Making a list, checking it twice

I wake up in the dark and stumble toward the kitchen looking for coffee and my list.

When I first get up, I can't remember anything that needs to be done, even though most of what I do in the wee hours is the same from day to day. So I check my list. Twice.

Start the laundry, put a roast in the crock pot, pay the bills. My instincts tell me to crawl back under the covers, but that isn't on the list, so I start the coffee and find a couple of eggs to crack into the cast iron skillet for breakfast.

Morning time goes by fast, and, once I am awake, I feel good crossing things off my list. When the kids wake up, the list gets put away while we get through breakfast and start farm chores. I usually find that list later in the day, under a pile of jackets or stuffed in a desk drawer. I take the undone items and write them on the list for the next day.

This time of year, my kids are busy making their own lists. My sons are particularly industrious, and pretty much every toy in the sales paper that might appeal to a young boy has been duly recorded on the boys' list of the day.

One of my daughters wrote her Christmas list in Pig Latin. I struggled mightily to decipher the list (ancay ouyay asay ooksbay and iplay lossgay?) then found a translation conveniently provided at the bottom of the page.

Getting to the end of her list reminded me of one of those silly tests in which the first instruction is to read all of the instructions. The final instruction is to ignore all the questions and turn the paper in with only your name at the top. I never was good at reading through all the instructions before getting started. Life is too boring when you know what is ahead.

I thought that Sophia was quite endearing when she gave me her coded list, but when I tell people how cute I think my daughter is, they look at me with a blank stare. I wonder if they are thinking that her action is so completely normal that every child in the world has done it or if they are asking themselves if I can possibly be serious. "Oh, dear," they may be thinking, "they must be homeschoolers."

While I haven't been giving any formal lessons in Pig Latin, we have been discussing learning a new language together. The question is, which should we learn? The list of potential languages is long.

I'd like to make it to Italy someday, so Italian seems a logical choice. Brian votes for touring Belgium, so French or German would come in handy. Spanish is practical here at home, but practicality and dreaming are not often found together. If we learned Portuguese, we could go to Brazil to visit Paula, our first exchange student.

So much to learn, so little time. Some days I dream of the full-immersion model, packing up and moving to another country for a while, just for kicks. I think the kids would be up for the adventure. One more thing to put on the list of things I want to do. Someday.

For now, though, there are still many preparations for Christmas. I promised the kids I would get caught up on grading their assignments over break, and I still have shopping and baking to cross off my list. Dreaming will have to wait for another day.

From our family to yours, Errymay Ristmaschay.

Rose Godfrey is a homeschooling mom in Meridian. Her homeschool blog can be found on the Appeal-Democrat website at appealdemocrat.com.