Homeschool Mom High School Freak Out!

This is all past tense freaking out we’re talking about… five months ago was when it occurred.  My daughter was beginning her senior year in high school and she needed a transcript for some such activity or club or other stress-producing avenue for this homeschool mother.  Lots of moms have high school homeschool anxiety… how will I teach chemistry, or trigonometry, or a foreign language when all I know is pig latin from Zoom??? 

I’m a planner by nature, so making the high school plan was right up my alley.  The lovely state we reside in has the high school requirements right there online for us to copy and paste.  I simply spread out the course requirements over four years and BAM… it was done.  Fast forward to the request for the transcript.  WHAT?  You want grades from the last three years?  Of course I kept diligent track of all of them… including electives and P.E. and driver’s education…. somewhere.  Being somewhat organized, I had thrown them all into a file folder AND I knew where it was.  Whew!

Through the first three years of high school teaching, I had also been collecting transcript templates.  They were thrown in a file folder that I knew the location of!  See?  Why was I freaking out?  I guess I had heard of other moms losing it at this point, so I jumped on the band wagon.

Truly, it was no big deal.  One balmy August afternoon when it was WAY too hot to go outdoors in Phoenix, AZ, I sat down at the computer and made my own template for an OFFICIAL HIGH SCHOOL TRANSCRIPT.  Yes, I wrote that right at the top in bold letters.  Looks really official.  I resurrected the high school plan for my daughter… the one with two cute pictures on the top… (one from 1994 when she had a waterfall hairdo and was sitting in her high chair.. and one glamor shot taken by her talented cousin, Whitney) and I filled in the classes as they actually happened.  Bam!

Why do homeschool moms freak out about this??  I’m not sure.  The Lord fills in the gaps for us EVERY time.  The credits added up to more than enough.  The required classes were accomplished.  He supplied teachers for the subjects where I know nothing.  Homeschooling is really about leaving the details up to the Lord.  We wake up every day and pray for wisdom… and then march down the stairs, feeling as unqualified as ever, and rely on the Lord to aid this sometimes weary soul.  I wouldn’t trade one day of our homeschooling adventure…. (I can think of about 10 days I would trade!) … but each day with its trials, joys and triumphs was worth every ounce of my ever-loving-sold-out devotion to God and our kids.

Tonight I copied and pasted Official High School Transcript #1 and filled in the blanks for #2.  And it’s only half way through his freshman year!  Sweet Jesus, I’m on top of this thang now!

I Do Have Other Kids

Austin has been the focus of several blogs lately, but I feel obligated as a mother who teaches fairness and non-favoritism, to mention my three other children.  And for the record, when I kiss each one of them “Good night” I whisper in each one’s ear, “You’re my favorite, don’t tell the others.”  It’s a ritual of motherly love… that they are all well aware of… but each one secretly believes it’s true!

Larisa is my mini-me, except the blonde, blue-eyed version.  People say she looks like me, but the only resemblance I see is our teeth.  She is 16 and has spent all but two years of her life in my 24/7 care.  She went to kindergarten and first grade, but we have homeschooled her all the way to her junior year of high school.  And we still love each other.  Amazing!  Spending so much time with your mother makes you more mature than the other 16-year-old girls who spend 50+ hours per week with their giggly, boy-crazy friends.  It’s a proven fact of life.  She is a joy to be around!

Currently, Larisa is knee-deep in Chemistry and loathes it, unfortunately.  She is taking other classes too, but Chemistry is her ball and chain this year.  She’s not a math lover, to say the least.  I’ve been teaching her Algebra… and math was my favorite subject in high school.  It’s so logical.  It’s right or it’s wrong.  There’s no predicate nominatives or split infinitives to mess with your mind!  However, teaching Larisa Algebra has almost made me not like math anymore.  But we will be victorious.

Keeve is my huggable, thoughtful, slow-paced child and our musician.  Currently he is taking piano lessons for the third year and is playing the trombone in the elementary school band.  That is the only class he has ever taken at a school.  He was 11 the first time he darkened the doorway of a public schooling establishment.  He’s there for 45 minutes, twice a week, and he’s handling all the peer pressure quite well.  Keeve is also the only Crosby child to sport braces so far.  He’s bearing that burden like a champion!  The change in his teeth and jaw shape in a mere four months is nothing less than amazing!  Keeve is also my baby boy.  He’s the one who will be the most displaced when our Colombian princess gets home to stay.  We’ve had many a talk with Keeve about this and he’s OK with the whole deal.  He prays faithfully for his little sister each night for her to have a bed to sleep in and someone to love her and feed her.  It’s precious.

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We have only four more days in our wait for our referral call for our little girl from Cali.  Please see my adoption blog for stress-related information:  www.ZazasMama.wordpress.com.  Here is the extent of what we know about our daughter at this point:  she lives in the Cauca Valley, in Colombia.  She is 5 or 6 years old.  She is an orphan.  She speaks Spanish.  That’s it.  Here are my educated guesses about her at this point:  she has black hair, olive skin and brown eyes.  She is tiny for her age.  That’s it.  Here are my hopes about her at this point:  that she still has all her baby teeth.  She has dimples.  She loves to giggle and snuggle.  Someone has lovingly told her about the love of Jesus. She likes to sing and dance and play with dollies.

TOMORROW I could have all the answers to my questions about my girl!  The suspense is killing me!

School Starts Today…..bahahahahahahah!

Yes, that was my sinister laugh. You see, we homeschool.  We don’t start today….but the rest of the kids who live in Phoenix do.  It’s 9:23 am and two of my three kids are still asleep…. happily dreaming of sugar plums and their favorite mother/teacher who doesn’t want to start school until September.  We are in a co-op for the boys that starts on the 31st.  So I guess we will be starting in August…. barely.  We’re studying Africa for four months.  Should prove entertaining.

My junior in high school starts this Thursday with one class, Economics (only on Thursdays).  That gets her warmed up for next week, when she starts Spanish 2 (only on Tuesdays). THEN the following week she starts Chemistry (only on Tuesdays, too.)  So she’s slowly starting her third year of high school….. not the cannon-ball style… the wade-in-slowly-while-you-get-used-to-the-water style.  Algebra is an ongoing force in her life.  And I still need to pick an English course for us to do together!  Yikes! (Hey, I have two more weeks!)

I’m not ready for school to start.  Usually by now (two weeks and counting down) I am full-blown into planning and gathering needed supplies and books.  Not this year.  I’m terribly distracted by our coming Colombian princess.  I knew I needed to finish her room before school started… and I finished last night!  Whooo HOoooo!  I asked the boys what they thought of starting school in November.  They smiled and thought it was my most brilliant idea EVER!  But it was a cruel joke.  My heart is in Colombia…. not Africa.  What doesn’t help my motivation is that we will travel to Colombia during the school year… which will wipe out about six weeks of school when my mind is mush.  I always thought I would have the kids bring at least math with them to Colombia.  I’m not thinking that anymore.  Spanish immersion is enough.