I wonder if everyone's life looks like mine. I kind of hope not, because then I have cause for optimism about our own future being different.
We're in Transition Week. One of a couple. The time when summer pushes back on the spring stuff that isn't finished and then you toss in a couple of high-intensity special capstone events for good measure. Add in a little Clendenon craziness, and you get the picture.
Here's today, and yes, it's still a schoolday on top of all this, not that anything got done:
Orientation and first training session at Learning RX
Drop off leftover conference books at St. Joseph's Villa
Practice play lines with friend
Dive practice
Swim practice
Tennis practice
Dance recital rehearsal
What we skipped: baseball game; picking up flowers for Frances's hair for recital
Tomorrow is another Learning RX session (way across town), play practice, band practice, flute lesson, Cub Scouts, dive practice, swim practice. I'm exhausted just writing it.
Though we have a lot going on, probably the biggest time consumer that is both exciting and stressful is the cognitive training that Walter is doing. This program, PACE, requires 3 hours a week in the center for 12 weeks working one on one with his trainer, Andrea, and then we need to do at least three more hours at home with him on the off days. Tonight's first assignment is to have Walter watch the Karate Kid, which we're doing right now (yes, that's right, it's after 10 p.m. and the kids are still up) to learn the lessons of wax-on/wax-off and sand the floor and kicking like a bird. Walter's assignment is to try to figure out what Daniel learns from all his exercises, what the wax on, wax off has to do with karate, how practice and concentration in one thing that seems unrelated can carry over into other areas of your life. We also did some training, even though he wasn't necessarily supposed to tonight. The first thing they learn is the names of all the presidents forward and backward in order, and they are timed on this and must meet certain benchmarks. Walter has it down, but he doesn't have the time thing covered. He's getting stressed, but he's working on it. He managed to get a "gold" in the 10 and 20 categories, but not on all 44, which is where he started crying with the stopwatch going. He also worked on attention arrows, which is a variation on the old say the name of the color when the word name of another color is on the paper. Again, he is timed on how fast he can say the names of rows of colored arrows or say which direction they point and has to say the color of each arrow on the beat of a metronome at various speeds. It is cool to see the gradual improvements. For each task, he gets points, so he has incentive to work harder. My motivation is high now, and I hope it will stay that way for the next 12 weeks. It's intensive, but finite, and hopefully this will improve his auditory and visual processing and his processing speeds, which should carry over into his reading, listening, attention and other skills.
At the conference, I also picked up a new wordbuilding/vocabulary program that I'm dying to start. I'm second-guessing myself for having gotten a level that may be higher than what we should have started with, but I am hoping that this will help break down vocabulary to help with both spelling and understanding longer words. What I'm seeing is a shift as we had into summer. We'll finish up Saxon math one of these days soon--about 12 more days left or something, but then we'll focus on this brainskills stuff, doing more of the Critical Thinking Company books that I've collected over the years, playing games, doing this vocabulary stuff, and helping Frances learn to read. I'm pretty impressed with her progress over the last month. She has been working through Headsprout Reading, which is an online program (yes, I'm spending more money on "education" than I thought possible now) that has her completing one 10-15 minute episode a day and claims to get her reading at the level of an average 8 year old by the end. We'll see if it's true. I still haven't seen the real "click" that tends to happen with reading. She's still laboring through the short words like she always has, but there's bit by bit change, and her fluency is going up. I'll try to remember to say how it's going in a few weeks. She's near the end of the first 40 episodes right now, and I'm not sure if we'll be able to pay for the next 40 right away. Rutledge is doing it, too, but he's moving slowly. Amazingly, though he is delayed in many areas, he is starting to read some short words and knows quite a few sounds. He's not exactly breezing through or understanding everything, but slow and steady wins the race, right?
And Spongebob School, as we call it, is nearly over. He has been doing speech therapy for almost 3 months, but unfortunately, there have only been about 5 sessions so far because of holidays and then us being gone last week. Now he only has one more before the schoolyear ends. It's a little frustrating, since a delay in such a short life is significant and 3 months is a long time to wait to get on the issue again, and so far he hasn't gotten to material that is challenging or works on his problem areas (specifically, one of his age-inappropriate areas is that he can't say "k" and g" sounds at the beginnings of words). But he has had a lot of fun, he has learned all of his sounds taught so far, and he performs them like a little trained monkey. I'm wondering if there's something I can do to further the process over the summer. I hate the feeling that I need to become an expert in someone else's professional area, but I guess that's what parenting is, when it all comes down. We are the experts. We are at ground level and know what our kids need, and then we endeavour to find out how to meet those needs, no matter how far flung from what we thought we were experts in they might be.
Oh my goodness. I can't believe my kids are still up. Especially with a physical day like they've had (dive, swim, tennis). We're all working on getting up earlier, particularly now that I have this running ambition and program I'm trying to follow. Who knows? Maybe tomorrow will be rainy, which will eliminate some of the things from our list of to-dos, but I'm excited about the changes toward a more outdoor lifestyle that the impending summer brings, I'm excited about wrapping up some of our regular year stuff, and I'm ready for a bit of change.
Nancy
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Monday, May 25, 2009
Digging out from under total insanity, here I am again.
I have been on hiatus from what feels like everything. I think in a sense I'm lonely, maybe doing too much of things I don't really want to do for reasons I don't really understand. I'm really busy, but feeling pretty alone at the same time. Maybe I'm simply moving too fast. Maybe everyone I know is moving too fast. Maybe we all need to slow down. Who knows.
We just got back from a week in the village of Hatteras on Hatteras Island on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. This is the second time we have stayed in Hatteras--the first was three years ago at this same time of year. And there was a lot in common between these two trips. Rain and gale force winds, a television full of warnings about rip tides that kept us from the water for days. Not that you'd want to go in while it's in the 40s and 50s in the air, not to mention the water. Well, amend that. Actually, kids will go in just about anything, if given permission.
The first trip we took to Hatteras was salvaged by the miracle of letterboxing. There were at least 25 letterboxes back in 2006 in the Hatteras Island/Ocracoke area. Though it was cold and we were underdressed, we did get out and about into areas we never would have seen without a list of vague clues to guide us. We learned about and hiked through maritime forests with trees stunted by the salt wind we were so familiar with firsthand. We saw at least 5 snakes in 5 different environments--historic graveyards full of downed sailors, hollow trees in the Buxton Woods, in the Pamlico Sound, on a forested trail on Ocracoke, and guarding a letterbox with its life.
Unfortunately, this year when we were looking for an afternoon activity, we discovered that the placers of many of the letterboxes on Hatteras had made most of them private or by invitation only. This seems to me to violate the spirit of the communal activity of letterboxing, open to all. We did attempt to revisit one that had become overgrown, so the trail was no longer visible, but we gave up on it in deference to the snakes who doubtless called the spot home. While there, we visited the "Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum," which is fascinating and full of information about the dangerous shoals and long history of warfare and shipwreck off the Atlantic Coast. We also had fun poking through another old graveyard tucked into a condo and giant sound-house community linked to a popular shopping area by a boardwalk over a vibrant salt marsh and found a letterbox under the fourth step down off a gazebo.
Finally, on the fifth day of our trip, things were looking up in the weather. It was sunny. Our day on Ocracoke, always a favorite, ended in drizzle turning to genuine rain, which was a shame since we had just unloaded our bikes and were ready to head out into the nether reaches of a very cute place. We managed to visit a few shops (to get some blessed relief from being pelted by wetness). On the plus side, we found a super coffee shop that had perfect climbable trees, and Walter amused the many guests sitting out under the trees with his tree-shimmying skills. Rutledge, of course, made friends with many, many dogs, some of whom were searching for another friend and some of whom were offended by very short people who aren't always gentle. There were the two French Bulldogs at lunch at the seafood restaurant, wearing their life preservers because this breed can't swim. There were the two dachshunds on the beach who didn't like children. And the hyper beagle puppy who came by shortly afterward. Then there were the coarse-haired Portugeuse Water Dogs. And the chihuahua on the sound when we semi-trespassed onto land for sale on the sound. The westie on the way to the pizza place. While on Ocracoke, we also shopped at our favorite little shell and trinket store, visited the ponies descended from the ones supposedly brought on a Spanish ship way back when, and climbed the trees in the cemetery and read the names of the British who perished in an attack by a German U-Boat during World War II.
On my final day there, it was sunny, and we were able to fly the very cool kites we bought on the second day of the trip, the kites that didn't appreciate the 35 mph gusts from the early part of the week. Ollie had a red, white, and blue airplane which, when all is told, was really a delta in disguise, Walter had a Red Baron plane, and Frances had a poison dart frog on a classic diamond. We got sunburned without realizing it. The older three kids played for hours in a rather cold ocean that most sane people stayed out of. We got mahi-mahi, steamed shrimp, and bay scallops right from a local boat. And we played yet more Set, a game that figured very strongly in this vacation. We did almost all of a 550 piece puzzle (no, I haven't forgiven the others for not putting in the last 25 pieces of plain blue sky that I left off when I went to bed after midnight).
Leaving was the hard part. I had to physically peel myself away. It was as if a magnet was holding me back. The day was gorgeous, the weather warm, and I wanted more than anything in the world to (a) become very irresponsible. I had volunteered a long time back to organize the used curriculum sale at a statewide homeschooling conference. Suddenly, I wanted to just flake out, to not be where I was supposed to, to say that my mental health was such that I just *had* to stay at the beach. And that made me kind of slow getting out. It felt like there was lead in my feet keeping them from pushing the gas pedal of the car. As I was going over the bridge off the Outer Banks, Margaritaville came on. I'll admit, this isn't a song that I have ever completely understood. But at this moment, the appeal was undeniable. The life of just kicking back, shirking all responsibility to anyone else, and just drinking for the rest of the day, week, maybe month or year was calling my name. But I kept driving. For the (b) above, I also thought about just driving right on past the conference and on across the country. See "being irresponsible" above.
But I went to the conference, the book sale was successful. I wish I could have seen more of the conference itself, which i didn't feel like I experienced because I spent more or less the entire time except for a brief run for lunch and an hour out for one session on a topic that wasn't all that pertinent to me (preparing high school transcripts). But overall, it was a good experience. Just not as good as the beach would have been.
Oh, and I'd be remiss not to mention our kayaking adventure. We were eco-explorers. The Outer Banks is full of these "Eco Tours" by kayak--whatever that really means. We had brought our semi-new kayak that we bought last fall and were determined to use it. Considering the crazy wind and choppy seas, it wasn't much of a possibility until close to the end of our trip. On a bikeride with the kids (which, like everything else, involved a lot of graveyard with a wide variety of years on the stones), I had scoped out a good place to park and put in our boat in a salt marsh area. When we went back a few days later to show it to Kerry, wouldn't you know it...there was a big old snake slithering through the water. I take these things as signs! So we decided, on our last night, to go out to the Sound and put in at a public access. I was pretty sure I had seen kiteboarders here at one point (almost no one was out this week!), but I hadn't seen any other kayaks there. Now I know why. When I say shallow, I mean shallow! Ollie and I loaded up with our life jackets and were pushed out, and about a minute later we ran aground in water so shallow that Ollie had to push me and the boat away. Then Walter walked out about 500 feet and helped us to get back in; he was in water up to his ankles. Meanwhile, being Walter, he was also collecting more wildlife than the aquarium sponsored class we skipped could ever have expected. By the time we left, he had clams, multiple hermit crabs, had seen a rabbit, and who knows what else he picked up off the bottom. No matter how far we paddled out, it was still shallow, shallow, shallow, and getting dark. And it required a lot of effort to drag the kayak across the sandy bottom and we didn't want to be stuck too far from home. So that was the end of our eco-tour.
All in all, it wasn't enough vacation. We did a lot of at-home things--played a lot of Set, Monopoly, chess, mancala, that dreadful little word game from Cranium that Rutledge plays (you fish for letters with a little rod and a totally useless plastic polar bear sits on a piece of cardboard watching), Go Fish, Uno. We read a Nancy Drew novel. But the beach time wasn't enough. I needed more, longer, and warmer. I was plotting my return, maybe spontaneous, for a night, with a tent, as I left. Who knows, maybe I will follow through!
I have been on hiatus from what feels like everything. I think in a sense I'm lonely, maybe doing too much of things I don't really want to do for reasons I don't really understand. I'm really busy, but feeling pretty alone at the same time. Maybe I'm simply moving too fast. Maybe everyone I know is moving too fast. Maybe we all need to slow down. Who knows.
We just got back from a week in the village of Hatteras on Hatteras Island on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. This is the second time we have stayed in Hatteras--the first was three years ago at this same time of year. And there was a lot in common between these two trips. Rain and gale force winds, a television full of warnings about rip tides that kept us from the water for days. Not that you'd want to go in while it's in the 40s and 50s in the air, not to mention the water. Well, amend that. Actually, kids will go in just about anything, if given permission.
The first trip we took to Hatteras was salvaged by the miracle of letterboxing. There were at least 25 letterboxes back in 2006 in the Hatteras Island/Ocracoke area. Though it was cold and we were underdressed, we did get out and about into areas we never would have seen without a list of vague clues to guide us. We learned about and hiked through maritime forests with trees stunted by the salt wind we were so familiar with firsthand. We saw at least 5 snakes in 5 different environments--historic graveyards full of downed sailors, hollow trees in the Buxton Woods, in the Pamlico Sound, on a forested trail on Ocracoke, and guarding a letterbox with its life.
Unfortunately, this year when we were looking for an afternoon activity, we discovered that the placers of many of the letterboxes on Hatteras had made most of them private or by invitation only. This seems to me to violate the spirit of the communal activity of letterboxing, open to all. We did attempt to revisit one that had become overgrown, so the trail was no longer visible, but we gave up on it in deference to the snakes who doubtless called the spot home. While there, we visited the "Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum," which is fascinating and full of information about the dangerous shoals and long history of warfare and shipwreck off the Atlantic Coast. We also had fun poking through another old graveyard tucked into a condo and giant sound-house community linked to a popular shopping area by a boardwalk over a vibrant salt marsh and found a letterbox under the fourth step down off a gazebo.
Finally, on the fifth day of our trip, things were looking up in the weather. It was sunny. Our day on Ocracoke, always a favorite, ended in drizzle turning to genuine rain, which was a shame since we had just unloaded our bikes and were ready to head out into the nether reaches of a very cute place. We managed to visit a few shops (to get some blessed relief from being pelted by wetness). On the plus side, we found a super coffee shop that had perfect climbable trees, and Walter amused the many guests sitting out under the trees with his tree-shimmying skills. Rutledge, of course, made friends with many, many dogs, some of whom were searching for another friend and some of whom were offended by very short people who aren't always gentle. There were the two French Bulldogs at lunch at the seafood restaurant, wearing their life preservers because this breed can't swim. There were the two dachshunds on the beach who didn't like children. And the hyper beagle puppy who came by shortly afterward. Then there were the coarse-haired Portugeuse Water Dogs. And the chihuahua on the sound when we semi-trespassed onto land for sale on the sound. The westie on the way to the pizza place. While on Ocracoke, we also shopped at our favorite little shell and trinket store, visited the ponies descended from the ones supposedly brought on a Spanish ship way back when, and climbed the trees in the cemetery and read the names of the British who perished in an attack by a German U-Boat during World War II.
On my final day there, it was sunny, and we were able to fly the very cool kites we bought on the second day of the trip, the kites that didn't appreciate the 35 mph gusts from the early part of the week. Ollie had a red, white, and blue airplane which, when all is told, was really a delta in disguise, Walter had a Red Baron plane, and Frances had a poison dart frog on a classic diamond. We got sunburned without realizing it. The older three kids played for hours in a rather cold ocean that most sane people stayed out of. We got mahi-mahi, steamed shrimp, and bay scallops right from a local boat. And we played yet more Set, a game that figured very strongly in this vacation. We did almost all of a 550 piece puzzle (no, I haven't forgiven the others for not putting in the last 25 pieces of plain blue sky that I left off when I went to bed after midnight).
Leaving was the hard part. I had to physically peel myself away. It was as if a magnet was holding me back. The day was gorgeous, the weather warm, and I wanted more than anything in the world to (a) become very irresponsible. I had volunteered a long time back to organize the used curriculum sale at a statewide homeschooling conference. Suddenly, I wanted to just flake out, to not be where I was supposed to, to say that my mental health was such that I just *had* to stay at the beach. And that made me kind of slow getting out. It felt like there was lead in my feet keeping them from pushing the gas pedal of the car. As I was going over the bridge off the Outer Banks, Margaritaville came on. I'll admit, this isn't a song that I have ever completely understood. But at this moment, the appeal was undeniable. The life of just kicking back, shirking all responsibility to anyone else, and just drinking for the rest of the day, week, maybe month or year was calling my name. But I kept driving. For the (b) above, I also thought about just driving right on past the conference and on across the country. See "being irresponsible" above.
But I went to the conference, the book sale was successful. I wish I could have seen more of the conference itself, which i didn't feel like I experienced because I spent more or less the entire time except for a brief run for lunch and an hour out for one session on a topic that wasn't all that pertinent to me (preparing high school transcripts). But overall, it was a good experience. Just not as good as the beach would have been.
Oh, and I'd be remiss not to mention our kayaking adventure. We were eco-explorers. The Outer Banks is full of these "Eco Tours" by kayak--whatever that really means. We had brought our semi-new kayak that we bought last fall and were determined to use it. Considering the crazy wind and choppy seas, it wasn't much of a possibility until close to the end of our trip. On a bikeride with the kids (which, like everything else, involved a lot of graveyard with a wide variety of years on the stones), I had scoped out a good place to park and put in our boat in a salt marsh area. When we went back a few days later to show it to Kerry, wouldn't you know it...there was a big old snake slithering through the water. I take these things as signs! So we decided, on our last night, to go out to the Sound and put in at a public access. I was pretty sure I had seen kiteboarders here at one point (almost no one was out this week!), but I hadn't seen any other kayaks there. Now I know why. When I say shallow, I mean shallow! Ollie and I loaded up with our life jackets and were pushed out, and about a minute later we ran aground in water so shallow that Ollie had to push me and the boat away. Then Walter walked out about 500 feet and helped us to get back in; he was in water up to his ankles. Meanwhile, being Walter, he was also collecting more wildlife than the aquarium sponsored class we skipped could ever have expected. By the time we left, he had clams, multiple hermit crabs, had seen a rabbit, and who knows what else he picked up off the bottom. No matter how far we paddled out, it was still shallow, shallow, shallow, and getting dark. And it required a lot of effort to drag the kayak across the sandy bottom and we didn't want to be stuck too far from home. So that was the end of our eco-tour.
All in all, it wasn't enough vacation. We did a lot of at-home things--played a lot of Set, Monopoly, chess, mancala, that dreadful little word game from Cranium that Rutledge plays (you fish for letters with a little rod and a totally useless plastic polar bear sits on a piece of cardboard watching), Go Fish, Uno. We read a Nancy Drew novel. But the beach time wasn't enough. I needed more, longer, and warmer. I was plotting my return, maybe spontaneous, for a night, with a tent, as I left. Who knows, maybe I will follow through!
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
I have become the world's most pathetic blogger. It's pitiful, really. I don't even know what I'm doing. I think I'm just losing interest in the things we are doing because there are so, so many of them, and I don't have time to enjoy any of them because I'm juggling so many balls in the air at once. Almost every single night of the week I am finding that we have to choose among many things and let some go as we prioritize because people can only be in one place at one time (or two parents can only be in two places at one time...). Some evenings, especially Wednesdays, can have up to five things at once. It looks like tomorrow, the Wednesday about to happen, won't be so full, but that's an anomaly....
Frances is playing soccer (I know, picture!). Ollie is playing baseball. Frances has ballet three nights a week. The boys have Cub Scouts. Ollie is doing tennis lessons. All three have music lessons. We have this play practice. I'm helping with a conference. I'm playing in tennis tournaments and two leagues, I have LLL meetings this week. Soccer has no practice tomorrow, Cub Scouts is on two off weeks, and some of the kids seem to have strep, so we may not be going much of anywhere tomorrow. What's interesting is that though Walter tested positive for strep, he showed no symptoms of anything other than a mild cold. Some coughing, a bit of a runny nose, and that's it. In fact, he was at the dr's office for a totally unrelated old piece of news (he's skinny, really old news), and by chance she picked up on a spot that looked like a bruise on the roof of his mouth. Ugh. Rutledge has an ear infection, which I normally take a more naturopathic attitude toward, but since he has speech issues, I'm finding myself choosing the path of least resistance (and hopefully fastest clearing). Again, I wouldn't have known about it if I hadn't taken him in for his excessive coughing, which has been keeping us awake at night for six days now.
We will get through this with relative grace and lack of disruption. I think there's always this glitch week in the fall that challenges us just when we think we're heading into the home stretch!
Frances is playing soccer (I know, picture!). Ollie is playing baseball. Frances has ballet three nights a week. The boys have Cub Scouts. Ollie is doing tennis lessons. All three have music lessons. We have this play practice. I'm helping with a conference. I'm playing in tennis tournaments and two leagues, I have LLL meetings this week. Soccer has no practice tomorrow, Cub Scouts is on two off weeks, and some of the kids seem to have strep, so we may not be going much of anywhere tomorrow. What's interesting is that though Walter tested positive for strep, he showed no symptoms of anything other than a mild cold. Some coughing, a bit of a runny nose, and that's it. In fact, he was at the dr's office for a totally unrelated old piece of news (he's skinny, really old news), and by chance she picked up on a spot that looked like a bruise on the roof of his mouth. Ugh. Rutledge has an ear infection, which I normally take a more naturopathic attitude toward, but since he has speech issues, I'm finding myself choosing the path of least resistance (and hopefully fastest clearing). Again, I wouldn't have known about it if I hadn't taken him in for his excessive coughing, which has been keeping us awake at night for six days now.
We will get through this with relative grace and lack of disruption. I think there's always this glitch week in the fall that challenges us just when we think we're heading into the home stretch!
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