You know you've entered the adult world when there is a plethora of paperwork.  Today Josh applied for his passport--Yipee!  He is going to Italy in April with his Aunt Shell to toodle around for a week or so. He is just a bit of a procrastinator, however, and had to expedite his passport--to the tune of $194!  OUCH!  I think he learned a very expensive lesson.

I got him the forms and showed him how to go about making an appointment at the post office to get this all done over a month ago, but I left the doing up to him.  It was HARD not to just do it for him, but Joshua is EIGHTEEN now and mommy should not be doing his paperwork for him.  Darn it. 

The girls entertained themselves while Josh filled out his passport application form by playing one of Rebecca's favorite games:

Elizabeth has run a fever for a couple of days, but is now up and about, although she is definitely not 100% yet.

Rebecca, the poor dear, is down for the count.  She's had her first dose of Tylenol.  Usually I wait a bit to see if this is going to be a quick bug or something more prolonged before I start doling out the pharmaceuticals, but Elizabeth was so miserable that I'm not going to wait on Rebecca.  I want her comfortable as quickly as possible.  And no spending all day washing sweaty sheets for me, I hope!

Poor dear did school today before the bug hit her.  That's okay, what with running a fever and all, Elizabeth will be allowed to sleep in tomorrow.  That makes her happy!

Here dear Mummy made the little lovekin some soupy...

Teen talks on phone whether feverish or hungry...

of course, you can try to both eat and talk, but not in front of your mother, dear one, lest you are sent to the cold, hard dining room table!

Reading came amazingly easily to Rebecca.  She was reading 300-500 page novels in kindergarten.  Math, on the other hand was more of a challenge.  It's not that she had difficulty, it just didn't come effortlessly like reading did and so she balked.  Memorizing math facts was a chore.  A long.drawn.out.never.ending.battle kind of chore.  Some time in the first grade I made up a little chant for Rebecca to repeat when she became recalcitrant.  It went like this:

I love math.

Math is fun.

I want to do math EVERY DAY!

I mostly wanted to keep her from spiraling into a black hole of "I can't do this" or "I don't want to do this" and making it a battle.  Whenvever I pulled out the chant we would repeat it until giggles ensued.  It usually worked! 

Today we updated her chant.  She keeps telling me she is "terrible" at math.  Oh, puh-lease!  The child, age wise, is in the eighth grade and is working in Saxon Algebra 2.  She is slated to finish CALCULUS her sophomore year!  The problem is, she's a perfectionist and if she doesn't understand a topic instantly she becomes...frustrated isn't quite the right word.  That would imply some actual effort went into it.  She looks at a problem and sees something puzzling and instead of jumping in, she starts thinking, "Oh, this is hard," and there it ends.

So, today we made up a spiffy new chant:

This was actually inspired during chemistry when we were doing some basic dimensional analysis.  She, herself, pointed out the fact that Saxon has had us doing this about a thousand times in the past couple of years.  She said it with a smile, recognizing her own absurdity and thus was born her new chant.

I don't actually believe that these chants will make her think that math is fun or easy.  I just want to remind her that attitude affects performance.

Of course, once Rebecca had a chant, Elizabeth and Joshua wanted one, too. 

Elizabeth does the NEATEST work you will ever see--it's art, truly.  She retains what she learns and, as far as math goes, is self taught.  However...

Here is Elizabeth's chant:

I am not a turtle.

I CAN focus and pay attention.

It doesn't have to take ALL DAY to do ONE math lesson. 

And Josh's:

I am not a sloth.

I CAN get up in the morning without help.

I want to go to college some day.

Uhm, I think that's self explanatory!

This is what my dear son has taken to calling his daddy...

...and Daddy takes it with a grain of salt.  The boys went out paintballing and upon arriving home I asked Josh how they did.  The child turned in a slow circle--not a mark on him.  When I went upstairs, however, Daddy could not say the same!

Apparently his camo shirt is even worse, but he chose not to be photographed in that!

When one is under the weather, nothing perks you up better than homemade soup.

Do remember to choose your utensil wisely...

And yes, the spoon fits quite nicely INTO his mouth!

My darling is sick again.

And is wondering...Would you blog THIS!!??

Well, yes, I would!  (Unless you reeeaaallly don't want me to)

Isn't it great when your children get a chance to teach you something?  I introduced Elizabeth to blogging many moons ago and she just immersed herself into it.  Well, this week, with no transciption to do, I decided my blog needed a little bit of a change and the dear child helped me out and it only cost me fourteen gummi worms! 

"Elizabeth, dear, I want a picture of you for my blog."

"What?"

"I want to blog about you helping me with my blog, so pose for me."

"Uhm, is this REALLY the picture you want me to post?"

"NO!!!!"

"Okay, then pose for me."

"Why, oh, why does my mother blog?"

I think these pictures say it all..........

Now, this second one doesn't at first glance seem so bad until I tell you that my dear son swept around Target wearing this ensemble while I shopped the clearance sales (nothing spectacular, by the way) after he got off work.  He was calling himself Darth Joshua and extolling the virtues of the just-purchased robe to all who would listen.  He was tired and a little punch happy, I think. 

Now the next two sad pictures are of the Yule Log Cake that Rebecca made Christmas morning.  They are pitiful because my darling daughter started cutting the cake (and cut off the best parts!) before calling me to come an' get it and only remembered that I would want to BLOG about her masterpiece after several pieces had been chopped off.

I guess I'm grateful that she did remember to take a couple of shots before the cake was completely decimated. 

On another note, we went to see Bedtime Stories this evening.  It was okay.  Typical Adam Sandler-type humor.  This is normally one that I would skip, but for some reason I got it into my head that this was Inkheart (which I DO want to see) and so I was somewhat disappointed to begin with when I realized it wasn't.  Oh, well, if you think mild bathroom humor is amusing, this film is for you!