Mommy Brain

The folks over at the Atypical Homeschool forum have a thread going about the areas in which we homeschool parents are educating ourselves. (Great blog and great forum, by the way.)

There are several areas in which I know my own education is lacking. The area I’m planning to work on this year is art. Not the doing part of art, but the knowing part of art. Art appreciation.

I’m not artistically gifted in what I consider the “main” arts – drawing, painting, sculpting. I am musical and I love to crochet, but in school I always saw myself as artistically impaired. Because I felt pressure to be able to create a certain way, I hated it. I hated arts and crafts time, I hated trying to draw and I never advanced farther than stick figures.

I haven’t completely given up, though. During the last two years, the kids and I have been enjoying the Draw Write Now, 1-2-3 Draw and You Can Draw series and I’ve definitely improved. I even enjoy it – now that no one’s making me do it.

But back to art appreciation. Because I learn best by reading, that’s how I’m pursuing knowledge in this area. I’m starting with children’s books. This may seem strange, but I don’t know anything about the terminology of art, and I doubt I’d understand any books geared toward adults.

I’ve found a terrific series of books at our public library by Richard Muhlberger. The series includes the one pictured at the top of this post, as well as books on Cassat, Monet, da Vinci, Picasso, Van Gogh, Bruegel, and a few others I’m forgetting right now. The book has large full-page prints of the artist’s work, as well as smaller pictures that highlight details and specific sections. The author gives a brief biography of the artist and explains how his background influenced his art. He shows what makes the artist’s work stand out from other artists and tells you how to identify the artist’s style.

I want to pass on some of this new-found knowledge to the kids. So far they haven’t expressed an interest, in spite of my strategic “strewing” of the books around the house. I’ll be ready when they ask, though. And in the meantime, I’m actually enjoying art.

What about you? Are there any areas you’re delving into this year?

For the first time in history, the Seattle Seahawks are headed to the Super Bowl! If I knew how, I’d put up a smiley doing a victory dance. I screamed myself hoarse, and I can’t stop bouncing. Here’s to victory in Detroit two weeks from today!

Tagging myself again:

Four jobs you have had in your life:
Administrative Assistant
Sales Clerk
Waitress
Real Estate Agent

Four movies you could watch over and over:
Sleepless in Seattle
While You Were Sleeping
When Harry Met Sally
Meet Me in St. Louis

Four places you have lived:
Sedro Woolley, Washington
Vancouver, Washington
Pullman, Washington
Colville, Washington

Four TV shows you love to watch:
NCIS
Lost
House
American Idol

Four places you have been on vacation:
Victoria, B.C. – three times, this was our family’s favorite vacation spot when I was growing up
Tepic, Mexico – on a missions trip, so not really a vacation
Waldport, Oregon – our honeymoon
Palm Springs – as a nanny with my Aunt and Uncle

Four websites you visit daily:
My Yahoo page for news
Arlo and Janis – my favorite comic (only weekdays, no new content on weekends)
The Quiddler daily puzzle
Atypical Homeschool forum

Four of your favourite foods:
Pizza
Ice Cream
Chinese food
Chocolate

Four places you’d rather be right now:
Can’t think of anything. I’m getting ready to head to my parents house to watch the Seahawks game in a few minutes.

Tagging?
Anyone who wants it.

Isabella remembers the birth of her son:

“First with child at the age of twenty-four, Isabella had wished herself a son but bore a daughter. She was anxious, having no experience of sisters, and only her own uneasy girlself to measure things by: she had been small and round and plain as a day-old loaf of brown bread. But Luise, like Margit to come after her, took after Alois: long and bony, with spindly fingers and toes; this set Isabella’s mind at ease. She gave everything affectionate she could find in herself to her girls, and in time came to the belief that a woman must have a daughter to rest easy in her grave.

Then Peter was born, and Isabella fell into a new kind of devotion, awash in an unexpected energy that made her arms quiver and her fingers jerk. She realized, with some guilt but no regret, that she had been holding back the quick of herself, the bloody beat of her heart, for a son. For Peter. It took her a long time, too long, to find some balance, to show an interest in the girls again. Even then, when no one was looking, she would pick Peter up and draw in his scent. She chided herself for taking such pleasure in his smell, even as she ran her nose over the crown of his scalp, pink and firm and fuzzy as a peach but much sweeter. She would fit her lower face to his small one, her nose buried in the soft folds between ear and shoulder, and inhale until she was dizzy. She did this until he was too old to tolerate it, and then she mourned the loss.”

Now Peter is a grown man, gone off to war, and his mother and family await his return:

“There are three men still gone, one fighting in the South Tirol. Two others, including Isabella’s Peter, are in Galicia. They have had no news of Peter in four months. Now the whole household – Isabella, Alois, and their widowed daughter, Barbara, as well as Peter’s wife and four children – lives with an ear turned toward the road. They wait for the sound of his step, or for word that he has fallen. The weight of this, all of them leaning toward the road, seems to have tipped the family out of balance and set them spinning haphazardly. They are moons of a missing planet.”

Peter returns from the war missing a leg, some fingers, and an eye.

“Now Isabella spends as much time as she can spare at the window watching Peter, who spends his days whittling in the Schopf with the shutters propped up to let in the light. She tells herself that he doesn’t know about this habit of hers.

Peter sits with the damaged side of his face bared to the mild winter sun. Like a blessing, the sunlight strokes what his mother cannot bring herself to look at: it moves tenderly over the mass of scar tissue that ripples from his hairline down the left side of his face to puddle on what was once a smooth cheek, a well-formed ear, a clean jaw. It soaks deep into the patch that hides the empty eye socket.

Isabella watches Peter as he turns his one eye and his mind, still whole and sharp, to the piece of wood wedged against his right thigh. Beneath his blade a world has come to life. A meadow of flowers twists and twirls around the long, tapered shaft of wood. Half hidden in a mass of blossoms, a stag raises his head. There are birds, squirrels, ibexes, and he is working now on a small group of marmots.

Quietly, the youngest of his boys slips into the Schopf to sit with his father. Peter makes no move to discourage him, but he pulls his cap down low over the left side of his face. Shavings still fall in fragile tendrils from the point of his knife. Isabella listens as Peter and Leo talk. Leo is seven, and so in love with his father that his ruined face is no penance at all. They talk about the marmots, who live in the highest ranges and cut grass and spread it to dry on rocks in the sun, using the sweet hay to build nests in their burrows. Leo imitates the high warning whistle the marmots make to their young, and Peter laughs out loud; Isabella feels her insides clutching. She chides herself for her weakness, for her jealousy of a seven-year-old child.

When Peter puts aside his knife, Isabella turns away quickly. She will not watch her son take up his wooden prosthesis, now covered to the hinged knee with flowers and vines and animals, and strap it to the stump where his left leg used to be.”

A mother’s love:

“Isabella goes down on her knees next to her son, her bones snapping and protesting, but she goes down anyway. There is a rustle as Anna moves away, but Isabella takes no note of this; she puts her hand on her son, her right palm on the ruined left side of his face, to turn him full toward her, to meet his eyes. He has been waiting for her all these days, all these weeks: he has been patient. But there is something of wariness, come caution in his eyes as well; Isabella sees this now and it makes her cringe. She runs her fingers – gently, gently – over the waves of flesh, red and purple; she traces the thick seams the doctors left behind; she cups his sunken cheek in her own seamed palm. There is murmuring around her: Alois, Anna, Barbara’s voice rising shrill. Only Peter is quiet. Peter doesn’t protest or turn away, and this gives her the strength to stay.

He smells of linseed ointment, of pipe tobacco and wood sap, of his wife and his union with her – this gives Isabella pause, but only for a moment. She draws in his smell and now she finds him again, the boy he was, a boy running bare-legged down the road while his mother watches at the window. When his arm comes up and around her shoulder, Isabella slides her fingers into her son’s hair, puts her face to the hollow between ear and shoulder, and draws in a breath.”

(All quoted passages are from Homestead by Rosina Lippi.)

Once a year, Kevin and I take a weekend away – just the two of us, no kids allowed. It has been one of the best investments in our marriage we have made. We’ve done this since the kids were small. It was easy because we either lived with my parents, or at least in the same town, and our kids are completely comfortable with being at Grandmama and Papa’s house. (In fact, sometimes I think they prefer it over being home!)

As the kids have gotten older, they’ve started to stay with friends for our weekend get-aways. We don’t usually have any trouble finding places for them to stay. Last year, my parents kept Natalie, our oldest, and Josiah, our youngest, while Noah and Jonathan stayed with their respective best friend’s families.

We’re planning to go the third weekend in February. This year, finding places for them to stay – places where they will have fun and with people we trust – has been extremely difficult. My parents are unable to take any of them because my dad will be working out of town and my mom’s schedule as a pastor keeps her weekends full. My friend, Debbie, whose son Dylan is Jonathan’s best friend, had knee surgery today and will be in recuperation mode for the next four to six weeks.

The oldest two will be staying with their best friends’ families, and I’m waiting to hear tonight from a good friend at church about taking the youngest two. What would we do without our church family?

It seems each year when we talk about going away, we have at least one person who says, “I could never leave my kids for three nights!” I don’t know if I’m defensive, but this always seems like an attempt to say, “We’re better parents than you are.”

We love our kids, and at the end of each yearly getaway we are more than ready to get back home to them. But each year when our tax refund is on its way, we get excited about our time alone together. We have found that this one weekend a year allows us to spend time making goals for the coming year, talking about things that have nothing to do with running our household, and just being together in a way that’s not always possible at home.

A few years ago, when we only had two children, I was talking to some ladies at women’s Bible study about our yearly tradition. An older lady, whose children are grown and older than me, approached me. She said, “I’m glad to see that you and Kevin are making your marriage a priority. Dick and I didn’t do that. We poured 110 percent of ourselves into our children, and there was nothing left over for each other. When our last daughter graduated and left home, we were left with nothing. We didn’t know each other anymore; we were like strangers. It took a few years to get to know each other again, to remember why we had gotten married in the first place. Remember that your children will one day be grown up with families of their own. Keep your marriage a priority, and even though your kids leaving home will be hard, you’ll be looking forward to more years with your best friend.” I always remember her words when that “mother-guilt” clicks in when we’re getting ready to go away.

So in a few weeks, Kevin and I will be headed here for three nights and three days. We’ll be staying here. We’ll spend a few hours here, browsing and getting caffeinated. Kevin will probably want to go here. We’ll watch movies, eat here, here, and here, and spend lots of time doing this and this. (Made you wonder, didn’t I? ~wink~)

IF, my friend says they can take the boys. (Please, please, please…)

I think our family has finally returned to the land of the healthy. Other than some lingering coughs and slight congestion, the worst is over. We celebrated Saturday by taking the kids to the Aquatic Center in Trail, B.C. Our little northeastern Washington town is only about 45 minutes from the Canadian border, and the kids love the aquatic center. Huge lap pool, smaller kiddy pool, spiral waterslide, and a hot tub for us grownups – all indoors, so weather doesn’t matter. We swam and soaked for a couple hours and then headed to Subway for lunch. (6″ Subway Club – only 6 Weight Watchers points. Not as much fun without cheese or mayo though.) Kevin asked for American cheese on his sandwich, which got him a funny look and a polite “We don’t have American cheese.” It’s okay, Ron and Andrea assure me we didn’t commit an international faux pas.

We stopped at a cute little place called Cafe Americano for lattes for the trip home. The owner was a delightful Italian lady, tiny and full of energy. She assured us many times that she just loves Americans and we should tell all of our friends to stop by her shop. The lattes were excellent, and I was good and bypassed the homemade cannolis sitting on the counter.

We’re back in full swing where school is concerned. I’m proud to announce that Jonathan, my 6-year-old, now knows every letter by sight, and also knows the sounds of half of them. He’s starting to read words here and there and is very proud of himself. Math is still his favorite, though, and we’ve been having fun playing with our paper clock and talking about time.

Natalie, my third-grader, is doing great as usual. Third grade math brings a lot of new, hard information: fractions, multiplication, division. She’s coming along, though, in spite of Mommy’s inability at times to explain things. I understand what I’m talking about, but it doesn’t seem to come out in a way that makes the light bulb come on for her. She’s reading Nancy Drew again and we’re reading The Horse and His Boy together. We raced through The Magician’s Nephew and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe during Christmas break. I think I enjoy reading them aloud with someone even more than I enjoyed them when I read them myself.

When we got to the chapter where Aslan dies, she sobbed and sobbed. At that point, my husband came up to watch a movie with me and it was time for Natalie to go to bed. I took pity on her and missed a half hour of the movie to read the next chapter to her in her room so she knew everything turned out all right. Her response: “I don’t think I can watch this movie, Mom. I don’t want to cry that hard ever again.” I found it’s much harder to do all the voices when you’re crying yourself!

Noah is also doing well. He found a Danger Joe book he received as a reading reward from the library’s summer reading program two years ago. The book went on the shelf since he was just beginning to read at the time. Now he’s reading it himself, and it’s wonderful to watch. He also discovered the Garfield books over Christmas break. He reads me all the funny ones so we can laugh together. Things are much funnier when they’re shared, aren’t they?

Josiah wants to “do school” now, too, and so Natalie helps him with a preschool workbook I picked up at Walmart while I’m working with the other boys. He’s only four, but it’s on his own initiative, so I think it’s all right. We’ll stop as soon as he loses interest. In the meantime, he can now count to 20 and recognize numbers 1 through 10.

I was able to go to women’s Bible study this morning for the first time in weeks, since we were off for the holidays and then we all got sick. I left on a high. I had forgotten how much I need that time with my friends, the encouragement, and the prayer.

I had my Weight Watchers meeting tonight. I came out of Christmas week with a few pounds back on, but have taken them off again. 36 pounds gone so far. I’m reconciling myself to the fact that this is a lifestyle change and it will take a while. One day at a time.

On a much lighter note, American Idol starts tonight! The kids and I will all watch together. This means that Natalie and I – and probably Noah – will watch, Jonathan will drift downstairs to be on the computer with Dad, and Josiah will fall asleep on the couch. And hopefully there are some more Clay Aikens, Bo Bices, and Carrie Underwoods waiting to be discovered.

…about gardening.

“I do not love to garden. I love other people’s gardens, and I like cut flowers. I have Astroturf and a whole lot of high-quality plastic flowers stuck in the dirt of our front yard. These are quite a lovely sight and bring to mind many e. e. cummings poems.

People used to give me potted plants and trees, and what happened to them is really too horrible to go into here. They’d end up looking like I watered them with Agent Orange. I’d tell people that I didn’t do well with potted plants, and they’d decide that I’d just never met the right one and that they were going to be the person to free me and cause God to restore my glorious gift of sight and all that, and they’d bring me some little training plant, and I’d try really hard to water it and keep it in or out of sunlight, whatever its little card of introduction said it preferred, and to take it for little walks around the house, and within about a month you could almost hear chlorophyllous breakdown, a Panic in Needle Park sort of thing. Then you’d see it clutching its little throat, staring at you with its little Keane eyes, gasping and accusing – and I mean, who needs it? Believe me, I have enough problems as it is.”

from Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott

…from Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott.

“And so if one of your heart’s deepest longings is to write, there are ways to get your work done, and a number of reasons why it is important to do so.

And what are those reasons again? my students ask.

Because for some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die. They are full of all the things that you don’t get in real life – wonderful, lyrical language, for instance, right off the bat. And quality of attention: we may notice amazing details during the course of a day but we rarely let ourselves stop and really pay attention. An author makes you notice, makes you pay attention, and this is a great gift. My gratitude for good writing is unbounded; I’m grateful for it the way I’m grateful for the ocean. Aren’t you? I ask.”
from pages 14-15

“You are going to love some of your characters, because they are you or some facet of you, and you are going to hate some of your characters for the same reason. But no matter what, you are probably going to have to let bad things happen to some of the characters you love or you won’t have much of a story. Bad things happen to good characters, because our actions have consequences, and we do not all behave perfectly all the time. As soon as you start protecting your characters from the ramifications of their less-than-lofty behavior, your story will start to feel flat and pointless, just like in real life. Get to know your characters as well as you can, let there be something at stake, and then let the chips fall where they may.”
from page 45

“As we live, we begin to discover what helps in life and what hurts, and our characters act this out dramatically. This is moral material. The word moral has such bad associations: with fundamentalism, stiff-necked preachers, priggishness. We have to get past that. If your deepest beliefs drive your writing, they will not only keep your work from being contrived but will help you discover what drives your characters. You may find some really good people beneath the packaging and posing – people whom we, your readers, will like, whose company we will rejoice in. We like certain characters because they are good or decent – they internalize some decency in the world that makes them able to take a risk or make a sacrifice for someone else. They let us see that there is in fact some sort of moral compass still at work here, and that we, too, could travel by this compass if we so choose.

In good fiction, we have one eye on the hero or the good guys and a fascinated eye on the bad guys, who may be a lot more interesting. The plot leads all of these people (and us) into dark woods where we find, against all odds, a woman or a man with the compass, and it still points true north. That’s the miracle, and it’s astonishing. This shaft of light, sometimes only a glimmer, both defines and thwarts the darkness.”
from pages 105-106

“Toddlers can make you feel as if you have violated some archaic law in their personal Koran and you should die, infidel. Other times they’ll reach out and touch you like adoring grandparents on their deathbeds, trying to memorize your face with their fingers.”
from page 203

(Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed! was provided to me free of charge by Mind and Media, who received it from the publisher for the purpose of being reviewed.)

I have been hoping the day would never come that I would have to review a book I didn’t like, but here it is, and here I go.

I read Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed! by Katharine DeBrecht for the first time the day after I received it in the mail. My initial reaction was negative, so I put the book down and waited a week. I re-read it this afternoon, and my reaction hasn’t changed.

There are two areas that I look at when I am reviewing a book: content and quality. A book can have very good content, but still be of low quality if it is poorly written or poorly edited. A book can be of high quality, and still be lacking or false in its content.

I’ll start with quality. This book is geared toward children. The story in the book is about two boys who want to earn money for a swingset. They decide to start a lemonade stand. That night, they have a dream that they’re operating their lemonade stand in a very scary place called Liberaland. The story is a platform for speaking out against the liberal agenda. None of my children enjoy reading or hearing books of this type. If the story is contrived or unbelievable or poorly written, my kids won’t pay attention long enough to get anything out of the “moral” of the story. There are also some grammatical errors in this book that make me question the editing process. I’m not saying that all authors should be perfect in this area, but these mistakes should have been taken care of at the editing stage.

As to content, the explanation of the liberal agenda is very shallow. We’re told that many areas of the liberal platform are bad, but there is no explanation of the conservative side of these issues. I want my kids to be able to think for themselves, not just to be told “liberal equals bad, conservative equals good”.

I disliked the use of caricatures of specific liberals in the drawings. Mayor Leach is an exaggerated Ted Kennedy, Senator Clunkton is a dead give-away for Hillary Clinton. I would have preferred to address the issues without taking shots at specific people, especially in a book aimed at children.

I agreed to review this book because I consider myself fairly conservative. I disagree with Ted Kennedy, the Clintons, and other liberals as much as the next conservative, and yet this book still bothered me. I may be mellowing politically, because I’m seeing more and more that neither political extreme has ownership of what is right and good. There are definitely some no-debate issues, such as pro-choice vs. pro-life, but there are also some issues that aren’t so clear cut.

In a book geared toward kids, I would have liked to see a more intelligent presentation of the pros and cons of the liberal agenda, and also a look at what the Word says. I never want my kids to believe a certain way just because Mommy and Daddy told them to. I want them to think for themselves, study Scripture, and come to their own conclusions. For this reason, I won’t be reading this book to my children.

(Connecting With Your Kids: How Fast Families Can Move From Chaos to Closeness was provided to me free of charge by Mind and Media, who received it from the publisher for the purpose of being reviewed.)

I started reading this book the same evening Kevin and I decided not to enroll our boys in pee-wee wrestling. Yes, they would probably excel at it. Yes, our town has a great wrestling program. Yes, the coach is a wonderful person. Yes, Noah’s best friend is participating. But we still decided not to do it.

We’re faced with guilt at every turn of this parenting journey, aren’t we? I feel guilty when we’re doing too much, so we cut back on our activities. Then I feel guilty because maybe our kids are missing out on valuable opportunities.

And yet what would we have been missing out on if we had said “yes”? Two and a half months of enjoying the unhurried lifestyle that our family values. Two and a half months of evenings spent at home resting and re-charging. Five Saturdays – in a row – of family activities like trips to Canada and swimming and just being together. Not to mention $15 enrollment fee, $25 for wrestling shoes, $18 for headgear, and $30 in tournament fees – for each boy.

We knew we had made the right decision. Timothy Smith’s book affirmed our choice. He has written an intelligent book that encourages families to slow down and let go of the guilt.

The first section, Breathless Pounding, talks about our society’s tendency to run fast, just for the sake of running. He then explains the why: our society values success, and we equate success with material, financial, and occupational achievement.

In section two, Check Your Pulse, he gets to his point: if we want to win our children’s hearts, we have to stop. Stop running, stop over-scheduling, stop striving. He shows the difference between the world’s standards of success, and God’s standards. We were made for rest and for connection. Our busy-ness denies us both.

In section three, Discover Your Heartprint, he describes the four basic “heartprints”: the Cruiser, the Runner, the Walker, and the Biathlete. He shows the characteristics of each and how to determine which heartprint is yours.

In the fourth section, Making Your Heartprint Work for Your Family, he gives advice on how to parent each of the different types, and how they blend in a family. He shows us how to be grace-filled, toward our children and toward ourselves.

Most of all, Mr. Smith shows the value of the family, and that it needs to be preserved at all costs. We won’t regret the “enrichment activities” we skipped, but we will regret the time we missed just being with our children.