiful Mind unfolding in such a myriad of ways that I cannot fathom how anyone dares try to measure it's creativity and depth and adaptability.

When a child sits down and writes a lullaby on the piano for her baby brother, there is no number to capture the complexity of love and ability brought together in that moment.  Deciding one sunny afternoon to self-teach computer coding, how can you attach a figure to the inclination and boldness and receptiveness of a mind like that?

When that same child turns a phrase in an essay that makes me pause from the surprising stirring of emotions within me, or hides away in the sewing room busy recycling a dryer sheet and a deflated mylar balloon to stitch up a regal outfit for her doll, there is no standard of measurement that quantifies how creative, how unusual, how mutually earth-friendly and technically well made that effort really is.

So when I sat down to look over the SAT scores with Madeleine last night, on the heels of this state standardized algebra test, I told her point blank, without mincing words: school, grades, tests, assessments, these are all necessary parts of modern life, but will never be any measure of the Beautiful Mind God has given to her.  I pleaded with her not to rest in these numbers or tie her self-worth to any flat quantitative analysis as an accurate reflection of the three-dimensional kaleidoscope of brilliance within her.

The brilliance within all of us--His favored creation.

For he has made everything beautiful in its time. 
He has set eternity in the hearts of men, yet no one can fathom what
God has done from beginning to end.  Ecclesiastes 3:11

Craft Like An Egyptian {Friday Photo}

My once acutely shy child finished her big school presentation on King Tutenhkamen (or, as she likes to call him, King Tutu).  From shrieks of  "You have to help me!" to "Stop helping me, this is my project!" to "Why aren't you doing anything? Don't you care about my grade?" to "Stop touching my mask--this is my work!", King Tutu's mask slowly and painfully emerged from his ancient tomb.  A+ little one.

Music of Her Own {Friday Photo (AND Audio!)}

Madeleine's been tinkering a bit on the composing side and above is a sampling of the results.

I posted an imperfect version to remind myself

that she's just a kid in a house full of noisy distractions. 

And still....

 

Portrait of a Boy {Friday Photo}

'"So medicine, law, business, engineering...
these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life.
But poetry, beauty, romance, love...
these are what we stay alive for."
Robin Williams, Dead Poets Society

Making Room

This summer, I began a sewing project in earnest.  This was no small task, for not only was I planning, piecing fabrics, and sewing them through, but I was taking on the more giant task of stitching two colorful and diverse lives closely together, binding them permanently at the seams.

One hot day, we decided that no more were our two girls going to play then spat then separate to two rooms only to fuel up for the next exchange.

Because when these babies were brought into the world, the thought upmost in my mind was that each birth brought me a child to rock and raise but it brought my children something far more: a lifelong friend.  

And when God promised before you were in the womb, I knew you, He also knew well the very hearts He would bring around our dinner table.  You know, God has a way of planning those things.

So setting aside my despair over the girlie arguments and squabbles, my hope is that in sharing a room, they gain an equally great gift to that of a lifelong friend:  the ability to get along with others who are not like them, to live in community with grace and kindness, and to love in the midst of the differences.

I figure the room sharing is a built-in way to help prevent them from living selfish, parallel lives and disconnecting from each other in separate spaces.  It plunges them right into the messy mix of relationship, into the give and take of shared space, into the realm of resolutions and building into each other’s lives. 

So the beds were set up, the clothes moved over, the logistics of leaving a space and occupying another all tended to. The girls searched and shopped and finally settled in on different but coordinating fabrics from a pretty line, Circa by Jennifer Paganelli, inspired by French flea markets.  Stitch.  We put our heads together on what was needed: spreads, Euro pillow, bolster, throw, canopy overhead.  Stitch.  They huddled together and with great excitement picked out a new monogram, just for their rooms—a vintage 1920s font—and chose the thread (blue metallic mixed with hot pink).  Stitch.

Stitch, stitch, stitch, stitch, stitch….the threads of ideas and actions began to bind as I watched them find a way to mediate tastes and blend the differences into something beautiful. 

And as I sat bowed over my machine, my mama heart bowed before their Lord and maker who in His wisdom appointed them for sisterhood for specific and special reasons.  I sewed and prayed for the sisters to grow seamlessly together over this time, in this space created with planning and love, in this one-chance-deal they have to discover the treasures they are to one another and realize that in togetherness their world is a much more vivid and wonderful place.