Author Archives: Barb

Do’s and Don’ts of a Highway Birth

Posted on by
4

Were any of your children so eager to enter the world that they couldn’t wait until you made it to the hospital?

My cousin Candice (a homeschool mom, btw) has four daughters. Her youngest, Ania, arrived while Candice and her husband were en route to the hospital. Ania was born in their car on the side of the highway while cars raced by in the next lane.

Candice and her husband are journalists who documented their big event with photos and Candice’s recent post in the Boston Globe, “Do’s and Don’ts of a Highway Birth.”  And Ania is now a healthy two-year-old.  🙂

The Young Teen in Your House

Posted on by
8

In His Solitude by Charly Palmer
In His Solitude

Little kids love summer. Big kids love summer. But what about teens?

My kids looked forward to every summer until they became teens, and then everything changed. Suddenly, running through the sprinkler just didn’t thrill them anymore.

I was used to them rising early to run out and play with their friends. But once the teen years hit, they’d sleep later and later, completely missing summer mornings and sometimes needing to be called for lunch.

I remember worrying that my older son would suffocate in his room. By 11 am, he was still sound asleep with the window shut tight while the sun heated up that end of the house. My attempts to rouse him were greeted by growls, as though he were a confused bear who thought he was still hibernating through the winter.

Once conscious, he’d stumble downstairs, where the hunger that had built up over 12 or 13 hours of sleep made him eat as though he’d gone days without food. His enormous breakfast would segue into lunch with the rest of us, and he kept on eating. Then he’d head outside to play basketball with friends for the afternoon, come home in time to eat an enormous dinner, and play on the computer before lapsing back into his night-time coma.

I learned from friends with older children that this was actually par for the course for growing teen boys. Looking back, it makes sense to me now. After all, it takes a lot of rest and nourishment to grow to 6″ 4″ and wear a size 16 shoe! But at the time, I was quite mystified.

Do you have a young teen in your house this summer? Are you mystified by some of the things you’re seeing him or her do? As teens’ bodies change, their emotions and behaviors change, too. Learn more about how to live with your teen in my free Special Report, “Ten Tips for Coping with Temperamental Teens.”

Prayers and Smiles

Posted on by
8

We have a couple of medical issues in our family lately, plus we’re having trouble finding a house (we’re supposed to be moving in a month!) So please pray for us, if you feel led to do so. (Thanks!)

In the meantime, I’m looking for smiles wherever I can find them. Here’s something that made me smile, and I want to share it with you:

Your Friends and Homeschooling

Posted on by
15

How’s it going with your non-homeschooling friends? Do they get what you’re doing? Do they think you’re crazy? Or are they just drifting away……?

A dear friend of mine and I lost our friendship over homeschooling. It wasn’t that she was mad at me for choosing to homeschool, and I doubt that she felt guilty that she wasn’t doing it. Those are the usual reasons that friends split up over homeschooling, at least from what I’ve heard. No, my friend was thrilled to put her kids in school and go back to a job she loved and missed while staying home while the kids were little. I think we just drifted apart because I was so busy having babies and homeschooling them while she was busy working and going back for more education.

Now we just send Christmas cards to each other. As far as I can tell, her kids have grown up fine, and everyone is doing well. I’m happy for her. But do I miss her?

A little. I guess I’m just more comfortable with the homeschooling crowd. They get me. They get what my life is like. And I get them.

To make things even better, being a homeschool mom means finding new friends all over the place. I meet them at conferences, when I speak to support groups, and online. No matter how they homeschool (Charlotte Mason, traditional, unschooling, etc.), we have the joy of homeschooling our kids in common.

So don’t be blue if homeschooling has put some distance between you and the friend(s) you used to hang out with. You’re in a different season of your life, and that may call for new friends. They’re out there waiting to meet you. Why not find a local support group or an online group* and start making new friends?

* I highly recommend The Homeschool Lounge!

New Project for a New Baby

Posted on by
9

100_9084-1

I call this photo “Optimism.” You see, I haven’t made a quilt in a few years, but a friend of mine just became a grandma, and I want to make a baby quilt for her adorable new granddaughter.

So I picked out the fabrics one week, pre-washed and pressed them the next, and was supposed to start sewing this week.

Ahem. Here they are, still awaiting the rotary cutter.

I’m hoping to start sewing very soon. The fact that we’re moving 4-6 weeks from now looms large in my brain. I need to start packing. But I really want to make this quilt! So we’ll see…..

Picking out the fabric was something of an experience, btw. I wanted to buy new fabric because I figured the fabrics from my stash probably look too dated for a modern baby quilt. Most of them are 10-20 years old, and I even have some stuff from the 70s. All of my stash is good fabric, tightly woven with colors that are still beautiful. Most likely, all of my fabric stash was made here in the USA.

Several years ago, I read that most of the fabric sold here in the USA these days is made overseas. Like so many other things, fabric can be produced more cheaply in other countries, so why not? That explains why it took so long for me to find the fabrics I need for this baby quilt. I learned first-hand that cheaply produced fabric is most definitely cheap. I had to reject many fabrics that were not woven tightly, or not printed very well. Even so, a couple of the fabrics I chose because I needed them color-wise are not as high-quality as I would have wished.

Today I learned that there’s a wonderful solution to this problem. One of my favorite quilt supply catalogs, Connecting Threads, has announced that ALL of the fabric they sell now is woven and printed in the USA from cotton grown in the USA. How cool is that? And the price is still $5.96 a yard….how do they do it? They say they cut out the middleman, and I’m glad they do.  Wish I’d known this before I went shopping for baby quilt fabric. I have a feeling that the fabric they’re selling is better quality than the imported stuff.