comfort of our own home

Having now started to try out kindergarten, it just makes me even more aware of how comfortable it is when we don't have to go.

Let's take today as an example. The girls wake up and come down around 7am. I get up, E nurses, I do their hair as specified by them, put their breakfast on the table and they get busy eating and chatting. I go back to bed with C to try and sleep a little more (he's been sleeping really badly these past few days). He wakes up 30 min after he falls asleep. I bring him out so Judge can hang with him and head back to the bedroom for another try - the girls are drawing and L has opened all the envelopes she made yesterday (she said she 'went and checked her mail').

[Judge and I, and down the left hand side she's written her full name plus a few more letters before and after. I absolutely LOVE where she's at with her drawings. I mean I always do - love seeing her development. And the same goes for her writing. As mentioned before we are very along the lines of 'free learning', where we don't teach her how to draw, dance, paint, or write...in the sense that we don't sit down and say she's doing it wrong, nor show her how to do something unless she asks, e.g., asks us to write something for her so she can see what it looks like - though I did explain today how numbers and letters all have a specific direction they belong in when we are writing, as she writes a lot of stuff upsidedown (you can see here too how she writes the 4's and 3's upsidedown as well...they're in my 'body'). The upsidedown stuff is a part of her process though, I think, so I don't usually comment on it]

An hour later I wake up to muffled loud music and happy voices (I'm wearing earplugs). I come out and find Judge filming them dancing, with L's camera. They've been doing this for the last 15 minutes.

I find there's also been more drawing, painting, and some plastic bead activity as well.

[explaining who is who in this family portrait - clockwise it's L, C, E, Judge, and I]

They proceed to then peacefully and happily play with some tangram-ish things for about 30 minutes - first independently beside each other and then working together organizing them back into the box-thing they are kept in. And then they put it back and get a ludo game board and pieces to play with in their own way.

[first time she's really 'followed the rules' on these - except for the stackingof the red ones (which I love). Before she just organized them all over the board as she saw fit]

By now it is noon, and we get ready to head out (takes us half an hour to get everyone dressed and prepare a to-go lunch). We head over to the school with E riding L's bike. They play there on the swings and jungle gym, eat, watch the kids during recess, etc., and two hours later we wander home via the store.

After resting a bit Judge starts working on dinner while the girls eat some yogurt, C naps once, the girls play with water in the small sink and Leona practices writing numbers (she suddenly wrote 1 through 8 today, for the first time...half of the numbers are upside down), then they make beds on the kitchen floor, we eat dinner, and they continue their bed-organization-and-laying game in the living room.

After they shower and Judge takes them to sleep I will take C for a walk if it's not raining, and hopefully get to do some editing work tonight as I have a case to work on.

This is a rather typical day, substituting some of their indoor activities with soap play food making at their kitchen, play dough playing, playing in their 'school', playing outside around the house, etc., as well as some arguing and screaming, and often I am the only one to head out with them (especially if the weather isn't too great) - where Judge will then stay home and either rest, do some dinner prep, or study. And the excursion is sometimes to the playground and beach at the hotel, or to the fjord below us to throw rocks (and before that a visit to the kindergarten sometimes, but we have now been banned from just visiting, in order to protect the privacy of the kids there.

I love the organic and relaxed routine.

Compare this with heading to kindergarten, where I try to not rush Leona to get ready while at the same time getting us out the door before 8:45am (not easy when our morning routine is as slow and relaxed as it is), then hang out at kindergarten with her but try to avoid being near her so she can be with the teachers and kids, all the while either trying to help C sleep in the stroller, hold him when he wakes up, nurse him, taking him to pee, or trying to find out why he's still fussy, and trying to keep the kids from touching him and breathing on him (germs germs germs). All the kids and their energy and noise and sometimes their limit testing behavior (where not all the teachers are able to successfully uphold the limits) exhaust me. Add to that cold and some rain, and it's not exactly my preferred way to spend the morning and noon.

But seeing Leona laugh and play with the teachers and kids makes it all worth it. I hope. Not quite sure how long we should give her to feel safe with the teachers - safe enough for us to just drop her off and then come get her four-five hours later. The way kindergartens are set up (comparatively lots of kids, not a teacher that can be focused solely on being with her all the time so she can become comfortable with her) makes me question whether it will work this time around.

I guess after a couple more weeks we will evaluate the situation with the head teacher.

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