Quick OB Update from today

And it went fine!

Today was the glucose screening test, which I passed, thankfully.  Got my RhoGam shot, found out I was slightly anemic.  I was with Toot as well, so it's not a major thing.  Those dumb iron pills are expensive though.

I start with the checkups-every-two-weeks schedule now.  Yay.  (Can you hear my excitement?)  I remember how fun it all seemed with my first baby.  And now, the hassle of having to either schedule someone to watch the kids or bring the kids with me to all the extra appointments just seems to be a big ole bother.  But, I understand the reasons behind it.  And, it's but for a short time.

We'll have the 4D sonogram next time also.  This is merely for "fun" - it is not diagnostic in nature at all.

And that's it!  Nothing exciting occurred, and for this pregnancy, that's a good thing!

Charlotte who?

In the homeschooling realm, there are almost as many education methods practiced as there are in "regular" schools.  Even inside a single family, a parent may decide to use one method with one child and a completely different method with another child in order to accommodate various learning styles and abilities.

Right now, at the Zoo, my intentions are to follow a "Charlotte Mason" type of education, for the most part.  There are always tweaks and alterations that are necessary, I think, to any type of education in order to make the learning as accessible as it can be to each child.  I will say that if at any time this doesn't seem to be working, we will make quick adjustments as is necessary.  But, for now, this is what we're going to try. If you are like I was a year ago and didn't know Charlotte Mason from Adam's housecat, this is a pretty decent and quick summary of what the Charlotte Mason method of schooling entails:

 From SimplyCharlotteMason.com  

  1.  How does Charlotte Mason view the child?

      The child is a whole person whose education should cultivate the whole person. A child's personality deserves respect, and his natural appetite for knowledge should be nourished.

   

   2.  How does Charlotte Mason define "education"?

      Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life.—"By this we mean that parents and teachers should know how to make sensible use of a child's circumstances (atmosphere), should train him in habits of good living (discipline), and should nourish his mind with ideas, the food of the intellectual life" (Vol. 3, pp. 216, 217).

      Education is the science of relations.—The child should form personal relations from a feast of great ideas given through a broad curriculum.

      "They come into the world with many relations waiting to be established; relations with places far and near, with the wide universe, with the past of history, with the the social economics of the present, with the earth they live on and all its delightful progeny of beast and bird, plant and tree; with the sweet human affinities they entered into at birth; with their own country and other countries, and, above all, with that most sublime of human relationships––their relation to God" (Vol. 6, pp. 72, 73).

   

  3.  What does Charlotte Mason say is the role of the teacher?

      The teacher is a guide. She is to carefully prepare the banquet and spread the feast of living ideas by introducing the child to the great people of the past and present who thought up those ideas, then get out of the way and let the child form his own relations.

      "Give children a wide range of subjects, with the end in view of establishing in each case some one or more of the relations I have indicated. Let them learn from first-hand sources of information––really good books, the best going, on the subject they are engaged upon. Let them get at the books themselves, and do not let them be flooded with a warm diluent at the lips of their teacher. The teacher's business is to indicate, stimulate, direct and constrain to the acquirement of knowledge, but by no means to be the fountain-head and source of all knowledge in his or her own person" (Vol. 3, p. 162).

So, there it is in a very small nutshell.  I thought the grandparents might appreciate being able to sort of know the direction we're attempting to follow.  For now, anyway.  :-)

He's OSO special!!!

There's a new show on the Disney Channel that currently comes on at 7:00am during the week.  It's called Special Agent OSO.  And this little bear named OSO has quite captured Tooter's attention.  He will sing the opening song sooo loudly that you can hear him anywhere in the house, no matter what doors are closed between you and him!

Anyway, I finally got it on tape and thought I'd share.  This is way funnier to me and to Jmk than probably anyone else, but here ya go.  :-)  (Oh, and poor Poodle thought she might sing with him, but was sharply rebuked during the middle of the song.  Toot is a performance hog).  And, yes, he's eating breakfast whilst singing.  It is 7am, afterall.

Mother's Day 2009

Just some pictures from a couple of weekends ago:

The family just before lunch after church.

 All of us'ns who went to eat lunch after church.  My family plus my mom and dad and my sweet brother.

Then, we went over to Amy and Jay's house and got to see Jmk's mom and grandmother.  Notice the garden off to the right - not too shabby, eh???

And, here are the winners of the Peas and Carrots pageant.
Or, two peas in a pod contest.  Whatever.
Poodle loves her some SueSue!


It was a lovely day, truly.  And, as my grandmother always used to say - every day is Mother's Day!

Test post of the picture from Amy and Jay's house.  I wanted to see what cropping would do after it was posted.  You can ignore this one!

A, My, The

Some clarification on the sermon that I referenced in the last post:

The quoted verse was II Tim. 4:7 -

"I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith." He was keying on those three little but powerful adjectives.  The point Bro. Philip made exactly was that Paul fought a good fight, not the good fight.  There are many fights that can be fought.  Paul just fought one of them.  There are many courses that can be run, Paul ran his course.  We must run our own course and fight a good fight, but always keep THE faith.  There is only one faith - the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.  Forever and Amen.

"Run Your Own Race"

Or:
"Keep Your Eyes On The Goal Or You're Going To End Up Running Into The Neighbor's Grass And Falling Down"

Last night, we had a wonderful meeting-of-the-moms with our homeschool support group.  The primary purpose was to bring and share curriculum choices and to talk about things that are and are not working for us as individual teachers.

It was very wonderful for me to have some time to talk with some other mothers who have the same educational philosophies that I do - and to talk about certain book list choices that I am getting ready to put on our shelves.  Lots of good things happened last night, but one thing in particular has been on my mind today.  I was talking with my sweet friend (and church sister) Karen, who was relating to me a sermon that she heard from Elder Philip Conley that dealt with running your own race.  Essentially, keeping your eyes on the "prize", (i.e. Jesus Christ) and keeping your path towards Him straight and true.  There were other things that she mentioned about the sermon itself, but it was how she related that to homeschooling in general that made so much sense to me.  And, as I thought about that concept today, I thought about how it relates to life.  To parenting.  To dealing with children and family and co-workers and friends and clients and neighbors and on and on....

When we're talking about things regarding life as we live it, there are a number of goals that we have for ourselves and our family.  And even if we have the same goal as someone next to us, the path to that goal may be very different.

For example.  In my own family, I want my children to have an education that is part of their becoming whole, well-rounded, vital citizens and that encourages them to become lifelong learners.
But, the path to that same goal is going to be vastly different for Poodle than it is for Tooter.  (And likely as equally different for Sparkie).  Because they are such different people with such different learning styles already.  And it is definitely going to be different for my children than it will be for another family's children.  But, if I am always looking over my shoulder to see what the family down the road is doing, than I'm going to have to take my eyes off of my own goals.  And I'm going to wobble.

Just like watching the kids ride their bikes.  When they are looking straight forward and paying attention to what they are doing and where they are going, then they stay right on the sidewalk and do a great job. But the first time they look behind them to see what everyone else is doing or they start watching their own shadows or they watch a car pass by in the road, they all of a sudden start veering into the neighbor's yard and usually end up either stopping or tipping over.

I realize this isn't a new concept for life in general.  It has probably been the subject of a whole lot of speeches and a whole lot of pre-game motivational talks.  But, it helped me, personally, to be reminded of that last night.  And, I thought that maybe someone else could use that reminder as well.  Just because my friend down the road did something a certain way to reach her goal doesn't necessarily mean that this is the way I need to do it in order to reach my goal.  Whether we're talking about curriculum choices or relationship choices or free time choices or family choices.

There are different paths to the same goal when it comes to life.  And that's why we have a big responsibility to be true to ourselves when traveling down those paths.

Thankfully, there is only one path to Heaven - thru the blood of Jesus Christ.  And, as the song goes....  "I'm so glad that salvation's free".

Conversations with Tooter

From the back of the van on the way home from birthday present shopping and lunch:

Poodle:  Mommy, what day is it?

Me:  It's Tuesday.

Poodle:  Okay.

Tooter (who had an extra spoonful of contrary cereal this morning, apparently):
 It's not Tuesday, it's Oneday!

A milestone reached

Poodle called for her first song yesterday during song service at church.  :-)

For those non-PB types out there, our worship service goes like this:  we have 30 minutes of a cappella congregational singing, followed by an opening prayer, preaching, a closing song (usually with a handshake) and then a closing prayer.  During the congregational singing, folks call out the songs they want to sing.  (Not that way in all PB churches - sometimes, the song leader(s) pick the songs....)

Yesterday, Poodle asked me what she had to do to ask for a song.  I told her when we finish this one that we're singing, that she needed to call out the number she wanted really loudly.  I asked her which song she wanted to sing.  She said "which number is Amazing Grace?".  I told her it was 154.

And she called it out!  It took an extra song for her to get heard, and I actually had to call the number myself to get the sound all the way to the front of the church, after some folks at the front said that a child in the back had called a song.  (We're pretty particular about supporting our children being involved with the worship service.  There's nothing better than the sound of babies crying and children participating in church).  But, she called out her first number.  It was really meaningful to me.  And, it's not like a rite of passage in the church or anything like that.  It's just a big deal to me to have the guts to speak out that loudly with all those grownups sitting around you.
:-)

I'm proud of you Poodle.  That was a big girl thing you did.

What we did today.

I took the kids to the Y to sign them up for swim lessons.  Then we went to the park for a playdate with some other families in our homeschool group.  Then one of the other moms and I took our kids to a pizza buffet for lunch.

Pretty non-eventful for most folks, but it was a huge thrill for me to be able to do this!  Sometimes I just need to have things taken away so that I can fully appreciate the blessings that I had in the first place.  God is good!!!