BackBlog: October: Miyuki’s 1sts.
Oct 30th, 2008 by Sally
Another photo blog … one of firsts: first play dough session, piano playing, first birthday, first party (at the swimming pool and tea and cakes at the restaurant afterwards with lots of friends), ….
first train ride … on a steam train.
Piano playing
first photo!
first truly Lilliputian moment!
first class petting!
first upside down play dough session with Freya! How did the photo get upside down? don’t know, but as Freya is usually most at home upside down I think it will be funny and appropriate to leave it in anti gravity mode!
first helping Mum cook! Well, actually she is eating all the crispy skin off a boiling hot chicken whilst blowing her fingers. She wanted it, and who am I to say she can’t peel your Sunday lunch? I’d let her sink her teeth into your leg if you came for lunch, if she asked, probably!
(well, anyway, I think that’s the concern my mum has when she comes up against my weird parenting choices!)
first act of anarchic incitement (well, unlikely to be the first or last!) Miyuki managed to go from ‘can I put my hands in Clare’s washing up bowl’ to slipping her feet in (at which point I thought “oh well, I suppose it’s easier than dangling her.”) to sliding her bum in! Now, if she’d suggested bum in in the first place I might have had the sense to divert her to something else (maybe). So, now Claris is totally into sitting in her kitchen sink! Not sure how pleased Clare was
Lani also decided to mention the anatomical bit of the birds and bees, and her feelings about the spuriousness of fairies, Father Christmas and God … all in the same session! (We’ve previously discussed the politics of doing this and I think she was having an anarchic moment too!) Thankfully they are home educators so we can’t incite their kids in that way because they are already there. However, I know that Clare has been having a few conversations she thought she’d got away without having! I think her eldest, Molly, had been putting pressure on Lani (so she felt) to believe in God, and it may have been her rebellious reaction to Molly’s suggestion that you don’t need proof, you just have to believe (in God, fairies and Father Christmas).
first birthday party. Here are a few of the folks that came swimming with us. That’s just some of the kids … the age range was from about 55 down to 5 months. Just how we like it. Swimming was chosen because it is Miyuki’s favourite activity and we thought she’d choose it if she could! We then went off for tea and cakes in the restaurant, en mass, before Jon and a few others went off with the kids to the swings (it was getting difficult to contain the really tiny ones who were following the free range older ones into the park, awol.) Meanwhile, some of us lounged around drinking tea, eating cake and discussing the pros and cons of power struggles with our kids, and the feasibility or otherwise of non-coercive family relationships. I’m getting pretty good at the latter (in terms of understanding and being able to debate the ideology … also better at living it gradually.) Most people’s questions or objections have previously been my own. They are obvious assumptions or concerns, but I finally have the answers to most of them from my reading and from my attempts to live it (like the big sugar eating debate!)
On Sunday I also began to read Jan Fortune-Wood’s “doing it their way” (or something like that … haven’t got it right next to me.) I’ve always felt very skeptical (as a child and as an adult, as a sociologist, as a student teacher, as a teacher, as a Montessori teacher and as a home educating parent) about the subject matter taught to kids, and the point or otherwise of it! This book has begun to answer some of those questions.
baby awakes.



