Becoming Jane Doe

So much has happened this year since my last post.  Most importantly, if not scarily, in early March the children's father walked out on us.  He withdrew all support and removed himself from the responsibility of being a husband and father outside of me attempting to encourage contact and him paying minimal child support.  

I have been left heartbroken.  

My world has fallen apart.  

The children are in shock.  

All our plans for the future have been piled up and lit on fire.  

I have not been able to articulate the events very well, nor our emotions.  

We (the children and I) are still pushing forward with homeschooling, training our wonder dog and moving to Adelaide to be closer to the children's therapists.  

Our eldest son has moved out of home, mostly due to some of the threats received from his dad regarding cutting off utilities he required for his university studies. He has severed all ties to his dad, which I hope and pray can be reversed one day.  I completely understand his choices.  he is an adult and has his own mind.  He has seen a lot over his almost 19 years on this earth and is finding it hard to forgive what he has seen.  I am blessed that he is standing by my side and becoming a wonderful young man with morals, ethics and capable to make his own decisions rationally and considering the affects on others around him.  It is going to be very hard to move away from him when the time comes for us to relocate to the big city.  

As for me and the other children, we exist.  I do my best to try and smooth over the rough edges and pain in our daily life.  It's not easy.  My counsellor and GP have had me contact further organisations to help support us through this time.  Actions made towards us have been determined to fall under the  heading of domestic violence.  DV is more than just bruises, cuts and physical assault.  Emotional, verbal and financial abuse can be difficult to prove.  However, I have proof.  It hurts to hear that I, and the children are being abused.  It hurts, but we will move on.  We can recover and I pray I can protect these young souls so they don't feel this pain as acutely as I do.  

What is going to happen in the future, I have no idea.  I need to retreat from life in general.  I need to heal.  I have deactivated my Facebook account and am withdrawing to try and find myself.  Work our way forward.  Become the real me.  I am more than a wife, more than a mother.  I am a human being who is intelligent, strong and deserves respect.  Until I discover just who I am I will be Jane Doe.  A blank canvas as such...  working to find out who I am and where the future will take me outside of being a busy mum to my beautiful family.  

So here I am, Jane Doe, signing off for now.  I don't know when I will be able to check in again.  I don't know what tomorrow is going to bring, let alone the next few weeks, months or next year.. but I do hope that I am able to find myself again.  In the meantime, I am becoming Jane Doe in order to be able to find the real me.  

Baby Steps...

Today (well what's left of it) resulted in some productive learning for the children.

Domenik, as expected, shied away from anything that had to do with pen, paper, scissors or glue; Aerynn however loved it!  She did some work on the colour purple.  Deliberately, neatly and carefully tracing the letters of the word "purple" and starting to develop an understanding on which letter was what.  She then studied some magazines and cut out some purple items to stick into her scrapbook "purple page".   She did so well!!!  There was a little confusion about which hand she wished to write in.  Coming from a family where there are several dominant left handed individuals I am open to her experimenting and seeing which is easier for her to work with.  Aerynn has also been finessing her pencil grip and arm positioning when drawing and writing.  She presented me with 3 pictures , one done before correction and two after.  She identified that using a correct grip and position made her able to draw smoother and harder on the paper.  Previously she was simply brushing lightly on the paper, with her wrist and forearm being held off the desk by her shoulder and elbow position.  Aerynn also had attempted to write some letters,  Notably an A, o, r, P, b, i, n.  I suspect she was attempting to write her name.  I am excited by her keenest to learn, despite her upset this morning from being thrust in a busy social situation she was quite obviously not ready for.

Domenik did some social work this morning at the library, joining a group for some hands on paper making.  He learned how paper can be beaten back down to it's fibres, then recycled and made into all kinds of artistic media for use further down the track.  He was able to select some coloured paper pulp slurry for his own paper construction and with very little assistance screened, pressed and presented his paper ready for drying.  Whilst some was wet he decorated it with additional threads, beads and sequins.  At the moment they are drying, soon we will be able to bring them in, iron and he can use them for whatever purpose he wishes.  I believe this will be a project we can do together at home whilst investigating further his curiosity into recycling.  Aerynn was meant to join in this class, however it was very crowded and she got lost in amongst the taller and more boisterous children.  Being able to replicate this project at home is something I firmly believe she will enjoy, especially once she sees the finished product from Domenik's brave adventures today :)

Dom also initiated a cheerful conversation around what groupings of animals are called whilst in the car travelling out to Moorak in the afternoon.  He correctly identified that a group of cows are called a herd, and a kangaroos are a mob.  We discussed how different families have different names, such as a flock of birds, school of fish and even a parliament of owls.  this will be something we can touch on further as he starts some investigation into animals and life cycles later in the year, unless, of course, he wishes to delve into it sooner rather than later.

Tobias also had a productive day working with colours.  He identified blue and yellow as his favourite colours today, and chose a tub of play dough of each colour.  He investigated both blue and yellow and identified items in magazines of similar colours.  He attempted to cut some out, however his fine motor skills are not quite mature enough to complete this task and he became frustrated with it.  We quickly moved on to investigate what happens when the colours mix.  Toby was quite impressed to discover his two playdohs made a beautiful shade of green when combined, however was rather disappointed that he could not then seperate it back into the original primary colours.  Later this evening Toby has been playing with magnets.  Using the force of a magnet to move items around the floor.  He has discovered that not everything is attracted to the magnet, but metal works really well.  He was impressed with how strong some magnets were and was experimenting with sizes and how firm the rods (drill bits in this case) such to the magnet itself.  He was also intrigued that although metal is fantastic to use in this experiment, that not all metal is attracted to the magnet, such as the aluminium of his toy cars.  This can be something we can further investigate as we do some experiments together with magnets later in the year.  In the meantime he is quite happy going around his toys (and my toolbox) to see what is magnetic and what isn't.  I am hoping tomorrow he will respond to working on some charts to formalise his natural play investigations of this evening into a small report that we can work with later in the year.

So not necessarily a planned learning day, but learning completed nonetheless.

New Year's Revolution...