About

In the spring of 2010, Jeff and I decided to homeschool our two boys.

Upon hearing the news, before asking why or how, most people asked us how long we were planning to keep it up. Our reply? ”At least through November.”

We would test the waters and see how it went.

So I bought a lot of cool school supplies. And hired an Au Pair so that Jeff and I could both keep working while spending mornings with the boys. I made color-coded spreadsheets to manage five people’s schedules. And reminded myself of the reasons we were trying this. Because many days it seemed like a crazy idea.

But the boys had started swearing – even more than I do. And Ezra vowed he would become a lifelong smoker. And Zach was growing up so fast. And I was working in the afternoons and I missed the boys. And my kindergartner kept telling me that he was stupid. And my first grader kept saying that school was too easy. And I wanted them to spend more time getting dirty and less time standing in line. And did I mention that I missed them?

So we put aside our fears that our kids would become social misfits and gave it a go. At least through November.

Two years later, as we embark on our third year, much has changed. Most important, we added Nafisa to our brood. She’s a fabulous teenager whose mother died and who needed a place to stay. “A place to stay” morphed into us not being able to imagine our family without her.

Other things have changed as well. Spending so much time with boys helped me see some of their academic weaknesses more clearly. So now we have one fewer job (mine), one less au pair, several new diagnoses, and a lot more time to hang out and raise bees.

These days, I write about homeschooling the boys, helping a teenager navigate the crazy terrain of high school, and anything else that strikes me as interesting. Homeschooling was all-consuming when we first started two years ago, and it is still the most common thing we get asked about at dinner parties. The title of this blog not withstanding, though, homeschooling is just one of many things we have going on in a given day. All of which I hope you’ll stick around for. Because the support, advice, and challenge I get from readers of this blog are part of the reason we made it through that first November.

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