The Uniform of Motherhood

Do you ever feel like between homeschooling and housework and trying to meet everyone's needs that you lose sight of your own needs or dreams or passions?

This past weekend I took some time off from all things motherly, housewifey, wifey, and teacherly to nurture myself. It wasn't a planned diversion from the day-to-day around here. First I had to reach my limit, feel overwhelmed and under-appreciated, and pitch a fit. Then, surprisingly, I got some time off. A mental health day, if you will.

First up I did some art journaling ala Visual Chronicles. Just one piece that totally summed up my emotional moment enough that the whole family actually understood. They got the picture way more than my beat-a-dead-horse thousand-word diatribe. I'll have to remember that for next time.

Next I surfed the web, ate chocolate and spent a couple of hours pushing fabric through my sewing machine. It was better than great! I fought the urge to do anything for anyone else. It's so easy to fall back into that sinkhole, made even harder by the fact that I have this huge pile of children's mending and good intentions sitting on my desk. Instead, I concentrated on me. Me. ME! And my needs.

Oh, the irony! I made myself an apron.

I've never owned an apron before. I don't even come from apron folk. But I picked through the mess of fabric in my closet and came out clutching an old bathroom curtain to my chest, completely re-smitten with its feminine flowers and sheer eyelety goodness.

At first glance this apron seems like a big joke. Einstein thought so, too. It's sheer, white fabric. Completely useless for wiping your hands on the edges with wild abandon or catching spills or doing the real work of life. Not exactly a workhorse. But look again, I say. I've been doing that work for years without any barrier whatsoever. Just me and the sludge of life ensconced together in this domesticated dance. Just me and the sludge.

Let's face it. As a stay-at-home, homeschooling mom with three kids, there's not much time for my needs. On good days I get my hair brushed and my clothes remain unscathed by the various body fluids emitted by small children. I'm not particularly resentful of the snot or its liquidy cousins, it's just something I've become accustomed to as an accesory to motherhood. I wear it. Or it wears me. At the end of the day I can't tell. The uniform of motherhood. Be one with the snot.

This apron, by contrast, is not a sludge-catcher. Oh no! It's counter to how I feel on a day-to-day basis. It's the Anti-snot. I tie it on and my whole mood changes. It wraps its little flowers around my aura and softens my edges. And when my edges are soft... well, that transfers to the entire household, you know?

Now I'm singing, "I feel pretty," while I sling mash and wipe butts. Who's the workhorse now?

Mama said there'd be days like this

© Schooling from the Heart

Treasure in the woods

Earlier this week, homeschooling took us on a whirlwind tour of a local park nature trail where we followed clues and found our very first letterbox! Go us!

We carved up our own stamps that morning, threw some books together and bound them with crochet cotton, and hit the trail. It was FABULOUS! I'm totally smitten with the idea of mixing artistry, cognition, nature, and mystery. Not only is it good for the brain, it's good for the soul.

I had Sunburst read the clue outloud, and she and Moonshine worked hard at sleuthing it out. We made wrong turns and back-tracked and read the clues again and again.

Sunburst: "You will come to a T intersection... Oh, look! This is sort of like a 'T.'"
Mom: "Here's a huge, fallen tree, but is it the right one?"
Moonshine: "I don't see a footbridge."
Sunburst: "The clue says, 'Don't blink or you'll miss it.'"
Moonshine: "I think we must have blinked."

We finally found the treasure, a small plastic container, hidden in the wet leaves under a footbridge. We had to really dig around for it, but there it was, as promised. We carried the box over to a fallen tree and sat there admiring the logbook entries and hand-carved stamp. We stamped the logbook, added a message, stamped our own books, and carefully sealed the box back up and placed it back into hiding. It felt grand and lovely and extremely satisfying, and the woods smelled so good.



Einstein caught up with us on our way back to the car, and to not leave him out of the fun, we turned around and did it all again, only letting him sleuth out the clues. The girls were very cute about it-- helping him make the same wrong turns we did. It was fun for the whole family! And we got outside, in the thick of nature, which doesn't happen as much as I'd like.

On the way home we started plotting to place our own letterboxes. There are only four in our county. Only four! In the spirit of the game, we've got to do our part. Einstein and I have been out scouting around for the perfect places and staying up late designing stamps. We crack ourselves up.

A huge part of the draw is the artistry of hand-carved stamps-- that personal touch. Leaving a hand-crafted treasure out in the woods speaks to me of trust, faith, and human connection. Someone made this, and in sharing the stamp, they are sharing a bit of themselves. With complete strangers. With all the crazy things that go on in our world, how cool is that? And how important! It speaks volumes. Not just to me, but to our children as well. It's a message I want them to hear loud and clear.

Initially, I thought this stamp carving business sounded crazy hard. But it's not. Hand-carved stamps are not hard to make. We're no experts, but here's what we did:

At the craft store I bought a small block of Mastercarve and an X-acto knife. I made a pencil image on paper and pressed the Mastercarve onto it to transfer the image. Then I carefully, gingerly cut out the white areas, about 1/16 - 1/8 inch deep with the X-acto knife. My depth wasn't precise or even, I just tried to mimic what most stamps look like. My first attempt was crude and fell into pieces after a few stampings. But I used the same drawing and more carefully tried again. This time it was better.



Originally, I read online that kids can make stamps with Artgum erasers and table knives. This did NOT work out for us. It was way too crumbly. Instead, they drew images and I cut them out from the Mastercarve. The more simple the images, the easier it is to cut them. And I love how they all have a different feel to them.

If it helps, Atlas-Quest has a simple stamp-carving tutorial.

Rather than purchase them, we made small logbooks for the trail with leftover cardstock scraps and acid-free copy paper. Our books measured 4 1/4" x 5 1/2". I used a tiny hole punch to make four holes along one side, about 1/4" from the edges. Then I had the girls sew them up using the Japanese stab binding technique. Again, here's another great tutorial.

For more information on letterboxing, be sure to check out:
The Letterboxer's Companion by Randy Hall
http://www.letterboxing.org/
http://www.letterboxing.org/kids/
http://www.letterboxing.info/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letterboxing

M is for Michigan

M is for mango.
And Michigan, apparently.

Carschooling... who knew?

Hit the road, Jack!

With the maple season over, I was itching to get as far away from my house and trees as humanly possible. So last week our family hit the road for a couple of days and headed where else but the land of great enchantment: Missouri.

Bear with me... you'll see why.

The whole thing was very 'lax.' We left home at Kitty Bill's naptime, and by dark we found ourselves where the Mississippi River meets the stunning display of architecture known as the Gateway Arch.



We gaped and drove around it a few times before heading off to a hotel with an indoor pool. There's nothing like a before bed swim for kids who have been trapped in the car for hours. Worth every penny!

Next morning we piled back in the car and headed south. By lunchtime we had arrived.



The Laura Ingalls Wilder Home and Museum in Mansfield, Missouri. Sunburst was beside herself. We've been living and breathing Laura Ingalls for the past five years, ever since Sunburst picked out a few Little House picture books at the library. When we moved to Texas the following year, the girls and I volunteered as costumed interpreters for one season at a living pioneer history museum. To enrich our experience I began reading Sunburst the Little House series. Since then she's read the books at least three more times, and although we've moved on to other Little House character books (Martha, Charlotte, Caroline...) Sunburst still totes one or another of the original books around with her. I regularly find them wedged in the couch cushions, on the bathroom counter, and splayed in the backseat of the car. The covers are all coming off and some of the pages are even missing. They're that good.

When she's not reading, Sunburst regularly dons a sunbonnet and apron and pretends to be a Little House character. In the beginning she was always Mary. Even after she understood Mary's blindness, she continued pretending to be Mary-- trying her hand at rag rugs, stumbling around the house, and even knitting with a blindfold on. For years she would pretend our vegan dinners were bear meat and call us Pa and Ma at the table. Moonshine was Laura, on account of the dark hair. And when Kitty Bill came along they were delighted to finally have someone to play the role of "Baby Carrie." (He'll probably resent that someday, you think?)

So Missouri. Now you know. We spent about two hours in the museum checking out old artifacts from the books like Mary's first patchwork quilt, Pa's fiddle, and Laura's little porcelain tea cup jewelry box. We read old postcards and letters exchanged between Laura and Ma, and Grace's letter informing Laura that Mary had a stroke and the end was near. We saw pictures, and drafts from the books and old handwork and so many, many things. And then we toured the Rose Wilder Lane section of the museum...



They kicked us out at that point so we could join the tour of the house. We walked through the house at Rocky Ridge-- Laura's house with Almanzo. It was small and quaint and, as we were told, left exactly as Laura kept it before she died. Later on we drove down the street and toured the Rock House, a house comissioned by Rose for her parents. It was modern and lovely, but not as cozy and warm as the farmhouse. We could understand why they gave it up after a few years and moved back to the original home.



The kids all ran down the hill from the Rock House and played in the field before we loaded back up and headed towards the cemetary to see the gravesites.



The next day we were startled by a surprise snowstorm. Who predicted this weather?



Despite the flurries, we pulled back into St. Louis at lunchtime and were greeted by the same miraculous spectacle. At the first sight of the Arch, Sunburst was unrelenting. She begged and pleaded until we agreed to go up. All the way. To the top.



There is nothing like the sense of adventure of an 8-year-old. Personally, I'm a tad bit afraid of heights. When we first moved to Salt Lake City they had an old, dilapidated library. It was servicable and fine-- just give me books and I'm happy. But somewhere around the winter Olympics and the new electric city tram they also built a new library. When I say new, I mean more than just state-of-the-art. I mean crazy new. Fancy, fantastical, open and airy, hanging sculptures, shops, fountains, caves in the wall, billowing fabric, walls of glass, eye candy kind of place. If you've been there then you know what I'm talking about. The whole place freaks me out. The stairs? I can't walk on those stairs. They jut out over several floors of open space with glass railings. But don't take my word for it. Go look for yourself! Here's another. It's a stunning library, don't get me wrong. But in the old one I didn't lose my lunch.

The Gateway Arch, by contrast, is just like a really high stairwell that reaches into the clouds. Well, not quite. The sign from the top reads "630 feet." I think my understanding of height isn't so great because it seems so much higher than that when you're up there.

Yes, I did go up. Luckily for me and my bum foot you don't have to climb the 1,076 steps to the top. They have a tram that teeters up the inside railing in a mere four minutes, and you can't see out as you climb. Well, you can see the stairwell and a handful of the 105 landings, but you can't see outside, outside. Otherwise, our little tram car would have been a freakshow.

The tram car itself was endearing. Each car is a little pod and made me feel a bit like I was on set in a 1960's Sci Fi movie. I almost expected to be handed a Barbarella suit, though admittedly, I'm no Jane Fonda. It was great though. It was exactly like sitting inside a dryer. Small, hot, round, and a little tilty as it climbed and corrected itself. Ridiculously fun.



I don't know who these people are. Sorry people, but I needed to capture the moment and you were easy and friendly targets.

Once up at the top it wasn't bad. The minimal sway did funny things to our stomachs, but overall the view was spectacular. The windows were small. Very small, and it felt surprisingly safe to be up there suspended over nothing. The kids were all jumping up and down. Not just mine. It seemed to be the theme. Woo hoo! We're really high up!





On the way out of town we stopped in at Eternity and gorged ourselves on outrageously tasty vegetarian soul food. A perfect ending to a sweet trip!

Play on words

"I'm the boss.
I boss people around--
In a circle."

--Moonshine, almost 5 yrs

Geography Fair

Last week we nearly drowned in sap. During the height of our overflow the girls put together and gave a little presentation on Ghana for our local homeschooling geography fair. Sunburst did the left two panels of the board, while Moonshine did the far right (including the writing there, because she wanted to.)

As you can see, Moonshine was able to touch upon all her current interests: fancy clothing, hairdos, and jewelry. She threw the priestess on her side because she was beautiful, and that counts as an interest. Sunburst included the more general information like food, climate, and folklore, but she was pleased as punch to be able to include some wild animal photos and share her dad's "You need to buy a live chicken if you want to see the crocodiles" story with the crowd.

They chose Ghana not only because their dad, Einstein, lived there when he was in the Peace Corps, but because that darned spider Anansi comes from there. We read all of the Anansi stories we could get our hands on this year, and Sunburst was quite taken with them. Especially "Anansi and the Moss-Covered Rock," which we read over and over and over again, and it was even funnier still when Moxy Jane read it out loud when she came to see us. This is Sunburst's rendition of the book cover:



To round out the show the girls brought some food to share. As Sunburst told them, "We were going to make giant forest snail stew with fufu, but we couldn't find any giant forest snails and (boxed) fufu tastes like bellybuttons smell, so we just brought African cookies instead."

Flowing

The trees are going crazy! The last few days we were getting only 3 gallons of sap per day. Today we had to change out the collection jugs twice. Our sap production tripled. NINE gallons of sap!

If it takes five hours to boil down 3 gallons of sap... well, you do the math. We have WAY more sap than we can manage today.

I'm not complaining. No. I'm still excited about the whole endeavor. So what if I'm tied to the house at the mercy of my propane cooker. What's better than spending time out in the moonlight basking in the sweet vapors of maple broth?

As the flow has increased, so has our syrup production and our astonishment of nature's bounty. We've been singing our own mapley version of the song "Johnny Appleseed":

Oh, God is good to us.
And so we thank our God.
For giving us the things we need:
The sun, and the rain, and the maple seed;
Oh, God is good to us.

And every seed we sow
Will grow into a tree.
And there will be syrup there
For everyone in the world to share.
Oh, God is good to us.

Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, maple syrup, Amen!

Makin' Syrup

Last week at our bi-monthly coop we learned how to tap maple trees, collect sap, and cook it down into maple syrup. Sunburst and I have been intrigued by this idea for years, and wow! It turns out that it's a fairly simple process.

In our excitement, we went straight out and collected our equipment:

• Hand drill, 7/16" drill bit
  
• Taps and hooks
• Empty gallon water jugs for collection
  
• Turkey Fryer cooking base
• Propane tank
  
• Large enamel pot
• Ball pint jars

Since we live in the city we had to opt for a legal outdoor heat source like propane. According to the literature, it takes anywhere from 32 -50 gallons of sap to make ONE gallon of syrup, depending on the kind of maple tree you tap and the sugar content of your sap. That's a lot of water to cook out, so you boil sap for several hours every day during maple season. We have seven taps running right now on three maple trees, and that gives us about 3 gallons of sap per day. That's as much as will fit in my pot, leaving the tiniest bit of room in hopes that it doesn't boil over. A two-day accumulation of boiled sap gives me just one pint of syrup.

It doesn't sound like much, does it? But that one little bit of syrup makes my heart sing! I don't think I've been this excited about anything in a long time!

There is a wealth of information out there on tapping trees in your own backyard. I can't recommend it enough! If you try this at home, please remember to thank your trees!



Be sure to check out Aleisha's great photos of our co-op tree-tapping event.

Online resources:
How to Tap Maple Trees and Make Maple Syrup (pdf)
Make Your Own

STOP telling your kids they're smart!

Apparently, telling your kids they're smart sets them up to be underachieving failures. Fascinating!

http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/

Word Family Village

We've been having a blast lately making up words.

This is Sunburst's own Word Family Village. It's not finished yet, but she has been working on it steadily, and with great gusto, for the last three weeks. And not only is it fun, it's accomplishing exactly what I had hoped that it would: Sunburst is learning to spell.

As any unschooler will tell you, the best way to learn to spell is by reading. That argument makes perfect sense to me. But for some reason, despite the fact that Sunburst readily and greedily reads over 200 pages a day now, she still can't spell. Maybe this is something that comes with time? Or maybe, I think, Sunburst has always been a FAST sort of person. Despite her reading ability and comprehension, she doesn't slow down to think about how words are constructed. So when it comes time for her to write words, they fumble upon the page in strange configurations.

So I thought we'd slow things down a bit and work on basic word construction. Word Families. You know what I'm talking about - -it, -in, -an, -on, -up, -un, -en, -et.... that sort of thing.



I started out by drawing a house on the chalkboard and telling a simple story, which went something like:

Once upon a time there was a family called the In Family. They lived in a very small house with a red door that that had their name written right upon it: In. That way the mail carrier never got confused and delivered them someone else's mail.

Well, one day, even though their house was small, they decided to have a big party. Their relatives started arriving in an orange bus. b, d, t, g, w... All of them came, and they were having a great time. They cooked up a mess of yummy food, and laughed, and hugged, and talked all day long . But as the night wore on, they got louder and louder and louder. No one at the In house could sleep with all this noise, so they decided to stay up all night long. They cooked more food, laughed at each other's jokes, and cranked up the music and had a dance party. It was great, except for one thing. The noise coming from the In house was so loud that it woke up the neighbors.

One by one the neighbors came over and knocked on the door asking them to quiet down. Finally, the sheriff came, and that got their attention. "Shhhhhhhhh!" Said the sheriff, "Your neighbors are trying to sleep!"

So one by one, the Ins settled down to a whisper, and as the sun started peeking over the horizon, the last In had fallen fast asleep.

Sunburst liked the story, and so then I showed her that all the folks that had come over to the In house actually made words. We sounded them out together, and then she drew the house in her book with all the -in words. Then I asked her if she could use the -in words to make a poem. She happily dictated, I wrote it on the board, and then she copied it into her book. (Rin is place from the Rowan of Rin book series she's crazy about.)



Then Sunburst asked for another story. But first I handed her a pad of construction paper, scissors, and a glue stick and asked her to make the In house. While she was doing this, I took a few wooden shapes (spoons, popsicle sticks, and teardrops) and began to make consonant people. Sunburst helped dress them. The small ones are singular consonants. The larger ones are consonant blends. She took her In house and glued it onto a presentation board and started drawing roads and grass, and before we knew it, it started to look like a village. She even drew a town square with a fountain! We attached the people with a loop of masking tape on the back, and one by one we started moving families in. The Ut house looks like a hut. The Up house is on stilts. The Ub house, well, it's actually an elitist pizza parlor. You have to make an -ub word to eat there... otherwise, they deliver.





Sunburst even got Moonshine involved by having her color in all the roads.



All this was well and fun, but the question was still there. Is Sunburst learning to spell?

To answer that query, we decided to host a spelling bee. It was actually Sunburst's idea to have an oral test. Three of our favorite characters came: Martha, Charlotte, and Rosemary. Sunburst represented for each of them, of course. They all did an outstanding job spelling words from a few different families. And rumor has it, they can't wait to do it again.

Turn up the heat!

We had a bit of a freeze here.

On Tuesday we lost our power around noon while I was cooking lunch. We kept waiting for it to come back on, anticipating that it wouldn't be out for long. But it didn't.

All day long we watched the freezing rain come down. We huddled in front of the gas fireplace, boiled kettles of water for tea and spaghetti, and bit by bit started putting on extra sweaters, hats, scarves, gloves... and still the power didn't come back on.

We urged the kids to run around in circles to keep warm. We snuggled and read by firelight and candlelight, until our eyes hurt and we finally gave up. It was dark. It was cold. And the kids, fully dressed, climbed into sleeping bags and went to sleep. Early. Very, very early.

And so did we.

The cold woke us up earlier than usual. We couldn't boil water fast enough for tea. Outside, the world outside had turned into a blanket of ice. Inside the house, we could see our breath. We were all shivering and teeth chattering and heaped up together to stay warm. Or trying to stay warm. With coats on and everything, it was still ridiculously unbearable. Einstein and I weighed the thickness of the chill against the obviously treacherous icy roads, and it wasn't a hard choice. As we were herding the kids toward the open door it happened. In our moment of desperation the power came back on.

Our rejoicing was great, to say the least. It's amazing how much we take for granted. Light at the end of a switch. Heat at the push of a button. Dry roads most of the year. I find I don't think about those things until they're not there. It inspired a lot of talk about the olden days, and how even our gas fireplace was a gift of modern technology.

Twenty-two hours without electricity isn't much when you really think about all those who have gone before. We've been reading through the Little House series: Martha, Charlotte... Laura-- none of them had electricity. And yet they managed extremely well.

That cold day gave us a lot to think about, and despite our uncomfortableness, it was a really fun time. We tend to not spend that much time pressed up against one another, snuggled into each other's warmth, encroaching on each other's space. It was so nice and calm that just for a moment we pondered turning the electricity off every night. That was until we noticed the mess left behind from the freezer defrosting...

A Week's Food

Milk is nice for Monday,
Milk begins with M;
Treacle tarts for Tuesday,
I'm rather fond of them;
Walnuts do for Wednesday;
Thursday, toast and tea;
Friday figs; and Saturday soup;
And Sunday--
Wait and see!

- E.C. Brereton
from A Little Book of Rhymes New and Old, c. 1940

Full bellies, full days

Birthday week is finally over! Thanks for all the well wishes.

On Tuesday we had a little family celebration with a very small cake that was completely overwhelmed with plastic horses. Then on Saturday we filled our house with the laughter and shrieking of three lovely families and their children in what amassed in a five hour birthday party bonanza with even more cake. To say the least, Sunburst was thrilled! So thrilled in fact, that she made us a family of "Thank You" cards to commemorate the loveliness of her birthday.

We inadvertently created a new birthday tradition in this house when I realized that I completely forgot to purchase birthday candles until the afternoon of Sunburst's birthday. Rather than brave the snow, we decided to melt a bit of beeswax in a small bean can and add in a bit of candle coloring wax. Sunburst was overjoyed to labor away dipping her own birthday candles, two at a time, on lengths of crochet cotton I cut for the task. They worked beautifully! And she managed to count and make enough to outfit her party cake as well.



As for me, I kept busy teaching myself to make icing roses, per Sunburst's request. Luckily, I wasn't completely on my own in this, as I discovered that there are a slew of cake decorating videos online.

That alone would have made for a full week, but other things happened as well:

At our bi-monthly co-op my favorite camp counselor, Aleisha, taught us some new songs and drama games that have kept the kids entertained for several days now. Even Kitty Bill is captivated by "Tony Chestnut," so it looks like we'll be adding it to our pre-lessons warm-up over here. I've noticed that, although we can't manage a full circle time each day, things go a lot smoother if we warm up a bit with a couple of movement songs and hand-clapping.

Kitty Bill is no longer living up to the passivity of his blog name. He's a mischievous little sprite! He's into everything these days, including all the kitchen drawers and the kitchen counters. Nothing is safe. Nothing is sacred. He has even demolished our sturdy easel chalkboard. And naps? Forget about it. He says he's too old for that nonsense anymore. So a new name for him is in the works... and an all-new naptime scheme.

In other news, I met with a new doctor on Friday who pronounced my heel to be suffering from nerve damage. It has been 12 weeks since our car accident, and I'm still limping along. Every time I try to put just a bit more weight on that heel my progress moves backwards. So how long is it going to take? The doctor told me that it could be another 3 months. I was so taken aback by this news that I didn't even know what to say to him. He can't be serious, right? Could it really take six months (or more?) until I can walk normally again?

Until then, I continue with physical therapy. Though I'd much rather be pain-free, truth be told, there are worse ways to spend 45 minutes a week than getting a foot massage.

Anticipation

When I have said my evening prayer,
And my clothes are folded on the chair,
And Mother switches off the light,
I'll still be seven years old to-night.

But from the very break of day,
Before the children rise and play,
Before the greyness turns to gold,
To-morrow I'll be eight years old.

Eight kisses when I wake,
Eight candles on my cake!

-Lucy Betty McRaye
from A Little Book of Rhymes New and Old, circa 1940

Sunburst has not been able to contain herself all day. Tomorrow she'll be turning eight. EIGHT!? It seems so old... how on earth did she get to be eight already?!

Let the Good Times Roll

Blessings that are bright.
May our hearts always be light.
Blessings on our bread.
May we all be healthy fed.
Blessings on this day.
May Spring not be so far away.





Today was a great day. We're really back in the flow, and boy, does it feel good.

Yesterday Sunburst and I sat down and had a talk about how things are going. She's been lost in a reading zone lately-- just completely obsessed with two different series she's working through (The Fairy Realm and Rowan of Rin.) It has been really hard to capture her attention, and I get it. Who wants to put down a good book? Or in her case, a good pile of books? She hasn't seemed all that interested in anything I suggest lately, namely, our Waldorf lessons.

So I asked her if she wanted to continue with them or not. She looked at me like I asked her if she wanted to eat a porcupine. Stop. Doing. Lessons? So we came up with a plan to fit in lessons AND reading time, and today's execution went off without a hitch. We got so much accomplished, both in work and play, that I just want to bronze this day and hang it on the wall.

We even managed to sneak in some Saints work, recalling a story of St. Brigid's Cloak, that we read over the holidays. Plus a couple more St. Brigit stories from this site.

We had a good mix of Groundhog's Day, Candelmas, and St. Brigid's Day revelry, and even whipped up an Irish soda bread in the shape of a cross for afternoon snack.

St. Brigid's Bread
2 1/2 c flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
2 T sugar
1/2 t sea salt
1/4 c raisins
1/4 c dried cranberries
handful of nuts or seeds (we used pumpkin seeds)
1 c soy milk
1 T apple cider vinegar

Preheat oven to 350. Mix all dry ingredients. Add milk and vinegar and stir gently until mixed. Spoon mixture onto a greased cookie sheet in the shape of a cross. Bake for about 30 minutes.

Paper Friends

Yesterday the girls spent all morning playing with their tiny Ghanaian friends.

I printed them out from this site HERE, and the girls are having a blast. It's our warm-up to a project they're doing on Ghana for our local homeschool International Fair in March. They were so excited to start the project, and who am I to hold them back. Their enthusiasm is contagious.

Each doll has been named a traditional Ghanaian day name, which seems to have everything to do with the day of the week you are born, using this site HERE. We may decide to adopt our own Ghanaian names for a day. I've been checking out my options, and apparently as a Thursday child, I'm something akin to "a big rock in one's pocket." Is that a good thing?

We also spent some time crafting our own Flat Stanley dolls. Flat Sunburst and Flat Rosemary! are packed up and ready to travel. First stop: Moxy Jane's kids in Austin, Texas. I can hear them giggling in their envelope, giddy with anticipation.

Perspective

Last night I tripped over the baby gate in our hallway. It was one of those teetery falls, where there's time enough to work up a surge of adrenaline trying to right your balance. In the end I didn't go down, but I banged my leg on the gate pretty hard. Luckily though, it was an all new part of my leg, and not the pre-injured portions.

It still hurt though, and my heart was pounding, and my breathing was shallow and fast. Just imagining the pain I could have been in, for a split second the idea of reinjuring my injuries, freaked me out. And I crouched on the floor in the hallway panting.

Moonshine saw everything and ran to me, showering me with a dozen kisses. "Are you okay, Mommy? Did you get hurt?"

"Yes, I'm okay, just a little scared," I told her. "The kisses really help."

She looked between me and the gate and back again, and in her matter of fact voice informed me, "Well, it's not badder than a car accident or anything."

Talk about perspective! Get over it Mom. This too shall pass....

a side order of sleep

As you know things have been a little kooky over here, and we've been really struggling trying to get our rhythms back in place. Everything depends upon that rhythm- our ability to function in the world, stay focused on tasks, and communicate clearly and humanely with one another.

Clearly and humanely. I always had assumed that would be the easy part... but when our rhythms are out of whack, nothing is easy. Nothing is clear. And I find myself suddenly at the end of the day wondering how did we get here?

Rhythm, to me, depends primarily on two things: food and sleep. Regular and consistent mealtimes are easy. I watched my kids to see when they get hungry, and I began to anticipate that hunger. We eat every 2-3 hours. I don't know if that's normal or not. But that's when we're hungry. You can set the clock by it. 9, 12, 3, 5:30, and 7:30.

Sleep, on the other hand, is less easy. When Sunburst was a wild and energetic one-year-old who fought sleep with an iron fist, it astounded me how our neighbor's same age child would easily nap twice a day and be back in her room for a 6:30 bedtime. We struggled with sleep issues for years, but eventually we moved past the iron fist business and got on with life for the most part. This past November, our sleep patterns fell apart all over again. A solid month of houseguests, a car accident, illness, holiday fervor, and an injured Mommy who couldn't physically get it together to do the normal bedtime routine turned us all into sleepless wrecks. Normally, I climb in bed with them and we read for 30 minute stretches before the singing and other Mommy voodoo. For the first couple of weeks, I couldn't physically climb into their bed. The nightmares and pain had us up and down all night. One sleepless night led to another and the whole system crashed.

In a moment of complete desperation, I picked up this book, recommended to me by the wise Aleisha.



I can't say enough good things about this book. It had me crying by page six. I'm not saying that I wasn't bone tired and emotionally fragile, because believe me, I was. But it opened my eyes to thinking about sleep and parenting in a whole new light.

And we're sleeping again, for the most part. But even when we're not, because life is always happening, it's like my brain is more attuned to what's going on. I can see sleep issues as sleep issues rather than plots to overthrow my sanity. I can cut us all a little more slack, and the rhythm can still flow through us. And so at last we're back to being mostly humane, functioning people. Who knew?

Building a nest

Last night was our local homeschool Science Fair, and we didn't go. We could have given quite an interactive presentation on GERMS and the spread of influenza. Instead, we opted to stay home, blow our noses, drink hot tea, and reminisce about last year's Science Fair, otherwise known as, the time Sunburst built a nest and Moonshine laid an egg.

It all started when we decided to partake in the Great Backyard Bird Count. All that winter bird watching inspired Sunburst, then age 6.5, to think about birds and nests. She had lots of questions, and we checked out a pile of books from the library. She was fascinated by the idea that birds make their nest out of almost anything, and she decided she would try to build a nest, too. How hard could it be? And which materials would she use?

It was her own brain child, and I let her run with it. She came up with this nest, which was almost too heavy for her to lift, and then narrated a little "how-to" piece:

Coincidentally, we happened to find a REAL nest that had been dislodged from it's usual place, probably by a gardener or a strong wind. Sunburst brought it along as part of her display, although it was teeming with mites.

Along with her nest display, Sunburst presented a poster* on the various nesting materials. She chose to discuss the first two components on her poster... poop and spit! She explained in great detail "bird nest soup!" and the cleverness of birds by adding carnivore poop to their nests to scare off predators. A healthy debate among her peers ensued:

Naysayer #1: "Ewww, that's too gross! Who would eat a nest?"

Naysayer #2: "Or spit?!"

Sunburst (grinning madly): "Well, they eat it in a soup, called Bird Nest Soup."

Naysayer #3: "People eat nests? In soup? I don't think this is true. How do you know about this?"

Sunburst: "Yes, it is true. I read about it in a book."

Obviously poop and spit were a huge hit and she had the whole crowd giggling (even the parents!) She was very cute.

Moonshine, then 3.5 years, not to be left out of the fun, decided that her contribution would be an egg. She crafted this one out of playdough.

It was their first learning fair, and they've been hooked ever since!


*That's a lot of neat handwriting for a 6.5 year old. To help Sunburst make it happen, I lightly penciled in the larger words and she went over them with a marker. She drew the pictures and glued on the "stuff." To simulate poop, she painted a dry chunk of TVP with acrylic paint. The gross factor prevails every time.