"It's life, Jim, but not as we know it…"

I was very surprised to pull up my blog and see that I haven't, in fact, blogged EVEN ONCE this year! Wow!  I actually did start another side blog to kind of vent about things and work through some thoughts, so maybe that counts for something in the grand blogosphere of life.  I also haven't read most of the blogs I used to follow in that time.  And it isn't that I'm not online, because I am.  I just do 99% of my online time on my phone, because I'm either nursing toddlers & putting them down for naps or sitting near kids who are working on school and need me "on call," so I will go days without sitting at my computer.  And another factor is that Noodle has become quite the Scratcher  and so it can be a challenge to even get a chance to sit at my computer. And when I do finally have a chance, Gub Gub thinks he needs to climb on the chair, on me, on the shelves next to my desk, so it's a bit of a circus and not conducive to sitting and thinking or writing.  Or really anything for that matter besides going a little more crazy.

But life is pretty good.  The twins sleep through the night most nights, though there's been something unknown going on this past week which has disrupted that, so that means I get a fairly good chunk of uninterrupted sleep and now feel pretty human most days.

We are trying out something new with homeschooling, called "Project Based Homeschooling," which basically means you allow your kids more unstructured school time and assist them in working on projects that interest them and help them develop the skills needed to do what interests them.  We are still just kind of dipping our toes into this approach, but hope to be going pretty well with it for next Fall.  We will still do our core subjects of Math & Language Arts together, and probably History (as I'm  planning a sort of LA/History combined) and do project time in the afternoons.  Noodle has shown me how great this can work with her Scratch stuff.  It's amazing how much time kids (and people generally) will spend on things that call to them and fulfill their interests and desires to create.  Spud also has been working a lot on very interesting Lego creations as well as origami.  And just tonight we started a blog for Sprout so he can participate as well.  My hope is that this will be a good approach, especially for Spud who you could call an intractable learner.  You can not lead that horse to water, even, let alone make him drink.  It's more of a "make him aware that there is water and hope he understands that water is really important," and then there is a decent chance, but no guarantee, that he'll drink.  It is a real challenge to work with him, but I am feeling hopeful.  I feel that raising him to be a useful and mostly happy individual will be a very challenging task (it has been so far) but will probably result in a tremendous amount of satisfaction for me, as I know just how #$&% hard it has been.  Some personalities are just tough.

My 36th birthday is just 3 days away.  My friend started (last year) thinking of a list of X things to do each year that she is X (I think she is 44 this year, so 44 things) which I think is kind of neat.  I'm not sure I'm up for that this year, though.  I guess they wouldn't have to be really challenging things…  I'll mull it over.  It is a "Perfect Square" number, though, and I won't have another of those for 13 years.  That seems notable.

I do hope I can get a bit better at posting.  Life is busy, but we are doing mostly okay most of the time.  It's been such a blessing to finally get some springtime weather, as the twins are loving being able to play outside, which means fewer messes INSIDE.  Hooray!!  And just for fun, a couple of pictures from Easter of my littlest ones.