Drawing With Dad

I like posting stories about our daily life around here. We're just a normal family, and yet so many of our life choices have been anything but typical. My children were born in this house. Every birth is exciting and every birth is special. But, being able to welcome our babies to life here in our own home was particularly special for us. Only about 1% of babies born in the United States are born at home. My family and Husband's family were both here for the birth of our son. Cheers rang out from the stairs where my mother, mother-in-law, and sisters were sitting as I labored upstairs in our bedroom with my husband, a doctor and 2 nurses when my son was born. My daughter's birth was so easy, and I was so relaxed and so far along that the doctor came AFTER she was born and so it was just me, my husband, our almost 2 1/2 year old boy and my new daughter here. And, I breastfed these kids for YEARS!

All of these ways of living are so natural but they're not typical.

We homeschool. Again, not a typical life choice yet one that many families are making with increasing frequency. There are estimates that about 2 million kids are now homeschooled. So, for some, not quite the freaky thing it once was. It's not fringey any more and everybody at least knows someones cousin's brother-in-law's niece's husband's sister's son's great aunt once removed who is doing it as well. So, totally common these days. People do still look askance a little bit at the kids' soccer matches when I tell them we homeschool..."Oh!! Really?!! Oh, I could NEVER do that! But I know a friend who has a cousin whose brother-in-law's niece's husband's sister's son's great aunt once removed is doing it as well. Wow. Good for you..." Polite smiles all around.

Any way. Back to our normal every day life around here. Below, you see pictures of my husband drawing with our kids at the kitchen table. All three of them are quite visual and I've improved my drawing abilities because of them. I never had a lot of art classes in school and I never just picked up a pencil and started drawing, but my kids do and so does my husband.




They are drawing bicycles. Sometimes, a lot of the time, they draw buildings with vanishing points and aliens and monsters and apple trees and ants and horses and mountains and flowers and robots and snakes.






Here, you see my husband drawing a High Wheeler, or an Ordinary or for you folks across the pond, a Penny Farthing. This is just a simple sketch, but I am so impressed with his abilities. He's like this all the time. He just grabs a pencil and with a few strokes has a clear, recognizable image. The kids have gotten this from him. Drawing is now part of our curriculum and the kids love this aspect of their schooling. I do too.