Leaving Oz

Halloween Aftermath

The week after we went trick or treating, I noticed Rex was a bit off.  He was more fragile, whinier, touchier, and hadn't eaten more than two bites of any meal.  Yes, he went trick or treating.  Yes, we allow the kids to take one or two candies from the bag during the day.  No, we don't lock the bags up or store them in high places where they can't be reached.  The cute felt bags which their grandmother had given them this year were in full view and very accessible in our kitchen. 

I felt the honor code was working well.  They asked me if they could have a treat, and I would either say yes or no.  Accordingly, they would eat or not eat.  At least, that is what I thought...

My Son Broke My Mom's Nose

Our much anticipated visit to my parents' home at the end of September was fraught with one challenge after another.  About ten days before I was to leave for Ohio, I had arguably the biggest fight with my mom that I've had since living outside of her house.  Raised voices, locked doors, hanging up on one another... it was bad.  I almost cancelled the trip, but I knew that would be a mistake made in the heat of my emotion. 

Then, after my mother and I reconciled which was a small miracle (thank you, Lord!), the power went out in my parents' home for seven days.  Every day, I would call, as the date for our departure drew nearer, and ask, "Is it on yet?" 

And she would reply, "Not yet.  Maybe tomorrow." 

Planning for the School Year

Many of my friends and neighbors are zipping up the backpacks, labeling the jackets and packing up their children's lunches as school starts this week in our community.  As for our family, we just finished up school year 07-08 the last week of July, and I breathed a very short sigh of relief as my final attendance records, evaluation forms and report cards were all sent in to my host school. 

It's been a working summer for us.  Any week when we didn't have a summer camp or visitors we spent measuring perimeters, reading about the Good Queen Bess, or practicing the piano.  I feel so ready for a vacation, but now is the time to plan for the upcoming scholastic year.

Love Notes

Every so often, I will wander over to my bed at the end of a too-long day and wonder if anything at all worthwhile got accomplished in the last 20 hours.  Then I will find a colorful pencil drawing with a note on my pillow telling me I am loved. The kids get so excited about these notes and will often tell me as soon as they have delivered their missive onto the bed.  But even though I have been forewarned, I am still pleasantly surprised to find the letter, and sit contentedly on the side of my bed to examine the child's drawing and read the caring message.

One such evening, I found not one but two love letters, and decided to write them back.  Shocking that that thought never crossed my mind before.  The kids were playing with their Papa, and so I had time to scribble out a few lines to each of my four children and place the notes on their pillows before they went to bed.  I waited in eager anticipation for them to discover the little slips of paper.

The Birds, the Bees, and the Silkworms

Against my better judgment, or at least my self-serving nature, I found myself driving to a fellow homeschooling mom's house to pick up silkworms.  She had called me up and invited me to take some of the worms off her hands, and although I protested politely, she was very persuasive.  The kids, having recently lost their pet fish, were beside themselves with excitement.

We brought our share of worms home along with a week's supply of mulberry tree leaves, and I banished the whole colony to our playhouse in the backyard.  They were fascinating in a gross way.  Pale white and as long and wide as my pinky fingers, they ambled around the cardboard bin, chomping away at the leaves. 

The lifecycle of a silkworm moves along at a good pace: larva, pupa, moth, reproduction, eggs.  The children watched daily and made new and interesting observations.  They even named all the worms, although I'm not certain how they were able to keep track of them.  Nana was the baby silkworm, and my girls held it aloft on their finger and petted it, cooing at the white worm friend.

Achieving on the Stanford Achievement Test

As a homeschooling mom, there are different ways for me to assess how my children are learning. For reading, I listen to them read. For spelling, we work on phonograms and spelling lists. I can tell at the end of the week what Charlie knows how to spell and what he doesn’t. For math, there are assessments every five lessons as well as fact drills. For history and science, I mostly ask them what they remember from the lesson or the reading. I have mental tabs on how fluently they’re reading, what spelling words continually trip them up, and what facts just won’t stick.

We play an “I’m thinking of a historical figure who…” game when we’re waiting for our meal at restaurants, and often they can come up with the name or some semblance of it with enough clues. However, for the big picture, to see how my students fare in the “real world” of education, I rely on the SATs, the Stanford Achievement Test.

We have only taken this test for two years, and only my eldest has gone in to sit for the three hours at a time for three days with the other students who are also enrolled in the Independent Studies Program (ISP) of a particular private school in the South Bay. And every year, my husband and I wait for the results with bated breath. Why? Because we want to see how Charlie is doing; we want to see what the weak and strong areas may be. We want to see how we may have to tweak the program in the coming year. At least that’s what we tell ourselves.

Causing a Scene at Trader Joe's

If you were at Trader Joe'€™s in a certain town in the South Bay on a Thursday, you may have heard an irate mother yelling at a stranger and causing quite a scene. That would have been me. Yes, I turn about three different shades of red when I think about the incident, a combination of embarrassment, humiliation and indignation. Here is what happened.

My sister moved into the Bay Area very recently.  I was at Trader Joe's (not my local neighborhood store, thank goodness) getting groceries to stock up her fridge like a nice big sister. It was late afternoon, and the kids had been running errands with me the whole day. I told them they could each choose a little pick-me-up snack in the store. My oldest, Charlie, picked grapes (he's always so good).  My twins, Frances and Esther, had chosen buttery madeleines (they got that from me).  My youngest, Rex, snagged a bag of sugar-free chocolate chip cookies (huh?).

While I was on the phone with my sister getting her grocery order, I took the sugar-free cookies and exchanged them for the full-flavor variety, which seemed in the best interests of his toddler taste buds.

This did not go over well with Rex.