My two most beloved things are books and brownies! Join me here for book reviews and comments about homeschooling my 6 children still at home (ages 13 to 1). My oldest son is in college. I also muse about my own language studies and my attempts to make my children bilingual. Thanks for stopping by! http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/cathmom/ en-us Homeschool Blogger Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:09:00 -0600 Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:09:00 -0600 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: 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. 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.  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. 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! http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/cathmom/743614/ Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:09:00 -0600 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/cathmom/743614/ 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! http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/cathmom/740855/ Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:57:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/cathmom/740855/ 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! http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/cathmom/737594/ Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:36:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/cathmom/737594/ Tonight as my twins told me, "Schlaf gut!" on their way to bed, I realized that I don't want to lose German as a family language.  Saying good night and sleep well to them in German is the last vestige of the year when I spoke only German to them.  So I have to start adding it back in - I can use all those spare moments I used to spend on the Internet! http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/cathmom/737468/ Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:40:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/cathmom/737468/ 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. http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/cathmom/737234/ Sun, 18 Oct 2009 21:34:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/cathmom/737234/ 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. http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/cathmom/736983/ Sat, 17 Oct 2009 16:32:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/cathmom/736983/ Since this blog is called Books and Brownies, I thought it would be fun to share a list of my favorite childhood books.  We lived near the library, and my mom would take me at least once a week.  I would check out a huge stack of books and read until she told me to stop reading and go outside and play! 1. Heidi by Johanna Spyri This has to be first on the list because it is possibly my all-time favorite.  It has a wonderful message and may be why I love (looking at) mountains.  Grandfather's hut seemed like the nicest place on earth to me, and I still think of Heidi when I eat bread and cheese. 2. A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett Again, this book has a very positive message: with a good attitude, imagination, and perseverance, you can overcome any hardship.  I like both movie versions as well. 3. Lisa and Lottie by Erich Kaestner I may have mentioned this book before, because last summer I read the original German version.  This is the book that the movie "The Parent Trap" is based on: two girls meet at summer camp, realize they are identical twins, and switch places so they each can get to know the other parent. Now, is it coincidence that two of my favorite children's books were originally written in German and then I went on to study German? You be the judge! 4. The Little House Books by Laura Ingalls Wilder I read these many times as a child, except for The Long Winter.  I read that once and didn't ever want to again!  I enjoyed reading the adventures, but I know that I was never cut out to be a pioneer. 5. The Great Brain Books by John Dennis Fitzgerald My sister and I especially enjoyed reading all about the exploits of the Great Brain, although we didn't try many of them.  I distinctly remember where these books were in our library (a building that doesn't exist anymore) and me running over to them with her to see which ones were in. 6. Richard Scarry's Busytown books I loved reading all the little captions on the pages and looking at the amusing pictures. 7. Fairy Tales The Grimms, Hans Christian Andersen, ethnic fairy tales, it didn't matter. I loved reading them. 8. Dog books Since I love dogs, I also liked reading about them.  Jean Little had several dog stories I really liked. 9.  Books by Marilyn Sachs I haven't read any of these in years, so my memory is hazy, but I remember looking on the shelf for her books at the library as well.  Looking at amazon.com, I remember reading The Truth About Mary Rose, the Amy and Laura trilogy, and others.  I may need to search these out as presents for my daughters! 10.  Calico Captive This dramatic story, based on true events, captured my imagination.  I recently read it to my daughters and they loved it as well! I hope you find something great to share with your children on my list! http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/cathmom/735098/ Sat, 10 Oct 2009 16:24:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/cathmom/735098/ Is the writing on the wall?  Has German lost out to Spanish in my house? Except for my oldest child, all the ones who are old enough to talk don't want to learn German.  And the oldest one probably only likes German because he was exposed to it for a month in Germany at a formative age.  Both my daughters express dislike for German.  I tried to force them to learn it anyway by studying it at home and taking classes, and then surreptitiously by speaking to their younger siblings in German. Nothing doing. Although, they did tell me that they understood the German in a MacGyver episode they watched. Our speech therapist speaks Spanish (as well as Finnish, Swedish, French, some Estonian and Portuguese, and of course English) and she has brought over a few books to use with the boys that have Spanish in them.  So Ryan has started becoming interested in Spanish words.  He will tell you if you ask, "Mommy speaks German and Spanish and a little bit of French."  I asked him yesterday which he liked, German or Spanish, and he said Spanish. Studying Spanish as a family would be so much easier.  There are tons of free and inexpensive resources in Spanish.  We can go to Mass at our own church in Spanish.  We could find storytimes and playgroups and classes for homeschoolers just twenty minutes from our house.  I could find tons of support.  So why won't I just do the easier option? Roger thinks I should do both.  He thinks I should make the children study German if that's what I want.  The problem is that I have been brain-dead since earlier this summer (hence why I haven't really been reading, writing, or blogging), and I don't think I can handle trying to do two languages with my children.  Although I have to keep working on my German anyway because I am scheduled to start teaching it again this spring! http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/cathmom/734270/ Wed, 7 Oct 2009 20:14:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/cathmom/734270/ As I was driving into town today, I was pondering my blog post from last night.  Specifically, I wondered why I felt guilty for being overwhelmed.  And then it came to me - it's because if I were more organized and more together, I wouldn't be overwhelmed.  So then it is MY FAULT that I'm overwhelmed, because if I were just better, I wouldn't be. I don't agree with these statements.  I think being overwhelmed is a function of having four children under the age of six.  No matter how organized I am, I still couldn't account for all the variables they can come up with.  And being overwhelmed is also about not having time for myself, time to accomplish some of my goals.  So at the end of the day, no matter how much I've gotten done, there's always other things I should have also somehow gotten done.  It's not possible. I'm going to try to let go of the guilt now. http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/cathmom/727219/ Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:45:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/cathmom/727219/ So, lately, I've been feeling a little surrounded and overwhelmed.  Okay, a lot.  I'm trying to give three children an education, keep up with the twin hurricanes, keep the household running, get all children to their various and sundry lessons, appointments, and therapies, and I'm doing all this while having my life revolve around what a thirteen-month-old decides I can do.  And he's getting pretty good, with the twins as role models, at being a destructive force himself.  It's like he's thinking, "I don't need a twin; I can do it all by myself!" I really have needed some time alone.  Over the last few days I actually got a little bit.  Tonight I went out for myself for the first time since I went to the Mojo Mom author signing back in April.  Amy Tiemann, the author of Mojo Mom, was speaking to my Mothers of Multiples group, and since we just changed the hours of my daughter's tutoring, thus freeing up Monday nights, I decided to go. I'm glad I did.  I wanted to go to hear how other moms of twins talked about the idea of mojo and the other themes of the book.  Despite being 25 minutes late because I transposed two numbers in the address of the meeting place, I found it interesting.  As I listened to the other moms talk about struggles with their children, I realized that I had a child of each of the ages they were mentioning, plus others. And that made me realize - it's okay to be overwhelmed!  It really is!  I think I have been feeling guilty about feeling overwhelmed. I keep trying to remind myself that, while it is my job to see that the children's needs are met, my needs also have to be met, and they come before the children's wants.  Everybody's needs should be met before anybody's wants. The situation, though, is that meeting the needs of the six children still at home is taking up a whole lot of my morning, afternoon, evening, and night.  I have been fighting the guilty feeling of not being able to fulfill some of my children's wants.  But my husband and I spend so much time just meeting the basics!  For example, if our lawn is mowed, we're happy.  We're not out there improving the landscape.  I am working on getting the house decluttered and organized, but at this point, that is a need and not a want.  Some of the areas in our house were not even functional from having been ignored so long. I can feel myself getting burned out, so I know that I have to make a few changes.  I'm going to start taking mini-breaks during the day and just go in my room, lock the door, and be alone for a few minutes.  I'm going to have the girls watch the baby in the evening so I can have uninterrupted prayer time that isn't at 1 AM.  I'm going to try to get enough sleep.  Through my cleaning and organizing, I finally found my 10 minute workout DVD, and I'm doing that in the mornings when I first get up.  Even though I am woefully out of shape, I am enjoying it. So that's my plan - that, and realizing that it really is okay to be overwhelmed. http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/cathmom/726980/ Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:47:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/cathmom/726980/