Neurodivergent Travel

The idea of traveling with kids who are neurodivergent and have food allergies while being a mama who is neurodivergent with food allergies, and doing it alone, in places where they may not speak English, or understand why your child is loosing it massive meltdown drama because everything is suddenly too much, feels a lot. 

It's hard enough to collect the energy to get it together for a trip to Costco so days

There are days when the pure amount of energy it will take to drag them out into public for any reason is unthinkable.

 

Clothes, light, food, texture, sounds everything sensory has to be monitored altered too much of this to little of that, the wrong shirt, a smell, balance is lost. 

So am I crazy for traveling with my children?

 Maybe, let's be honest. That's not a great reason not to do it though. So we travel

It doesn't look like the instagram perfection of other travel families. What we do, how we do it isn't the same.  

That is OK. 

So this is us. What works for us, tips and tricks that help with traveling.  Stories about our adventures. The good, bad, join us on our Rambles. 

Self Care

 Self Care has never been a thing that I am good at doing.  Balance and single mama hood don't really go together. Pre Pandemic we had a parent support group  I had zumba class, we had play dates and coffee dates.  Then everything shut down and here we are.  I work as a home heath care aid which I love. It is hard work and then I come home to smaller humans. It means that 24/7 I am in charge of other people. With homeschooling there is an added layer of need.  

Trying not to feel burned out is hard. There isn't anything to look forward to no vacations, no holidays, no get togethers. There is just more of this day in and out.  

So attempting to build something new 

Every morning I have my coffee and listen to music and then do yoga. Sometimes kids join me other times they are still asleep.  

I am working on adding strength training in and zumbia using youtube. 

then after lunch I take mama time. I have a 2 hour nap. It feels very selfish and also sooo needed. It was going to be a break  from kids but every day I end up falling asleep. I set the alarm in the kids room on the Alex they can have screen time or audio books or whatever.

I wake up and then I take a walk usally by myself. Blast my music do a loop of the neighborhood.   

There are more little bits that need to be added in Slowly going to fill our days with moments. 

Tea in the evening with cookies and reading a book out loud.  Drawing, Gratitude journaling, writing in general. counseling, keeping a planner and habit tracker. Making sure getting enough water and steps in. Having fun things we do together that make us laugh. Dance parties, game nights. 

Slowly. bit by bit. 

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What do you do for self care?  What helps you keep from getting burned out?

School has been a struggle for one of my small people. Struggling with being told what to do and so much screaming and yelling and name calling. Mama is done.

We did go see some goats and played at the park a bit this week.  They have fallen for goats. There was a request for there to be "more goats in our life"  Which is the goal one day our own place with room to have things like goats and chickens. 

We got out to our favorite arboretum  and took some "school" pictures 

1st Grade

3rd Grade

Class Photo 

our mood this week 

someone was not a fan of picture taking but the light was so lovely and I love the way this barn looks as a backdrop. 

We saw this amazing dragonfly before an emo melt down in which we had to abandon our plans and leave.

Today we tried again it went slightly better. Only slightly.  We managed to walk and look at some leave and bark. We touched all the types of pine trees and tried to figure out which ones would make the best bed like the children in Boxcar children book. They talked about needle shape, how they were clustered together, how pointy they were.  

Then we stopped at the pond had a snack read poems about fall and harvest and a bit of Zen Shorts.  

I thought that it was so great and lovely then the meltdown queen decided she hated everything and everyone. So all plans of sketching and writing our own poems got abandoned. 

I'm honestly not sure what to do with her.  More structure more rewards more OT added into the day. It is overwhelming and yet I guess I'm glad that we are homeschooling where its OK that things are chaos and we haven't found the best way we can keep trying and adjusting. It gets to be all about meeting them where they are just takes a whole lot more research for me to figure out how to do that. 

 

Into the Woods

 Last week the smoke from all the fires descended and with it our ability to get outside even to open the windows. The air quality was off the top of the chart bad.  It sucked. We struggle in the harvest season with air quality as it has a lot of gluten with the harvest. Air being bad I ended up a sinus infection ear infection on the edge of lung infection mess for a few days. Kids schooling was at a fend for yourself feral level 

Now the air is better they sky is blue. The windows are open and we got out today. 

Our morning was spent inside as I watch a couple of little folk early usally my two are sleeping when they get dropped sometimes they dont wake up till they leave. (must be nice) then I started sorting our library. 

How many copies of Make way for ducklings do you have we have at least 3. I mean We love the story we have been to see the statues (omg they are so tiny eek) However I think we can let a few go.

 Same with my personal books I have a few that are doubles a few I don't like enough to read again so  away they go. Working on being a more organized less chaos person. Long journey .anyway..

Our afternoon was lovely. We went for a walk in the park and saw the start of leaves changing. Found a bunch of ladybugs and turttles. It was so neat they were so engaged and happy and looking and just the calm that was over them being in nature was fantastic. It lasted about 10 minutes after we got home and everyone got grumpy and cranky. Still there was a moment when they were using the big map in the park to find out where they could find quaking aspen trees. when it felt like YES we are doing the right thing. 

then as if that wasnt cool enough came home to our sunflower in bloom and a big pumpkin on our fence. 

In the begining

There are moments when everything is Amazing and this whole home school thing is cake. There are other moments of grumpy screaming kids that I am over already. 

We did a 1st day project and  made mosaic with glass tiles on to our planter concrete blocks. Then spread thin set over the block and pushed the  tiles in 1st one was a jelly fish. Was a fun meditative project I have been wanting to do for years. It makes me so happy every time I see them. 

Impromptu Hike

 Its really hard to get motivated  to get up and get out of the house. The other day  kids were a bit whiny and instead  of putting netflix on or spending  the day fighting  them I decided  to thorw them in the car and head out  on a hike.  What  happened was amazing.  

Deep in a philosophical  conversation  about unicorns  and starwars and their imagination  games.

Can see pur little town across the hills 

She brought  her wooden camera to take pictures  and document. She also brought  her imagination  phone but couldn't  get bars to text her friends. (She cracks me up)

Did she wear good hiking  shoes, well no. Did she learn something? Yes that jellies are ok walk shoes but other shoes might  be  better  for hikes. She did wear socks so they wouldn't  cause blisters  and brought sports wrap incase her bad knee started acting  up   (which it did)  I also packed but was really  impressed  she had thought  about  on her own. 

Looking for birds and coming  up  with 100 questions  about flight and identification  and if we could do some research. 

Sketching  the moss and licen and many wondering  observations  

I realized I suck at being  in pictures  this is an attempt  at making  sure I document  myself in too. Ordered s tripod for our phones to work on getting  better photos  of the three of  us. 

The veiw from the top of the butte looking  out over rolling  hills and sparking  conversation  about  glaciers.

Just sitting  observing  drawing   thinking  

Once we got out of the house and into nature the grumpy kids turned calm and happy  there was only a little  whining  about 3.5 miles in about  the last bit of the hike.  The point i didn't  lesson plan, heck i barely planned we just  went and learning  happened  they read the guide  discused what  they had read, knew, learned, they did math calculating how many miles we could hike in a year. They talked  about  science. 

Not everything  has to have a lesson plan and prep work and guidance  from you sometimes   just getting  out is enough. 

About me: How we ended up Home Schooling

I totally had a plan for where I thought life was going, I know I will wait while you stop laughing.

 I had this idea of a gaggle of children, old craftsman house on the edge of a sweet town with a little bit of land and a few alpacas and goats, a workshop, a huge garden. I would spend my days baking bread and making cheese and doing something artistic like painting or sewing and my garden would be this tangle of flowers and veggies. We would spend our days doing a home school unschooling mix. I had a vague idea about a husband who did something that allowed us to live this way and was around for game nights and heavy lifting projects. 

So reality is a bit, ok a lot, different.

 

We live in a duplex with a yard space that comprises a 5 foot strip of clay mud along the side of the house and a narrow driveway. Our house is actually lovely and big. Kids share a giant room that holds all their toys has an attached bathroom and the laundry room. I have my own big bedroom and bathroom. We have a storage/office nook depending on how on top of organization. Then there is a big open living room, dinning room, kitchen space. 

I have 2 kids C, who is almost 9 and obsessed with star wars and harry potter; and L who is 6 and in a unicorn girly artistic. They are amazing, I am biased by they really are the coolest kids. They aren't easy though. C has celiac and generalized anxiety and L is my true challenge. She has since she was born been fierce independent strong.  She is a bit of a medical drama llama and doesn't do anything by half. L has sensory processing and indications might be on the autism spectrum, she is so smart but there are indications she has some sort of learning disability going on. She has some other medical stuff that hasn't been pinned down yet. Issues with knee pain, retained infant reflex. All of which has meant that raising littles has not been easy. 

Pre-mama-hood I was a nanny for nearly 20 years and naively though it would make motherhood and easy transition. (spoiler it didn't).  I had planned to stay at home in the early years and return to work when they reached school age. Though we would do a home school after school weekends and breaks approach to learning. Instead I found myself a single mom with a one year old and three year old both of who needed weekly therapy for physical and mental heath and the dreams of staying home were gone. So I became a working mama juggling all the things. 

 It was starting to get easier with kids in school to balance work, kids, life and I was making some progress in becoming a person again. I totally though that 2020 was going to be it. Both kids in school, work was good, personal life was good.  We had reached a weekends with dad point in co parenting that seemed to be working.Then mid January he moved across the country. So I went from a couple of kid free nights and time to myself to recharge to solo parenting 100%. I still thought I have this it will be ok I adjusted my schedule to not work on a Friday so I would have a few hours while kids were at school to myself and we had support groups, play dates. Then pandemic and all that went away, kids didn't have school. finding sitter was soo hard. I was an Essential worker so staying home wasn't an option. 

We got though it though 5 months and then it was clear going back to school was not going to be a good choice. We had sucked at distance learning I knew it wasn't going to be a good choice for either kid for this year and the uncertainty of what the school year would be home, in person, computers, nothing was to much for either kid. Which left Home school. So dropped my work hours back to nearly nothing, posted on local groups that I'm providing childcare and in September we are going to be home during the week.