I live in a black and white brain where my children are tiny fragments of vulnerability and the world is a killing machine. You know? Last spring, after Benny got his bike, we attempted to take a bike ride around the neighborhood with the bike and the stroller. It was such an agonizing experience, complete with a never-forget-until-the-day-I-am-dragged-screaming-to-the-asylum moment of him rolling helplessly into the street and me with the stroller, running. Yeah. SO I had put that activity on my "Never ever do this" list, and had underlined it in red when we got the puppy.

Now, I am forced to admit that things do change. Instead of going wherever we were going to go (I think it was a responsible errand we were supposed to perform) we decided to take a bike ride around the neighborhood with the boy on the bike, the girl in the stroller, and the dog on the leash. And me calmly, placidly, cud-chewingly walking along. YOU KNOW WHAT? It was not so bad. My sweet, beautiful, intelligent child listened to directions, tried his best to follow them, and there was only one terrifying moment at an intersection. Which has already begun to fade away in my memory, from a scarlet red to a nice salmon. It was actually, dare I say it, fun.

So, maybe it is possible to have fun on city streets with the aforementioned grouping of life forms. Who knew?

My favorite moments were when Benny saw a sign that said, "Reserved Parking" and said, "LOOK MOMMY! It's a prefix AND two suffixes!" *smug homeschooler aura* and all the little times he said "WHEE!" when he was on his bike. He literally actually said "WHEE." As if it were a real utterance.

Okay, off to list things on EBAY. There are only 43 days left in the fifty day challenge, says the counter on my Google home page.

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We're going to try and learn at least parts of the music for the Beethoven Play-along that the Virginia Symphony is having at our downtown mall. AWESOME. I can't wait. The playalong music is going to be Beethoven's fifth, the first movement and the Allegro, and then a Sousa march. I'm sure there are parts in there that Benny can play, and we'll just mark up our music and play the parts we can, skip the parts we can't. WHEE! I'm so psyched.

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Wednesday was Happy Tales Homeschool Book Club. It was AWESOME. Very fun. I will write up what we did later and post it to the homeschooling site. We learned about setting with the book I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew by Dr. Seuss.

Then later that day a great karate class - Benny did so well sparring that Mr. Odom said if he can pull out a great form on Friday, he can have green tips. And I, it seems, am going to test for my green belt on the 29th. Is there time to do 50,000 squats before then so I can break those lousy boards?

Yesterday we had gymnastics, bike ride, lunch at Porterfields' house, homeschool park day. Last night was movie night and Chinese food night. I fell asleep. Susannah and I watched In the Realms of the Unreal while Dan worked. I'll review it later. And write more novel later. And probably I should do that laundry later. And blargledy blargledy later.

Today we're going to do some work, violin, Rosetta Stone, and then we're off to the library, then I think maybe we'll go ride the carousel today. Seems like a carousel day.

I need those cake rounds that I got at Walmart so I can make a kazillion more ribbons for the 50 day challenge winners at the Suzuki studio. Mrs. Ford thinks there might be 25 kids complete the challenge, and I have only 12 ribbons so far.

And so on.

Many pictures on the homeschool blog I update from my phone.

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Done reading it. Some thoughts.

To begin, I think that Maggie did not ever love Stephen. Obviously, she never loved Phillip. The love story of the book was between Maggie and Tom. I don't mean any kind of icky illegal brother/sister whatever. I do think that if she had had a larger sphere of experience, more people to know, more exposure to the world, she would have found someone to feel truly "in love" with, in the way that Phillip and Stephen were in love with her. In the passionate, married, adult kind of way. However, she never did find that kind of love. Her love for her brother was the only one that was true. That was eternal, endless, that she would give up everything for, that would have been completely sustaining for her.

Look at the structure of the love story for Tom and Maggie. They were together, they were separated by events and circumstances, they came together in the end -- it's a classic story arc for a very traditional love story, except that it's as if the genders are reversed. I mean a reversal of the traditional stuff that you expect to happen in a romance novel. Tom is the one who rejects Maggie for being "bad" as he pursues his relentless morals and virtues. He sends her away, corrects her and refuses her for all her traits that he sees as flaws. Ultimately, as they come together at the end, he sees (I think) that she was essentially herself, and that the flaws were actually her consistency with her own strange (to him) nature. So, Tom is kind of the girl, who stays put, and Maggie is kind of the man who comes and goes, and redeems himself at the end through a heroic, pure act. And they die in each others arms. I mean... come on. The inscription on the tombstone of their shared grave is: "In death they were not parted." That's what you'd expect to see on the grave of two lovers. Stephen and Phillip are just distractions... obstacles and problems. They aren't really love interests. They're things that keep Maggie from Tom, things she does to disappoint him and alienate him.

You know, this story kind of reminds me of A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy. I have to reread that one, I guess. There was some kind of a train ride or something, reminding me of Maggie's float down the river with Stephen. I just can't remember how it all went together.

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I've been letting him just play with Rosetta Stone for a while now, but now I've decided to get systematic and actually do the tests and time it and whatnot. Here's how he did today:

Test results for Benny
2006/03/24

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Today's nap time was supposed to be spent getting myself up to date with the South America pages both on the web and in the children's workbooks. That didn't happen. However, I did finish formatting and polishing this little unit study on Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham. KABOOMINARS are unit studies so small they can fit in one day, and so fun they have to be done with friends. This is the first one that I've finally gotten around to writing down and posting.

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We had a great morning! Benny did a fantastic job in gymnastics again -- this time in addition to letting other people go first in line every time, he also did not try to "win" the warm-up exercises. They do crab walk, bear walk, run, jump on one leg, etc. all from point A to point B and typically Benny will kill himself to be first, while other more virtuous gymnasts trot along behind actually doing the technique they're supposed to be doing. Today I saw him making the conscious decision to hang back and let someone else be first -- that is huge for him. No milk/cheese today. Also no peanut butter. One of those things is making him buggy, I'm becoming convinced.

Then we went to the Porterfields and played. We played in the backyard, then had lunch, then Veronica had a great game where they tasted different things, blindfolded, and wrote about what they were tasting and tried to guess what it was. Very fun. Benny was EXTREMELY distrustful and could hardly stand to keep his eyes closed while tasting. Then gave up halfway through, just couldn't manage it. Oh well! It was great for the other kids. :)

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The Galapagos puppets are really earning their Kleenex stuffing. The children are putting on yet another puppet show. Just now, the marine iguana threw off the shark mask he had been wearing and said, "ATTACK!" and the land iguana said, and I kid you not, "This highly motivates me!"

Sadie is being the tortoise. The tortoise's lines are thus: "Puppet show! Puppet show!" He also jumps around a lot in a very inauthentic way.

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Two quotes from Benny.

Me: I'm going to give you chocolate milk today, and if you're naughty, we'll know it's because of the milk
Benny: Oh, Mommy, sometimes I'm naughty and sometimes I'm not. That's just the way it goes!

Later.... after hollering at me about not having time to play Chinese Checkers etc.

Me: I think the chocolate milk did make you crabby, Benny.
Benny: No, it wasn't that.
Me: Then what was it?
Benny: It's just the way I'm made!

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Benny got right up and learned about plural and singular nouns. Spent some time on that, and then moved on to music class where we ran through all our South America songs. Now he's doing some more "predicting outcome" thingies while Sadie plays with the guitar. His favorite singular/plural pair was puppy/puppies. Natch. And he pointed out that child/children doesn't add an S or an ES or an IES. Thank you.

I must, this week, without fail, catch myself up on the South America web site and also the memory books for the children. He loves doing that book, and currently it's only up to E. DUH. And Sadie's is still on C! Maybe today during the nap I'll wade into that.

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We're eating strawberries and doing math. There was another puppet show early this morning. Can't find my copy of Mill on the Floss! And just when I was getting to the exciting part where someone does or does not go fishing with someone else! How will I live through another hour not knowing which of whose Aunts has what kind of sleeves on her dress, indicating what social class or what moral virtue? *thud*

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As usual, Sadie wanted to paint. And did. Then Benny came along, and he was painting away, and I started asking him math problems and having him paint the answer. Then I was crayoning some math onto his painting paper and having him paint around it. Then I gave him a page of crayon and paint math to finish. His comments: "I'm not going to paint anymore if you're going to start mathing it up."

*cackle*

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Today we're going to a social meeting of a local homeschool group we've never tried before. We're supposed to bring some food, and also something to do... ambiguous. I made some green bread dough and we're going to make shamrocks. I have enough for about 10 kids to do it, no idea how many to prepare for or if this is the type of thing we're supposed to bring or what. Benny is also going to bring his checkers, to see if he can scare up a game. And I guess we'll bring some paper and markers? I hope this shamrock activity isn't too dorky. It's all just in a meeting room in a library, but there is a kitchen attached, so hopefully I can just bake the things in there. We'll see! I'll try to post pictures.

This morning Benny did his school work and we also painted. Now when Sadie goes down for a nap we'll do violin, and we'll be the most virtuous people alive.

*****

Wow, that was disastrous for us. Very chaotic, very loud, lots of running, door-slamming, chair-climbing, and in general not what I expected. I think... it would have been better outside at a playground, maybe. I didn't have a lot of takers on the shamrock craft. And... while Benny did get to play checkers with another little redheaded six-year-old boy, I didn't really like the games that were being played by the older kids. One of them said they were trying to play an army game and Benny was messing it up. And then asked me loudly in front of him if he had a speech problem. Sadie got knocked down a few too many times. It just wasn't a good scene for us. You know when Benny is the one marching around saying, "Stop shouting! Stop running!" that the chaos has reached a new and possibly unprecedented level. I think that after an hour, he just couldn't handle all the stimulus and started getting irritated. He did enjoy playing with that other boy. And Sadie had a nice time with a girl who was enjoying dressing her up, early on in the afternoon. We left early. It was just too much.

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I started reading _The Mill on the Floss_ today. I read it a long time ago. In fact, I read it when I was about 8. Some of it my mother read to me, and some I read on my own. Two things I thought about, reading this today.

1. I can't *BELIEVE* I was trying to read this when I was eight. Maybe I have been getting stupider, my whole life, and at 8 I was some kind of precocious smartybrains, but it boggles my mind how an eight-year-old could have made it through any of this book. Just reading the dialect... takes a lot of concentration. Maybe I *have* been deteriorating. Disturbing. Or not. Strangely, the first chapter has a small girl (her father lovingly calls her a "wench") reading books too hard for her. Like _The History of the Devil_ by Daniel Defoe. Okay, that one I didn't get to. I can *remember* reading this book, like... I remember how I envisioned the mill. Ridiculous. I am purposefully picturing it differently now, to thwart my eight-year-old self who couldn't possibly have read this lousy book.

2. I like this part: "Plotting covetousness and deliberate contrivance in order to compass a selfish end are nowhere abundant but in the world of the dramatist; they demand too intense a mental action for many of our fellow parishioners to be guilty of them." It goes on, but the gist of the passage is that most people are too stupid to be intentionally wicked. Nice!

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Benny and I decided that a really valuable experiment at gymnastics class would be to always without fail let other kids go first. To never be first. My thinking was that this would take some of the stress out of racing to be first, stifling protest when other children are first, noting that the line "Doesn't look quite right" to him, and stuff like that. It worked GREAT. He was such a doll today. Really a doll. All day.

We left the house at 8:30 for Gymnastics. Dropped Sadie at Ahno's house. Did his class and ran into Porterfields there, because Zoe has her class right after Benny. They invited us over (or rather, Benny suggested plaintively that we should really go over and Veronica agreed) so we ran home, got Leroy from home and Sadie from Ahno, went back, had big huge fun in the back yard and then lovely lunch. After that, we went to the park for homeschool park day... I *think* I met some homeschoolers, but we didn't flash our secret gang signs, so I'm not sure. Benny had a FANTASTIC time -- there were lots of regular school kids there too and Benny loves a big herd of kids to run with. It was such a huge herd it was a little breathtaking, especially with Sadie who has no fear whatsoever and of course Leroy who wanted to meet everyone and lick a layer of their skin off.

Great day. Benny's playing Wallace and Gromit on the Playstation right now and Sadie is watching him from Daddy's chair, looking quite glazed over. Poor little moppet had to catch a nap in the car. No workbooks today. The weather was too good. I did get some help on my "Echar Flores" song from Veronica though.

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Anybody know Spanish who can tell me if this makes any sense? Trying to write a song in Spanish, when you barely scrape by in the language... is pretty silly! It's supposed to be about "Echar Flores" as in throwing flowers, giving compliments. F was for Flores in our South American alphabet. Trying to squeeze in some phrases they can learn by singing.

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I'm sitting here with a child who insists she isn't done with dinner. She had giant ravioli with parmesan cheese, and she had strawberries. Now she has mushed the remains all together. She has one giant lump of strawberry/cheese and one smaller lump, and she is pretending that they are two people, and narrative their dialogue *and laughter*. Example, one of them said, "Oh, GOSH, are you okay?" and the other one said, "OH, yeah" and then they both laughed. Just now she said to me, "Look, Mommy, it's the Mommy and the Daddy. I give them names!" And there they are. The two strawberry lumps. Then she announced, "I'M DONE" and put her binky, binky side up, on the tray, then slurped it into her mouth, ravioli and all.

Wow.

Today we took a long walk, finding many spring flowers that we practiced pronouncing, and we also wrote our "Echar Flores" song, which Benny helped me with. We had music class and did all our South America songs with me on guitar, Benny on violin, and Sadie on drums. We made a house out of boxes. We did some math. We reviewd suffixes by playing a game where we clapped twice every time we said a word with a suffix on it. AND now we're going to go practice the violin. Benny didn't finish all his work, so we didn't go to karate. A new tactic to make him get out of his head and get done with his work more quickly. It's not that he needs to learn how to do what's on the paper -- he knows how. It's that he needs to learn to DO something, complete it, without me standing there saying "Put your finger on the next problem." At least I think he needs to learn this. Maybe he can't. We'll see.

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Oh my goodness!

 The Galapagos day went GREAT!

 Ahno had made us some fabulous puppets by drawing or using photos, laminating, stuffing, and mounting on sticks. She had drawn a land iguana, a marine iguana, a flamingo, and had used pictures for a sea lion and a tortoise. They were fantastic – the kids loved them immediately. Benny was instantly on fire to do a puppet show, so the first thing they did when Zoe and Phillip arrived was to do an impromptu, unscripted puppet show, which was great. There were three “chapters” to it. The chapters were called "The Playground," and "The Mall," and "Sleepover at Tortoise's House." Not very South American, but OKAY!

Then they came to the table to make puppets of their own, which they liked. Then lunch and of course ice cream. Then we reproduced maps of the Galapagos Islands and discussed Darwin, microevolution, isolation, circumnavigation, adaptation, etc. Very good. The kids were right on top of it. Then we went and danced with our puppets and sang the Galapagos song, and then they did another puppet show.

The differentiation between the land and marine iguanas did *not* appear in the final puppet show, but I was still extremely satisfied with the event. All the kids behaved marvelously, and even Sadie got to wave her puppet around and make sea lion noises. She was also, at one point, spontaneously telling us something about Ecuador. We couldn’t understand what it was, but we did understand it was about Ecuador. J GREAT HOMESCHOOL DAY. Follow link for pictures.

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