A week ago we delivered our third child to the college dorm out of state for freshman year. This particular kiddo, unlike numbers 1 and 2, graduated from a public high school, and was emancipated from family dinners some time ago for health reasons. So we are all somewhat accustomed to a house with one fewer person in it, a dinner table with one fewer place setting, than we might expect.
It still feels a little extra quiet, a little more roomy. Mark and I designed this house for a large family to live compactly: four not-enormous bedrooms, two and a half baths, a playroom with climbing walls in the basement, a game room in the attic. The schoolroom had four little matching desks. The seven of us made it a little crowded there for the four years leading up to the oldest’s moving out. Now we are a Normal-Sized family of four, and there is plenty of room for everyone. The four little desks are long gone. I stacked the extra dining chair off to the side.
I’m excited for the newest College Kid. There was a string of struggles getting all the necessary accommodations for a disability that gives on-campus student life some significant extra challenges. So I am not at all sad, just relieved that in the end most of it came together for a good start, and ready to turn my attention to the next phase: just two kids at home, one middle schooler, one high schooler, both learning outside a school.
So I have some hope that I might be able to pick up blogging a little bit in the next month or so. Right now I am sitting in my rocking chair doing something I never thought I would ever want to do: writing a blog post with my thumbs on my phone. I am practicing, you see. For the next month or so.
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We started school at the beginning of August, but we only did half-school. The 10th grader started chemistry, civics (uffda), and a bit of English. The 6th grader worked sort of loosely on everything, with a little extra art. That was nice, a slow entry into the year, and we got just as far as I hoped we would in a month. Half-school makes it easy.
In September, since we have already done half a month’s worth of school, we will do the other half (at least we will try). We will set aside the chemistry and civics, and the 10th grader will start geometry and French II. The 6th grader will buckle down a little less loosely to math and English and history and science.
But we won’t be doing it at home. Those books are currently distributed among several suitcases. We’re about to try something totally new: taking school somewhere else. And also, taking only two of our kids, the oldest three off living their own lives (okay, two of them are doing it on our dime, but still) in places where they have keys and we don’t.
I’ll try to keep up!
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