Audrie at 14 months (and 3 weeks)

I was looking at Audrie's scrabook this weekend and telling some people about how I am so bad about journaling, but I scrapbook and blog about what Audrie's up to...and I realized, I havent done that in a LONG time.  For the sake of me being able to come back and read this when I have another 14 month old and think what was Audrie doing at this age...here goes...

• You dont really walk anymore, you run. With your head down and arms flaling. Which means alot of bruises and falling down.
• You have some thick thick hair, like mommy, and you are really tall so people think you are 2. But your not. You are a week away from being 15 months.
• Your vocabulary expands all the time. Right now you can say: mama, dada, bye-bye, ball, dog, duck, ruff-ruff, night-night, diaper, poo-poo, nose, cat, duck, hot-hot, cold, book, no, juice, toes, uh-oh, hello (only when pretending to talk on the phone), papa, papaw, naenae, nana (even though there is no grandparent named nana) 
• You can identify these parts of your body: nose, hair, belly, toes, foot, teeth and when we ask you if you poo-pooed, you point to your diaper.
• You can follow some commands. If we ask you to pick something up and bring it to one of us, you usually do. You can go find your milk, baby, ball, etc... You have learned to throw appropriate things away in the trash can.
• You still havent learned to sign "thank you" but you can sign "please" and "more". 
• You love to wave hi and bye, although you wont say hi. You wave now even when you are not prompted to. 
• You are learning to throw things, like the dog toys, and a ball, even though it doesnt go very far. 
• You also just learned how to kick a ball and you think it is really funny thing to do. 
• You can eat with a fork when mommy helps you and you really like it. 
• You love to buckle the top of your carseat with mommys help, you get really excited and clap.
• You STILL love Baby Einstein's Babys First Sounds

Thats really all I can think of at the moment. I have got to get better at doing this monthly. I know I am going to regret not doing it when this new baby is born and I am wondering what Audrie was like at that age.

This age, to me, is one of the hardest. Audrie is IN TO EVERYTHING...and does not listen to me very well. She listens to her sitter and other people, which I am grateful for, but I wish she would listen to me! I think it is most challenging because she cant communicate as much as I wish she could, so she just whines. and whines. and whines. I know each age comes with their own challenges and I also know one day, I am going to wish she couldnt talk! 

Thoughts on Homeschooling

I know my child is only a year old. But this year has flown by so fast. I think alot about her education and our future kids education. So many things to think about...private school? public school? homeschool?

I think I want to homeschool.

I know I lost half of you at that sentence.

Here are my reasonings:

I know Audrie can get a good education in the school system. GT and I both went to private school growing up until highschool--we loved it. We wouldnt change anything about it. But I want to be in control of Audries education. I want to be able to explore things according to her interests and strengths. I want to go further than the text books. I dont want her to have to learn things just to pass a test or get high scores on a standerized test. I want to teach her to love to learn. And I want to be there for it.

I know I could do some of these things if she was attending a school. But think about it, a child is at school all day, then they come home...do homework, then more school? No. They dont want to do more school.

GT's biggest hang-up about it is the socialization. Here is a really good article from the Pioneer Woman's website about this. What I asked GT, is who did we hang out with? Church friends. Youth group. We didnt hang out with kids from school. Seriously, what socialization is learned at school that cant be learned from church groups, sports groups, play groups etc...  And we are their parents. And we are quite socialized. We arent going to keep them locked inside all day.

I am not trying to keep Audrie and our future children from the "real" world. As my friend Lyznie always says, "the real world will shows itself eventually". And I think this is very true. When people say, so you're just going to shelter Audrie? I say, yeah I am. As long as I can. She doesnt need to know what is out there right now. She will find it out. Just like I did. But we will teach her what is right. We will teach her to make good choices. We will teach her to love. She will see an example of her family doing these things. So...all that to say, I dont want to homeschool her to keep her from the real world, but if it does, I am ok with it.

I hope to start being intentional about teaching her through Tot School. Kinda like montessori, but at home. I will blog about it through our journey.

My biggest question-- How do I homeschool Audrie when I have 1 or 2 other little ones? I know people do it. I know it can be done. But whew. It makes me tired just thinking about it.

I wrote all of this to get ideas? thoughts? comments?