First place for patriotism!

Some members of the girls' Brownie troop participated in Penfield's June-30-Fourth-of-July Parade this morning. We all brought our own decorations and decorated one family's truck. The seven girls sat in the back of the truck and threw candy to kids watching the parade, while David and I, and another mom and dad, walked behind.

The girls were thrilled that we won First Prize for Most Patriotic Float.

You might be able to tell that our contributions to the decoration were posterboards with phrases from the Declaration of Independence. We (ok, I) cut out all of the letters, pasted them on white posters, and painted them with coffee and tea to make them look like old documents.

Most patriotic, you'd better believe it!





WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF EVIDENT...

CERTAIN INALIENABLE RIGHTS

LIFE, LIBERTY

PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

LET FACTS BE SUBMITTED TO A CANDID WORLD

Quote from the director of the girls' drama camp

Yesterday evening, the girls had their performance after a week of PUSH Pins drama camp. They thought the camp was terrific (there were about 50 kids, some of them actually quite talented), and had a marvelous time.

I introduced David to the director, Miss Heather. She shook David's hand and told him how much they'll all enjoyed having Madison and Ella in camp.

"And Madison makes us all feel undereducated," she added with a smile.

Getting fit and saving money this summer

Hey, here's some fun news which has also saved me money. There is a farm near Rochester (there are several like this, from what I understand, but this one is Windy Meadow Farms in Walworth) that will deliver 12-17lbs of fresh produce right to your door for $15/week, or to a close-by pickup location for $10/week, through November 23. What is in it varies each week...here is this week's as an example: http://www.windymeadowfarms.com/weekly%20selection.html.

Anyway, I thought this was a great deal and so I signed up for it last week. We got lots of great stuff, I cooked and made salads, etc. There is so much in your shipment that you can freeze it, too, so I froze the strawberries to use in smoothies. Anyway, you get amounts off for referring people...and so what I did was mention them in my e-newsletter last week, which goes out to 6000 parents. Well, the woman emailed me tonight and told me that the newsletter made such an impact, so many people signed up, that I get the whole 23 weeks of this year's season for FREE. I understand that if you act as a drop-off point, you get free produce, too...so maybe this is a national trend and there is a farm in your neck of the woods. Just an idea.

Cool, eh? How's that for saving money and eating healthful food all in one fell swoop.

And speaking of swoop, no, make that SCOOP:

A client who sells kitchen appliances sent me an ice cream maker. It arrived yesterday. It's a nice one that requires no rock salt or ice, all you do is freeze the main cannister overnight, mix up your ingredients, stick the cold canister on the turning mechanism, add the ingredients, and watch it mix and thicken for half an hour. We made ice cream today: 2 cups heavy cream, 1 cup milk, 3/4 cup sugar, and some vanilla. And MY GOD there is nothing like how delicious and fresh this was. Better than regular ice cream, and much cheaper, too. On the other hand, not so healthful. I can console myself on one dimension, but not the other. I have a recipe book with lower-cal recipes, though, so we'll probably try some of the fresh sorbets. Maybe with the strawberries I get from this Friday's delivery...

Confession: The guilty pleasure of summer camp

Camp time! Madison and Ella are at the PUSH Pins drama camp this week, which is sponsored by PUSH physical theater, which has an emphasis on, well, physical theater. Mostly mime and dance, but also drums, arts and crafts, etc. They really liked it today.

Oh, the guilty, guilty pleasure I feel. Six blessed hours all to myself each day this week. SIX! I bought a smallish magenta notebook last night, which is to be my 2007 Summer Accomplishments notebook. In the front, I labeled the front-and-back of a page with each room in our house, and for a little while this morning, I wandered around, blissfully uninterrupted, writing down what needed to be done in each room, plus the garage, storage room, and outside. In the back, I started a to-do list, with all of my stuff (Axton Enterprises, KidsOutAndAbout.com, book writing, painting--which I vow to get back to this summer--academic planning for the girls, exercising at the gym, home organizing, financial organizing etc.) kind of intertwined as it occurred to me...and a LOT occurred to me all day. There are two-and-a-half solid pages of to-do. Then, I made a separate page of General Summer Goals, categories that encompass my to-do list, and tucked that into the front pocket so that it's handy (and revisable). I then took a separate sheet that represented this week, and made a sort of daily schedule. It's kind of nice, actually, that David is away through Wednesday, in that I can schedule in an extra hour of stuff to get done before the girls go to bed, and an hour after they go to bed.

There I was, working today, all the while alert for the inevitable "Mom!" that would call from any corner of the house. I even heard it occasionally, and would start up to find out what was needed as usual, when I'd realize THEY'RE NOT IN THE HOUSE, they're in Pittsford in the basement of the First Presbyterian Church. Then, in quick succession: Relief that I wasn't needed by someone, delight at being free to focus exclusively on what I was doing, guilt at my delight, a little rational work to override my guilt, and the plunge back into industry.

AAAAAAHHHHH summer.

P.S. And it's even cool because of the air conditioning.

Central air conditioning coming Friday!

I'm deliriously happy.

Pathetic, huh.

Let's pretend...

From Madison, at this morning's breakfast table:

Let's pretend that Domino's powdered sugar is a special kind that lets dogs read hieroglyphics.

And I'm the dog.

Two great questions

At dinner tonight, these were two of Madison's questions.

1) Have you ever had a theory that someone convinced you was wrong, so you changed your mind, but which then you reworked later and realized that your first theory was right?

2) In response to a discussion about numbers that repeat infinitely in mathematics, like 1/3, she wanted to know if David had ever encountered an example of a number that had an infinitely repeating part, but completely by coincidence, without a mathematical cause.

So, friends, how about #1? Any examples?

As for #2, David says that he has seen some examples, and that he's going to try to work one up for her.

Home Schooling (and Rosses) in the news

Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, June 15, 2007

In my neverending quest to get the word out about the viability and desirability of home schooling...

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070615/NEWS01/706150375

Update: When you read the article, check out the comments, too. Some of them are amusing...especially the one that took one of my comments -- that I'd be jealous if someone else educated my kids -- out of context and decided that I needed therapy.

Space school

I've been able to keep the kids in focus this week at school (when all of us really want to stop) by using a space theme. We spend a good (and fun) hour reading about space stuff from the books I brought home from KSC and also from the library. We have done space-themed spelling, which worked great. The girls are at different white boards, not able to see each other. We do the spelling words together (Ella's started that now). Moon, earth, sun, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. Then, Madison erases, and Ella *reads* the spelling words to her and Madison spells them.

We've also been working on a difficult solar system puzzle for two days. We're in the difficult portion now, and frankly it has such tiny pictures that it's giving me a headache. We only do that for about a half hour until the girls' patience runs out. While we've been working on that, we listen to the CD for the Bach Children's Chorus. Madison got her official acceptance letter last week, and she's got to memorize the following three songs in the CD by the end of the summer.

With "space" as the focus this week, the girls have been able to get going at their schoolwork at such a good clip that I'm able to have them do regular math (non-space) without any trouble. Ella is doing 4-digit by 4-digit addition with carrying (and I'm not exaggerating: she always gets every single problem right, for the last two weeks). Madison is starting long division. I had started long division with her back in the winter, and realized she wasn't quite ready. After 3 days, she's starting to get the hang of it. But it's difficult, and she gets frustrated when she works on something that you can't just snap your fingers and know. That's ok, some things are like that.

So I guess I've got a end-of-kindergartner doing addition with carrying, and an end-of-second-grader doing long division. I'm satisfied!

The new Charlie Bone book (Book 6, Charlie Bone and the Beast) arrived on Monday afternoon. Madison started it at about 4:30. She had finished it by 10am the next morning. She started reading it again yesterday afternoon.

We've been listening to Book 3 in the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. We finished that yesterday. We were weeding out the front rose garden yesterday afternoon, and fortunately that's right next to the driveway. So we had the CDs in the car, opened the car door so the speaker was nearer us, and listened to the 3rd and 4th CDs of Prince Caspian while finishing the weeding. It really helped us continue the weeding, because we didn't want to stop listening. David arrived home while we were still thus engaged (OK, while *I* was still weeding, and the girls were sprawled around with juice boxes listening), and he got out some pistachios and sat down and listened to the end of the book with us.

I had been skeptical of C.S. Lewis, given all of the apologia nonsense he also produced. (According to David, in Mere Christianity he actually states that if you have any underlying motive for your good actions that benefit yourself, it doesn't count as good, only self-abnegation counts. Rand said that if you want to see the worst of Christian apologetics, just read Mere Christianity. I haven't been able to bring myself to think that it's worth my time, maybe someday.) But Lewis is a fabulous storyteller, it's all beautifully written, and what is in there are Biblical referents that the culturally literate adult can appreciate, rather than admonitions from a Christian ethical perspective. That is, the first few books are the retelling of Bible stories: The Magician's Nephew is a retelling of Genesis, and The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe is a retelling of the crucifixion and the resurrection. I can't figure out what Prince Caspian is supposed to be retelling, unless it's Jesus's gathering of the 12 disciples, roughly. I wonder if he does The Flood in one of the other books. The girls are enjoying them enough that we'll continue, and I tell all who are interested (primarily Madison) about the parallel Bible stories.

Don't you think Ella looks better in my new sun hat than I do?




Now, that's a loaded question, isn't it?

Blasting off into the summer

I took a short trip to Florida with some colleagues -- no kids -- and saw the shuttle launch on Friday evening. It was wonderful, marvelous inspiring, so much so that I have so much to say, too much for the brief time I have right now.

I can't wait to find some time to take the kids. Soon, it will have to be.



Hey, didn't my camera do a good job? If you look at the photo in its original context, Atlantis is only a small spec in the middle, as we're 6 miles away from the launch pad.


But my camera is a 7.1 megapixel, and so I was able to crop it and look at it, and hey presto, pretty cool.

I couldn't resist the books in the bookstore there at Kennedy Space Center. We're going really heavy on space, and the shuttle, this week at Mariposario. The books I got weren't enough, we had to go and load up on some more at the library this morning.

Winding up for the year - rambling post

I've discovered myself infected by the same end-of-the-school-year lassitude that always affected me when I was at school. Who wants to do lessons now that winter's over, our brief spring is waning, and summer is upon us? On the other hand, now we can move back into the basement, because it's no longer too cold down there to work (have to get a portable heater for next year), in fact it's downright wonderful when the rest of the house is steaming. (Speaking of which, I'm getting quotes today and tomorrow for central air installation...David is fairly determined to go a summer without it, we'll see.)

I've taken some of this wanting-to-be-out-of-doors restlessness and channeled it into school: I decided we should build a map of the neighborhood, so most mornings for the past two weeks we start the day with a walk. Sometimes we put on landmarks, sometimes we count steps with our pedometer, sometimes we time how long it is from here to there with our stopwatch, sometimes we put the houses with numbers on and color them in to match the color of the house.

We also are volunteering at the Nature Center in Mumford, once per week in June. Last week we (ok, mostly I) pulled garlic mustard, that invasive weed, that was cluttering up the main yard at the Nature Center. Today is our second day, we'll see what that brings.

On my birthday (May 5) we had gone for a walk down in Penn Yan, and along the trail Madison found a large bone, very old, quite clean. We decided to bring it with us. Madison dubbed it a Mammoth Bone and she persists in calling it that, although I thought it was horse. We brought it to the Nature Center last week for a diagnosis, and Liz thinks it's a cow bone -- either the tibia or the fibrula, whichever is the one that goes from the hip socket to the knee (note to self: for pity's sake, look this up!). We donated it to the Nature Center for their Touch Table. Surprisingly, Ella was a lot more reluctant than Madison to leave it there, couldn't figure out why, usually it's Madison who panics at the idea of being separated from something that's hers.

The other thing getting in the way of getting work done is MY work, which seems to have picked up lately. I keep having to talk with clients, or do actual work, or whatnot. Let me confess that school goes MUCH better when I forget about work and give the girls my full, planned attention for a couple of hours, rather than have them work and me intermittently check it while I'm doing my own.

So I long for the last week of June, when they start camp, and when I can REALLY get things done. They're going to drama camp the first week, off the second week when Tatiana and Dario will be here, then morning ballet (Ella)/ history (Madison), then history (both, though Ella only in the afternoons), then horseback riding (morning), then nature, then off to Chicago, then YMCA camp with the Maughlins, then down to Tata's for a few days so that I can look after the kids while she gets ready for the school year, then a couple weeks off, then off to the 5-day Homeschooling Cruise to the Bahamas over Madison's birthday, which is Sept 10. And the summer is over.

Have I officially signed them up for any of this? Of course not. Have to light a fire under me own arse.

I keep realizing how miserable Madison is at spelling, so we're focusing on that more lately. God, she's clueless. She does, though, remember some of the rules, so I'm seizing on that. Yesterday I did spelling for a long time with both her and Ella. We chose words from Harry Potter. Would you believe that this kid, who has been obsessed with Harry Potter for at least nine months, who can discuss the most intricate little logical details from the books, initially spelled his name HAARE POTTR yesterday morning? I find this absolutely fascinating. We spent a lot of time yesterday, after school at various times, discussing words that are like "POTTER" and "MUGGLE." We'll keep plugging away at it.

It's actually good for her to have things she's not good at. There's no pretending that she's good at spelling right now, and by not mincing words about this, it lets her know that when she's good at something, she REALLY IS, there is no artificial praise going on, she can take genuine pride in it. There's no shame in her not being good at spelling right now. She'll get better. She's getting better at handwriting, she really is, although she's still not good at that, either. (I think getting better at spelling will help her get better at handwriting, she hates writing things that are so badly spelled she can't read her own thoughts.)

Chirp and Peep

The girls and I have been playing "baby birdie" ever since Madison was not yet two years old, so we've been playing this for six years. I've blogged about it before; it's a simple game where the only thing fixed is that I'm a mama bird and the girls are baby birds. When we're playing it in earnest, it's usually on a bed, with the blankets swirled around us to form the nest.

Somehow, early on (I think courtesy of an early Dora the Explorer episode, the one where she helps the lost baby blue bird find its nest) it was decided that the baby birds would say "peep" and the mama bird would say "chirp" -- "chirp" being more sophisticated and difficult to say than "peep." (Plus, the baby blue bird said "peep-peep-peep.") Daddy bird joins in sometimes, with a deep "CHIRP" that resonates from somewhere inside his chest.

Well, "chirp" and "peep" have been extended outside the game, recently. I found that a sweet, caring "chirp" is often enough to penetrate Madison's consciousness when she's upset. "Chirp?" I'll ask gently, and it's a measure of her state of mind how, or whether, she answers. The chirp says to her, "Remember, this particular thing isn't really important, what's really important is that I'm your mommy and you're my baby and I'll always love you and take care of you." It works, it really does, it usually touches her heart even when she decides to continue being intractible for a while longer.

I've taken to using it at all kinds of times, and the tone of my voice varies depending on the situation. When I'm proud of her, or we're all feeling affectionate, I'll sometimes say, moved, "Oh, chirp!" and she'll respond cheerfully "Peep!" Sometimes, when we're out among others, I'll whisper "chirp" in her ear, and she'll look at me and whisper "peep" back if she's feeling connected, or smile enigmatically and say nothing. Sometimes, when she's feeling disconnected, she'll outright refuse to answer "peep," and that's usually a measure of something stirred up inside her, but the fact that I've chirped at her often helps her settle down. Sometimes she teasingly refuses to answer, and often she'll say, frowning (a bit self-mockingly), "I'm not going to say 'peep' now." But usually, these days, she's happy to peep back at me.

Ella, on the other hand, has no subtlety with her peeps. It's almost always an immediate, smiling, "Peep!" that says, simply, isn't it wonderful to be alive and together? Whereas Madison's peeps can be imbued with all kinds of various meanings, Ella's peeps are almost always prompt, and cheerful. The "chirp-peep" game doesn't mean nearly as much to Ella as to Madison...it's just another expression of affection, one in a neverending chain of them.

Madison and I have discussed the possibility of chirp and peep extending a long time into our relationship as mother and daughter. She's decided that there should be some end to chirp and peep, that she would never say it, say, as an adult. I, on the other hand, can picture myself calling her up some day after she's taken her post as Supreme Court Justice Ross. "Chirp!" I'll say as she picks up the phone. "Peep!" she'll respond.