Two solid years of dreadlocks

  I think it’s sixth time lucky-after stuffing them up five times, i’ve finally worked out how to keep my hair in dreads and keep them looking good. For two whole years!

April 2011-new, wispy dreads.

April 2013

   That I haven’t screwed them up must be a good sign. I mean, look at my history…………

Dreads #1-Done by an African lady. Looked great, but I couldn’t lock the roots up when they grew out a few inches. A circus performer I met told me to wash my hair with soap and scrub it right into my head, so I did, and it worked great at knotting my hair up-it all matted together at the base into a helmet with dreads poking out. Complete write-off.

Dreads #2-The previously mentioned circus performer did these. Again, no luck with the base growing out. About a year later, I brushed them out because they were all hair at the bottom and looked fluffy and crap.

Dreads #3-The husband had a shot, and did a pretty good job. But we were in Tasmania in the dead of winter (ie March-October), and being someone who hates spending excessive (read:any) time on my appearance it only took two months or so for me to get sick of timing washing my hair to the weather, and having it sit icily on my head for hours. Got the brush onto them again.

Dreads #4-The husband again did them, but insisted I needed to have them thicker. He did them far too thick and tight and lost a lot of length as a result, and I felt as though I had turds hanging from my head. I think they lasted two weeks.

Dreads #5-The husband made atonement, and did a better job. These worked really well, and i’d figured out how to care for them. This time it was a mental thing. We were at our property, and with it being so hard to wash everything, from clothes to bodies, I started to think that I was looking icky. Looking back at photos I was just paranoid-we all looked fine. But mental trickery worked on me, and after about eight months I went back to boring normal hair.

   Now I can look after them with no issues i’m fairly confident i’ll one day reach my goal of having my hair waist length, for the first time in my life. At the glacial rate my hair grows i’ll probably have grandchildren by then, but oh well. It’ll give them something to play with.

7 months and 10 days in Tasmania.

  Not that I was counting or anything. Oh, but how glad I am it is all over-and so quickly! We expected to be there for much longer, living in limbo, waiting for the freedom that selling our house would give us. And it was all over and done with before winter began. 

  We decided to make the most of it, and while renovating our house started visiting the local attractions-North-East Park

  Ralph Falls and Cash’s Gorge

The majestic White Knights, at Mathinna. Somewhat ruined by the astonishing amount of leeches there, and us not having salt in our kit.

 

I forgot the camera for Columba Falls. Oh, and Lilydale Falls. The site of the infamous snake episode, years ago. None spotted this time thankfully!

And basically tried to settle in as much as possible-and when you’re us, and you have half an acre of beautiful soil at your disposal, that means producing food. Hello meat, for the first time in four years! We bought five sheep, and ate three. As my sister-in-law told us, we lost our vege-tinity.

Doesn’t he look tasty? But Sam the Lamb escaped the slaughterman (for now), and was sold with the house.

  13 Rhode Island Reds kept us piled with eggs.

And hatched seven babies!  A chicken book the husband was reading recently stated that RIR’s do not go broody. Obviously a book Mrs Broody hadn’t read.

   Um, we ate three of those babies too. Our friend was willing to teach us how, so we had a tatt-covered bloke turn up with lots of very sharp knives. We had lots of giggles about being friends with him-i’m sure most people assumed that with the overload of tattoos and dreadlocks between the three of us, we were up to something more illegal and interesting than sitting around drinking herbal tea and talking animal husbandry.

  I’ll keep the photos of the next part of the process to myself though, as i’m sure the vegans wouldn’t appreciate them. Come to think of it, most meat eaters wouldn’t either. IF slaughterhouses had glass walls etc…….

  We gardened. This is what a couple of months, a pick and a shovel can do to a patch of grass.

  Considering the hail storm we had in late October (see below), we ended the summer pretty well. While people rave about gardening in Tasmania, i’m not a fan. Give me more pests and a longer growing season any day. We literally got about six weeks of okay summer growing weather, and by the start of March when we left we’d had two ripe tomatoes. Considering we’ve lived in places where we’ve had tomatoes all year around…………..they can keep their brassicas!

  I finally started my herbal medicine study, but that’s on pause, maybe never to be resumed, as I was horribly disappointed with the quality of the course. I’m still waiting for a resolution of my complaints about references and accuracy-it’s time to go to the next stage of making sure they can’t ignore me, I think. But we grew many herbs, I made infused oils from comfrey and calendula that work amazingly, plus many other practical experiments. I feel like a mad scientist, which is probably why I like it so much.

  And that was about it. After living in a few places in a row knowing they were going to be temporary, I just couldn’t muster up the energy required to get out and do permanent-type things there. So I spent most of my time at home, got a hell of a lot of sewing and tie-dyeing done, got obsessed with the classical method of home education and began weaving that into our life, and basically kept myself manically busy while I crossed my fingers that this last hurdle of ours towards a permanent, stable life would be over quickly. And it was! When the house settled we had grand plans of travelling all around Tasmania. In the end we spent four days at Lagoons Beach (spectacular, free, highly recommended)

Then we decided we’d had enough, booked tickets, spent six days enjoying the north-west, and got on the Spirit of Tasmania. A night in the ocean recliners was enough to convince us that we never want to live on an island again (the mainland doesn’t count), we all cheered when our tyres hit the ground in the morning, and we were ready to head north again.

So, we were happy there. But now it’s done, and i’m nothing except glad. Phew.

Homemaking and Unschooling

  As we have our house for sale, and are maintaining the excessive neatness required by that, i’m reminded of just how messy this unschooling life is. Consider our last house here-four hours earlier, this room was spotless.

  Or our dining table, regularly needing to be shovelled off so we can eat.

  Although i’m not the cleanest person alive, I do like order. I was struggling with mess recently, so I started browsing online for what other homeschoolers had to say, and was again reminded of why i’m so not radical.

  The radical unschooling solution? Who cares, it’s just your high standards. You shouldn’t force them on the rest of the family. If they’re your standards, YOU uphold them cheerfully, demanding no help from anyone else. Give your family the blessing of a clean house. Theoretically, your children will see you and automatically pick up your good habits, and eventually exhibit them to your satisfaction.*

    After finishing my laughing fit and picking myself up from the floor, I started musing about how this method started. The reason I came up with is because most people hate housework. They see it as repetitive, neverending drudgery-and if you don’t want to do it, why would your children? This is mostly due to clever marketing-many people own every ‘labour-saving’ device there is because of this belief. People bitch and moan about having to clean. The message to children is ‘Housework is horrible. Avoid it any way you can’. So I can understand RU-ers thinking totally avoiding mentioning housework is a winning strategy-if you don’t force them, they may not end up with an aversion. But nor will the parents end up with any significant help in the vast majority of cases.

  But we are crafty parents. We learnt the secret trick with children years ago-you can make anything fun. And if you do, they will believe you. Like the husband having dishwashing races with the kids last night, where he washes them as fast as he can while the child drying has to try to keep up. It usually ends up with suds and dishes all over the kitchen (luckily they’re all stainless steel, so throwing doesn’t matter) and masses of shouting and laughing. Hence, our kids have no issues with doing dishes when they’re asked. 

   Instead of avoiding the issue, why not make housework enjoyable, by doing it together? By showing them that keeping house is a worthy task?  Unless they’re mega-rich they’re going to have to do it every day of their entire life.Turn it into a job they can do well, and take pride in-children like being useful. I think many people have forgotten that. They enjoy knowing they’re making a contribution to the family, and love knowing that their work is valued and appreciated. It also helps to cultivate an appreciation for actually having this all of this stuff-once you know how many people in the world live in poverty and how lucky you are in comparison it seems selfish in the extreme to complain about washing the dishes after your fabulous meal.

  Plus, there’s a lot they don’t notice. For them, the cleaning fairies really do come. I was asked by my seven year old recently what I was doing. The answer? Scrubbing the bath. She’d never realised it had to be cleaned. I imagine many children could move out without realising, especially if you clean when they’re asleep. Without a conscious effort to show them what is done and how it’s done, there’s every chance they won’t know until they have to tackle the job in their own house.

Sure, I could wait for their lightbulb moment, when they decided to be clean and tidy of their own volition-but i’d rather take the initiative. And then take the extra time I have to spend time with them.

*Cynic that I am, I confirmed my suspicions by doing some digging on the websites-all three who recommended this had 1-2 children and free rein on technology. A small family of screen addicts creates so much less mess than a large family of craft addicts!

Magic painting

  This is an activity that is great fun for kids and adults alike-we never lose our love for secret messages. It’s simple really-draw or write on plain, sturdy paper with a candle, pressing quite hard. Give it to the recipient, who paints over it with watercolours or dilute food colouring and voila! The secret is revealed. It’s a really nice wat to write lovely messages to the kids.

 

 

 

  I tried this with Frosty last week, who liked it for a little bit-but then spent the rest of his time emptying and refilling everyone else’s water. He’s going through a water stage right now.

Finding out your child doesn’t fit ‘normal’

  One area in which we’ve never had typical reactions has been the disability one. Reading a book of Deaf people’s stories has certainly driven home what i’ve always known-the husband and I are seriously weird in our blase attitudes to the differences in our Shorty. Like the husband said ‘All these people cry and grieve for their child. We just wanted to know what colours we could get hearing aids in!’

  But then there’s never been any doom and gloom. Upon counting fingers and toes at birth and satisfying myself that the gas hadn’t screwed my sight up any more than it is naturally, we shrugged it off. There’s video of us fanning out his hands, an hour or so after birth, exclaiming, ‘Aren’t they COOL!’ There’s never been much consideration of hacking bits of him off to make him fit in, just like a tummy tuck after having my twins was never considered for myself. Cosmetic surgery is cosmetic surgery in my head. It was a complete shock, the morning of his birth, to be told that if his extra bits had been discovered at the 20 week scan I would have been advised to terminate. I remember being completely pole-axed, clutching my perfectly healthy new baby to me, thinking that if events (and my views) were different, he wouldn’t be here at all, because of a ‘just in case’ view. Let’s get rid of him, just in case he’s not average! Kill off those differences!

  The strongest emotional reaction i’ve had was to the geneticist who delivered the diagnosis of his syndrome. As i’d already deduced with Dr Google it was most likely that one there was no surprise-except the surprise of him being such a bastard about it. Telling us our son would most likely be a vegetable for life, and not to have more children because they could be too, and wreck our life. Treating him like a liability. I should have gone with my urges and spat on him, I really should have. Especially now, considering our six year old bike riding, tree climbing, wrestling ‘vegetable’. And he got the syndrome wrong, too, by the latest assessment (three years ago, mostly because it really doesn’t matter what label they stick him with).

  But as I tell everyone I can (probably tiresomely, but can’t say I care), having a child with a syndrome is not a bad thing. Just a different thing. It can actually be a really positive thing, if you let it. Differences are so feared in our society. So many children are not even given the chance to live, with parents deciding they ‘couldn’t handle it’ and opting out. How many would make that same decision if exposed to real children and real parents who are handling their situation positively and joyfully? Rather than a bastard geneticist’s view? People take to Shorty instinctively, in a way they don’t to my other kids. They sense his happiness and contentedness, his perfect ability to live right now, his freely given affection and friendship. Qualities that adults practice and strive to obtain.

  Flawed? Or maybe even better off than the rest of us. It’s all a matter of perspective.

Home ed-as it is now

  I wrote this post a few months back, and it got way out of hand very quickly, to the point where I just had far too much to add to it, and gave up. So i’m just going to publish it as it is. So think of it as ‘home ed-as it was four months ago’!

  How do I sum up the natural education of five children in one blog post? Just cataloguing one day would be a mammoth read. We still unschool, and most likely always will-it’s so perfectly suited to our life (and my hatred of and inability to keep to schedules and regimentation), and the sheer amount they learn about a huge range of subjects is mind-boggling. I have finally gotten rid of all school-mind, relaxed and accepted that yes, unschooling really DOES work for young children. Meanwhile, the kids happily got on with it, as they always have. After our travelling we’re sticking close to home and enjoying our comforts while we can.

  Our most useful thing lately has been this whiteboard, picked up from a closing-down sale. The many things that are read, commented on, then lost in the million other same things can now be recorded in the lounge room and re-read until they’re stuck in those little heads. They choose what they’d like to put up there, like the poem, Auslan and Word Spy stuff below, and we change it every week or two. Yes, they enjoy rote learning when they decide what to learn.

   Before it’s taken off the whiteboard I copy it into the Family Fact Book-so anything they know was on the board, but just can’t remember, can be looked up.

  Narnia has also been the obsession for the last three months or so. First the audiobooks, then the BBC miniseries, all accompanied by Narnia guidebooks (and of course, a set of the actual books). There have been discussions and investigations on religion, cinematography and special effects, and the contrast between movies and books and why they have to differ. There has been endless roleplay-my kids will never miss a chance to live in pretend-land. Frosty with his very enthusiastic stick-swords does try my patience though, especially when he’s Peter and his unsuspecting brother is the wolf.

  History is another big theme, which is extremely interesting to me as I know virtually nothing about it. It just wasn’t covered at school. It started with a lift-the-flaps Roman town book and has snowballed from there into ancient Egypt and the Vikings, with the girls planning their future travels to ancient ruins all over the world, and Oods learning some Latin. Everyday life is the interest here-not so much the rise and fall of empires as how they built their houses, what they ate and what they believed in.

  Language in all it’s forms is another obsession-but not so much the Auslan, which i’ve been rather slack with. The Word Spy books have sparked much language play and interest, contributing to the interest in Latin and therefore Rome (it’s all connected somehow!) Secret languages and codes abound, and little symbolised signs and notes are appearing everywhere. I’ve no idea what they’re doing, and they like it that way. Because it wouldn’t be a secret language if I knew it.

  Lols and Sparkles are now fluent readers. They seemed to do this secretly, they didn’t want all the instruction that Oods did. Just the basics, then they were happy to decode the rest themselves. I’m still not exactly sure how well they’re reading, but they seem to be able to read books around the calibre of Aussie Nibbles just fine. Oods is reading Harry Potter at warp speed, she’s definitely following in my reading footsteps-she hasn’t hit my speed yet, but at the rate she’s going she may actually overtake me one day.

  Craft for the girls has progressed to making real stuff, with much less mess-I knew it would all finally be worth it one day! I still have two little confetti making boofheads who make an insane amount of mess, but at least I know that light at the end of the tunnel is not a train. The girls took it upon themselves to learn to knit and can all do so, and the clones have just learnt how to form stitches in crochet. Oods, meanwhile, crocheted me a pair of slippers completely from her head that fit me perfectly-meanwhile, the one I made her is too big. Yes, I have been outperformed by an eight year old, and yes, I am proud (and only a tiny bit miffed, promise). I really, really need another sewing machine, because I often have to wait to use mine. Bags, skirts, shoes, doll clothes, gauntlets-you name it, they’ll hack up some fabric and have a bash at making it completely from their heads-and it usually works. 

   They take it in turns to cook independently, with most recipes coming from their heads. There’s been some interesting food made, but they seem to have the basics of cooking nailed down now, and can turn out cakes, biscuits and breads of acceptable quality. I really like this one, because them cooking saves me some cooking. And what is a more important skill than cooking? Except maybe gardening, which has been mostly abandoned to the husband now the cold weather has hit, although Lols (his mini-him) still gets out there with him.

  The boys are about equal ability at the moment, and I think Frosty may have overtaken Shorty in the academic stakes in the last month or so. I treat them both as three, and forget that Shorty is actually six and ‘should’ be reading. Ha! Good luck with that! They do lots of drawing, tracing and colouring, as well as many hours of wrestling and whacking stuff with sticks. Whoever said boys and girls are the same had never actually exposed themselves to children.

  Finally, the natural world remains a constant interest, with more Attenborough documentaries, some snake handling and a wildlife show complete with wombat fondling recently. Jackie French’s kangaroo and wombat books are on the library shelf right now.

The kids still don’t use the computer, we still don’t have a television, so we’re still Amish sympathisers-but looking at all the above, who has time for that junk? I stand firm on my low-tech stance, figuring there’s far more worthy and interesting (and real) things to do, and they’ll pick it up easily and quickly when it’s time-just like we did. And yes, I apply the same rules to myself too! Internet once a week works just fine for me-I prioritise the most useful parts and ignore the rest.

Fevered crafty post

  I have blogged nothing i’ve made since I got to the last house, in a different state, last February! And it feels like i’ll i’ve done is makemakemake. So here’s what was clean for this photo session, and I may get to the rest another day.

Hoodie for Lols-to Imke in Sewing Clothes Kids Love, with pixie hood. Most complimented item, hands-down.

 Hoodie for Sparkles-also to Imke

 Not bad for my first t-shirt-with Imke, again, but needs to be narrowed substantially.

 Twirly skirt for Oods-my pattern. I’ll get around to finishing the 20 i’ve half-made to sell one day

 Sparkles

 Lols-love her taste in fabrics

 Pants for Frosty, green of course, to some vintage pattern. Yes, they’re well worn!

 Shorty’s version

 Chenille pants for Shorty too-they make him look like a teddy bear

 Pants for Lols, to a Burda pattern

 Sparkles’ version

   The Fred Bare rip-off kaftan in a fabric I couldn’t resist

Library bags for my independent reading girls-Sparkles

And Lols

A little bit of frivolity from me-crochet hook wallet from Sew Darn Cute (much better than the rubber band method)

 

And vinyl/felt needle book (much better than the loose in drawer method).

 

And the only pic of anything crochet i’ve done (mostly beanies for all the kids and a handful of dishcloths, plus gauntlets for me).

Ponytail beanie for Sparkles.

  Now i’m back to full-time study, i’ve managed to knit half a dishcloth and mend a sleeping bag in the last six weeks after moving interstate. As well as build fences, chicken and sheep wrangle and dig an extraordinary amount, but that’s all for another post (or not, knowing me).