Natalie's a Toto!

natalie has been a lot of things in her life. a grizzly. a bronco. an owl. and now a toto. i'm talking about school mascots. although she is only a first grader natalie has attended three, and now four different schools. the mascot of her current school is toto because that is the mascot she chose. she was able to choose her own mascot because we have officially switched to homeschool! sort of. it's a long story.

i have always felt that there would come a time (for what reasons i didn't know) that i would choose to homeschool my kids. kent was adamantly opposed, and i don't blame him. i had my own reasons to not homeschool (like morning sickness!) and that is why she was in a traditional school up until now. but every issue has a tipping point and we reached ours when natalie developed shingles.

at first natalie was beyond excited to start school, but it was pretty much downhill from the second day. she would cry and plead with me to not go to school saying things like "i just want to stay home with you because family is more important than school" and "can we pray about if we should do homeschool because i really think we should!" it was hard. i was already having to convince myself to just get her to and from school let alone deal with homework and projects. and she was getting in trouble at school, which had only happened maybe once a month or less in kindergarten, so that was stressful wondering what was happening and why. i thought maybe it was just residual stress from the move, or worry about the baby coming and implications from that transition that was coming out as hating school. (don't get me wrong those could be contributing factors, but our options for removing those two things from the equation are much less) i wouldn't have survived this period without my sister melissa, my mother-in-law, and my mom because they helped to talk her through things and were the ones to pick her up or drop her off sometimes too so that held us over i think.
as soon as my mom left after seth was born natalie got sick. sunday night she complained she wasn't feeling well but i didn't worry about it too much. on monday she again said she didn't feel well, but again i just thought she was trying to get out of school so i pushed her through the morning routine. that afternoon when i picked her up i knew something was really wrong. she said she had a headache and just sat around, and hardly ate any dinner. that night and the next morning she felt a little warm. as she was getting dressed she sat down and started crying that she just couldn't go to school because her teacher won't let her lay down in class but she was really sick and needed to lay down. i told her that if she stayed home she had to stay in bed all day, and she did! it was really sad actually. i though she had the flu. that night as i was changing her into her pjs i noticed a sore on her back. i asked her what it was and she said it hurt but didn't know. that night she woke up screaming- she had scratched the sore open in her sleep. so i put neosporin on it and gave her some tylenol because her fever was bad and sang the poor thing back to sleep. next morning she threw up when i had her drink some water. she still had a fever. i checked on her back and to my horror it had spread into a bubbly rash. i had the thought that it was shingles and that i needed to take her to the doctor. i looked it up online and all the symptoms matched- especially the picture. my friend came and watched caleb and jenna and i took natalie and seth to the doctor where she confirmed that it was shingles. she said that because natalie had the chicken pox as a baby, shingles can rear it's ugly head at anytime for the rest of her life, so we needed to reduce her stress level and teach her coping strategies and stress management now before harder challenges pop up as she grows older. i couldn't believe it! who ever heard of a 6 year old getting shingles??? as we drove home and i thought about how we could reduce the stress i her little life i had the thought that taking her out of school would be the best thing for our family right now. i literally laughed out loud. but then i thought of k12 and this plan began forming in my head. k12 is a hybrid of homeschool and public school. it has the structure and curriculum of a quality public school, but the flexible schedule and low stress of homeschool because it is a virtual classroom experience. i wrestled with it and came up with excuses and reasons why it would never work. i talked with people about it. i looked up SO MUCH online. i got so excited that this really was the best answer for our family. then i talked to kent about it. now, i love the man, but he totally steamrolled me. after that first conversation i felt like there was NO WAY it was ever going to happen. and when i prayed about all i got was that i wasn't supposed to fight with kent about it. i already knew the k12 program was the answer, so even though it seemed like a lost cause with kent, whenever i got discouraged i kept coming back to that peaceful place in my heart that said to just be still. when i had tentatively asked natalie before we got home from the doctor how she thought we could help her not be so stressed, of course the first thing out of her mouth was that she was stressed because of school and that she wanted to do homeschool because it would be better. so that whole week she was off school she kept asking and i had no answer for her. that was hard too! because i knew what i wanted to do, but i also knew that kent and i needed to be united to be successful. so i prayed and waited. that friday i had a parent teacher conference with her teacher and learned why natalie was getting in trouble. she was trying too hard to help too many other people. if someone was being disciplined she would try to step in and explain or defend them. if a student was asked a question and didn't know the answer natalie would shout it out and get in trouble for speaking out of turn. her kindergarten teacher had also mentioned to me that natalie would help other kids with their projects and not finish her own. both of them talked to me about the fact that natalie wasn't friends with her peers, she was friends with the kids who needed help. the ones getting in trouble, or who didn't fit in, or who were crying because they wanted their moms. she was so worried about everyone and trying to take on all their problems that she was literally making herself sick! when i talked with kent about all this we agreed that something drastic needed to happen. i didn't push the envelope- and you better believe i was proud of myself for it!
then the miracle happened. i had asked kent to at least look at the k12 website and he said that he would. on sunday night i asked him what he thought and he said after looking it over he thought it would be better and he thought i could do it! i was so surprised i asked him if he was kidding. seriously, i KNOW this is what we are supposed to do because nothing could have changed his mind otherwise.
once we were all on the same page we got so excited! natalie's school had put her on independent study so she had the whole next week off too and we loved every minute of it! i can't describe to you the change in atmosphere of our mornings around here. and to not have to wake the kids up from their naps to go pick her up- wow! talk about heaven. we enrolled her in the online public school powered by k12 in our area (iQ Academy of Los Angeles) and transformed our office into a classroom. kent was so cute buying supplies for the room and asking me about schedules and classroom rules and the curriculum. four HUGE boxes came from k12 with books, equipment, supplies, and a laptop- it was like christmas! we couldn't wait and started doing her lessons even though she doesn't start until tomorrow. i feel so happy and at peace about it. i mean, sure sometimes it will be hard. but everything is hard sometimes! and this will be SO GREAT! i can just feel it.
so here's so a new start and yet another school mascot! hurrah for homeschool!