Homeschooling

On March 22 and 23 we went to the Virginia Homeschooler's Conference. I had taken my husband because I knew of no other way to get as much information into him as possible without distractions. It worked. We started with the two Friday sessions: Homeschooling 101: Homeschooling for Non-Homeschoolers and Beginning Homeschooling. Homeschooling 101 was WONDERFUL. Aside from the amazing turnout (ever seat was filled plus people were standing up along the wall and sitting on the floor) there was a lot of the stuff my husband needed to hear: numbers. Jeanne gave a ton of statistics, showed us graphs, then gave us a lot of real life examples of thinking outside of the box. My favorite was a creative way to get information into her very active boys: she stood and read while they rode their bicycles in a circle around her. Brilliant! In a world where we know our kids need way more activity than they get, I just loved this idea! Beginning Homeschool went through all the legalities of homeschooling, what the requirements are, how to show that your kids are learning throughout the year, etc. That was great timing for me, because the rest of the sessions were convincing us to homeschool so we didn't have these nagging questions of how it would be possible to get our kid out of school.

When we decided to go to this conference I had a very hard time figuring out what sessions to take. There were so many great options! I am hoping that many of the ones I missed out on will be available next year. This time we took a sessions on Waldorf Homeschooling (a type of curriculum), Beginning Homeschooling, Part 2: But What Do I Do Monday? (several other curriculum types), Eclectic Homeschooling: Combining It All and Making It Work (where you take several types of curriculum and use them all together), Homeschooling Preschool (for our son), and finally Homeschooling Questions: Asked and Answered (which I figured would be a great way to finish off the day). Each speaker not only gave us different information but they echoed a lot of the same sentiments. Some of the big things we learned:

Socialization: The dreaded "s" word which has somehow come to be every non-homeschooler's reason for NOT homeschooling. We learned that not only is there not an issue with not socializing, that many times there is an issue with *too much* socializing! Case in point: By 9am this morning, Monday, I already had 3 homeschool activities planned out of the next 5 days, and they're recurring.

If you build it, they will come: Sometimes there is an activity, or coop, or field trip that you want to go to/on but everywhere you look you can't seem to find one. Start it up yourself. It is almost guaranteed that there will be interest. Case in point: a friend of mine posted that she was hosting a playdate and she found 6 families within her *neighborhood*. Another friend started up a Lego day every month and it was so popular she had to lock down the Yahoo Group for it.

If there are tears/frustration then STOP. The beauty of homeschooling is that you aren't on a schedule to learn XXX by XXX date. If one of you is crying or yelling or otherwise frustrated then learning is not happening and you need to put it away for the day, or the week, or whatever you're comfortable with and change the subject. It is also okay to switch curriculum in the middle of the year (or multiple times during the year) to find what works for both of you. How many times have YOU been frustrated with an assignment as a kid and wish you could put it away and go back to it? I failed MISERABLY at geometry the first year I learned it, but the next year I aced it.

The only question that could not be answered for us was how to handle one particular situation: an unsupportive family member. Speakers were asked this in almost every session and they danced around the topic well. My mother-in-law is not crazy about homeschooling and she has made that known from the get-go. We had agreed at some point to share the cost of private school but that was before I was as educated about homeschool as I am now. Most of the speakers explained that, in most cases, it was a fear of the unknown that caused the family member to not support it. On our drive home to pick our kids up my husband and I were going through all kinds of scenarios to figure out what to say if they said *this* or *that*. We got there, and didn't say a peep about the conference. Neither did my in-laws. My daughter exclaimed "DID YOU LEARN HOW TO HOMESCHOOL ME?! WHAT DID YOU LEARN!?!?!?!" but thankfully that was out of earshot. ;) The next morning my mother-in-law called and spoke to my husband enough to find out if we were truly considering it. He says that she knew that there were a lot of education options and knew we wouldn't have a problem teaching her, but she was concerned about -- guess what? Socialization. He did a great job explaining to her that it's actually an issue of too much in our area. She said she needed to digest it. Whereas before I would have been so anxious about her opinion, I feel absolutely certain in our decision to homeschool. We would not have had that without this conference. I have pages and pages of notes and supplementary handouts and I have spent nearly my entire day looking at websites and curriculum and books and figuring out The Plan which is more than I could have ever done on my own.

We got great suggestions as well. One was to start a blog or use some sort of calendar or list to write down what you're doing every day or week. The idea is that by the end of the year you will forget all that you have done, unless you have saved work, and it's nice to go back and see the progress you have made together. That's what has spawned this renewed interest in my blog. I have been scouring Craigslist and Ebay for deals and so far I have found a few which I'm waiting on my husband to look through. I have joined several local homeschool groups for support.

What is our plan at this point? I really like Waldorf's approach to using arts and crafts and music. One of the speakers in the Waldorf session explained that in first grade one of the cool projects is to make your own knitting needles, then learn garter stitch to create rectangles which are then turned into animals. That blew my mind! I want to do that! Since my daughter is already an avid reader we will continue with reading whenever she wants, and she also enjoys worksheets/workbooks so I have printed out several worksheets (that were free!) to laminate and use with dry erase markers. I saw this post when it came out and I saved it, knowing it would want to use it one day, and we will be working on it this week with Spanish months/days (which we'll rotate through each day) and planning our activities. We have already put a list together of things to do. I am looking for ideas for Spanish curriculum as well as some Pagan curriculum ideas (yep, I'm one of those ;)). I want something that will really focus on the meaning of each season and the cycle of the year and very.. earthy/natural (which is why Waldorf appeals to me). We'll be doing baking probably every other day which will help reinforce the fractions she was already learning in kindergarten. We are working on our garden which will be our science element for now. She has learned about some of our former presidents with money so I will continue with that somehow, too. I have my work cut out for me!

A Change of Scenery

While it has been a year and change since my last post, we are still focusing on a paleo/traditional/evolutionary diet. We have mostly learned to not strive for perfection, for that is a beast you will never tame, and I remember how far we have come from where we have been. There will be more on that in the future. This is not that post. :)

When I first thought up this blog there were many ideas I had in mind for posts: food, parenting, exercise, housecleaning, life experiences, etc. The catalyst for this post is that we have decided to homeschool our children. I'm going to have a follow up post shortly but I felt that an update post was needed first.

We're still here. DD will be 6 in June and DS will be 3 in July. We have spent the last year learning so much. I did my first Whole30 in January. My husband's company was purchased and we have spent the last couple of months in survival mode trying to figure out where things are going. As of last week things are looking up (way up) and I am now able to figure out where my focus can go.

I am no longer going to Crossfit. It's expensive! It is wonderful, though, and I miss it terribly. I've got priorities, though, and at that point in time I felt I was sacrificing family time. Don't get me wrong, I am all about self-care, but when you're gone 2-3 nights per week... well, there are only so many nights each week, and I have a partner that deserves an equal amount of time off. It didn't balance. I currently take one ballet class per week with a friend of mine, though there is an LA Fitness being built around the corner. The kids are old enough now that I am comfortable using child care services at a gym so that is an option for exercise. I am not much of a self-starter, so as much as I'd like to follow Mark Sisson's exercise ideas independently I need to be honest and realize I am not doing it.

Look for more detailed posts here soon!

Oh, hi there.

My mom just asked for the link to my blog and I realized I haven't touched it in 7 months. Ooops.

We decided to not do GAPS. GAPS is a little intense for our needs, and we aren't having some of the really intense issues that GAPS seems to address. That being said, I discovered Paleo. Which is basically GAPS minus the high doses of probiotics and intro stages. We focus on grassfed meat, lots of vegetables, healthy fats (olive oil, coconut oil, grassfed butter/ghee, leftover bacon fat from my farmer's bacon), and no grains, legumes, sugar, seed oils, or dairy (you can do some limited in the case of raw).

In early August I signed up with the local Gold's Gym. When I went in I discovered they had built out this new training center that included CROSSFIT. Now, I've read about Crossfit. It's inspiring. I have a friend who did it for a while. I thought it might be something to strive for, but I went up there to investigate and met Anya. She urged me to sign up and I discovered that it's not just for the athletic elite. Crossfit is for every body and I've been doing it at least once a week since then (coming up on 5 months next week). Today I noticed that I was getting my chin above the bar on pullups with less effort than even last week, I was pushing through my pushups and air squats way more than 5 months ago (I can get through about 35 air squats in one round if I want), and I can do full motion situps now whereas before I had to just reach for my calves and was lucky if I could get touch the backs of them. I can run about 250 meters without stopping, and am able to alternate between about 200m running and 100m walking. Today's workout was called Cindy, and it was as many rounds as possible of 5 pullups, 10 pushups and 15 air squats. I did 12 rounds.

Getting on board with Paleo has been tricky. I have two very picky eaters in my house, and when you take away the filler foods of grains they're left with very little option as they're not crazy about vegetables. That being said, I told my husband that what I wanted from him for Christmas was a 30 day commit to eating Paleo (80/20, I think a Whole30 is out of the question for right now). We're going to start on January 8th after our first paycheck of the month (oh how I miss paychecks that hit on the 1st and 15th). I'm still gearing up and making what paleo meals I can. Today I made Paleo Apple Muffins from Everyday Paleo for breakfasts for the pickies while I eat scrambled eggs and spinach and sausage. Dinner was Whole9's stuffed squash. Paul made chili yesterday, so we at least have gluten free meals.

Together we picked out 4 chicken breast, 4 chicken leg/thigh, 4 ground beef and 4 fish recipes for each week, some of which we'll double up on in order to have for lunches/leftovers. I also snagged a recipe from thefoodee.com for a roasted vegetable salad that I can serve alongside everything else we're making. Tomorrow will be my first day sans coffee.

I can't guarantee I'll keep up to date on this blog but I'll see what I can do. I need to take a before picture (which won't go up here haha) and take measurements tonight (though maybe I should do it tomorrow since I just ate ;)).

GAPS Prep, Day 7

Things are trodding along. I'm eating more fast food than I'd like because a lot of the food I have on hand requires preparation. I am trying to take advantage of free time or time while I'm already making a meal to work on something extra. Today I managed to package the zucchini chips, banana chips and dehydrated apples, then sliced 2 lbs of strawberries to go into the dehydrator. I made nutty blueberry protein balls and after dinner was cooked I made carrot mousse cake. Today I made Christie Eggies for breakfast with 1/4 avocado mashed in and it was tasty.

It looks like, since I'm nursing, we are not going to do GAPS Intro. Instead we will start with full GAPS and then, at a later date, do the intro. The question now becomes when to add in cod liver oil and probiotics. I'm thinking my plan should be to get us onto a full GAPS meal plan and then start in with the supplements, one at a time.

If I keep a regular rotation of soup in the fridge that should help a lot. I need to regularly keep an eye on what is in my fridge and see if I'll be running out in the next 24 hours and, if so, make whatever it is that I need.

For dinner tonight we had a whole chicken (which is now in the process of becoming stock on the stove) and corn on the cob, because we needed to use it up. I still have some flour, corn starch, frozen corn, corn meal and rice that needs to be used up. I may need to pass along the flour, corn meal and quite possibly the rice because we're just not using it up fast enough and I'm just anxious to get moving on this. The last thing to go will be my coffee and with that actual sugar. Dessert was Carrot Mousse Cake which I made with 1/2 as much honey as last time (1/8 cup) and it was still quite tasty.

DH worked with me on meal planning. I need to have a regular schedule. We agreed on two fish nights, two chicken nights, and 2 beef nights. I can use whole fish one time that can go into the bag of fish parts for fish stock. I will use ground or shreddable beef one night (primal tacos, chili with navy beans, etc) and we will grill steak or make a roast another night. I need to keep things interesting and I have to try out new recipes regularly to make this work. Just some thoughts. If any of you out there reading this have any suggestions I am open to it. We aren't eating grains (corn, wheat, rice, etc) or starches (potatoes, sweet potatoes) and not a whole lot of dairy though cultured dairy is allowed.

GAPS Prep, Day 3

Yesterday was a very busy day with a farm food pickup, work, and a grocery store run! However, I still managed to bake two whole porgies then turn them into stock (which I have going right now). I also made Girl Gone Primal's Nice & Naughty Nightshade dip and Sunflower Seed Crackers. Except I somehow ran out of the enormous bag of sesame seeds I had and subbed ground crispy almonds. I may have cooked them a bit too long as they tasted just a teensy tangy/burnt. Still edible, though. Today I'll be making GGP's prawn pate as well. And maybe more Nutty Blueberry Protein Balls (the original recipe calls for dates instead of prunes and blueberries instead of strawberries). And maybe another carrot mousse cake. I also have apples that will start going soft soon to dehydrate as well as more strawberries and bananas. Those went *fast*. I also plan on dehydrating some zucchini slices to be chips.

Today I am going to a GAPS information session. My husband took the day off because I've got a dentist appointment this morning so I'm dragging him along, too. Even if his job ends up being Child Entertainer, it would be nice if he got some exposure to this. ;)

GAPS Prep, Day 1

I'm going to say we're on Day 1 of GAPS preparation, since it's June 1 and I haven't been tracking up until now. I had all the intentions of posting yesterday until our power went out!

I've been following through the GAPS Guide, which if you're unfamiliar with is a book written by a mom following the GAPS protocol. She lists all kinds of troubleshooting tips, FAQs, and a progression to follow in order to ease yourself onto the diet. I was able to skip through several steps. We've cooked with coconut oil for a couple of years, I have a source for grassfed meats and eggs, and I regularly make chicken bone broth however we always use it before I can freeze it! In the guide she recommends that you continue eating your normal diet, and phasing out things as you run out of them, and add in GAPS meals as you go until you're on a full time GAPS diet before starting the intro.

My farmer was having a sale on chicken carcasses. That is, the chicken leftover from cutting up legs/thighs/breasts/wings. I get two per bag which is perfect for a batch of bone broth (almost 3 lbs). Yesterday I picked apart 5 carcasses. I have an amazing amount of broth and only 2 1/2 cups worth of little silicone freezer ready cups available. I will need to clean out the other 1 1/2 cups this morning so I can continue freezing stock. I pureed all the soft parts and put them into 2 cup servings in bags.

I made Carrot Mousse Cake yesterday and, I must say, it's pretty delicious. I even had some friends (who are gfdf) try it and they agreed it was tasty. DD was not a fan. I put 1/4 cup honey in it which was enough sweet for me but apparently not for her.

I've been perusing http://www.marksdailyapple.com longer than I have known about GAPS and we will likely be transitioning to this after GAPS (they're very similar). I've been looking up recipes there that are safe, and while the nuts aren't soaked, I made Nutty Blueberry Protein Balls (walnuts, macadamia nuts, dates, shredded coconut and fresh blueberries). Though a quick read in the GAPS book I see soaking isn't required unless you feel like you need to. That's a relief that if I don't have the time to soak and we have no other food options that I can use them raw, straight.

I'm placing my order this week for delivery in 1 1/2 weeks (so long as the routes match up) for walnuts, pecans, sunflower seeds and frozen butternut squash. I still have quite the stock of almonds, both raw and soaked/dehydrated. My farm delivery this week will have my beef bones for my first batch of beef bone broth.

When I wasn't working yesterday (read: when I was nursing my baby and needed to sit ;)) I was reading through the GAPSters blog. This mom detailed their intro and it was SO helpful and kind of the catalyst for me starting this blog up again.

Food Plan:

For breakfast today I am making Christie Eggies which is the GAPS alternative to scrambled eggs. It looks so tasty. My aunt taught me once, at an IHOP, the beauty of ordering over-easy or over-medium eggs then mashing them up with a fork to get the more solid whites mixed with the runny yolk and it was so good.

Lunch will likely be fast food as I did not plan ahead for my day. We'll be at a ballet class before work and only have 30 minutes between locations so it'll have to be something fast.

Provided I am not too exhausted (my first day at a family friendly job starts today) then I will be making a grocery store run and tonight I will be making Girl Gone Primal's Naughty Nightshade Dip and Sunflower Seed Crackers. I'll have to pick up something easy for dinner so I am considering getting a whole fish in order to make fish stock later.

For snacks today I have a fresh banana for DS and various dried fruits I did myself (strawberries, bananas and apples) and pecans.

I'm baaaack!

Having totally fallen off the wagon, we are working our way back on to the wagon. Life got a little overwhelming for a while for no good reason and we're settling back into a routine. We still eat about 90% pastured/grassfed meat but still supplement from the grocery store if we run out. The majority of our produce is from the grocery store as the growing season ramps up. However, this year, I started my *own* (first!) garden (which was an adventure in getting HOA approval!) and will hopefully have an abundance of peppers, tomatoes, onions, carrots, squashes, melons, lettuce, chard, beets, peas, pole beans and various herbs.

The big reason I'm bringing this journal back is because we have decided to start the GAPS journey. GAPS stands for Gut And Psychology Syndrome. The theory behind it is based on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet which was developed to help people with various intestinal problems and, later, autism (there is a common problem found in the gut of autistic children called Autistic Enterocolitis however it's pretty controversial because the doctor who found it has been discredited, but parents are still seeing relief for their children nonetheless which is the most important thing). Dr. Campbell-McBride saw relief with her own son on the SCD and expanded upon it then started noticing common things with her own patients (from autism to ADHD to even schizophrenia finding relief). It all comes down to the balance of gut flora, which has become a pretty popular/mainstream concept lately. That gut flora is put out of balance whether that's from prescription drugs, poor eating habits, various toxins, etc. What you're doing with GAPS is starving off the bad and supplementing with the good and feeding the existing good bacteria bringing your system back into balance.

Personally this makes a lot of sense. I am the fourth generation of formula fed children and was born via cesarean section (as were, sadly, both of my children). This is significant because children are born with sterile guts. Their guts are populated when passing through the birth canal and later through breastfeeding. However, when your gut is already compromised (like mine) then chances are you are passing along the same imbalanced flora. There are a variety of personal reasons for doing GAPS for myself - acne, asthma, seasonal allergies, and a variety of other mental snafus that overlap each other. I experienced my own gut issues in my teenage years into my early 20s and witnessed my daughter having her own gut issues as early as 6 weeks old. Let me tell you, nothing makes you feel more helpless than to know something is going on with your child and not knowing how to fix it. DH suffers from a variety of things and wouldn't it be nice to see relief, even if not 100%?

I know it is a lot of anecdotal evidence but really, funding is pretty limited for studies and the human body is so complex. There is so much we don't know that I can't imagine wasting time waiting to see if this is proven when I could just try it and see for myself. In addition, the primal lifestyle is VERY appealing to my husband and I, and there's not much difference between it and GAPS.

For the last few weeks I've been working on reading the GAPS book, the GAPS Guide book, and various websites/blogs I can come across with others' experiences. I joined the yahoo group. I already do things like cook with coconut oil, and make bone broth (well, from chicken at least), and ferment my own vegetables, and purchase pastured eggs/meat. I have made kefir before. However in the last week I have made ghee for the first time, and I picked apart a chicken and put everything that wasn't bone or tough cartiledge into a food processor for "chicken pate" to mix in with soups. I made Nutty Blueberry Protein Balls (walnuts, macadamia nuts, coconut oil, shredded coconut and fresh blueberries), Lemon/Blueberry/Pecan bars, attempted Cinnamon Apple Pecan bars (but it was crumbly, needs raisins or dates to hold it together), and I'm trying to get in the habit of making more soup.

This week I'll be getting some fermented cod liver oil (to add, small amounts at a time, to soup), beef soup bones (to make beef bone broth and beef pate), and hopefully I'll find some gherkins to make homemade fermented pickles. I also want find a good fermented salsa recipe so I can make dehydrated zucchini chips to eat with it. We are working on phasing out all of our non-GAPS/primal food and are down to some beans, rice and flour. I'll be trying out various recipes this week to keep food available to us so I'll be posting those relatively frequently.

I'm going to aim to post an update every day just so I can keep track of what we're eating and how we're feeling, though I want to be realistic that it may only happen every few days or a week. ;)