12 September 2011

Distance Homeschooling

I wish I could tell you I took to being a father like a fish to water. Nothing in my life prepared me for small children. Yes, I had a dad. I still have a dad. But I was completely insulated from dealing with babies and small children. I was clueless, and there was nobody to teach, mentor, or disciple me. Not my dad (I lived in New Jersey, he still lives in Texas), not my father in law, and definitely not my wife. I had no close friends with small children. So I was on my own for much of the early years of my children's lives.

Now that they're 6 and 7, things are much easier. I can relate to them. I can reason with them. I can joke with them. And I can still kick their butts.

When I first met Christina in 2000 (Y2K), I'd been doing some reading on homeschooling. I shared that reading with her. Somehow, she agreed. We had Joshua in 2004, and I changed jobs so she could stay home with the kids. We had Caleb in 2005. We've been a single income family since March of 2005, when my employer at the time, BAE Systems, hired me from contract to full time employee, and Christina resigned her job in HR at a lumber yard. It's been tough, and we've made a lot of hard choices, but somehow we've made it with one income.