Rain, Hail, and Shine……

Well, I haven’t blogged in the last couple of weeks because we haven’t really done anything ‘formal’ (not because I’m suffering the same condition that brought about the death of my last blog..ie: complete lack of motivation). Besides it rained for ages and we were literally stuck inside the whole time, and we were out of wheels for a few of those days. Suffice it to say that Ariel is now an expert cubby builder with a dismantled Papasan chair and a queen size bedspread being his only materials. If you’re ever stuck for a dwelling and this is all you have, then Ariel is your man. For any enquiries please feel free to contact him via this blog He is also a master hide & seeker…which we also did a lot of during the rain. Joshua can now count to 3..of course this is then followed with the lesser known numbers ‘coming’, ‘ready’, and ‘or’, ‘not’.

Actually this is what makes the natural learning part of our journey fun. Despite the fact that our formal main lesson has fallen by the wayside the last few weeks (due to a few lifestyle changes, rain, and not being arsed)..we have been doing quite a lot. During the rain we made some new friends…a family of beautiful rainbow lorikeets decided to grace us with their cheery presence. It was interesting that the birds only appeared just before a storm came and torrential rain with it…but it was kinda nice to draw the correlation for Ariel that the rain wouldn’t last for ever because God made us a promise that He wouldn’t flood the whole world again..and although we didn’t see any rainbows in the sky, we did see it in the birds. Stretching an analogy? maybe. but it brightened our week anyhow.

Of course, they also required the obligatory feed for the time on our verandah.

When the rain finally took a break we got the chance to catch up with our beautiful little unschooling group at Fagan Park, and we welcomed a new family to our group. So stuff has actually been happening.

Now it’s really hot and we’ve been inside again. So to borrow a principle from permaculture..see solutions not problems… we took the opportunity to explore the Fruits of the Spirit. and because we all need a little reminder every now and then, they are (in order of appearance): Love, Joy, Peace, Longsuffering, Gentleness, Goodness, Faith, Meekness, Self-control. We even painted them over our dining room archway (because sometimes one REALLY needs reminding). The reason we started working on these was not so much because of my addiction to buying fruit trees (and having no-where to actually put them once I realised they were going to be huge when they matured) but because for the last 8 months we have been participating in a programme called Growing Kids God’s Way…yes much to my shame, we have been partially Ezzo-fied. I say partially because I’ve managed to separate the chaff from the wheat in the programme ( and hopefully inform others of it as well) and use the bits that are actually useful and biblically-based, but the rest I’ve chucked. Why don’t I like this programme? Well, it’s basically an off-shoot from their Babywise programme which is a load of Biblically unfounded dangerous rot around ’sleep-training (read control crying), scheduled feeding, etc in babies. The practices they advocate are actually physically dangerous to a child..and this actually doesn’t show your child how to love & respect you. So anyway there’s heaps written about why these programmes are dangerous, punitive, and adversarial rather than loving and actually following the example Christ gave us. So when I spoke about lifestyle changes before, we’ve changed our tact a bit. We still do the boundaries, understanding love languages, couch time for me & the superman, etc BUT we now approach our children from the charge that Christ gave when He said ..”if you do these things for the least of my brethren then you do them to me’ ..believe it or not this also includes children.  For further information on this Biblical Christ-centred method..have a look at www.gentlechristianmothers.com and www.aolff.org 

For someone who homebirths, bresatfeeds full term, co-sleeps, carried my babes, and basically responds to my children with the mothering instincts God gave me..it makes much more sense (and it works) to parent in a continuous gentle manner than all of a sudden employ separatists methods. Despite what many people think God isn’t separatist. He gives us boundaries (the Law) but He helps us when we ask Him, and when we seek Him, He always keeps us close under His wing. The imagery that God uses throughout His Word is that of a mother tenderly caring for her nursling. Why would He use this imagery to describe His care for us if He didn’t expect us to treat our children the same way?

Anyway, enough with the rant. We’ve had a pretty good week.