Weekend Edition

Ever wonder what it is like in our little world of home schooling? Most days, I go over the calendar and the weather with Finley, then we sit down together to do a couple of worksheets. Reanna completes the work assigned for the week on her own, then checks her own work with the teacher editions I've handed over to her. If she has any questions, she asks. I wasn't being very timely correcting her work last year. Weeks later, I would find something she wasn't doing correctly. That wasn't exactly the best way for her to learn. (I do administer the quizzes and tests and correct those, lest you think...)

Some days are a little less organized. (That isn't saying much.) Take this past Friday for example: We loaded up into the van and drove to Shelby park. Reanna scooped up some pond water in a jar. Then we looked for an acorn, as we had read about them in Your Big Backyard, a magazine Finley receives. We checked to see if the nature center was open, but it wasn't. Then walked the trail a little ways to see if there was any murkier water to be found.

When we got home, I was starved and so were the kids, so as I juggled fixing lunches, attempting to eat myself, and nurse Ziv, I got out an old (and I mean old) microscope that I had salvaged years ago from a school that was undergoing renovation. Reanna and I sucked up floaties in the pond water, then checked them out under the microscope to see what we had. We found a fairly unimpressive blob, some plant material, then we hit pay-dirt.

A water flea:

Only ours didn't have the eggs inside of it. You should have seen it in action. Eventually, after developing an excruciating headache from staring through the little lens for so long, I pricked my finger so that we could examine some blood platelets. I was a little disappointed to discover that they were much smaller that I had imagined. We needed a stronger lens to really see the little blobs well. Reanna also tried to extract some goo from a fly to compare it with our blood, but that didn't work so well, either. I can't tell you exactly what we learned, but it was fun.

Yesterday, the kids spent the day with Aunt Molly. They went to a pumpkin patch and to cousin Victor's soccer game. Chris, Ziv, and I went with some other friends to see the Grascals play in a Bluegrass Underground show. It was quite fun. Even if you aren't too familiar with bluegrass, the experience is well worth the relatively inexpensive $15 ticket and pleasant drive.

Today, Nana is coming over to see the kids after spending a week on a cruise ship. Then, hopefully, we will all get a good nap in to recover from all the excitement of the past several days.

The Cream Can- a memory shared

Excerpt from an email my mother sent:

Sunday (yesterday) after church and "brunch" at home, we took a pail of plums to Jeff and Sandy at the farm. We had such a good time visiting them; when we were ready to leave Jeff says, "I have something to give you, if you promise to share it with others." And I said, Well, it depends on what it is.........So he took me to the back room of the garage, and there on a shelf was my grandad's old cream can with "G. Bolenske" painted on it, just like it was years ago.......My, oh, my.......what a bunch of warm, wonderful memories that old cream can brought back......I was very touched! In the can was some old, homemade laundry soap. I don't ever remember Gramma making soap, but Jeff said he remembers Lillian making some.......Anyway, I am so excited to have this old cream can. It brought back the memories I have of watching Grandad milk on his three-legged stool, with his head against the cow's warm side, the sound of the milk hitting the bucket, and how fast he milked, striping the teat at the end with his two stubs of a finger. And the warm, dark, cozy feeling in that old barn.. And how he carried the warm, foaming bucket of milk to the porch, where he poured it into the separator...the cream going into the cream can to take to the Laurel Creamery......The Creamery was next to the Lutheran church we attended, and has a particular clean, moist smell to it when you entered. Later, we would have to pick up the cream can and the cream check at the Creamery. I also remember the time Dandy let me "try" to milk Old Roan, the tamest cow, whose huge udders would just drip with milk because they were so full.......I still remember how weird, and rough those udders felt, and really how difficult it was to get the milk to start flowing.......
Anyway what a special gift that was......It is rather amazing because Gramma and Dandy moved into Laurel, you know, and somehow that old cream can was saved......probably by Dandy.....because Gramma was pretty good about cleaning useless items out...... !

On Finley- before I forget

1. A few months ago, Finley started answering me (on her own) with a "yes sir!"

2. A few days ago, she asked Chris to write the time down on a little piece of paper. A few minutes later, she asked him to do it again. She then taped the piece of paper to another and created her own wristwatch.

3. After receiving instruction from Reanna on dance moves, and instruction from me on how to write her letters, she now likes to teach us how to do these things.

4. We recently acquired a movie about a horse. Finley has started pretending she is a horse named Sally. She whinnies, throws her head around, and paws the air. It resembles something like a crazed wildcat.

5. She has discovered the joys of mud.

(And, yes, she in the one that accidently man-handled the worm to death.)

1000 Words

The waiting game.

My brother and sister-in-law were asking this weekend about our 'plan' to move out of the city. We are in the waiting stage. We have decided to wait until the school year is almost over to even begin to think seriously about looking. Because we are home schooling Reanna, and it is working out so well with her dance schedule and her mom's work schedule, moving now would throw a wrench in the works. There is also the uncertainty in the housing market. There is the question of what Chris really wants to do to earn a living at that point, as I am fairly sure we aren't savvy enough to be completely self-sustaining right off.

Every now and again... when cops are yelling through the bull horn at some guy three doors down... when our lovely neighbor down the block decides to burn the insulation off some electrical wire on the first night we have our windows open... when some other mysterious smell wafts down from the pool chemical plant up the way... we get a little anxious to be away from it all. But all in all, I believe in destiny, and it all works out nicely in the end if it isn't forced.

I remember the misery of looking for a house to buy. At first, we wanted to buy a house in Antioch, TN, since we were good friends with several people that lived out that way. We looked, and looked, and looked... It got to the point where I was SO sick of looking and finding nothing I really liked, that I told Chris the next house he found that he really liked, I would just go along with. He found one. It had a two car garage, a nice, finished-out basement, a deck with a hot tub, and a fake fireplace in the living room... He wanted to put in an offer and ask for the work benches and the pool table. I laughed, but told him to go ahead.

The night we put the offer in, I panicked. The front yard was a 15-20' slope right down to the front door. The back yard was a steep wooded slope. Where would I put a garden? I didn't even know if the sun would shine through any of the windows in the house. I hated the place.

Thankfully, they turned down our offer, and we turned down their counter-offer. We even turned them down when they offered us our original offer. I was relieved.

We ended up finding another house in Donelson that we both loved. The previous owner had tricked it out with lights that turned on automatically when you opened the closets. There was a passageway from a bedroom over the kitchen and into the attic space above the garage. A light in the garage flashed if you left the light on in the attic. There was a ham radio antenna. There were roses and daffodils and who knows what in the yard. I had only been on the market for three days. We put in an offer, but some one else beat us to the punch. We were disappointed, but we waked away with hope, knowing that there was bound to be another house we could both agree on.

Finally, I talked Chris into looking in East Nashville. He was hesitant. He had history there he wasn't too keen to be reminded of. When we stepped into our house, we knew it was the one. It had that old-person smell, and old lady wallpaper donned the walls. Mouse poison was dumped into muffin tins under the old, red counters, and the water was brown and smelled like sulphur. There was coal still left in the wide-open basement. Out back near the 'creek' was a cement couch and picnic table. I was so excited, I could hardly contain myself.

Chris drove by the next day to take another look, and met our neighbor, Joe. They immediately took to each other. With the realization that, as he was no longer engaged in illegal activities, he no longer needed to be afraid of the cops, Chris agreed that this was the place.

I really believe that we were meant to live here these past five years. Our neighbors are just what we have needed for this time in our lives. Having an 'adoptive Nannie' next door for the kids has been a huge blessing for me. (Remind me later to tell the story of my wedding rings.) And we have benefited and grown from the other relationship we have developed while living here. We were prevented from making a ignorant financial mistake. If we would have bought one of the other houses, we would have been strapped financially.

The idea of looking for a new place seems a bit daunting. I'm not sure how much I need to worry about zoning and soil conditions and what not... Chris and I sometimes have different ideas about housing. He wouldn't mind building from scratch. I love the idea of taking something old and bringing new life to it. I want to make sure that we don't buy too much so that we aren't able to maintain the property, but I want enough to support a massive garden, some chickens, a couple dairy cows, and maybe a pig or some other animals...

I'm not getting over-anxious about it, though. I have this feeling one day, we'll step on a property and know it is the one. And in the mean time, we are content to wait until the time is right, whether that is in the spring or twenty years from now...

The Sacrificial Worm

an unsuspecting worm,

caught up in curious hands

that won't let go

until it's over.

Family Update

Zivah will be two months old on Tuesday. Such an occasion is an excuse to borrow my brother's camera and take way too many photos of the kids.

Check out Z's chubby thighs.

She is a baby of a million different looks. It all depends on how gravity is pulling on those cheeks.

Here she is rewarding her mama with a smile and display of excitement.

She is happiest right after a feeding and a diaper change. We have our best moments at the changing table. That's when we talk... or rather, I talk, and she throws in an 'oo' or a little screech here and there.

Early on, I figured out that her skin was sensitive to regular wipes. Her little bum would get beet red, and when I wiped her, she would cringe and make this creaking/strange bird screeching noise, telling me she didn't like the way it felt. Thankfully, there is no more diaper rash.

She spits up a lot. She still cries when she has gas. She has started sleeping for a six hour stretch most nights. I'm not used to that (as Finley and Joe both did two four hour stretches at night), but I won't complain. She likes to watch her mobile slowly spin, and usually starts to fuss as soon as the animals stop moving. Sometimes she is content to just sit in her infant seat. Sometimes she's not. Sometimes she'll take long naps in the morning. Sometimes she won't. Z is my random baby. I never know what our days will look like.

Finley requested a cape the other day. She watched a few episodes of a cartoon called 'Word Girl.' She's upset because I won't let her watch it anymore. Word Girl lies to her parents to hide the fact that she is a super hero. That's not okay with me. If Finley was a superhero, I would let her go fight the bad guys instead of clean her room. She wouldn't have to lie to me. Anyway.

Finley wanted a cape, so scrounging in the scrap box, I ran across a section of skirt I had to cut off the one I made for Finley several months ago. (It would have fit an elephant it I hadn't cut some of it off.) The scrap would make for a perfect cape, except, as Finley pointed out, there was no pink. So I sewed on a pink star.

As soon as I finished, Finley ran outside, wearing the cape. She told me she needed to wait for a big wind so that she could fly. I have the feeling that she won't wear it that much, now that she's realized this cape won't really make her fly. Reality is so disappointing.

Reanna is back in the swing of dance and home school. Well, sort of. This week she is on vacation with her mom, so I don't have any new photos of her yet...

Here is hot-rod Joe. I think Joe would ride his bike 24/7 if allowed to, stopping only for bananas and Ovaltine. He has worn out the front tire of his trike by slamming on his 'brakes' and skidding to a stop. (Look closely in the red circle below.) There is now a nice thumping as he rides along. We are trying to figure out how to repair or replace the tire.

I took the morning off. When I was gone, Chris left the kids in the basement as he worked on putting up the last two closet doors in our room. Soon, Joe came upstairs, carrying his diaper, saying that he had pooped. Chris panicked. There was no poop in the diaper. There was no poop in the toilet. Joe led Chris to the storage room in the basement where we had stored the training potty after the stale, stinky pee incident. He had pooped and peed in (and all over) the training potty in the basement. Way to go, Joe.

Too Much Information... II

I had to vent a little.

A long time ago, I heard a teaching about suffering that has stuck with me. At the last supper, (I hope I am remembering this correctly) John asks if he can sit next to Christ in heaven, and Jesus responds with, "can you drink the cup I drink?" Jesus was asking John if he was willing to share in his suffering.

Suffering is not just being nailed to a cross. Suffering is also, in part, having to live in the presence of evil and sin. Suffering is seeing the wrongs happening in the world and not being able to do much about it.

The trick is to live in the face of evil and still have hope, love, and peace.

Too Much Information...

I'm having a moment...

Actually, I've been having this moment all day long. Lots of random things running around in my head in between the toilet scrubbings and pee clean-ups. (The kids got put to bed a half hour earlier than normal tonight. Somedays you can only handle so much. Don't worry. We are letting them play in their room in their jammies.)

I picked up a National Geographic at the doctor's office on Friday. (By the way, Z is out of the harness, and we go back in two months just to make sure everything has stayed where it is supposed to.) Flipping through the pages trying to find some interesting photos for Finley and me to look at, I came across pictures of 'electronic trash' piled up in third-world countries. One photo showed a little boy taking apart a mouse to harvest the metals inside. Scattered around him were hundreds of mice. Another showed a man pouring molten lead from one pan to another. He was using his cookware to melt the lead off circuit boards. Yet another showed a guy standing in a cloud of [toxic] black smoke while he tended the fire that was melting the insulation off power cords and phone lines. Ugh. I'll not say what I'm thinking. At least not all of it. Our consumerism makes me nauseous, though...

Having a new baby makes you think a lot of the other birthing experiences. I had been thinking about my experience having Joe and how long it took to heal and how lucky I was, really, to heal as well as I did. And then we watched some news report about the war in Congo, and how rape is just a part of what is happening there. One doctor was interviewed that is treating many of the women that are raped. They are being so brutally raped that the doctor can't repair the damage to some of them and they end up having to use colostomy bags for the rest of their lives.

Then I hear an interview with a guy in a shelter waiting out hurricane Gustav. He was complaining because they had to use port-o-johns. Poor guy.

If all goes well, I'll win my first fantasy football game. We were laughing last night. I wanted the Colts to only score with field goals. I have their kicker on my roster. Chris wanted only TDs, as he has Manning. I was hoping the Bears would only score touchdowns or not at all. My opponent had the Bears' kicker on his roster. I didn't care who won the real game. FF makes you watch the games a little differently.

Surfing through some of the Craft Mafia websites, I found a site I really liked: Harrilu.com. If I had lots of money to spend, I would buy something like this:

The text reads 'small but scrappy.' More so, I just wish I had the time to find lots of clothes at a second-hand store and make them as cool as the stuff I am tempted to buy.

Sigh.

While reading Five Acres and Independence, I ran across a layout for garden that would support a family of six. It showed the dimesions, row spacing, what to plant.... I realized that the 100 x 200 foot plot was nearly the exact size of our current lot. All I need to do is tear down the house.

Z is turning into a little chub. And a confession: the tie-dyed onsie, I spent $20 on at a artisan festival while I was pregnant. I justified it because the hippie selling the stuff gave me some pointers.

The Narnia Noggins

About a year ago, Chris and I were sitting on the couch discussing marital struggles some friends of ours were having. In the middle of this, Chris says, 'I want us to do something together...'

My curiosity is piqued. Is he actually going to suggest we do something meaningful together? Something to help build our relationship and draw us closer together spiritually?

'I want us to join a fantasy football league together next year.'

Okay. So much for deep and meaningful.

So some guy at his work formed a league this year, and Chris was anxious to be a part of it... although he seemed to have forgotten involving me. I wasn't going to let this bonding experience go, so I reminded him that he said we were going to do this together. He agreed.

Then Chris called one morning before the draft and said they were one team short. Did I want my own team. Sure, I said. Why not. The bonding experience has turned into a competition.

So I immediately got online, joined the league, and proceeded even to name my team: The Narnia Noggins. I hope C.S. Lewis doesn't roll over in his grave. (By the way, most of the guys didn't bother to name their teams, and the other most creative name is Smackumdownum.)

I got first draft pick, and minutes before the draft started, was debating between Tom Brady and LaDainian Tomlinson. I ended up going with LT. I hope it pays off. So as the draft ensued, I sat in front of the computer cradling and nursing my half-crying infant.

Among my other recruits: Wes Welker, Hines Ward, Adam Vinatieri, and, my most conflicted pick, Eli Manning. Although Manning showed some promise in the first half, he choked in the second. Oh, how I wanted Brady...

(This is Eli Manning. Arg.)

So the first game of the season was last night, and although I used to have strict convictions that I would only watch Nebraska and Titans football games, last night I found myself glued to the set watching a team I could have cared less about last year. Good grief.

Through the Eye of Finley's Camera

One Z Is Not Enough... I need ZZZZZ's.

Zivah is not like my other babies. By this point, my other babies were happily sleeping through most of the night, waking me for only one feeding to tie them over until morning. Zivah likes to get me up at least twice, and this, coupled with my other two early birds, makes for great lack of sleep on my part.

It is apparent to me that Chris does not quite comprehend how this lack of sleep has altered my five senses.

What he hears: Nothing.
What I hear: A baby starting to fuss, which will soon turn into full-on crying if I don't get up out of my comfortable bed and do something about it.

What he sees: A nicely made bed.
What I see: No chance for any more peace and quiet, much less, sleep.

What he tastes: Coffee.
What I taste: The elixir of life... that thing that keeps me from falling over dead in the morning.

What he smells: New baby.
What I smell: Thankfully, no spit up or poo.

What he thinks I feel: His loving arms wrapping around my body.
What I feel: Yet another person entering my personal space and tapping my physical and emotional energy.

Bluegrass Underground

I haven't wanted to see a concert this bad in a long time...
Bluegrass. 300 feet underground in a cave.
http://www.bluegrassunderground.com/index.php