A New Me

Tesco Diets welcomed me to the new me this morning! This is because, after 8 weeks, I have achieved my weight loss goal of 1 stone. For a long time I have been feeling that my weight is creeping up on me. I think I have a fairly comfortable relationship with food and I run a fair amount (though never quite as much as I'd like to) so I was certainly not fat and my BMI was within the healthy zone. But only just. Weight, and weight loss, is riddled with angst, anxiety and discomfort. I did not want to set my children a bad example or contribute to body image issues for them by being over-weight or obsessively dieting; I did not want to be a slave to a diet, depriving myself of one of life's pleasures for the sake of an unrealistic body, but I did not want to end up 50 and a stone overweight because I had let it slip. I talked openly and honestly with the children about my reasons: health, BMI, the gradual weight gain of middle age, and I still ate cake for poetry tea and on my birthday. I tried not to say that I wasn't "allowed" a certain food, but instead spoke aloud the truth that I was choosing to limit what I ate to attain a certain goal which I had set myself, and I have stuck fairly well to the menus that Tesco have provided. And I have lost a stone! I have caught myself in the past thinking that I would be happier if I were just that bit lighter, but I am not happier, my jeans are a little looser, but not much, and not one person has commented that I look different (not counting my husband's loyal answers to "Can you tell I've lost weight?") I am not a new me, but I am pleased with myself, my self-control and my slightly slimmer silhouette. And I am going to have a chocolate brownie with my tea this afternoon!

Busy Week

I am not sure where all my time has gone this week, but it has felt particularly fraught. I know that the puppy is largely responsible, but I'm just not sure how she has consumed my time. The children have been incredibly mature and responsible, willingly taking her in the garden, clearing up poop outside and wee inside and hiding in the garden to teach her to come when called.
Both my sons needed to visit the doctors today, and my eldest shooed me away from the surgery door and had the consultantion alone. While I was impressed and pleased with his independence, another part of me marked it as a sign of his growing up and away. Of course there is a time in the future when I won't even be aware that my children have been to their GPs, but it felt strange and sudden not to be in there, not to know.
Life changes. While I think that I crave it getting easier, I find that, as my children are growing up I have brought a dependent puppy into my home. I have had plenty of 'pit-of-the-stomach moments' this week, wondering what on earth we've done, whether I will actually be able to cope with this dog. Dog owners reading this, tell me, does it get easier? I really need to hear right now that it does, as I wipe up yet another pee, or take yet another shoe from her saying, with decreasing calmness, "Not for dogs."
I'm would love to write more, but I have an excited puppy and hungry children ...

Havoc

There are moments in my day of pure bliss: my daughter snuggled up on one side, learning to read, and my new puppy with her chin on my leg, learning that we are her new family. There are moments of havoc: another puddle of wee on the kitchen floor, mud liberally spread throughout, one son trying to write a limerick and the Tesco delivery arriving, as always, five minutes early so my husband isn't home to help unload.
I am trying to emulate Brother Lawrence in the practice of the presence of God, and to this end I have begun a notebook in which I will write one Bible verse or inspirational quote each day to mull over and keep my thoughts turned towards Him. Today: "And I'm going to keep that celebration going because I know how it's going to turn out." (Philippians, The Message) I have not managed, quite, to celebrate all day, but I do know that God is good and that in His care this will all turn out well.

Becoming a Dog Owner

After a fun, but exhausting, weekend, being on the road from 7am 'til 8:30 pm on Sunday, we are now the proud owners of a beautiful, pedigree, chocolate Cocker spaniel puppy.Yesterday was spent in a blur of sleepiness, said puppy cried until gone midnight, and wiping up dog pee, desperately trying to find five minutes to upload my pictures and post, but failing. We did all get fed though and the children managed some work too. Coco is a delight, very excited but also already very obedient. She's very wriggly too, so that most of the pictures I took of her were blurred.

Until she fell asleep.

British Wildlife Centre

Yesterday was my birthday and we had a lovely trip out to the British Wildlife Centre. I was particularly thrilled with the badger sett. I have never seen a live badger before and here was a whole family, sleeping and grooming and moving about in their underground tunnels which we could watch from 'inside' their sett (through glass windows.) I also saw a weasel, a pine marten and wild cats. The harvest mice touched me the most: so tiny and yet so perfect, little hands and beady eyes, smaller than my thumb and yet created and known by God, existing and thriving in their own grassy world.

My hero!

Gareth Malone is my hero! His 'Extraordinary School for Boys' finished last night and I was cheering him all the way. A primary school headmistress had invited him in to see if he could help their year 5 and 6 boys, aged from 9-11, with their below average reading scores. He was set the task of raising their reading ages by six months in only eight weeks. This struck me as a hard challenge indeed, and perhaps a bit cheeky of the school. After all, they had failed to raise the boys' reading ages by six months in six months, that's why they were behind. So Gareth's methods were not just to be as good as school, but much, much better. He had the boys outside in their self-made woodland classroom, he had them chasing him across the common dressed as a highway man, he had them competing in debates, visiting a bookshop and stocking up on brand-new boy-friendly books and, finally, writing and performing their end of year production in the local theatre. They were outdoors, exercising, dressing up and fighting as Romans, singing, reading aloud at the seaside and generally being boys. It did not surprise me at all that the average increase in reading age over his eight weeks of teaching was five months, some boys even improved by twenty months!

What did surprise and sadden me was the attitude of the staff. One teacher was filmed last night telling him that four of her colleagues had told her how badly he'd handled one particular discipline issue. They told him that that they had noticed the boys behaviour had deteriorated (although, from their description of said behaviour, I wondered improved confidence would have been a better description) and the headmistress, in a piece to camera, confided that she really couldn't see what the children were learning. They thought that he didn't know what he was doing and that it was important that he had more structure and boundaries and yet he had great relationships with the boys and they noticeably grew in self-belief as well as literacy. They were deeply intrenched in their own paradigm and were unwilling and unable to see any alternative. The pressure was on for the boys to do well in the reading age test, measuring one small aspect of learning and not, as Gareth said, the twinkle in a boy's eye when he is engaged, and they achieved all that was asked of them, so much more that the school had delivered.

I must have dozed off at the end, for I'm sure I missed the bit where the teachers ate humble pie!

Finding Others

Last night I sat in my lounge and shared coffee and brownies with seven other home ed mums, all of whom lived within a couple of miles of my house. A combination of friends, friends of friends and names from the Education Otherwise contact list which was published a couple of weeks ago, I only knew two of these mums before yesterday. Four of the group had just-teenage boys, three had only had their children home since the Spring. There was a lot of laughter, a lot of encouragement, the beginnings of friendships and a real sense of breaking down isolation. I travel quite a way to many of our activities, long ago accepting that the distribution of home ed families meant that I had to be willing to drive half-an-hour for swimming lessons, book club, social groups and skating. To find that I am one of perhaps a dozen home educators in my immediate vicinity came as a great, and happy, surprise. Having had the idea to try and get a group of us together for some a while, it seems the timing was right and people were eager to come. We left with a date to meet up again in a few weeks time and I am looking forward to seeing what will come out of this for us and for our children.