Survival and recovery

We survived the holidays.

Lots of boundaries. Lots of intentional time together, including enjoying new games of coarse. Limiting outside activities, which meant lots of saying “no” to possibly fun activities so we could say “yes” to peace.

Oh, and a new kitten. His name is Chase and he is the fuzzy, warm balm to my weary soul. He’s primarily Ms. A’s kitten, and she is doing a fabulous job stepping into motherhood pet care. I don’t think there is a more loved-on, spoiled kitten on the planet.

So now we are in the recovery stage.

The season we are in requires that we be very intentional about our time and our energy, both physical and emotional. Mental too, I suppose. Actually yes, Hubby and I have to be very intentional about how we use our mental resources.

This time of winter can be hard for many reasons. I mean, it’s cold, sometimes bitterly so. And right now there is not very much snow on the ground which limits the kiddos’ interest in playing outside.

I’ve heard that many homeschoolers reach a mid-winter crisis about this time of year. Thankfully, because of our style of homeschooling and the intentional choice that we are continually moving on to the next thing, I think we’ve avoided this fatigue. The biggest struggle for us at this point is getting the imaginations of 3/4 of the kiddos to settle down long enough to come sit with mommy and do the book work we need to accomplish. In reality that means that TuiMama needs to stop trying to multi-task and just set a time limit and stick to it.

”When I’m done with this basket of towels, it’s time for reading lesson.” And then doing it.

Now, Mr. B is easier in some respects because we very purposefully keep his routine very structured. And if he chooses to waste the whole day on one page of math, he can do that in Daddy’s office so that it doesn’t steal time away from the other kiddos who need Mama to be the teacher for a concentrated amount of time.

This is a very Mom- heavy season in some ways. In other ways, the kids are learning how to do so much more independently. But with the support needs that my children have, because of their different neuro-diversities, there is very little that doesn’t need at least some significant Mom and Dad intervention or inspection.

Oh! One thing we did to recover from the holidays is commit to a week-long sugar fast, which included cutting out all grains and simple carbs. My husband and I generally eat in a low-carb, whole-foods way, but all of us had gotten way too accustomed to an alarming amount of sugar over the holidays. I was saying yes to “treats” so often, that they weren’t treats anymore. We were all feeling sick and sluggish. So we changed it up for a week, and everyone did great! And we feel so much better. Now we are slowing incorporating healthy grains back in, but things are still very limited. I’m trying to replace high-starch options with veggies whenever possible, but really focusing on making whole-food meals. I have had a policy in the past that if I want something sweet, I need to make it from scratch. It, again, creates intentionality. Well, now I am trying to transfer that to other parts of our meals and snacks as well. It can’t realistically be 100%, especially because of my food allergies limiting certain things, but we have a focus and that is good.

The kiddos have been adapting surprisingly well, which I feel like has a lot to do with our consistency and how they’ve seen us transform our eating over the past two years. Mr. D is having the hardest time, because he is our pickiest eater and really loves his sugar and bread. He doesn’t have any actual food aversion issues that would make him avoid food as a whole, so we are just holding our ground at this point, and he has surprised us by trying some really new foods and flavor combinations. He even found a new favorite when I made pan chicken gravy from scratch. “This is a make-again, Mom!” That is a high compliment from that food-lover.

Another win in this area is that all of the kiddos are continuing to expand their culinary skills. We use an incredible cooking curriculum called Kids Cook Real Food by Katie at Kitchen Stewardship. It’s a step-by-step multi-level curriculum that has given me the tools I need to help my kids become confident in the kitchen. I think I’ll do another post on this so I can share more specific stories about how growing in confidence in the kitchen has impacted my children.

What about games? Oh, they’re just as prolific in daily life as always. It seems our home book library and game library have both exploded over the holidays AND gotten more organized. There are so many new games that I can’t wait to share with you. I love that many of them take less than 30 minutes to play, which is wonderful for when I only have a few minutes of free time before bedtime and I want to connect with one or more of my kiddos.

So that’s how we are moving step by step through these winter days. Writing it down is such a blessing because it helps me to see that we really are making choices that are making a beautiful impact on our daily life.