cunning plans and clever tricks

i had a funny text exchange with a friend the other day. he's someone we used to hang out with back in the day when everyone lived in crookes, only the first round of weddings was taking place and kids were still twinkles in their daddy's eye.

i was on the bus heading and saw this friend from the window walking down the street looking very pensive. so i texted him about it and within the text exchange i was able to use the phrase (from roald dahl's "The Enormous Crocodile") "cunning plans and clever tricks". i really enjoyed that - it made me smile. i love when things like that happen - the mixing of the imaginary with reality. although i suppose not so imaginary now that it is immortalised in a book!

a couple of things have been bugging me about radical unschooling recently. andy started an interesting discussion on the radical unschooler's network about the cost of unrestricted food. our boys are loving their binge on sweets and like to go to the shops fairly regularly to top up. we are seeing changes though - both boys are starting to dislike certain sweets and choosing not to eat them as a result. this means we've had open bags of uneaten fudge and other things lying around! also we've been creating monkey platters for them and they've been happily digging in to those and eating all sorts of yummy goodies.

i am trying to relax about the excess of sweets as i see the changes take place and trying to trust that the boys will find their natural groove with self-regulation. i know for me as someone who experienced an eating disorder, along with all the crap our culture puts on food and our relationship with food, learning to self-regulate is hard. but i am convinced that it is harder as an adult than for a child because by adulthood you have so much more baggage.

the thing is though that i had an image in my head that the children who have been unschooled from day dot would be so self-regulated that they'd be fairly slim having achieved a healthy balance between food and exercise. that they'd have fallen into rhythms of eating that enable them to stop when full and just have a little of something they fancy because they know the 'banquet' is always there for a re-visit. this meant i was shocked to follow a link to a young adult who was unschooled from birth (including food) and see someone overweight. my friend samantha will roll her eyes when she reads this. she has been involved with a project that seeks to share the 'truth' that fat and fit is a healthy option. i suppose it is a healthier option but it doesn't fly with me for various reasons. however i also know that the info disseminated to us is hugely biased and full of propaganda (take vaccinations for example)so perhaps fat can be healthy.

anyway - as incoherent as this post is, it is my thoughts and struggle at the moment!

Last night a movie saved my life...

well not quite. andy did go and see star trek (yawn) and said it was great. my boys and i have been watching lots and LOTS of DVDs recently. well, since we started lifting restrictions on media. so yesterday we were in full-on Kung Fu Panda mode and today we are in full-on Madagascar mode.

the beautiful thing about it is hearing how much they laugh out loud. proper belly laughs that consume their whole being. and each time they see the film again they laugh even more as they get more and more understanding of the various layers of each joke. trust DreamWorks to layer their jokes!

the other thing i'm noticing about watching movie after movie with them is that we have such wonderful conversations as a result of the film. the kids certainly aren't in a coma-state as some research suggests children take on. in fact they are animated and engaged and enthralled and inspired. we talk about geography, history, zoology, art, biology, physics, chemistry, sociology and on and on as a result of watching these films again and again. and the great thing is about choosing to trust this process is realising that without such a degree of immersion they wouldn't be developing the layers of understanding that are allowing for the interesting conversations and games that flow out of the experience.

both boys have colds at the moment and it's nice to snuggle together in front of a film instead of expecting them to be more active and then having to deal with the moaning because they feel under the weather.

i want to put up recent photos but not getting round to it. i shall do soon i hope!

warm rosy cheeks - a special end of day glow.

we've been doing fun things and not a lot of time for thinking outside of them. here's some of what we've been enjoying:

making decorations by threading wrappers and fabric its and milk bottle tops and foil etc onto thread.

full body painting on cardboard outside

awesome den building in the garden using duvet covers and sheets etc.

painting and play dough

baking

planting up beetroots and pumpkins

beer festival

watching films

creating swings from rope and pull-up bars

eating green eggs and ham (well known by dr seuss fans)

spending hours in the shower enjoying the sensory experience

making and drinking vanilla milkshakes

harvesting rhubarb

sword fighting with foam lagging

saying 'i love you' unexpectedly and frequently

watching tadpoles in our pond

spontaneous prayer

taking calls from fireman sam


i shall hopefully put pictures up soon but it's a slow process as we can't work out how to easily re-size photos on our current software. windows vista isn't the same as the last windows we had (at least that's how i understand it!).

ooh, and some mormon missionaries came round yesterday and after a long conversation with us they asked if they could help us out with anything so we asked them to put up the venetian blinds we had been meaning to get up for yonks. fantastic!