Category Archives: Family

Here’s what we look like today.

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Saying What You Mean

So Jay and I have been talking about a milk animal for our family.

Currently we have a goat-share which is down to a gallon a week, and we’re burning through that in a few days.

The next question is what kind of animal. Jay is more interested in a cow, while I’m just a bit overwhelmed at that idea, and used to the goat milk now.

We read this goat v. cow article which (humorously enough) reinforced both of us in our current bias.

Jay did more reading and became intrigued with the issue of A1 protein (in milk) vs. A2.  Which lead to a whole other speculative discussion about what it takes to import animals to Alaska, and how I didn’t want to go to that length until we’d lived with a cheap cow for a while first.  Assuming we did cow and not goat(s).

Anyway, even with Jay’s timeline putting such acquisition two summers out I’ve been trying to nail down a sequence at least (Blame it on my J-preference. It’s what I do), and was having a hard time following Jay’s patchy description.

Finally I cornered him (he was tethered by earphones to his computer and the weekly football watching).  “Just a little clarity,” I begged,  “I’m getting mixed messages, and have no idea where to apply my imagination.”

Now, someday I hope to do a whole post on this, but applying my imagination to something is so much more than “day-dreaming” or wishful thinking.  It’s a way of entering into a possibility and consuming it (The Blob fashion) to find the nooks and crannies and knowables to learn what it is I don’t know, in order to fix that.

It’s the best way I’ve ever discovered to learn about something.

Jay was admirably self-controlled despite my untimely interruption and said, “You’re getting mixed messages because that’s what I’m sending.”

So we’re not particularly further in the process, but I get the relief of at least knowing we’re on the same page: that he’s under no illusion that he’s actually given me enough to work with or to expect anything specific from me.

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Now That’s a Nice Curriculum

We went to a Christmas party tonight, where we got to watch the pod race from the Star Wars (I) movie in the movie room: widescreen, 3D TV with surround sound speakers making it impossible to hear anything else.

Elisha wandered in partway through and couldn’t move for watching (I scooped him up and brought him to my lap on the couch).

On the way home Jay made a comment about reminding himself not to be jealous; that he had plenty of nice things that he liked, and he just chose to spend his money differently.

From the backseat Natasha piped with a surety that convinced me she’d picked it up at Sunday School: “Some things God chooses not to give us and we should be content with what we have.”

Jay didn’t hear her and asked Natasha to repeat herself, which she did, word-for-word, adding shyly, “I memorized it from my science book.”

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So Much to Process

Yesterday Melody had her first dentist appointment (looked in her mouth a week or so ago and could see cavities).

Turns out she’s got a gobzillion cavities, and the dentist looks at me and asks, “Has she been brushing twice a day for two minutes each time?”  And I felt like saying something totally rude about how he shouldn’t assume everyone has heard those standards, and I’m not an idiot, are you taking a survey over how many people who follow the standards still get cavities?

Maybe I would have felt guilty-er if I hadn’t just had a conversation a week ago with a mom who does hyper-regulate her kids’ teeth hygiene and was crushed that her 8-year-old has cavities despite her efforts.

Anyway, they give me a quote for half her mouth (they schedule one side at a time because they don’t expect a kid to sit through the whole procedure at once) and blow off my questions/distaste for metal fillings.  “[Tooth-colored fillings] are more expensive” was all they’d say to me.

The friend who referred me had warned me about the negitive response the workers gave when asked about health issues, so I tried to make it about aesthetics (hey, this should be solid ground, I thought), and still felt invalidated.

I guess I should have taken that story as a reason not to go, but I wanted to get Melody checked and here was somebody known by somebody.  Anyway, after looking at the estimate (pushing $2000.  For one-half of her mouth. BLEW my mind) I told Jay, “I am totally calling around for prices.”

And I only had the energy to call 3 offices, but that was enough to establish that we visited an expensiver place (annoyed me) and that there are providers that are already rejecting the metal fillings themselves, so I don’t have to but heads with an establishment.

So I have to finish calling around tomorrow; one more place to meet Jay’s request of four new offices, and one call-back to compare oranges with oranges.

I’m totally getting the impression that this isn’t playing by the rules (going to place A then hijacking the x-rays and exam to have the work done elsewhere).  If office A hadn’t charged plenty for the initial exam I might feel more compunction about changing, but I’ve given the worker his due.

Continue reading →

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The Other Difficulty With Differences

I outlined my basic observation of differences here.

Another angle is that by doing things differently we begin to measure personal success in terms of success of the model we employ.

For example some parents (usually of only one child), directly attribute their child’s good behavior to their exceptional parenting skills.

This could be accurate, or it could be self-delusion.  I tend to take their gushing advice with a grain of salt, wary of such a small sample size.

Just yesterday I was talking with another mom about homeschooling and we were comparing methods (not competing, just finding out. She’s literature-based; I do half our subjects with workbooks and the other half orally).  I felt a warm, cozy comfort at our easy conversation, how we both tied our choices to our personalities and lifestyles, rather than the inherint *rightness* of the method itself.

I said so to her, saying how thankful I am to have several years “this way” behind me now, so I can compare a  track long-enough to let me see both when and how my method really works and when it doesn’t.  But how, over all, it averages out as effective.

My biggest discomfort in these “differences” interactions (whether it’s about parenting or schooling) is when someone attributes to the method what could just as easily be individual variation.  For “failures” or “successes.”

Natasha was reading by age five.  Melody, in the same environment, was still slogging through her phonics workbook at age six.  Some people asked if we were doing the right thing. If we were using the right curriculum.  And I did compare it to some other options, but felt nothing offered more than what we were using already.

Now seven, and nearly finished with those questioned phonics workbooks, Melody has a *solid* foundation that she builds on every day.  She has developed independent study skills, problem-solving skills (we’re still working on focus and speed, but we’ve got time), and I couldn’t be more pleased with the progress she’s made.

~ ~ ~

There is so much individual variation between children that I really think once you have something solid (by any objective standard you can measure), as long as it’s not actually making life more complicated (we had one of those, too), it’s a matter of persevering.

Elisha has begun the same series of workbooks– despite my intent to hold him back one more year– and I can already see that he, like Melody a year ago, isn’t quite clicking with it.

~ ~ ~

I haven’t decided if I’ll do an enforced hold until he’s older (my original plan) or keep working intensively with him.  One of the reasons I love the 50% workbooks approach is that it allows me to work independently too.

The books we use are so gradually advancing that the kids can frequently “self teach,” which is really important to me.  Not because I want to keep them out of my hair (they wouldn’t be homeschooled if that was important to me), but because I se my life as been one long string of self-teaching.

I consider it one of the most-valuable life skills they can learn, so I’m thankful to have found texts that reenforce this value of mine.

~ ~ ~

One of the reasons studying personality has been so important to me is how it allows me incorporate that understanding of equality into interactions where differences could start to look like mistakes. Like someone “getting it wrong.”

What I want to remember, what I want to extend grace over, is that correct can be a lot-broader of a path than I choose to walk myself.

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VICTORY!

Two nights ago we had one of those moments that, as parents, you wonder if they’ll ever come.

On Monday night all three children ate rabbit for dinner. Two of them requested more quinoa, and the one who refused quinoa ate double helpings of the spinach/pear/feta salad.

For dessert they all ate double helpings of spice-cake muffins sprinkled with powdered sugar, requesting the leftovers for breakfast; and those were held together with broccoli and carrot purees.

This came after a pancake victory last week where a buckwheat-heavy recipe was eagerly consumed and declared *delicious* by the entire family (when a year ago buckwheat was too strong for anybody but me).

It’s times like these when I feel a huge relief: we really are changing, growing, transforming our tastes and habits.

We may be slow, but persistence really seems to mean something in real life.

 

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Natasha’s First Story

So Natasha’s English curriculum guided her through writing a “personal story” paper, and I coached her.  She did the steps over a couple days.

Listing topics

This was actually traumatic because she knew what she wanted to write about and I still wanted her to write at least one more thing down.  She doesn’t like writing any more than I did at her age, so I’m always looking for functional reasons for her to write to get a bit more practice.

Picking one (Check.), making a list of things to mention in the story, and then deciding the order of presintation of the list. Then she was supposed to write, self-check/revise and then rewrite it.

I added the steps of telling me before she wrote her first draft because (as a storyteller, and knowing how discouraging the physical mechanics of writing can be) I wanted this oppertunity to stay wonderful.

It was wonderful. Somewhere between making the list and deciding what order the things should be presented in she realised she was preparing to write a story.  Like Mama writes stories.

And her motivation was so high it was adorable and a delight.  When she got to the writing stage she sometimes had to ask how to spell words. I’d help her sound things out (unless they were sight-words.  Then I just told her), and before the end she was sounding out her own words.  And feeling GREAT about that, too.

Every sentence was a triumph, and after each one she had to stop to read me the whole piece from the beginning.

There were so many fun things coming out of her mouth I kept tweeting them, so here’s the train in 140 characters or less:

  • So excited! I’m coaching my oldest through her first writing project. “1st draft. Just get the words down- ideally where they make sense.”
  • Me: Good use of commas. N: What are commas? (The power of good reading and writing-play.)
  • Me:The little curly things after the names. What do you think they’re for? N: They’re like *ands* only… not.
  • Thank you Daddy for taking us to that rocket launch. This is so great. N (singing): This is so fun! This is so fun! I’m writing a *story!*

After we went over her first draft she rewrote it, and this is her final product.

At 1:00 AM, January 28, we went to a rocket launch. I went with Mom, Dad, Melody, and Elisha. At 1:40 AM, the rocket launched and it made a big light on the horizon. When the rocket got into the sky it made a big BOOMing noise. Then we went home and went to bed.

The End.

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Downsizing a Kitchen

In the next month–Lord willing– I will be moving into a new house (and by “new” I mean a 40-year-old cabin, albeit one blessed with running water; not a given in my community).

The layout is fine, but the storage options in my new kitchen are limited to two sets of cabinets: one below the sink’s counter, and one above.

We’ll probably add some more once we get the appliances in and see where they’d fit. But, even with the extras I estimate I’ll have about 1/3 the storage space I enjoy in my current kitchen.

I will have a dry cabin right outside the front door, so any non-daily stuff (pressure-canner!) and pantry storage won’t have to fit in the actual kitchen.

This post is to throw an open door to this sort of advice: What bare minimums would you keep in a stripped down kitchen?

Some of my first answers surprised me, for example, between my salad-spinner and my Kitchen Aid mixer, I’d pick the first.

You see, since going gluten-free most of my baked-goods have been one-batch experiments, hardly worth the effort of unpacking then washing. On the other hand, I’ve really enjoyed the simplicity of the spinner’s results, and food that needs rinsing is cheaper anyway, which makes it the kind I’m most likely to buy.

Fortunately (she says with a grit-tooth grin) my minimalistic living while our house was on the market this summer can inform these choices.

My off-the-top list (these are all things I have and use already. The goal is to keep handy only the constantly used):

  • Dishes to eat off of, and silverware.
  • All my mixing bowls
  • Two of every measuring cup (my ill-fated attempt to use just one of each really cramped me in the kitchen this summer) and all my spoons.
  • Two bread pans, three cookie sheets and four Silpats (non-stick silicone mats. *Perfect* for GF cookies) and silicone baking cups (did you know these will work on a cookie sheet? Means I can pass on the cupcake tins.)
  • Full pot rack (freebie, since it can just hang )
  • Vitamix blender
  • Knife block
  • Microwave and/or toaster oven (These last four will likely fill most of the available counter space– though we usually stack these last two.)

Aaand that’s about as far as I’ve broken it down.  I’m not entirely sure how to divide the food or remaining “filler” that currently finds its home in my kitchen.

Anybody with experience or insight will be heard with great eagerness.

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The Amalgamation of Childhood

Listening to my children play is like picking apart the seeds of dreams.

Elisha and Melody have been play slave-escape stories again tonight, and Elisha restarted a scenario, carefully setting it up:

“The White Dragon will protect us from the Red Dragon–Kill it! And then help us escape to Freedom.  Carry us. But not in its jaws, on its back.”

Care to see the sources?

I love the way my kids produce stories.

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Countdown

I am so hungry for closure right now.

We only have until October 27, and then our contractual relationship with our realtor will end.

The house will be off the market for the amount of time it takes for their buffer-zone (where they claim their full commission despite being out of contract) to expire, and then it will be up to us.

I wanted to start this way, but considering only 3 or 4 houses like ours have sold in the six months we’ve been on the market (and we might not have know that on our own), I’m thankful we went “by the book” at first.

Jay plans to take off of work two extra days after we’re off-market, in order to help us move back in.  This is a huge blessing, especially considering he’s been completely comfortable with the Spartan lifestyle of the last six months.

It’s the kids and I who’ve been missing our comfort objects.

For six months we’ve maintained our house “by the book,” keeping the rooms set up as the professional stager advised.

This has been hard for me on a few levels, especially considering how much I enjoy rearranging in our little house. It’s always made me feel rather creative.

Now (or rather, in three weeks) we will be *living* in our own house again.  Yes, we’re still trying to sell– later– but for now we’re changing things back to our own:

The extra room will no longer house an unused bed.  It will return to the domain of books and toys (did I mention that we had a solid wall of bookcases in that room?  The longest wall. And all those books have been in boxes for this time).

And I freely admit that one of the biggest things I learned this season was that books are my comfort-object.  I’ve decided most adults have one: if it’s not a cell phone it’s a key wad, purse/wallet or pocketknife.

We will still be in ambiguity– not sure if God intends for us to stay in this home or move– but I anticipate a much more comfortable level of ambiguity.

One that might even include a dish-drainer and a Kitchen-Aid mixer again.

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When was the last time you cried while laughing?

Today, for me.

Here’s the scene:

Oh, yay, it’s snowing. Oops. I haven’t shoveled the yard in a bunch of days.  Ugh, that means I have to get dressed to go outside.  I was hoping to avoid that while sick.

[Be the adult, get dressed for the day {about noon} and stagger out to the living room realizing that simple act consumed my energy allotment for the hour.]

Thank God Jay’s back from his morning of running errands.  Collapse on the couch and confess negligence and abdication of scooping responsibility.

About this time Elisha comes back inside, glowing with smiles and cold.

Don’t worry Mama we saw it.  It’s not buried yet.

Now, I have already forgotten both that I’d offered the excitement of watching mama race the snow and a 4-year-old’s interest in poop.  I was only sick and tired and annoyed that one of my articulate children once again used a pronoun instead of a noun that would actually convey information.

I have grown to hate the words it and thing with severe intensity.  They’re like serotonin inhibitors– filling a hole that would normally be a channel, or at least a resting place, for something that could contribute a great deal more than the current squatter.

When I finally understood what the boy was talking about, he also conveyed that he and his sister were (helpfully!) doing what they could to make sure the piles were still visible.  Actively “brushing away” the still accumulating snowfall.

Keeping a straight face I politely informed him that I don’t want that job done any more, and asked him to leave things as they lay till Mother can deal with them herself.

Oh you don’t have to worry about that, Mama.

I am now worried.  This is a new phrase for him.

I be sure to stomp it.

How this could, in his mind be either helpful or reduce my inclination to worry, I think I’ll never know.  I was ready for a good cry by this point, and here was as good a trigger as any.  Jay was home and I could retreat for a little private catharsis.  But I couldn’t even speak, I was laughing so hard.  Tears streamed down my face, and poor Jay had to wait quite a while for my answer to, “What did he say?”

So I got my cry in the best possible way.  And yeah, I feel better, too.