A Little More Time

My dad has been in the hospital for a week and a half. Whereas for a lot of people this would cause a lot of anxiety and hand-wringing, for my sisters and me it was a cause for rejoicing, as our Daddy just has not been himself for the last few months and we thought it was well-past time that someone figured out what was wrong. He was forgetting things - lots of things. He couldn't really carry on a conversation with you - it would either be one-word answers, or the same sentence, over and over again. (Spooky, as our Dad is the Champion Endurance Talker of the Century, once holding an old high school buddy of mine captive on the phone for 45 minutes talking about turkey hunting. It took my friend at least a year before he would even call me again.)

At any rate, the kicker was, for about 2 weeks prior to his hospitalization, my dad would not get out of bed. He wouldn't eat. He just lay there, sleeping or staring at a muted TV. It was A.W.F.U.L. When he finally did get up, he went for a haircut, fell out of the chair, and didn't remember falling. That was it. We (Mom and I) took him to the neurologist the next day.

I'm happy to say, one hospital visit and lots of new medications later, my dad is SO much better. He is diabetic, and had let his blood sugar stay way too high for way too long. He also has hypothyroidism, which was going practically untreated. Those conditions are now under control. But the best thing is that he has a renewed state of mind and emotional health, if you know what I mean. I feel like at least a glimmer of the old Dad is back.

I know not everyone gets to keep their parents around for as long as I have. But I'm not ashamed to admit selfishness on this point. I want 'em as long as I can have 'em, and I want 'em as they are - not shells, not bodies without spark or personality. I hope the last two weeks have bought us a little more time together, and I plan to use it. Even if it means listening to turkey stories.

On the Home(School) Front

Well, we've been doing school around here for about a month, and I have not yet posted about how our year is going so far. Actually, I've been holding my breath a bit, waiting to see if it gets harder. But, I have to say with a little sigh of relief, that I think it's gonna be okay.

For one thing, we're all in new math programs, and that is working out well. You know why? Not because the programs themselves are necessarily better, or my kids like them more. No, it's this: all of them are Mastery programs. You know, some math programs are Spiral-based: they teach a little of a skill, then a little of something else, then a little of a third thing, then come back around to the first thing and teach the next step. That seems to work well for a lot of kids. Not mine, though. Or maybe I should say, not for ME. I got so frustrated when my kids could not get through their math without tons of errors, and then I'd go to try and correct them, and then we'd have to backtrack 20 lessons to find the one little skill they never mastered so that they could not make the rest of the problems work out.

With their new programs, we stay on a skill till I know they've GOT it. If they get more than 3 or 4 problems wrong, we do more of the same the next day. We're not moving on until it is solid. Math is taking a long time this way... but it is SO much easier to correct. And I don't have that horrible twisty feeling in my guts that they are going to blow their math exams in high school because I've failed them as a teacher now.

Someone asked me what we are using - it's Chalkdust for the boys, and Math-U-See for the girl. Yeah, the MUS is a little on the easy side... but I'm okay with that. It's very homeschool friendly, with none of the silly classroom stuff that wastes hours of time, and it's very visual. We're doing two pages a day. The Chalkdust is pretty good. There's a video instructor who teaches each lesson, then the boys do the problem sets that go with the video. I do like being able to control how much practice they get.

At Classical School (the one-day-a-week program the boys attend), the year has gotten off to a good start. Things that were excruciatingly hard for DS2 last year have miraculously gotten easier, such as writing papers. Grammar and Latin we have been doing together, and that is paying off - DS aced his first tests in both subjects! (This TRULY is miraculous, believe me!) Their teacher has come up with a clever plan for Latin... I just love this. Even though the boys are a year apart in the program, they are on the same lessons in the Latin book because the older class started Latin at the same time as the younger class. DS1 is head of his class in Latin, which his little competitive heart just loves, but there are a couple of other kids hot on his heels. So their teacher made a deal with DS1 - he could earn extra credit every time HIS BROTHER aces a Latin quiz or test. In other words, if DS1 helps DS2 succeed, they both win. How cool is that? The best part is... it's working. DS1 has taken over Latin lessons with his brother. Heh, heh, heh. Let the revolution begin.

DD and I are whizzing through First Language Lessons and Story of the World Vol. 1. That's because we were supposed to be halfway done with the former and completely done with the latter by the end of last year, but sadly, we weren't. So I'm trying to stay completely on track this year to catch up. We're skipping some of the SOTW lessons, which is unfortunate, but hey, if we didn't I don't think we'd finish the book by the end of THIS year! I'm hoping to start Vol. 2 in a couple of weeks, and again, we'll have to skip a few chapters, but we should be able to finish up, which is the goal. One thing I do know by now, after 6.25 years of homeschooling, is that you have to be master of the curriculum and not let it master you.

Let's see, what have I left out? Piano lessons! We have another new teacher (long story), but the big advantage of this guy is he comes to my house! Woo hoo! This is so efficient! And I really like him as a teacher... he is very focused, and positive, but he has high standards, which has helped my kids want to practice. Whew. We are not doing any sports right now... which needs to be corrected... but we'll get there. Right now I'm feeling like we're not TOO busy, and not TOO idle, and I hate to upset the balance. Margin is a good thing.

Round Here

On The Other Side of the World

Were you as sad as I was to learn of Steve Irwin's death? Yeah, yeah, I know you could say it was only a matter of time... but really, don't all of us take risks every day just getting in the car and driving on the highway? Yes, The Crocodile Hunter took unusual risks, but he did so with passion. And enthusiasm. He had a rare gift for making us look at God's world with renewed wonder and making it seem fresh and adventurous. In a world full of too-cool-for-you celebrities, The Crocodile Hunter was never too jaded to express a genuine excitement for learning and exploring. His family's loss is a loss to all of us.

Round Here

The Counting Crows played in Atlanta this weekend, and guess who got to see them? Mamabird! And guess why? Because Mamabird's kid brother is a musician who plays with a singer/songwriter who opened for the Crows! So DH and eldest Babybird and I all got to hang out backstage with a bunch of very cool musicians (no, not the Crows - it's all very segregated, even backstage), but it was very exciting nonetheless. My brother was FABULOUS, if I do say so myself. He's been playing music professionally for about 10 years now, and it was a real thrill to see him perform in front of thousands of people. We've been to enough hole-in-the-wall bars and Arby's parking lots to see him play for dozens, so this was very gratifying.

Back to Real Life

School goes on. Math is a drag. Latin is rockin'. Everything else is just okay. But this is a short week, with the holiday, so I'm going to take what I can get this week and hope that things pick up soon. I'd like to avoid turning into Mean Mommy because we've had too many days of not getting to everything we should.

That's the news around here. Hope your week is going well. I'm still reading Eat This Book but haven't made much progress. Will take some fiction suggestions if anyone has read anything good lately.

Like Honey, Like Sweetheart*

My dd just turned 7, and she SO identifies with Mom. We are deep, deep into All Things Mommy, from applying lip gloss in the morning to choosing Diet Coke as her preferred soft drink. But this week she channeled Mom again in a way that made me laugh. She was loading the dishwasher with her brothers and got into a little "row" with them (as the Brits say). When I stepped in to referee, I discovered the cause of her frustration: She, who has the permanent job of unloading the silverware, was insisting to uncooperative brothers that spoons be put in THIS compartment, knives in THAT one, forks in THAT ONE ON THE END. This way when she unloads it, all she has to do is grab all the handles in one section and dump them into the drawer, with no sorting! Her exact words were, "Mom, I'm trying to be ORGANIZED."

This is like Mom in two ways. One, it manifests Mom's insane need to keep in order parts of the home that no one ever sees, such as the inside of junk drawers or the Christmas decorations in the attic, while portions of our home open to visitors sport dirty socks and stacks of old magazines. My dd can walk right past a puddle of chocolate milk she spilled on the table, but the SPOONS! the SPOONS, by Jove, are ALL TOGETHER in the DISHWASHER!

Two, she has picked up on a every woman's unspoken belief: Men don't load the dishwasher properly. You can't learn this too early in life.

*The Honey/Sweetheart title came from dd, too - when she was very small, around 2, she used to come to me and ask to play a game she called Honey/Sweetheart. "Okay. I'll be the Honey. You be the Sweetheart. Sweetheart, have you cleaned your room?" This game was just a version of House, where she was the mommy and I was the baby. I was puzzled by the name until I figured out that she always heard DH called me "Honey" and I was always calling her "Sweetheart." The game persists even today, with our cat in the role of Sweetheart. Pity the poor cat.