Saluting people of courage from 2007

We are spending the New Year's holiday in Pennsylvania with our dear friends Tatiana and Tony, and their son Dario.

Tonight, we are saluting people who exhibited great courage in 2007, and also those we know who have made good positive changes in their lives, and can serve as inspiring examples for us and our children.

First, Benazir Bhutto, of course.

And Oscar Elias Biscet, who in November was honored in absentia by President Bush with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work to promote freedom in Cuba.

And the people of Venezuela who rejected Chavez's "reforms."

And most of the American soldiers stationed in the Middle East.

And Garry Kasparov.

And the Ladies in White in Cuba.

A big toast will go to Alejandro Ripoll Paez, Tatiana's brother, who this year escaped Cuba on his 12th try, on a speedboat to Mexico, and is now in Miami, working to bring his wife and children.

We are also celebrating those we know and love who took the initiative this year to make their lives better, to be true to themselves, which sometimes involves a good deal of courage:

My friend Harold, who left the priesthood this year after realizing that he didn't believe Catholicism is true.

My friend Patrick, who decided to have six months of chemotherapy to reduce the chance that his colon cancer will return.

My friend Donald, who left a job that wasn't right for him.

And, Tatiana, who, after teaching college Spanish for five years as an adjunct, talked herself into the Master's program in language and culture at Villanova, where she currently teaches Spanish.

All of these people inspire me.

Anyone have any other additions to this list?

A terrible day

I found out about Benazir Bhutto's assassination when I was on the treadmill this morning at the YMCA.

I am sad, and afraid.

If you think about the world, how many people of true courage can you really name? For me, Benazir Bhutto has headed the list. Find me someone braver than her.

One of my fears is that people here in the West won't make the connection -- you know who they are, the ones who claim that we should somehow try to make nicey-nice with all of the hostile wackos and dictatorships in the world -- won't recognize that the people who did this are the crazies whom we have to fight. They'd be happy to do it HERE, damn it. To YOUR kids. To YOUR friends.

I am so afraid that without Bhutto's restraining sobriety, that part of the world will begin (or accelerate, depending on your perspective) a terrible downward spiral. What chance do all of the oppressed women in the Islamic nations have now? (I'm sure many of them are getting the message: Take off the chador, babe, and you'll just SEE what happens to you.)

I want to go back to yesterday.

Biggest hits

The biggest hits this morning were

1) The Barbie 2-in-1 Party Plane and Cruise Ship


As I suspected, this was Numero Uno by far. I'm so glad I got it for Ella. Not only did she LET me play with it, she ASKED me to play with it. I got to be Hairstylist Barbie and teenaged daughter Barbie. Ella was both Mom Barbie and Dad Boybie. (We had gotten a male Barbie a few years ago, not Ken, but Blaine, the next guy, and Madison promptly named him Boybie. So Boybie he has remained.)

Madison was the cruise attendant Barbie and Captain. The Captain was a Prince Barbie, now demoted to both Pilot and Captain, depending on whether we're playing Cruise or Plane Flight.

Even better, it all folds up into a neat package for storage.

2) The Bike

Madison wanted to ride it in the house.

3) The Sled.

They're now out sledding in Ellison Park.

I'm going to take a walk by myself in Corbett's Glen across the street. Then I'm going to sew a comforter cover for our bed, because what other day of the year do I have the luxury of sitting around the house and watching America's Test Kitchen (of which I've taped about six episodes) and sew. I'm really tired of supplementing our comforter with an old twin Winnie the Pooh blanket, it needs a nice cover.

Madison came up to me this morning as I was eating chocolate-covered pretzels and reading Washington's Crossing (appropriate day to read about that) by David Hackett Fischer. She slipped her arms around my neck and whispered, "Thanks for the bike, Mom. I knew when we saw it in Target that you'd find a way to get it."

I said, "Hey, Santa brought that, you're not supposed to thank ME for any Christmas gifts, that's the point, they're from Santa."

"I know," she said, "but I wanted to thank you anyway, it's really great and you should know that I say thank you."

Because that's just the kind of kid she is.


Later: We always listen to WXXI, the local classical music station, on Christmas. And they just played a really strange piece which was a combination of "The Little Drummer Boy" and Ravel's "Bolero." I can't decide whether it works.

Division by Zero

Madison, and, lately, as a result of Madison's interest, Ella, has taken to looking for ways to combine the numbers on the digital clocks on the kitchen stove and on the VCR. For example, at 11:31, she'll suddenly say: "One plus one plus one equals three!" and at 11:38, she'll say: "One plus one, cubed, equals 8! The two of them are now always alert to ways to successfully combine the numbers on the screen. I taught neither of them to do this, although I will admit that I always did it as a kid, too. (It's how I learned that if the digits in two different numbers add up to the same thing, the difference between them will always be divisible by 9. E.g., 95-77=18.)

At 2:00 this afternoon, Madison asked what it would mean to divide a number by zero. "What would be 2 divided by 0?" I explained that it was meaningless, that you can think of what it would mean to divide a number into 2 pieces or 4 pieces or 1 piece but not into 0 pieces."

"That's scary," she said.

"What's scary?" I asked.

"That it could be meaningless. I wish I hadn't asked the question. I wish I could dial back my life to before I asked the question and not ask it."

She felt a little better when, a few minutes later, David said that some people interpreted the answer to division by 0 as infinity. He took her through the reasoning: What if you divided something by 1/2? 1/4? 1/100? She saw how it got bigger and bigger the smaller fraction you divided something by, and how if you got small enough of a fraction you get such a big number that it approaches infinity.

Ella can't help but read

I was talking with Laura earlier this fall about possibly using The Writing Road to Reading because I was feeling a little discouraged about Ella's progress or lack thereof. Everyday reading was such an effort for Ella that she didn't really try when she didn't have to for school. But Laura told me that part of the effect of WRTR is that soon Ella wouldn't be able to help reading.

I was skeptical.

But, I can see now that the corner has been turned. Ella can't help reading. She got a new computer game, Barbie as the Island Princess, for Lightbulb Day, and in wandering around through it, she *just reads*. Not the long explanations, mind you, I guess they seem daunting, but everyday words and phrases and sentences that pop up now and again. They just seem to go into her head effortlessly. It's been a long time since Ella got a new game and so the difference in that is startling.

Of course, as with everything, it's impossible to tell whether this was just primarily "her time" or if this is the cause. But I'm really pleased. Thanks, Laura.

And Madison still can't help spelling, even more so in the last week. It's as though she can suddenly see the words broken apart in her head, and can relate them verbally. What was once just a picture on the page that she read effortlessly is something that now has logical (or illogical) parts. And I'm pretty sure that this is due to WRTR, as I've never heard of a magic "click" moment for spelling that happens naturally, and it didn't seem like Madison was primed for one of these moments, anyway. We deliberately took a right turn in spelling with WRTR, and it brought her brain some new skills that she wasn't heading toward on her own.

Just a picture-taking time of year, I guess

We got our Christmas tree today (the latest we've ever gone before Christmas without one).



Later in the afternoon, we hung our ornaments. Each year, we get three ornaments from somewhere we travel: One for us, one for Madison, and one for Ella. David and I started out with some cable cars from San Francisco in 1995. By the time each of them is 18, they'll have their own "starter set" to move to their own house. Madison said that we already have a lot. I pointed out that over the next 10 years before she's 18 we'll have 30 more.

"Or 40," she pointed out. "If you guys split up."

After a long, surprised pause, we came to understand that she meant if David and I get separate sets of ornaments.

Then there was more clowning around.



And this was my favorite:

Karate kids move up a belt

They had a very nice belt ceremony at Martial Arts America, where Madison and Ella go for karate twice per week. I really like how they do things there. The instructors take it seriously, but not deadly seriously. The girls really have improved in the last year.

My camera was not cooperating very well, but I got some okay shots.



Here is Madison doing the kata with her group:



I was able to crop the others out of Ella's shot:

Happy Lightbulb Day!

Tonight's the Big Night.



Hope your Lightbulb Day is bright!

Shopping is the best therapy

I’m sure I’m not alone as a parent in thinking that my kids are so wonderful that I’d like to get them anything they want, everything they want, in fact. And yet…what about the stuff that I wish they didn’t want?

Ella has been hankering for one of those big plastic Barbie sets, you know, the ones with all of the little plastic accessories that really HURT when they get crunched by a bare foot…the ones that look like a bunch of cheap pink plastic junk rather than some of those great toys that last forever that I wrote about in the article on KOA.

Well, I’ve been remembering, lately, a Christmastime when I was about six, and how my parents refused to get anything Barbie-ish other than the actual doll, telling me it was a lot of expensive and trendy junk that would never last. Remember the Barbie Country Camper? I remember it vividly. I wanted that Camper like nobody’s business. And I realized, as I was shopping this week, that I shouldn’t remember something like that vividly. Or, at least, my daughter shouldn't. What I'm recalling, of course, is not that Santa never brought the Barbie Country Camper, but the dismissiveness with which my father treated me desire for it.

I had these visions of Ella, 32 years down the road, complaining to some therapist about how her mom would stomp on her aesthetic sensibilities by refusing to get the pink plastic stuff she craved. So, right there in Toys Backwards-R Us tonight, I told my own good taste to hold its tongue (so to speak). I loaded into my cart the 2007 equivalent of the Barbie Country Camper: the Barbie Party Plane & Ship 2-in-1 Playset. With music! And lights! It all seemed so right.

And I bet, come Tuesday, that Ella will even let me play, too.

Birds and bees

Explained sex and birth control to the girls over lunch today, in response to Ella's question about whether you can prevent a pregnancy from occurring. Kicked in menstruation, too, as part of the explanation of how different birth control medicines work. Why would anyone want to have sex if they didn't want to make a baby? they asked. It feels good, I said.

"But not for kids," said Madison.

"Right."

"For kids it would hurt."

"Yes. You have to grow a lot for things to be the right shape and size."

Their reaction was engaged interest in the facts. Certainly nothing like Madison's initial response when she asked how the sperm got to the egg (when she was five, I think), which was "EEEEEEEW." This discussion was infinitely more satisfying than that one, at least for the parent.

Nate the Great

It's a Nate the Great morning here in the Ross house. Ella has already done her Nate the Great reading (she does about 5-6 pages; Nate the Great is a perfect struggling level for her--difficult, but she can get it), and we're having pancakes to celebrate.

Not fish pancakes, though.


Madison is profoundly hooked on Trixie Belden. This is the third day. She is on Book 3. Good thing the library had some.


Mostly finished the shopping last night, YES! Need to get a "big" present for Ella, though. Madison's big present was a bike.

Spelling

I really think the Writing Road to Reading program is having a big effect on Madison's spelling. I'm a little bit off-program on WRTR, in that nowadays we basically review the rules, and then plunge right in annotating the words they want to spell.

For example, this morning, Ella wrote out her Christmas List. Then, I wrote it out big and properly, and together, we went syllable by syllable and annotated it. They like this, particularly Madison.

The effect that it's been having lately on Madison is that she is, a bit annoyingly, often SPELLING when you ask her a question. But she's spelling properly, and fast.

"It's time to get your karate uniform on, Madison."

"I - space - K-N-O-W - space - T-H-A-T - period."

I don't fuss about how annoying that is, except when she does it to Ella's face, JUST to be annoying, because she knows Ella can't process the verbal spelling as fast as Madison has been doing it.

So this is all good news.

Best thing to do during a blizzard

It's snowing hard outside. This is our backyard.



We decided to make gingerbread houses.



Of course, children fight when they have to work on the same gingerbread house. (This is wisdom from last year.) So I decided to get out the Halloween gingerbread house that we forgot to make at Halloween. Ella is making that one:



She doesn't know about her mustache yet.

Blizzard

Ella just reported to me that the snow is coming from the east, which is very unusual here in Rochester; usually weather comes from the northwest or west. The great weathervane that the girls created went down in the sleet last week, but it would be buried by now anyway. We'll make another soon, because Ella in particular found it so interesting to see which direction the wind was blowing from.

Ella is uncommonly good at orienting herself in space...from the house, she always knows which direction is north, south, east, and west, and is usually able to figure it out when we're out and about, as well. This leads me to think that something about this ability is inborn--I have a really good sense of direction, too, and it just feels like there's some sense I have that I tap into, rather than having developed it intellectually some way. Watching Ella's progress, it seems like she learned this effortlessly and does it naturally; I can tell the difference between things she has worked hard to acquire and things that she can "just do"--and directions are one of those things. I do math spacially, too, and it seems that Ella is the same way.

Since she has this predilection, we've been looking at weather maps online lately, so she can relate her immediate orientation to the map. That's a bit harder for her, but still enjoyable.

Both a good and bad thing, depending on your perspective

I discovered this week that my new KitchenAid Mixer, properly employed, makes Grandma Zydzik's chrusciki recipe with about a thousand percent less effort. And it took a 3-hour job and paired it down to an hour. Worked great for giving to the choir teachers and neighbors. Not so good for my waistline; most of the effort for chrusciki (and the secret to success for this pastry) typically goes into kneading and kneading and KNEADING the dough, which, before I had the mixer, at least shaved off some of the calories. The incredients are: egg yolks, sour cream, flour, sugar, a pinch of salt, and vanilla...shaped into bow ties and deep fried in Crisco, then drenched in powdered sugar.

I would have taken a photo of the chrusciki, but they were gone too fast.

Old family joke (or one that I may have made up 20 or more years ago):

Question: What's the shelf life of chrusciki?
Answer: No one knows, it never lasts long enough to be put back on the shelf.

This is the extent of the Polish heritage that has filtered through (the recipe, not the joke). It's the best part, probably.


Hunkering down for the blizzard today...

Naturalism vs Romanticism

I'm pleased to say that I've been working hard on the book, the first novel of what I hope will be a terrific series for 8-to-12-year-olds. It stars a group of homeschooling kids who live near Powder Mills Park in Pittsford, NY, and who come upon a mysterious treasure chest with even more mysterious contents floating in Irondequoit Creek.

Madison and I have been researching this book for over a year, mostly because it is (or wants to be, let's hope that it works) a romp through classic children's mystery literature, and we've had to read a LOT of it. She reads, she reports, I check out, I write, she reads, and we edit edit edit.

Anyway, I'm in Chapter 9 of what I think will be about 16 chapters. Been humming along, of late, despite being overworked on various dimensions. (My goal is to get it published before May 5, 2009, my 40th birthday.)

Madison and I were talking about the progress today, and she pointed out that this book, like most of the others that she likes, like the Boxcar Children and Nancy Drew, have "perfect" children in them, and that this is perhaps unrealistic.

"No one ever gets into snits," she complained. "And maybe the readers like that better, but I think that's unrealistic. Maybe we should have Karen Rose and Alexander have a fight or something, or have one of them be snotty to their parents."

I talked with her about how novels and movies portray only things that are essential to the plot, rather than peripheral things. "You know people have to go to the bathroom now and again," I explained. "But we never see that, because it's not part of what drives the story along."

"Well, maybe not," she agreed. "But I think maybe we should try to move away from presenting perfect kids, and go for more realistic kids. Maybe kids should be able to relate to our characters rather than want to be like them."

Émile Zola, reincarnated, perhaps?

I took the opportunity to describe how this was actually a big debate in the 19th century, Naturalism vs. Romanticism, and how we've had several representatives of both in our Birthday of the Day (William Blake was recent) in literature, art, and music. She was interested that this all has a name. But I think she was more interested in winning a point, and in having me alter the book to be more realistic. I told her that she should propose whatever she thinks would be good for the book, just let me know.

In other news...

I brought the girls to a new dentist today, a pediatric dentist. Madison really hadn't hit it off with my dentist (at her first visit, when she was 4, she wouldn't open her mouth, and every time thereafter it was a struggle for her to allow stuff to be done inside her mouth...partly a gag reflex and partly a control issue). After the last time when Dr. Parnes seemed a little frustrated with her, I thought maybe a change would do her good.

I asked around and got a glowing recommendation from one of the senseis at karate for this group, which is mostly women. We went this morning, and Madison really hit it off with them. They understood her issues, and worked with them. She pronounced them a vast improvement over "the last guy." Ella, on the other hand, always loves a trip to the dentist, has no problem opening her mouth and chatting up a store. Today, though, she didn't like the taste of the toothpaste (she chose "chocolate mint" flavor from among a vast array) or the feel of the toothbrush so well, and it colored her whole experience. It's good that Madison really likes these folks, because she needs to get her back teeth sealed in a couple of weeks, and she needs to make an orthodontist appointment pronto because her mouth is so crowded. These people don't submit your paperwork to your insurance company for you, but I'm assured they're worth it. Seems to be true.

First boy-talk, ever

Aunt Tamra's Christmas package -- having three boys, she loves to shop for girls' clothes -- arrived this morning. Much squealing ensued. ("Aunt Tamra has really overdone herself this year!" said Ella. I had visions of Tam staying too long in a tanning booth, but I didn't have the heart to correct Ella on the wording.)

"Gee, Ella," said Madison, as Ella put on a denim skirt and denim jacket, both embroidered with colorful flowers. "That's beautiful. That will really attract the boys."

"It will?" said Ella, with a skeptical look on her face. "Do I want it to?"

"Sure, you do," said Madison, cheerfully. "Come on, let's go upstairs and I'll get you looking so good that all of the boys will want to have a date with you right away."

They came down. Ella had her hair brushed (!) and a navy hair band holding it back.

"You look nice," I said.

"Yes," said Madison. "And I did up her eyes and lips really nice, too."

"Oh, really?" I said. "I can't see anything different there."

Without pausing a lick, she replied, "Oh only the boys will be able to notice."

Ah, if she only knew.

I guess I'd better tell David that he'll need to start getting the baseball bat ready.

Update: We're finishing up school for the day, and Madison is pretending to be a boy named Max who is at "real" school, chatting up "Elizabeth" (Ella) in the funniest "deep" voice. I'm gathering that she's doing this so that Ella starts getting experience talking with "guys."

Honestly, I can barely bear to listen, both because it reminds me of exactly how I used to play with my little sister, and how I used to wince at the memories not too many years after we used to engage in the same kind of play-acting. Besides, I'm inclined to think that they're too young to be thinking about this. Maybe they've been picking up this kind of talk at Brownies, or something.

You're the Top

At one point, David and I started using the song "You're the Top" as a good gradual cultural literacy discussion.

Here is a link to the lyrics. We don't sing 'em all, quite. David says that there are several versions.

But we were discussing tonight:

You're the National Gall'ry
You're Garbo's salary
You're cellophane.

David asked if either of them knew what "Garbo's salary" meant. Ella said,

"I think it's kind of a salad-thing that you eat..."

What? Where on earth did she get such an idea? We were perplexed. We couldn't help giggling up a storm.

Snuggling into bed a few minutes later, still a little perturbed at our giggle-fest, she explained it to me.

"Mom, I was thinking of that stuff that you eat. We made some at the cooking class."

Oh oh ooooooh! They made Waldorf Salad at the cooking school. There's a line a little further down in the song:

You're the top!
You're a Waldorf salad.
You're the top!
You're a Berlin ballad.

And what's in a Waldorf salad? Of course, CELERY!

(Although not exactly Garbo's celery.)

Absurd Math

Melissa Wiley's blog gave me this link to

Absurd Math

It's a free online math game in which you travel to an absurd world somewhere in the universe to help save civilization as they know it. It's designed to nurture pre-Algebra skills.

Madison and I played it yesterday morning. She loved it, although she needed my help for some of the math. She got the logic and the "feel" of playing the game within a few episodes.

I really think Raymond would like it, Laura, you should check it out.

Christ, The Messiah runs long

What a weekend it was. Madison had two rehearsals on Saturday for the two concerts on Sunday.

The first concert, at 2pm, was called "OrKIDstra" with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, at the Eastman Theatre. This is a series that the RPO does four or five times per year, special concerts for children. They always sell out. This one was a holiday show featuring "The Polar Express," a musical rendition of Chris Van Allsburg's beautiful book.

You'd think such a thing would be cheesy. In this day and age, what isn't? But it wasn't, it was beautiful. The Bach Children's Chorus combined with the Amadeus Chorale and a great baritone from the Eastman School. The baritone sang the part of the narrator, which was almost exactly just a simple word-for-word rendering of Van Allsburg's book. The choir sang a kind of echo part that was fairly musically complex. All in all, just lovely.

Then afterward we ZOOOOMED across town to a 4 o'clock concert at the Hochstein School of Music & Dance where the choir was doing The Messiah with the Rochester Oratorio Society and the Rochester Chamber Orchestra.

It was long. Really, really, long. I'd forgotten just how long The Messiah is. Two and a half hours. David took Ella home at intermission, it was just too much. And for the last 3/4 of the program, the choir was up there on stage with the the Oratorio Society and the Orchestra.

For 77 kids to have such a rigorous day of concerts, that's asking a lot. I hadn't realized that they'd have to stay up there motionless on the stage for 2 hours. I am pretty sure Madison had not realized it. And some of the younger kids did NOT rise to the occasion. They forgot (or didn't care?) they were up there, and some started whispering. A couple even played some hand game called "chopsticks." It was distracting.

But not MY kid.

No, Madison pretty much sat rigidly at attention, with her face turned toward the conductor. Once, she carefully put a restraining hand on the girl next to her--unfortunately, the girls misbehaving were only a few kids to her left, but otherwise was perfect. Perfect. My little 8-year-old. I was so proud. I know how hard it is not to be distracted by such things. I found myself feeling a bit relieved that there were so few boys in the choir.

At intermission, the choir manager, June Santini (the Great Santini) read the choir the riot act. And they were a lot better behaved in the second half. But the thing is, it's such a LONG piece, and the time between their numbers ran to 45 minutes or more. They'd had a long, hard day, and many of them almost started falling asleep. Lots of yawns. Some slumps. Some chins on hands. Some heads on back of seats.

I watched Madison's face, and it reminded me of this great video we have of her, at about age 1, in her high chair. It's a 3-minute segment of her falling asleep in the high chair, trying not to, jerking her eyes open, and finally succumbing. On the other hand, this 8-year-old has a force of will that the 1-year-old did not. I was so impressed with her keeping herself focused and awake.

The soloists that they had for the four parts were great. The bass was particularly impressive, a guy named Derrick Smith who is a faculty member at Eastman and has sung opera all over the world. I would give a lot to see him do "Porgy," which is apparently one of his roles. The alto soloist, I can't remember her name, is blind, and the kids got to meet her and her guide dog after the performance. Very interesting for them to see her with a Braille score up on stage.

I had a $5 gift card from Target which could only be used yesterday (I know, weird) so after the performance Madison and I went out (alone...which, I can't remember having been able to do with her in the last six years so that was nice) for Indian food and then to Target so she could spend the gift card on whatever she wanted. She spent over 45 minutes carefully going through the options, and finally selected a black-and-white stuffed puppy which she named Pepper.

I told her that she'd earned the three of us a day in which she gets to do anything she wants. So, today is a mental health day. Well, at least, a mental health morning. No school. She and Ella are playing Club Penguin. I get to finish decorating for Christmas, organize the attic, and organize the basement. Then we'll go to their gym-and-swim class, the library, and karate. And then more of doing Whatever Madison Wants.

I kind of wish they weren't so delighted with the No School option. Ah, well, who said my kids were different from any other.

Frost

After Rational Jenn posted an enthusiastic link to my Lightbulb Day post, I got into a little back-and-forth with one of her commenters about whether Robert Frost's poem "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" is about death. I don't think so.

I sought John Enright's opinion, and he has a nice post about it on his blog at
http://john-j-enright.livejournal.com/433810.html

Update: And here, too.

What a crazy idea

Sometimes I think to myself that I'm insane to think that I can run a 1/2 time technology consulting business, 1/2 time web site publishing business, and home school my kids.

Today is one of those days.

12pm and the only education they've had is what David gave them this morning on the Birthday of the Day (Ira Gershwin).

Lightbulb Day's A-Comin'

I thought for this year I'd write up how we celebrate Lightbulb Day and post it on KidsOutAndAbout.com:

http://rochester.kidsoutandabout.com/main-articles/lightbulbday.html

Who knows, maybe it'll catch on.

Concert

The girls had their first (and only, of the season) choir concert together tonight, with both the Bach Children's Chorus and the Mozart Children's Chorus performing. The Greece Choral Society, an adult choir, also sang, and it was a beautiful concert. Thoroughly enjoyable and would have been touching even were my children not in it. The girls were really gratified that our friends Tom and Susan also came; that made it particularly special to them.



The experience of having one's children in the performance is unnervingly unlike not having one's children in the performance. I'm sure David, with his nerves of steel, doesn't experience it this way at all, but for me, it's almost like I'm up there with them. Ella, in the younger chorus, had a distractingly active girl standing next to her during the performance. Well, it was as if I was there with her, up there on the risers, as Ella thought to take hold of the little girl's hand discretely to prevent her from waving it around. I was experiencing what it was like for my six-year-old to have to focus so hard not to be distracted and sing and behave properly, and then summon that little bit of extra maturity to try to calm her neighbor without drawing extra attention.

I am having a hard time explaining what this is like without making it seem like I'm living through my kids in an unhealthy way. And I won't even try to explain how proud I was of them tonight, and how happy I am that they love to do this thing that is so GOOD for them.

Anyway, after their parts were done, then I could relax and enjoy the rest of the performance in a different way.

(Yes, of course I wept. As usual. Discretely.)

Let breakfast go too long

Without enough food, Madison becomes kind of the rebellious proletariat. She goes on a self-righteous revolt against the ruling class.

Ella, on the other hand, becomes the damaged princess. She dissolves into a cut-off-the-nose-to-spite-the-face attitude whereby she's not going to eat if The Help doesn't cater to her every whim.

The Leaves are Buried Under Snow

What do you think? Should I try to scrape them out with the garden rake and put it them in the street to see if the town will still collect them?

The girls and I had raked them three weeks ago into a nice jumping pile, but then it has been always too wet to jump.

And now they're here:


Although you can't see them because they're under the snow.

Pretty sure I shouldn't leave them there until spring.

Maybe I'll solve this after I solve the burst-pipe-issue in the attic bathroom.

House photos

I know that all five of you are just dying to see how the rearranged living room and church room look. Actually, when I'm lacking energy (as I often did this week because it was so busy), I just walk over and look at the living room, or bring the laptop into the Church Room now. What Tatiana did really made a difference.

We call this the Church Room because the last owners took the covered patio that was off the back of the living room and enclosed it, using the salvaged wood and stained glass from a church that was being torn down. The TV is now in back of me. We love this room, Christian symbols and all. I hate the carpet, but as the floor underneath is just flagstone, even this carpet is pretty cold. We'll have to solve that problem before we yank it up.



Don't you think that it's somehow appropriate that a bunch of atheists should have a Church Room? And now that I put the space heater in it, it's cozy.

This is the view from the living room with my back to the fireplace, looking out to the front of the house. It is a very long living room. My dream is to have the wall to the left and the wall in front covered with bookshelves, floor to ceiling. To do it right seems to be pricey, I have to track down this Menonite guy we met in the spring who does this kind of thing and see how he prices it.



This is the view of our Rumford fireplace (original to the house). The Church Room is out the door to the left. I vow to bake bread in the upper oven this year. We'll see how that works.

Forecast

Today:

Snow.


Tomorrow:
Snow and freezing rain.

Monday:
Several inches of snow. And wind.

Tuesday:
Lake-effect snow.

Wednesday:
Cold with snow developing (developing?!).

Thursday:
Snow showers.

Welcome to Rochester! I guess it's December.

We are ready with the neat snow ruler that Tom and Susan gave us for our housewarming present last year. Only up here in the Great White North can a housewarming present be a snow ruler.



Here is a photo of our cool new handmade weather measuring instruments:

The weathervane works particularly well; that's the little thing on the right that we made with straws and some oak tag; unfortunately the arrow blends in with the background so it's hard to see in the photo. We watched it whip around yesterday as a windy period came in, then it settled down to be consistently from the northwest or west. It's pointing west-northwest in the photo. Ella has a real knack for directions; she was always able to know which direction it was pointing. They found it interesting that the arrow points *into* the wind rather than away from it.

Silent Week, Hectic Week

The day before Thanksgiving, David had taken the girls and Dario to Strong Museum:



The next day, we had a really good Thanksgiving dinner. David and Tony took Madison and Dario on an insane hike up the same waterfall we did at Conklin's Gully in October, only this time in very very cold and wet weather with wet leaves on the ground. They had a good time. I had a good time staying home and cooking in my nice warm kitchen. Tatiana had a nice time grading papers in my nice warm kitchen.

Then, of course, the squirrel ran over my cooling pumpkin pie outside my kitchen door:



But of course that could not keep us from eating around it. Tony said, "Hey, I'm Cuban. I'm honored to be eating the pie that was signed by an American squirrel." He probably wouldn't eat it if Castro signed it, though.

The bad news is that I did a taste test with two pies: using canned pumpkin, and using fresh pumpkin that I baked myself. The fresh one won hands-down. Too bad, because it's a lot more effort than opening up the $1.69 can from Libby's.

I discovered that there is nothing like having several people with discriminating taste buds tell you that the new Roasted Garlic Squash Soup you devised this year was the best thing at Thanksgiving dinner.

The next day was Madison's first of three days performing with the Bach Children's Chorus in The Nutcracker:



It was at the Eastman Theatre. It was beautiful. I cried. Of course. The administrative director of the BCC told me that parents of first-year participants cry a lot.

Before they left, Tony and Tata helped us totally rearrange the living room and the church room. We moved the TV into the church room, along with the black leather furniture. A definite improvement, and much more cozy to watch TV, especially with the space heater going.

This week, clients exploded all over me. AAAAGH! It's the holiday russh! every active and inactive client seemed to say. I NEED HER HELP NOW. The girls were happy to cede a lot of their school time to my clients. I was not happy to cede a lot of their school time to my clients. I felt guilty. But we got three cool science projects made today, all dealing with weather. We made a rain gauge that we think will work, a weathervane that definitely worked, and a wind meter that was too flimsy to work.

Today, just as I was finishing up my weekly KOA e-newsletter, Ella came in and told me that it was "raining" in the doorway of her room. Madison had just flushed the toilet right above said room. Ah, the joys of an old house. I emailed our real estate agent, who knows everyone around here,

If, hypothetically, you had a pipe burst under your attic-floor bathroom after your 8-year-old flushed the toilet, and you knew about it because the water started dripping down into your 6-year-old's room in the frame of her door and she came down and told you it was raining in her room, and you figured that the ceiling was going to have to be opened up to get at the issue...well, after you turned off the water to the toilet in question, who would you, personally, call?

She emailed me back:

Well, of course, speaking "hypothetically"...I'd go shopping & not come home until someone else had handled the problem! I'm thinking the Woodbury outlet downstate??

Then she gave me the names of a couple of plumbers. Sigh.

This weekend we have two hours of rehearsals tomorrow morning for the next concert, which is Sunday evening and (yay!) Tom and Susan will be joining us for it. Both Madison AND Ella are in this concert. Will post photos next week. We have Wigilia on Saturday afternoon, which is a traditional Polish Christmas Eve event that the Polish Society of Rochester puts on every year at the RMSC.

And now, the whole family is watching Ratatouille (that took me three tries to spell) in front of the TV with some Chinese food because I had absolutely no time to cook today. I'd better join them.

Happy Thanksgiving

The rolls are rising, the turkey is brining, Ella's tooth is loose, los Americanos are here, and my inbox has several email messages from KOA readers telling me they're thankful for my weekly newsletter. All is right with the world except for the flood in the basement from yesterday's rain, but even that can't dampen my spirits.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Patriots Crush Bills, 56-10, in our Presence

We went to our first professional football game last night, and it will probably be our last unless Patrick wants to go again in two years, for an afternoon game when it's reasonably warm out.

Even then, well, it was an experience that was fine to have, say, once.

We were with my colleague Steve and his two adult sons, one son's girlfriend, and my friend Patrick, who drove in from Cleveland for the occasion. All of us are Patriots fans, although we Rosses were really fans in an along-for-the-ride sort of way. They really get into it.

We were pretty amazed at the bad behavior of the Bills fans, and the way they shouted at our Patriots-gear-clad friends, despite the fact that we had little kids with us. We tailgated (also a new experience) for 3 (!) hours before the game. Steve brought the works: A grill, a tent, lots of food, a table, chairs, and a TV. It was a little windy, about 25-30 degrees, and a lot of people built fires in trash cans or out in the open. People were mostly drunk, very merry, and extremely messy. Steve said that the carnage left in the parking lot reminded him of third-world countries, minus actual open sewers. We reflected that we were happy that we worked with our brains, rather than being the people who were going to have to clean that up the next day. We hope they cleaned it up, that is. Pretty low-class.

The girls liked being at the game, they liked the hot chocolate, they liked talking about the rules of football, they liked meeting Patrick and interacting with Steve's family, they liked the fireworks at the beginning and singing The Star-Spangled Banner and seeing the Bills run out onto the field through a big blow-up tunnel. After that they were just pretty self-involved enduring the cold, so I think they were oblivious to all of the cursing going on around us. In our section, 339 (very high up), people were mostly merry, and so the cursing didn't have any bite to it. I think they would have noticed had people been angry. David took them home after the first quarter, which was the best thing for both him and them. There was a bit of endurance involved for him, too, and a great deal of detached gazing out at a very strange aspect of the subculture. I was amazed to discover that some people were still steadily drinking beer despite the temperature.

And then some magic happens...

Today, the girls and I went to see the Master's Thesis Defense of Hye Yon Yi, one of David's students who often babysits for the girls. Madison and Ella LOVE Hye Yon. They think she's the best babysitter EVER. David and I think she's a lovely young woman with a lot of potential, too. She invited us last week, so we went. Everyone there was much amused to see M & E there, and extremely complimentary afterward about how incredibly the girls behaved during the hour-long defense. Ella colored, but, to my surprise, Madison listened to the whole thing. She said afterward that she hadn't understood any of it, but she really was listening. I was proud.

Hye Yon's Master's Thesis was on "Turing Instabilities in a S-I-R Model." Don't know what that is? Neither did I, of course. Basically, her paper is a model of what happens mathematically in an epidemic. She took 10 cities from Mayan culture and proposed that each city has contact with exactly two other cities. Her work explored what happens mathematically to the population in terms of people susceptible to the disease but not yet sick, those sick, and those recovering from the disease. The aim was to determine under what conditions the cities are "stable" ("at equilibrium") in terms of what percentages of their populations fell into the three categories.

Here's the thing that's bothering me: I didn't get any of it. Well, ok, I got what I GOT (explained above) but I couldn't follow any of the math. Despite being married to a mathematician for lo these many years, and despite having "math awareness" above the average Jane, there was just no way in hell I was going to track with the equations on the PowerPoint slides. It occurred to me, to my chagrin, that I could probably make some sense out of a Master's Thesis in just about any subject BUT mathematics.

I really have the sense that learning math is different from learning just about anything else in our culture. And I think this is partly because most of us think this way: We understand math *up to a point*, and then, in higher math, SOME MAGIC HAPPENS that very few people understand. So they just decide not to bother.

It's the MAGIC quality of this all that is bothering me. I should know better than almost anyone that mathematics isn't magic at all, it's not confined to the realm of a few magic people who miraculously understand this stuff. It's a step-by-step acquisition of a bunch of knowledge that you have to focus on in a certain way to understand. I think that the accumulation of this knowledge is qualitatively different from most other knowledge, and that this is what makes people think it's magic. And, let me just say, it's hard.

It's worth repeating: It's hard. That's probably why I steered myself away from math and science and engineering (yes, no use trying to blame this on some kind of anti-woman culture, the fault was all mine) toward being an English major. Writing was just easier, and easier for me to be good at it. Yes, it was somewhat lazy, but it's not just that I was lazy; at the time, I didn't see anyone around me who had a good grasp of higher math, who could tell me that it really was possible to understand it with steady work. Even my father, who was a professor in the math department at one of the CUNY schools, couldn't explain calculus to me. (OK, he was actually more of an administrator, but STILL.) I imagined learning higher math not as the tortoise in Aesop's fable (which it really is), but as the hare--and, moreover, a hare who'd have to leap into a Star Trek transporter and be beamed over the finish line.

The MAGIC aspect of it all got me. I simply didn't see the path from where I was, Point A, to being a scientist. It wasn't Point B, it was Point Q. Plus, there is a cultural mystique about math that I bought into: the one about it being kind of impossible except for Superior Beings. My unstated attitude (and come on, admit it, it was yours too) was that only special people could survive being a math major, and that even for those people some magic must happen within those four years of college so that they could emerge knowing what Fourier Transforms are all about.

Living with David has of course taught me that it's not magic, that it's work, and that with good instruction anyone can learn it. This is what makes my experience this afternoon that much more frustrating. I should have been an engineer, there is no doubt about it. I would have loved it, ultimately. But I'm not an engineer, and while I COULD of course go back, that wouldn't make any sense; it would absolutely not be the best use of my time at the age of 38 when I have many other worthwhile things to accomplish.

On the other hand, I feel like I should know more math than I do, and this afternoon it was really bugging me. After living with David for so long and being fairly brainy myself, shouldn't I have picked up enough that Hye Yon's thesis defense should have made some kind of sense? The answer is easy: Duh, of course not, I haven't actually done the work. I have learned a fair amount of mathematics trivia, but not enough systematically to put it all together. And (interesting to me), I could kind of see where the gaps were in Hye Yon's presentation given what I know about math and science. But that didn't change my frustration this afternoon.

I would love to give a talk to teenagers called "And then some magic happens..." to try to bust through this mystique without giving the misimpression that higher math is easy. I want to explain that the magic is a myth, that young people shouldn't be intimidated or believe that they have to be somehow special to learn it. I want to explain that if anyone has done something, so can they, given interest and dedication to the effort of puzzling things out. Such a talk would be motivated by, but not degenerate into a wailing account of, my own having misled myself about this.

As you might guess, Madison and Ella will not be so misled. We certainly are not going to try to dictate what they end up doing as a profession--they will follow their own interests. But even if Ella becomes, say, a dancer, you can bet your life that Twinkle Toes will still know how to use a Gamma matrix.

You Can't Dry Yourself with a Wet Towel

Madison came up to me this morning and said,

"Hey, Mom, I've discovered a great new saying! At least I think it's a new saying. I've never heard it before. But I can't figure out where to use it:

"You can't dry yourself with a wet towel."

She's right! That would be a great saying!

So in what situations, my lovely literate readers, might one use the expression, "You can't dry yourself with a wet towel"? Get creative, here.

Southerners are most definitely welcome. I'll never forget Laura telling me, "Deb, your Northern-ness sticks to you like chewing gum to the cat."



In other news:

I've been a little quiet because we've had a little struggle and backtracking here at Mariposario in the last several days. David discovered over the weekend that Madison couldn't do multi-digit multiplication. She could, A YEAR ago! Damn it. I was embarrassed that I didn't know this, that we hadn't kept her up with it. (I know, if I'd been using Saxon math it wouldn't have happened, as that is so thorough and includes so much review.) And trying to get her to go back and do it has been like pulling teeth. It takes her an hour to do 6 problems, with a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth and lack of focus. If she'd just focus, she'd be fine, but she isn't, and she protests that she is when she's not. Ugh. I haven't gotten that much work done, we're all still working at 2pm, which is unusual for us.

I've dropped the ball a bit on the WRTR, too.

I haven't been to the gym in 2 weeks. I'm a little behind on my work, though not much, it's slowed down a little.

I haven't delivered the Girl Scout cookies yet.

It's time to regroup. I have to plan ahead more. Maybe I have to change some of my methods.

After all, you can't dry yourself with a wet towel.

Snow

It's what we came back to Rochester for, isn't it?

It's snowing. It wouldn't quite be enough to cause mass panic in Charlottesville, Virginia, although they panic at the drop of a flurry, and of course it doesn't even raise an eyebrow here in Rochester.

But it is very cozy.

Quarterly reports

Madison had her Penfield Recreation performance of "Holka Polka" this evening, in which she played both "Splenda," the sweet, if somewhat artificial, Good Witch of the South, and the evil Fairy Godmother. It was one of those 20-minute grade-school performances about which you have low expectations and then enjoy yourself when it comes together all right. She did nicely, and is, if I may say, stunningly cute and glowingly happy up on stage. We then went out to vote, during which David discovered that he had not actually registered to vote. And then we went out to dinner to celebrate Madison's performance (she chose Chili's). And then we all fell asleep at 9pm. Which means that I woke up at 11:30 and couldn't sleep, so here I am writing quarterly reports for the girls' home schooling.

We in NYS have fairly rigorous requirements. We have to submit what is called an IHIP (pronounced eye-hip)--a detailed Individualized Home Instruction Plan--and then provide detailed reports each quarter on progress, plus an annual progress wrap-up at the end of the academic year...and then every other year starting in the fourth grade, a standardized test.

I submit an IHIP each year that details my educational philosophy and plan of action with plenty of I-am-not-the-person-you-want-to-mess-with-trust-me written between the lines. In my quarterly reports, I refuse--REFUSE, I tell you--to submit a subject-hour-by-subject-hour estimate of time spent; instead I do as most of the other home schoolers around here do, which is ignore that requirement and instead write "at least 225 hours" at the top of each quarterly report. The weird thing about New York is that you submit your stuff to the school district, which then applies the letter of the law to whatever extent they feel like. (In Virginia, this was not the case...although you do submit to the superintendent of your school district, there are fewer rules and everyone abides by them...plus there, no one has the right to approve or disapprove your curriculum or how well you have documented, as long as you do the minimal reporting you need to.) We homeschoolers know which districts are the power-hungry ones around here (city of Rochester, Spencerport, and Brockport) that are interested in micromanaging you. Fortunately, although we live in Brighton, we're so far to the northeast that we're in the Penfield school district, which is known as being a bit more relaxed. The District liason recognized me right away (she even submits events to the KOA calendar) both as a semi-public figure and as a brainy type, and so I'm pretty sure she will never question what I provide.

Anyway, here I am, wide awake, writing quarterly assessments, which is somewhat pleasurable for me as a person of easy words, quick typing skills, and myriad things I could document about engaged and bright children, but which I could see would be a teeth-grinding chore for a different type of person.

Thin Mints

Ach, they are evil.

Fall Back

I love Fall Back time, and the extra hour of sleep came at a good time for us. I had been letting the kids' bedtime migrate starting from the ALCS playoffs, which was handy for things like the shows and concerts we've been seeing and participating in, but was sort of bad for home schooling -- they'd get up later, David would get to work later, we'd get started later. But because the stuff we do in the afternoons is at fixed times, we'd have to shorten the school day, so we've been getting less done. With Fall Back having happened this weekend, I can easily now put the kids to bed at 8 instead of 9, which meant that Ella got up at 6:45 this morning and we woke Madison at 7:45. So we were at it by 8:30, which I love. Thank goodness for home schooling, I can't imagine how we could get all of this accomplished if I had to rush them out the door at 7:30. We'd have to cut back or they'd be exhausted. This way they can get 9 1/2 hours of sleep. I've been reading how even elementary kids' lives are so crammed lately that they're getting less than 8 hours. Ick, I can imagine how perpetually cranky Madison would be.

Other things are also settling down. I'd been preparing for the party last week, and on this past Saturday I exhibited KOA at the Rochester Children's Book Festival. I had about 750 6-year-old KOA printed purple balloons from when I first got them made when KOA started, and so I rented an insanely big (I learned -- I'll never do that again...I'll always get two smaller ones even though it's more costly) helium tank from Party City and spent 6 hours blowing up and giving away 300-400 balloons. The kids helped, in the afternoon, after they got out of choir. The balloons were really effective, even though it seems that latex has a definite half-life, and over 1/3 of them broke or were hole-y before I even got the knot tied.

There's nothing like free balloons to get kids to drag their parents over to your booth. Madison and Ella were beyond thrilled at being the ones with all the balloons to give away, rather than being the one who wants the balloon. (I tell ya, I give these kids EXPERIENCES.) Anyway, I got a lot of signups to the KOA list, and it was also a real rush to ask parents, "Have you heard of KOA?" and often to get the answer "Oh, gosh, yes, I get the email every week, I love it, I always look forward to it, are YOU Debra Ross?" It was a lot of fun for me. And really exhausting, too. I smashed various fingers and toes in the whole helium tank escapade, and wore away bits of skin on my right index finger from tying balloons for six hours, but it was worth it.

And I can now settle in with nothing more looming that I have to prepare for. Aside from work, that is, and my kids' education. Oh, and we have to distribute and collect the money for the Girl Scout cookies that came in yesterday. And we're having a cookie booth at RIT (the troop is, I arranged it) to sell G.S. cookies on Friday.

I've actually been quite prolific on the Frontier Team book that I'm writing (with Madison, to some extent). We got delayed with the research, romping through classic children's mystery books and finding "rules for detecting" contained therein so we could reference them in our book, and we're still doing that to some extent. But I've been getting the story fairly well fleshed-out, lately, and we're about 1/3 of the way through the book. Frankly, being at the RCBF on Saturday was inspiring, in that if these people could be successful authors, there's no reason I couldn't be. And I have a built-in marketing machine, anyway, so I'm hoping I'm that much more appealing to a larger publisher. We'll see. It's been fun putting in real-life places and people in Rochester, too. And weaving good reasoning in there, both implicitly and explicitly.

Patrick

Today, my dear friend Patrick will finish up his final chemotherapy treatment for colon cancer, the 12th of 12, although it will be some time before the side effects completely release him. What a year it has been for him. The prognosis is good, I’m happy and relieved to say.

Patrick and his family actually have a lot to do with who I am as an adult. On October 19, 1991, Patrick’s little brother was in a near-fatal car accident and took 5 weeks to emerge from a coma. We were 22, Dan was 17. That was a soul-etching incident for me, and it’s the reason I am cheerful, as a rule, now. Really. We didn’t know whether Dan would live, or ever be himself again. I remember being in terrible pain about this...then, right at the depths of my despair, it occurred to me that I’d never felt as acutely alive as I had at that moment.

After that, everything was relative to that day. No matter what setbacks occurred in my life, as long as no one was terribly sick, or in the hospital, or dying, I have typically been able to keep it relatively in perspective and, mostly, not let it get me down. So, I’m usually very cheerful, unless someone I love is in physical or emotional pain, or in the hospital, or dead. (Or, also, if I find out I’ve done inadvertent harm to someone. Okay, and I get morose when I'm sick.)

I got a call on October 20, 2001. Exactly 10 years to the day after his brother’s accident, Patrick himself was in a near-fatal car accident in Michigan and took months to recover from a head injury and other injuries. The accident permanently damaged one of his optic nerves; one of those beautiful blue eyes will never be the same. The effects of the accident will probably always be with him – he gets tired more easily, for instance. And then, this spring, he was diagnosed with cancer and they removed half his colon. Christ.

See, really bad stuff happens. People die sometimes. People’s children die. There is war and oppression in the world. But my children are alive. They are healthy. They are smart. I feel almost guilty about it sometimes, when not everyone can say that. I will admit that not infrequently, I find myself beating back the fear of losing Madison and Ella to some illness, or to some accident. But even that image helps me maintain equilibrium in the face of day-to-day setbacks, because so long as that is not happening, I can’t say that it’s too bad.

I have been criticized in the past for being too cheerful, for always saying everything is good even when, technically, not everything is ideal. The accusation has been that I'm not being "real"...i.e., not showing my "real" emotions when I'm stressed, or mildly upset. On the one hand, I'm married to an ex-Presbyterian and have learned why stiff-upper-lipping it beats collapsing under pressure any day. And reason IS superior to emotion as a tool for managing life.

But, also, I think it's important to note that I'm not being phony. Life IS good, at least as long as we’re not being faced with a real tragedy. We live in a mostly free society where people can mostly accomplish what they reasonably attempt. One has the choice to focus on positive things, or dwell on negative things. So long as I'm not ignoring anything important, I choose the positive things.

Patrick has cheated death twice. His continued existence here on the planet is one of many bright spots in my life, and in the lives of a lot of other people as well. He is alive, so I am happy.

20 years

I got a note today from an old high school classmate who suddenly remembered my married name and Googled me and found my address. Seems that I'm on the "missing" list for my high school graduating class, which she saw in the invitation to our 20th high school reunion that she received a few weeks ago. Said reunion, she said, takes place the Friday after Thanksgiving. Can I go?

Wild horses couldn't drag me to this reunion, even if Madison weren't performing in the Nutcracker, even if Los Americanos weren't coming up from Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving.

I wouldn't mind being a fly on the wall, though. That would be interesting. I'd hope all the mean people look old.

But I didn't tell Carey any of that. I did tell her to have a great time, and to email me afterward to tell me about it.


--------------------------
(I'm up at midnight, and alternately working on a report for a California client, and blogging. Can you tell I've had too many Reeses Peanut Butter Cups? Yay Halloween.)

90 degrees in a new direction for Ella

In other words, Ella has turned the corner on reading.

I haven't said it before, but I'm saying it now. Yep. It was yesterday, October 30, 2007. She's reading. She has been able to read in some form for almost 2 years, but yesterday it seemed to click for her. She was six-and-a-half on Monday. The magic moment I've been doubting would come, as progress has been steadily incremental, oh, at 5 degrees or so.

Ella's potty-training progress when she was a toddler was quite similar to her reading, minus the 2-year effort. She had no real impetus to potty-train when she was two -- she cheerfully figured why bother, she was happy, she had it easy, it was nicer for someone else to worry about the diaper than to make the effort herself. It wasn't so much a matter of laziness as a comfort in the status quo. And then, 4 days after she turned 3, she suddenly decided that it was time, and that was it. No real effort involved, she just did it. And that seemed to be the case with reading, as well. She worked at it because I made her, for school, but she was just as happy to have someone read to her when it was an effort. And suddenly, it's no longer such an effort, so she's proud and happy to do it.

Madison was totally different. Her philosophy about reading was very like her own potty-training, too. She was not quite 2 1/2, and she wanted to do it all by herself, damn it, because the potty was there to be conquered. The same thing with reading...she was almost 6, and I'd already read the first 19 Boxcar Children books to her, and I'd told her that we weren't getting started on the next 90 books, she'd have to read them herself. And by god, she was going to do just that. And so she did...she sat down in August 2005 and just started reading, skipping any words she didn't know.

But back to Ella. She insists on reading me a whole Dr. Seuss-ish book in the morning before getting out of bed, and another before going to sleep. Yesterday it was Go, Dog. Go! and Marvin K Mooney, Will You Please Go Now? and today it was The Best Nest and Hop On Pop.

I attribute the suddenly steep slope to two things: To the Writing Road To Reading cards and method Laura introduced me to a few weeks ago, and to the fact that Ella has been singing and playing the piano so much, reading the words -- words that are conveniently broken up into syllables -- along with the music.

Or, heck, maybe it was just Her Time and it would have happened without all the work. No real way to tell. At least she has the sense that hard work pays off, which is almost as valuable as her newly-acquired skill.

Quotation marks blog

I usually try not to steal other's blog entries, but I must here. HT Rational Jenn for a link to this blog:

http://quotation-marks.blogspot.com/

The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks
misinterpreting bad punctuation since 2005

I love this.

The Golden Compass

I see some religious homeschoolers are really getting their panties in a bunch about The Golden Compass.

http://snopes.com/politics/religion/compass.asp

http://homeschoolbuzz.com/reviews.html?content=The-Golden-Compass--His-Dark-Materials-book-1-

It is said that Philip Pullman regards his books as the antidote to the religious messages of the Narnia series. We found the Narnia series fascinating, because the girls treated it as a fantasy series like any other; the religious parallels and messages passed them right by--they saw what happened in Narnia, and treated it as relevant only to the context of the Narnian world, not as relevant in our world.

Has anyone (from the group of the five or so of you who read this) read The Golden Compass or heard anything about it? If so, can you can give me the scoop? Adrienne? You must have an opinion. Some libraries seem to put it in Young Adult, some in the Children's section. I'm wondering if I should read it to see if it's appropriate for Madison.

One thing leads to another

After almost two weeks of letting history fall by the wayside, we were just starting some more work on ancient Sumer this morning. Because David and I have been helping the girls brush up their geography skills lately, I thought I'd point out the map yet again in the book. Then I got out our Big Big World book, and also the globe, and had them find Sumer in both. It was actually kind of tricky, for them to transfer their understanding of a simple small line sketch of the Tigris/Euphrates Rivers and the Persian Gulf and the Arabian peninsula to find where those areas were on the more complex maps. It took a little while; I was interested to see that they were not very good at it.

But then that got us started on the "seas" of that part of the world, the Mediterranean and the Black and the Caspian and the Arabian, and that led to a discussion of Italy, and then we started talking about where all of the various ancestors came from, Scotland and Italy and Poland and the Ukraine, and then looked to find all of the routes they might have taken to get to the U.S. And THEN, providentially, the mom of one of Lara's friends showed up to borrow my camera, and as it happens her parents had run from the Nazis in Austria and ended up in Argentina where Monica was brought up, so she traced that route for us, too.

Sumer? Another day.

Oh, and I must report that Ella zipped through Go, Dog. Go! this morning. She's doing much better. It makes me wish that I'd been videotaping her reading right from the start. It feels too late to start now.

Baseball

Rational Jenn wrote about sports yesterday, which prompted me to put down what I haven't had the time, what with all the Halloween and rehearsal/concert madness going on.

Although I don't follow major-league baseball religiously during the regular season, we always watch the postseason on TV in October, especially if the Red Sox are playing. I love baseball. There were only a few girls playing Little League in the 5th and 6th grades, and one of them was me. (The other was my dear, dear friend Anne, who was known as "that red-headed girl pitching for the Lions.") I was on the Panthers. I was no good for almost all of the two years I played, although in my very last at-bat in the 6th grade I hit a triple, and that was the official moment when it "clicked," and although I never played on an official team again, I was always pretty decent at pick-up games. I remember having someone pinch-run for me at my first IOS seminar in 1993 when I was in a leg brace due to the skiing accident.

Anyway, in 1991 I became a Red Sox fan when Patrick and I lived in Boston for the summer when he was reporting for the Globe. I loved, and still love, Fenway Park. 1991 was the beginning of the era of Mo Vaughn, and the beginning of my rooting for the Sox. The day after I found out I was pregnant with Ella in 2000, I had to go to Boston on business and was able to get a ticket. I sat in right field, and I bought The Baby a Red Sox T-shirt that I'll give to Ella when she's a teenager. Madison is going to Boston with the Bach Children's Chorus April 17-19, and if the Sox are playing at home I'm going to do my best get us tickets, even if we have to go out early or stay late.

Fortunately, we have the Rochester Red Wings here, the Triple-A team for the Minnesota Twins. So we go often during the summer (only $6/ticket) and always sit over third base. We don't really follow the individual players so much, because the better ones are always getting called up. But going to a game here in Rochester is so much fun. It's such a genial way to spend 3 or 4 relaxed hours on a summer afternoon with kids. The girls really got into the game this year, and positively enjoy discussing the rules and strategy. If you go on a Sunday afternoon, after the game, the kids get to go down on the field and "run the bases with Spikes," the Red Wings' mascot (I think he's an eagle). On Mother's Day and Father's Day, you go down on the outfield after the game and play catch with the free baseballs they give you.

The interesting thing is that baseball on TV has really seized Ella's attention this postseason, much more so than for Madison. She roots for the Red Sox because we do; she got to know the players, the lineups, she discussed how grumpy the Cleveland Indians' manager always looked and how much Terry Francona spit, she loves Big Papi and Manny Ramirez. While Madison would often read a book while we were all watching the game, Ella was always paying attention. A couple of nights during the ALCS and the Series, she finished dinner early and asked to go and watch the pregame show all on her own, while we were finishing up. ("Hey, Mom, Dad, come quick, James Taylor is singing the National Anthem!") The first thing she'd ask us in the morning was who won. Yesterday morning, upon finding out that the Sox had won Game 4, she said, "Well, I'm happy, but I actually wish the Rockies won last night. Because now there's no more baseball until spring.")

When Geeks Home School Their Kids

Here, Madison and Ella spontaneously decided to re-enact Raphael's "School of Athens" painting, by the shore of Skaneateles Lake.

Madison wanted to be Aristotle, and Ella didn't mind being Plato.



This was a photo from last week, but I was reminded to post it today by a conversation Madison and I had in the car on the way to their homeschool Gym and Swim class at the Y. We were listening to some kids music about math, and one of the song's lyrics posed the question, "Where would we be without math, what would the world be like?"

Madison wanted to talk about this. She proposed that math WAS EQUIVALENT TO motion, and that without motion, she couldn't exist, nor could the earth...and although she was uncertain about how it would affect the universe's existence, she knew that it would be very different than it is.

I was intrigued that she had chosen "motion" as her synonym for math. Is it that she hears David and me talking about calculus so much? Or that the math David works on and describes to her is measuring motion of various kinds? Hard to know. Fascinating. Anyway, I than proposed that perhaps math wasn't just a different word for motion, but that it is human beings' ability to quantify, and therefore is dependent on human consciousness for its existence. She liked this. She hadn't considered it before, I don't think, how math must be linked to human beings rather than being independent. And so she started to talk about what "existence" means, and how it's related to "consciousness." But then we pulled up to the Y. Sigh.

Conversations like this sometimes make me want to shout, "Look out, World! She's coming! She's only 8, but she's going to take you by storm in the not-too-distant future! And you're not ready!"

Now if I could just teach her to spell.

Party a success

We're all tired. The four of us are spaced out in front of the World Series now.

Hints on the purple ice hands:

1) Don't let the fingers freeze close together. They'll amputate much less easily on the way out of the glove.

2) The purple will stain your own hands. Wear extra gloves. I didn't. Too late by the time I realized.

I loved our ghosts so much I wished we'd made more. The backyard looked really neat.



Madison's fortune-telling went over great. I made up about 40 fortunes and they were a big hit. The parents liked them too. Here are some:

One of your parents will accuse you of something you didn’t do, and you’ll set him or her straight very politely.

You will find yourself wanting to wear something purple.

You will find yourself humming a certain song that will be difficult to get out of your head, and you may drive the rest of your family crazy as a result.

A new spirit of generosity will overwhelm you, and your parents will be surprised.

You will be overcome with the desire to help wash the dishes.

You will soon start to see patterns in numbers on digital clocks or other electronic devices.

Here is Madison in her gypsy teepee:

Halloween preparations

In this spirit of Trying to Be All My Parents Were Not, I'm helping the girls (ok, they're helping me, when the spirit moves them) prepare for the big Halloween party on Sunday. It's grown to about 25 kids.

I try to be cool. And what isn't cool, freezing cool even, about purple ice hands:




Just take nonpowdered gloves, color water purple with red and blue food coloring, fill up gloves, tie off, and pop in the freezer. When they're frozen, peel off the gloves, take your new creepy purple hands, and pop them into the orange punch. BWAAAH HA HA HA HA!!!!

That's educational, right?

Thanks, Food Network.

The Squeaky Wheel on Grease

More Grease fun! In this post I talked about my mistake in bringing the girls to Grease last month. Well, another local theater group (we have many here in Rochester, most of which have the word "theatre" in their name) has done a family-friendly version of Grease.

I brought the girls yesterday. (I know it's totally declasse but I love to get these free tickets.)

Did the group (TYKEs -- Theatre Young Kids Enjoy) pull it off? Read my review and see, if you're inclined. And tell me if you agree with my main quibble about Grease, family-friendly or not.

Squirrelly October

Turns out the squirrels that have made a nest between our second and third floors are FLYING squirrels. We cornered one in the house on Wednesday. It was adorable, and almost tame, not afraid of us at all, with the biggest eyes. It could fit in your hand. I didn't let the girls pick it up, although Greg the Squirrel Guy who came over later told us that they actually make good pets. We chased it outside, where it wandered around confusedly, blinking in the light (they're nocturnal). No wonder we've been hearing the activity at dusk. Poor thing.

So tell me he isn't the cutest:


It's almost a shame that we're trying to make him and his family homeless, although at this point I fail to see how that's going to be done effectively, in this old stone house with all kinds of crevices.

And then yesterday, when Ella and I were out in the woods part of the backyard banging nails into foamboard yellow eyes that we'd made as decorations for the Halloween party on Sunday, we came upon a dead squirrel. Actually, I started hammering into a tree at the edge of the meadow, and then she suddenly screamed incoherently and started running away. Now, Ella doesn't just scream randomly, so I ran toward her and scooped her up to find out what was wronog; it actually took her a second to point, with a trembling lip, and say, "There's...it's...there's... a dead squirrel there." And she burst into tears.

It turned out I'd almost been stepping on it. Ick.

As David pointed out later (I know, it's a little shameful of me, but I'm happy to assign The Husbandly Head the job of disposing of dead animals in the yard), the squirrel looked as though it had gone up to the Great Squirrels Nest In the Sky by having been dropped from a great height. A little flat, you know. I'm thinking the big, beautiful red-tailed hawk that Ella and I saw in one of the big pine trees in the backyard had a little accident with its breakfast; the thing hadn't been there the day before.

Must...get...back...to...Halloween...preparations...

Old photo makes us "big bucks"

Can you believe that a company in Norway wants to use this old photo of Madison in an internal training document flyer?



They found it where I'd used it as the graphics for an article about how to get kids to practice, which their old piano teacher wrote for KidsOutAndAbout.com in early 2005.

And they'll PAY us $300. Imagine.

Update: The guy just emailed me the page in the training document as it is laid out. Make sure to click on the photo below; it will take you to a large version that is worth seeing!



The graphic designer who contacted me, Tommy Knøsmoen, said to "tell Madison that there will be people from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Polen, Czech Republic, Austria, and probably a few more countries that will see her when educating in negotiation."