Here is A's first knitting effort, all done. Looks pretty, eh? I think it turned out really well, and I love the yarn she chose. I made one just like it, but more greenish. Now we've both managed to cast on and knit, and yesterday I figured out how to bind off. Woo hoo! I don't have much confidence yet for anything beyond a hat and scarf, and I'm not sure how many hats and scarves we can really use, but I'm excited, nevertheless. I have many knitting pros among my friends, so A and I are in good hands, in any case.

I just signed A and I up for an on-line Brave Writer course called KidsWrite Basic. I linked Brave Writer to her blog, because I think you get a better idea of her philosophy from her blog than her website, which is more nuts-and-bolts. A likes to write and frequently ask for help from me in the way of structure ("Let's have journal-writing time every day. You just say it's time and set the timer, and then we'll write for at least 10 minutes") or subject ideas ("I think you should have me work on an essay. What do you think I should write about?"). Unfortunately I've failed her on both accounts, so I'm hoping this course will not only give us some good ideas for improving A's writing, but will also help me give it the attention A is wanting and needing. 

M is a happy unschooler, though he does tolerate some mom-imposed math and reading (in small doses). He loves science, and I've started bookmarking websites for him that show science video clips, which he'd do all day if I let him (with a few Underdog and Tennessee Tuxedo cartoons thrown in from YouTube, thanks to his pop!). Here are some of his sites he's gotten a lot of mileage out of: Scenes from Nature, Robert Krampf, Newton's Apple, and Wired Science. And speaking of science, here's why it takes M an hour to do the dishes:

One day it is bubbles in glasses, another is spinning plates on top of the water, another is trapping air in glasses, it's always something. And water is always stone cold by the time he's done.

Adjustments

Events have conspired, and it is time to make some minor adjustments in our routines and way of life. First, we have some debt to pay off, since we fixed our bathroom and bought a new (used) car. We've had a mortgage for a long time, but I don't think we've had any debt since we paid off my student loans about 5 years ago. It is hard to figure out where to cut corners, since it seems like all we spend money on is food, but we spend way too much money on food, so surely we can find ways to save on food. 

I know that good quality, local and/or organic foods are a luxury to many, but it is bigger than that. It fits with my larger values about minimizing our impact on the earth, about giving my money to operations that have a social conscience, rather than huge agribusiness operations that are stripping away the topsoil, dumping toxins into our water system, displacing smaller family-run farms, and treating animals inhumanely. This just doesn't feel luxurious--it feels like the right thing to do. But, we do have to get our bills payed. 

And another change I'm just not yet totally comfortable with--we're now a two car family, and, OMG, I think our new car is an SUV! Its a small one, but it sure is shaped like and SUV. This is a shock to my system, but I'm trying to get used to the idea. Ack, what have I become!? And, there's another adjustment, other than the emotional one of getting used to being a two-car family. Now I don't have to walk to work, which used to give me 6 hours of walking each week and was my only real exercise. I love walking, and I often had lovely walks home with some friends from work. On the other hand, it didn't feel so safe to walk in the morning, so I'm glad I don't have to do that anymore. Plus, I'm glad that my commute time has gone from 2 hours per day to about 25 minutes per day. Surely I can find a way to get some exercise in the extra 1-1/2 hours I now have on my work days. Trouble is, I'm going to need to exercise on my non-work days too, to make up for losing all those miles of walking.

OK, I'll cope with having two cars, I can find a way to exercise despite losing my walk to work. I'm sure we'll find ways we can cut back on our grocery bills. I think of myself as someone who likes change, but I guess I like small changes, like taking a new job in the same organization where I've worked for about 12 years (not actually moving to a new organization), or re-arranging the same old furniture, or updating a bathroom (not moving to a new house), or switching from bike-riding to walking to work (not getting a second car). Woo-hoo! Boy, I am getting old, aren't I?

Italy, Siblings, and Knots, Oh My!

We have a thing with Italy going right now at my house. We're reading aloud a wonderful memoir of a boy growing up in the Abruzzo region of Italy (pretty much right in the middle of the country, up in the mountains) in the 1950s. When we was four years old he was sent off to live with his kindly and fairly well-off uncle, who was a priest, and although he missed his immediate family, he had some wonderful and funny adventures, mostly of his own making. At times he is deliciously naughty in funny ways, and he always seems to pay an appropriate price for his misdeeds. The kids eat up the stories of trouble he gets into. 

So now we're eating Italian cheese and listening to Italian language tapes and looking at Italian art and just generally speaking with fake Italian accents whenever we can get away with it. In one chaprter, the boy, Mario, takes art lessons from an old man in a nearby village. This teacher shows him how to combine things like plants and rocks and bugs with resin and oil to make brilliantly-colored paints. We are determined to try this ourselves. We know of a couple of places to look for tree sap, so next time we have a free day we're going to hit a known sap source and see what we can come up with. 

I've also been reading Cheaper by Dozen, which is a fabulous read-aloud. This book was also part of the inspiration for the Italian language tapes, plus A also wrote out flashcards for all the squares up to 25 x 25, in a nod to the Gilbreth family. A, who is already disappointed with the size of our family, is now feeling even more deprived at having only one sibling. Rather than talk my ear off about it, as she has in the past, now she just sighs when I put down the book, and with a trembling lip, asks: "If the parents of any of our friends die, can we at least adopt them?"

M is trying his hand a knot-tying tonight, which somehow seems like a natural progression from paper airplanes (don't ask me why). I tried to set him up with knitting, but it didn't really grab him. He found a page of knots in a dictionary, and tonight we found some printable instructions for a bunch of knots. He took the instructions and some string upstairs to bed with him, so we'll see in the morning if he could make any sense out them.

I knew this would happen

Just as I predicted--I had about a month's worth of blog material, and now I've petered out. Actually, I just can't seem to stay up after the kids go to bed. As a lifelong insomniac, when I'm sleeping well, I take full advantage.

I think the stars must be aligned, things are going along so smoothly. My husband hasn't had much work and we've actually had a lovely week of making dinners together, something we used to really enjoy doing. He usually works evenings, so it is usually me and the kids for dinner, and we eat a LOT of baked potatoes or quesadillas or quiche with smoothies. Grandma O came over for dinner last night and it was such a pleasure to have a yummy but simple meal with all four of us and my always enjoyable mother-in-law. 

Other pluses: the weather has been beautiful, the bathroom remodel is done (!!), and at work we're getting really good feedback from experts on the review we just completed. Everyone in our circle of awareness is healthy and well, and the bills are paid. OK, we may be stuck in a dreadful, unwinnable war, our health care system is in a total shambles, glaciers are melting at alarming rates, and corporate greed is controlling our domestic and foreign policy. But hey, isn't it still OK to feel some contentment with my small little corner of the world? I'll try to get out and fight the fight tomorrow.

Building Big

We've been doing some really cool activities based on the PBS series Building Big with our homeschool group. The images above are of a skyscraper made of only two pieces of newspaper (the straws were added later and aren't necessary to keep it standing up) made by M and me, and a suspension bridge made by A which really and truly is a suspension bridge. The blue construction paper towers are the top aren't the support towers, the backs of the chairs are the support towers. Unfortunately the road part is made of construction paper, so it isn't very stiff or heavy and won't pull the cables all that tight. But I'm excited that she really got how the cables are anchored, and go up and over a tall strong tower, and then other cables go down to the part that people go across. Everyone around here is jazzed up about building things now, and I think we're going to have to build the geodesic dome from newspaper for science club sometime soon--it looks like an extremely cool project.

Darn, I wish I could figure out how to intersperse text and pictures. All the pictures wound up at the top and I couldn't move them.

Tonight at gymnastics M discovered that he and his favorite buddy there have the same favorite movie: Singing in the Rain! What were the chances of that?? Two 1st-grade Donald O'Connor wannabes. We've got to set up a playdate with this kid! Or at least a matinee musical and popcorn...

The Summer Day

Just a quickie today. I read a wonderful poem I have to share by Mary Oliver titled The Summer Day. It fits my current homeschooling mood. Read it here.

Chaucer

There is a great scene in The Music Man where the mayor's wife dresses down the librarian for encouraging the teenagers of the town to read "smutty books", like those by Chaucer, Balzac, and Revale. I don't know who the last two are, but I did read Chaucer in high school and I certainly didn't remember anything remotely "smutty", so I thought it was a big joke. Well, we just read a retelling of some of Canterbury Tales for kids and I'm sure the mayor's wife would not be pleased! Talk about potty humor! Bare bottoms, farts, visitors sneaking into teenage daughter's beds at night to "snuggle," high humor to my kids.

Isn't it rather funny that I didn't notice any of this when I read it? I thought I really did read it at the time, but apparently I didn't actually understand that Old English. And, you'd think I would have caught the clue that there might be something juicy. The summer before we were supposed to read it for school, my friend and I saw that the movie Canterbury Tales was playing so we decided to go see it. When we got to the box office, however, they wouldn't sell us tickets because it was rated X. You'd think this would aroused my curiosity about the book, but apparently not, because I didn't remember a thing about it beyond the first 10 lines that I had to memorize.

Makes me want to check out Balzac and Revale, whoever they are.