Mom Remembers

Spring is here!  Oh joy!  The weather this whole month has been so fine and everyone seemed re-energized by the changing seasons.  Our homeschool has been blissfully sunny. I have been thinking a lot this month about my responsibility as not only an educator, but an example of a learner.  If my children are going to take seriously this lifelong quest of growing in skill and knowledge, they need to see that I also take it seriously for myself .  So with that pep talk, I have been working on learning scary new skills a little bit everyday.  Like new music.  And writing speculative fiction.  And memorizing Mandarin vocabulary.  At first it was really scary, and then disheartening.  But now I am excited about the journey, which is exactly what I hope for my sons. In Kindergarten The Pancake  - A friend recommended a lovely anthology to me called Nursery Tales from Around the World  and from this anthology, I found the story...

1. Carl and I have been doing reading lessons (almost) every day for a few weeks now.  The lessons are from a book called Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons .  While the methodology of the book really grates against my ideals (aka "better late than early" and "no twaddle"), Carl is really happy to be learning.  And it's fun for us to spend that time together.  I feel an inordinate amount of pride at his burgeoning abilities. 2. My friend, Michelle, has been running up against a hard deadline for her writing class so I babysat her daughter (Kylie) every morning this week so that she could write.  Kylie and Carl have been really cute playing together. 3. Soren has been having trouble controlling his temper recently.  He has been getting mad (for legitimate reasons) and then grabbing the offender and punching them (which is a completely illegitimate response).  This is something I always think we are done with and then pops back up again a few...

Because I have been writing a lot recently, I've been thinking about plenty of different characters and trying to pin down what makes them distinct from each other. As a by-product of this, I've been looking at my children through different eyes.  I have been looking at them as characters and watching to see how they will respond in different situations.  And since they are real life (and not the kind of flat fiction that comes unbidden from my clacking fingertips), they are each unique individuals.  They each respond differently to the same stimulus.  Part of that is because of the age differences between them but part of that is all personality. Here's an example scenario.  This is real  life, something that has happened to each of my kids, and they have all responded in a way that tells you something about the singularly special boy that they are. Here's the scene:  The boy is wearing a T-shirt or sweatshirt with a recognizable superhero logo ...

These are The Singing Diapers.  So Soren tells me.  When he folds and snaps up the diapers in the morning, he lays them out on the couch like this and explains to me that they are Singing Diapers. "Some of them have three eyes and some of them have one," he says.  And he laughs like he just made a funny joke. Soren's humor is often inscrutable. But I think I know why The Singing Diapers sing. Sven woke up from his nap this morning, full of smiles and pee.  I took him to the couch to change his diaper and announced, "Let's put on a Singing Diaper!" Soren was coloring at the table but he whipped his head around and smiled so big I thought his face would crack. "Then it will sing louder!"  He said joyfully.  I must have looked quizzically at him because he explained further, "Because he will toot!"  And then he laughed and I laughed, too. I got that one.

This last week, I went on a long road trip with Scott and Sven.  Scott had a job interview in Roswell so we left Soren and Carl with neighbors and busted out the 13 hour drive down to New Mexico.  Then, after the interview, we drove the 13 hours back. Talking hour after hour with my husband was really nice.  We never did get our book on tape working so we learned a lot about each other.  I came back with lots of ideas about how to be a better wife.  I also felt really excited to do something besides sit in a passenger seat.  That means I came back with lots of energy for working on my current goals (teaching, writing, harping, and homemaking).  So I loved being able to spend lots of our trip just talking. However, for many of those hours, Sven was awake and requiring attention.  I kind of thought he would play happily with some toys we borrowed from our neighbors while enjoying diluted juice in a sippy cup.  While he did that for about...

1. Soren made a Minecraft Alphabet book for the baby.  Since he couldn't think up items in the game for all of the letters, he made up some of his own.  Like "U is for urine".  His pictures, which are all pixelated are really cool. 2.  Kindergarten this week was AWESOME.  I will probably write all about it in my monthly homeschool update but I just want to say right now that I was really happy with school this week.  It was fun. 3. We played Robot Turtles for our FHE game on Monday night.  This is a new game that we got last month and I really love it.  It teaches kids about basic computation and is really fun.  The goal is to navigate the turtles through a maze (which changes every time) to reach a jewel in the center.  I got to be the "Robot Mover", which means that I pretty much played the role of the computer.  The kids wrote "programs" for their turtles and I executed them.  While making goofy robot noises. 4. The ...

MOM:  Soren, please come to the kitchen and put the dishes away. SOREN:  Yeah!  (comes skipping to the kitchen and then sees all the dishes on the counter)  Which ones? MOM:  All of them. SOREN:  But this is back-breaking work! MOM:  No, it is not back-breaking work.  If you want me to show you back-breaking work, I can. SOREN:  No, thank you.

Sven and I have a ritual/game we always do for diaper changes.  This is how it goes: * I take him to the boys' room to change him on Carl's bed.  I swing him back and forth, chanting "1-2-3!" and on the 3, I throw him gently onto the bed. * Sven laughs, rolls onto his stomach, and crawls quickly to the other side of the bed (which is underneath Soren's loft). * I clamber up onto the bed and crawl after him, pounding my palms on the mattress behind him.  He usually looks back and laughs.  It's like I am chasing him but I go very very slowly and make sure to stay just behind him. * When he gets to the end of the bed, I grab him and pull him back.  I tickle him and he laughs. * I lay him on his back and get out the diaper for a change.  He often rolls over again, wanting to start the game all over.

It has been one wonderful year since Sven first came to our family.  This is what we did to celebrate: 1. I sang the "Happy, Happy Birthday" song to him all day long. 2. He had a strawberry smoothie with cheerios for breakfast.  What could be better than that? 3. Maybe the very sweet pancakes we made in Kindergarten, which Sven enjoyed immensely.   4. I dug out my bin of 12 month clothing and put Sven in a new outfit.  I was looking for the onesie from Carl's first birthday but I couldn't find it.  Which is ok, because Sven got one of his own later. 5. We went to McDonald's for lunch with our neighbors.  Carl and Sven played I-drop-it-you-pick-it-up with the happy meal toy for quite a while.   6. I tried to get a picture of my three boys all together but they were too wiggly. 7. Sven's Nan sent him an amazon gift card so I enjoyed browsing for board books during his nap. 8. I made chocolate cupcakes with cream chee...

Sometimes doing school with my two Kindergarteners is magical.  On those days, I love having a preset time to engage in the wonderful world of childhood with them.  I can see how happy and alive they are, which does my mother heart good. Sometimes, it's just so blah.  I don't want to do it.  I really felt like that this month.  Which is embarrassing to admit, because I felt like that last month, too. Fortunately, the kids spent two weeks doing school at my neighbor's house.  And I could tell that it was magical for her this month.  So at least my kids were with a positive teacher 50% of the time. In Kindergarten The Snowman  - My unit for this month centered around a very simple story that I made up.  The story encodes the steps for snowman creation.  I thought that we would be able to make a snowman on one of our walks this month but there was no snow on the ground all month long!  It has been an unseasonably warm winter...