Mariposa Academy Homeschool

It’s strange and unexpected, but now that we have made our decision to stay in Charlotte I am actually at peace with it. I am not having second thoughts, not worrying about all the stuff I don’t like. Just enjoying all the positives and having a pretty much spectacular time these days.

Maybe it’s because it is spring here. Is there anything more gorgeous than spring in Charlotte? The weather has been ranging from the sixties to the eighties, and the trees are in bloom. Everywhere I go, I am agog at the fluffy, cotton-candy cherry blossoms

and Bradford pears.

The dogwoods and azaleas have also been blooming, and another tree I don’t know the name of. It is a small tree, with teeny, bright pinkish-purplish flowers clustered tightly along its branches. Very delicate. I used to see it in NY, too.

We’ve been spending lots of time in parks and playgrounds. Friday my friend Suzanne picked up the kids and me in her huge honking Suburban. We joke that it’s made of clubbed baby seals. I’m sure it gets about two miles to the gallon. But Suzanne has four kids, so she needs a big car. And it actually is such a luxurious ride that I found it quite tempting.

We went to a small park and hung out with some other friends of ours, Olga and Jennifer, and their respective kids. Olga is hugely pregnant, Jennifer is newly pregnant, and Suzanne has a wee baby girl of two or three months, whom I got to hold. Let me tell you, I am having complete baby lust these days. One more month until I can start trying!

The park is right near Olga and Suzanne’s neighborhood, Starmount. There were tons of people from the neighborhood there, and one group having a barbecue. Suzanne kept running into people she knew. Her son made a new friend when he returned a ball that another boy his age had thrown too far. People left their car windows open because of the heat, without worrying about a break-in.

On Sunday we met our friend Jen and her kids at another park, a really lovely one with a community bulletin board, a playground, a community garden, and a little creek. The kids had so much fun together.

That’s what I want– a real old-fashioned neighborhood, where people hang out at the local park, tend a community garden, go to neighborhood events. A place where people know each other. I can’t wait to find it.

We are staying in Charlotte.

At least, I think we are. We have given up on the idea of NYC, because it just seems impossible. Or, if not impossible, we would be giving up so much that it just wouldn’t be worth it. With the price of housing, we really wouldn’t be living in NYC. We’d be living in suburban Jersey, at least an hour’s train commute into the city. We really wouldn’t be able to afford to take advantage of all the cultural offerings of the city, and we’d probably only manage to get into the city once a month, if that. The things I love about NYC– the vibe and excitement, the diversity, the convenience of having everything in walking distance, delivery everything, excellent mass transit….. I would have none of these. So what’s the point? If we’re going to live the suburban life, we might as well do it here in Charlotte, where we can get a 4-br house close to downtown for under $250K, where my family is, where we have lots of friends.

If suddenly Adrian got an amazing job offer with a great salary up in Boston or something, we’d probably take it. But as it stands, Charlotte is the best option for us.

And now, I can’t wait to sell our condo and move into a nice big house with a yard. We still have work to do on this place to make it salable, and I need to learn to drive, but hopefully it won’t take long for either.

In other news, Zekey has been sick for about five days now. There are a few rotten stomach bugs going around and my poor boy has caught one of them. I don’t want to be gross, so let’s just say…. lots of diaper changes. And lots of spraying Lysol. Ugh. I’ve been stuck inside most of the time since last Wednesday, and I’m going a bit stir-crazy. Hopefully he’ll be better soon.

I am soooo tired. Tired tired tired. Last night I couldn’t fall asleep, so finally at around 1:00 I got up and looked for homes in Charlotte online for about two hours, until I forced myself to go to bed. Zekey seems to have adjusted to Daylight Savings Time remarkably quickly– he was up before 7:30 this morning. Ugh. I managed to grab half an hour of sleep after I put Dora on for him, but then he wanted me up with him.

Anyway, if you know me at all (which I hope you do if you’re reading this), the line that stands out for you in that paragraph is “looked for homes in Charlotte.” Yeah. Um. I don’t know. Adrian and I have been talking. And thinking. And… I still don’t know. The thing is, I haven’t given Charlotte a fair shake. Even I know that. I say I tried to like it, and I did– for about a week or two. And then I gave up. And until I learn to drive, I really can’t judge Charlotte fairly for what it is and what it has. So many of my frustrations, so many of the things that make day-to-day life a struggle for me, are because I don’t drive. It’s hard to like a place when running a couple of errands takes all day, when being three minutes late for a bus means being an hour late and therefore having to reschedule an appointment, when everything from which activities my kids can participate in to which doctors I can see to which friends I can hang out with is proscribed by the bus route.

I’m aware of all this, and I’m aware that even if we move back to the NYC area, I will likely need to drive. I never want to live somewhere where I have to drive just to get a cup of coffee or a quart of milk, but no matter where we end up I will probably have to drive at least once a week. So I am going to learn to drive. And I just feel like once I can drive, it only makes sense to give actually settling in Charlotte a fair shake. Move into a real house, take advantage of everything the town has to offer, and really live here for at least two more years instead of dreaming about leaving.

I was actually seeing the possibilities, envisioning a happy life for us here. NYC would mean going back to terrorism fears and ridiculous expense. Owning a home is so much more affordable here. In NYC we will probably struggle to make ends meet owning a three-bedroom townhome in Jersey at least an hour’s commute away from midtown. Here in Charlotte, we could have a four-bedroom house with a yard and actual storage space and a real kitchen, without struggling. We would love to open our own business one day, and that’s actually a possibility here in Charlotte. In NYC, just because of commercial real estate rates, it would remain a distant dream. I have a community of awesome friends, people that I really enjoy spending time with, people that I totally “click” with, people that are so supportive and would not only give me the shirt off their backs, but would also come over and wash all of my shirts and cook dinner while babysitting if I needed them to. And the sad thing is that I haven’t even put as much effort into these friendships as I could have. I haven’t invested myself fully in these relationships with these spectacular people because always, in the back of my mind, is the knowledge that we are eventually going to move back to NY, so why get super-close to people? If we make the commitment to staying I will have the greatest community here, and so will my kids. Of course it’s nothing like NY, but we can be happy.

Even the conservatism and bigotry and the huge presence of the Christian right is not as scary to me as it used to be. Since leaving Charlottemommies.com and starting ViaMaterna.com, I hardly ever have to deal with people telling me I’m going to hell for my religion or quoting scripture verses at me. Yes, I will still have to deal with such people, but I can lessen my family’s exposure to them. While still very black/white and very southern, Charlotte is diversifying quickly. The Hispanic community is growing so quickly, there’s a surprisingly large Indian community, and just the other day there was an article in the paper about the influx of Koreans. Despite the uber-Christian nature of this town, there is a sizable Jewish community and it is gaining influence. I have noticed an increase in availability of Passover foods and books just from last year to this year. This is a city that is having growing pains because there is a huge influx of newcomers, many of them immigrants, ethnic minorities, and Northerners. There is a lot of tension because of the conservative good ol’ boys who want to live in the old South, and because of the current right-wing political rhetoric about illegal immigrants and Muslims and all that. Not that I’ve studied it or anything, but I really believe this is temporary. I can totally see Charlotte as a much more diverse, cultured, and accepting city in ten years. I really would be surprised if that doesn’t happen.

But what kills me is my love of NY. Do I really want my kids to be Charlotteans? To grow up here and have their image of NYC be the Empire State Building, Times Square, and people talking in awful stereotyped Brooklyn accents? To become obsessed with sports (and crappy teams, no less), or… NASCAR? Oh, for the love of all that is good and holy, please don’t let my kids become NASCAR fans!!!

And I wonder if we’d be doing our kids a disservice, living in a place with no zoo and no aquarium, instead of four zoos and an aquarium? A place with just a few second-rate museums instead of a place with more museums than I could visit in a lifetime? A city that’s actually is planning to sell a landmark arts center to bring baseball to downtown?

That’s the real sticking point for me– What will be the best for my kids? What will give them more opportunities, more fulfillment, more joy? Growing up in an amazing, vibrant city, the “capital of the world,” famous as one of the top-tier cities of the globe, with countless cultural and educational institutions, more diversity than probably any other city on the planet– but just barely making it financially, and living on the outskirts of said city because there’s no way we can afford to really live in it? Or living in a smaller city with a teeny fraction of the cultural opportunities and less diversity, but having a fair-sized house with a yard, being okay financially, maybe owning a family business, and really taking advantage of the cultural opportunities that exist?

Reason number 4,826 why I’m glad we homeschool: At Mariposa Academy, we do not censor the words vagina and scrotum.

Llanina is on a paper-cutting frenzy. She’s been really into drawing and cutting out little pictures, as well as taping little things together. She made a family of robots for Zeke by cutting out and taping together squares and rectangles. She also drew and cut out a family of unicorns for him.

This evening I showed her how to cut those little people that hold hands when you unfold the paper (y’all know what I mean), and paper snowflakes. She’s done a few of each and is now cutting different shapes and seeing what they look like when unfolded.

Her snowflakes are really cool, with little hearts and spirals cut into them. Both the kids are really into spirals– drawing them, cutting them, pointing them out when they see them. Spirals are cool.

We had Zeke’s IEP meeting yesterday at our local public school. Zeke will receive two sessions of speech therapy a week, for 30 minutes each. They might be joint sessions with one or two other kids. I was against that at first, but the more I think about it, the more I think it might be good for him. Any other kids in the session would also be three-year-olds with apraxia. They would be doing the same therapy exercises. Having a peer there might be fun for Zeke, and help him come out of his shell more.

We should receive a call from the therapist within the next two weeks to set up the schedule. I’m so glad we are finally getting this underway.

Guess what? Ezekiel has learned to write his name! I would take a picture but I doubt it would show up– he wrote it with a purple glitter pen on dark blue paper. He also wrote it a few times with a glue stick, which of course meant that it was pretty much invisible a few minutes later. Some letters are sideways, the E’s have about a dozen lines instead of just three, but he actually wrote “Ezekiel.”

Right now he is working on a bunch of mazes he asked me to print out for him. Some of them are letter shaped, which he specifically asked for more of. He’s really interested in letters these days. The other day he and Llanina were making letters out of Scotch tape, writing letters with glue sticks, and Llani glued little bits of cut-up paper to form the letters of her name. I wonder if I could find Sticky Wickies somewhere. Remember those waxy strings you could form into shapes? I bet they’d like to form letters with them.

Today we meet with the public school folks about Zeke’s speech therapy. Finally! Poor Llani suddenly developed a fever last night, so Adrian is working from home so he can stay with her while Zeke and I go to the meeting. My poor sick girl is still asleep. Zeke, on the other hand, woke up at 7am today! Ugh, it gets earlier every day!

We have been having huge problems with transitions lately with Zeke. Changing his diaper, getting dressed, leaving the house– these all cause terrible tantrums. Sometimes I have to literally wrestle him, kicking and screaming, into his clothes. It’s horrendous. I dread having to deal with these meltdowns, and have actually just given up on our planned outing a few times. I’m not sure what to do. I think I’d better dig out my copy of Raising Your Spirited Child and see what it says about kids who have problems with transitions.

I’m also realizing that he thrives on routine, which I think is part of the same personality trait. He does the same thing every morning when he wakes up– watches “Dora,” eats a bowl of cereal with soy milk, then plays on Nickjr.com. He falls asleep around the same time every night, and wakes up around the same time each morning. He likes things to be predictable, and when his routine is changed, it upsets him.

I, on the other hand, am just terrible with routines. It is a minor miracle that we’ve managed to keep roughly the same bedtime for the past couple of months. My daughter is six and before this, the longest we’d kept to a set bedtime was about a week. I see I’m going to have to work on this to make things easier for Zeke. It will probably help me, too.

I wrote up a quick little chart of our weekly routine and stuck it on his door, so he knows that Tuesday is knitting group, Wednesday is his speech appointment, Thursday is coffee playdate, etc. I’m going to find a more durable format, like a feltboard or magnetic board, that can be changed if needed. I’m also going to decide on a regular weekly and daily routine. Nothing regimented or strictly timed, but some sort of loose structure that with make things more predictable. We’ll have a regular weekly library day, some regular outside time, a morning meeting to go over the day ahead of us, stuff like that. Hopefully that will make our days smoother and less tantrum-filled.

Tuesday was gorgeous– in the high sixties/ low seventies and sunny. That, of course, meant two things.

For me:

and for the kids:

What could be better?

Zeke is really getting good. He pedals madly and zooms around. Llani is good but nervous. Once she gets more practice and gets over her trepidation, she’ll do much better. I sat and knit while the kids rode. I also met a neighbor, who brought up religion in the first conversation we ever had, actually made a face when I told her my husband is an atheist, and informed me that she is “a Christian” (and if you’ve spent any time in the South or among the mainstream homeschooling community, you know there’s a difference between “being Christian” and “being a Christian). Ugh. I wish I had thought of something to say, but I just nodded. Two years here and I’m still taken aback by things like this. I have to come up with a prepared response to have at the ready.

Yesterday was nice, too. We missed our bus to a local shopping center, and that turned out to be a good thing. The kids ran around and played while I sat on a bench and knit. We got the next bus, had a snack, and then went to Michael’s. Zeke picked out yarn for his sweater, which I’m going to start once I’m finished with Llani’s.

I also bought yarn for a sweater for me, but I’m having second thoughts about it. It’s more than I wanted to spend, but I didn’t think it was too outrageous. then I realized, afterwards, that it added up to a $50 sweater. No, scratch that. A $50 potential sweater. I paid fifty bucks for the possibility of a future sweater. I’m giving serious thought to exchanging it.

We then went to a toy store, and the kids played while I shopped for some gifts. As we left, we saw this doll on the sale rack:

Beautiful, isn’t she? She was half-price and we just had to have her. As the cashier was ringing us up, it suddenly occurred to me that sharing would not be easy, and I’d better let Zeke grab one of the inexpensive toys up front. He chose an airplane.

Llani named her new dolly Henrietta (after Henrietta Pussycat on Mr. Rogers), and is totally enamored of her. Of course, so is Zeke. I should have seen that coming. He loves his airplane, but he also loves Llani’s doll. So this morning I called the toy store and asked them to hold the last remaining dolly like that for me. Zeke, of course, decided he was naming his dolly Henrietta, too. So, to avoid confusion, Llani changed her dolly’s name to Daisy.

Today, of course, is grey and miserable. We’re supposed to have our Weekly ViaMaterna mama and kids coffee, and I’m hoping it won’t be raining when we need to leave. Maybe we’ll go to the mall early just to make sure we get there before the rain starts.

Llani has been getting back into topics she’d put aside earlier. She’s been reading quite a bit about dinosaurs and pirates over the past couple of days, and has been playing with a Hebrew Alef-Bet (alphabet) puzzle we have. She’s also been doing a lot with cutting and folding paper. The other day she cut out groups of shapes in different sizes: a bunch of circles of all different sizes, a bunch of triangles of all different sizes, etc. Right now she is cutting and folding little purple Post-it papers to make butterflies, tiny hats, and who knows what else.

Speaking of puzzles, I hereby declare that the absolute best way for kids (and, um, NYC-centric adults) to learn US geography is a United States jigsaw puzzle. Especially one with really cute illustrations!