Okay, I survived my first week of homeschooling. But it was just the first week.  And to best honest, it was actually, well,…fun.

I think science has become our favorite subject. Last week we did really cool stuff like make globes out of oranges, then cut the skins off and try to press them flat like a map. We roped off a square yard in the jungle that is our backyard and the girls used their Dollar Store magnifying glasses to scope out beetles, tiny moths, and Florida’s automotive bane—the lovebug. While discussing the community and population of an ecosystem, we watched a Swallowtail butterfly dance from morning glory to morning glory, lingering over each bud as it plied for nectar. And then we capped off the week creating a niche for earthworms (a jar with potting soil), my girls squirming and giggling as they pried apart the disgusting, slimy blob of Walmart brand nightcrawlers and dropped them one by one into the jar.

Now don’t get the idea that I thought up all this cool stuff. I just did everything word-for-word from the curriculum. I’m not that creative.

I did have a victory, though. By nature, I’m an anal controlling perfectionist. I’m not as bad as Monk, but I do make Sandra Bullock’s character from The Blind Side look a bit slothful. And I saw that with some chagrin. Sometimes it can be a blasted nuisance as I can’t just start something or do it on the fly. I have to make sure it’s defined, outlined, bibliographed, budgeted, blueprinted, edited, choreographed, spell-checked, and duplicated in triplicate before I concede it’s ready to be viewed by another living soul. Well, I’m learning that when homeschooling two girls–one of them with the attention span of a hummingbird on speed–perfecting anything is pointless and a complete waste of my valuable and quickly dwindling time.

So, while I previewed every lesson and went at each with gusto this week (I even accompanied the girls on our electric keyboard for “The Continent Song” to the tune “Yankee Doodle Dandee”—don’t ask), I had a victory in that I didn’t have everything perfectly orderly every single day. There were some lessons I actually had to fly by the seat of my pants. Me. The List Lady.  The woman who actually organizes her plastic food storage containers by shape.  My husband, the fly-by king, was beaming with pride because he thinks he’s finally rubbing off on me. I won’t burst his bubble just yet.

Ah, but this week I did get a glorious and in-depth look into my daughters’ characters and I have just one question to ask? Why, oh, why did God in his infinite wisdom endow little girls with such a preponderance of emotions? And my girls aren’t even pre-teens yet! I mean why cry over a page of helping verbs? Why breakdown over a list of single syllable short i vocabulary words? Sure I sometimes lose it over the odd T.V. commercial but I just chalk that up to hormones. I think my poor husband and son may drown themselves in our hot tub when my girls hit puberty and I simultaneously go into menopause.

Still, I count this week as a win for the Pullen team. Hey, we didn’t just survive, my kids actually learned something.

Next week is the real test though–we embark on our first field trip. And you wanna bet we won’t get twenty minutes from our point of departure before one of them will throw me the classic line: “Are we there yet?”

I can’t wait.