Archive for May, 2008

Waiting for baby blogging

Well, I’m slowly but surely reaching the end… or so says the little countdown thingy on my sidebar.  According to that, I have 17 days to go, but I could also still be pregnant a month from now if the baby decides to be (quite) late.  We still need to get baby clothes and diapers out of storage, but that looks like it should happen on Saturday morning.  I’m also hoping Matt can find my summer maternity clothes, because we’ve hit a hot spell here and I am broiling!  I really feel for the women I know who aren’t due until September…  I hope you have lots of ice cubes available and air conditioning!  I know I wish I had them right now!  The baby seems to have dropped more, as I can bend over more easily and I also seem to be doing that pregnant woman waddle when I’m not thinking about how I’m walking.  I was incredibly tired on Monday - Wednesday, but I seem to have perked back up a bit yesterday and I’m doing better today as well.  I was thinking on Tuesday that I really hoped I wouldn’t be this tired for the rest of my pregnancy!

I’ve decided to quietly bail on the rest of our school year.  Sure, we didn’t finish Alpha, but we got quite close…  and while she hasn’t completed all the pages, she does at least understand the concepts.  I imagine Beta will start with a lot of review like Alpha did, and we’ll be doing just fine when we start again.  She’s made very good progress in all the other subjects too - her writing is vastly better than it was a the beginning of the year, she’s gone from reading at a 1st grade level to a 4th or 5th grade level, and she’s done very well with Latin, memorywork and everything else we’ve done over the past year.  I feel a little bad at just sort of petering off rather than ending the year in a definitive way, but I can at least console myself in the progress she’s made.

OK, the munchkins have found me and are agitating for snacks and help with projects.  I best get off the computer and help them out!

Book Meme based on a LibraryThing tag

Mrs. Darwin recently posted her version of this list, and I thought it would be fun to do as well.  It certainly beats breathing down Emma’s neck as she ever so slowly picks up the kid’s room…

*****
Below is a list of the 100 or so books most often marked as “unread” on Library Thing. How many of them have you read?

BLUE: Books I’ve read
GOLD: Books I’ve read as school assignments
GREEN: Books I will likely read in the future
RED: Books I started to read, but never finished

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22

One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote 
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
Emma
The Odyssey (and read on my own too)
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad (and read on my own too)
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway

Great Expectations
American Gods

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales 
The Historian: a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera

Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible: a novel

Angels and Demons
1984
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables (abridged - unknowingly at the time)
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes: a memoir
The God of Small Things

A People’s History of the United States: 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere

A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots and Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake: a novel
Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion (currently reading)
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics: a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

I’m amazed at how few of these were read as school assignments.  I could be misremembering, but I know there wasn’t much of an emphasis on classics in my high school.  Another color that would be interesting for me to add is if I read them in a book group.  There’s quite a few of the modern well known books that I have read only because they were chosen for a group read.

Quote from Corrie ten Boom

This morning I started reading The Hiding Place, by Corrie ten Boom, and I came across this great quote that I thought I would share.

Once–I must have been ten or eleven–I asked Father about a poem we had read at school the winter before.  One line had described “a young man whose face was not shadowed by sexsin.”  I had been far too shy to ask the teacher what it meant, and Mama had blushed scarlet when I consulted her.  In those days just after the turn of the century sex was never discussed, even at home.

So the line stuck in my head.  ”Sex,” I was pretty sure, meant whether you were a boy or a girl, and “sin” made Tante Jans very angry, but what the two together meant I could not imagine.  And so, seated next to Father in the train compartment, I suddenly asked, “Father, what is sexsin?”

He turned to look at me, as he always did when answering a question, but to my surprise he said nothing.  At last he stood up, lifted his traveling case from the rack over our heads, and set it on the floor. 

“Will you carry it off the train, Corrie?”  he said.

I stood up and tugged at it.  It was crammed with watches and spare parts he had purchased that morning.

“It’s too heavy,” I said.

“Yes,” he said.  ”And it would be a pretty poor father who would ask his little girl to carry such a load.  It’s the same way, Corrie, with knowledge.  Some knowledge is too heavy for children.  When you are older and stronger you can bear it.  For now you must trust me to carry it for you.”

This quote seemed quite apropos when I was opening the mail this evening and found a letter from our parish about their “Touching Safety” program and an opt-out form.  The diocese requires that each parish offer this class yearly, and while I certainly understand why they are offering it I’m really not sure that it is an appropriate experience for my homeschooled kindergartner.  Does this mean I have my head in the sand?  I don’t know.  But for now I think this is knowledge I need to carry for my daughter awhile longer yet.  

Getting Ready for Baby

You know, if I get any more lax about getting ready for a baby, I think the next one is going to be lucky to have some blankets and a diaper waiting.  Today I got together all my homebirth kit stuff (in anticipation of my 36 week home visit tomorrow morning), but we’re still lacking clothes, diapers, and receiving blankets.  Matt is going to try and find them in storage on Saturday.  It occurred to me today that I should probably try to find somewhere to put the baby clothes and diapers…  I find it funny to reflect on how I’ve gotten ready for each child.

Emma - Had a freshly painted spare room set up as a nursery.  Had a dresser/changing table, crib, nursing chair, bookshelf with baby stuff, all cute and nicely arranged.  This was all completely ready a good month before she was born, and she was two weeks early!  However, she probably only spent 3 hours total in the crib, and the room was only used for changing purposes for the first two years of her life. 

Gregory - We learned from the last experience and didn’t set our goals quite so high.  Also, Matt was working from home so we no longer had a spare bedroom.  Gregory got a dresser/changing table (the same one we used for Emma) in the master bedroom and the bottom shelf of our bookshelf for blankets.  I had my homebirth kit assembled and ready by 34 weeks, and the furniture was in place around that time as well.  Too bad he wasn’t born until 41 weeks…

Newest little one - Um, yeah.  Changing table?  We’ll use the bed.  Dresser?  I think I’ll pack away my sweaters and give the baby’s clothes that drawer.  Crib?  Ha, learned our lesson about that one with Emma.  Nursing chair?  Where on earth would we put such a thing??  I think the only thing that’s being added to this room is a diaper pail.  I can’t decide if that’s pragmatic or pathetic. 

Really, this lack of preparation isn’t an indicator of our anticipation or our eagerness to meet this new little person!

This is what happens…

When you start running, running, running and you trip and fall flat on your nose.

Poor kid…  at least it doesn’t seem to be bothering him much!

Thinking about math

I feel like one of the biggest mistakes I’ve made this year in homeschooling is in how I’ve handled math. I’ve been thinking about this recently as I’ve been planning next year, and then I read Kathy Jo’s recent post about math and it brought home one of the things we’ve been struggling with the most in the Math-U-See system - the workbook. The videos are great, the teaching approach is fantastic, the manipulatives are extremely useful in illustrating concepts… but the workbook just isn’t working quite right for us.

A lot of it is my fault for a variety of reasons. I’ve been too linear in how I’ve handled the workbook. I’m the type of person that likes workbooks. If you hand me a workbook, I will happily sit down and work my way through it, page by page, even if what I’m doing is remedial level review. Completed workbook pages have always given me a strange sort of joy. So, when confronted with a workbook I want to work through it, page by page, no matter if the subject is already mastered. Not so surprisingly, this approach has been rather joy-killing for Emma. Also, since I didn’t have much access to a computer or DVD player for the first 4 months of our school year, skipped the math videos for that portion of our math. This meant I focused more on the workbook and less on the manipulatives and methods the videos teach - not a good thing. The other problem with workbooks is that they make it very easy to plop the kid in front of them and go off and do something else, coming back periodically to interrogate the child as to why it is taking so incredibly long to do one page of math.

So, in the course of the year Emma has decided that she doesn’t like math, and that the Math-U-See workbook is one of the worst things in the world. She has also developed a terrible habit of sitting and staring at her math page, lost in daydreams between each problem. She’ll do one problem, stare into space for awhile, maybe do another one or just start muttering to herself about this or that. Or she’ll start saying the math problem out loud to herself over and over, but not actually paying attention to what she’s saying or getting any closer to solving the problem.

I started recognizing this, slowly, a few months ago and we spent some time doing online math drills and other things to give her more practice with her addition before we moved onto subtraction. It isn’t that she doesn’t understand the concepts - that’s not the problem at all. She already completely understood the concept of subtraction before we even started on it. What seems to be lacking is diligence, focus and the ability to think through the problem quickly without getting flustered or distracted. We started really working on these aspects about a week and a half ago and so far it seems to be helping somewhat. I’ve started doing math orally with her, either having her read the problem, write it, and move onto the next one (to help her keep focus), or reading the problem to her and writing down her answer. I’m also trying to make sure she understands what to do if she doesn’t just know the answer by having her look at the manipulatives and explaining the strategy for the problem rather than getting flustered and panicky.

This all seems to be helping, but I still haven’t solved the fundamental problem of how to approach the Math-U-See workbook. Right now we’re doing a page that practices the new concept and a review page each day, so that she’s getting practice for both new and old. This works better than doing one page per day, where we have three new pages followed by three review pages. That made each lesson drag on far too long, and the new pages generally aren’t varied enough to make it really a good practice session.

I feel like I’ve learned a lot in how not to handle math, and I’m starting to get some ideas on how to do it better. I wish I had some fond memories of doing math to draw upon, but my math education was nothing but worksheets, endless drill, and boring lectures. I don’t think I felt like I had any handle on math at all until the end of my first year of college!

Our morning

  This morning started with the kids playing hospital in their room right after they woke up.  Here’s Gregory in his hospital bed, happily munching on Cheerios with his “medicine” (water in a toy sippy cup) close at hand. Gregory likes the game because he gets to have Emma wait on him hand and foot, and Emma likes it because she gets to take care of her patient and arrange everything just so.

During breakfast we realized that some people were setting up something outside in the parking lot behind our fourplex. We peeked out over the patio fence and found that a bunch of men were getting ready to do some tree trimming. The kids have enjoyed watching the show all morning, from both upstairs and downstairs. I’m not sure if you can see it in this picture, but there’s someone about 30′ up in the tree doing the limbing and then there’s another 3 guys down below, handling the falling branches and dragging them out to the chipper. It is fun to watch the kids watch the workmen. *grin*

I’m dragging a bit this morning due to caffeine withdrawal - it is amazing how sensitive I am to that stuff. Ugh. I was only drinking one cup of black tea in the morning, and it wasn’t even brewed strongly. But on the plus side, abstaining from caffeine does seem to be improving my sleep and lessening the restless leg thing, so I guess it is worth it. But it seems kind of silly to be ready for a nap at 10 a.m.!

Vermiculture of the Book Variety

Oh, and the little wiggly ones that live in the soil are doing pretty well too.  :-)

Vicious Cycle

I’ve been having trouble falling asleep lately, and not because I’m not doing enough to wear me out during the day!  Rather I’m struck with this horrid, inescapable urge to move my legs and arms every minute or so when I’m trying to fall asleep.   Last night was by far the worst for it and I had a horrible night trying to sleep.  I did happen to remember as I was tossing and turning something called Restless Leg Syndrome (don’t you just love how everything has a name?) and I looked it up this morning.  Unfortunately, the symptoms are spot on, and there’s not exactly much that can be done about it.  For pregnant women, birth seems to be the cure…  but something sooner than that would be nice.  :-)  It really is a silly thing - but wow is it frustrating!

There is supposed to be some link between low iron levels and this, but as of a month ago my iron levels were just fine.  There is, unfortunately, a link between this and caffeine consumption as well.  This is where the vicious cycle comes in - because over the last couple weeks as this has gradually developed, I’ve started having a cup of black tea in the morning to counter the effects of not sleeping well at night.  But if the caffeine is making it worse, then all I’m doing is setting myself up for another bad night, which is just going to make more more tired the next day, etc. etc. etc.  *sigh*

Today is the first time I’ve had it during the day, and I’m not sure if that’s because of the tea this morning, or if the tea just made it worse.  But it sure is making it difficult to sit down and read to the kids and do school with Emma.  However, I’m getting lots of tidying and laundry done…

Money and kids

Emma and I got into a discussion today about Playmobil, particularly about the Playmobil greenhouse set.  She’s had a chance to play with it once when we were at a potluck over a month ago, and apparently she’s been thinking about it off and on ever since.  She really enjoys Playmobil whenever she’s had a chance to play with it (which is not all that often, really) and she used her birthday money to buy her first Playmobil set.  However, now she’s out of birthday money, and Christmas seems a very long way away.  I’m rather wondering how to handle this sort of thing.  When she was younger, generally asking for a toy was a spur of the moment thing and 99% of the time I said no and that was that.  She was content to play with Christmas and birthday toys, and really didn’t have much desire for anything else - or at least lasting desire.  I might buy a seasonal toy here and there (for example, new sandbox tools at the beginning of summer) but that’s about all I would buy for her outside the Christmas/birthday sphere.  

On one hand it seems rather limited to only get toys on Christmas and her birthday (especially since they are only two months apart) but I don’t really like the alternative of buying stuff because she’s been wanting some particular thing for awhile. That seems like a dangerous precedent and not particularly wise either.  So…  either we come to terms with one of these schemes, or we need to start considering that age old parenting tool of the allowance.  The only other option I can think of (other than to continue to lose teeth, which as Emma pointed out is rather unpredictable as a revenue stream and does come to an end at some point) is cash for special jobs, which seems like it would be of limited use for someone her age.  

So, hmm.  Food for thought.  I’ve been reading some articles online about the subject, and I’m thinking I’m not exactly in step with mainstream thought on the matter.  The idea of a dollar per year of age per week seems like a ridiculous amount of money for an allowance!  Some of the other recommendations just don’t seem particularly appropriate or applicable either.  Has anyone figured out something that works well for them - or read anything particularly useful?

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