Summer, parting is such sweet sorrow

Exploring some math concepts together with The Piano Man from my perspective at the sewing machine.

"School" has started. Our relaxed version of schooling that includes freedom, structure, cultivating individual interests and curiosity, self-pacing, exploration, and exposure to ideas and subjects is under-way as the seasons shift. Not that it ever stopped, we just explored other subjects with a different level of freedom and self-guidance. We are once again participating in 2 different local university style classical education programs for homeschoolers. The classes the girls are taking this year are once again exciting and of their own choosing. Earth Baby is taking Greek 3, Latin 2, Jr. High Spanish, Writing and Literature 7/8 (it's actually high school level, and she loves it!), high school drama, advanced drawing, and another art class. The Storyteller is enjoying a writing class, Spanish, drama, zoology- swimming creatures, art, Latin 1, and Ancient Roman and Greek architecture. Lolie is taking a math games class and she wanted to take a reading class I think mostly to have fun discovering new books. She is also taking drama and Spanish as well as an etiquette lunch to learn how to eat a meal with polite manners. Good thing I guess, she won't get that here! All of them love the 2 days a week managing their own schedules and visiting with friends. Squiggle Bug and I love our time together to do things like make playdough, scones, dance to whatever music we want, build elaborate castles of blocks or whatever strikes our fancy, play with baby dolls, go for long walks and swinging. We like to pretend it is fall and made up a song this week about the leaves crunching under our shoes as we walked and the vibrant colors of the season. We can dream, right?

Squiggle Bug enjoys a hot walk in September doing our new favorite family activity- geocaching!

My sewing machine is whirring, the knitting needles are clicking, books and patterns being marked for ideas, yarn being fingered, etsy and craigslist being perused for more ideas and maybe a few deals, dress-up themes being discussed for October 31st, whispered conversations abruptly halted when another family member walks into the room, secret measuring and knowing giggles with side-ways glances echo off the walls of our home. But the ultimate tell-tale sign of the seasons shifting has been the Christmas music books making their way to the piano as we select what we want to work on this year. I am constantly humming the favorites I want to arrange for us to sing this year and will set about determining keys and parts soon so we have ample time to learn them comfortably.



I refuse to think about the fact that if we are turning our attention forward to Halloween and then Christmas it means that Smunchie is closing in on her first birthday as well. Nope, impossible, she's still a newborn, right?

Though the weather has cooled off a touch with a hurricane that made landfall only 150 miles away, we don't actually expect real change to the weather until well into November at the earliest. A fact we take into consideration when planning our Halloween costumes. Still, it feels as though we have begun to bid summer adieu and from this point out and shorts and t-shirt days will be mere stragglers of an Indian Summer. We pretend that you can't actually wear shorts and t-shirts all year here. I sit here and right this in a tank top and summer skirt. Same outfit I'll probably be wearing at some point in December.

For years we have been listening to the 3 big girls beg to visit a waterpark but the hot temperatures, fair skin, and high cost made us balk at the idea. Thanks to some friends passing along some free-tickets, we were able to have one last horrah this summer by enjoying a day along a chlorinated lazy river, 3-story swirling tube slides, jumping fountains, fabricated showers, artificial wave pool, water obstacle courses and more. The weather had cooled off nicely with only a high around 91 degrees and even for our not-so-summer-fun-loving selves we had a good time. Sunburns were avoided, dehydration kept at bay and we enjoyed our buddy system for the day. Smunchie still hates water so she was less than thrilled but was mostly content to ride along in the lazy river as long as she wasn't getting wet and was able to breastfeed at the same time. It worked. As long as I didn't think about the SouthPark episode with Pi Pi's New York Splash Waterpark too much. *shudder*

I wasn't able to get too many photos, I was far too busy enjoying the waterpark experience but snapped a few of Smunchie staying dry on the beach.

To Grow Imaginations- part 1

A shoe zoomed by my head with a “swoosh” sound effect from my three year old. I looked up from my perch on the couch just in time to see the tiny homemade fairy with crazy yarn hair and a little stuffed giraffe fly by tucked into one of my daughter’s sneakers. The shoe was followed by a wooden toy boat loaded with more homemade fairies and various small wooden animal shapes bobbing along in the air supported by my 5 year old’s arm. Following the boat was yet another shoe, this one sparkly and red from last year’s Dorothy costume for Halloween with more fairies, tiny people and animals tucked inside with my 8 year old daughter providing sound effects. I paused in my reading to see if I could catch the tale being woven with flying shoes, boats, funny fairies, and wooden animals in the amazing minds of my three daughters. They called back and forth to each other with the voices of fantasy play about a magical land they had to reach before nightfall. Though it was early morning, nightfall was apparently coming quickly judging by the urgency with which they encouraged each other along. I couldn’t catch it all but their land of fantasy sounded truly fascinating.

Like most parents, we’ve experienced the fun of picking out just the right toys for our children for holidays and birthdays only to have our youngsters captivated by the wrapping paper and boxes over the gifts we selected for them. At first I was slightly hurt by their apparent lack of appreciation of all that I went through to find the perfect gift, hide it and then wrap it up for them. Actually, they did seem to appreciate that last part a bit but the toy itself was profoundly neglected in favor of the packaging they had ripped apart. Eventually my disappointment gave way to rationalizing their choice, they were so young and when everything was cleaned up they could see and play with the toy properly. Besides, when they got older their appreciation and anticipation of the gift inside the packaging would grow. I told myself that for quite sometime.

With three children close in age it didn’t take long for the toys to begin pilling up and still the boxes and wrapping paper were the best part. We began to assess the situation of trying to keep the toys caroled and I noticed that I was less than thrilled with them myself. Not just because they were regularly under foot and actually not played with that often but because most of them were an ugly nuisance. The colors seemed tacky, the beeps and whirls down right irritating, the music out of tune, and they seemed to rob my children of something that I couldn’t put my finger on. It didn’t help that there were just so many of them! I was overwhelmed with the shear amount of toys available, how to pick which one to play with at any given moment? Did they even matter any more? One thing was certain, the toys were in the way of our lives but I wasn’t sure how or why.

Time to sit.

Today I have a sick toddler. All the cleaning, schooling, writing, phone calls, work, cookie baking and knitting I had planned on getting done went out the window and was replaced with lots and lots of cuddle time. My primary job today? "Hold me, mommy." I had planned some activities for today that would hopefully make my to-do list shorter for the time being. That was not to be though. Cooling a feverish brow, wiping a runny nose, wrapping my arms around her little body curled around my belly was about all I was able to get done today. There is a pot of a hearty yet simple vegetable soup on the stove for dinner that I managed to get made with the help of Jeremy and the big girls in those brief moments E let me set her down and we'll be enjoying the warmth of that soup (loaded with garlic) in just a few moments with some crusty bread and a bit of brie. Initially I was annoyed at how my day was going but then I realized that I needed to savor it. E wanted to spend hours just being held and cuddled on my lap, there was nothing more important that I could be doing in that moment but to meet her needs. Even though in reality I'm currently a stay-at-home-mom, I don't think of myself that way. It simply boils down to me not being the best version of myself if I don't pursue a career outside of my children. More on that later (as in another post some day, somewhere down the road) but today wasn't about being a stay-at-home-mom or a work-out-of-the-home-mom. It was about what my daughter needed and even if I was working full-time out of the home still what she needed was mommy or daddy to have an available lap for her to curl up in and get her clementine, goji beeries and walnuts when she needed a snack. Deadlines, agendas, and clients can't hold a candle to her needs in that moment. So that is what I did today just as I have done in the past when I worked 40+ hours a week out of the house. It was warm and sweet and special and just what we all needed. I drank 3 cups of tea this morning, when else would I get to do that? We watched a Muppet Christmas movie (not A Christmas Carol) in the middle of the day and E and I were entertained by the big girls putting on dance shows to Christmas music blasting through the house. The big girls wrote their letters to Santa and made clay Christmas ornaments for our as of yet undecorated Christmas tree. We picked out our ridiculous list of cookies to be baked for the holidays and curled up with books (and some coffee and chocolate for me) for a nice quiet time. No, this wasn't the day I planned but it was the day that needed to be.

The only thing that is sad with this picture is that it took a little girl having a fever, cough and runny nose for me to take the time to do this. I need to plan these kind of days a little more often. Now, off to knit and watch White Christmas after eating our soup.

Eight

I don't remember being 8. There are a few fuzzy memories of when I was 5 or of kindergarten anyway: "M" day where we all had to bring something that started with "M" and there were marshmallows, M&M's, a kid with red dots all over his face for "measles." A crush on PJ or was it JP? David chasing me around the playground trying to get a kiss and the substitute that was kind of mean about quiet time. After that I have vague memories of events or playing but I could have been any age. I remember some birthdays (the ice cream cake with clowns and the chocolate chip themed one), vacations, school projects, etc. but just being 8 doesn't stand out to me.

Maybe this is why sometimes I look at Lavinia and wonder where this variety of person came from and how in the world can I relate to her.

Two weeks ago she turned 8 and being that she got a big party last year this year it was a small affair, just family. We let her pick out whatever she wanted to eat for the day and after her initial request of French Toast, Doughnuts, Kolaches, Cupcakes, ice cream, crepes and a whole lot of other sweets we amended the "whatever you want part" to be "one breakfast option, some kind of non-sweet lunch and dinner option and one celebration sweet" which left plenty of room for lots of junk she normally doesn't get to have. She pouted but settled on French Toast, Macaronni and Cheese with hot dogs (yuck!), cupcakes, and pizza. Hardly growing food but we conceded and she enjoyed her feast of grease and sugar. We gave her the gifts in a similarly simple fashion, she gushed over an American Girl doll from Grandma and Grandpa Martin (only complained once that it wasn't the one she asked for) and carried her around changing her outfits and hairstyle multiple times a day right off the bat, she giggled over arts and crafts supplies from Jeremy and I, she hugged a new outfit, shrugged at the $50 she could spend anywhere on anything (amended to exclude everything normally excluded when she asked "Even a Barbi!?"), and squeeled over the "Fairy Realm" series. The best gift of all though was 6 rolls of Scotch tape all her very own. She loves tape, steals it constantly sticking it everywhere from walls to paper sculptures to herself. Jeremy and I had been half joking for two years now that we should get her tape and we finally did. I never expected that she would be so delighted by this gift, made me wonder why we didn't give it to her years ago. Oh to be 8 when Scotch tape would trump $50.

Today we had a call from the director of the home school enrichment program the girls go to on Tuesdays, she asked us to see her when we came to pick up the girls, there was something she needed to discuss with us. Apparently, during Creative Writing the boy (we'll call him Bob) Lavinia had a crush on last month decided to write the boy (we'll call him Joe) that Lavinia has a crush on this month and so Bob, who Lavinia informed she no longer liked, told Joe that Lavinia now liked him. Joe handed the note to Lavinia who freaked out and wrote a note back to Joe denying the whole thing and telling him that she infact hated him. Horrified that she told the boy that she does actually like that she hates him, her heart got the better of her and in front of the entire class she stood up and declared that she lied and that she does in fact have a crush on Joe. Her pension for drama earned her, along with Bob and Joe, a trip to the Director's office and a phone call to mom and dad. I wasn't exactly sure what my reaction was supposed to be so I laughed. Hard. Really, really hard. In case your wondering, the director laughed too. For that matter, perhaps the entire class did since they all witness her rather loud proclamation of love to Joe. A long conversation with daddy about how she doesn't need to be announcing her love to anyone outside her family for at least another 12 years or so Lavinia seems unphased by the entire experience. When asked if she was embarressed at all that the entire class heard she said no because she knew it was important to tell Joe how she really felt. She's 8. We are in so much trouble.

Cave paintings and lizard soup

In history the girls and I are studying about ancient times, primarily the early nomadic people around Egypt and Mesopotamia before those places became Egypt and Mesopotamia. We've learned about the fertile crescent, how the people moved from place to place based on food sources, what they wore, how they hunted and gathered, what they ate(lizard soup anyone?), how they lived and how we know these things about them. Cave paintings, stories of their daily lives (which seem so much more interesting than mine!) recorded on walls of stone using fingers, leaves, sticks, and paints from plants and stones created thousands of years ago. I suspect, though I have no proof of this, they were compelled to make these rudimentary works of art not to record history for us thousands of years later but because they were moved to create and they created from what they knew, as simple as that. In examining cave paintings and then creating our own I found myself wondering if there was a designated "artist" in the community or anyone and everyone contributed when they felt so moved. Certainly there were those that had a natural talent for various arts but was it limited only to those that were declared masters and their students or was everyone welcome to dip into the thick and chunky paints they created turning their fingers orange as they smeared the goo on the cave walls. I have no idea but it's kind of fun to consider.

The girls made their own cave paintings. I like books, I love books and I can read history like it's a novel, completely fascinated by what people before us have done. This works for me. Not the girls so much. There are reasons to believe that if I want these lessons to stick with the girls we have to move beyond reading a book. So they create images of their own, in a sketch book, that reflects what we have learned, we call this "Waldorf Inspired." Vocabulary, dates, places, maps, and depictions are recorded there in their own hand sometimes following my lead in a crayon drawing, at other times creating their own original representation. Our cave painting experience went beyond our sketch books and onto several panels of dry wall left over and being tossed from our neighbor's post-Ike renovations. Set up in the "garage area" (just a small carport type thing), the girls used left over paints from the same renovation, leaves, sticks and their fingers to create paintings that depicted nomadic life in the crescent circle. They had a blast. There are now blue, red, rust, and orange-y paint smears on the grass in our backyard where they wiped their fingers clean and several sheets of dry wall leaning up against our house warping in the humidity making them even more cave like with their rough paintings of history. I'm not sure how much of this lesson will really stick but I know they won't forget cave painting or lizards soup- I know because that was part of their cave painting.

Pictures of our history lessons: