November 15, 2011

sick days

Homeschooling is a funny beast. There are things that I was positive would be problematic (keeping Briton's attention all day, not going stark raving mad at having no break) that have turned out to be, well, not a problem at all. And then there are things that I thought would be easy, or didn't think of at all, that have turned out to be something of a pain. Like trying to balance field trips around the city with getting back in time to pick Evelyn up (we cannot get to Brooklyn and back in time, as we found out not long ago, oops) or the Homeschool Office loosing all of our paperwork and then getting all huffy about why they don't have it (hello! If I hadn't sent it in you wouldn't know I was homeschooling!). Or sick days. Not kid sick days, that's obvious. Mom sick days. I'm about four days into a nasty bronchial cold that makes me want to sleep all day. In fact you'll have to forgive me if this seems a bit more rambling than normal, my head is pretty fuzzy. But what do you do when the teacher is sick and you can't just call a sub?

The answer, so far, has been all about muddling through. Yesterday Evie had a short day at school so for the few hours of "school" that Briton had we watched a documentary on Revolutionary New York. And then I slept while the kids played for the rest of the day. Today Will took over for a few hours and now that he's off to school we limping along with things that are more independent and less mommy based. It's not ideal, but it's not long term, so it will work.

So off I go to prop my head up at the table while Briton runs through French and then onto art and independent reading. I'll be back when I can string a sentence together without falling asleep midway through.