Stuart and I have recently decided that we would look into homeschooling Gage and Finn. It has been something I've thought about, however briefly, before. In the light of all those innocent lives lost this past Friday at Sandy Hook Elementary School, I started doing some research. While I know I live in Canada, and school shootings/mass shootings of any kind are less likely to take place compared to the States, I still wonder. If I put Gage in school, I'm handing over my most prized possessions (one of my 2 anyway!) and I would want them to teach him and keep him safe exactly as I would. I just don't feel like the school system in place could do the same job I could. Every child learns differently and excels with different teaching styles. There are so many things they don't teach in school that I would like my child to know.
When Stu and I talked about it and made our pros and cons list for both homeschooling and going to public school, the homeschooling list was very appealing.
I plan on sharing more as we continue to do our research, and we still have a little bit of time to figure things out (Gage isn't due to start Junior Kindergarten until September 2013) but I'm excited to blog about this journey as well!
Monday, December 17, 2012
Thursday, December 6, 2012
Constant Surprise
I've been blogging a lot about my journey with Dusty lately, so I think I'm due to write about some mom issues.
The last few days I keep stepping back from my life and going "wow, I can't believe I'm a mom!"
It seems a bit nuts to me that I have 2 beautiful boys, that I carried inside me for 9 months, birthed and have raised into healthy active children. I never knew I was capable of so much love, and I'm so lucky that I get to stay home with them and watch them continue to grow and become men. I can't wait for them both to be grown, I can just imagine they will be such tall, strong, good looking men that will hopefully be well adjusted, polite and full of passion for life. I don't want to rush anything and I get so sad when I look at how tiny they used to be (even Finn has grown so much!). I guess I just look forward to each and every stage!
I was thinking this morning about all the things that surprised me about being a mom. I had a particularly rough night with Finn, and while I was feeling pretty rough this morning, I started thinking about a list of "mom surprises" in my head.
Here is some of that list:
#1 The sleep deprivation! Before I had Gage, everyone used to say "sleep while you can, because you won't once baby arrives!" and I always thought to myself "oh whatever, I'll be home on maternity leave, I'll be fine with no sleep!". I was so very wrong. I'm much better this time around with Finn, but with Gage I did NOT handle sleep deprivation well. At all. I had 2 small kitchen fires because I was so tired, that could have turned into something MUCH worse. Just simply because I was too tired to pay attention to what I was doing. I heard a story once about a mom who came home from grocery shopping with her small baby and in the midst of getting the food out of her car, she locked the keys in the car with her baby. She sat on the hood of her car and cried for 2 hours while her baby slept, upset that she had done something so stupid. After she slowly calmed down, she noticed it was getting cold, put her hands in her pocket and SURPRISE, found her keys. That is absolutely something I would do. Hands down.
#2 How NO ONE listens to mom. This goes for my husband as well. I'll tell Gage "Don't do that" only for him to go "no" and leave the room still doing it. I tell him to leave our cats alone and to stop chasing them a MILLION times in a day, only for him to completely 100% ignore me. I'll tell Stu something, whether it be a detail about my day, an appointment in the coming week, or some plans we have for the weekend, only for him to completely not pay attention. A few days later he'll claim I never told him. It makes me want to smack my head repeatedly against a wall.
#3 How much breastfeeding hurts. I've had constant latch problems with Finn, and while I've tried everything, gone for help, watched videos and read article after article about what could possibly STILL be wrong almost 10 weeks after we started, my nipples constantly feel like they are going to fall off at any moment. Sometimes when he wakes up and is hungry, I cry and think "oh no, not again!" It is slowly getting better, but we still have some brutal days.
#4 How hard it is to find "me" time and how often I forget about my own needs. I'm awesome at going out somewhere and making sure I'm completely organized. Both kids will have all they need, be clean, have sippy cups full, extra change of undies, portable potty seat, extra diapers, receiving blankets etc. I'll have everyone with boots and jackets and mittens and hats ON and ready to walk out the door before realizing I'm still in PJ's, wearing slippers and haven't brushed my teeth and haven't eaten anything in 6 hours. Then when I finally do get some "me" time, whether it's going to the barn alone for a few hours (the best thing EVER) or just being able to sit and put makeup on, it goes by WAY WAY WAYYYY too fast. And then all too soon, I'm at home with 2 miserable children with 20 billion demands.
#5 How much patience is required to deal with an almost-3-year-olds everyday adventures. I've never ever been known for patience, at all. Some days I barely hold on by a thread and I wonder how bad it would be if I just lost my shit. Maybe then he'd listen to me?
#6 The cleaning. I'm a neat freak. I HATE a messy house. It's my THING. No matter how tired I am and no matter what is going on that day, I HAVE to at least clean the kitchen and vacuum. At least. It drives me nuts if I don't do something to clean.
#7 How frustrating it is when Gage is loud and wakes Finn up. Like 5 seconds ago. After a horrible rough night of no sleep, I FINALLY just got him to nap and it only lasted 5 minutes. Trying to not take that out on Gage is really really hard.
#8 How strong my stomach is now. I can change poopy diapers, get pooped on, wipe bums, change undies and bed sheets, pick up half chewed food with my bare hands and not even bat an eye. Only thing I can't handle is puke. That is Stu's job.
#9 Making dinner. I have no energy left by that time of day. As much as I would love to have a healthy and hearty dinner ready on the table for when Stu gets home from work, more often then not it's perogies, waffles or bagels. Even that sometimes, takes far too much effort.
#10 How hilarious it is when Gage has a huge tantrum in a store. He JUST started doing this, and is in the "I want" stage. Everyone stares. It's awesome.
#11 How heartbreaking it is when they get hurt and cry, or just get really upset about something. You know that "the world is ending" cry? It so hard to hear!
#12 Not allowing the tv to babysit. It's really easy to put the tv on and let disney junior or treehouse entertain my kid while I relax with a coffee. It's SO hard to get outside and go for a walk sometimes.
#13 How scared and panicked you get when it all goes quiet. Toddlers aren't supposed to be quiet, so when they are, RUN.
#14 How hilarious kids are. They say the funniest things! Gage told me last night while in the bath "hey mama, I'm touching my penis!" ...... ummmm okay? Or how easily they copy what they hear. Stu said once "I'm going to fart in your face!" (which was so not cool to say out of frustration, what came next was all his fault) only for Gage to go "no, I'm going to fart in YOUR face!"..... sigh.
I'm sure there will be many more, I'm going to make sure to add them as I think of them. I also asked some friends on social media to share what they thought as well.
The last few days I keep stepping back from my life and going "wow, I can't believe I'm a mom!"
It seems a bit nuts to me that I have 2 beautiful boys, that I carried inside me for 9 months, birthed and have raised into healthy active children. I never knew I was capable of so much love, and I'm so lucky that I get to stay home with them and watch them continue to grow and become men. I can't wait for them both to be grown, I can just imagine they will be such tall, strong, good looking men that will hopefully be well adjusted, polite and full of passion for life. I don't want to rush anything and I get so sad when I look at how tiny they used to be (even Finn has grown so much!). I guess I just look forward to each and every stage!
I was thinking this morning about all the things that surprised me about being a mom. I had a particularly rough night with Finn, and while I was feeling pretty rough this morning, I started thinking about a list of "mom surprises" in my head.
Here is some of that list:
#1 The sleep deprivation! Before I had Gage, everyone used to say "sleep while you can, because you won't once baby arrives!" and I always thought to myself "oh whatever, I'll be home on maternity leave, I'll be fine with no sleep!". I was so very wrong. I'm much better this time around with Finn, but with Gage I did NOT handle sleep deprivation well. At all. I had 2 small kitchen fires because I was so tired, that could have turned into something MUCH worse. Just simply because I was too tired to pay attention to what I was doing. I heard a story once about a mom who came home from grocery shopping with her small baby and in the midst of getting the food out of her car, she locked the keys in the car with her baby. She sat on the hood of her car and cried for 2 hours while her baby slept, upset that she had done something so stupid. After she slowly calmed down, she noticed it was getting cold, put her hands in her pocket and SURPRISE, found her keys. That is absolutely something I would do. Hands down.
#2 How NO ONE listens to mom. This goes for my husband as well. I'll tell Gage "Don't do that" only for him to go "no" and leave the room still doing it. I tell him to leave our cats alone and to stop chasing them a MILLION times in a day, only for him to completely 100% ignore me. I'll tell Stu something, whether it be a detail about my day, an appointment in the coming week, or some plans we have for the weekend, only for him to completely not pay attention. A few days later he'll claim I never told him. It makes me want to smack my head repeatedly against a wall.
#3 How much breastfeeding hurts. I've had constant latch problems with Finn, and while I've tried everything, gone for help, watched videos and read article after article about what could possibly STILL be wrong almost 10 weeks after we started, my nipples constantly feel like they are going to fall off at any moment. Sometimes when he wakes up and is hungry, I cry and think "oh no, not again!" It is slowly getting better, but we still have some brutal days.
#4 How hard it is to find "me" time and how often I forget about my own needs. I'm awesome at going out somewhere and making sure I'm completely organized. Both kids will have all they need, be clean, have sippy cups full, extra change of undies, portable potty seat, extra diapers, receiving blankets etc. I'll have everyone with boots and jackets and mittens and hats ON and ready to walk out the door before realizing I'm still in PJ's, wearing slippers and haven't brushed my teeth and haven't eaten anything in 6 hours. Then when I finally do get some "me" time, whether it's going to the barn alone for a few hours (the best thing EVER) or just being able to sit and put makeup on, it goes by WAY WAY WAYYYY too fast. And then all too soon, I'm at home with 2 miserable children with 20 billion demands.
#5 How much patience is required to deal with an almost-3-year-olds everyday adventures. I've never ever been known for patience, at all. Some days I barely hold on by a thread and I wonder how bad it would be if I just lost my shit. Maybe then he'd listen to me?
#6 The cleaning. I'm a neat freak. I HATE a messy house. It's my THING. No matter how tired I am and no matter what is going on that day, I HAVE to at least clean the kitchen and vacuum. At least. It drives me nuts if I don't do something to clean.
#7 How frustrating it is when Gage is loud and wakes Finn up. Like 5 seconds ago. After a horrible rough night of no sleep, I FINALLY just got him to nap and it only lasted 5 minutes. Trying to not take that out on Gage is really really hard.
#8 How strong my stomach is now. I can change poopy diapers, get pooped on, wipe bums, change undies and bed sheets, pick up half chewed food with my bare hands and not even bat an eye. Only thing I can't handle is puke. That is Stu's job.
#9 Making dinner. I have no energy left by that time of day. As much as I would love to have a healthy and hearty dinner ready on the table for when Stu gets home from work, more often then not it's perogies, waffles or bagels. Even that sometimes, takes far too much effort.
#10 How hilarious it is when Gage has a huge tantrum in a store. He JUST started doing this, and is in the "I want" stage. Everyone stares. It's awesome.
#11 How heartbreaking it is when they get hurt and cry, or just get really upset about something. You know that "the world is ending" cry? It so hard to hear!
#12 Not allowing the tv to babysit. It's really easy to put the tv on and let disney junior or treehouse entertain my kid while I relax with a coffee. It's SO hard to get outside and go for a walk sometimes.
#13 How scared and panicked you get when it all goes quiet. Toddlers aren't supposed to be quiet, so when they are, RUN.
#14 How hilarious kids are. They say the funniest things! Gage told me last night while in the bath "hey mama, I'm touching my penis!" ...... ummmm okay? Or how easily they copy what they hear. Stu said once "I'm going to fart in your face!" (which was so not cool to say out of frustration, what came next was all his fault) only for Gage to go "no, I'm going to fart in YOUR face!"..... sigh.
I'm sure there will be many more, I'm going to make sure to add them as I think of them. I also asked some friends on social media to share what they thought as well.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Proved Me Wrong
I had my first lesson on Dusty this past weekend with a new coach. To say that I am proud of my horse is the understatement of the year. I went into this new adventure with Dusty with little expectation and some small goals, I was just hoping to have some fun with my horse and get both of us into better shape.
Within one hour, my extra long Quarter Horse proved that even I've been underestimating his abilities. On the lunge line before I even got on, he surprised me by becoming soft, relaxed and balanced. I've never acheived even 1/3 of that in the 9 years I've owned him. All I did was put a side rein only on the inside instead of on both sides. This made it next to impossible for him to lean on and resist, as long as I kept him moving forward, he began to realize that it just made more sense (and less work!) to carry himself properly.
Then I got on, and had him doing a shoulder-in in a square, where he also became completely soft and using his hind end, and eventually we even TROTTED the shoulder-in! That was all something beyond what I thought he'd be capable of doing and looking like we had it together. He's just so impossibly long, I've barely been able to get him to shoulder-in at the walk when I ride him by myself. But this actually felt good, and LOOKED good (or so I was told). I could have cried! And that was just the first lesson!
My coach seems to "get" why I'm wanting to do this, despite having so many people tell me that I should move on from Dusty and ride other horses. People even went as far as trying to convince me to sell him, or lease him out. If we were able to do something like a shoulder-in at the trot on the first lesson, I'm extremely excited to keep this whole journey up. My coach put it as we are starting a new chapter, and asking Dusty to forget about how I've been asking him to do things in the past. He's so hard mouthed, and dead-sided. She told me that we just need to ask him things at the whisper instead of "yelling" because eventually he'll start paying attention and going "what are you saying?". I was hesitant that it would work at first, because Dusty is typically is so stubborn that no matter how much leg I put on him to move over, if he doesn't want to, he just doesn't. But it WORKED. I learned that instead of holding him up and in the position I feel he should be in, I need to ride his hind end first, to ensure that he is under himself properly, and by doing so I'm "inviting" him to "rise" to the occasion and carry himself in front of me. The way my new coach explained all this made so much "click".
I went into this thinking that my biggest challenge would be getting my body to do what I already know needs to be done. To build that muscle up and get myself into better shape. For the most part, I already knew the things Dusty and I needed to work on and fix, but I assumed he'd have a harder time "getting" it then I would. I was so very wrong! My body the next day was very sore, which I was expecting. But the way I was looking at my horse and what he's capable of was also so very wrong. He's been underestimated so many times in the years I've owned him, and looked at as the super long, bombproof, slightly rude, pushy, built-like-a-hunter Quarter Horse that wasn't capable of much and I always stood in his corner. After years of people looking down on him, I just stopped ignoring what others thought of us and our riding relationship. It turns out I really wasn't in his corner as much as I thought and that all those nay-sayers got to me more then I thought. My sweet gelding proved me wrong, and I could totally feel him going "I told you so, mom!" this past weekend when at the end of the lesson I showered him with praise.
I'm so excited to continue this journey with my boy! I've started writing our progress at the end of each ride, just so that when we rock next year's show season, I can look back at where we started and be that much more proud of both of us. I know it's baby steps, and that to most people a shoulder-in, walk or trot, really isn't that big of a deal. But to me, who was told my horse was "worth his weight in gold" and an "awesome school horse for beginners", it's so much more then I thought we'd be capable of in such a short span.
Within one hour, my extra long Quarter Horse proved that even I've been underestimating his abilities. On the lunge line before I even got on, he surprised me by becoming soft, relaxed and balanced. I've never acheived even 1/3 of that in the 9 years I've owned him. All I did was put a side rein only on the inside instead of on both sides. This made it next to impossible for him to lean on and resist, as long as I kept him moving forward, he began to realize that it just made more sense (and less work!) to carry himself properly.
Then I got on, and had him doing a shoulder-in in a square, where he also became completely soft and using his hind end, and eventually we even TROTTED the shoulder-in! That was all something beyond what I thought he'd be capable of doing and looking like we had it together. He's just so impossibly long, I've barely been able to get him to shoulder-in at the walk when I ride him by myself. But this actually felt good, and LOOKED good (or so I was told). I could have cried! And that was just the first lesson!
My coach seems to "get" why I'm wanting to do this, despite having so many people tell me that I should move on from Dusty and ride other horses. People even went as far as trying to convince me to sell him, or lease him out. If we were able to do something like a shoulder-in at the trot on the first lesson, I'm extremely excited to keep this whole journey up. My coach put it as we are starting a new chapter, and asking Dusty to forget about how I've been asking him to do things in the past. He's so hard mouthed, and dead-sided. She told me that we just need to ask him things at the whisper instead of "yelling" because eventually he'll start paying attention and going "what are you saying?". I was hesitant that it would work at first, because Dusty is typically is so stubborn that no matter how much leg I put on him to move over, if he doesn't want to, he just doesn't. But it WORKED. I learned that instead of holding him up and in the position I feel he should be in, I need to ride his hind end first, to ensure that he is under himself properly, and by doing so I'm "inviting" him to "rise" to the occasion and carry himself in front of me. The way my new coach explained all this made so much "click".
I went into this thinking that my biggest challenge would be getting my body to do what I already know needs to be done. To build that muscle up and get myself into better shape. For the most part, I already knew the things Dusty and I needed to work on and fix, but I assumed he'd have a harder time "getting" it then I would. I was so very wrong! My body the next day was very sore, which I was expecting. But the way I was looking at my horse and what he's capable of was also so very wrong. He's been underestimated so many times in the years I've owned him, and looked at as the super long, bombproof, slightly rude, pushy, built-like-a-hunter Quarter Horse that wasn't capable of much and I always stood in his corner. After years of people looking down on him, I just stopped ignoring what others thought of us and our riding relationship. It turns out I really wasn't in his corner as much as I thought and that all those nay-sayers got to me more then I thought. My sweet gelding proved me wrong, and I could totally feel him going "I told you so, mom!" this past weekend when at the end of the lesson I showered him with praise.
I'm so excited to continue this journey with my boy! I've started writing our progress at the end of each ride, just so that when we rock next year's show season, I can look back at where we started and be that much more proud of both of us. I know it's baby steps, and that to most people a shoulder-in, walk or trot, really isn't that big of a deal. But to me, who was told my horse was "worth his weight in gold" and an "awesome school horse for beginners", it's so much more then I thought we'd be capable of in such a short span.
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