My Week in #7QT

My second godchild was baptized on Saturday.  John watched both Afon and Roan and let me slip away with just the family to a hidden Capuchin monastery in the Welsh hills that I didn't even know existed.  Our godson is the fifth son of friends of my husband's family.  Now I have two godchildren to pray for!

Safe to say Afon ate all of the chocolate coins Saint Nicholas brought and left the oranges.  The ceramic birdy and tea bag holder are for Mama and Daddy, respectively.  ;)

Wrote out most of my Christmas cards.  Now I just have to mail them (and therein lies the rub!).

An mid-week Advent visit to the church.

We attended Afon's Christmas pageant (in British speak, a pantomime), in which he played a star.  He was supposed to sing "Twinkle Twinkle" with the other stars, but he was too busy looking around.  Then he clapped when the audience applauded.  Yep, that's my special boy!

His is not a Catholic school, so I was surprised at the explicit appearance of baby Jesus and the other characters from the Christmas story, wise men and the like.  Goes to show how "the war on Christmas" is nonexistent in this country.  People say "happy Christmas," and no one is offended at the mention of it instead of the generic holidays.  State religion for the win?  (I kid!)  But somewhere, somehow, they're on to something.  Americans just like to feel entitled and/or offended by EVERYTHING.

After the pantomime, we were informed Afon had head lice.  Joy.

So, fun times.  (Fortunately, we were able to nip that in the bud before it became our fourth household epidemic.)

I was traveling along the shore and saw these birds soaring over the roof of the abandoned pier.  They glided just like a school of fish.

Rolling with the Takers at Written by the Finger of God.

Back-to-School Fall Fantasies

Print me!

I'm feeling all schoolish.  It's Afon's first day at Reception*, and while I'm so looking forward to having him in a structured environment with peers and out of my hair, part of me is a little sad that he wasn't the sort of pupil who could indulge my back-to-school fall fantasies.  This time of year, I can be caught sifting through curriculum (that I won't use) and brushing up on different homeschool philosophies.

Molly wrote about how she doesn't have the temperament to teach her children at home; while I should have, meanwhile, been a celibate teacher.  I'd wear one of those 90's dresses with buttons shaped like apples and get my hands chalky going over the themes of fall with young children I could send home at the end of the day!  To me, that sounds positively dreamy.  Of course, in this dream, there is no paperwork, angry parents, or children with disciplinary issues.

I know it's God's way of sanctifying me, that instead I have the disorder and lack the child I can connect with academically.  Anyway, there's still Roan.  ;)

I wanted to figure out this Waldorf thing once and for all, so last week I spent a good deal of time researching it, and I think I've discovered why it's so hard to pin down.  It's based on an occult religion called anthroposophy, but they don't like to broadcast that, and so the causal observer gets a bit of blanks to fill in when researching it in detail.

If Waldorf schooling was (or ever is) an option, I don't think we could do it because I get really hung up on reincarnation.  (Drives me crazy.  To me, nothing says, "Don't try your hardest, there's always next time," like reincarnation.  Plus, you know . . . heresy.)  And even though they don't explicitly teach it, it is apparently taken into consideration when nurturing and mentoring children in early education.  Weird things like, "So-in-so has behavior problems/allergies/a disease because he's working through issues in his past life."  There's also heavy evidence that white supremacy and racism is built inextricably into the philosophy.

The things that do draw me to Steiner schooling are its very overt ties to western folk traditions, thereby intertwining often and well with the liturgical year, and its emphasis on nature and natural things.  Waldorf toys are the most beautiful little pieces.  But Afon can't be trusted to appreciate (er, not rip up in his teeth) a nice expensive handmade toy.  A nature table would be routinely dismantled, with leaves and flowers ground into the carpet hourly.

So I'm hovering on the unformed cloud of ideas of how to extend his "schooling" at home, if at all.  He spends plenty of time outdoors, and when we're on the beach I like to "educate" him about the rocks, sea glass, empty crab shells, and mussels clinging to crags.  When we walk, I point out the plants I know to him.  I'd really like if we lived near a farm (Snowdonia? maybe some day!), so he could interact with the animals.  We tried the spring before last to grow some seedlings, which died after I neglected to cover them one cold night.

His imagination is basically limited to playing with cars, or I'd stuff his little dirty palms full of saint peg dolls.  Afon is, however, a mini genius at drawing.  I'll have to share some of his pictures on here some time.  The attention to detail is impressive, and I'm not just saying that 'cause I'm his mom!  No impressionistic Steiner watercolors for my little man.  He ploughs through reams and reams of paper.  I hope some day I will be able to to get him to keep a sturdy sketchbook he can take with him everywhere, that will become a treasure for his later years in life.

Afon loves "cooking" and "knitting," and I think in a few years time, after he's got some therapy in him and is able to follow directions, I'll teach him how to crochet.  As for beeswax . . . I'm pretty sure he'd just eat it.  :P

By the way, here is the big boy himself setting off on his dad's bike for the first day:

What are your schoolish thoughts this time of year?  I'm really nosy!




*Reception is the year in the UK that children go into school, the year they turn five.  I'm not sure, curriculum-wise, how it compares to preschool and kindergarden in the States.