Um… lessee… Yup. One whole month. One whole crazy, hectic, busy busy month.

But, it’s all over now, and we’re back to normal. Or at least as close to “normal” as we ever get around here.

I had a great time as piano accompanist for more than a dozen students at the Fredericton Music Festival. I got to meet, chat, and hang out with (meaning: get very silly with) the other local accompanists. I suppose I’m not quite finished yet — two of the kids I played for are performing in the final awards concerts.

My son competed at the Atlantic Gymnastics Competition as the only Fredericton boy on the NB Provincial team.  He got a 5th place on the pommel, and while he was hoping for a higher standing, we’re all quite proud of him for his first competition at this level.  I’m a bit frustrated, though, that we haven’t seen how his scores lined up with the other events or overall — only that he wasn’t top 6.  But I’d like to know if he was 7th, or 27th, and how close the marks were.

All the girls results are posted at his gym club, but not the boys.  And what’s even more frustrating — there was an article in the local paper detailing all the results of the local athletes.  All the girls, that is.  Even the ones whose best showing was 7th, and 28th overall.  Not a mention of my son.  After all the sacrificing we’ve done for his gymnastics, after the excitiment and the pride of making the provincial team, and the stress and the joy of going to Atlantics… to be left out like that, I confess, it hurts.

It hurts me.  I haven’t even shown him.  I can’t imagine how he’d feel.

Well, in other news, my baby seedlings are doing great, except for the onions, which the cats decided was cat grass.  Half of them are still hanging on, but I bought a package of onion sets anyway.  The baby tomato plants are beautiful, the peppers are growing, the cucumbers are humungous.  Just a couple more weeks and the frost danger is passed.

And after nearly a month of just not worrying about “school” stuff, we’ve finally gotten back into it.  Or starting to, anyway.  We got about a week and a half into our second six-week session using Charlotte Mason ideas, when we just gave up.  It wasn’t worth the effort and the struggle with our busy-ness.  He actually did a few little things on his own in the meantime, and read up a storm  – he just finished The Hobbit last night and now wants to start Lord of the Rings!  This is the same boy who less than a month ago cried and wailed and sobbed when I said we’d be reading The Hobbit next.   Go figure.

I’ve just decided to call the previous attempt at a 6-week session a wash, and start again fresh.  This week, we’re mostly just reviewing, remembering what we’d been doing before, gradually adding subject areas back in each day until we’re back to ‘normal’ for next week.

For instance, for French, today we just reviewed the words he’s learned so far.  Most of them, he actually remembered himself, and I refreshed his memory on the rest.  I think we’re ready to start doing some French on paper, he’s got enough oral vocabulary and his pronounciation is good, next week we’ll start again with Mimi and French phonics.  So today, I simply wrote down the words he knows, so he could see what they look like, and I had him sort them into cognates, near-cognates, and non-cognates, which he actually thought was a lot of fun.

I think the trickiest thing to get back into will be Math, so this week we’ll just do games, and not start lessons again until I’m confident he’s refreshed enough and ready.

Oh, and I started a new house rule — no electronics (video games, etc) until noon, including for me — unless it’s directly required for school stuff.  I have a bad habit of sitting down with my morning coffee and reading my online comics, only to find myself distracted by the vast mysteries of the web and the morning nearly gone, with agitated and ignored children at my feet and me still in my pajamas.  Then I expect Flipper to attend to his schoolwork without distractions before he can play video games.  Yeah, hypocrite much?

So with this new rule in place, we were done most of his work by 10am and went outside for the rest of the morning — Pomme is utterly in love with the new sandbox.  When Flipper first saw his list of work this morning, he had whined and moaned that it was too much… Even though it was only half the usual amount and only review at that!  But when he himself observed that he was nearly done and it was still early… he voluntarily apologized to me for having complained that it was too much.

You could have picked me up off the floor with a spatula.

First, here’s his floor routine. The lady handing out oranges stood right in front of his splits… He’s the only boy in the bunch who has true full splits. He won bronze for this routine.

More videos after the jump…

Here’s his vault. There’s twenty-five seconds of him just standing and waiting because I didn’t want to miss his run… it’s not usually that long of a wait. He got a silver medal for this vault.

Here’s his pommel routine. All they have to do for level 1 is 5 circles. For all the other boys, that means one circle, repeated five times. Flipper won gold in this event.

Rings aren’t his strongest event, he only got seventh place. But it was still a solid performance for him. I missed the first few seconds because the camera focus was off and I had to restart the video.

Here’s his parallel bars routine. He won a bronze for this, despite his lackluster L-sit.

And here’s the high bar routine. In warm-ups he made it all the way around every time, of course. He got fifth place. Still, this is a big improvement over his previous high bar performance at Christmas time.

And finally, here are the medal presentations for Overall Standings. After the event medals, I was expecting him to come in third. But his pommel mark was so strong (9.5) that it pulled him up into second.

With these good results, he’s qualified for the NB Team for the Atlantic Championships coming up at the end of this month in Sydney, NS. We weren’t sure at first if we could afford to send him but we’ve decided it’s worth the sacrifice. He’s got his team tracksuit already and it’s very, very cool. We’re all so proud of him!

This weekend is NB provincial gymnastics competition.  The boys’ events were held last night.

In the 10+ level 1 boys, my crazy boy Flipper flipped his way to one gold, one silver, and two bronze in the individual events, and scored a silver for Overall.  He’s also earned a spot on the NB Team for the Atlantic championships to be held next month in Sydney, NS.  That’s if we can scrounge up the dough for all his fees.  He really wants to go, so we’ll try to figure something out.

His best friend from the club got first overall in the under 10 level 1 boys!  And a slew of gold medals from the individual events too.  Unfortunately he’s below the minimum age for Atlantics (9, he’s only 8), so it’s disappointing they won’t be going together.

Still, we’re so proud of him!  I’ve got tons of videos which I’ll post when I have tme!!!

It was a long, long evening as all seven boys had to do all six events. They started with the floor routine, and everyone gasped as Flipper went into his full splits! I was quite surprised that he was the only one with full splits, most of them only got halfway down. Flipper has always been so floppy and unfocused, I was so very impressed at how clean his execution was when it counted! He ended up getting second place on the floor!

He also rocked their worlds on the pommel horse. In level 1, the pommel horse routine consists simply of making 5 circles around the “mushroom”, a simplified entry-level pommel. He was the only one able to do all 5 in one go, the others did 5 circles one at a time. He took gold in that event!

Those were his strongest events. He also tied for third on the rings and did a nice handspring over the vault. He was least prepared for the high bar (but did quite well all things considered) and he was decent on the parallel bars.

The greatest surprise was at the end, when he scored silver in the Overall ranks! All these years of paying waaaaaaay too much money, hours and hours and hours spent back and forth to the gym, wondering what would ever come of it. We did it because he loved it, whether or not he ever became “competitive”, but he was often so unfocused in training and unmotivated to really do WELL that we often wondered if it was really worth it.

It was worth it.

He still goofs around in class. He still could probably accomplish more if he applied himself more. He’s still floppy — his coach says he just has a hard time controlling his long limbs! But he has strengths, as well. He still loves it. And as time goes on, we’re seeing the results, in his body, in his skills.

I have struggled to trust him to find his path. I have tried to impose my will and my thoughts on what direction his life should take. Oh, the mistakes I have made in homeschooling through the years will surely be the subject of many future posts! But in this one area, in the gymnastics, I trusted him despite my skepticism. Despite the financial hardships. Despite the time commitments. And oh boy, were we ever glad we homeschool with those time commitments! I cannot imagine doing all those hours at the gym AND school AND homework.

Despite several years of really not being convinced of his dedication and motivation, I trusted him. And now I’m starting to see the fruits of that trust and it’s a kick in the teeth I need. He will blossom into the young man he was born to be, and I don’t have to henpeck him or rule over him with an iron fist. I need to learn to trust that innate drive for growth and development that is in all children and not WORRY so much about all his little foibles and difficulties. Left to follow his own passions, he will come through and come through beautifully.

Oh I should also mention — he came in silver, who got the overall gold? His friend from our club. He got gold in nearly every event in fact! We were so excited to share 1st and 2nd on the podium with our friends. And just to be the cherry on top of the whole shebang — I won one of the raffle prizes, an enormous Christmas gift basket, full of chocolates and drinks and decorations! It was all just meant to be.

I guess first of all, I should come up with cute nicknames for my kids… I have observed that most ‘family’ bloggers refer to their kids as “Little Fish” or “Peanut” or “Pumpkin”, in order to maintain a certain sense of privacy.   Let’s see…

My 10-year-old son is energetic, hyperactive, distractible.  He’s quick to temper and prone to selfishness.  Yet he’s also a gentle soul who likes soft and cuddly things, he’s gregarious and kind to his friends, always laughing and full of jokes.  We think he has sensory issues and he has trouble sleeping.  He’s moderately gifted, but lazy.  He can build the most astonishing Lego creations, he will draw amazing pictures endlessly, he loves to read.  He loves the blues, idolizes Stevie Ray Vaughn, and is a master of Guitar Hero.  He has a junior black belt in karate and is now in Tae Kwon Do.  He’s a competitive gymnast.  He’s never been to school and has no interest right now in ever going.  He asks hard questions about life and fairness, and seems to alternate between the maturity of a grownup and a 4-year-old.  He has two main goals in life — to be a guitarist in a band, and to be a marine biologist.  He especially adores whales and dolphins, but is already an expert on anything under the sea.   Even his bedroom has an undersea theme, and he won’t eat fish because it makes him sad.

So then… he is “Flipper”.

Now my daughter is quite a different creature.  She will be two years old next week.  Her favourite things to talk about are shoes, cats, fish, dogs, cars, and colours.  She’s viciously independent, insists on doing things by herself, and insists on ‘helping’ mommy in the kitchen, with cooking, doing dishes, as well as other chores like doing the laundry and taking out the garbage.  She can be very loud and cantankerous, like any toddler, but on the whole, she’s actually fairly reserved, quiet, calm, and serious.  She was never “diaper-trained” and is now a “graduate”, virtually potty-independent.  She did “baby-led solids” and her favourite food is spicy Indian curry.  And potato chips.  Apples and bananas and pomegranates.  And, of course, mommy milk!  She is the most beautiful baby you’ve ever seen, she looks like a porcelain doll.  She’s surprisingly petite given her parents… She’s the apple of her daddy’s eye.  Hm.  And her favourite undies are the ones with the apple on them, which she calls “apple bum”.

Maybe she can be “Apple”.  Not to be confused with Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow’s cute little girl of the same name…  No, even better.  She’ll be “Pomme”, like her yummy pomegranates (the word means “seeded apple,” by the way), and since I’m bilingual and we’re trying to work on French… and it just seems a wee bit classier.

So there we have it.  My bouncy, friendly, confusing Flipper, and my rosy, sweet and colourful Pomme.