And Now We are Six

I have been writing online for the entirety of my youngest son’s life, and then some. Nearly 20 years blogging.

I have had multiple blogs, including one on the very first Blogger back when it was in beta (when I was nursing my newborn oldest.) That blog got blown away when Blogger had to reset the server at some point and I never bothered with them again. I went on to a .php database that Shamus made me for a site on homeschooling for an educator’s perspective (called the Kitchen), he made another for me for my art (Pocket Lint of the Soul). I also had several html sites at that time. In fact, I still have the code for one I made for the kids called unimagintively “The Kids Portal” so they could have an easy way to get to their favorite sites.

I went on to having my first installed WordPress site when WordPress was new and installing a site on a server was all done by hand (I believe that was a sub-domain at Shamus’ site). From there I moved to gracedbychrist.com, which was when I got my own server and started hosting others) and then finally to untraditionalhome.com, in 2007. Untraditionalhome.com has moved servers multiple times over the years, losing some of the old images (I have backups but have never bothered to re-upload them because really, who goes back and reads old rambly posts and I am queen of old rambly posts.)

All that to say I have been blogging for a long time, for most of my kids’ lives. I had pondered what to do with this site, whether to delete it or just let it sit, whether to download it and run it on a home server so I have access, or who knows. One of the situations adding to this dilemma is that a few years back a well known blogger and personal bloggy friend disappeared. Her site went dark, gone. I found her on Facebook and all was well, she had just moved on but she had a few posts I cared about, that I wish I had available still. She had posts my kids still talk about. So this got me thinking about what to do with this site. Leave it, save it, update it? What?
For the time being I will save it, and maybe post an update here and there. I do have things to talk about but not yet. And life is too busy in this season for me to be spending a lot of time writing.

Where am I? If you are interested in what I am doing in this season you can visit here: https://www.tinybookdragonart.com/ and here: https://www.handmadeherbals.com/ plus I am working as a nanny and as a college student tutor. I do still have Instagram which I update infrequently: https://www.instagram.com/tinybookdragonart/ . I also spend a lot of my downtime on Reddit where I can happily engage in communities that follow my current interests including sewing, fermenting, herbal remedies, 3d printing (Issac and I WILL have a 3d printer at some point, we will), Silhouette Curio, home improvement, design, and so on.

About the family: The older two are grown and moved out, as they have been for 2 years. They have their own lives. The youngest is still happily home, doing his own things and very much not interested in having his photo taken. He is a builder, fixer, and maker like me so we spend a lot of time fixing and making things together when I am home.

About the Christian unschooling community: I am not actively involved in the Christian Unschooling community anymore although the community itself is still thriving. I just don’t have time and am no longer in that season. I feel like with the book being done, I am done. I don’t really have much more to say and this generation of young parents has different questions than the previous generations. It is time for other, younger parents to step up and help this newer generation. I see a gap there but I am not in a place to fill it. My kids are grown, and the problems and questions facing this current generation of new parents are different from the ones that faced my generation and the one that followed mine.

What about that title? If you don’t know, And Now We are Six is the title of an A.A. Milne book (writer of Winnie the Pooh) and the beginning of the final line in the last poem, The End. It was a favorite of mine growing up and I always think of it when I move on to a new stage in life because the child thinks he is oh so grown up and yet the reader knows he is really still little and has so much growing yet to do. That is how I feel. I am feeling stretched and old and yet I know that I am really only in mid-life with so much more growing yet to do.