How We Started School

We began the school year with a vacation. It just seemed right, watching the neighborhood kids trudge off to school with their heavy backpacks while we were packing and preparing to go. I've never been much for following the school calendar, but do keep track of our learning days as the state requires. The August start rule seems harsh to me, and did as a child. August is still summer, schools are rarely air conditioned, the sun is shining!

We went to a YMCA family camp in the northwoods of Wisconsin. We learned and lived much more there than we would have at home with our usual schedule. It is a beautiful, quiet, secluded spot. The kids met up with old and new friends, were gone from the cabin except when hungry or at bedtime. They caught turtles, frogs, and snakes - or rather watched as other kids did the dirty work. They kayaked out on the lake and watched bald eagles soaring overhead, looking for a meal. The foraged for firewood and birch bark, learned archery, played group games, swam, jumped off the raft and got eaten alive by mosquitoes.

On the way home, we saw this handsome pink elephant not half a mile away from a similarly huge cow. Not sure what the lesson was supposed to be there, but we enjoyed it all the same.

Brain food

I read an article last week in the Chicago Tribune about breakfast cereal and it stuck in my head. The Tribune investigation shockingly revealed that the food industry had found a way around regulations requiring more nutritious breakfast cereal by fortifying it's sugary cereal and offering more "adult" cereals. The Tribune was also amazed that children seem to prefer the sugary cereals and that consumption can be correlated to advertising on children's television programs.

I don't know if it's because we homeschool or because we don't have cable TV, but my kids have rarely eaten sugary cereal. Our allergies might also be part of it, but we've never shopped for cereal. We bought the kids cheerios when they were babies and toddlers, a perfect, portable snack. We buy puffed rice when we want to make "gooey cookies." Other than that, we don't really eat cereal. Small once had fruit loops from a breakfast buffet at a hotel. And I can recall Medium pointing to Lucky Charms and saying "That's just strange."

We don't need fast breakfast. Today the kids made pancakes together. Small regularly eats bacon. Medium makes herself an omelet or oatmeal. Large will have last nights' leftovers, a hot dog or fried eggs with no toast. Some mornings we are more pressed for time than others, most mornings they can follow their taste buds and fend for themselves. Small can microwave bacon and oatmeal on his own - he prefers steel cut oats.

It used to be that when the kids were exposed to cable TV, they would stare and stare at it, more interested in the commercials than the shows. Now they talk back at the commercials or skip channels. We don't need cable for reception and are able to watch all we want (including Spongebob) via Netflix. So, we've never had that to cut out of our budget in lean times.

I can imagine the repetitive advertising could get kids begging. But most kids are reasonable. When mine watched a lot of PBS kids, they would occasionally ask for Juicy Juice. I explained the packaging problem of individual juice boxes and the unit cost.

I don't have anything against sugary cereals, but it's never been part of our budget. Along the same lines of kid products and advertising, we did get the strangely flavored Dora and Spongebob toothpaste for a while, but we have now graduated to Aquafresh and all are happy.

Marketing to kids is here to stay. So are parents.

Vindication

A week or so ago, Medium pointed out to me that she did not know what a Twinkie tastes like. We were not in a store at the time, and I don't remember how the topic of conversation came up. My first reaction was to say "You don't want to eat a Twinkie, " but I held it. I described the taste of a Twinkie, told her that I had a boyfriend in college who had toured a Twinkie factory and told me that Twinkies never see an oven and asked her if she wanted to try one. She said she did.

The next time we were in Target, we got her a package of Twinkies. Large and Small opted for Oreos in a big cup that fits into a car's cup holder. Small is still allergic to milk and eggs and amazingly Twinkies have both listed as ingredients. Also amazingly, Oreos do not. Medium did not like the Twinkie, gave the second one to Large, who ate a bite and put the rest in the composter. I now know that a Twinkie will compost.

We try to eat health, whole foods, avoiding processed foods whenever we can. But somehow it feels like snobbery to deny something like Twinkies, particularly as I was brought up on them, Ding Dongs and Ho Hos. Every lunch bag had some chemical reaction in the form of a cake inside. Zingers we discovered in High School when my brother and I had our own car and a gas card. We learned that gas stations sell food and filled up on junk until my Mom put the lid on our spending.

Junk food isn't evil, after all, and it's everywhere. My children are different enough by virtue of their homeschooling. They don't need other badges of distinction, like being denied Twinkies. They will probably never eat another one now. I remember telling Medium's Girl Scout leader that I had never been inside a Dunkin Donuts when she was wanting to take the girls to one, but wanted to clear the allergies first. I felt strange at feeling some pride at that. I have a sister who is proud of never having been in a McDonald's. It's a strange thing to be proud of. It's all wrapped up in that weird food thing we have in our family. I don't want my kids to have that.

Today we got slurpies as a special treat. Small and I have a summer cold, we didn't sleep well - when did his legs grow to the point that his toe nails can scratch my ankles when we are in the same bed? - and I had promised him a treat for skipping going out to breakfast and having to drop the other two off at the art camp in our pajamas.

I'll still cast a wary eye at junk food, chemical food. But I don't want the kids to either fear it or crave it because of my denial. The three of them had slurpies and have lived, so far, to tell the tale.

Volunteering

I've been thinking a lot about volunteering lately. Why do some people step up to the plate and others don't? Is there some inherited volunteering gene that compels a person to do more than they can? Is there a corresponding gene that compels a person to let others do the work?

Obviously, I have a bias, as I am part of the former group. I can't even pose a question about the other half without exposing my bias. I have a no-buddy, someone who helps me to say "no" when I cannot possibly do more. I am also her no-buddy, but in true over-volunteering style, I firmly believe my efforts to stop her volunteering are called into play more, because she does more. Which leads me to think I should be doing more, and then I have to call my no-buddy to stop me.

Every year, our fabulous InHome Conference reaches the point where half the required number of volunteers are doing all the work. This year, my no-buddy (some buddies we are, right?) decided we needed to map out the jobs and create a manual for the conference. This is to be a living, breathing, ever-changing document to help new recruits and seasoned veterans perform herculean tasks to create the event that is the highlight of our kids "school" year.

I worked for years in Human Resources hiring, firing, training, contract negotiating, performing labor relations, benefit evaluations, the whole gamut of people related jobs. I worked in the corporate world. We were lean and mean in the engineering profession, or so I thought. Even more lean in the trucking industry, and a quite bit more real. But I never encountered what I have seen in the past few days.

In surveying the current volunteer population, we've found that these 37 heroes are performing the jobs of possibly twice that many. In salary situations, jobs have functions that are secondary or tertiary. In the volunteer world, there are no such luxuries. What needs to be done gets done. What wants to get done is either a need or discarded. There is no cushion, no fall back, no support staff.

I want to believe that a lack of knowledge if fueling the lack of volunteers, both for the big jobs and the small, one or two hour jobs during the conference. We don't want to scare people or guilt them into working something they aren't comfortable with. We want to be a welcoming, warm environment to newcomers and long-term homeschoolers alike. We don't want to be pushy, so we don't tell anyone what, specifically we need. This leads to the few thanklessly performing for the many. And it leads to discontent and burn-out. It happens in places like this particular conference, in homeschooling groups, in habitat restoration, in situations requiring volunteers everywhere.

So what makes people shy away from volunteering? There is the fear of the unknown. This has happened to me. I have a child with severe eczema and was sleep deprived for four and a half years. When I couldn't get a clear picture of what was required in a volunteer opportunity, I said no, fearing it was more than I could handle. There is also a feeling of inadequacy. Others have been doing it so well for so long, how could anyone else measure up? There is also a complete lack of understanding of what it takes to orchestrate the event, group, class, etc. If a Girl Scouts troop, for example, runs like clockwork for a few years, there is a belief that it will always work that way. If a support group has been a safe harbor for a generation of parents, it should just continue after those kids have fledged. But without a fresh crop of volunteers in each of these situations, this wont happen.

And then there are the people who wont volunteer no matter what. They have a stronger "no" muscle than most of the people I know. They sign up, pay their fees, do what is asked and go home. They are one tree, not part of the forest.

I don't really want to know how many of these trees there are out there, I'm too busy meeting the forest. I have no answers to the whole volunteering conundrum, but I get to widen my circle of friends and acquaintances and learn from them. My world is richer. And now that my eczema baby is sleeping through the night, I have more time.

Planning

I think one of my more important jobs as a parent is to help my children understand how to use their time. Not in the manner I learned, which was to create endless to-do lists of tasks that couldn't be accomplished in one day. The longer the list, the more important I felt. Until the end of the day, that is, when I felt like a complete failure. Keeping with my goal of finding the flow of balance in my life, I'm working to get the kids to take over their own schedules.

Each morning we have a family daily planning meeting. Sometimes it's short, sometimes long. Today we went over what needed to be done by when in order to take a trip to the Field Museum. Small woke everyone up in the night, so we didn't really get rolling until 10:30 or so. Working with the time schedule and priorities, we determined we needed to get our homeschooling and accountable kids tasks done by 12:30 to get to the museum by 1 to leave by 3 and not hit traffic on the way to the gym. That would leave time for playing with friends before dinner when we got home. It was an aggressive schedule and we didn't make it. That, in itself, was a lesson.

Yesterday I made up planner pages for Medium and Large, took them to Office Depot and had spiral bound books made. We've been working with a planner page for a while and came upon one we can life with. The first section is for homeschooling: reading, spelling, vocabulary, writing, math, science, history, art and music. Not very unschool-y, I know, but the kids choose their reading, math topics, science topics, history selection based on what we've read in The Story of the World: History for the Classical Child, Volume 2: The Middle Ages: From the Fall of Rome to the Rise of the Renaissance, Revised Edition ... the World: History for the Classical Child), art and music. They asked for spelling and vocabulary. The second section is for Accountable Kids, the program we use to keep our house and life in order. Next is a section for exercise - they chose what to do and write it in. Then comes activities and classes with the time we need to leave and an Extra section for things like play dates. We are pretty pleased with how it's working so far, and are keeping ourselves open to tweaking it in the future.

It's been a struggle for me to learn to manage my time as an adult. I've never had a good notion of how long something takes to accomplish. I think it should take half an hour to install a ceiling fan, when it takes the better part of a day. This past weekend I never imagined I would have my basement overhaul project 75% complete in just two days, it seemed it would take an overwhelming year of weekends.

I've been working through the The Life Organizer: A Woman's Guide to a Mindful Yearbook by Jennifer Louden. It isn't a planner in the traditional sense of filling out blocks of time, you still use a calendar for that. The book's purpose is to prompt you to focus on what is important to you. It poses questions for each month and week to guide you through to your goals. My favorite weekly circle to fill in is "Let Go Of." I'm not through to that point yet, but am looking forward to it!

Somewhat handmade Christmas

Now that everyone has opened their gifts, I can share my handiwork. The cabled mittens on the left went to my sister-in-law. It was a really fun pattern from Ravelry, quick and easy to knit. The socks went to my brother-in-law, my usual 3x1 rib pattern. Stretchy and functional. The yarn is Opal, purchased at my weaving shop before it closed this summer. Very fun knits, those two.

And then I violated one of the Yarn Harlot's rules of holiday knitting. I knit for someone who doesn't appreciate handmade things. Actually, my sister's daughter may very well appreciate the little bundles of joy I gave her in the form of a bunny and a monkey, but my sister did not. Lesson learned. Ordinary plastic stuff is better. The monkey was a really fun thing to knit as well, although next time I'll do the smaller version to shorten the boredom of the arms and legs. The pattern came from Blue Moon and featured an afterthought heel for the mouth and butt. Much fun.

And then came the fleece pajamas for my kids. This was extremely difficult as I'm not good at sewing and the kids are with me all the time. One of the few drawbacks of homeschooling is that you can't sneak in a handmade gift too easily. But I kicked them out of the house or banished them to other rooms to get them done. And now they are matching, except for the dots I put inside as labels to help in the laundry folding.

All in all, I've had a very creative year. It was one of my resolutions last year to do something creative each day. And except for the few weeks surrounding my father's hospitalization and major life change, I managed to do just that. I feel better for it and hope to keep up the habit in the years to come. All told, I knit seven pairs of socks (and I'm on the 8th), a hat and gloves, mittens, a lace scarf, a failed sweater for Mark, a bunny and a monkey. Need to update my Ravelry notebook, which is really handy for notes. That and I sewed the Halloween costumes, pants for Small, the pjs, and did some paper crafting. It's really healthy to keep the creative juices flowing.

Life and Art

So, we were messing around with art the other day at a library nearby. Lots of tissue paper, lots of glue, scissors, you get the idea. I was helping Small, following directions and making a tissue paper collage with boring circle and petal flowers. Medium and Large, on the other hand, were carefully crafting yellow cone flowers, obedient plant, compass plant, cardinal flowers - anything but boring daisy like flora. We were using a little art skills textbook, and true homeschoolers they are, they took what the needed and did what they wanted. Really beautiful creations!

And on an even more positive note, I haven't had any pain in 48 hours now. I'm cautiously optimistic that the corner has been turned, the super-duper antibiotic has done it's job and life will now return to what we call normal.

Water, water everywhere

This was my backyard on Saturday afternoon. We don't normally have lake front property. It rose higher than this on Sunday, but by then my energy for taking pictures had waned. I took the picture to show my father and mother, whom we visited on Saturday. It was a crazy thing to do and we were lucky to get home. But my brother was in town and we had spent all morning wondering if we would get water in the basement.

We decided to wonder about it from afar. My brother lives in California and at best we only see him a few times a year. When my parents move in a few months, we will see him even less. My parents live on top of a sand dune and do not get water in their house. They are on the lake. Between the end of the sand dunes and the highway, there is a ecologically significant bog. This bog, normally a wet place, spilled over the road. We muddled through and had a good visit, watching the continual rain, visiting, laughing, planning our parents move, talking about their health, etc.

It was torrential rain on the way home. Most of Friday night and Saturday it rained non-stop. Thunder showers, they called it. Not violent storms, but a heck of a lot of rain. Saturday night it was raining hard, especially at 65 miles per hour. But we were lucky to get home. 80/94 was closed just east of my parents' exit and we were headed west. By Sunday it was closed further west and I could not get out there as planned. I had to reschedule my father's appointment with his neurologist.

Our basement had a little river running through it. Not a lot of water, just enough to be an annoyance and make us sweep it into the sump pit. We spent most of Saturday morning preparing for the flooding, picking up laundry, moving cardboard boxes and relocating important stuff to higher ground. Or so we thought. When the water came in, it was a steady stream, causing us to rediscover items that could be damaged. Eventually there was very little higher ground left.

Now, we had cats for the first 12 years we lived in this house. Three of them. Elderly cats the last five years of their lives. One of them never quite did his business in the litter box, although in his younger days, he was close. We haven't had water in our basement for 10 years. Which, sadly, means the floor hasn't been washed in 10 years. Oh my, this made for a smelly situation on Sunday. Lugging stuff, sweeping the water with a push broom, discarding wet stuff. We filled four garbage cans and had lots of recycling. Most of what we lost were items we should have thrown out ten years ago but didn't. Boxes and paper bags of books, 30 year old magazines, ancient financial records. Most of the garbage we tossed wasn't even wet, it was just garbage. I'm trying to look at it all as a further opportunity to declutter. Today I filled another giant bag of garbage and a banker's box of recycling.

Unfortunately, Large has a gastro-intestinal thing as a result of the basement cleaning. We weren't totally focused on washing hands, I guess. And he didn't. He's been not eating more than a couple slices of toast for two days now.

I now am instituting a firm no cardboard rule for the basement. If it's not in plastic, it can't go down. Appliance boxes can be kept for one year, the date on the outside of the box with the receipt attached. Otherwise there is no point to keeping them. I'm in full tossing mode. Look out. When we flood in another 10 years, we will have nothing to worry about.

Stupid Parent Tricks

I took Medium to the beach the other day. Large and Small were beached out from the day before and chose to stay at my parent's house. I keep telling these kids that they are lucky to have grandparents who live on the beach. At least we have a nice place to go and time to swim when we are there helping out. Didn't have my camera, so this is an old picture.

We went to the more private of the private beaches in their community. The one where you can't usually see another soul. This beach has a more gradual drop off than the other beach and the waves didn't seem as high as they had been the week before. Medium loves being pushed ashore by the waves, jumping them and swimming through them. I remember doing the same things on the same beach as a child. All this led me to the decision that she could go beyond the drop off, but not above her waist in the water, which would be too far out for me to help her. She wasn't' all that interested in getting deeper, the waves were up to her neck when they crashed in. She just likes to be a foot or so offshore, splashing in.

I pointed out a helicopter up the beach from us - is that east or north? The lake confuses me there, as a Chicagoan the lake is always east. In Indiana, all that changes. I thought it had been painted to look like Nemo. As it slowly made its way down the coast, I saw it was just a coast guard helicopter. Then we saw an Indiana DNR helicopter, patrolling farther off shore. In all, we saw three helicopters going slowly back and forth. After we had been there about an hour, we saw a man on a dune buggy, slowly driving along. I don't think I had ever seen a dune buggy kind of thing on this beach, but again, no alarms were raised. Medium was playing in the sand, the dune buggy went way down the other direction - south or west, practically to the steel mill.

About half an hour later, he drove back and stopped his buggy. Medium was in the water, playing. He said "I guess you know about rip currents." Yes, I do, but the waves didn't seem as bad today. Have there been rip currents spotted? I had spent time researching rip currents after someone drowned a few weeks ago and felt confident I could spot one. Yes, was the answer. Oh. And there are so many patrols today - three helicopters and you driving on the beach. He was wearing a state park uniform. "Yes, we're looking for a body. A drowning off Porter Beach."

Chills. Serious hair standing on end kind of chills all over my body. I stood up to get us going. Porter Beach is likely less than a mile up the end of this private beach, it's another private beach adjoining the State Park. The state park beach was closed to swimming because of rip currents. There are no warning systems for private beaches.

So, a new rule for our family. If we can see waves from the kitchen window, we call the state park before heading to the beach. If that beach is closed for swimming, we don't swim. We aren't a real rule oriented kind of family, but this one seems necessary.

8 Kids in a Yarn Shop

I recently received a gift certificate to a yarn shop as a thank you gift. This made me remember a 2 year old, unredeemed gift certificate which I had carefully tucked into Barbara Walker's Knitting From the Top. How I knew it was there and was able to locate the book is beyond me, but gives me hope for my brain's future.

I then happened on to a plan to go to the yarn shop, Chix with Stix, in Forest Park. It's not close to my house, which is why the first certificate had not been used up. That, and I had forgotten it. It is, however, very close to our Writer's Workshop activity at a friends home in Oak Park. I convinced Kim to go with me. She convinced Lori.

So, after my horrible attempt at parallel parking in a spot that a semi could have fit it, the three of us happy, homeschooling moms were lost in the bliss of a good yarn shop. Two of us were spending gift money, adding to our joy. The kids - 5 boys and 3 girls behaved remarkably well. It helps that the shop has a chihuahua and a comfy couch and a play area for the littlest of the bunch. The shop keepers tried not to be panicked by our presence. They weren't completely successful in that. But they were nice about it. And the kids didn't get in trouble until we left the store, laden with our new purchases. They were climbing the brick wall of the doctor's office next door. My little one was playing with the mail slot. Both those things were against the doctor's rules, and he came out to tell us so.

And this is what I purchased! Sock yarn for my sister in law - a yummy bamboo, cotton, elastic blend. After reading reviews on Ravelry, I learned the yarn can be short. Good thing Marsha has small feet! Another ball of sock yarn, and a fabulous sock knitting carry along bag. It's cute and convenient and totally not like me to indulge in something frivilous. I put my boy's socks in there and can't wait to knit in public with this bag. It's a very hip improvement over the zip lock bag. Or the plastic newspaper sleeve I used the other day.

The new yarns are sitting on my poor loom. My loom has been begging me to weave for some time. The rug on there is finished except for the hemming. Knitting has taken over my passion for it's portability, but weaving is something I need to return to. Soon. The rhythm of weaving and physical activity of it is much different than knitting. Soon.

Leap of Faith

I did it! I finished the lace scarf for my mother's birthday and she loved it. It really was a leap of faith to think that the curled, shriveled thing in my hands, barely 50 inches long, would turn into what it was supposed to. After binding off, I took a deep breath, submerged the thing, squeezed it between towels and pinned it to my bed. I almost cried.

All those yarn overs, the knit three togethers, the dreaded slip slip knits. And the new to me slip two, knit one, pass the two slipped overs. Mark tried not to be alarmed when I told him I had 30 hours of knitting left in 4 days. Of course, I didn't get that many hours in, what with our regular life schedule and all. (The house keeping has suffered considerably during this project.) But it turned out that blocking lengthened the piece considerably, nearly as long as my mother is tall.

And my mother really did love it. She realized how complicated it was to do, I don't think she personally has ever done lace knitting. This was my first lace piece. She had four kids, so her attention span was even further reduced from mine. I often make gifts for my family that aren't so appreciated. I do it because I love to make things and because of my rebellion over mass consumerism. (Find the pattern here.)

My mother is sadly confused lately, this present was for her 81st birthday. A bit of luxury for a woman who now almost never goes out except to the grocery store or to take my father to his doctor's appointments. Part of her confused state has to be from lack of sleep, part of it from dementia. My 81 year old father has Parkinsons' and cannot sleep for more than two hours at a time. In 24 hours he'll sleep a couple, wake a couple, sleep a couple, never a consistent stretch of sleep. He often needs help getting up, so my mother gets up with him.

Opening this gift, however, Mom was not unclear at all. She knew instantly what it was, the hours spent on it in concentrated effort, the beauty of the fine merino wool. She understoond and appreciated the effort. It was the perfect end to a fantastically fun and interesting knitting project. I could not have asked for more.

It took a whole lot of self control not to tell my mother that the artifical scalloping on the edges was a mistake in blocking. I didn't read beyond the instructions to soak, wring and pin. Didn't read to the point where the lace book said if you have a garter stitch boarder you can create unwanted scalloping by pinning and that the procedure should be to roll it on dowels between cupboards. Still don't get that, but I'll know not to have a garter stitch boarder again and not to be in such a rush.

I'm already hunting around for my next lace project.

An End and a Beginning

Is it really over, do you think? Winter, I mean? Ice and mud turn into just mud? I'd really like to think so.

We returned from the completely fabulous InHome Conference two days ago and haven't gotten sick yet! It's probably too early to tell, but maybe we'll walk away unscathed this year. We paid our dues up front, in my opinion.

As usual, the conference was great fun. The kids took classes in American Indian folklore, Mayan Pottery, Illinois Biodiversity, Geology, Wildlife Education, Lego Robotics, Scrap booking, Juggling, Theater Games, Tye-Dye, Comic making, Petroglyphs, and Rainbows. In between they got to hang out with friends, go swimming in an indoor/outdoor pool (in the snow!) and walk a lot. Mark and I got to volunteer in sessions, direct traffic in an immense hotel/resort facility, meet new homeschoolers and hang out with friends.

The conference is always an exhausting adventure. This year's exhaustion was compounded by the time change. I was unable to explain the time change to the kids at the time. They have lost interest.

Despite extra Starbucks, I slept for 2 hours when we got home. Mark took a walk in the woods. The big kid played with schooled friends on the block and the other two watched Jungle Book. We all decompressed in our own ways.

It's sad so see the conference end, but spring is just around the corner.

That's What Friends Are For

Remember these voltures singing to Mowgli in the old movie, Jungle Book? That's been in my head this morning and I wanted to thank my friends being there for me.

Need help with a knitting problem? Ask your friends. Can't figure out what to do with your child's intimidating abilities in your weaker areas? Solutions are offered. About to have a complete breakdown when the delivery team tells you they cannot hook up your dryer? A friend looks for shut off valves. Youngest child sleeping all day with no food or drink intake? Reassurances from 6 moms ease the worry.

Thanks all you wonderful women! You make the world go 'round.

My Allergic Valentines

Here is the valentine I made for Mark. I've been looking at a lot of papercrafting blogs lately, and wish I were better at it. Papercrafting can be done so beautifully, maybe I'll get there. But in the meantime, I know my hardworking, exhausted husband will enjoy this effort.

Yesterday I had the kids make Valentines for the party today at Writer's Workshop. It was a long shot that we would attend, but it helped with the grumpiness to have a project to do. The boys pressed designs and did some backwards writing into styrofoam and then rolled and printed it onto paper. Messy and fun. Little Missy wrote individual messages onto strips of paper, then folded and glued them into hearts - like the junk mail hearts I did the other day.

Today they woke and made special valentines for each other. They were shocked to learn that all the kids on the block were in school during such a huge holiday. Things like this make no sense to them, its another one of those meaningless rules. Later they asked to have some of the Sweet Tarts I bought to go with the Writer's Workshop valentines. They had shared a box of them yesterday.

After passing out a box to everyone and putting the rest away in the kitchen, Buddy came running and screaming into the living room to tell us to put them down. The Little Man actually spit his right out of his mouth. There, clearly labled on the individual box was a "made in a facility" message. It included more than just peanuts and tree nuts, also wheat, oats, barley and a whole host of other things my youngest is allergic to. The Sweet Tarts were packaged as twelve individual boxes, shrink wrapped together. On the outside of the shrink wrap was an ingredient sticker - with no warning, no "made in a facility" message. But each box had the message printed on the side. I didn't read the individual box labels.

Now I know that my oldest boy's bad cough yesterday was a result of eating these Sweet Tarts. He told me a couple of times that he needed the nebulizer, but he was able to get out complete sentences and run down the stairs to relay the information. And he wasn't wheezing. I put him under steam and made him rest, but he was still coughing. With hindsight, I can see he was having a reaction to the cross contanimated candy. And I gave him nothing for it, suspecting nothing. Worse than that, we had a heated argument over the need for the nebulizer.

Honestly, I know it would take a superhuman strength and power to keep my kids completely safe from food allergies. The list of foods we avoid for anaphylaxis is long: peanuts, tree nuts of all kinds, all legumes except soy. The list of foods we avoid for severe eczema is even longer: dairy, eggs, wheat and all gluten (oats, barley, rye, etc.), flax, pineapple, mango, papaya, corn starch and syrup, cranberries, blackberries, watercress, cabbage and some other greens. Labels are long and complicated. Some are clear, some are double labled like the Sweet Tarts. Some are over labeled, like every single cut cheese at Whole Foods, because they cannot separate their cheese from their nuts in the back. (The cheese guy cheerfully told me they wash the cutters for different molds on different cheeses, but they can't clean up their act enough to extend to the rest of the kitchen.)

So, the challenge is great. But I cannot stop blaming myself when we are accidentally exposed. Whether the reaction resolves itself in the emergency room or the living room, I still feel completely inadequate and unable to confront the obstacles. I am educated and hypervigilant, and yet my kid can have a reaction without me even realizing it.

Vast Right Wing Conspiracy

Today, while in the midst of doing his math problems - calculating the area and perimeter of rectangles - my oldest child corrected me and made me laugh. I usually knit while the kids are doing their math, they have so many questions and need help learning not to frustrate themselves. It also give me a good excuse to knit.

In between screens at mathscore.com, I asked my daughter to turn on the oven to 450 because I'd like to give them hot dogs and french fries for lunch. It's a special lunch for us - a having friends over or celebrating something kind of lunch. Today the snow is just so glorious (we can afford to say that while we are immobilized) that it seemed a celebration lunch kind of day. Besides, calculating area makes sense now.

Buddy lifted his head from his math and said "Wait, why don't I get to know what we are having? Why does she get to know all about it?"

I thought about the many answers to this question for about a nanosecond and wound up saying "It's a vast conspiracy." (Someone please nominate me for Mother of the Year.)

"You mean 'vast right wing conspiracy,' Mommy!"

That made me laugh. Math was over. No, I'm not anti-Hillary, or even anti-Clinton. But I needed to explain. We headed to youtube to find this video:




This, in turn led to a history discussion (does it count as history when it was so recent?). We talked about the two party political system, political dynasties like the Bush and Clinton families and the role of the media in shaping policies. We also talked about personal responsibility and how "uncool" it is to have both a wife and a girlfriend.

This is yet another reason why I love homeschooling. We had the time to get deep into a topic, could strike while the iron was hot and give them as much information as they wanted. They also get to understand one of their mother's favorite expressions and have hot dogs for lunch with no worries about the incredible snow.

Homecoming

I wish I had taken a picture or video of my girl's return from her Girl Scouts camping trip, but all I have is one of her leaving. She was exhausted from packing and waiting for me to get the car out of the garage. I had misjudged how much snow we had received and got stuck in the driveway.

Her homecoming was amazing - as I'm sure the trip itself was. The boys hugged and hugged her and wouldn't let go, even with the promise of dinner. They made a banner welcoming her home and put it across the hallway to the dining room. Then everyone talked at once to catch each other up on what happened in her absence, she telling us what she did on her trip. After all that energy fighting on a daily basis, we had an evening of love and togetherness.

It made me think we are in a rut. Certainly our financial woes have put a strain on the kids, although we aren't in a place where we are depriving ourselves of necessities. Our being stuck at home for lack of a car has stiffled us considerably. So, when the kids got up this morning, I told them the project of the day was to make an igloo before the snow melted. They had to go outside and work together and figure it out. They were out there 2 hours, but the rain and the melt hindered them. I hope the start of their structure remains for the snow we are supposed to get tomorrow night.

Every time I looked out the window, they were hard at work arranging their bricks, trying to figure out how to make it stand up and hold a roof. It was amazing to see them at work/play. Collaborating, discussing, throwing snow, making snow angles, working on the igloo, getting really wet and hungry. We need more creativity in our lives. And less fog.




Two more paper box animals today. I made some marble magnets yesterday, but am not happy with them. Aside from that I've been knitting, knitting, knitting on the baby blanket with no end...

Resolutions, Part 2

Another of my resolutions for 2008 is to get more outdoors time into our schedule. We already do a lot with weekend hikes and my twice a month Roots&Shoots schedule. In the winter especially it is easy to stay huddled up indoors. This isn't healthy for our family, we need to get out and breathe the air, soak up the sunshine, explore.

To that end, we went snowshoeing twice last week, when it was still cold. A little too cold for my littlest, but we discovered Toasty Toes foot warmers to stick onto his socks and he's very happy. I also got him some smart wool socks at REI, but it has strangely warmed up over the past few days and we haven't had an opportunity to get out. From a chilly 18 degree snowshoe expedition on Thursday, we had a 65 degree muddy hike on Sunday. In between those two, I took my R&S group to Fullersburg woods where these ducks, among many others, learned that the snow the kids were plunking into the water was not bread crumbs and they had to fend for themselves.

The family hike on Sunday was fun, but a little creepy too. Black Partridge Woods is tragically close to the highway and the traffic noise completely ruined a beautiful, scenic place. There were steep ravines to climb, a creek to follow, much mud to squish in, a wonderfully tended section with no buck thorn and many brush piles. Unfortunately, there was also ample evidence of underage drinking (why can't they bring a garbage bag like we did?) or maybe even of age drinking. Bottles broken everywhere, cans strewn about, signs posted about it being and alcohol free zone, but ample evidence of no enforcement.

It's supposed to be a wonderful place for wildflowers in the spring and we'll probably go back for that. But between the traffic noise and the litter, it's not going to be favorite haunt. I just couldn't relax and found myself peering at the cars pulling into and out of the parking lot, worried about drug deals happening under our noses. The children had a wonderful time, we didn't have to carry our youngest at all, he wanted to climb up and down, jump the creek and have fun with the big kids. Unfortunately, he only has one pair of sneakers, now very muddy.

Snow Dance

When we got to the sledding hill yesterday, we were greeted by a sign that read "No Sledding." It had a lengthy explanation of the dangers of the terrain, the fact that trees and fences were in the way and that someone could get hurt.

Our town is pretty flat, so we have to drive to a neighboring town's park for what suffices as a hill. It's not really much of a hill, but it works. And it's worked for years. Everyone comes here to sled.

So, we ignored the sign. There was already another family sledding and we decided to believe the sign indicated another section of this small slope, which indeed had fencing and many evenly spaced trees. It was damp and cold, with lake effect snow falling and swirling around. Cloudy and sunny at times, a perfect sledding day. The snow was not packed down when we got there, but we worked at it enough that by the time we left and other families arrived, the hill was a good sled.

The other moms looked askance at us, one ventured to ask if we had school today. I told her we homeschool and this was recess. She laughed and left it alone. Really, they should have been pleased that my 85 pound kid was packing down the snow for them! After a while, a village worker came and tinkered with the sign. I got that creepy feeling you get when choosing to violate a rule. He spent a long time on the sign, but never approached us and then drove off. As we were leaving, we read the sign again and it had been changed to "Sled at Your Own Risk." We had another discussion about the sign, about unenforceable rules and how grown ups can sometimes change their minds.

Later in the day, after a trip to the library for story time and to reload our reading materials, the entire family turned out for Parent Observation Day at the little guy's dance class. We had forgotten about Parent Observation Day for my oldest boy's class the day before and can't make it to my daughter's tonight, so we came out in force for this one. While he was clearly distracted by the parents in the room, and especially his parents, sister and brother, my youngest child show his love of dance, of his teacher and the whole world in his movements. You can see him below in the mirror.