All change!

My dear friends, you must think we Clearys are pretty hard to keep up with. We dream dreams, plan plans, talk ourselves in and out of all kinds of schemes. We say we're going to do some crazy plan or another then we go and do something else altogether.

And so it might surprise some of you to know that *drumroll please* I am having baby number five, even though I had recently half-given-up on Monsieur. Cleary thinking that this was a good idea!!! I kept saying "oooh I just have this feeling there's another little soul out there, whose just supposed to be with us!!!" And monsieur was a little less keen on the idea of nappies and being-up-in-the-nightime and all that goes along with baby living. He was already planning our retirement adventures! There's no way I'd ever bully him into it, and I never wanted to feel that he'd been forced to have a child he didnt want. The baby would know it, feel it, and grow up with a sense of not being quite wanted. No way that was an option. So I started to resign myself to the fact we might not have any more. I grieved. Inwardly. I mourned for my aching womb. I reasoned with myself it was ok not to have any more.

So it shocked the hell outta me when he turned around to me one evening very earnestly, out of the blue and said "You know what? Let's do it. We'll regret it if we don't. I'm ready again. Let's have one last glorious baby and enjoy the hell outta it!"

"Are you serious???" 'Don't shit with me I said. This is not a shitting-with-me matter. If we have a babay, you have to really want it too, else I'm not doing it".

"I really, really do" he said with big wide eyes. I knew he meant it.

So here we are, preggo!!! Baby number five is cookin' on gas!!!

The kids are so so sweet about it. They keep patting my belly and asking if they can be helpful. Indie actually cried with happiness when we broke the news to them. They are counting down the months already and taking bets on what it will be.

And on that big shocker, here's a bit more news. We've put our house on the market and are dreaming, hoping and wishing that we can buy a 5 acre place we have fallen in love with, that's a fantastic opportunity. We've said to each other 'We're mad if we buy that place. But we're even madder if we don't."

It's not that we don't like it here - we have some really amazing friends around us and our home is pretty special, but.... we have always said that we'd like the boys to have better access to home ed activities and other fun places and so that they can start to learn to be more independent as they grow older and may want to go to college etc etc. The place we're looking at is just a mile and a half from a train station that would give the kids really easy access to Norwich in their teens. We are a little limited here in that sense. So it will be a new start (ish), new home ed groups to go to, new friends to make and a new lifestyle to boot. If we pull it off, it will be really sad to leave our friends but they'll be able to come and visit and even camp since there's be tons of space!!! And if it doesn't come together? Well we'll just carry on as we were here! What will be will be. But we have to try. To not try in case we fail would be a real waste.

So lots going on.....

Hush! Hush!

I can't remember where I saw it, but a few months ago, I saw a little button on someone's blog that said 'I'm taking the 365 days no shouting pledge' and it got me thinking about our family.

We have raised our boys with slightly opposing philosophies, Mr. Cleary and me. I have always hated competition, and competitive sports, whereas Hubba Hubba has always thought competition is healthy and makes us strive to be better, pushing us beyond what we would otherwise achieve.

So there have been tensions between the lads, as they all vie to be the best at this or that. Somewhere on our journey, films with terms like 'loser' have crept in. And so the boys wanna be top dog and this or that. And they fight a bit between them as they battle to win one over on each other. I fucking hate it!

And as there has been a fair amount of highly stressful crap going on intermittently this year, everyone's voices have gotten louder and louder (Perhaps partly where my love of silence has crept in recently!) The boys get pissy with each other as they get jealous about stuff.

And then a GLORIOUS thing happened. We went to circus camp. The boys learnt some amazing skills, in a NON-COMPETITIVE environment. Cosmo, the ringleader and clown extraordinaire, made a statement, for which I could have kissed him (but was way too shy!):

"I don't believe in competition. I believe everyone is talented and got something special about them. No-one is better than anyone else. Everyone is brilliant in their own way"

Woohoo! Yes. Too bloody right. Competition creates tensions, rivalry, jealousies and suffering for everyone but the winner - and sometimes everyone including the winner!

So anyway, what has this got to do with shouting? (I'm getting to that part)

Well, I turned around to Pete a while back and said I think, as a family, we are all a bit shouty. (Daddy Pete in particular - hes had more stress than any of us, so I get it.... but....) When we don't feel heard, we just crank it up. Times that by six and everyone starts talking louder and louder until we are shouting, and as a means of dealing with stress SHOUTING sucks! Ad it doesn't take the stress away it just makes it even worse. And it is tiresome communicating in such a rubbishy way. Just a habit and actually unnecessary.

So we made a pact. From now on, and for 365 days (I'm hoping to make it permanent but a year is a good start), lets not shout at each other. At all. Let's all break the habit of doing it.

And now if anyone gets a bit loud, we all gently say to them "you're shouting". And that reminder makes the person walk away, and try to deal with it differently.

You know what's. it's workings, it's really working! It's been two months since we took that pledge, and now if anyone shouts, it's rare and we all notice it as something unusual.

I am enjoying the quieter, less shouty Cleary way of living. Alf is still habitually dissolving into a shouty puddle when he gets REALLY frustrated but he'll grow out of it.

I just know he will - because we all have!

Perhaps this is another reason I am enjoying the quiet, the still, the peaceful, the wordless.

Anyway, that's enough words from me.

Shhhhh....... as you were......

;-)

Microcosmic!

Following on from my last post, I thought it would be fun to explore wordless pleasures and treasures in this usually 'wordy' space!

And this, my friends, is definitely a wordless treasure - a beautiful film about the microcosmos of the natural world .... I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

MICROCOSMOS - An incredible, up-close look at the insect and floral world

  

Words at my feet, song in my heart

Hey - checking in because I have missed y'all a little and wanted to write and say all is well, in spite of scant postings!

Why so quiet, you ask?

I haven't been able to express myself in words just lately, nor have I wanted to.

And now I understand why!

I hit a big flashing light realization just recently whilst having a conversation about spirituality.

The lady I was chatting with was a Reiki master, and she was talking about how we throw words up in front of us to try and project who we are and what we mean to say, and how our true essence is behind the veil of words. It rang so true and helped explain something I've been feeling for a while but wasn't able to find the words for!.

As a writer, I have become a mistress of words, weaving them this way and that, using them to help me to distill feelings, thoughts and experiences. Making the illogical logical, the irrational, rational. Making neat and tidy things which are wild and spill out over the lines.

I've been trying to make sense of the mysteries of life with words. But I realise how inadequate this is!

We simply cannot express everything with words, nor understand everything using words or explain them using words. Some things cannot be explained.

Some things are meant to be a mystery.They are meant to be illogical. They are meant to be elusive.

For they are bigger than us.

Words are from the head.

And just lately, my heart has really taken over doing all the thinking around here. I am feeling and processing from a different place.

Words are guff! 

They are black and white, not multicoloured. They don't even touch the ultra violet colours on the spectrum!

So please excuse the silence, but don't take it as anything bad - I am simply feeling life with my heart right now and swimming around in the enjoyment of not writing, not trying to distill things, not trying to pin down shadows, not trying to catch butterflies.

Simply breathing, feeling, enjoying, tasting, loving, smelling, and living life to the full.

Are you feeling life with your heart, or has your head taken over?

Give your head a holiday and just feel.

" The quieter you become the more able you are to hear " 

- Rumi

Can you hear it? Can you feel life?

Isn't it just fucking beautiful?

Laidback....or what happens when you're not trying!

Hey - how are you all?

Nice to see you here.

I just wanted to write a little post about the magic that can happen when you're not even trying.

Unschooling is pretty much a philosophy of actively rejecting school techniques as a means of learning, with the trust that learning is all about making connections organically, joining the dots in a random way. It's about treating workbooks and worksheets as something people should choose, not be forced to do.

Unschooling is about seeing past the usual labels of what is educational and seeing everything as inherently and potentially educational. Every experience. Every book. Every place. Every friendship. Every TV show. Every game. It's not about cherry picking things and splitting them out into  'educational' and 'non educational'. (Although this is a trap I still fall into. I'm trying not to! Nobody's perfect) Learning isn't portioned out neatly - it's seemless. It's a journey of discovery. It's not anyone else's to own or judge or comment. It just IS.

Unschoolers look beyond the usual labels, certificates, curricula but see the learning that spills all over the place in their own real lives, and trust that their kids will learn by simply being alive too. Being alive and having friendships, conversations, making and experimenting, trial and error-ing, going to interesting places, workshops, courses, festivals, fairs, museums. Watching TV and learning about animals and fashion and history and sea rescues and tribespeople and volcanoes and science discoveries and skateboard tricks and how cartoon sponges can live in pineapples under the sea! Piecing together what mass culture means. 

If it looks easy and sounds lazy learning like this. It is and it isn't. For someone very much 'educated' in the traditional way, this kind of learning still sometimes freaks me out. Particularly on those days when the Playstation seems more fun than maths or those other supposedly noble and worthy subjects - the ones we all hold up as THE BIGGIES.

And just when I start to wonder about this or that. The kids will astound me like Indie and Alfie this week.

Indie, the kid who I have inflicted the least amount of schoolyness on, the one who has been unscathed by earlier freak-outs of a school kind that involved workbooks and worksheets for his older two, has skipped along with his learning entirely organically really. Now 7, he has barely had to do any of the kind of mindnumbingly boring letterland type b*llocks that temporarily seemed like a good idea just a few years ago with the others. (Sorry Finn and Herb by the way)

I really haven't tried hard to 'teach him the basics' which seems an obsession with school. And yet he is reading. And using beautiful words. 

And this week, Pete picked up a maths book we had lying around, and tried Indie with it. He tried a page chock full of old-fashioned sums. Adding up hundreds. I didn't know Indie could really add in tens to be honest - he is still at the stage of counting to 89 and pausing as I say "90'! Anyway, I digress. 

Turns out, Indie sailed through an entire page of sums! As in 347+293 kind of sums. Written the old fashioned way. And he was so excited about it! I LOVE maths, he said! I'm a mathematician! And that night he took another worksheet to bed, because he wanted to do sums before he went to sleep. And he announced "This has been the best day of my life!' Which is pretty cool considering we have just been to Legoland and he has had a LOT of cool days! Seeing his unbridled joy at doing maths has made me laugh and smile and I feel really happy we didn't push anything with him. See what happens when you're not really trying?

And Alf. He is one smart little cookie. No preschool stuff with him AT ALL. No coaxing, no cajoling. No letterland-y type preschool educational crap whatsoever. No attempts to teach him the alphabet or anything that would be considered schooly. And yet he knows every letter. He can read the odd word. And the letters that are firing him up right now? The letters on the PERIODIC_FREAKING_TABLE no less. He has a beautiful old fashioned periodic chart on his bedroom all, a massive canvas that he likes us to talk about. This one is helium, it's the gas we put in balloons. This one is the symbol for gold. etc etc. Yep. Alf is a little scientist of the highest order! He goes round talking about elements, about solids and liquids and gases. Uses statements like 'This is really effective!' This is the kid who is making puddles and experiments all over the house and garden, mixing things to notice the change, his eyes lighting up when he says 'This is really sciency!' or 'If I squeeze this maybe I can get the nitrogen out!' 'Let's make a fire with the elements' (Um yeah Alf, but not inside the house darling).

So anway. Just needed to share in case any of you unschoolers are having wobbles. have faith! It's not a tidy and coloured in neatly between the lines kind of education, but it's a juicy way of learning that's for sure!