Willful Stupidity

There are at least a few people who read here but not on my discussion boards. So, you, magic answer, please!

(c/p following:)

I think that most curriculum-based homeschoolers (and many NON-curriculum-based homeschoolers...and traditional schoolers...and, oh hell, almost everybody) find themselves in this situation at some point.

You ask a question and your child looks at you like you've just spouted an extra head and are demanding verbal homage to ancient Martian dieties. In Martian.
Backwards. While standing on a flagpole and playing the mandolin.

It is a question she should know the answer for. It may be something really, really easy that you've JUST talked about. Or something she's answered many times before. Or something that interests her and she talks about incessantly. Or "what's at the end of your leg and has five toes on it?" asked of your 7-year-old daughter.

Which yes, is mine.

And yes, I'm having this happen. A lot. A frustrating LOT. We used to be able to just stop what we were doing and have a snack and come back to it when I could catch her unawares - and likely to just answer me, damnit...because she knows the answer - and it would be fine. Happened once a week or so, we're all good. But lately it is nearly every day and can happen as little as 10 minutes into talking about something. "The witch's name was Morwen and she had nine cats." "Morwen is a cool name mama." "What was the witch's name?" *blank stare*

I know that the majority of what we do is interesting to her, I don't have to cajole her into doing "schoolwork."

Wellthen.

How do I stop this? Or, well, minimize it? It is driving me BATTY!! She knows the answer!! Just SAY THE DAMN ANSWER!!!

If this is a phase let me know so that I can stop stressing out about this.

Babies

I have this weird feeling that my husband wants this to be private even though he didn't say as much. But I need it off my chest.

He is babylusting BIG TIME. Yesterday in the car he told me "I feel like there is a baby boy waiting for us" and "well, it seems like the timing thing always works itself out."

OMG he is using all the classic babylusting-woman lines!

I am so so so conflicted about this. He loves his kids and wants more of them. I love my kids and well, I want more of them too, but I'm not feeling this NEED he's feeling. On the one hand, it would suck suck suck to have a kid during midwifery school, on the other, when WOULD it be good again? If I take a break immediately after school, wouldn't that make it harder to start up? If I wait until I'm established...well, that is a LONG time to ask a baby-lusting person to wait, and I'm worried about how well my body - which already had supreme difficulty handling pregnancy at the ripe old age of 24/25 - will hold up under another pregnancy if this is a 10-years-off kind of a thing.

In the meantime, he mopes every time I have my period as if it was another opportunity lost, another child never met...

And I feel really responsible for that. If he had his way we'd be pregnant RIGHT NOW. I mean, I don't feel like it is ALL ME but I do feel like I'm defying him somehow, like I'm the one demanding something. Like we're really not supposed to be done having babies and I'm the one being stubborn.

I've also lost an "out" in that I know my cycles and my body so well now that if I got pregnant it would be on purpose - there is no "letting go" or "seeing what happens" or "allowing fate to decide" or any of that bullshit. And it would take something drastic to make me decide that I wanted to conceive. Even though at my core, I am happy about the idea of having another baby. It just doesn't make SENSE.

I think my husband is hoping that against all odds, I get pregnant despite our strict policy of abstinence during anything even remotely resembling fertility.

*Sigh* I have no idea what to think about all of this. No idea.

In Recovery

So on Friday at 11ish our friends out in Puyallup gave us a call and invited us to meet them at the Pacific Science Center. As we got ready to go, my mom called and asked if she could visit this weekend. It has been, oh, way too damn long, since she visited. Like, the house was in its original layout I think.

The house was embarrassingly dirty, the washing machine hoses were still frozen...and the kids knew we were going to the Science Center, leaving in 5 minutes. To see Grossology. Oh, no, we weren't going to put off that trip. So we left the dirty house in the dust, and went to have fun.

And then we came home, shoved food in our mouths, combed hair, and left to see Swan Lake with the Pacific Northwest Ballet. Which I wasn't exactly looking forward to after the last ballet I'd seen...but it was great.

Home at midnight. Um, no, not doing the dishes and vaccuuming.

Mom came in at 5:30am, which means I woke up at 4:30am. In the morning. Ouuuuch. I am SUCH a BABY about the lack of sleep thing. Whine, whine, whine. Shoved dishes around, wiped down counters, shoved toys aside with the vaccuum cleaner in an attempt to eradicate some of the crumb-age off the floors. Not clean but not as embarrassing.

Picked up my mom. Came home to still-sleeping kids (yay!). Mom bribes them individually as they wake up, with Pez candy and neat new toys - little bathtub things with propellers, they bump and redirect. Toys bumping around in the sink, kids happy.



Left for P's birthday party. Dropped off transmission-fluid-leaking car on the way, picked up cheese and crackers, got there only slightly late (first guests). Ate too much. Kids had too much fun. We did manage to get some evidence of that...

Toddler Mischief:




Boy Fun:



Mamas:


Gratuitious Toddlerness Photo:


Left on time, went to MIL's. More food. Pies instead of cake. She had these...interesting...candles that are connected by a strip of paper that encircles the wicks. You are supposed to light one end of the paper, and all the candles get lit. The results were a little more...dramatic...than we expected:



Think she was up to something or what?



MIL brings up a computer problem at the last second which was way more involved than it should have been. We didn't leave until 10ish. Ouch.

Spent Sunday morning recovering. Dropped mom off on the way to a mamas-fondue-night. Home by 8 but damn, the kids did NOT want to go to sleep and I, well, did.

Enormous, pounding headache this morning. Out of good coffee. Fished some crap-ass ancient stuff that doesn't even smell like coffee out of the cupboard. Not working. Ugh....

The children can smell weakness. I know that they can. This is why, on days when I am spaced out and foggy, they start bickering over stupid things and doing things that aren't strictly allowed. Like making tiger stripes on the couch cover (white) with some "neat" new crayola "Slick Sticks" that, oddly enough, do not state "washable" anywhere on them. Fuck.