One lap, shared.

My 4yo stole a rare moment on my empty lap this evening. He has gotten so tall and lanky he barely resembles the chubby baby that used to ride around in a sling all day long. Now his little brother is the one most often on my hip, but he never seems to resent it. Grouper is more likely to smother Baby Fish with too tight a hug than do anything that expresses jealousy.

No, tonight it was the baby's turn to be jealous.

It took me a minute to realize what he was upset about. UberDad recognized it first. "He doesn't want Grouper sitting on your lap!" my husband laughed, watching the baby scoot over to the sofa from his playmat, dismay in his voice and on his face.

I smiled at him as he came closer, but hugged my middle son tighter, not ready to give up our cuddle. "Your brother is my baby, too!" I said. "But you can come up and join us!"

I pulled him up on the couch, and set him on his brother's lap. We were nestled one on top of another like his stackable wooden boxes, though I wasn't sure that it would be enough. It was -- he was happy to be a part of the cuddle for a moment. Then he slid off to crawl along the sofa and giddily bounce against the cushions.

How lucky am I? He could just as easily have reached out to grab Grouper's face like he does the cat's tail, in an attempt to wrestle his place back. But he didn't.

At some point every mother worries about jealousy between her children. "If I have another baby, will my first child forgive me?" "How will I give them both enough attention and love?" And sometimes we do exactly what we hope we wouldn't -- we choose one over the other, expecting the older children to understand when we put the baby's needs first -- all day long. Or putting the baby off too long because the older child needed our attention. And sometimes it's just a matter of not having enough hands to do everything we're needed for at once.

Maybe it's luck. An undeserved blessing. Maybe I'm figuring some things out and not making those mistakes as often. In any case, I am grateful for having sons who know the value of a brother, and truly love each other.

Toy recalls

I'm a little slow on the news, so forgive me if this is old and you've all heard it already. But just in case, check this list and make sure you don't have any of
these Mattel toys (it includes lots of Polly Pocket playsets).

Freedom to celebrate difference -- shouldn't homeschoolers have it, too?

I'm not sure what woke me and the baby up at 5:30 this morning. (Probably his tummy wanting more milk.) But I do know that the noisy motors of buses filled with children headed back to school kept us from getting back to sleep. Our house is in walking distance of three elementary schools and a high school, and the buses use our wide residential street as a thoroughfare.

My neighbor, a fellow homeschooling mom, stopped by in her robe around 8 to see if we were planning to go to the library this morning, like we often do on Mondays. "Happy Not Back to School Day!" she said. "Aren't you glad you're not sending your kids off to prison?"

"Be careful," warned my mother from her spot on my couch when I expressed the same sentiment 20 minutes later. She was waiting for the boys to put their shoes on so we could go out to breakfast and celebrate her birthday.

My mom doesn't like me getting too excited about the fact that we're not sending our kids to school. At least not around people who do send their kids to school, like she did. I understand her concern for offending people, especially people I know and love. My friends are not all making the same choice as I am, and I respect their reasons and their decision as their own.

But it is nice to be around those who share my perspective and aren't afraid to celebrate our choice to buck the mainstream. We are happy about keeping our kids home with us. Why can't we celebrate that and joke a little? Why does it seem like homeschoolers are the ones who have to protect the feelings of schooling moms, when we're the minority surrounded by a culture that doubts our validity?

I don't normally experience that doubt directly. Somehow I've avoided the kind of conversation my neighbor has with people in line at the grocery store on a weekday morning, her three children in tow. I'm just not as friendly and talkative.

So I hadn't thought much about the conspicuousness of taking two school-age children into a restaurant at 9 a.m. on Back to School Monday. (Instead I'd been remembering how my parents always took my sisters and me out to breakfast on the first day of school, giving us new wristwatches when we each started kindergarten to commemorate the moment.)

Otherwise, I might not have been as caught off guard by all the questioning stares as we entered a cafe full of adults, many of whom had undoubtedly dropped their own kids off at school at hour earlier. Fortunately we didn't get any rude comments. Although it might have been a nice opportunity to educate people, as my neighbor so often does.

If it hadn't been my mother's birthday, we might have been at a Not Back to School Party with our fellow homeschoolers -- eating pancakes and ice cream sundaes, swimming, and celebrating our freedom to do so any day we like.

There's nothing wrong with that.

I know there are moms who miss their kindergarteners terribly after sending them away for the first time. I know this because I know homeschool moms who began as schooling moms, and hated it. But most moms get used to it, even breathing a sigh of relief when summer vacation ends and they have a few hours a day to themselves again.

I admit the possibility occasionally appeals to me, too. Think of all the blogging I could get done!

But then I think about how that would change our family life. How much I would miss them. The struggles and boredom they might face in school unnecessarily. The moments we would miss out on because we simply weren't together to experience them.

And I celebrate our choice to do so. I know I'm lucky to have a husband who feels the same way I do -- even as he headed back to school himself.

Who's Afraid of Harry Potter?

I love this article so much, I wish I'd written it. The author, a fellow unschooling mom, didn't have a current link, but gave me permission to post it here. Thanks, Amy!


Who's Afraid of Harry Potter?

By Amy Hollingsworth


(Published on Christianity.com)


I, for one, am not.


“Always use the proper name for things,” once mused a wise headmaster, gazing over his half-moon spectacles. “Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.” The proper name I’m thinking of in this case is Harry Potter, the kid with the lightning scar who’s become a lightning rod for censors.

By now, everyone has at least heard of Harry Potter. All three books about Harry Potter’s adventures as an ill-treated orphan suddenly transported into a world of wizardry have magically hovered atop the New York Times Best Seller list for months now.

Author J.K. Rowling’s freshman effort has been compared to The Chronicles of Narnia; her imaginative style likened to that of Roald Dahl. Not everyone is celebrating the arrival of her British hero, though. Parents in California, Michigan, Minnesota, New York and South Carolina have taken steps to have the books removed from school libraries. They would be happier if the books, well, vanished into thin air.

So, who’s afraid of Harry Potter? I, for one, am not. Sure, I think Professor Snape is a little creepy and well, Voldemort, he’s so bad no one even refers to him by name. But I’m not afraid of Harry Potter.

Not afraid of him, not afraid of his friends, not afraid of how he’s being educated. I see Harry Potter as a sort of Everyman, or more accurately, Every Kid. He’s not the smartest or the strongest or the richest or the best looking. Maybe he’s a little different because he wears long robes to school, plays sports on a broomstick and has a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead, but he is brave and he has a good heart. What’s not to like?

I’m not saying I didn’t have any concerns about my children making Harry’s acquaintance. Like every responsible parent, I’m careful about the company my children keep. Would meeting Harry stir up a desire to delve into the dark side of fantasy? Should my kids be cavorting with wizards, learning to concoct potions, seeing how far evil can triumph?

It’s a legitimate question. For that reason, my children have never even participated in Halloween, except to celebrate a Harvest Party with friends. But I didn’t know enough to make an informed decision.

I asked around, picking the brains of those who had already dared to climb aboard Hogwarts Express. There were mixed reviews, although mostly positive. In the end, I decided the only way to know for sure was to meet Harry myself. Since my library’s 33 copies were all in use, I headed to the bookstore and purchased the first in the series, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. It was worth every cent, or Knut, depending on where you bank.

My initial plan was to read the book myself and then if all went well, to read it to my 8-year-old son. (I’m not in the habit - metaphorically speaking - of chewing up my children’s food for them like some mama bird who doesn’t want her babies to choke, but I do like to know what they’re eating.)

My son knew about this conditional status and would sneak into my bedroom to riffle through the pages like they were contraband. Talk about building interest. After I read each chapter, he would ask for a detailed summary. Midway through the book, I stopped giving summaries and we began reading the book together.

These are the reasons why I’m glad I did.

1. The books highlight experiences kids can relate to. Instead of arguing over who’s got the best bike or the coolest video game, Harry’s friends ooh and aah over the Nimbus Two Thousand, the latest and most coveted broomstick model. They collect wizard trading cards. There’s even a bully (aptly named Draco Malfoy) who makes Harry’s life miserable.

J.K. Rowling doesn’t hesitate to point out the unfortunate fact that people are sometimes divided into social classes, with labels like Muggles (nonwizarding types, like you and me), Squibs (nonwizarding types from wizarding families), and Mudbloods (a pejorative for someone with magically-challenged parents). The books provide a safe place for kids to identify with peer pressure, bullies and injustices in a setting that’s pure fantasy.

2. The books allow you to become a part of history. Reading the Harry Potter series, I feel a kinship with those Britons who paged through Bentley’s Miscellany in 1837 eager to read the monthly installments chronicling the adventures of another famous orphan, one by the name of Oliver Twist. I’m not trying to be dramatic here. How often do you and your children get to follow a tale as it’s unfolding, knowing all the while that it’s destined to become a classic? I see the Harry Potter books this way. I don’t have to wait for any historian to tell me these books will be considered among the very best of children’s literature.

3. The books encourage naming the thing you fear. It was Albus Dumbledore, the wise and noble headmaster of Hogwarts School, who spoke the words I quoted earlier. He cautioned Harry to always use the proper name for things because “fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.” I think those parents who want to censor Harry Potter, or those who simply refuse to read the books at all, are more fearful of “names” or words than anything else—magic, potions, wizards, witches, spells. But these things are not the central focus of the stories.

The books are not about conjuring up occult powers. The tools of the wizarding trade are merely props, the backdrop for the real drama. And the real drama is the age-old battle between good and evil. The evil, as embodied in Lord Voldemort, is not fictional. The existence of that kind of wickedness in the world is what is to be feared, not Harry’s broomstick. When I read the chilling account of Harry’s encounter with Lord Voldemort to my son (and I must admit here that I did a little editing, just a little), I explained to him that this was evil personified, (im)pure and simple.

Evil is real. It exploits those who give their lives to it and then leaves them for dead (which is what happened to poor Professor Quirrell). That’s what Voldemort represents. What conquers that kind of evil is not a magic wand, but the goodness and bravery Harry is best known for. I’m not really sure why Harry Potter has been singled out. I have a hard time believing that the masses cried foul when C.S. Lewis wrote about a White Witch exploiting a young boy in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe or when the Queen of the Night took center stage in Mozart’s The Magic Flute or when L. Frank Baum unveiled the Wizard of Oz. Maybe they did. But if I had to answer the question, “Who’s afraid of Harry Potter?,” my guess would be: Mostly those who haven’t bothered to get to know him yet.

Copyright, 2000 Amy Hollingsworth