Our first broken bone

Every year I have high hopes for how the school year will start. This year was no different, but of course, things didn’t exactly go to plan. On the Wednesday before school started, we met our homeschool friends at the park for a hang-out day. Everything was going great, the kids were playing, I was talking to my mom friends, and then my son came running up to me holding his arm. He had been on one of those climbing nets and tried to jump down. Unfortunately, his foot caught when he jumped and he fell face-first to the ground and caught himself with his hands. He was in a lot of pain and couldn’t rotate his arm, so we loaded up in the car and headed to the closest Urgent Care. His x-ray confirmed what I already knew, his arm was broken. He had a buckle fracture to be more specific. This was the first broken bone for either of our kids. Luckily he only has to wear a wrist brace and his pain was handled very well with Tylenol and Advil for the first couple of days. Overall he did really well. As soon as he had that hard wrist brace on and his arm was supported the pain was easier to handle. He was able to sleep the first night, which was a concern, and with a little caution, he was able to go back to doing almost everything he normally does. I think he was pretty bummed that it didn’t get him out of school but by the time Monday rolled around he was pretty much back to normal.

Mom’s sick

Our first week of school went pretty well, even though we did end up having a few commitments in the middle of the day. I was pretty pleased with how the kids handled the start of school even though everyone else is still on summer break. It didn’t really change much about their schedule other than going to bed earlier. Our school days, especially the first couple of weeks, are not very long. All things considered the first week was a success. The second week of school is where we went off track again. I woke up Wednesday with a sore throat and went downhill from there. Luckily we take Fridays off now, so Wednesday and Thursday were the only days affected. However, on those two days, they did very little because it hurt to talk. I had a goal this year to make sure we did our read aloud every day, but my throat hurt too bad to get it done this week. Our other subjects like history and science, where I read to the kids, also got put on hold this week. I may have been the only one upset about that! It’s Saturday now and I still feel terrible but I am hopeful it will be better by Monday. This upcoming week will be week #3 and ideally will be more of what our full school day actually looks like. I would really like to be 100% for that. School days are much smoother when mom is healthy.

Life Happens

Sometimes I get really frustrated with the interruptions to our school day and year, but life happens in the middle of homeschooling. As a homeschool mom, I don’t have a substitute I can pull in when I’m sick, or a building to send my kids to so I have the day to get things done. Homeschooling happens right alongside life. Sometimes that’s hard, but mostly it’s wonderful. I never want to forget that what I get to do is a privilege. Not everyone wants to homeschool, but there are some who want to and can’t. We work hard to make this a reality, but I still want to remember I am very lucky to be able to do this. That doesn’t mean homeschooling is always easy. Things sometimes don’t go smoothly or the way we wanted them to and that’s ok. Life doesn’t always go the way we want it to so why would anything else. Despite all this, I am so very happy to have another year to watch my kids grow and learn. Homeschooling allows me to do life right beside them and I wouldn’t change anything about that.