Meet Bananas. She's pregnant. But when she'll be having her baby is a bit of a mystery to me. Honestly, I thought we'd have a baby donkey before Christmas. It's past Valentine's day. I even had her blood tested a few weeks ago to make sure a baby was still indeed on the way. Last April she had a positive pregnancy test as well. Cornell's veterinary hospital estimated she was three months into it. They were wrong. A miniature donkey's gestation period is between 11-13 months. So I guess we will just wait and see.

Coincidence? I don't think so.

I'm currently reading Callous Disregard: Autism and Vaccines: The Truth Behind a Tragedy - Hardcover (May 24, 2010) by Andrew J. Wakefield . It is taking me FOREVER to get through it; mostly because it is excruciatingly boring and sometimes I have to look up words in order to know what the heck is going on. There is a of medical mumbo jumbo and since I am not a doctor, I google a lot of things. But, I am interested in what Andrew Wakefield has to say. I know this Autism/vaccine debate is a hot bottom issue. I just don't see how all these parents claiming to have children negatively affected by the MMR vaccine can ALL be wrong.

Coincidence? I don't think so. Not really. So what the hell is going on? (One of the reason's I like blogging is because I can swear whenever I choose to! Having three little kids really puts a damper on my potty mouth so, be advised that I plan to sneak in a naughty cuss word whenever a good opportunity presents itself!)

Could this really be a big cover-up or conspiracy? Are drug companies really that powerful? What about the doctors that we all trust? I love our family doctor and I like to think that he would not steer my children in a potentially dangerous direction. Are they looking out for the greater good here at the expense of the unfortunate few who will be impacted? Really? Wow. I hope not. But clearly something is going on here.

Charlotte is 13 months old. She has had a handful of vaccinations. We started them later and spread them out giving her one or two at a time. She has NOT yet had the MMR vaccination. I imagine she would be "due" for it at her one year old check-up. I have canceled and rescheduled her appointment three times. (I'm an avoider...can you tell?)

My older daughter, Willa (who will be eight next month) has had both the original vaccine and the booster which I think kids typically get around age five. Harry who just turned five has received the first of the two part series.

These are the kind of things that keep me up at night. Honestly, given all that I "think" I know about autism, I feel a little like I have dogged a bullet. More than once. Especially with Harry.

Here’s the conclusion my limited knowledge had led me to at this point… I think that with autism there is often a genetic component. I think the MMR vaccine has the potential to "trigger" whatever it is inside some kids that messes them up. I think that some children are prone to having a negative outcome from the MMR vaccine and for those children the results are often devastating.

I will not be giving Harry any further MMR vaccinations at this point. Charlotte will not be getting the MMR vaccine either. Am I doing the right thing? I don’t know for sure. On this one I am going to have to go with what “feels” right because sometimes that’s the best I can do.

Bread

We eat a lot. Seriously. A LOT! There is this little market I like to shop at and this poor checkout guy, always the same guy, dreads me. I know it. First of all the shopping carts they have there, the smart cars of the shopping cart world, are too damn small for all of the food I buy. So I make my children...the ones who are capable (Charlotte, your day is coming) push carts too sometimes. We fill those up too. Secondly, I almost always forget to bring in my ever so trendy canvas reusable shopping bags. This visibly pisses off checkout guy. And third, but not last---because I am sure there are other reasons I am over looking; I think I am funny. Checkout guy clearly does not. I am waiting for the day that we get banned from the store for holding up the checkout line week after week, except for the fact that I am pretty sure we singlehandedly keep them in business.
Okay, I admittedly have been accused of being somewhat of a food snob. If feeding my family whole, organic, healthy food makes me a 'snob' then that is a title I am happy to have acquired. When it comes to food you often get what you pay for. Good food is not usually cheap. I won't disclose how much I spend of food from week to week, but I'll say this much--- It is shocking! For example: four days ago I bought 20 pounds of apples; today we have five pounds plus two apples remaining. Today I baked six loaves of bread; three of them have already disappeared. When I buy bananas I don't buy one bunch, I buy four or five. I buy olive oil by the gallon and it lasts maybe two or three months. I can blow through a 25 pound bag of flour in just a few weeks easily.
We eat well.
I like that.

I like our kids.

We homeschool our kids. And when I say "we" I mean it in the same sense that women who are kind enough to say "we are pregnant" do to include the father. There is absolutely no we in pregnancy! That is the biggest load of poo ever stated. We do not feel like puking our guts out 24 hours a day for 10 months. We do not have heartburn and 50 pounds of weight gain and sore feet and tired backs. We do not get hemorrhoids. We are not utterly exhausted from growing an entire person inside our uterus meanwhile denied sleep because nausea, baby hiccups and somersaults and lashings of the kidney bladder and ribcage keep us up at night!
We were never pregnant! I was.

Right.

So yeah, we homeschool our kids. I can't really imagine doing it any other way. They belong at home with me. So that's what we do.
I get asked a lot why we made that decision. There are so many reasons for doing what we do, it's hard to come up with a quick answer. I like my kids. I like having them home with me. I don't feel like at age five or six I am ready to hand them over for eight hours a day for the next 13 years. And, perhaps most importantly--- I believe I can do better and have more to offer than a school system. There are PLENTY of other reason's too. That was just the short one.

Playing in the snow!

down with toys! (but not all of them.)

I hope to chronicle my adventures as a homeschooling/wannabe farmer/opinionated stay at home mom.

We have a pretty busy household ---2 parents, Katie (me) and Kyle (my husband.) 3 kids---Willa (7), Harry (5), and Charlotte (1). 2 cats---Fiona and Steve. 2 dogs--- Ellie and Arlo. 1 horse--- Sol. 6 (soon to be 7) miniature donkeys---Beatrice, Citabria, Albus, Bananas (who is expecting a baby in the very near future), Olive, and Imperious. We had about a dozen chickens until recently. I sold then for five dollars apiece to the farmer down the road. Chickens who don't lay any eggs are really not worth keeping. So, off they went. We have a little old farmhouse with too much "stuff" inside.

Over the last six months or so I have dramatically (I think) scaled down on the amount of stuff we have. Toys in particular. I learned (the hard way) that the local Good Will has a 6 bag a day limit. (which is not too strictly enforced, but still...) It is kind of a stupid rule because they don't specify a bag size... Anyway, after a small investment in some big ass contractor size trash bags I was back on my way to pairing down. Now, you might think the kids would be bummed about having less but I think just the opposite held true. They were psyched to get rid of stuff. Okay, honestly--- Willa was psyched, Harry was PISSED and Charlotte was just happy that somebody finally dumped out the toy baskets so that she could get to all the junk that was at the bottom of them. The end result has been great. I have been trying very hard to aim for quality vs. quantity when it comes to toys. We use Rudolf Steiner's Waldorf principles when it comes to educating our kids and that fits in nicely with the idea of simplification. Almost all of the toys in our house are wooden and handmade. I am staunchly anti-plastic and not just for health reasons. Actually I think I am "staunchly" anti-lots of things. I am not exactly sure how I got to be so opinionated, but here I am. (Let that serve as a warning should you care to read onward!) Another thing I am is disorganized and this is something I am trying my darnedest to change. Schedules kind of fall into the same category as rules. It is almost as if I can hear them screaming to be broken or disrupted. Unfortunately my 5 year really seems to flounder amongst chaos and there lies the impetus for change. Oy! Rituals, rhythm, predictability---scary words to a scatter brain like me but those are the things I am working towards. Oh, and simplification.

Where was I?

Ah, getting rid of toys... Less is more. It really is. It is nice to have the extra space. The kids breathe easier with less. More room to play. More room to grow. Open ended toys made from natural materials. Plenty of room for imagination to take over. The best part is that when they have well made toys with real "value" they treat them as such. Things get picked up and put away and respected. (well, most of the time.)

My next simplification project is books. This one scares me a little. I love books. I know, I know, that is so cliché right? Everybody loves books. It would be very un-scholarly of me or something not to. I seriously have a book addiction. I buy them by the dozens. We have books EVERYWHERE in our house we even have book shelves lining the basement walls. (which was a big mistake by the way----mildew--ick!) Anyway, Simplicity Parenting has motivated me to declutter, EVEN with books. The author reminds us to think bout the images a book leaves kiddos with right before sleep and the messages/morals/whatever, that it instills in them. Books are powerful. So read the really good ones over and over (as kids naturally like to do) and skip the ones that are just so-so. Hmmm. Can I really get RID of books. I don't know. Maybe I'll just send them to a slow mildewy death in the scary basement. At least it's easier on me that way.