Homeschool, Schomeschool.

This is how I feel sometimes (often) while home-schooling. Gracelyn can be so stubborn, she is difficult, and she sometimes flat out refuses to do anything. Not to mention, I am usually sleep deprived from my awful night/day sleep schedule. I am impatient, I am frustrated. It is hard. I feel like she isn't getting what she should from home schooling. I don't have time for co-ops, and LEAH groups.    Granted, she does get a lot of social interaction between my mom (who home-schools my little sister) and our daycare, who both participate in Co-ops and Bible School and the such, but I feel like I'm not doing enough. I feel like a home-schooling failure. I want to quit. Throw the towel in. But, that isn't my style. So, we continue on.

If I was optimistic (which I never am) I would say that I would continue to homeschool her next year, but I don't see how I could possibly have the patience to do it, while maintaining my sanity. On the upside, we do have days when I feel like we accomplish a lot, that I have really taught her something, and that she listens to me and absorbs what I say. Those days are few and far between, though.

Our schedule is very random. I think this is part of the reason why I feel like a home-school parenting failure. I teach her whenever. Wherever. I work nights, so sometimes I pick them up from daycare early, or stay up on a weekend and teach her. I find this hard, as my tolerance level is a lot lower and one or both of us end up in tears, so I don't do it as often, anymore. Mostly, I teach on my days off. Well, my second day off. My first day off isn't a "day off", since I don't get home til 8am-ish that day. However, I rarely have two days off in a row, due to working overtime. Which helps us financially, but not her educationally. We will do a page out of a workbook here and there; before bed, while I'm making dinner, in the few minutes before I run out the door to work. I quiz her on spelling words in the car, she reads to me, we count in the car. We just sort of wing-it. She is caught up-ish as to where she "should" be in the book, but I feel it isn't "quality" education. I need to do better. It is so frustrating.

In the fall our private daycare is closing. She home-schools her four children and has run a full-time daycare for years-I don't blame her. Frankly, I have no idea how she does it, she is super-woman, all rolled up into a Christian, home-schooling, daycare running Mother. I envy her and her patience.

Which leads to the conundrum. Do I find another full-time daycare, and continue to homeschool? Do we move closer to my parents, but further from both our jobs? Do we send them to a private Christian school around here, but then what if we move this year, will my husband want to/have time to drive them to school? And Madalyn will only be 4 next month, we'd have to send her to the full-time preschool. How will she do away from us, and without Gracelyn?  If we send them to school, we would still need a daycare for snow days, holidays, summer, ect. How will I do without them being at the trusted/reliable daycare? With them being in separate classes? In a foreign environment? With me wondering if they are sad and/or missing me? With not being able to text and see how they are doing? Not being able to pick them up whenever I wanted? Will I ever be able to find a daycare as trustworthy/reliable as ours, now? Can I find the patience to continue to homeschool, should we find a reliable daycare? It is all very stressful. I have procrastinated on figuring it out. It gives me a headache.

My husband wants them to go to school, he is not all for home-schooling like I am/want to be.

I want to start back to school soon. I want to go straight from RN to Masters. It's going to be very tedious, I imagine. I can barely hold myself together enough to teach Gracelyn now, with working full-time and then the overtime I pick up, let alone, adding a full curriculum to my schedule. Should I hold back on school, and continue to home-school? Do I have the patience for it? Can I find the patience for it?

Another issue with my pushing back my start date for school is the fact that I want to get my NP license. However, sometime in the future, 2013- 2015ish, they are making all Nurse Practitioners get a PhD in nursing. If I wanted to be a PhD, I would be a doctor. I have to start the program before that goes into effect, to be grandfathered in, I believe.

Man. I miss the days when my biggest stressor was where to sit in the lunchroom.