February, 2006

Family — 1 Comment
28
Feb 06

A FIRST!!!

Today we had some friends over, and Allison came up from the playroom and said her teeth just all of the sudden started hurting in a weird way. Upon further questioning, she said that it was one tooth. It just sorta popped and hurt in a weird way. She was covering her mouth in a bit of shock. I asked her to let me see…and you guessed it. That tooth is a wiggling away in there! Real loose like a long necked goose Like a–oh baby, that’s a-what I like! We were beginning to wonder if she would EVER loose any teeth. She turns 7 in two months..her friends all started loosing teeth when they were around five and six years old!

Initial reactions – delight, pride, happiness, but within an hour those reactions were replaced with ones of trepidation and fear of eating with that tooth or anyone actually touching that tooth. Well if she doesn’t eat with it or allow anyone to touch it, that tooth may stick around a while.

Family — 1 Comment
27
Feb 06

Looks like we made it…..

Jessica turned 18 today! I swear over the past four years, I was beginning to think we’d never get here! But whew. She is a bright energetic beautiful 18 year old with her whole life stretched out in front of her. She seems to be making more and more steps to adulthood every day, and I think someday she may even get there! I just wonder what the next 18 years old for her! The possibilities are endless and are entirely in her hands!

She had grand plans of celebrating her 18th by purchasing lotto tix, visiting porn shops, getting things pierced and tatooed, buying cigarettes…registering to vote (and for the draft) but instead she went to a meeting at work, did some shopping with her gift certificates and went out to dinner with the family…..where her baby sister smeared catsup all over her new windbreaker. I don’t know if she was disappointed with her 18th birthday or not, but all in all, I think it was a nice day. She did have a “shin-dig” on Saturday with some of her coworkers from work. They played pool and poker, and ate a bunch of food and laughed and partied all night long! (well until about 9:30 because everyone had to get up early the next day….remember that commercial from way back when…”Time to make the donuts“…well her friends all wake up saying, “Time to make the bagels”

Happy birthday Jessica.. The child who taught me how strong I really was…the child who stole my childhood & my heart…the child who became my everything.

Education / Family — 1 Comment
25
Feb 06

night night time around these parts

So as I was tucking in the girls, unprompted by any discussions of any sort, Allison tells me that she is an ant pupa (she’s all curled up in her blanket), and from Meredith’s bed I hear, “Yeah, and I’m an ant larva” – strange kids.

After night night time, Allison just has to come down to tell me her favorite Rudyard Kipling story from the Just So Stories – How the Elephant Got his Trunk, and she chuckled as she told me this, as though recalling the story.

Family — 2 Comments
24
Feb 06

He got the job!

Whoo hoo!

Family — 2 Comments
23
Feb 06

Something I discovered today

Today was a lovely day. We drug out the bikes and ventured into the cul de sac for some faux springtime fun. When we got out there, the girl across the cul de sac came out too. She is older – almost 13 and very nice. Allison sees her out there hanging out with friends and wants to go play with them – she doesn’t understand why 12 year old girls may not want a 6 year old joining them…I’m sure she will understand when she is 12 and her sisters are 10 and 7 :-) Anyway…today this girl was alone and was delighted to play with Allison. She’s a sweet girl…so she asked Allison to shoot some hoops with her. Lydia drug me out of the cul de sac where another mom was blowing bubbles with her sons. Lydia was literally dragging me saying, “Bubbles mommy? Bubbles for boys” – and Meredith joined us for a few minutes while we intruded on this mom with her kids..

when we returned to the cul de sac, I learned two things about Allison….

1) That girl (Allison) can play basketball! She can shoot the ball and get it in the net! Over and over again (you would not believe how Daddy’s eyes lit up when he heard the news)

2) That girl (Allison) is socially advanced….or at least on target. She is a caring friend. And assertive and verbal, even though she is shy and fearful, you wouldn’t know it when you met her. This older girl was taking a mentor role and showing Allison how to play, but Allison kept insisting that she play too, that she have as many turns as Allison was taking. AND later when Allison came inside, she told me that she asked the older girl if she minded playing with Allison because Allison was so much younger and I had told her that she may not want a younger kid hanging around. You have to admire that. I had told her that 12 year old girls may not want to play with 6 year old girls, and instead of accepting that as a truth, my shy little girl went out and asked a 12 year old girl directly if she had any problems being friends with a younger kid. That’s my little warrior.

So anyone want to argue that my kids are not “socialized”? (we won’t mention how the basketball game ended for Meredith….that’s another story. But hey, that kid is four and a middle child and if she gets ugly…there are a lot of reasons for that!)

Education — 6 Comments
21
Feb 06

Almely Academy – its official

I registered our homeschool. We are now officially a school – Almely Academy. Whoever can figure out the rationale for the name wins a prize (a big virtual smooch).

Allison turns 7 in about 3 months, and we have to register before she turns 7, so there ya go. Now I never have to do it again. All three of the kids will be enrolled automatically, and we are totally left alone by the state. I didn’t even have to mention the name(s) of my students, their grades or anything! No mandated assessments, no annual registration, no required courses or attendance records. A big reason I love Kansas :-)

School is actually going very well around here. Just if you are wondering. Allison is reading and enjoying it, and reads daily on her own for fun now (whoo hoo). She is EXCELLING in math. I love Right Start. It rocks. Allison blows me away daily…and reports that math is her very favorite subject (although she can’t wait for spring when we start doing insects and other creepy crawlies for science). And in other news, Meredith is the proud owner of some workbooks. Sigh. Yes, it wasn’t that long ago that I was claiming that you would not find a workbook in my house! But Meredith was begging for school, and kept asking about workbooks when we would see them in the store, so I finally buckled and got her a large K-math and K-reading book, which she works out of at her leisure. She will often do 2-4 pages while Allison has her school…but many times she opts not to. Either way is fine by me. April first we are going to start her on 100EZ lessons for reading (V E R Y S L O W L Y), along with a bit of Spell to Write and Read along with Allison, just to reinforce pre-reading for Meredith and start some spelling stuff with Allison. She will also start her level A of Right Start…a couple of lessons a week…so also S L O W. And Allison will continue on her current track….We are currently doing AO across the board (only on week five of year one…), with some minor secularization of the readings :-) , but next year I may modify it somewhat and do the Classical Education’s history program. Anyone ever use that? Opinions? And then just use AO for literature, geography, etc.

We are all sick this week so taking it easy. I tried to do a bit of school today. I read a chapter from Paddle-to-the-sea, and both Allison and I were so out of it, at the end, neither of us knew what I just read, so instead we played some math games, did some handwriting, and did Music Ace on the computer.. Meredith did some workbook pages, and Lydia stands at the table and scribbles. Fair day considering we all feel yucky.

Eric has a Very Important Job Interview today, which required the purchase of a suit jacket. I am on the edge of my seat waiting for updates.

Family — 2 Comments
14
Feb 06

Craigs List dealings

I got $150. Whoo hoo. Diesel the dog got out. The guy buying my goods was coming into the house, and I was holding Diesel back. After he got in the house and started to reach for his wallet, I let go of the dog, but then his wife started coming in! I didn’t even know she was back there! No knocking or anything, and the dog took off! SO, the wife starts to run a bit after him, but these folks are older and she doesn’t make it very far. The husband keeps telling me to stay with the kids. THEN he yells at the wife to get in the house and stay with the kids and for me to get in the car and we would go get him. I hesitated, but it was clear that these were friendly grandparents and we would only be gone a second. They certainly didn’t orchastrate this whole thing so they could abduct me and and live in my house with my kids. Allison and Meredith were out there with us in our initial attempts to retrieve the dog, but Lydia was in her highchair naked (this is another post) and eating. SO I jump in the car, hollering that there was a baby in a highchair in the kitchen. We drive up and down the neighborhood, asking folks if they’d seen a speed demon running past them. I was just telling the husband that we should just forget the dog and head home because I felt uncomfortable leaving my kids with someone they don’t know, when we finally catch sight of Diesel running down the sidewalk of a side street. We take off after him (boy that dog is FAST), with me calling him from the window. He won’t stop for anything! So we go really fast to get in front of him and then stop, and I open the door and call him. Well he just can’t pass up the opportunity for a nice car ride, and hops in. We head back home. The kids are telling this woman our entire life history, and she has Lydia sitting in her lap wrapped up in a blanket, saying that Lydia has calmed down now, so apparently Lydia didn’t like the idea of mommy leaving her in the kitchen and a stranger coming back to watch her without mommy even saying goodbye. I feel bad about that. But it all worked out in the end, I guess. The dog is home, the kids are ok, and we have a cool $150 to blow on comic books and neck-ties.

Lets just not think of the what-ifs, ok?

Family — 1 Comment
9
Feb 06

DELETE THE APHIDS!

Today as dawn broke (ok, you are right, it was 10:30, and yes, we were in our jammies eating breakfast! What of it?), I mentioned to Allison that I needed to do a bit of work on this index that is due tomorrow. The first thing I do when I edit a completed index is to delete the orphaned subheadings. The subs that appear all alone with no other friendly subs to hang out with. So I told Allison that all I had to do was “delete the orphans” – her response was priceless. “Delete the ORPHANS? Mommy! That’s mean. ” I explained what I mean by orphans, when she decided “you shouldn’t call them orphans. Why not call them aphids. Aphids deserve to be deleted. Go delete the aphids!”

Education / Family — 1 Comment
7
Feb 06

update

hi all!

couple of notes.

Today we had a repair person come to the house to fix the heater (mighty chilly with no heat!). As we passed through the dining room to get to the basement, he noticed my dining table covered with books, papers, pencils, crayons, math manipulatives, etc., etc., etc., and causally asked, “you homeschool?”. I love love love how common and acceptable homeschooling is these days. He didn’t blink an eye. I asked him how he knew, and he said he just sorta guessed. When I homeschooled Jess for Kindergarten, I was often frightened to take her out in public during the day for fear people would ask why she wasn’t in school. Oh the times, they are a’changing. What’s the stats? Last count, several years ago (2003 I think), there was 1.2 million registered homeschoolers in the United States, with some estimates that that number was increasing at rates close to 25% a year in some states…so if that holds true, then now, three years later we have what? Nearly 1.9 million homeschoolers. And that is just the registered homeschoolers. In some states homeschoolers aren’t even required to register (like across the border in Missouri), and in other states homeschoolers are only required to register once, and some states you don’t register until the child is 7. So those state figures wouldn’t include homeschooled kids under the age of 7, would they? SO if we do in fact have 1.9 million registered homeschoolers in the US, what would the figure be with the fringe schoolers that aren’t registered due to age or state requirements? I would have to guess that would bring us up to at least 2.5 million..wouldn’t you say? :-)

Speaking of school, today Allison said, “Don’t you just LOVE this math book we use?” And yesterday at the office store, she was lamenting about how she didn’t have enough money to buy this game she saw. The game was $10 and she only had $2, and she saw another game package that contained her game, PLUS three other games, and it was $20, so she was talking to the clerk as we were paying for my items (which I had money for, lol), and she told him that she had two dollars but the game was ten dollars and she only needed $8 more dollars to buy the game, or if she would wait and save $18 more she could purchase the package. The clerk raised his eyebrows at me in this approving way, and complimented her. (of course then she asked the clerk if there was any way to make sure that the game wasn’t sold by the time she saves up enough money, lol) ALSO, earlier in that same store, she was looking at something that cost $1.99, and she said, “I know that $1.99 could also be said as one-hundred ninety-nine cents, or we could say one-hundred and ninety nine ones, which are pennies.” Yup. OH, and I almost forgot, as we were leaving the store, she was saying that if she gets $3 a week, she will only have to wait 3 weeks to have enough to buy the game, and then she will have a dollar left over! Boy that sounds like some multiplication/division stuff going on in her little head, if I’m not mistaken! I do LOVE our math book :-)

In other news….we are settling into a few routines round these parts. Meredith started ballet, and LOVES it (big surprise there, huh?). She counts the days from one class to the next, and earlier today I caught her in the kitchen, in her big footed jammies, with her left arm over her head, her right toe pointed out, and her head looking towards her right toe, and she was saying to herself, “look towards the barre, keep your back straight, check in the mirror” LOL. Last I looked, there was no barre, or mirror in our kitchen.

Both of the girls are taking piano again. We found a teacher who comes to our house and the girls LOVE her. I hope we never have to switch teachers again. Sometime in the near future (within the next four months or so) we will look into purchasing a piano so the girls will have that rather than a keyboard to practice on and take their lessons on.

Allison is taking ice skating lessons! I don’t really know that she is learning to skate, but she sure is learning not to fall. The key to not falling is not to move. Just stand there, look like you are moving or at least trying to move, and at some point, a teacher will come and help you move. At the end of every class she beams and says, “I didn’t fall!” – um, you didn’t skate either. Oh well, lol. I think her initial goals of Olympic figure skating have been replaced with new goals of avoiding falls. Aim high little one, aim high.

I on the other hand, could take a lesson, as I am recovering from a fall I had on Friday. I stepped out into my garage and twisted my ankle, falling down the two steps (so yeah, I fell out of the house), while holding the baby (who landed in Eric’s toolbox…not the softest place to land, but she’s ok). My foot is still somewhat swollen, and has some interesting colors running through it, but my ability to walk increases each day.

Ok, back to work…..stalled enough for one night.