Yesterday I took three kids--Walter, Frances, and Rutledge to Annapolis, Maryland for my Uncle Bill's memorial service. I am still questioning exactly what I was thinking taking them along, since it was not an environment where they would be on their best and quietest behavior, but Kerry had to take Ollie to diving practice, which most certainly isn't a good place for accompanying sibling, and I feel strongly that it is a priority to give my children some sense of extended family, since they have fairly little of that now. They had never met my Uncle Bill, so the service was a bit boring to them.  But they were also able to meet their cousin, Quin, for the first time.  And I want them to have some chances to see the people they are related to as real people, not just lines on a family tree (not that I'm that organized at this point to have made a real family tree...).  

My heart goes out so much to my cousin, Lisa.  She has lost her father after a long, long illness that took his abilities away from him bit by bit.  And her mother had a stroke last year and requires a great deal of care.  There's not enough you can say about the gift she has given her parents by taking care of them, living with them while they need her help, and her family's dedication to each other in sickness and in health.  I ache for her because I've been through my own time of amazing pain with my mother and her death and the massive crater that has been left in my life because she is gone.  During the terrible, awful, unbelievable week when she was dying, lying semi-conscious in the hospital, the whole scene was surreal.  It felt like it was never going to end, like it was the longest week ever, and like she was always going to be held in that space between living and dying.  And yet, I can firmly say that six years later, she is definitely gone.  She's not coming back.  I don't have her with me, even in a terrible state that is nothing like she was during the time that she was living and was the mother I knew.  It feels so crazy and so wrong not to have a mother who is there to be with my children, with her grandchildren, to be someone that they know, that they do things with, who is part of their life and their childhood and their history.  Instead, at best, my children remember her as an old lady in a nursing home, and at worst...they don't remember her at all.  Worse yet, one of them never even met her.  It feels, on my feeling sorriest for myself days, that its simply unfair, that there is nothing that can ever take her place and nothing that can ever fill the role that a grandma should be filling for them, and this is a gap in their life that is just wrong, wrong, wrong.  And so I feel all the more acutely sympathy for Lisa, because her little boy is just three years old, mere weeks older than Rutledge, and I know how she wants him to know and love the parents that she knew and loved, not just live through their illnesses, the hardships of the last part of their lives, the chaos that comes with a house full of nurses coming and going, medical equipment, distressing doctor visits, excruciating decisions that you never asked to have to make.  We can tell our children the stories of our parents, of our childhood, of the people that we knew them to be, but the sad fact is, we can't really make our kids know the people that meant everything to us.  I feel like my mother is as much myth as anything else to Walter, Ollie, and Frances (Rutledge can't even comprehend yet).  About as unreachable as anyone else who might appear on our family tree from the past.  The experience of losing a parent certainly is part of what has made me reassess what I want to do to bring my own family closer, to be sure that we live to the fullest together, that we have plenty of time before they inevitably grow up and move on to their own families.  Because in the end, it is, for sure, these families that we have now, our young families, that provide what healing there is out there for the giant hole that the loss of a parent causes.  And I suspect it will be, eventually, that way for my cousin as well.  There's nothing like a preschooler, with mischievous antics, little illnesses, broken bones, parties to send snacks for, Halloween costumes to pull together at the last minute, violence on the playground, and the zillions of things that we worry about with our children to force you to live in the here and now.  It doesn't really make things better, but it does take your mind off of it, and eventually, it makes you focus on what you can do with the people in your life who are still here, because you'll never be naive enough again to think that however it is, that it's going to be this way forever.

Today was sugar skull day.  Yearly ritual.  It's interesting to see the skulls change/improve? from year to year as the kids get older.  Or to see how the lure of mixing all the colors together to form brown (one of the colors in a bag we had already made) never really loses its charm.  Two friends and their kiddos came over, so it was a minor party.  Complete with cookies and pistachio cupcakes.  Yum.  

And we all know what yesterday was.  Here's my special Nancy version of election day.  Kerry was at the polls at 6 a.m., before heading off to the gym--he has recently joined American Family Fitness because they have better equipment and, um, those TVs on the treadmills.  He waited close to an hour, so I decided to play a timing game myself.  Plus I had gotten very little sleep the night before because I had a headache around dinnertime and took a caffeine-containing powder that kept me alive and kicking until around 3 a.m.  So we slept late, then did their basic schoolwork (the math/grammar/science/history stuff) because I was afraid that with public schools being out that I'd lose them to the neighborhood if I stalled too long.  And that's when Kerry called to remind me to take some I.D. to the polling place.  This is a big problem since I have lost my driver's license!

So, here's what makes my visit to the polls unique:  I burst into tears there!  I spent about 1.5 hours ripping my house, car, purse, etc. apart looking for my ID.  I didn't find it.  So I had to move on to Plan B.  Both McCain and Obama were calling me repeatedly all day long, so I took the opportunity to ask the poor Obama non-robo caller what else I could use as ID.  Big problem.  I have no passport (I'm a SAHM who hasn't been out of the country in 14 years).  We are huge recyclers/throwers away/shredders and also take any opportunity possible to be paperless with our bills, so I didn't have any utility bills, bank statements, etc. with my name on them.  I freaked.  I assumed that nothing in my life is in my name.  The new van doesn't seem to be in my name (Kerry reminded me that the actual transaction took place with him signing because I wasn't there at the time and he brought it home after I had described a fantasy where I just walked out one day and someone else had made the decision for me and left a vehicle in my driveway with a bow on it).  No investment statements (again paperless, and lately my policy has been to rip them in half and pitch them without looking at them).  I became absolutely obsessed with my lack of legal identity.  Without a 2x3 piece of plastic with my picture on it saying that I am permitted to operate a motor vehicle, I have no way to prove that I truly exist.  Or matter.

I ended up taking a bank statement that I printed out from online, a letter addressed to me from the Woodlake Homeowner's Association telling me that I suck because my kids built a treehouse in our front yard, and a 1.5 year old statement from our bank.  None of these flew.  So I had to sign a paper swearing that they could stick a needle in my eye and take my firstborn child that I am Nancy Renwick Clendenon and that I won't vote twelve times or I'll get a fine of $2500.  And that's when I started crying.  Four kids in tow, and I'm not really a person, citizen, or legal entity.  

And then I walked to the voting booth and couldn't figure out what to do--I could see a pen and a little instruction sheet, but nothing to vote on.  While I was blinking through my tears and crouching down under the desk thingy, everyone kept telling me I just had to fill in the circles with then pen.  What circles?  They forgot to give me a ballot!  

I was late for art class because I was still crying AND I had missed the turn into the correct neighborhood and had to do a complicated U-Turn.  And the art teacher was upset with me for being a few minutes late.  That just got me crying again.  Bad, bad day.

But we did have some fun points.  My intention was to have a little party during the election returns in the evening and buy some red, white, and blue balloons.  I wasn't that organized, though.  Three hours of pottery class and then an hour of jazz dance class and hearing that Frances isn't making progress, and I was wiped out on this day of no sleep.  So we just piled into the bed and colored in our "Color Your Own Electoral Votes Map."  Walter declared that he wanted to do this every year because it was so much fun!  We also took a quiz at www.scholastic.com where you had to guess which candidate held which view on a variety of issues including health care, illegal immigrants, pulling out of Iraq, homeland security, No Child Left Behind, school choice, taxes, and the economy.  And Ollie created his own newspaper article about himself running for president and his platform, based on a series of questions about where he stands on major issues and what his priorities would be.  Surprise, but he wanted to use 100% of his budget on the military.  Reminds me of the boys in my 7th grade history class who formed a team for a class debate called "The Warmongers."  It must be in their blood at that age.

I feel a little silly admitting this, but I was much more affected by the election than I ever anticipated I would be.  Seeing the jubilation in Chicago when it was announced that Obama would be our next President, I found myself with tears in my eyes.  I'm sure a lot of it was just that I was having a fragile day in general, but I was so touched by what this election means to so many Americans.  And I'm not a person who cries at movies or books often (I did sob through the scene in Juno where "Sea of Love" is playing), so this was out of character for me.  It was pretty exciting to experience with the boys, through, because they have been watching the debates, reading news articles, and studying the election process, and they were so aware of what was going on this year.

Totally unrelated notes on reading:  Tonight Frances and I read Gloria's Way, which is by the same author as the book for her book club last month.  It's a short, fun read.  Then we read _The Thanksgiving Story_, which is one of our Sonlight books.  The older boys and I just finished _My Side of the Mountain_ last night, and tonight we read _Stone Fox_.  Super-engaging, short book with a heartbreaking ending.  Ollie has just finished _Meet Thomas Jefferson_, _Star Wars: The Swarm_, and _Julian Rodriguez, Episode 1, Trash Crisis on Earth_.  Alas, Bilbo ate the corners off of the cover of Ollie's favorite book right now, _Diary of a Wimpy Kid_.  Darn dog!

Calm in Chaos

Our new church has a bi-monthly program called Mothers Mentoring Mothers. It's held at the home of a member whose children are grown, and each month there is a cooking demonstration of some sort--this month it was making pie crust and I left with some great tips like rolling the dough between pieces of Saran Wrap, which allows you to keep your counters clean and lets you transfer the crust straight into the pie pan, where you can peel it off like the back of a sticker--and then a presentation by one of the "mentors" whose children are grown, and then small group discussions. Keep in mind that this is the church where nearly 50% of the population is under the age of 10, so there were 18 of us younger mothers and about five or six older (by older we're not talking all that old here!) mothers, so it was a minor crowd for someone's living room! Tonight's general topic was Calm Amid Chaos, and boy did today fit right in. What's pathetic is that there was nothing special about today...just a normal day at home.

Here are a few of the "special" moments:

* Not once, but twice I was sent on a mad dash through the house for immediate changing supplies because (a) I was urgently informed that Rutledge, still naked from his morning frolic in the bathtub, had pooped on a paper towel that was wadded up on his plastic ride-on motorcycle. Truth: false alarm. It was really chewed up Snickers that dribbled from his mouth. But his butt definitely needed some covering. (b) While I was reading to the older boys, Rutledge came in with a reeking diaper (yes, he's only 3.5 months away from his fourth birthday; I am a toilet-training failure). The next thing I knew, there was a vocal ruckus claiming that there was poop on a pillow. Here's how bad things are at my house: I had to ask whether the pillow had a pillowcase. Affirmative. So I tore down the stairs at breakneck speed to get the only wipes I could confidently get my hands on from under the sink in our half bath. Then flew back up the stairs to change the offending diaper, only to find that everything in it was perfectly intact and had not leaked. Once again, a false alarm.

* It was The Day of Unfinished Projects. And yes, I brought them on myself. I can't say no. Frances, on her quest to complete that list of Projects Every Elementary School Student Must Do, wanted to have herself traced on butcher paper today so that she can make organs to place on herself. We made it as far as police outlines taped to the floor, but my three minute web search for some printable organs turned up nothing so far. Crap. We might have to draw them ourselves. Then we moved on to the pumpkins which we scooped out but didn't make faces or carvings on yet. They're waiting to rot and attract bugs on my dining room floor. I started trying to clear out our schoolroom and eating area bookshelves to consolidate our school materials, largely because Ms. Near-Ph.D in lit can't be totally sure of the answers to 7th grade level reading comprehension questions. No, I still haven't found my answer key. And now I have books and papers and folders all over the floor in, count them, three rooms. Then there's the matter of the sugar skulls. See yesterday's post. This morning I scooped out, with nary a regard to the difference between 1/2" and 1/4" (I was supposed to leave at least 1/2" thickness for the skull with my scooping), the fronts and backs of our sugar skulls. There are so, so many of them! I think I'm at 18 now, fronts and backs. There's not an inch left on my breakfast bar for one more square of cardboard (today I went at another cereal box, a macaroni and cheese box, and a stuffing box). The trouble is, you scoop out the skulls, and then you can make more skulls with the scoopings. And then when those dry enough to scoop, you can scoop those and make, you guessed it, more skulls from those scoopings. And so on and so forth.

* Frances and I started a puzzle. Got about 1/3 of the way through it. Then got distracted. Then dinnertime came, and Kerry had Ollie clean up this partially worked puzzle off the floor.

* Walter had a rough day. Too much candy. The banner moment was when he got really, really, angry (remember that book, "When Sophie Gets Angry, Really, Really Angry!"?) at Rutledge for messing up his Lego Mindstorms robot that he started kicking doors, slamming doors, throwing things, and then STANDING ON THE PIANO!!!! I was livid. And not very patient. Not a good mother. He ended up in his room and taking a 30 minute nap, which I'm sure he needed.

* Walter worked on his Mindstorms robot, but then we got all snagged up in the pictographic instructions Lego gives about EVERYTHING. All we needed to know was how to charge the rechargeable battery (we couldn't find anything that looked like an AC adapter to plug the thing in) or how to get the battery cover off of the rechargeable battery so we could put it on over the 6 regular batteries I had to hunt down hither and yon in the house. But alas, Lego uses no words. It's like dealing with a mime. We got it eventually, but not after Walter burst into tears because he had been forced to remove some complicated Technic arms to deal with the power supply issue. The robot was way cool, though. It responds to his voice and darts toward him with surprising speed. We never did get around to loading up the software tutorial, so we haven't been able to do any programming yet.

* Rutledge was in high form today. His big thing now is screaming at me things like, "Stop saying Yes!" when I'm answering his many, many questions. Or screaming at me to, "Talk, Mom! Talk to me!" while I'm driving and he is chattering nonsense or screeching about something. Most of his utterance in the car is screeching. He hates his carseat. He hates the feeling of the seatbelt in his sister's pink carseat (why did I buy him a blue on? He wanted pink!). He hates that I drive at night with the interior lights off and that I won't appease his demand that I turn all lights on so that he can see. "Mom! Mom! It's dark!" He was angry because I wouldn't give him a big bag of acorns to throw around. Because I wouldn't give him more candy (how much candy did my children eat today? The unit of measure would surely be bushels). Because I had gotten another movie in addition to Bee Movie at the library. Because I had checked out anything at all when he didn't want me to check out anything. Because, if the truth be told, it was really 6:30 and not 5:30 p.m. because of the time change, and he was tired. Then he spilled his milk all over my new table runner that doesn't look particularly maching washable. The same table runner that several somebodies chucked pumpkin guts all over yesterday after I told them that no, they could not work on the pumpkins at the table, they had to do it on the floor.

* Frances, bless her heart, just comes up with anything to do but schoolwork. It's okay. I'm not too concerned. She's young. But I feel like I'm teaching in an institute for those with severe ADHD most days. All I wanted was a few minutes of attention to put some dates on a calendar and blow through some pages of Singapore Math. We hadn't looked at this particular book together before, and I thought it would be fun for her. Guess what? She prefers Saxon. What's wrong with the girl?

* Here's what we ate today on my watch: macaroni and cheese AND oatmeal for breakfast (because, you know, some people want oatmeal and some hate it). Candy. Apples. Candy. Our favorite recent delicacy: chicken nuggets done in the oven, not in the microwave. Candy. Stuffing. Candy. Cheese slices. Candy. Vitamins in the disguise of candy. Fruit Roll-Up, the "real" kind that I won't ever buy, because it was part of the Halloween candy that will never disappear.

* Frances got her new team leotard today. It was rather ceremonious how they passed them out to the girls and then they all ran to the bathroom to try them on. Frances, of course, ignored all directions and immediately ripped off all of the tags that had the byzantine washing instructions for these precious, rhinestone-studded showpieces and then threw the bag and tags into the giant trashcan by the door. So I got to hone my dumpster diving skills.

And that's what my day has been like. Hours worth of math procrastination. A big mess wherever I went. A pudding container on its side with a spoon hanging out on our carpeted stairs.

But we also finished My Side of the Mountain tonight. Ollie read the second half of the Star Wars Swarm book club book, so he's done now.

Amid all the chaos, I'm not sure what wisdom can really be found. Or what peace. Perhaps simply getting out for nearly three hours tonight and stepping away from the scene of today's life of crime is as much as one can wish for.

Sweetness

It's been a week of sugar. Yeah, yeah, there has been Halloween. We know about that. Walter was a "rich man," perhaps Bill Gates--at least that's what is on his nametag at this party. Rutledge went from having a pirate costume to being afraid of it to getting back his devil costume from last year to finally declaring that he was going to be "A Star War." In the end, this meant that he would reuse Ollie's Jango Fett jumpsuit from last year and would wear the mask for a grand total of less than one minute. Frances made it easy on us by wearing an old tablecloth with two eye holes cut in it and going as a ghost. And Ollie was Freddy Kruger. We ran around like crazy people looking for a mask on Halloween morning, but since I wasn't willing to pay $20 for an ugly piece of rubber, he settled for using makeup. I think he looked fabulous!


But that doesn't really address the many roles sugar has played in our life this week. There was last week, when we made pyramids and then igloos out of sugar cubes. I determined that this whole Classical Education thing was not entirely working when I was benignly neglecting Frances. When the twins were her age, we were knee deep in listening to the Story of the World CDs and making models of the Nile and mummifying things and doing science experiments with bouncing eggs. But now we were forging forward with our own plans, and Frances wasn't getting to do the projects and the endless listening to the story of Tarak, eating his lizards that served as their foundation for the study of history. Let's just say that the pyramid went a lot better than the igloo. Someone was telling me this week that it is very expensive to build round rooms and round houses, and I can fully understand why. Plus glue plus sugar cubes often equals a puddle.

Then there was the "edible" cell models. We've been attempting to cover Biology in a rather schizophrenic way this year. I almost always refer to books and education materials as "resources" rather than curricula, and this is because my real problem is that I can't make decisions. I'm a low commitment kind of gal these days. I use a little of this, a little of that, and I'm constantly looking for something that will fill things out just a little bit further or offer just a tweak on the perspective. And that is my justification for using, ahem, three separate curricula so far for science this year, and it doesn't even touch on the other books I've pulled in on the side. We started with LifePac Science, which has a bit too fundamentalist bent for my comfort, but it does systematically cover the major topics that one might see on a 4th or 5th grade standardized test and has the kids writing down the vocabulary words that marginally literate people should know when it comes to basic sciences. Walter and Ollie find it deadly dull. I find it often lacking in depth, including even the basics of the type that you'd find in the generalist Seymour Simon or Gail Gibbons picture books. Not that we're not reading those as well, but it makes me realize how much we need to supplement in order for me to feel like we've done justice to the topics. Much of last month was spent on weather--causes of differing weather, fronts, heat and cold and their ups and downs, pressure of various kinds, instruments for measuring various things that affect weather. It was really boring! Now weather could be a very exciting topic, but not in a LifePac. I was eager to move on--draw some diagrams in their notebooks, take some quick tests that say they know enough not to be meteorologically ignorant, and then upward and onward. Back to Biology.

So the topic now is cells. Animal cells and plant cells. Another of our so-called curricula this year is the E=McQ free Life Sciences curricula that I downloaded and printed over the summer. This is much better suited to doing while including Frances, which is appealing, and it introduces just a few more terms than what we've seen elsewhere. So far we're not on cells there, but the focus on biotic vs. abiotic was a start. Then I popped over to my newest acquisition, Real Science 4 Kids Biology. We used this series for Chemistry a few years ago (two years too soon, but I digress...), and the Biology lives up so far to my expectations based on my past experience with this author. Since we've already chugged through quite a bit of the LifePac on cells and have rounded that out a bit with Time4Learning's segments on cells, organelles, and the "building blocks of life," the extra material and its lively presentation in the RS4K book went down well. Plus there was a pleasant diversion with an initial chapter on taxonomy. Ever the comedian, Walter had a great deal to say about old King Philip Came Over From Great Spain. The Kingdom was King Arthur's. What do we do to our nails? Phylum. The Order is a McRib. The Family is the Clendenons. The Genus has an IQ of 150. Ha ha.

But I digress again. The big adventure wasn't what we studied. It was what happened next. Last Thursday evening we made these jello cells. They involved a transparent shade of flavored jello, some Knox gelatine, and a variety of bad pre-Halloween candy.

First, Frances' animal cell cracked in half. So she ate it. Then Ollie's nucleus blew his animal cell apart. Walter had better luck, but overall, the plant cells went a bit more smoothly. For one, we had figured out a better system for implanting organelles at that point. And we also benefitted from the more rigid cell walls that distinguish the plant from the animal cell.

But the true excitement came in the morning, when Frances popped excitedly into my room and announced, while my eyes barely had the sleep rubbed out of them, that she had puked four times during the night. In her room. On the bed and the floor. And she had moved the sleeping Rutledge to the floor to get him out of the way. This followed right on the heels of vomit and dog poop all over Bilbo's crate and the living room floor from Hokie. Anyone who knows me know that this is way too much provoking to me! I responded by cancelling our plans to go to Inflation Nation, the indoor inflatable bouncy monstrosity place I had set up a trip to for our homeschool group. And then I began cleaning. Ten hours later, I was still disinfecting. And ten days later, we've managed to go unscathed by her illness. I'm almost certain that that gelatinous cytoplasm was at the root of the ordeal!

This weekend's sugary moment involved...drumroll please...twenty pounds of sugar. Nearly a cup of meringue powder. For the past two years, we have had a tradition of making sugar skulls to celebrate Day of the Dead. I couldn't let it go by this year without some royal icing, so this afternoon I bought my own sugar skull mold--an XL one--at World of Mirth. In the past, we've used Adena's, so I'm thrilled to have one of my own, but I think I preferred making the Large size instead of this gargantuan one, which takes a lot more raw material than I had bargained for!



This is my base of operations. A teaspoon of meringue powder and of water for every cup of sugar. I didn't have a bowl big enough to prepare the whole bag of sugar at once, so I kept it going six cups at a time.



The sandlike mixture is packed tightly into the skull mold--once for the front and once for the back. After I let them dry overnight on little squares of cardboard on the counter, I will scoop out some of the sugar mixture from the back of the pieces and then allow them to dry for another 12 hours. When that time is up, I'll use cement-like royal icing (powdered sugar, more meringue powder, and water) to glue the two parts together to make a 3-D sugar skull that we will then be able to decorate with more icing, pieces of colored foil, bottle caps, sequins, shells, or whatever we decide to use. When they are dry, they can last for years. If Rutledge hadn't made a snack of our previous ones, we would still have the ones we made at previous co-ops. Unfortunately, all I have left is a smeared half of one on my schoolroom bookshelf.



Here are the blanks, reposing on pizza boxes, stuffing boxes, cereal boxes, and whatever else I could scavenge. Our recycling was picked up on Wednesday, and any boxes that didn't go out with that are being saved to wrap Christmas presents in. I had to get creative!

While we weren't being artistic with sugar, we were on field trips this week. Tuesday we saw the play "Legend of Sleepy Hollow" at Theatre IV, which is the local theatre for children. It was pretty bad. Frances liked it--it was silly. But it completely lacked the spirit--and yea, the pun is intended--of Irving's original story. We've seen a few other live drama productions of Sleepy Hollow over the years, including an awesome one at Explore Park on the Blue Ridge Parkway that was done outdoors and included a great deal of memorable music. But this particular prodution belabored the less-important details of the story, took some liberties not exactly implied by the author, and most of all, wasn't creepy. Hmmm.

Thursday we traveled to Mount Vernon. Can you believe that I've lived in Virginia for 36 years and I've never been to Washington's home? It is a full-day affair. There was an engaging introductory movie, an anticipatory line to buy tickets to the whole shebang in the first place, and a pretty amazing model of Washington's actual house that had walls that moved up and down so that you could see the perfectly scaled and detailed interior. I think the kids enjoyed the food court most, with its historically accurate Pizza Hut and 32 ounce soft drinks. We added on a "National Treasure Tour" to our regular ticket, and this got us into the basement of Mount Vernon as well as took us on a walking tour of the grounds to all of the places where the movie was filmed, with commentary on the historical accuracy of what was portrayed, how the Mount Vernon Ladies Association or whatever it is called that owns the property communicated with the Walt Disney company about how they could use the property, and gave us stunning views of the Potomac.


It was a chilly and windy day, but the turning leaves were inspiring.


But not quite as inspiring to 10 year old boys as this: a 3 person privy with wooden drawers underneath that could be taken out and emptied. This was a pretty state of the art privy for its day because it represented centralized sanitation set apart from the house. Their friend was especially repelled by the group aspect of the layout.


Everyone needs a photo prove that they were really there. In this one, the house looks more proportional than it does to me in real life. Up close, it looked a little, well...short. Like a model of a house instead of a whole one. It must have something to do with those second story windows that go right up to the roof. Some of the interior highlights include the very fashionable green room (I'm so glad that this is not the vogue these days--I can't stand when molding is painted as well as the walls!) and the bed where Washington died. We had just seen Jefferson Davis' house the week before, so the continual question the boys had, as they did there, was, "Is this the original ____." Imagine that repeated over and over and over again. What's neat is that Mount Vernon has been working tirelessly to acquire as many of the original items in the inventory in the house as possible--many were sold at estate sales when George and Martha died or were pilfered over the years.


The formal gardens and fruit orchard were not of interest to my world-weary historical house tourists. But they were heartily impressed by the very large trees, including some stunning tulip poplars on the property. When we were at a wedding reception at Washington's River Farm, which is down the street from Mount Vernon, there were only two trees there that were original to Washington's time, and both were the dreaded Black Walnut. I say dreaded because for several years I did battle with a large and violent black walnut in our yard on Sherwood Avenue. I hated that thing! Darn rock-hard nuts with sharp points that embed in your yard and stab your feet when you think you've picked every last one of them up!


And finally, we had a good time Saturday night at the fall festival held by our church. The site where it was held was perfect--many acres for hayrides behind the tractor (all you need is a 3 year old boy to access the deep appeal of this again!), a gladiator moon bounce that could hold about 30 kids at once (this is a church with about 25 kids ages 3-5, not to mention the many on either side of that), a chili cookoff, a bonfire and marshmallows, and plenty of friends. So even though we didn't make it to a pumpkin patch this year, I do feel like we lived fall to its fullest so far. Now if only the leaves would come off the trees!

Mini Semester Two

It seems like even though we aren't in "school," we do have a session demarcation that develops on its own. And this is the start of our new mini-semester, it would seem. Our Young Rembrandts art class is over and the 5 week pottery session is about to begin. The Edison Project class Walter was taking at www.quickstudylabs.com ended last week (but ended for him a mere two days ago because he was out of town for the final week of the distance learning class), and the new one begins tomorrow. And this week we sign up for the next session at the Richmond Enrichment Studio, which is a homeschool center. We still have two weeks left of the current 8 week session, but the changing of the guard is in sight.

It has finally been seasonal here. Tonight we expect a freeze, and because we're resistant to turning on our heater quite yet, it's a wee bit freezing here in our house. Walter, Rutledge, and I celebrated the season by going to Carter Mountain Orchard in Charlottesville. The orchard, which is about 90 seconds away from Monticello and Ashlawn-Highland, is your typical tourist craziness--thousands of families, well-coordinated and extensive parking direction, twenty checkouts, cutouts to stick your face in for pictures. You get the idea. We had a great time. And we came home with 20 pounds of apples. Tomorrow the big plan is to make an apple pie. Only 80 more apples to go after that!


The Fujis were especially elusive. What more excuse do you need to find in a niche in the canopy?


Apple cider doughnuts by the half-dozen, still warm. With apple slushies. With your 22 pounds of apples. Ahh, the good life.


Fall is for hayrides. You know, I think that when I was growing up I might never have been on a hayride. Or maybe once at a weekend camp I went to at a horse ranch. But I don't even remember. My kids? They're on a hayride every time they turn around in the fall and spring. Walter and Rutledge especially enjoyed seeing the top-secret apples not for public picking and consumption. I vetoed walking a mile with three elbow-wrenching bags of Granny Smith's to try to sneak a few contraband pieces of fruit.



Overall, though, this was a relaxing weekend at home. Walter and Frances went to a sleepover at a neighbor's house, and Frances went to watch her friend cheerleading and her friend's brother playing football. She went to a mock-sleepover birthday party on Friday night. In the midst of the playing, we also managed to read two short but satisfying stories about the Mayflower and the first Thanksgiving, numerous picture books, a short book about George Washington, and more than half of the Great Illustrated Classics _Captains Courageous_. Ollie and I are still in the middle of _Five Children and It_, Ollie is reading the second in the Gregor the Overlander series, and we have _The Cat Who Went to Heaven_, another Newbery winner, on the docket for tomorrow night. Frances rewrote, in her own special way, the story of Rumplestiltskin, which I transcribed onto notecards that she bound together and plans to illustrate.

Walter and Ollie worked together to make a "sweeper," which is the first project in the new Lego Science and Technology set that came in the mail last week. I'll have to write more later about what a cooperative venture looks like between the two of them.



This particular project was called "Circus Magna." Two different circus tricks are either "attractive" or "repellant." In the first, a man flips from a platform on the tower and lands on a target after the car drives through. In the second, which you see above and below, a jump seat is picked up by a car as it drives under the tower. The next step was to build a counter that will record the number of times the trick is performed.

I think it's official--Suburban Season is over for me.  I played my last game of the fall season this morning, and, well...the less said the better.  I was on a total winning streak at our new B3 level, which was a considerable jump from our previous C1 Bumped To C2.  For the first three engagements, I was on top of the world--doubling up playing both singles and doubles and winning both.  Then, a combination of Peter Principling and tougher opponents knocked me back into my place.  This morning I lost 8-2 to a very nice woman.  And then Kate and I lost 10-5 in doubles.  I had a migraine last night and this morning, and I took Maxalt and was far-off spacey, had spots in front of my eyes, and didn't have the oomph to get the ball over the net during my first match this morning.  Things were better, but obviously not good enough in the second match.  Next week we are going to the Museum of the Confederacy for a program on daily life for soldiers and on medical procedures, including amputation.  I'm really excited, and the kids will have a great time, too, but it does go to show that my motto is mostly true:  "Every week is special."  You can try not to book too many things, but special opportunities will come up, and sure enough, they do!

I'm doing my darndest to potty train Rutledge now.  I've been on a bit of a low lately--wallowing a little more than is mentally healthy in my "We've been rejected by our families."  I've also been feeling my lack of wage earning and the social status of stay at home mothers--I'm feeling like I've taken a heavy dose of not being a wage earner, not having a very attractive resume, and not contributing to my community.  And a bit of self-pity because my children are numerous and challenging.  We're not at our personal best these days--loud toddler, sullen or bored ten year olds, impatient 7 year old.  And then me.  

My emotions have also been given a churn by the death of our neighbor across the street during the night on Monday.  I woke up at 2:45 a.m. to the sound of a generator on fire engines and ambulances.  Two fire engines (including a hook and ladder arriving more than 45 minutes after the ambulance), two ambulances, and three police cars ended up on the scene before all of the lights and sounds left.  I realized the next morning that perhaps why it affected me so much, since I didn't know the woman at all, not even her name, was that it was the exact day of the 6th anniversary of my Mom's death.  Which would probably explain why I was so unexpectedly broken up by some random song on XM Village about "wanting to see my mother's smile again."  And it's probably behind some of my questioning of whether she'd be ashamed of what I've done with my life or proud of me.  I suspect she would at least act as if she was proud of me, even if deep down she was thinking, "What a miserable waste of space!  Playing tennis and taking kids to the park and driving back and forth to a zillion activities that aren't even her own!"  I miss having that kind of at-least-on-the-surface nonjudgmental support from someone who loves me just the way I am.  

Today was one of those days when I left the house at quarter til nine in the morning and didn't return until 8:15.  It's rough being away for almost 12 hours.  I found myself at our Community Group still in my Cheeto-stained tennis clothes.  It was all good stuff--3 hours of tennis, 1 hour of travel time and lunch, 2.25 hours at the park, 1.5 hours knitting at gymnastics, 1 hour of travel time picking up Ollie and buying some supplies for a history project, a plant, and dinner, and then 30 minutes of travel slush time, a little over an hour at Community Group.  But I'm exhausted.  

We're back on task at Latin class tomorrow.  It's always a little bit stressful because the boys' behavior in there hasn't been the best in the past.  But we waded through the homework from the week they missed and I think they're picking up the concept of person and number.  I hadn't remembered how new those concepts felt to me even as far as 8th grade, when I first started in Latin and realized that I don't think we had ever covered names for the pronouns or nouns that the verbs were agreeing with.  It was eye opening.  So I'm sympathetic with Walter and Ollie's initial confusion.  Alas, this coming week we have both the irregular verb "to be" to learn and the endings for first declension.  I anticipate lots of memorization singing in the next few days.

And we are woefully behind on our online German program at www.livemocha.com.  They really like the visual aspect of it, and I think it's a great way to begin learning a language without feeling a burden of heavy grammar concepts.  That's on the growing list of plans I have for what I'd like for us to keep up with that I'm not quite keeping up with.  Our Lego Science and Technology set came on Monday, and I haven't even had time to look at it.  I think it will take about 45 minutes to do a lesson, but we need to find a 45 minute time block somewhere that isn't spoken for.  And amazingly, that's increasingly difficult to do.  

This reminds me that I need to RSVP for a birthday party Frances has been invited to for Friday.  And I need to get a gift.  And I need to get the twins started on making their cars for the Cub Scout Derby Saturday.  

Boy have we been busy!  I had a more supposedly more stringent Fewer-Field-Trips stance this year, but lo and behold, we haven't stuck very well to it.

For the past 11 days, the boys have been out of town riding the Virginia Creeper Trail, going to a barn party, camping at Hungry Mother State Park, and skating at the skate park in Lynchburg.  Annie and Tim came to get them last weekend, and despite a minor episode of a stomach bug earlier in the week, it seems like everyone had a great time.  I'll probably be getting some pictures soon, but the highlight of the trip seemed to be seeing a very cute dachshund puppy on the drillfield at Virginia Tech.  Some other moments I've heard about:  a strange conversation with a women at the state park whose husband has depression issues; a head-on car crash that they witnessed; not liking beets (too sweet, Walter said); a bike debacle involving a large rock; 17 miles "all downhill," in their words.  I'm just glad to have them back.

Frances and I have been doing a lot of reading, which explains why I haven't done a lot of blogging.  The days just aren't long enough.  With the lesser chaos of only two children this week, the focus turned from the twins to Frances.  I had never read a chapter book with her, and to exonerate myself somewhat, I should mention that she has never shown interest in joining our nightly reading.  In fact, it's just in the past two or three weeks that Walter has started participating.  In the past, he has gone off to play with his Legos or has simply been in some kind of brown study, not listening or paying attention.  I've had to change my book selection a little bit in order to keep him and now Frances with us, but it's a change for the good, and perhaps it will spur Ollie to do more reading on his own, which it has (he just finished the 4th in the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series, _Outcast_).   

Here is a list of what Frances and I read while the boys were gone:

*  My Father's Dragon

*  Elmer and the Dragon

*  The Dragons of Blueland

*  The Mouse and the Motorcycle

*  The Magic Finger

*  Gloria Rising

Now we're reading _George's Marvelous Medicine_, which she is loving.  Prior to the Annie and Tim trip, we were on a Henry Huggins streak here, following a long spate of Ramona books.  We're also in the midst of Old Yeller, which was for the book club that we can't seem to get to because it falls on the week of each month that we've managed to be out of town.

Yesterday was a PauWau in Powhatan, which was both interesting in itself and interesting in my children's response.  Now Rutledge's opinion doesn't count for much--he's just along for the ride.  But Frances was ready to go almost from the moment we arrived.  I have to find myself wondering whether they've been jaded by too many field trips.  Pau Waus (what's up with the spelling?), dance festivals, theatre performances, historic houses, Colonial towns, museums, classes on science, art, music, etc., etc.--they've just seen it all, often multiple times.  Their primary question now tends to center around how long it's going to take to get to the location of whatever it is.  Annoying.  Though maybe it's good to be so immersed in so many experiences that they start to feel very "normal."  

I was pleased to hear that Ollie watched the presidential debate on Tuesday evening.  The whole time I was watching it, I was thinking that Ollie needed to be in on this, and I missed being able to talk to him about it.

Thursday Rutledge, Frances, David, and I went on a tour of the Bon Air Fire Station.  I've seen tons of fire stations in my time, so it was interesting but not earth-shattering to me.  I think David had the best time of all.  Rutledge was a bit nervous...fire departments do have this thing about water, you know.  

Alas, I did not have our new telephoto and macro lens for our camera when we went to all of these events.  And I did not take it along to the Richmond Folk Festival when we went last night.  I wanted to travel exceptionally lightly--my only concession was for our water bottles.

This might be a good moment to say how easy it is to have only two children!  Unbelievable.  It's hard to even begin to say where the comparative simplicity begins.  Less noise.  Even with Rutledge being in a generalized bad place with frustration tolerance and anger management, it was still so much quieter and more calm with just two children.  There was less fighting, less intentional aggravation of each other.  When I was trying to read, there was infinitely less disruption.  I was on top of the laundry, on top of the dishes, and the house was relatively clean.  I had some extra time and energy for larger scale cleaning projects (putting out of season or hand me downs that are too big into plastic tubs, cleaning the twins' room).  I just felt more sane.  And let me say now, the moment the twins came back the mess began.  The kitchen was pretty spotless.  They came, and suddenly there was doughnut powder all over the floor, stuff all over the counters, spilled food, clothes dumped here and there, and plastic weapons in all the wrong rooms.  And the bickering, antagonizing, and general noise level...yikes!

Kerry is out of town at the Men's Retreat at the new church we've been attending.  I am so guilty of always looking for greener pastures, and I'm kind of hating myself right now for putting myself in this position again.  Our old church misses us, but for whatever reason, I've found myself searching out other options for years while we were there, and I'm sure there's no perfect place, but I feel like my roving nature is probably some cover for some deeper character flaw.  I hope Kerry is having a good time, though.  He'll be home tomorrow.

Tomorrow is incredibly full--church in the morning, dive practice in the early afternoon, I need to figure out how to get a birthday gift for a party we're going to at 5, and I'd like to get the other kids to the folk festival again for part of the afternoon.  I don't know when Kerry will be back, and he's out of cell phone range, so I'll have to see how it all pans out in terms of logistics.

Right now I'm watching a show on Animal Planet called Dogs 101, and I'm finding, as always, that I wish that the boys were awake.  They would love this!  And although we have a DVR downstairs, I can barely figure out how to even turn on our complicated TV/Fios/Playstation 3 system, so I doubt I'll ever figure out how to put something semi-permanently in the electronic ether on the fly.  

Oh, I forgot--the most exciting part of the week for Ollie was shooting a real BB gun.  If he can take a hunting safety course, WT will take him hunting this year.  He has declared that he's not too interested in pheasant, but is feeling ready to confront a deer or a bear.  Hmmm.  We'll see how that goes.

And we've had a lot of hamster drama (or, as Rutledge calls them, Hampers).  For Frances' 7th birthday two weeks ago, I got her the world's cutest hamster.  She really was adorable--small, fuzzy, and even Ollie, who isn't prone to this type of thing, said we should call it "Ms. Snugglewumps."  Well, to make a long story short, Ms. Snugglewumps, quickly renamed "Screamy," had some serious anxiety and defensiveness issues.  We endured three very difficult days with her--I never knew that a hamster could scream!  The final straw was a four hour stalking in my bedroom, including deep under the bed chase.  She was shrieking, expressing her scent glands, and prepared to bite the heck out of our fingers.  Not surprisingly, it was Walter who eventually caught her, and when he did, we sent her right back to Petco where we had bought her.  It turned out that Petco had been having some strong responses to this particular litter of hamsters, and the very knowledgeable small animal representative there suggested we go to Petsmart, which she said had more child-friendly rodents.  Enter Hamster #2, whose lack of a name constitutes some foreshadowing.  This charming male, who loved being handled and was friendly and kind, suddenly and unexpectedly kicked the bucket two days ago.  He was given a proper burial in the backyard in our, alas, growing animal graveyard, only to be dug up again today by Bilbo.  Sigh.  Meanwhile, we have hamster #3, who I am terrified about at this point.  We have an increasingly shocking track record with small animals.  I fear that one of our hermet crabs has expired now, and I'm not sure why--I can see they aren't thriving, but I'm at a loss in figuring out what to do about it.  They have a new cage, plenty of stimulating things to do, two different kinds of hermit crab "variety" meal, fresh vegetables at times, water, a sponge, have been given baths, and yet they aren't moving unless we poke at them.  I want our pets to be happy, and I worry that something about us is simply toxic.

And in the meantime, Bilbo ate a chunk out of our older leather sofa today.  Older means 6 years, not ancient.  And it was already falling apart on its own and Bilbo has enjoyed pulling the stuffing out of the open area in the past.  Today added in the ripping of, as Ollie calls it, genuine cowhide.  

And this is probably enough for now.  We've been out and about as much as ever, and yet at the same time trying to balance out some time at home for playing as well.  October is always not exactly the cruellest month, but it is probably yearly our busiest.