train up the child, the way he's already gone...

I have a kid that doesn't talk. He can, and he could, but he won't. Instead, he chooses the most logical means for a mostly-blind child to communicate: sign language. Anyway, if you were at my house, you would understand 3 things.
1. R2 is HUNGRY
2. R2 wants to LEAVE
3. R2 wants to GO TO SCHOOL.

He "tells" me, and anyone else who comes by to, you know, deliver the mail or whatever, all the time. Glory be, school starts in 2 weeks. I haven't told him yet because he can only handle a day's notice before the waiting really stresses him out.

It's not just school for him, though. I mean, we'll pack him a lunch and send him off to the custody of the state for 8 hours a day or whatever, but this year somebody else is going to school, too.

Toby is starting homeschool, approximately when R2 gets on the little yellow bus and goes to tell his teacher he's hungry. This is the most exciting thing that has ever happened to Toby, ever. And honestly, I'm geeking out a little myself. He's just such a natural learner that I am stoked to really try to teach him.

I mean, I teach all the time, good things and bad things. But starting in 2 weeks, I'll be teaching stuff like writing and adding and random facts he doesn't already know and such. I've been preparing for a year or so, buying preK-1st workbooks and random school and art supplies (thrift stores, Walmart, Target, and jackpot: Dollar Tree!), and squirreling them all away. Most of them have already been breached, since he's a sneaky little son of a gun. Anyway, now I have everything in basically one cabinet and I have high hopes of making some kind of lesson plan or goal or something prior to my start date.

If you hang around here much, you know I'm not terribly self-disciplined. I'm shooting for an hour a day, and I'm not nailing that hour down yet, since plans give me hives.

I've also bought a few beginner workbooks for Bean, since she can't read yet, even though she's 3. This gives Toby a huge superiority complex. "You're not going to homeschool, Brynn," he says loftily. "You're going to preschool."

Unlike everything else he says, this doesn't seem to bother Brynn. She's just excited about being able to draw with markers without getting in big trouble. I hope to encourage her artistic tendencies, and maybe channel them toward paper, since she prefers walls as her primary canvas. I know, I'm so uptight!