D, upon reading Marc Brown's Arthur's Halloween, in which Arthur's family is making the house look spooky (and learning that "spooky" means "scary"): "But why would a skeleton be scary?"

Newt

Political Math looks like a great resource. It seems to be a blog, written by one guy who somehow finds the time to analize the numbers behind various political issues/debates/claims/etc., who makes easy-to-understand YouTube videos summarizing his results, with interesting caveats, sources cited, occasional raw data, etc., on his blog. I've been seeing YouTube videos by this guy for the past month or more -- they tend to get linked to on conservative blogs, because Obama has been making a lot of claims in the process of trying to get a lot of different things passed, and evaluating those claims for reasonableness comes up negative about as often as I think you'd expect for a politician. But he also posts negative evaluations of Republican politicians (such as this post on a comment by Dick Cheney), which ups my estimation of the accuracy and usefulness of his analyses. So I thought I'd share, in case anyone else was interested.

Newt

One of these days, I want a real vacation. You know, the kind I had as a kid, where someone else packs, and someone else drives, and I just get to be lazy and irresponsible for a week. Doesn't that sound nice?

Now, back to reality, where "vacation" means frenzied preparations and packing for most of a week, followed by fun, washing dishes, diaper changes, and laundry, but not at home, followed by most of a week spent doing laundry, cleaning the house (that I tried to leave clean when I left, but somehow didn't), cleaning out the fridge, buying food, and sorting the mountain of mail, so that we can return to some semblance of normalcy. Today, I tackled the laundry and the house.

This was made considerably more interesting by J, who seems to have decided to be helpful again. He saw me putting away laundry, and took it upon himself to "help" me. Of course, as far as he could tell, I was picking things up off the bed and putting them in random drawers in the closet. He could do that! He first grabbed half the pile of folded napkins, which I removed from his grasp and returned to their pile, after which I moved the entire pile away from the edge of the bed. Undeterred, he next picked up a pillowcase, which he tried to push through the crack between two drawers; seeing that this attempt was unsuccessful, he then pulled the drawer out, which allowed him to triumphantly drop the pillowcase on top of Daddy's neatly folded polo shirts. I waited until his back was turned to pull it back out; I'm not sure why, but it felt more appropriate.

When he turned back to me, he was holding two dish towels and grinning at me as he marched towards the closet. I informed him that the dish towels belonged downstairs, and he immediately turned, marched out of the closet, and disappeared down the hall. For a time, he disappeared from my sight; I think he started to go downstairs, although I didn't actually catch sight of that. At some point, however, he reappeared, still with dish towels in hand; perhaps navigating the stairs with dish towels in hand was too difficult? In any case, he seemed to decide that the next best thing was to put them in my sewing corner (which is at the top of the stairs); standing on tip-toe, he carefully shoved them over the top of the gate and let go, watching them fall with a very self-satisfied, "Didn't I do a good job!" sort of air.

Toddlers are a ton of fun, but I think I had better guard the laundry basket for a while if I want to ever find my linens again.

Tackling the mail and finances should take up the better part of a few days, and will include a battle long conversation with the medical insurance company we no longer have, as of a week ago, as well as another one (on a completely separate issue) with the medical insurance company we do now have. The switch was imposed on us with one day's notice, we don't have insurance cards or any of the info necessary to get actual coverage information yet, and the mess may result in having to choose between seeing T's therapist a lot less or finding a new one. In case anyone reading this is ever in a position to influence the choice of medical insurance companies in any way, please keep in mind that this is NOT the way to do it. A month's notice would have been really nice; I think a week should be the minimum; and new insurance cards should be issued far more promptly than this. For one thing, most insurance companies won't cover the refill of a prescription until close to when you're supposed to run out, based on when you last filled the prescription and how long it's supposed to last you; it's only by the grace of God (or sheer dumb luck, your choice) that I haven't been caught by that one this time.

Newt

We are home. There is work to be done. Order is slowly being imposed on the house. The car survived the trip, and the air conditioning revived while we ate lunch, so we're doing pretty well. Chinese Leftovers Soup for supper!

Newt

We are on the road tonight, on the way back to Chicago, spending the night in small-town Kentucky. We went out for Chinese food tonight, experienced good, friendly service, fed all five of us, have enough leftovers to feed us all tomorrow night as well (if we can manage to get them home), and spent a grand total of $20 (plus a special tip for the person cleaning up after our rice-loving toddler).

In other news, we are still driving our '91 Previa, because Enterprise is the major seller of used 12-passenger vans and July 4 is a big car rental weekend; while today's rain was annoying to drive through, the lack of heat was very welcome. (Our air conditioning mainly works when it is cool outside.) Also, my sunburn from taking the kids swimming on Tuesday has started peeling.

Newt

The kids and I watched The Sound of Music today (started it yesterday). Somehow, when you have inquisitive children and make it a habit to take their questions seriously and attempt to answer them, even the tamest, most family-oriented movies bring up interesting topics that lead to difficult explanations.

First, of course, there's the complicated romantic situations -- which, by adult standards, really aren't that complicated, but when you don't know much about the topic, the idea that no one tells you who to marry -- that there are no magic trumpets, no loud and clear revelations from God, no infallible parental instructions that you have to obey -- that the whole thing can be rather complicated and confusing for even the adults involved -- needs a bit of discussing. We managed to get through that OK, but there were numerous requests for clarification along the way.

And then there's the fact that the entire thing is set in the conflict between Austria and Germany in the days leading up to World War II. I like Gretel's statement on the matter: "The flag with the spider on it makes everybody nervous." (Gretel, in case you've forgotten, is the 5-year-old.) My initial, quick explanation that the Nazis were running Germany and wanted to take over Austria (and that some people in Austria, like Captain Von Trapp, didn't want them to) was initially sufficient but did not carry us through the final chase scene. And as the movie ended, D hit me with the big philosophical question: "Why did they want to take over a country that wasn't theirs?"

I managed to analogize it to why she might sometimes want more toys than just the ones in her room, even though she has lots of toys in her room and some of the other ones belong to T and J and not to her, which she accepted. And then I gave her the barest outline of the platform that got Hitler elected: Make Germany strong and prosperous, and get rid of anyone who might hurt Germany. We followed a few of the consequences of Nazi interpretations of these points; when "Germany is strong" means "Germany can take over and rule others," invasions result; when "get rid of people who hurt Germany" means "get rid of Jews," invasions are further justified as the search for Jews to kill widens. ("Mean mean mean!" was D's response to learning about that part of Hitler's plan. It seems to be her strongest available epithet; it may be time to introduce the thesaurus, although some more emotionally calm moment would be more conducive to vocabulary expansion; she was (understandably and appropriately) pretty emotionally invested in that statement.) (Another interesting balance point to try to find: Teaching D to manage her emotions so that they don't overwhelm her and her expression of them doesn't overwhelm the entire family, while retaining that emotional tenderness that is outraged and offended by evil and cruelty to others.)

If you look for it, if you think and ask questions and find answers, history is everywhere. A lot of our best literature and art is tied to specific times, specific places, specific historical events. A lot of modern literature is set in the days surrounding WWII, when everything was in turmoil and the author can justify and explore all sorts of odd conjunctions of people and situations that normally would not be found together. Certainly, the study of Shakespeare's plays could drive you to research a wide variety of historical circumstances (some of which I know next to nothing about so far); there's also a wealth of fiction set around the time of the Civil War, on both sides, and any number of other sources as well.

I haven't yet brought up the subject of concentration camps with the kids, nor have I mentioned numbers to them yet. I think I was exposed to the numbers associated with WWII too early, and it deadened me to all the other, lesser numbers, until I eventually made the realization that one death is really bad, and could look at all the numbers I'd learned with new eyes. Having heard about six million Jewish deaths for so long, it hadn't seemed to me so bad that hundreds of thousands had died in the Civil War. I think what I'd like to do, when they're emotionally mature enough, is introduce them to accounts that bring the individual impact of death close to home -- for World War I, Rilla of Ingleside; for World War II, Anne Frank and Corrie Ten Boom's The Hiding Place and others -- and then bring in the numbers, the horrible intentionality and brutality of the Nazis, the systematic extermination through concentration camps, etc., perhaps with Schindler's List as a transition point -- it does a good job, from what I recall, of connecting you with the personal, while also showing you some of the horrific scope. But we'll see how it goes; you never really know, even when you sit down to watch a good, tame, "family values" sort of movie, where you'll end up. It is both one of the greatest pleasures and one of the greatest terrors of raising children.

Newt

J discovered raspberries last night. I don't normally buy them -- too little volume for the money -- but Grandma bought some recently, so they were in the fridge here. I was eating strawberries, which were on the top shelf he couldn't reach, but there were these things that looked like little baby strawberries on the shelf below that he could reach! (After, of course, he'd gotten someone to open the fridge for him so he could pick out what he wanted.) He ate several raspberries, one at a time, with great enjoyment. When we finally cut him off and told him it was time to go to bed, he cheerfully turned towards the stairs and walked up to the room he and I are sharing here.

His response to statements like that has been improving recently; I think his vocabulary has increased again. He seems very smug about knowing what's going on, and very happily lies down on the floor in front of me when I sit down and say that it's time to change his diaper. And given his usual desire to stay awake, nothing else quite explains his cheerful reaction to the idea of going to bed last night.

He's also very fond of car rides, and going places with older siblings. He very cheerfully went to take Grandpa to pick his car up at the shop this morning, in spite of the fact that Mommy wasn't going; the presence of Grandma, Grandpa, D, and a car ride was apparently enough to make it very exciting.

However, something got him thoroughly over-tired this morning; he spent the last half-hour or more before lunch falling apart at the slightest provocation, and I finally put him to sleep before lunch was ready. There'll be plenty of time for him to eat after he wakes up.

Newt

J is helping me snap the ends off the green beans for supper. More precisely, he is helping me by putting the snapped beans in the pot, which is entirely make-work, as I could put them in the pot as easily as I can pile them on the counter, but it keeps him occupied and happy, which in the absense of his older siblings, is a Good Thing. (D and T are watching a magician at a local library with their grandparents. J screamed when he realized that they were leaving the house and he was not.)

Most of the way through the chore, J decided to see whether he could also break beans in half. Turns out, the answer is yes. He takes one end of the bean in each fist and does a combination of twisting and bending to snap the bean in two. The look of concentration and effort on his little face is strongly reminiscient of Olympic weight-lifters, but his satisfaction at having broken the bean just like Mommy knows no bounds.

Newt

I'd meant, originally, to post something before I went camping, saying that we were going camping and that I'd be completely without computer access for five days. In the flurry of packing and getting ready to go, that didn't happen. But that's over now, whether anyone noticed my absense or not.

We went camping in Bardstown, Kentucky, because that was about half-way between where I live and where my parents live, and because there are a lot of fun things to do around there, notably:
- We saw the Stephen Foster Musical. (A musical that encourages the attendance of small children! Wow! Yay! J was really cute -- gave up on sitting in the hinged seats that he wasn't heavy enough to keep the seats fully down on, and instead spent his time alternating between sitting on the stairs watching the musical (and joining in the applause) and climbing up and down a selection of 4-5 stairs right next to me. Outdoor amphitheater, we had aisle seats -- good choice, with a small child! Eventually, he fell asleep -- musical started at 8:30, ended at 11, so no surprise there.)
- We took a tour of Mammoth Cave -- very beautiful, but with lighting dim enough to trigger T's fear of the dark some, so the two hour tour was a bit of a trial for him. (Also with enough stairs to make my legs unhappy, and with small enough clearances in places to make getting through with J strapped to my chest a bit interesting. But very worth it, for all of that.)
- We saw the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace Memorial -- a Greek Temple-style building containing a log cabin that feels very much like a shrine to a fallen hero/god. (There are fifty-six steps on the way up, one for each year of Lincoln's life. There are sixteen windowns, sixteen flowers carved in the ceiling, and sixteen posts holding up the rope keeping people from touching the log cabin, all because Lincoln was the sixteenth president. The ranger there told the kids this. It's kind of a weird place, really.) If you want to actually learn something about Lincoln, the place to go is the Visitor's Center at the bottom of the hill, where you can watch a movie about Lincoln that mentions some features of his childhood and tries to connect them to some of his later features as politician and president, see a cut-away log cabin with typical household items from the time period (all carefully identified on a sign, so you know what they all are), read various things written on the walls (including a timeline of Lincoln's life), and build your own log cabin out of Lincoln Logs.
- The kids went with their Grandma and Grandpa to a tank museum, where an old friend of Grandma's who was career military and has helped the curator set up a number of the tanks guided them around, told them stories, and encouraged them to completely ignore the conspicuous signs that said, "Please Do Not Climb On The Tanks."
- We got wet in a gully-washer of a thunderstorm Thursday night -- poor D got soaked to the bone, and her pillow spent the next day dripping on the clothesline. (Library books, or really any books, should not be kept in a tent when rain is expected and other options are available. We may be paying the library back for a few board books.)

My Old Kentucky Home State Park is an interesting camp site, the sort of place that's very poor at helping you reconnect with nature but serves excellently well as a good low-cost base of operations for seeing an area. Small campsites, close together, each with its own water supply and power hook-up (rather RV-friendly), toilets that not only flush but do so automatically (T was scared of the noise, and was forever asking for someone to come with him to cover up the electronic eye until he was done and out of the stall), and showers with decently warm water (although with noticable temperature fluctuations).

Also notable on this trip was the amount of time that the van spent in the shop. It's a '91, so rather elderly, and we've been expecting that it would die sometime; it seems to be opting for the rapid decline into decrepitude, rather than the abrupt death in the line of duty or the long slow decline. It doesn't feel like it has quite the power it should in the engine, it no longer kicks into low gear when you floor the accelerator trying to get up a hill (this was interesting, following my parents over the moutains from KY to GA for the remainder of the visit), and the air conditioning starts spewing out hot air after a few hours on the road. We're officially in the market for a new, larger vehicle (with the absurd size of car seats these days, and our plans to continue growing our family, we're very close to outgrowing the minivan market), and are hoping that a used car dealership recommended by some family friends in the Atlanta area will come up with some good options for us to consider before we drive home on the 5th and 6th, so we can drive home in comfort. I hate buying cars.

So anyway, there's the update on the last week or so. Lots of fun, lots of heat, campfires, and s'mores, not much computer access. We spent a lot of time sitting at the campsite reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's On the Banks of Plum Creek, which makes me very appreciative of the pioneers who lived outdoors (or close to it) all the time and had no air conditioning, washing machines, or private showers to come back to. I like camping, but modern conveniences are very nice, too.

Newt

T was already awake and downstairs this morning when I came down at 6:35. I was still groggy, stumbling to my computer to read comics and blogs and wake up; he was wide awake, and wanting my attention. But he's lived with me long enough to accept it when I tell him that I need time to wake up, and he should go do something else; he wandered off happily enough, I think to watch YouTube videos downstairs, and came back up an hour later to lay a hand on my shoulder gently and ask quietly, "Mommy, are you awake yet?"

He got upset briefly when he discovered that he could not scratch his head with his hind leg like a rabbit; with some advice on fine-tuning his technique from Daddy and a helping hand from Mommy, he managed it. All is now well with the world.

He has discovered the wonders of CSA fruit season, and requested a peach and a plum. I told him to wash both before eating them, which he promptly and carefully did, leaving the water running while he took them over to the kitchen towel to dry them. I reminded him to turn the water off when he was done using it, wondering internally how it was that he always seems to forget this step; watching him, all became clear. He prefers to use a white stool (small, light, easy to move, maybe 8 inches high) for small tasks like this, and the white stools allow him to easily reach the stream of water, but in order to turn the water on or off, he must wiggle and climb until his tummy rests on the edge of the sink and his feet are in the air before he can reach the knob. Ah, the trials of being still rather small! (Although he seems enormous to me -- he's rather difficult to pick up these days, although once I've picked him up, he does a very good job of wrapping long limbs around me and holding on, so the weight is distributed rather well.)

And now, I would love to stay with him for a while longer, and talk about hares and rabbits ("Is a hare the same as a rabbit, Mommy? Can you look it up on your computer?"), and maybe squeeze in a bit of math and reading. (He's been asking for reading lessons recently, and seems close to being able to connect sounds to get words.) But I really ought to take a shower and get dressed before his friend from two doors away comes over and I take them all to swim lessons.

I really ought to find a way to make better use of these early-morning times, when he's the only child awake and there seems to be no reason for conflict or yelling. If only it didn't take me so long to wake up.....

Newt

"I want to show you how clean my room is!" Translation: The room has, really, truly, and honestly, been cleaned to the child's best ability; there may be one or two things for you to point out for improvement, but the overall result will be satisfactory.

"My room is totally clean! You don't even have to check it!" Translation: "My room is not clean. I don't want to clean it. I want whatever you've been promising me would happen when I cleaned it, but without all the painful work along the way. And, I'm too young to realize that you have the experience necessary to totally see through this; I honestly believe that saying this will achieve my goal of easy pleasure and delayed punishment, and will be horribly disappointed and likely throw a temper tantrum when this fails."

Newt

( For purposes of personal record keeping. )

Newt

J's been transitioning towards sleeping more independently, largely because I started putting limits on how much he could nurse at bedtime. (Once on each side. There are only two of them. After that, we're done, until he wakes up next.) For the past week or so, he's been fine about stopping nursing after two sides, even voluntarily making it one side, but not so OK with having to lie still and fall asleep after that. Tonight, after half an hour of him crawling all over the bed and chortling every time he found me, I realized that perhaps my presence was a distraction. I told him I had to go get something but that I'd be back, slipped out of the room, and spent five or ten minutes on the computer.

When I went back up, he was asleep. There had been no chortling, no talking to himself, no crying; without me to distract him, he simply fell asleep.

Of course, what would have happened if he hadn't had me there for the first half-hour of relaxing in a dark room is anybody's guess. I'm not entirely sure what will be the best sleeping arrangement for the next several months; I expect that the transition will be awkward, and perhaps even painful at times. But I'm pretty sure that expecting him to fall asleep in our bed when we are also there trying to fall asleep is not the best plan anymore.

The realization is making me feel rather nostalgic. I'm going to miss his warm little person sleeping next to me. (Mostly. There's advantages both ways, y'know. At least, I think there are.) So anyway, I wrote ( a poem about it, which didn't turn out quite how it sounded in my head, but I think it's close enough. )

Newt

We are "playing" Clean the House today, because my Friendly Teenage Helper is sick and the house needs cleaning. J has apparently realized (finally! YAY!!!) that visibly dirty dishes should stay in the dishwasher and not be put in the cabinet. What he has not yet realized is that if there is one visibly dirty dish in the dishwasher, all the rest of the dishes can be assumed to be dirty by association, and therefore they should all be left in the dishwasher, whether they are visibly dirty or not. He took them out, one at a time, and put the visibly dirty ones back (sometimes correctly); he got to a bowl (that I think had had popcorn in it?) that was lacking visible grime, and I caught him half-way to the cabinet with it.

Newt

Via patrissimo comes a variety of fun and useful science-y links.

First, an article on science, football, and danger, making an interesting point on why we have fewer people entering the sciences in college and a much lower level than previously of general science knowledge among non-scientists.

Second, an absolutely amazing periodic table. The online version is interactive; he also sells print versions, which are not quite as informative, but much better for posting on walls.

Third, the text you get when your mouse hovers over "Tin" on the above periodic table is, "The classic tin soldier was sometimes made of pure tin, but more often tin-lead or lead-antimony alloys, or, shudder, just plastic. I cast this one out of 99.99% pure tin in an antique mold meant for kids to use." The picture representing tin is of a tin soldier mounted on horseback; if you click on the "Tin" square, it will take you to many more tin-related pictures, including one of the mold he used to cast the tin soldier. My first thought on reading that the antique mold had been meant for kids to use -- "They let kids cast things out of metal?!?!!" -- nicely illustrates his point in the article in my first link. We've sapped home and classroom science of all its fun and danger, making it safe, tame, and -- let's admit it -- boring. He attributes this to an unspoken national agreement that football is more important than science, and certainly, being a geek at a school with a good football team will give you a very convincing proof of this. But I'm inclined to think that there's also a contribution from our national/societal move from farm to city, and from physical work to office work. We no longer view children as being capable of real work; we no longer view work as involving physical risk. Combine these, and we see no reason for our children to take physical risks with themselves -- except for the fact that they have to run off all their energy somehow, and so we sign them up for sports, accepting the fact that the running off of energy will inherently be physical, and thus involve physical risk. But science? That's an intellectual endeavor; we don't expect our children to do anything actually useful in that realm, they are there strictly to learn, and their learning should be as safe as our paper-pushing jobs in our offices. We compartmentalize our lives, remove physical risk (and activity) from as many compartments as possible, and wonder why so many kids suddenly need Ritalin and nobody likes science any more.

Laura Ingalls Wilder's birthplace features a log cabin with a loft above the bedroom and pantry, which was used for food storage and as a sleeping place for Mary and Laura. When we visited last fall, we noticed that this loft had no railing. Were it my house, I would want a railing there; I think there's a balance-point to be sought in issues of safety. But we've swung too far the other way, and even knowing that, it's hard to figure out even vaguely where the balance point should be. My knee-jerk reactions, it seems, are still more educated by my culture than I'd realized. I'm thinking now that some soldier molds and some tin sound like a great birthday present for T -- although I'm guessing that it was probably originally used by older children than he is, and that he should still have adult supervision and help in using it for a few years yet. That's another societal change -- children used to play with actual physical toys at older ages, and now we expect them to transition to electronic-only play by the time they're preteens. Silly us!

Also, sudden random epiphany: In spite of my half-chemistry background from college, I have a very poor chemical intuition. A large portion of this, I know, is due to my own failure to attend enough chemistry lectures as a freshman. But I wonder how much of it was also due to never having access to chemicals outside of controlled "experiments" that were really more about teaching us to be precise and keep good lab notebooks, both of which were really really hard skills for me, to the point that they completely distracted me from the fact that there was chemistry happening on my lab bench!!! And I see the need for a balance point there, too -- the lab skills are important, and you do learn more if you have a record of what you've done to look over, and there are effects you won't notice at all without attention to detail. But I wonder what would have happened if they'd given us a bunch of random chemicals with labels, a fume hood, some basic equipment, and perhaps a list on each label of which things you should NOT mix that chemical with (so as to avoid excessive levels of danger). Wow. OK, now I know what the benefit of the home chemistry kit was to children growing up fifty years ago, and I want to do exactly this with my kids at some point. The dream house now needs to incorporate a fume hood or two somewhere.... Basement, or attic? Probably not a good mix with the commercial kitchen to permit/encourage enterpreneurial ventures by resourceful children, that'd probably give the health inspector heart failure.... *grin*

And how difficult is it to buy a good supply of basic chemicals, as a random not-a-professional-chemist? Have we safety-fied ourselves out of this opportunity, as well? I will have to do some research.

Wow, that turned into more verbosity than I was planning on.

Newt

If I were a really good record-keeping homeschooling mama, writing things down every day under various subject headings, today would go under "Life Skills:" "Entertaining a toddler."

I woke up with a cold; I'm exhausted, and my head feels like it's been stuffed with cotton balls. We're taking a break from potty training J, as well as from everything else I can think of to take a break from; the kids are playing happily together; and if I get really ambitious, I'll read some of Les Mis (Barbara Curtis is hosting a book club / discussion group on it this summer) or work some on my list of math skills. I am very very glad not to have anywhere I have to go today.

Newt

Aside from being exhausted from staying up too late last night reading a book on potty training, today has been much better than yesterday. I've finished today's entire list of paperwork (which is not to say that all the paperwork is done, just that I've finished the amount I allotted to do today). And, the kids played pretty well together this morning. I talked to D last night about the need to share the rule-making with T, and so when they started fighting about where/what they would play this morning, I was prepared. They got to take turns deciding where/what/how they would play, and the kitchen timer said when it was time to switch. We started with 5 minute increments, because that was short enough that T could deal with waiting that long to get to make all the choices (D had won the coin toss to decide who went first), but switched to 15 minute increments when they discovered that 5 minutes wasn't long enough to "get anything done." So far, so good! Yay!

Newt

I'm trying to get a lot of paperwork-ish things done this afternoon, before J wakes up and I start potty training him. This morning was taken up with pre-pottytraining errands -- the library, the grocery store, the drug store -- so that hopefully, I won't have reason to have to leave the house much this week, and can focus on potty training, reading lessons, and math.

I've posted a lot in the past about T and math; on some level, I know how far from the norm he is. But in the long succession of daily interactions, it's apparently rather easy to forget, to get so used to my normal that I forget it's not a usual normal. I've been working recently on coming up with a better way of keeping a record of what he knows and doesn't know, what we've done together in the way of math, etc. D is pretty easy to keep track of -- she works her way through worksheets quite happily, I put a check mark next to the page number on a chart (I'm considering switching to writing the date of completion instead), and we're done. But what I do with T is so free-form, give-and-take, and non-linear that record-keeping is a lot harder.* So I found a list of recommended standards for what math skills/knowledge children should learn when, from (I think) the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics, and am turning their descriptive paragraphs organized by grade level into bullet points organized by content area, with the idea that I can then keep this in a file and make dated notes under the relevant bullet points when we work on things. In the process, I am realizing anew how weird T is; he is currently working on some 2nd grade topics and some 3rd grade topics, but has completely mastered the 1st grade topics; he will not turn 5 until August. Some of this, I think, is just the real life aspect of homeschooling -- no fractions until third grade?!? How can you bake or cut up sandwiches or divide food between various numbers of siblings without fractions!?! -- but a lot of it is definitely because T is T. (Odd observations from the standards: (1) Apparently, "children" magically become "students" when they reach 3rd grade; (2) The standards say nothing -- nothing -- about money or time, two very traditional aspects of elementary math education, but a fair amount about "Data Analysis," which I don't recall working with at all until high school, and then only in science class; on this latter point, maybe my memory is just faulty?)

D and T had a huge screaming fight this morning that left both of them crying and in need of comfort. D ended up running off to her room to spend time alone, which left me free to comfort T -- which I thought was good, because in my mind, she was pretty obviously the one most at fault. (My expression of this opinion, coupled with some punishment for what she'd done to her brother, was part of what precipitated her departure from the scene.) They'd been playing "store," and T wasn't adding prices up "the right way," and in her insistence on "the right way," she yelled and screamed and threatened him until he was scared, crying, and badly hurt emotionally. (I'd been on a different floor, and wasn't alerted to the fight until the volume rose rather high.) So I comforted him, got him busy doing something else (getting dressed so we could run errands), and then sought her out. She was also upset and in need of comfort, so we cuddled some on her bed while I commisserated with her over the frustrations of little brothers who won't do what they should and expressed my disappointment over her valuing "the right way" over being nice to her brother. I'm not really sure what more to do. This is simply the latest and worst in a series of similar disagreements; T has been taking a more active role in determining the directions their pretends take, and D has been very slow and reluctant to relinquish control. What's more, she seems to be learning his obnoxious ways of dealing with disappointment -- yelling and roaring when she doesn't get her way -- plus a large dose of yelling every parental word I wish I'd never said at top volume, with a few random and ineffective threats thrown in for good measure (and increased volume and anger when the threats don't work, which they never do -- her favorite threat is, "If you don't [X], I won't play with you any more!" which by that point probably sounds like a pretty good deal to the unfortunate target of her wrath, and she never follows through on her threats). I'm considering trying the tactic of "enlisting" her to "help" with T's therapy -- telling her that it's good for T to be directing some of the pretend (which is totally true, his therapist would love to see him do more of this and it's a good sign that he's trying to), and asking her to encourage him to do so -- but that seems like a lot to ask of a 6.5yo, or at the very least seems likely to lead to questions whose answers are rather heavy for a 6.5yo. Another thing to discuss with the therapist on Saturday, I suppose, although I'd be very interested in other feedback in the meantime.

I'm also trying to puzzle out what to do about J eating dirt. It appears, from the muddy smears he has every time he comes inside after playing in the back yard, that eating dirt has become a regular part of his outside play. It seems to me that if the experience of eating dirt is not, in itself, sufficient deterrent to keep him from doing it, then there's not much more that I'll be able to do. But I have enough uncertainty in my risk assessment to wonder: How bad can eating dirt be? Should I be worried? Is it worth resorting to sprinkling Tobasco on all the exposed dirt in our back yard, or hovering over him anxiously and trying to divert him every time he tries it? I doubt it, but I'm not really sure.

In other news, it seems likely that I will soon have two children teething at the same time -- D has three loose teeth (they're all in a row, and the center one is much looser than the other two), and I remember my adult teeth hurting when they came in. At least D is old enough to ask for ice to chew/suck on, unlike J. :)

Newt

* There are two reasons to keep track of records: For the sake of other people (IL doesn't really require the keeping of records, so it's possible that no one else will ever see these, but if anyone ever made an actual allegation of educational neglect, it'd be good to have records on hand to help prove otherwise), and for my sake (the nonlinearity of his preferred learning style, combined with the generally large number of other things I'm tracking at any given time, is making it rather hard for me to keep track of what he does and doesn't know, and I'm hoping that having what he knows summarized fairly succinctly somewhere will help me generate ideas as to what to work on next).

Today, in the process of making supper, I had to break up a giant lump of frozen peas. I did this in my normal fashion: I held the top of the bag and swung the entire bag, underhand-style, against the tiled wall in the kitchen, forcefully and repeatedly, with a loud *thud* each time, until enough peas had broken off the lump for us to eat.

As I poured the peas into the pot, J picked up a random piece of hardware that was lying around and swung it at the wall, forcefully and repeatedly, with a loud *thud* each time.

Oops.

Newt

Yesterday, we went to a game store, where T discovered the game of darts. (Thankfully, the darts had magnetic tips, not sharp tips. Nonetheless, we did not bring the game home.) They had one dart board set up for people to play with, at just the right height for T. T settled on the following rules for playing darts:

1) The person to get rid of all their darts first, wins. ("Get rid of" = "throw at target.")
2) The two players must take turns.
3) T get the first turn.

Unless one of the darts gets lost, this results in a deterministic game. However, even if you know who's going to win, throwing things is fun -- moreso when you have a very small child around who will chuckle endearingly every time something flies through the air.

Newt