Smatterings

Much like going on holiday or other life changing events, having a baby really throws a spanner in my blogging and prayer life. Its not that everything suddenly falls out of control, but any break in routine causes these two parts of my life to fly out the window. In this case, waking up twice at night to feed the baby has meant that I am not leaping up with the dawn to pray and blog. Rather, I am buried under a pile of blankets and children running through the day to come in my head. And somehow, if I don't get to it right off, I never return to it during the day. Except right now.

But lots of other things have been happening. Here are some of them.

Going to the Dentist
I haven't been the dentist in a while.
As a child, whenever we were near a dentist, as far as I could tell, I had to spend a lot of time being shouted at in French while what seemed like All of my teeth were filled.
"Ouvre la bouche!!!" the dentist would shout (that means OPEN YOUR MOUTH)
Actually this only happened for one week in Belgium when I was six. But every dentist after was really just an extension of that first dentist.

And then there's the fact that I have a Huge gag reflex. I remember as yesterday throwing up on a dentist in Oregon--a foolish man who, when informed by me that he was about to be thrown upon, said 'no you won't' only to find that in fact I could and did.

So this time, having been drug by Matt (ON MY Day Off no less) to a bright cheerful sparkling clean Teeth Factory, I apologized loudly and right away for gagging. 'I'm so sorry' I said over and over as the poor hygienist tried to get an X Ray and I gagged again and again. Finally she gave up and took me into a fancy room with a machine that took pictures from the outside. 'I'm so sorry' I said as she led me back to the waiting room.

Needless to say, I'll be going back to the dentist fairly often for the next little while. Each time I will think of Mrs. Miniver lying back in that perfectly comfortable chair, designed to extract the worst kind of torture, so comfortable that nothing will distract you from what's going on in your mouth. Next time I go, I'll have found the book and I'll be able to tell you all about it.
In the meantime, I leave you with this.

Classical Conversations
We finished our first 12 weeks!! I'm really enjoying my class this year. I might not have mentioned it before but I'm the tutor for the 4s and 5s or Abecedarians as they are called in CC. I have a class of five boys and one girl. One of the boys is mine and he's made real progress this year, especially from last year.

You'd probably think, as I initially did, that spending a morning once a week with 6 little kids trying to do a science experiment, play the tin whistle, learn Latin Noun Declensions one by one and hear a presentation from each child on the topic of the day would be a completely ghastly experience. But you'd be So Wrong. Aside from Sunday, Wednesday mornings are my favorite. I particularly enjoyed this week's presentation time. The topic was of their own choosing and after hearing 3 little boys talk about movie characters they love, the one girl got up with a doll dressed as a flower. The boys could not understand the meaning of this doll.
'How did she get to be dressed as a flower?' one of them asked.
'Well, what movie is she in?' asked another.
No answers were forthcoming to these questions. I mean, really, why wouldn't she be dressed as a flower is a better question.

Nursing the Baby
As expected, its going much better. As I said before, this baby is my best eater. She gained a pound in two weeks (AMAZING) and looks, let's be perfectly honest, pudgy. And, now that we're heading into week four, its not Nearly so painful.

Conversations
Alouicious came and shouted to me this morning, as I was trying to brush my teeth, 'Are there any tiny riding men?' or it may have been 'writing men'. Either way the question was incomprehensible to me.
'What?' I said.
'Are there any tiny riding men?'
'I don't know' I said helplessly. 'I have No Idea.'

Visits
We were charmed and delighted to have some family visit last week from far away places like Oregon and New Jersey. It made me quite homesick for an Oregon winter and for all the lovely and sensible people who live out there.

The Christmas Pageant
I'm immersed in it. I've been tweaking and tweaking the script and music and cast list. Its going to be the Best Ever. I hope everyone will come see it.

An ordered and Peaceful Life
It feels to me, in a vague and undefinable way, that we are shedding the stress and crises of the last 8 years. I had feared that having lived for so long, our whole marriage in fact, in a church in turmoil that we wouldn't know how to live without it when it came time.

Such appears not to be the case. A growing and vibrant church, while fraught on many days, and certainly full of the many small dramas that make life interesting, is not necessarily crisis driven. The growth, order and generalized peace of the church is very much present in our home. Even as we head into a stressful time of year we are by no means over stretched and running in too many directions.

Rearranging the Furniture

I seriously overdid it yesterday and ended up in a rocking chair, at the end of the dining room table, grimacing and closing my eyes every few seconds while everyone else ate supper and asked repeatedly, 'what's wrong, Mommy?'
'I didn't drink enough' I said over and over, chewing on ice cubes, 'and now the baby thinks it should be born right now.'
'Ew' said Alouicious.

I never can get used to this last stage of pregnancy. After this many babies, or so my doctor tells me, your body knows how to give birth and sets itself up to be ready to every moment of the day and night. So you feel, for weeks and weeks, like you're about to kick into labor, but you never do. That's the key. You Never Do. You just go on being pregnant until Jesus comes back. And of course, God is patient and merciful, abounding in steadfast love, not wanting any to perish but all to gain eternal life and so He Doesn't Come Back. Day after day he waits.

I exaggerate, only a little. This pregnancy has been the best, probably, of all five (except for being seriously nauseated for 6 months). Matt pointed out yesterday, when I was whining, that usually by this point and I am affixed to the couch eating lime popsicles and moaning. Instead, for reasons I cannot fathom, I am vacuuming almost every day, maintaining an organized and orderly house, cooking immense pots of soup and getting in full days of school. And This Week (I can barely contain my excitement) I'm hoping to move all the contents of two atria into two beautifully constructed rooms built for this vary purpose in the parish hall. I have Never Had three separate rooms for all three levels of Catechesis. The rooms are going to be painted a cheerful and holy yellow and then I'm going to putter and move furniture and make lists.

It was a great comfort to me, then, to discover this post this morning. I know Matt (and probably the whole vestry) wonders why I am always in the atrium, rearranging stuff and fussing. And I know my own children wonder why, when we arrive at CC on Wednesdays, the first thing I do is rearrange All the tables and chairs even though there's no real practical reason to do so. Obviously, its because I'm such a godly person (ahem). It couldn't be any other reason, like being overly perfectionist and hung up about inconsequentials.

But this morning, still being sore and shattered by my own stupidity, I am going to lie here and continue to eat ice.

maybe this is helpful or.....

We're memorizing Psalm 139 in the group time of our CC mornings. Here's the tune we worked on yesterday. Its only half the psalm, and I am NOT an amazing singer, especially since at the top of my blog this morning I read, 'Your baby is almost 17 inches long and weighs 4 lbs. Only 60 days to go!' which means that my lung capacity is seriously diminished. The child on my lap is for you to look at while I sing, instead of looking at me. I don't know why she is pouting.

For those of you who might need it

I coerced Micah, our youth minister, into working out a song for John 1:1-7 in Latin as a help to us since we've been struggling with it. Feel free to make use of it as you need.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Download "" in MP3 format

Wednesday in Review

I'm sitting here in a veritable stupor. Even though everyone slept until 7:30 (are you paying attention? 7:30!!!! Not 5, not 4, not 6:45, 7:30), having to actually get out bed and stumble down to the kitchen to make my own tea facing down hoards of miniature shouting angry people (by that I mean my own children) is still daunting.

I deeply appreciate all the prayers for Matt's safe traveling. However, I neglected to ask for prayer that Matt would take the right set of keys with him.

Yesterday morning, having woken up at 5 and spent what seemed days preparing and organizing for our morning with Classical Conversations, I experienced sheer terror at precisely 7:50 when I took the keys off the hook and found them to be the wrong keys. I called Matt in hysteria and then remembered that, by the grace of God, one of the families in CC lives four blocks from us. I called in her in a fit of apologetic embarrassment and she very graciously agreed to come get us on her way.

So the morning progressed without other incident. Except that my own son could not see his way to sitting in his chair even for the slightest amount of time and eventually, by the end of the morning, was standing up in it shouting and weeping about the melting of the snow. Then he shouted and wept when I took his star and he lost the opportunity to pick a prize out of the prize bucket.

I was so shattered by the whole mess that when we got home I let everyone watch Curious George and Word Girl while I tried to figure out what to do about choir. Because there's also choir on Wednesdays, which requires a car with a key. After much phoning and gnashing of my own teeth, someone from the choir with a van volunteered to come get all of us.

Really, there's nothing like taking four small children to choir practice at night in winter. I bathed them all, stuffed them into warm pjs, stuffed them into coats, and then plonked them in front of this

while I filled bottles and found snacks and looked for the list of music. Choir itself involved holding the baby (first on the back and then the front), moving E closer to and then farther away from the heater as her internal temperature dictated (she sat with her eyes shut and her hands folded in holy contemplation. Later I discovered she was thinking about how much candy she expected to receive and not about the music, or God), catching my boys by their collars as they ran laps around the church to tell them to NOT run laps around the church, finally forcing them to sit in the library because they couldn't Not run laps around the church, only to hear one wail (loud enough for everyone to hear) "It hurts my feelings when you make me sit in here."

So I am sitting here in a stupor. Pretty soon I'm going to move my stupor to the school table where I will wrestle my children into learning whatever it is we're supposed to be learning today. And then I'm going to make them Clean!!! NOW, no don't dawdle, no stop touching your brother, CLEAN!!! because Daddy is coming home and if he delays at all, well, we'll see.

Oh, and if you're in Binghamton and you're planning to go to the Noon Eucharist today, its canceled, because I can't get there.

Friday in Fall

So we didn't read Alfred the King, in spite of our best intentions. Well, E's intention was NOT to read it and I became distracted from my tireless pursuit to make her read it. Thing is, she's reading, rather well actually, but without any interest at all. The whole point hasn't clicked and I'm gathering that I can't make it click, no matter how much I talk about how exciting and wonderful reading is. Amazingly, she would rather read lists of words on boring pieces of paper than an actual book with pictures. Such a strange child.

Meanwhile, E and A are retaining vasts amounts of disconnected information and enjoying it very much-the timeline, the english grammar facts/definitions, the dates and history sentences, the timeline, the catechism, the bible verses, the parts of the body, the latin. To be perfectly honest (I hate it when people say that), I'm totally surprised. I'm more than surprised. I happened to glance at my IHip today (I can't even remember what IHip stands for) and found that we are on track for where I planned to be, even though I feel like (feeeeeeeeelings, nothing more than feeeeeeeeeelings) we're always behind.

As I just said, it surprises me. I'm surprised, shocked even. I guess I just imagined it being so Awful and so Hard. When you say something like, 'Well, we're homeschooling this year,' to someone who knows you have four small children and a 40 hour a week job at church they look so Appalled, so Afeared for your sanity that you go home thinking, 'I must be crazy, this was a terrible idea'.

This very thing happened to me this week. I wondered to myself, 'How am I doing this?' And I discovered the following things about our life.

A. (because we're learning the alphabet). We're very focused on the things that are really important to us, like: home made bread, home made stock, home made food in general. So a day in the kitchen is essential to the functioning of the household through the week.
B. the children are perfectly capable of cleaning and picking up after themselves so I will not waste time doing it better after they have done a bad job. I will just sit down in the chaos and ignore the veritable desert of crumbs on the floor, admonishing them that they will have to do it tomorrow since they did not do it today.
C. Church is more important that sports. So we are not probably going to do a lot of sports. Maybe a little here and there, but basically its going to be a life lived in church. E, actually, is having an hour of ballet a week and loving it. But basically, because we're not running all over creation, we have time to help clean the church, worship in the church, make pies for the church, play in the church and color pictures all the live long day in church.
D. Classical Conversations is SO HELPFUL. Its keeping us on track and providing structure for the difficult things like science, art and music.
E. E and A are recovering the very good relationship they lost a little last year when she was in regular school. They were glued to each other before that, but, after a year of being endlessly on the bus, exhausted from relating to so many different people, they seemed unable to get a long. Now they work together, play together and pray together and are glued back at the hip, only now they have little ones to include and love and its very pleasant to watch.
F. Being with your own children for the whole day is not as awful as one would expect.
G. I'm really glad we dispensed with the whole counting thing. If a child can come at '3' or '10' they might as well come right away. Of course then you have to teach counting another way.
H. Some days are better than others but every day that we do school all day is a good day.
I. I can count well enough for a first grader.
J. I'm a better singer than I thought.
K. I can play the tin whistle better than a four year old on my first try.
L. I'm a lot less lazy than I was seven years ago.
M. My children will be a lot less lazy when I'm through with them.
N. Sometimes its easier to remember the timeline when you're dressed up as Spiderman.
O. Babies are a serious pain when you're trying to delicately glue little pieces of paper together in exactly the right way.
P. It is imperative that everyone goes to bed early on friday night so that I can watch that repulsive program The Soup. There, I said it, I watch TV sometimes, even bad TV.
Q. We actually have more order and structure than we did with a regular school routine. I am not required to get up while it is still dark to make lunch and stand out in the cold waiting for the bus. I can slowly wake up and start school at a reasonable hour when the sun is up and everyone is in their right mind.
R.If Matt didn't cook on the weekends, I would loose my small mind.
S. Homeschooling IS a sacrifice but I can't remember what we gave up to do it. Must not have been that great, whatever it is.
T. I thought I would have to give up doing all the stuff I do at church, but actually, I just needed to do more work in less time (as in being less lazy, see above). Surprise.
U. I really enjoy making charts and books. I don't enjoy reading the Math text to find out what we're doing next.
V. I don't have the energy to read Any books at all except for Calvin and Hobbes.
W. I didn't need to worry that Matt would never read to the children in the evening. It turns out, he just wouldn't read boring things. Now that he's reading them Narnia, he Never forgets and rearranges his whole life to be there at that moment.
X. I probably don't need to worry at all, although its such an essential habit for me, I don't see giving it up this year.
Y. Probably more people could homeschool if they put their mind to it, just like more people could go to church if they put their mind to it.
Z. Gluing leaves to pieces of paper is a legitimate art project and it doesn't need to wait until I know what all the leaves are before we do it.
Well, isn't that a nice cliche, I made it all the way to Z.

Columbus Day

The leaves are really peaking today. This year is by far the most beautiful since we've been here. Its just stunning.

My house, on the other hand, not so stunning. I let the boys eat cinnamon buns on top of me in bed this morning, which means at 10 o'clock tonight, or whenever I happen to get to bed, I'll have to strip all the sheets off because there's no way I'm living with all those crumbs for a whole night. And the kitchen is a wreck because at 5:30 Matt and I decided that we HAD to celebrate Columbus day with meatballs and cheesecake.

And the baby is teething horrendously (you can search back to my posts during Holy Week for my thoughts on this matter). She continues in abject misery.

E, after being told to pick up the living room, said, 'I'm having a bad day'.
'No you're not' I said, 'You're having a perfectly fine day.'
'Oh,' she said.

So, I'm sitting here next to this brilliant red tin whistle, ream of papers in hand, ready to go. By morning I will be playing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to perfection.

Half of a post

For those of you who are getting tired of all the homeschooling chitchat, I'm sorry, as things settle out I'm sure I'll be able to think about many other things. Its just been on my mind for the last few weeks to comment on the strange juxtaposition or intersection (its Monday morning, I don't know what word I'm casting about for) between something like the Trivium and something like Catechesis of the Good Shepherd.

Catechesis is essentially Montessori based. Sophia Cavaletti, is inventor and founder, was friends with Maria Montessori and set out to fill out and provide the spiritual/religious element that Montessori herself never had time to. In other words, its all about 'Experience' and 'Prepared Environment' (I'm not being snarky with the scare quotes). The environment is key to the experience of the child as they meet God. The underlying most basic assumption of Catechsis is that the child already has an understanding of God, that God has already revealed himself to the child in creation, in love, in care. And that the child, especially at age 3 to 6, responds naturally and openly to God in prayer, thanksgiving and worship. Obviously, many things can happen before the age of three to interrupt or destroy a child's vision and experience of God, not least of them not being brought to church.

The prepared environment, or Atrium (entry way into full life in the church), sets the stage for the child to experience God and begin to gain vocabulary and meat and potatoes knowledge around that information. This is where it's so interesting, for me. There's no memorizing. There's no coloring of worksheets. There's no 'teaching' per say. The Catechists tells the stories of scripture (all carefully chosen) and uses various handmade materials to tell and retell the story and talk about, particularly 'wonder' about what God is doing, how the people in the story feel etc. The repetition naturally produces real knowledge of the scripture, and the use of the materials makes the connection between hands, heart, mind, and body. There's nothing more restful than watching a child speaking quietly to herself, moving little wooden sheep in and out of a green pasture, moving the Good Shepherd, opening and closing the gate.

Then I flip over to Classical Education, where I am not at all concerned (well, not too concerned) about the Religious Potential of the Child or their Experience of anything, my Main Concern is knowledge. So we are memorizing Everything-the Catechism, the times tables, the systems of the body, the Time Line, history dates and facts, Latin, language arts. They Are like Sponges. In three days of minimal repetition, they basically have the first week down.

About a year ago I mentioned to someone that we were thinking about Classical Education. The person I was talking to was a Montessori teacher, in a Montessori school. She was appalled, practically sick to her stomach. 'How can you do that? What about the Child? You're going to wreck the three year cycle!'

Well, we are on the three year cycle, the CC three year cycle.

Flee, thou, from temptation

Wednesday appears to be the day to blog. I'm really supposed to be doing work (All Kinds of work, I'm feeling tempted to list it all but, as I just told my Bible Study, Scripture teaches us to flee from temptation) so blogging seems an obvious choice.

I'm sitting here in the library at church with a large inadequate lamp, a pot of tepid tea, ice cold milk, and a large cupcake. I shouldn't be sitting next to a cupcake. I'm trying to loose five pounds this week in advance of seeing Matt's mom and sister who I am always hoping to impress (they're both so much cooler than me, but I make the effort anyway).

And on the other side (away from the cupcake) I've got a nice fresh stack of CC books that arrived yesterday. Last night I watched the info video that came along (well, listened, but I had a vague feeling there was supposed to be a picture along with). I was so tired, lying there listening, and honestly, the only thing that sticks in my mind is that Leigh Bortins, while having a very soothing voice and important things to say, did not appear to be breathing and would come up for a big gasp of air every paragraph or so.

Alright, alright. Kelly is sitting here waiting for me to stop blogging so we can go work. Blast it all.