Schooling and September

 Our second week of school is nearly done and I am here to tell you: I'm tired! My body has slept through my alarm clock for two days in a row.  Yesterday I was up around 6:30 (after sleeping through the earlier alarm), but this morning I wasn't up until 7:45 --!! I'm giving myself plenty of grace, because clearly if I need rest, I should get rest, instead of pushing myself for no good reason. Although we will still do a little school tomorrow and Monday, I am thankful that we have a four-day-weekend coming up (my husband is off from work). I'm ready for it!

Finn is getting into the swing of his two online classes--Honors French 2 and Honors Biology. I'm incapable of teaching the former and not interested in teaching the latter, especially after seeing his textbook!  Although I took AP Biology, went to Summer Governor's School for Biology in high school, and planned to major in Biology in college (spoiler alert: I picked philosophy instead), I don't consider myself a great resource as a teacher for Finn on this subject. It has been 25 years since I studied biology seriously. He needs depth, because that's the kind of person he is! I was ruminating this week about how some kids have clear likes/dislikes in high school, so you can sort of cater the experience to them.  Some children are obviously not going to be scientists; others are obviously not going to be English professors, etc.  I do not  have that yet with Finn. He loves every single subject with a passion and depth of curiosity that is astonishing to me. It's wonderful, yes, but it's also daunting!  Perhaps in another year or two he'll have a better idea of what he loves the most.  Although I did ask him this week "if you had to decide right now what you wanted to study in college, what would you say?" And without missing a beat he said "linguistics."  Interesting--and not at all surprising, for this boy who has been teaching himself Chinese all summer, and who is taking French and Spanish (yesterday after his first Spanish 2 class he was glowing, 'ohhh, it was WONDERFUL!!! to be back in class!!'), who checked a book on Thai out of the library, and who can read bits and pieces of Arabic and Russian, and knows more about the roots of languages than I could ever know. 

So. We'll see!  But in the meantime, I'm just so thankful that I get to homeschool him, that we get to spend the next 4 years *together*, that he exists and is my son.  

As we are navigating the waters of online classes and my expectations for Finn this year, I also have little Annie tagging along.  She is really the best.  She gets her schoolwork done quickly, reads voraciously, writes little stories, helps around the house, knows where to find everything, is often my right-hand-man :), and has a "friendship" category in her school planner where she can write down what things she is doing with her friends each week. She's definitely my extroverted, social child. I just love her! My goal with her this year is basically to be sure we get plenty of time together to read aloud, sew/make things, and talk.  Academically, 5th grade is really a piece of cake!  I want this year with Annie to be about making things, reading books, and spending time together.  She's at such a great age for relationship-building!

Today is September 2nd, and my husband and I were both in high spirits last night because of it.  He loves autumn.  From Labor Day weekend until Christmas, he's so happy. He loves the long Labor Day weekend. He loves the leaves changing, the crisp weather. He loves pumpkins, cider, and running or hiking in the fall air.  I like to think he also loves my birthday (September 25th) and our anniversary (two weeks later, October 9th).  :)  He loves dressing up for Halloween, carving pumpkins, traditions. He loves Thanksgiving and all the Christmas festivities.  In 2018 he was so sick, he missed the entire autumn. I think that gives him--and me--a heightened sense of joy every time it comes around again!  And it has felt more autumnal here this week, too.

I've always loved autumn because of the beauty (we're in the mountains, and it really is lovely in autumn), my birthday, the start of school (when I was a child, school began the day after Labor Day, and I loved starting school!), all the harvest goodness--pumpkins, spices, etc.  In fact, I love autumn so much that back in 1998 I changed our planned wedding date from July 24th to October 9th, because I couldn't bear not to get married in autumn! 

I think this weekend I will put out some fall decor. I need to de-summer my flower beds, but right now I still have a project looming: painting our kitchen cabinets! I haven't really touched them in several weeks because we went on vacation, and then school started.  But I need to get the cabinets finished so that I can move on to a few other projects around the house.  It's incredible how much paint can change things.  My cabinets went from dingy and grimy to bright and clean.  

Happy September!