(New Year's Day. Note green moving sticker on chair from two moves ago.)
(Shouldn't somebody tell that kid we're on Christmas vacation?)
(Salad -- spinach, lettuce, and, yes, if you're Southern, there is cabbage in there, too -- in my new simple white serving bowl, a gift from Andy. Katydid was trying out the spiffy "gourmet" feature on the camera. She didn't take a picture of the Hoppin' John, but it was there.)
St. Jeanne Jugan, newly canonized in October of 2009, foundress of the Little Sisters of the Poor...
St. Louis, busy and blurry as usual...
St. George is a man of few words and was not sure he wanted to stand up in front of all those people. (St. George is also very brave.)
He's supposed to be St. Isidore, the Farmer. Apparently St. Isidore wore a "John Deere cape". (Because it's green, see.) Everyone at the party called him "St. John Deere."
Today, the Feast of All Saints, we spent running errands, grocery shopping, signing papers, an unscheduled library visit, and finally -- with one of the twins down with the annual All Saints Day fever -- watching the recorded Mass from the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.
November always seem to me like a little Lent... after all the candy and celebration, a little sobriety, a little swirl of rain and leaves coming down off the trees, a little remembrance of those who have gone before, the double feasts of All Saints and All Souls.
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.
I went in for a redo of my 20 week ultrasound today. At 20 weeks the baby was sitting such that the ultrasound tech couldn't get a good picture of its heart. This also meant that she couldn't tell whether the baby was a boy or a girl.
At 24 weeks the baby was much more cooperative. And...
.... INSERT DRUM ROLL...
It's a boy!
(Hah. I bet you thought with all that suspense that it would be a girl. Nope. Boy.)
Current kid count = 6 boys, 1 girl.
I arrived home to a list of boy names compiled by the rest of my family which included "Robinson" (Crusoe?), "Aquinas", "Barnabas", and "Xavier". One of my 4 year olds informed me that we were going to name the baby "Luke" -- for Luke Skywalker, of course.
It's the time of year when everyone seems to enjoy looking back over the year that's been before moving on to the year to come. I suppose I'm no exception. Lately I have been thinking a lot about my reading. I started the year reading David Denby's Great Books: My Adventures with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf, and Other Indestructible Writers of the Western World and I came to the end of the year with Ten Books that Screwed Up the World by Benjamin Wiker. So I started thinking, you know, I like reading all these books about the Great Books, maybe I should actually read some of them? Hmmm. Well, that's for the new year. As for the old year...
February: I was still reading Denby's Great Books in February, along with a bunch of books about homeschooling high school (you can see the whole giant list of books, which I read in February and March, here). But what I was reading to the kids was The Story of Caves, an old book I found in our library which contained a fair bit of information about our local caves, and sparked a fair amount of interest around here, especially with Farmerboy. Closet spelunking gave the boys something to do when it was way too February-ish outside.
March:I made some notes about my reading for the year, which is the only reason I can now remember that I read Kon-Tiki in March. Not that Kon-Tiki is forgettable. On the contrary, it's the kind of book you read when you're in your 30's and wonder why you didn't read it sooner. And then it sort of passes into your permanent, dateless memory, where all the best books are held. You know round about when you read it, you can remember snuggling up under the blankets after the toddler is *finally* asleep, you can remember setting it down on your husband's nightstand and telling him it's the kind of book that he would enjoy and also that you are hoping your 12 year old son will read it because -- well, archaeology! adventure! lots of weird fish! -- but as far as summoning "March 2009", your brain is at a loss. The allure of armchair travel passed a little by the end of March, though; we were preparing for our annual trip to Tennessee and winter was ending.
April: We spent Holy Week and Easter in Tennessee visiting family and friends, and I read He Leadeth Me by Walter Cizsek. What an excellent (and challenging) book, written by an American priest who spent years as a political prisoner in the Soviet Union. I also started Fahrenheit 451, and on the long car ride home, I read Real Food for Mother and Baby by Nina Planck. The arrival of spring saw us in the garden and at the library, checking out lots of books about plants, frogs, and dirt.
May: What did I read in May? May is sort of a blank on my reading radar. May was all about putting in gardens, getting turkeys and chickens, birdwatching, and being outside. Oh, and emergency preparedness. I read Just in Case: How to be Self-Sufficient When the Unexpected Happens, by Kathy Harrison, a good reference book for the family. To the kids, I started reading In Search of a Homeland: The Story of the Aeneid, by Penelope Lively, which rounded out a year spent with ancient mythology, epics, and fairy tales. While reading this retelling of the Aeneid, the boys got interested in volcanoes, and we built a few. I also contemplated the simple life, and ended up concluding that I don't really have one... but that my kids might.
June: June was for wrapping up the school year and preparing for the new one. I read Working in the Reggio Way by Julianne Wurm and Designs for Living and Learning: Transforming Early Childhood Environmentsby Deb Curtis and Margie Carter, and I posted a few "Reggio reflections" of my own. Both books were excellent and prompted a lot of thinking about how to handle the projects the boys do. While I was reading about how to do projects with little people, my big kids were immersed in the Warriors series of cat books... but Katydid did take a break from Warriors to read Black Beauty and In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson. After she'd finished, she was rather heartbroken to learn that the Dodgers were not in Brooklyn anymore.
July: July was rainy, cold, and asthmatic... 3 things not generally associated with July, I know. My garden persevered in spite of the weather, and so did the kids. I read Eat Fat, Lose Fat by Sally Fallon and Mary Enig and started adding coconut oil to my smoothies (hoping to tame the asthma),a couple of art books, and In a Patch of Fireweed by Bernd Heinrich, which taught me more than I ever thought there was to learn about how insects regulate their temperatures.
August: August was again focused on homeschooling -- plans, plans, and more plans. Accordingly, I read a few books: Snowball Earth by Gabrielle Walker, which kept me up at night so I could finish it, and most of Reading the Rocks: the Autobiography of the Earth by Marcia Bjornerud, which... did not. I also reread Homeschooling: a Patchwork of Days, edited by Nancy Lande and wrote about our not quite average day. And after reading Mudpies to Magnets, we made ice cube necklaces. Gareth was reading Out of the Silent Planet by CS Lewis, and Katydid read A Little Princess and began Little Women. All my tomatoes died of late blight.
September: Well, this is what I thought Gareth would be reading. He didn't actually read much of it. He did actually finish Fellowship of the Ring. He also spent some quality time with Genetics of the Fowl. Mostly, though, in September we were sick. (I would give you a link but which one??) We had an interesting not back to school day, and I nursed myself through the flu with Josephine Tey's Daughter of Time and Lyanda Lynn Haupt's Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness.
October: October was a birthday month -- the twins turned 4 and Gareth turned 13 and made his own birthday cake using a 1950 version of the Betty Crocker Cookbook. I also discovered that I was pregnant with #7. I read some very good spiritual biographies/autobiographies, including Come Be My Light (Mother Teresa) and In the Shadow of His Wings (Fr. Gereon Goldman). In fact, October was a very good month for reading. I read some of the best books of the year in October. Gloria Whelan's Homeless Bird was definitely one of them; the story of a young, widowed Indian bride, it ranks high on my all-time favorite list. So glad I checked that one out of the library. Some time in here I finally finished reading The Hobbit to the kids, too.
November: First trimester nausea moved in, and I didn't feel much like reading or doing much of anything else either. Raymond Arroyo's biography of Mother Angelica, Mother Angelica: The Story of a Nun, Her Nerve, and a Network of Miracles kept me interested, though, and so did my friend Sarah's books, The Magic Thief: Stolen (#1) and The Magic Thief: Lost (#2). We took an unexpected day trip to Honesdale, PA, and I had all I could handle keeping up with the little boys.
December: December was a tough month. The little boys all came down with a bad case of croup. My nausea started to lift a bit, but none of us read a whole lot. I finished Ten Books that Screwed Up the World, which was not my favorite but brought me around full circle again to the Great Books, and I also read With God in Russia, Walter Ciszek's memoir of the time he spent in the USSR as a political prisoner (and after, until he was finally able to come back to the US). Andy read James and the Giant Peach (one of my most favorite books ever, which probably says a lot about me) to the little boys before bed, and we wrapped up the year playing Lego Star Wars and Wii Baseball, watching new Doctor Who episodes on BBCAmerica, and Julie and Julia and Star Trek on DVD.
Weeks 8 &9 -- We finished up quarter 1... or at least we decided that we would take a break. Gareth attended a forestry program for Scouts, and earned most of his Forestry badge. It did not snow... much. I chickened out and did not take Farmerboy or Katydid to swim lessons on the day Gareth and Andy were at the Scout program, because taking 2 hyperactive 4 year olds and a 2 year old to any place with a large, deep body of water and no barriers is not my idea of a good time.
Week 10 -- we take a housecleaning "break". Mostly what we do is excavate the long hallway that serves as the playroom for Lego and Playmobil. (It has a door, so we can keep toddlers out.) It also seems to serve as the place where containers full of dirt, rocks, and worms are tipped over, if what I found in there is any indication. We also stripped the wallpaper off the boys' room wall, which was only half-wall papered because we'd stopped last year when it started turning out badly... and prepped it for painting. And we did an intensive clean of the family room, which also needs to be painted. Strangely, the family room doesn't look any better than when we started, but at least I know that the toys are all out from under the couch and the window screen and glass lamp shade are not full of dust and bugs. This is enough.
Weeks 8, 9, and 10 in a nutshell. :-)
A collection of photos from weeks 8, 9, and 10...
The biggest event: Gareth turned 13. I thought about making a big blog post, but... I was worried I might embarass him. So I'll just embarass him slightly here. ;-) 13 on the 13th...
And he even made and frosted his own cake ("Milk Chocolate Cake", from a 1950 Betty Crocker Recipe), by request. The cake turned out great. It didn't even stick in the pans like my cakes so often do.
I cleaned up and rearranged the nature area. From left: basket of river rocks, basket of feathers, basket of pine cones, plant press, tray with paper and pens for drawing, Timeline of Life, wooden trays of fossils. (It doesn't look this anymore, mostly due to use. I need to rearrange it again.)
Apples by Katydid, inspired by a drawing in Museum ABC...
Of course, the busy weekend could be coloring my perceptions of the whole week. Swim lessons began (for Gareth, Katydid, and Farmerboy), violin lessons continued (for Katydid), there was a trip to the library, and the rain held off long enough for our Little Flowers and Blue Knights groups to meet at the Shrine of the North American Martyrs in Auriesville.
The shrine is built on the site of the martyrdom of St. Isaac Jogues and his companions. Bl. Kateri Tekakwitha was later born here, and baptized just a few miles away. We had a picnic lunch with one of the priests and the kids played soccer in the field by the gift shop.
Another important event this week...
The twins turned 4! Four years ago I could not imagine surviving to this point. And yet -- here we are. :-)
So those were the special occasions. The boys had to unwrap presents early on Saturday morning as fast as they could, because Andy had to take Farmerboy to his swim lesson by 8 AM. I don't think it bothered them much, though. ;-)
Other highlights of week 7...
The boys rediscovered stamping. Here, Farmerboy is experimenting with thumprints.
Inspired by a project in The Usborne Complete Book of Art Ideas, Gareth cut up an eraser to make his own stamps. He found that stamp ink worked better than the black tempera paint he started out with.
Gareth and Farmerboy also messed around with acrylics a bit...
Gareth's gas giants inside a nebula. As he was painting, he realized he had very little black paint. I provided him with a very cool book I bought off a bargain table several years ago, a collection of Hubble photos called The Universe. Since some regions of space are full of colored dust, Gareth decided that might work for his background. He tried to fill in some black in the gaps. This was basically a painting to experiment with the qualities of acrylic. Since I know very little about painting myself, I will need to do some research and experimentation to figure out how to extend his explorations. I find that this is the area in which I often fall down. I do a fair job at introducing the kids to novel materials and projects, but not such a good job at deepening skills.
Farmerboy was inspired by Gareth's painting, so he decided to paint his own planet:
The red circle is the planet, surrounded by purple atmosphere, streaming off into space.
Katydid and I fooled around with oil pastels this week. I sat down one day when the boys were stamping to experiment with blending oil pastels.
I was just laying down patches of color to figure out how oil pastels work (on black paper).
Katydid drew a landscape instead:
On another day, she copied down this poem she wrote and illustrated it with oil pastels:
I often forget to mention Farmerboy's academics, which are a little different (obviously) from the big kids'. This is what we're using:
Modern Curriculum Press Phonics A , spending a longer time working on consonant sounds, as he has some trouble remembering them
Handwriting Without Tears , the 1st grade book
A mish-mash of reading materials, including silly sentences I write for him, word cards I cut out from cardstock he can use to make his own silly sentences (silly is a big draw here), and Sonlight's I Can Read It! series (Book 1). I find the Sonlight stories a little weird in some places, but it's nice having them all together in a few books.
Mainly Montessori math materials... the 100 chain is what he has been interested in most since we began our school year in August. He's learned to lay out the tens cards and count the beads one-to-one to 100. He also counts on the 100 board, counts piano keys, counts lots of stuff spontaneously. When we first began, he would often skip numbers, had trouble remembering the -9 to -ty (29, 30, etc) transition, but he's got them down now. Last year I tried to use Singapore's kindergarten workbook with him, which was a disaster. He learned to write his numbers, but that was about it. (In my defense, I had to be able to do something with him while also rocking a baby for 2 hours every afternoon.) This year, since we've switched back to Montessori, is going much, much better. I've done presentations of the decimal system using base 10 blocks, and he is keen to be able to go on to the 1000 chain now that he can do the 100 chain.
A few words about the assortment of books here... on Sept. 29, the Feast of St. Michael and the Archangels, the kids reminisced about the year we made shields. So Farmerboy got off on a bit of a knight tangent. He made himself a cardboard and aluminum foil suit of armor, and shields for himself and his little brothers. The boys then added their own coats of arms. Why don't I have pictures? I have no idea.
And then... the duck and chick books. On and off for months, the twins have made it evident that they are fascinated with eggs. They pretend to be flood monsters hatching out of their eggs (they lie on their backs and put pillows on their bellies for "eggs"). They pretend to be gigantic plum-plums hatching of their eggs. (Pip's invention.) They pretend that they are chicks and I am the Mommy and they hatch out of their eggs and then go on the road. ("Chicks on the road!" they call just like we do when the chickens wander into the street.) Their dearest wish is that we would get a rooster so instead of eating our eggs, we would let some hatch. And then they became enamored of Daisy. So I have been canvasing the library shelves for chick/duck/egg picture books. I think I have found all of them by now, and will probably need to hunt through the rest of the library system.
(Ack! How could I forget? We also read Five Little Ducks about a million times this week!)
Read this week
Gareth: Peter and the Starcatchers, Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson; Fellowship of the Ring; St. Dominic and the Rosary (Vision Books); various Dig!, Muse, and Faces issues re: prehistory
Katydid: Little Women; Dealing with Dragons, Patricia Wrede; Louisa May Alcott issues of Cobblestone; Queen Victoria issues of Calliope; Dig! Neandertals
Read-alouds this week: The Hobbit (everyone); Farmerboy (little boys); Once Upon a Time Saints: Around the Year (appropriate pages)
Listened to this week: Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, CDs 3&4 (mostly)
Watched this week: The Planets: Formation of the Solar System; Ken Burn's National Parks: Episode 3 (I have no idea why #2 was skipped)
