I sat down at the kitchen table to draft a post about how I’m striving to learn the lessons of patience and grace that this year seems to demand of me. And Duke decided to try out all the different alarm tones available on his iPad. All of them: foghorn, klaxon, old fashioned telephone ringtone. And then listen to all of them all over and over again. Usually the result of this kind of experiment is a top volume alarm going off at 1:30 A.M.

But I am learning patience. I am learning to live with the vast universe of things that I can’t control. I am learning to truly treasure the seemingly small list of things that I can control. I’m learning to slow down and find the joy in the small, slow moments that I ordinarily would have missed in the usual busy-ness of our previous lives.

Today was our first day of school. Last year I purposely didn’t think too hard about how to structure our homeschooling lives. Partly because I just didn’t have the time to overthink it, and partly because I suspected that I wouldn’t know enough about it until we experimented for a while. But this school year? I’ve been thinking about this school year for months. And I’m excited. We’ve got some fun material to explore. Duke’s excited about learning to read. Amelia’s excited about all the books included with our writing program. I’m excited about all of it. Today was a deliberately slow day — a day to dip our toes in and kindle our curiosity before diving into the nitty-gritty. And I think we all had fun.

I’m learning too. Lessons in patience and family and love… and did I mention patience? I don’t have a choice this year, so I’m doing my best to embrace it gracefully.