In linguistics, you learn that languages change over time.  Geographically isolated groups of people will develop their own idiosyncrasies, which can then develop into dialects and eventually separate languages. Why do I mention this? Because my geographically isolated, unschooled (by this I only mean that they don't go to school, not the style of homeschooling) children have the beginnings of their own dialect.

It began with saying "was meaning" instead of "meant."  For example: "I was meaning to do that."  It would be simpler and easier to say, "I meant to do that." I corrected them to no avail.  The girls got the boys saying it.  I've even said it once or twice before I stopped myself.  I mean, I was meaning to say "meant" but when you hear "was meaning" all the time, it's really hard.

They also say "inside of" instead of just "in."  For example, "I really liked the characters inside of this book."  At least my children aren't lazy.  They're adding extra syllables in lots of sentences.  That's got to mean something, right?

Then the girls got really interested in Scotland, and they started saying "save" instead of "except." For example: "We all got soaked in the rain save for Brogan."  Most people, I'm sure, know what that sentence means (and the context is pretty obvious too), but what American says that?

I've started noticing too, that none of them say Gabrielle's name right. It's not just the ones in speech therapy either!  The twins say "Dadum" for her right now, but Ryan and Mary both say, "Gabielle."  It's like they say it so fast that they leave out the "r."  I'm not thrilled about that.

I drew the line at "Me and" to start a sentence.  That's not an idiosyncrasy; that's just plain bad grammar, and it's especially irritating to someone, ie, ME, who has studied German grammar with all the cases.  Mary would say that when she was younger, and I figured, with excellent speaking role models in my husband and me, she would grow out of it.  As my husband always says, "How's that working out for you?"  So now when she says, "Can me and Gabrielle go dance in the den?" I answer, "Who?" and she rolls her eyes and says, "Can Gabrielle and I go dance in the den?" Ryan had just started saying "me and the twins" but we are nipping that in the bud.  He actually remembers most of the time now and either says it right the first time or corrects it himself.  But if not, I say, "Who?" and he rolls his eyes and says, "The twins and I."

Mary will also say, "Can I make dessert for me and Gabrielle?"  When I started to correct her about "me and" I explained to her that this sentence is also wrong.  It's really quite simple. "I" is a personal pronoun in the nominative case; "me" is in the accusative case.  "For" is a preposition and in English, prepositions take the accusative case.  And it's just good manners to mention the other person first.  Unfortunately my simple explanation went over her head, and I've found that this is not a hill I'm willing to die on.  Maybe when she finally gets over saying "me and" we'll try to fix this one.

I was meaning to make this post both interesting and funny. I hope that you found the anecdotes inside of it amusing, save for perhaps the children's eye-rolling.  Well, I've got to go now - me and Gabielle have to watch "Eyes on the Prize."

Posted in My languages

I got word yesterday that enough students had registered for my German course, so this month I will begin teaching again!  I am very excited.  Yes, it's something else to do, but it's something in which I am not Mom for a couple of hours.  It will give me new motivation to continue improving my German (which has gone by the wayside along with my long-lost buddy, Sleep).

I am very excited!  It only occurred to me later in the evening that I found out on Brogan's eighteen-month birthday. After that long of a maternity leave, I am definitely ready to teach again!  I told my husband and the children last night at dinner, and Ryan (the six year old) asked me if I were going to take Brogan with me and then, when the answer was an emphatic NO, "Who's going to milk him when you're gone?" I laughed and said I figured he could manage to go a few hours without nursing.

Off to plan!

Posted in Homeschooling

Brad Paisley recently came out with a song called "Welcome to the Future." It's not one of my favorites, but my daughters and I were listening to it and I found that I had to explain an entire verse to them:

I had a friend in school,
Running-back on a football team,
They burned a cross in his front yard
For asking out the home-coming queen.

I thought about him today,
Everybody who's seen what he's seen,
From a woman on a bus
To a man with a dream.

Obviously, the running-back is African-American; the KKK or some sympathizers burned the cross; the homecoming queen is Caucasian; the woman on the bus is Rosa Parks; and the man with the dream is Martin Luther King, Jr. My daughters didn't understand any of that. They didn't even know what a homecoming queen was.  Why should they? Their only experience with high school is watching the High School Musical movies, which all of us who have actually gone to high school know are completely unrealistic.

Sometimes it just shocks me what my children don't know.  I think what happens is that I figure that I know it, so somehow by osmosis, they must know it too.  For a couple of months, I've been thinking that this oversight needed to be rectified.  So when Gabrielle and I were planning our unit study topics, I suggested the Civil Rights Movement as our first and she agreed.

I told our plan to my wonderful friend Emily, and she reminded me of the series Eyes on the Prize that PBS made a while back.  The library luckily has the whole series, and I got out several books about the Civil Rights Movement from the library too.  I left them on the table and saw her reading one about the Montgomery Bus Boycott.  I also got a book that has some of MLK, Jr.'s speeches, with forewords to each one by other important figures of the time.

The speeches are incredible! He was such a dynamic speaker.  I'm not sure that I had ever heard an entire speech from him. After we watched the first Eyes on the Prize episode, in which we heard parts of his speech from the first night of the bus boycott, I read her the entire speech.  I love the part that goes, "If we are wrong, the Supreme Court is wrong; if we are wrong, then the Constitution of the United States is wrong; if we are wrong, then God Almighty is wrong!"

I think that the Brad Paisley song will have more impact now that my daughters have seen Emmett Till's body in the open casket funeral his mother insisted on after he was murdered merely for saying, "Bye, baby," to a white woman in a store.

We have much more exploring of this subject to do, and so far, I'm really happy with how unit studies are going!

No, not my future ambitions, although I have plenty of those. The children were discussing what they wanted to do in the future today.  I'm not sure the younger boys understood the concept of "career" though.

Gabrielle - be a famous author and live where it's cold

Mary - be a famous actress and travel all over the world

Ryan - be a father and live in (a town that will remain nameless)

Alexander - be a daddy

Christopher - be a baby

Brogan - demolition expert

OK, Brogan didn't actually say that, but let's just say that he's got a lot of promise in that field.

I always find it interesting to hear what children say they want to be.  I wanted to be famous until I read the book Valley of the Dolls and that cured me of it forever.  Robert had several interesting things he wanted to be. Airport taxi driver and manager at a Taco Bell are two that stick in my mind.  I think his latest plan is an MFA in Creative Writing and then maybe law school.  Hmm, where could he have gotten a love of writing and learning?

Posted in Montessori

A major theme of this blog has been my research into Montessori education.  Today I sat down to make my list of needed homeschooling purchases and began looking at some of my Montessori catalogs.  I also looked at the Montessori for Everyone blog that I have read on and off for a few years, and saw that she has moved to a new house and finished the basement to be their workspace.  You can see it here if you are interested.

And, yes, the green-eyed monster bit me.  I thought about a question on a message board I read yesterday, where someone wanted to know the top five or ten Montessori materials that someone should have.  It seemed so simple, to phrase it that way and then pursue those things.  And it made me wonder, with all my reading and research, why haven't I implemented more of the Montessori approach in my own homeschool?

I've repeatedly said that if I had to put my children in school, I would put them into a Montessori school.  I've said that if there were a school nearby that we could afford, I would put the younger children in it in order to have time with the older ones.  But would I?  I don't really know.  Neither of those things are likely to ever happen, so I'm pretty safe saying them.  I've even looked into a Montessori training program in my area, and I've thought about running a preschool when my children get older.

I think one reason I was very attracted to the Montessori method was the emphasis on order and a beautiful environment, neither of which described my house at the time I began learning about it.  The twins were babies then, and I also had another around the age of 3.  So much has been going on in the last couple of years that I guess I just never figured out exactly what I was doing with the Montessori stuff.  And probably, my all or nothing nature really wanted a room that I could just set up as a Montessori room and not allow anyone in there at any other time.  I doubted my ability to keep everything organized and together, and to stay on top of the children putting things back.

And then, ever since Brogan became mobile, and then especially when he stopped falling asleep easily in the evenings, I lost any mental space and rest that I had.  If I am awake, I am most likely dealing with a child under seven. Even if they all happen to be asleep, I have three older children to claim my attention.  And many, many things I want to accomplish and do.  It is a dilemma.

I had been doing much better with keeping the house clean and organized and getting rid of clutter, and now Brogan is a one-baby-destructo machine.  Nothing is safe, and he takes any opportunity he can get to pull stuff down, climb on things, and make messes.  So once he might actually be asleep, time has to be spent repairing the damage he's done.  I hate the mess.  I'm just done with it.  I'd like to be able to put something down and have it be left alone.  I'm tired of playing Remote-and-Phone-Keepaway.

So I think I might have just answered my own question.

Posted in Homeschooling

We've reached a new point for us in our homeschool and in our lives - we can actually go places! The twins, who are four now, are actually old enough to walk.  They (usually) don't run off, and they are potty-trained.  Brogan is (usually) content to ride in the stroller, and is big enough that he really doesn't nurse in public anymore. (He's almost a year and a half old! You'd think that since he's my seventh child, I would have figured out how that happens, but...)

So we go to the library twice a week, and...it isn't horrible.  It isn't crazy.  I'm still on high alert, but I'm not chasing children all over the place.  And we've been to the zoo.  Twice. With me as the only adult. With only one minor incident. My husband and I took all of the children to see the Nutcracker before Christmas and that also went well.  They loved it and were all well-behaved.

We've been stuck at home for so long that we've almost forgotten what it's like to go out and do things.  I have all sorts of field trips in mind: to see nature, to explore historical sites, to go to a science fair - whatever comes up.

Probably a lot of the field trips will coincide with my new plan for high school for Gabrielle (and Mary, when she gets up there): unit studies.  Various factors led me to decide to follow a unit study plan. One, we cannot do the same thing I did with my oldest for high school, since he is pretty much a "give me the book, I'll read it, and we'll call it good" kind of learner who tests well. Two, my daughter was beginning to feel that all we ever did in school was the things she is worst at (which isn't true, but as they say in Hollywood [from what I hear] "Image is everything"). If older sister hates school, then everybody is going to. Three, in reflecting on what I actually remember from high school, it's the things I did reports, papers, or projects on. Four, this is a Montessori approach for the older grades: choose a topic, study the topic, write a report. Five, it's the way I learn now (writing my reports on this blog!). Six, my oldest told me the best math book we ever did was the one that interested him but was way too hard for him (it was a sports math book at the middle school level, which we did when he was in about third grade), and that made me think that studying a topic and then requiring some kind of final project would motivate her to get her skills to the necessary level, instead of the other way around, where you have to get the skills before you get to do anything interesting with them.  There's probably more reasons, but I'll stop here.

She will continue to do Math-U-See (I shudder every time I type that name, but I love the program), Spanish (a very conversational, hands-on approach), typing, and Story of the World 4 with Mary.  We will choose a new unit each month, and by the end of the month, some kind of final project will be produced: a poster, a report, a skit, something that shows what she had learned.  If a topic is really big, we may take two months on it.  I plan to record time spent in various categories so that I can make a transcript from what she has done.

And those are the big changes in our homeschool! I'm really excited about them!  Hey, maybe I'll even attempt to go to the campus art museum again! Do you think they would remember me?

Posted in Swedish

So I finally just got sick of myself and ordered the two items off of my Amazon wish list that would help me learn Swedish the most - Swedish: Essentials of Grammar, and 201 Swedish Verbs.  They came the other day and I looked at them very briefly - like for about a nanosecond - and then put them down to go answer children's urgent calls.

But then the thing I realized is that nobody is going to give me time to do what I want to do.  No child is going to say, "Mommy, none of us will need you for the next half hour, go learn Swedish" and most likely my husband is not going to say, "Jeanne, go do whatever you want for an hour; I've got this" (not because he is a bad husband or anything, he's a great husband, it's just the pesky work-seven-days-a-week thing).

And the other thing I have realized is that I am not guaranteed any more time than I have right now.  I realized how quickly things can change when I watched my dog die suddenly right before my eyes last September.  While I am treasuring the time I have with my family, I also need to treasure myself.  And that lists of goals I have and things I would like to accomplish? I need to start them right now.

So today I began.  Seriously.  Right away I learned something really cool about Swedish: the definite article is attached to the end of the noun.  I wondered why I never noticed while watching Bilingual Baby Swedish that, while the word for boy is "pojke" and the word for apple is "äpple", the sentence "The boy is eating the apple" is "Pojken äter äpplet."  I even repeated that sentence many times and never noticed it! 

I love and admire the Swedes for streamlining the conjugation of verbs even more than us lazy English speakers also!  Every pronoun has the same verb ending - all languages should be this way.  I now know enough to start creating some sentences and I think that Mary and I can make a good start with Swedish.  Oh, and it's really easy to remember that "han" means "he" and "hon" means "she" if you think of Han Solo being male (all my children are obsessed with Star Wars LOL).

What have you been wanting to do? I challenge you to GO DO IT!

Posted in Pictures

At the beginning of last year, when I began the 52 Books in 52 Weeks challenge, I thought I would read way more than that.  One hundred books seemed reasonable to me; after all, that's only two books a week.  So I was expressing my disappointment to my sister and she reminded me that probably not many moms of seven read even sixty books last year!  I hope to make more time to read this year, but for now I'll try to focus on the achievement of having met my goal to read 52.

I'm making some changes to our homeschool this year.  I have realized that I want to change the focus for my older children to exploring their interests more formally.  So we'll be doing a form of unit studies, starting with Gabrielle.  Each month we will choose a topic and explore it.  For longer topics we may take two months.  By the end of the unit, something final will be produced: a skit, a report, a presentation, a poster, or something else that shows what we've learned.  I will keep track of hours spent on various subjects for high school credit.  Gabrielle will continue doing Math U See, Spanish, Story of the World 4 with Mary, and religion with all the children.

I have made a few New Year's resolutions. One is to be more aware of where the products I buy come from, and to try to avoid buying things from China.  Part of this is to really think through purchases, which will help our budget also.  Two is to keep up with my email.  I am on several email lists, and when I check my email, I tend to see if there is anything personal there and then just let the rest sit there.  I currently have over 6500 emails in my inbox!  I am committing to reading and deleting them each day.  Three is to lose weight and exercise.  In 2007, I lost 30 pounds but then became pregnant with Brogan.  Somehow I gained all my normal pregnancy weight plus the thirty I had lost!  So now I am at my highest non-pregnant weight ever and have been for a year.  I hate it.  I remember how good it felt to lose that 30 pounds and to feel more fit and active.  I know that my daughters wish I were thin also.  But it's been so discouraging to have to lose forty pounds just to get back to where I was before.  However, I did it before and I can do it again!

A little debt report: we paid off over five percent of our debt in 2009!  We are very excited.  That may not sound like much, but it was done on a very minimal budget.

I already have a stack of books to read this year! My oldest son gave me some of his college books to read, and I bought all the December romances from the line I hope to have mine published in.  A bookstore near me is closing and all romances were fifty percent off.  Since I normally buy them for twenty-five cents at the thrift store, and because I prefer to read older romances, I haven't read any current ones in a really long time.  So I decided to take the opportunity to do a little market research and buy the six current ones so I can see what they are currently publishing.  I also am thinking of starting my study of Russian literature sometime soon.  Maybe I'll research it and plan it this year and do it next year. My husband also gave me a book about Brett Favre and Robert gave me The Blind Side (guess they think I must like football or something!). So, um, yeah, see the first paragraph: I need to make time to read!

Speaking of football, my beloved Carolina Panthers managed to finish the season 8-8, so not a losing season.  But no playoffs this year.  In fact, I recently learned that under John Fox, the Panthers are undefeated AFTER being eliminated from the playoffs.  So I'm thinking of sending him a memo "from the commissioner" next September telling him that they have already been mathematically eliminated.  Some of my other favorites have fared better this year: Favre had the best season statistically of his career, and the Chargers are playing really well.  I would like either of those two teams to win the Super Bowl, but Favre already has a Super Bowl ring, so it would be nice for Rivers to get his.

This year I hope to continue growing spiritually by using the Magnificat magazine for daily prayer and by going to daily Mass once a week by myself.  In November I received a sample copy of Magnificat unexpectedly in the mail and decided to try it.  It has Morning Prayer, the Mass readings for the day, and Evening Prayer.  I loved doing it! It really helped structure the day and give it a flow and a rhythm like Holly Pierlot talks about in A Mother's Rule of Life. I decided to order it, but did so too late to get it in December.  I am now having to get back into the habit.  While ordering my subscription, I noticed that they have a children's version called Magnifikid, so I requested a sample of that and am going to do it with the children when we pray the Rosary and then take it to Mass with us.  It contains the entire Mass for Sunday, and explains any difficult words or passages, plus it has other activities and suggestions.  Also, I am going to set an alarm in our living room to go off every day when it's Rosary time, so it will be just like the bells calling monks to prayer.

As far as my life goals go, I am scheduled to teach German at the community college beginning in February, and I am hoping and praying that it will have enough students to run! Not only will it allow me to go out of the house sans children, I miss German and I miss teaching.  Having the class will give me added motivation to keep progressing with my German.  I'll keep up with Spanish by teaching Gabrielle, and I have a great idea to work on Swedish with Mary.  Well, it's not really my idea, I got it from a language book I still have never reviewed.  Hmm, I should reread that book and review it in all my spare time!

All that should keep me busy in 2010! Happy New Year to all my readers!

Posted in 52 Books in 52 Weeks 2009

Since this is the first year I have written down all the books I read, I decided to give out awards in different categories.  Of course, the award would have to be called a Brownie!  If any of the authors of these books want a homemade brownie, please leave a comment and my people will get in touch with your people. 

1. Worst Fiction - Without a doubt, this goes to The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot and all its sequels, of which I only read one.  The movie was so clean and nice that I had no problem with my children watching it.  I got the book out of the library, thinking my daughters might like to read it.  On page one, I knew they couldn't.  There is bad language, questionable morals, and other assorted no-no's, not to mention the bad writing.  Is this really what passes for popular teen fiction these days?  Oh wait, no, that would be vampire books now.

2. Worst Non-Fiction - Gimme Shelter: Ugly Houses, Cruddy Neighborhoods, Fast-Talking Brokers, and Toxic Mortgages: My Three Years Searching For The American Dream by Mary Elizabeth Williams wins this Brownie.  (For those who were expecting The New Global Student, that has a category all its own!) This book fails to explain her premise, which is trying to explain why they choose to live in New York City.  It's all written in a vaguely vulgar way too.  I doubt she would want to come get her Brownie since I live in the antithesis of NYC!

3. Most Annoying - And here we have The New Global Student: Skip the SAT, Save Thousands on Tuition, and Get a Truly International Education by Maya Frost.  This absolutely takes the cake for the most annoying book I read this year, and maybe in my entire life!  This woman's writing style is so annoying!  Again, this is another book that promises so much more than it delivers.  I actually would like to meet this author to see if she is this way in person, so Maya, if you like really scrumptious brownies, come see me!

4. Most Surprising Book For Me To Have Read - Know Your Power: A Message to America's Daughters by Nancy Pelosi.  Why is this surprising? I haven't voted Democrat since 1992 (but that doesn't mean that I like Republicans much better). I actually am very glad I read this book, because when I hear Nancy Pelosi speak now I know what context she is coming from.  I think I will make it a goal to read one political biography a year.  Wouldn't it be great if Nancy Pelosi came in person to pick up her Brownie?

5. Most Helpful - The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide To Classical Education At Home by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer wins the Brownie for being the most helpful book for parents.  Even if you don't want to follow the curriculum they outline, there are all sorts of suggestions, lists, and ideas that might help you.  The whole book is so clear and well-thought out!  I actually own the original edition but went ahead and bought the new edition this year.  Susan, you don't live too far away and I know you love desserts from reading your blog.  Come pick up your Brownie and we'll chat!

6. Best History/Biography - The Brownie goes to 1066: The Year of the Conquest by David Howarth.  I loved this book and still remember quite a bit of it even almost a year after reading it.  This was such a pivotal year that I think everyone should read this book to understand what happened better.  It's especially poignant for me, because most, if not all, of my heritage is from the British Isles.  My children will be reading it for high school history!

7. Best Children's Book - Calico Captive by Elizabeth George Speare is a classic for a reason! It shows the Puritan mindset, but also shows the main character breaking out of that somewhat.  She is exposed to Catholicism and other ways of living life and learns not to be judgmental.  Her grit and bravery in dire circumstances are also inspiring.  Unfortunately, Mrs. Speare is no longer with us, but please, go read her books if you haven't already.

8. Best Education Book - The Brownie goes to Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius by Dr. Angeline Lillard.  This was a fascinating review of how science has shown that traditional schooling is not the best option for children.  Any homeschooling parent would be interested in reading this book, even if they knew nothing about Montessori.  If I could not homeschool my children, I would want them in a Montessori school.

9. Best Non-Fiction - I read many non-fiction books.  In fact, of the sixty total books I read in 2009, only eighteen were fiction.  So to win the Brownie for Best Non-Fiction, the book has to be incredibly good.  I have to remember it later (not a sure thing these days!) and it has to affect my life in some lasting way.  The Brownie goes to Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv!  This book is a fascinating look at how children have, for various reasons, been removed from communion with nature.  It shows that children need to be connected with nature in order to care about the environment and to feel whole themselves.  The book made me feel better about buying a piece of land in the middle of nowhere and raising my children here.  We are surrounded by nature and have seen countless kinds of wildlife.  I read more about the European concept of "Waldkindergartens" and have tried to implement the idea with my little children by taking them outside to experience all sorts of weather.  There was a quote in the book that I liked, "There is no bad weather, only inappropriate clothing."  I highly recommend this book, and will probably read it again this coming year.

10. Best Fiction - At the end of last year, I began reading a four book series about Swedish immigrants to America. I read the third and fourth books this year, The Settlers and Last Letter Home by Vilhelm Moberg.  Moberg was a master at creating characters, and nearly a year later, they are still living in my mind.  The Last Letter Home is an especially poignant book, as Karl Oskar deals with the long-lasting ramifications of his decision to leave Sweden. This fall I was reminded of the first book, in which they are still in Sweden, when Kristina tries to make flour from acorns because she has nothing else to feed her family.  I looked at the acorns on my driveway and tried to imagine being that desperate.  These are books that will always be with me.

Congratulations on your Brownies, everyone! Happy New Year!

Posted in Me

When I started graduate school, I planned to go all the way and get my doctorate and become a professor.  Then I got sidetracked and disillusioned and had a baby instead.  I became gung-ho about breastfeeding and got very involved in La Leche League.  I started thinking about becoming a leader, because I was grateful for their help, and naturally, if I was passionnate about breastfeeding, it seemed the next logical step. 

However, after a while it became apparent that this was not right for me.  Even though I now have over ten years of nursing experience, my eyes glaze over when women start describing their breastfeeding problems.  I don't want to trouble-shoot and problem-solve. What I wanted to do was plan and lead meetings and do other volunteer work.  Not a good match for an LLL Leader!

Around the same time my husband and I learned Natural Family Planning.  Since this is the only method of avoiding pregnancy besides complete abstinence that Catholic couples may use, I was also pretty passionnate about helping other people understand the method.  I even began to try to convince my husband that we could become a teaching couple.  I wonder why I couldn't see at the time that my husband didn't even want to discuss my chart, let alone other people's charts!  Again, not a good fit.

And so it seems to go through the years.  I find something, throw myself into it and think I need to follow that route.  I've gotten to the point now, though, that I don't want to get hyper-involved in things.  I've been working on writing romances for a year now, and yes, I like it, but I don't want to get involved in the whole romance-writing world.  I mean, there are conferences and workshops and writing groups and books and probably podcasts and websites and discussion forums, and you know what? I don't have time for that.  I don't want to do that.  I just want to write a romance.  Just like I just want to breastfeed.  Or homeschool.  Or keep my NFP chart any old way I want (I was once reprimanded by some guy on the phone from Couple to Couple League when I had called them with a question! If that isn't a weird situation!).

I don't want to throw myself into things anymore.  Maybe it's because I'm old and tired, but I'd rather think of it as finally learning some balance.  I do think it's good that I didn't go on for my PhD, because at the time, I was somewhat obsessed with trying to be German and feeling inadequate because I wasn't.  Now I feel more secure in being who I am.

I just wonder if I will ever really find my thing.  I think I have identified that, in general, languages are my thing.  But what specifically am I supposed to do with them?  Whenever I ask myself that question, I know what the answer is.  I'm pretty sure that the Lord showed me years ago that I was supposed to teach them to my children.  So why do I find that so gosh darn HARD?  I plan and then I don't do.  I worry that it feels unnatural.  I plan to help other homeschooling families with languages and then feel like - how could I when I can't do it myself? 

And it can't just be about the children.  I fell into that trap before.  Some of it needs to be about me - but what?  Maybe 2010 needs to be about me actually doing languages like I want to. I'll study and I'll teach my children.  I'll use the resources I have.  I'll try to find the right balance.

Posted in Homeschooling

I was waiting out front for my older daughter at the library tonight when a chorus of little voices from the back of the van said, "I have to go pee!"  So I had an internal debate about whether or not I had to get out the stroller for a quick trip to the bathroom, interspersed with wishing that my six year old was old enough to stay in the van with the sleeping baby since he did not need the facilities.  I finally decided that I could probably manage to carry Brogan in the sling and hold the twins' hands as well.

After answering nature's call, we went to find Gabrielle since it was now fifteen minutes later than I said she should come outside.  On the way into the library, I saw a dear friend from my early homeschooling days.  We stopped to catch up with each other and the three boys who weren't strapped to me began running in circles around me like hungry natives doing a pre-dinner dance.  I caught one and told him not to run, but of course the other two felt that he was the only one that applied to, and they continued to run in circles until I personally told each of them to stop.

My friend's three children range from a few years older than my oldest to a few years younger than him.  She looked down at my four boys and said, "I just couldn't start over again now." Later on the way home, I thought, "Is that what I am doing? I guess it is." Friends that I met back when we started homeschooling in 1997 are now trying to figure out their post-homeschooling plans, while I am gearing up to get the two girls through high school while also teaching all the boys.

I remember another mom saying to me when I was pregnant with Ryan, "Do you REALLY want to start all over again?"  Robert was a teen, Gabrielle and Mary were nearly 7 and 5, weaned and potty-trained and sleeping through the night.  Of course, the mom asking was just an acquaintance and didn't know that I had suffered two miscarriages since Mary was born, one of which had nearly killed me, and that I had been desperately wanting another baby for quite some time.  So, that time, the answer was yes, I really wanted to start all over again.

I assume that there is a light at the end of the homeschooling tunnel, but it's so far away, I've never even had a glimpse of it.  I've been too busy trying to keep my head above the water rising in the tunnel.  However, it's true - I haven't even STARTED homeschooling three of my children (I don't go by that "oh, they have been learning since birth" idea of when homeschooling begins).  I think I figured out once that I will have been homeschooling for thirty years when I'm done.

Maybe I should stop thinking about this. It's making me more tired than I already was. 

Posted in My languages

Inspired by an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond, a few months ago I tried making a list of things I wanted to do before I die.  While Raymond's list consisted mainly of things he did and did not want to try eating, mine only had two things.  The first is to raise my children to be good Christians.  When I read a biography of St. Francis years ago, it said that this is what his mother always prayed for him.  It made sense to me that praying for your children to be good Christians kind of takes care of everything else.  "Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God and His justice, and all these things shall be added unto you" (Matthew 6:33 Douay-Rheims) and all that.

The second item on my list is actually three things.  I want to speak German and Spanish at a near-native level, and Swedish at a conversational level.  Basically I'd like to speak Swedish about as well as I speak German and Spanish now.

And that's all I came up with.  So while Raymond's life revolves around food (after all, food is what makes his mother Marie "worth it" as he tells Debra in another episode), mine obviously revolves around languages.  But I had hit an impasse with learning Swedish.  I've been unable to find a decent program, and I don't have the time to meet with a tutor or the money to pay the tutor with.

One night in early November at three in the morning, after having sat outside in the cold with a croupy baby while sick myself until I couldn't do it anymore and woke up my husband to take over, I was sitting in the recliner waiting for him to see to the other sick children before he took the baby.  I had just gotten a package from Amazon which included the program Spanish in Ten Minutes a Day, which I ordered as a supplement for my older daughter.  I really liked the program from what I could see, and, as usual, I looked to see what other languages they offered.  I saw that they have it in Norwegian.  And in my sick, sleepy state, I thought, "Norwegian and Swedish are very similar and mutually intelligible (OK, so maybe I didn't actually think big words like that).  Maybe I could get this program and use it as a roundabout way to learn Swedish!"

Well, the next day I did some research to see exactly what the differences were.  They really aren't that much, but I did discover that Swedes usually make fun of Norwegians' pronunciation.  Hmm, maybe not such a good idea.  I then emailed my friend in Sweden to ask her opinion, but she hasn't gotten back to me yet.  Then I started thinking, I have so little time as it is, it's ridiculous to try to learn Swedish in such an indirect way!

So it was pretty much in that state that I took the children to the Scandinavian Christmas Fair that I have posted about here before.  I was happy to finally find the Swedish-English children's dictionary that I had tried to order from Amazon two years ago (they kept delaying the shipping date, and after about six months of that, I cancelled the order).  It has both nouns and verbs, and the pronunciation for the Swedish right underneath the word.  I wouldn't have bought it if it didn't have that!  My biggest problem is that I try to pronounce it like German, which isn't always right.  However, knowing German certainly gives me a leg up on vocabulary.  For example, "bat" (the animal) is "Fledermaus" in German and "fladdermus" in Swedish. (Fans of the cartoon The Tick will know that since there is a character called "Die Fledermaus" who is a poor man's version of Batman.  And, yes, I do other things besides watch TV!)

The illustrations are charmingly old-fashioned, and even better, Mary has picked it up and been trying out words.  Her biggest frustration with looking at things in Swedish is not knowing how to pronounce them.  Now I just need to get a good Swedish grammar and maybe a verb book, and I think I can make some progress, and hopefully be able to help Mary learn some too!

Finding that dictionary helped me decide NOT to learn Swedish via Norwegian.  Maybe those 3 AM thoughts really should be ignored!

I have sadly neglected this blog as of late.  The combination of NaNoWriMo (final word count: 20,484 - just a bit shy of the 50K mark!), everyone except my husband being ill for the first two weeks of November, and a trip out of town for Thanksgiving and my high school reunion left me with little time to sit and write the last month or so.  Such is life. I do think of many topics that I could blog about, and I begin writing them in my head, and then I forget them completely. 

I did learn through NaNoWriMo that it is possible for me to average writing 1000 words per day.  Writing more than that, at this point in my life, is not possible.  I started a new romance even though I have not yet finished last year's because that is the rule for the contest.  This time the story seems to flow better, and I can visualize the characters. (Ask my husband how good I am at visualizing - basically, I stink at it.  We chose the place for our wedding reception because I when I walked in, I could visualize exactly how I wanted everything placed.)

I do enjoy writing.  It's fun to work in all these little things.  I love to learn, to read articles and find out little tidbits, and when writing fiction, I can work those things into my stories.  Now I just need to hunker down and finish both of my stories!

Posted in 52 Books in 52 Weeks 2009

A few weeks ago, I reached my goal for the year of reading 52 books.  I would have reached it earlier, but this summer I went through a period of being brain dead and really didn't read too much. Or blog, as you may have noticed. After that lull, I have now read ten or so in the last few weeks.  It feels good to be me again!

My last update about the 52 books challenge was July 10, and I had read forty books.  Since then I have read five fiction books: three romances, a Danielle Steel novel, and The Scarlet Letter.  I had to reread The Scarlet Letter after hearing that both my sister and my oldest son hated it, because I remembered liking it.  Well, I still liked it, but I think I can understand why others might not.  It is much more a description of the action.  In other words, instead of feeling like you are there, you feel like somebody who was there is telling you about it.  It's also a rich source of vocabulary words.

For non-fiction, I divided the book into Catholic, History/Current Events, and General Non-Fiction.  The Catholic books were The Rule of Saint Benedict and The Catholic Book of Character and Success by Fr. Edward F. Garesché, a phenomenal book that I plan to work back through and then use in our homeschool.

For History/Current Events, I read:

1. Under Siege: Three children at the Civil War Battle for Vicksburg.  I happened to see this in the children's section at the library.  While I was pregnant with the twins, I did a lot of reading on the Civil War, so I was interested in this.  Two of the children are on the Southern side, and the other child was General Grant's oldest son, who actually was present at the battle and was wounded.
2. After Etan: The Missing Child Case That Held America Captive by Lisa Cohen.  Etan Patz, age 6, disappeared May 25, 1979, while walking the two blocks to the bus stop by himself for the very first time.  His parents did not know he was missing until he did not come home from school.  When you read this book, it's almost unthinkable how cavalier society used to be about children's safety.  Missing pictures on milk cartons, Amber Alerts, beginning the search for a lost child immediately instead of waiting 72 hours, etc - these are all developments that happened after this case.  Today there is a tendency in the other direction, but in my opinion, many of these changes were good.  This book is hard to read, but I don't regret reading it. 
3. Gimme Shelter: Ugly Houses, Cruddy Neighborhoods, Fast-talking Brokers, and Toxic Mortgages: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream by Mary Elizabeth Williams. Why anyone would want to live in New York City escapes me completely, especially after reading this book about a family's three year search for a home to buy.  And then finally, they had the privilege of spending nearly $400,000 on a dinky little two bedroom apartment that wasn't even anywhere near the neighborhood they wanted to live in.  The book is part memoir, part commentary on the housing bubble, part someone trying to explain why she and her husband would choose to live in NYC.  I still don't get it, and I honestly, really, don't need to know when you and your husband "christened" your new apartment.
4. So Damn Much Money: The Triumph of Lobbying and the Corrosion of American Government by Robert G. Kaiser. Normally I would not read a book with profanity in the title, but this I could not resist.  The title comes from a quote in the book.  This book carefully outlines the horrible influence lobbying has on our government.  I truly think the only way out of this mess is to outlaw raising campaign money and give all candidates public money.  The scariest story in the book was when the President of Taiwan indirectly hired American lobbyists to try to get him a visa to enter the country (he attended Cornell as a young man and wanted to give a speech there).  The State Department, for fear of angering China, had refused him a visa.  The lobbying was successful and he got his visa.  Now, on the surface, I'm fine with that.  Why is China deciding who can enter our country?  But when you really think about what just happened, a foreign entity lobbied our government and got what they wanted!  That is really scary!  It's really a toss-up which book made me want to throw up more - this one or the Etan Patz one.

General Non-Fiction

1. Eat to Live by Dr. Joel Fuhrman.  My husband wanted me to read this book.  On the whole, this style of eating makes total sense to me, but it is really expensive.

2. The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp.  This is a really interesting book if you do anything creative or if you are interested in dance, since she talks a lot about the dances she has choreographed.  She really makes it clear that being creative is a habit and hard work.  There are lots of exercises and ideas to get your creativity flowing! I will definitely be rereading this one.

3. America’s Cheapest Family Gets You Right On the Money by Steve and Annette Economides.  I think I may have read this before, since some of it seemed really familiar, like the pages-long explanation of the minute details of attending the state fair cheaply...zzzz...oh ,wait, did I fall asleep there? Sorry!  You can get the same information that's in this book from The Tightwad Gazette, a lot more enjoyably.  I did like the way they calculated what your emergency fund should be, though, and their suggestions for budgeting for house maintenance.

4. I already ripped apart, uh, reviewed The New Global Student.

5. Gift From the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh.  I guess this is the year I read the books I associate with my mother - Love Story was the first.  My mom had a copy of Gift From the Sea that she really liked.  It's pretty much essays about relationships that she wrote while on a two week beach vacation.  Very thought-provoking reflections on marriage and motherhood.

6. The Not So Big House by Sarah Susanka.  While in general I agree with a lot of the principles in this book, I don't like many of the houses or rooms she shows.  I guess I'm a more traditional architecture sort of person. 

And that's it for now!

Posted in Me

For a while, I've been struggling with how to successfully integrate the computer into my daily life.  I've tried different things, prayed about it, thought about it, and scheduled it.  And finally it seems as though I have come to the right solution for me.

While the computer is a valuable source of information and a way to connect with my friends, it's also a big time vacuum.  Sitting down "just to quickly check something" is the equivalent of going into the supermarket for "just a couple of things." Even if it does only take a few minutes, it contributes to the scattered feeling I already have as a mom of four children six and under, plus two more at home.  

And checking something quickly multiple times a day adds up.  I started thinking, if I didn't sit down to check the computer, what could I do instead? Pray, read a child a book, clean something, speak a little German, play with the baby? In other words, something productive.  Something that would contribute to a good feeling at the end of a day, instead of the constant wondering, "Where did the day go and why didn't I get anything done???"  I considered getting on the computer as my break time, but it wasn't refreshing to me.  It just left me feeling more frazzled as I was pulled between my real world and the virtual world.  While it's true that we all need breaks, we need to be sure that the break refreshes instead of drains.

On the other hand, I am extremely limited in my ability to go out and to see my friends right now.  A friend and I have discussed how the feeling of isolation stay at home moms can experience can be very negative, and when I mentioned limiting computer time to my husband, he warned me not to cut off contact with the outside world.  A computer is a blessing in this circumstance.

So what to do?  Well, as I said at the beginning, after much prayer I have finally received the answer.  The computer stays off from the time I get up in the morning until the little ones are in bed, unless needed for urgent business like checking what is overdue at the library.  At that point (usually around 8 PM), I turn it on and catch up with my friends.  It feels like a good balance, and already I am feeling happier, calmer, and less scattered.  Thank You, Lord!

My friend Katherine is hosting this week's Carnival of Homeschooling, and she has included my post about my favorite children's books! Check it out!

Posted in German with the Kinder

Posted in Me

Well, I may be crazy, but I just signed up to do National Novel Writing Month again.  Last year I wrote 30,000 words in November.  This year I will try to actually win and write 50,000.  Oh, and I have no idea what I will write about yet.  And I haven't finished last year's yet.

But I will.

Posted in book reviews

The New Global Student: Skip the SAT, Save Thousands on Tuition, and Get a Truly International Education by Maya Frost is quite possibly the most annoying book I ever completely read.  If the subject matter weren’t right up my alley, I would have thrown it out the window (well, actually, it’s a library book, so I probably would have just put it in the book drop, but I would have banged the door extra hard).

I read about the book on The Simple Dollar blog in a pretty glowing review, so I was excited when my library had it.  By page 70, my excitement was gone and I was wondering if I could make it through.  My sister advised me to skip ahead, but I don’t really like to do that with books.  The author spends nearly the first 100 pages trying to explain why the test-taking machine that is American education is flawed.  Perhaps if I hadn’t spent the last ten years of my life reading about alternate forms of education, this would have been more revolutionary to me.  I actually began talking to the book, saying things like, “Get on with it already!” and “Give me some details!”

Her writing style was also a major turn-off.  Take this sentence for example: “Our primo parental up-and-out strategy should be to help our kids understand their talents and to teach them to generate ideas, research the heck out of  ‘em, and follow through in order to find great opportunities.”  Now, I don’t actually disagree with that sentence, but the way it’s written is the reading equivalent of nails on a chalkboard to me.  In addition, the summaries at the end of each section which contrasted “Old School” and “Bold School” also got on my nerves.

Another big issue for me was her constant harping on “fego” which is her made-up word for the combination of parental “fear” and “ego” that prevents us from letting our children study abroad.  I don’t think I’ve ever read something written by a parent that was so down on parents!  She glosses over the myriad other reasons that parents could have about being hesitant to send a fifteen year old half a world away for a year, and offers no reassurance except to point out that they’ll be in less danger of being shot or of being in a car accident than they would in the United States.  Ridiculing a person’s fears is not, in my opinion, the best way to help them overcome the fears.  A long, well-researched, carefully argued chapter would help much more than a casual, “Well, we took our 4 blond daughters to India, Mexico, and Argentina, and nothing ever happened to them!”

I kept waiting for details on how they took their family abroad, and she never gave them to me.  Apparently, they decided to move abroad, somehow made their businesses work online in a week or two, and left for Mexico.  The only detail she gives is how the girls found them a better place to live right after they arrived.  Oh, and also, somehow their mothers were better off because they moved abroad. Then there’s a whole section where her husband catalogs the money they saved living in Mexico, and his casual estimate is $3000 a month while living a better lifestyle.  Does that mean we could live for free in Mexico?  Oh, and also somehow, his sales doubled the first year they lived abroad. She also keeps talking about savings thousands off of college tuition, but again, never really crunches the numbers for us.  It seems (although doesn’t actually say) that they were able to pay for college out of pocket by the money they saved.

I wanted to like this book, but when I had made it through the whole thing and she never even addressed my biggest question, I gave up trying.  See, you can’t just decide to go live in another country.  They have to give you permission.  She never details the necessary preparations or even explains what they did.  She does give us a “Ten Commandments for Families Heading Abroad.”  Have I ever mentioned on here that this is one of my biggest pet peeves? I do not like fake ten commandment lists.  I don’t find it amusing or cute or trendy or whatever to make up a list and call it a “Ten Commandments.” 

The best part of the book was the ten pages or so that were the stories of eleven young people who went abroad through Rotary Youth Exchange (which is definitely a program I will be checking out) for a year either during high school or in a gap year after.  Not only were the stories fascinating, but we also got a break from the author’s annoying voice!  I can save you the several hours you might spend reading this book: study abroad is beneficial, it doesn’t have to be expensive, families might want to go abroad together, either for a short time or for longer, check out Rotary and the website Transitions Abroad.  There.

And I have no idea why she ended the book with an epilogue about the lady who wrote the Not So Big house books.  She’s not recommending a “not so big” education; she’s recommending a global education in the largest sense of the word. 

Remind me never to read anything by this author ever again.