You’re floating along in a dream. Suddenly, a four-year-old finger pokes you in one eye. A little voice rasps in a sandpaper whisper, "Mommy, I'm weally hun gwy!" Peeling yourself off the bed, you grope your way down to the kitchen. There you pause, prying your eyes open as you make unintelligible sounds to your coffee maker. Another school day. You're it, remember, and the little darlings are yours all day long.

After getting married, I taught upper elementary grades for a few years. Often, after a long day of trying to fit square facts into round heads, I would pray, "Lord, it sure would be neat if I could work with just a small group of kids. You know, really help them one-on-one." Before you could say your ABCs, we were sent as missionaries to Canada and were starting our own family. Instant school. Now was my chance to help little minds one-on-one and be the school nurse, principal, custodian, secretary, and teacher.

The first day of four-year-old kindergarten found us in our basement, surrounded by colorful bulletin boards, two desks, and a myriad of hand-made manipulatives. My kids were going to be taught right. They were going to be in their places with bright shiny faces or else. While I was trying to get Adam Ant to say a-a-a for two hours, my three - and four-year-old were squirming out of their skins, and my one-year-old was thinking up every conceivable distraction. Not having taught school to anyone below grade four, I was totally missing the point and was getting my teaching and mothering all tangled up. The new word, boys and girls, is relax.

And relax I did. Enter child number four. Add a move to a new church work and new house. Throw in a mom with an average of five-and-a-half hours of sleep per night, and you have relaxed. Some days we would do school on the floor (I can see some model home-school moms reach for their oxygen masks.) with child one and two, trying to keep child three from bringing the house down. After finally getting child four to sleep in her crib and having her wake up 45 seconds later, I would put her in her infant seat, bring her out with the rest of us, and rock her like crazy with my foot.

Some days are "I hate school" days, when I sense my elementary education major going down the drain. "This is boring." "When will we have to use this?" "Why can't I just use a calculator?" These days usually come after some late-night excursion and really help to add spice to a mom's otherwise mundane day. At least I don't have to worry that they're learning too much.

But are they learning enough? Can they say their 52 prepositions in 15.2 seconds? Are they able to list the Amazon tributaries in alphabetical order? These frantic thoughts usually come when it's quiet and I have time to myself-say 2:30 A.M. when I can't sleep.

Then there are days that we are really into the learning mode. Suddenly, shouts of "Mom! Mom! Come quick!" explode in the room. Resisting the impulse to call 911, I scurry over.

"Hey Mom!" one child says with an award-winning smile. "Listen-this is neat." They proceed to warm my heart with, "See how fast I can say my times tables!" or "Listen to this reading story. We studied this in heritage studies," or "Look-Grandpa and Grandma showed us slides of this place!"

"Talking school" to other kids is equally enlightening. When they discover that someone else has read or worked on a particular bit of information, they are amazed that other people actually learn this stuff too!

I am not a perfectionist. Some days the house looks like an explosion in a laundromat. At other times, I'm sure my husband wonders if the kitchen regurgitated. We don't meet, clothed and in our right minds, at a 6 A.M. breakfast table. I no longer do bulletin boards. My kids don't cluster around me adoringly as I drill them on Greek tenses. Many moms I've read about and know personally make me wonder why I bother. They will be in the Home-School Hall of Fame, while I'm in line on the outside waiting to buy a ticket for the tour.

Most days are tortoise-not hare days. But when one of my students sidles up, puts an arm around my waist, and says, "I'm glad we home school," it is suddenly all worthwhile. So hang in there, home-schooling parents. And think of all the parent-teacher conferences you're missing!