Back to School
Just this morning while sitting in what I'll call 2nd church, the preacher commented on the thrill that many parents feel when school starts back up and you finally get your kids out of the house and out of your hair. Well, I politely disagree. I love my kids in my hair. Much to my sisters dismay, I also enjoy poorly executed music lessons and even being the head of the event planning committee.
Two years ago, we made the decision to home-school. It was easy to decide we wanted to spend more quality time with our children. It was easy to find a plethora of curricula to choose from. The hard part was retraining.
About this same time, I began to feel exhausted-more than usual. I had pressing fatigue that was often overwhelming. I was having trouble staying awake to work with the kids, take care of the house, even more frightening-I often was too drowsy to drive. I have had 2 varieties of Epstein-Barr viruses, and was told that chronic fatigue was a potential ongoing side effect. This was more. I could barely walk some days, I ached and small things (like opening jars) became very difficult. I am a fairly active person. I had been advised to quit running after #7 due to hip pain, but I have always loved to ride my bike. I regularly work out with weights. We actually have a fairly well outfitted, dedicated work out room. This was not normal for me. I don't like to feel weak and I rarely give in to physical challenged. This had me beat. Several vials of blood given for testing later...I tested positive for the factor that typically accompanies Rheumatoid Arthritis. It runs strongly through my family. Ever the optimist, I saw this as an excuse to take the kids on field trips when I drove to a the highly recommended specialist 2 hours away. Even now, I don't think my family really understands what I feel like and none of the protocols have work well so far, but worse, it took away so much I wanted to do with my kids, because I truly just CAN'T. Ugh. Stupid RA.
I have always loved getting up very early and staying up very late and except for a few bouts of the lingering E-B fatigue, I have mostly been happy on just about 5 hours of sleep. Now 8 doesn't exist, but I desperately want it. True sleep eludes me, but if I get near the 8 hour mark I am fairly functional.
So that brings us back to "retraining". First, I had to retrain myself to a better sleep pattern (still not even close). Second, I had to convince the kiddos that they had to get up and get rolling even if I couldn't. That is also not perfected. We refine our routine often, but it is always improving. The best part is including more prayer in our day, bible reading as a family and learning to be a loving family and not just a bunch of people that eat and sleep here.
