Homeschooling Again

Homeschooling this round is, to put it gently, a complete disaster. I don’t know if anyone is surprised that adding Naomi to the mix has resulted in catastrophe. There are multiple zoom rooms and codes and passwords and sign-ins and the kids naturally devolve into feral creatures at even the smallest sign of weakness. Struggling to get into the right meeting room or locate the PDF file the teacher has sent? Or have I averted my eyes from glaring at them directly to look out the window at a bird fluttering in freedom? All of a sudden one is filling up the recycling bin with water in the shower, the other half-naked on the bunk bed eating crackers that were mysteriously found there. Caleb and Naomi both have proven to be very hard to nail down.

Just looking at the photos starts me out into hives and exhaustion. It’s like one of those children’s worksheet exercises where you have to find all the things. Caleb’s pants in the yellow chair (when did he take them off?), the snacks, the paper, the sharp objects buried beneath everything, the cups that seem to only be able to be located on the edges of the table, the jar of pencil shavings that has been kicked over half a dozen times, the syringes lying on the floor. What exactly is Caleb looking for? Do I want to know? Does Caleb’s teacher recognize that one of her students has been replaced? I am the stuffed rainbow chameleon, eyes bulging out of its head, face down, trying to crawl away from it all.

After half an hour, I find I need to just lie down under a blanket for the rest of the day. The other day, Jon came home and tried to wrangle the kids into cleaning up. After stepping on a piece of bread that had dried and hardened over a period of several days (or longer who knows) and then disintegrated into the pile of the carpet under his foot like a large crouton, discovering someone had let the hot glue gun drip onto his stack of invoices, and being accused of stealing all the construction paper, he gave up.

It is aided not at all by the fact that Chicken’s new friend has started coming into the house at will, to Chicken’s disgruntlement. I’ve been trying for years to convince Jon we need to get a new cat, but the cost of a new cat has gone up dramatically over the pandemic, as has Chicken’s crustiness, so we’ll take these free visits. Chicken does have all his shots, and this new cat does seem to be well taken care of, and certainly knows where to expect to find the food bowl.

The other day I was stopped at a long light due to construction in one lane, and a cop came up to the car. I was about to start panicking (/was panicking) until it was made clear that Naomi had waved at him (who is this child) and he was coming up to say hello. The kids were appropriately in awe, he asked me how virtual schooling was going and I choked a second time.

In any case, we are here. In the midst of the chaos, I know that I should be grateful for my babies being safe, and the opportunity and the technology and time for continued learning. I made a joke to Caleb’s teacher about why it was so crazy and why sometimes there are two children and sometimes just one who is not actually in her class, and she offered to get the TDSB to send another iPad. I continue to realize how fortunate we are that we have what we need, it’s just unruly children, unruly parenting. Fridge full of food, overdue library books spilling over everywhere, a backyard to run around in. Good health.