Learning about time ...

When he was about five years old, TJ, my eldest son, wondered whether I remembered dinosaurs and saber tooth tigers. I was a baby myself at the time - - not yet 30 -- and I was half appalled and half amused.

Then I remembered asking my mother (we were probably around the same ages) whether she remembered settling the old west. Hmm.

Jack is far too sophisticated to make the mistake his brother did. He knows full well that dinosaurs were around long before people existed. He has learned a lot about the evolution of people from Australopithecus Africanus through Homo Sapiens, and he has learned about the diaspora of Homo Sapiens out of Africa and over the planet, encountering our older cousins the Neanderthals when we reached Europe.

But his mind is whirling as he tries to put it all in perspective. It came out last night.

"Mamma, was your father a hunter?"

"Well, sort of; my father hunted once a year for fun".

"Was your grandfather a hunter?"

"No, both of my grandfathers were farmers. Why?"

"I'm thinking about homo sapiens hunters"

"Ahh, I see. Are you asking me when humans were hunter gatherers? Trying to understand time and learn what happened when?"

Big grin "Yes!"

"Ahh, well, my grandfathers were born during a time we call the Industrial Revolution. That was many years after we started the "Agricultural Age" when we started farming. Before that, people were hunter-gatherers. A loooong time ago. (gesturing with my hands.)"

"When we get back, we'll put up the timeline and start putting up pictures for everything we know, OK? We'll put pre-dinosaurs over near the basement door, and Jack right on the edge of the timeline over near the china cabinet, and then we'll put in different things as we learn about them -- OK? Sound good?"

Beaming "Yeah!"

And then we were on to watching Jack squeeze the juice out a green bean and a discussion of table manners.

Now, does anyone know of a good Ancient Greek language curriculum for tiny tots, similar to Minimus for Latin?

Do you know TED?

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. They now have a great web site on which I can spend hours exploring ideas through their videos of TED talks.

Everyone from Clifford Stoll, to Amy Tan, to Jill Bolte Taylor, to Stephen Hawking, to Michael Pollen holds forth on the subject of their passion for about 15 minutes and I walk away with a whole new view of the world.

You explore the talks based on a number of sort -- most recent, of course, most beautiful, most jaw dropping, most persuasive ... and a number of others.

It's great fun!!

Still the Long Distance Grandma

I've written before about the challenges of having your heart walking around (in the form of your children and grandchildren) on another continent.

I continue to read everything I can get my hands on, and the ideas continue to be focused on the Grandmas who live 80 miles from the grandbabies and are fretting because they can't pick them up from school or babysit for them a couple of times a week. I'd love to be able to record stories and then send the file and the book so the children can hear me read it to them...but I can't read Swedish well enough and they don't speak English!

I'd love to send a package of delightful surprises once a week -- but that quickly becomes very expensive! (A fat letter can cost $4 -- can you imagine how much a pair of mugs and some instant cocoa and a book would cost?!?!)

A few of the books do have some good ideas, but mainly it seems to come back to writing letters. If you don't speak the same language as your grandchildren, then a translator is immensely helpful -- maybe critical. Even though I speak a tiny bit of Swedish, as Bella got older, I felt more and more limited by having to stick with topics I knew the words for. My wonderful translator, Johanna, has been helping me since last June and after a year, I am starting to be able to "hear" how my "voice" sounds in Swedish. I can even pick through old letters and adapt phrases to send short notes between my monthly letters, which increases my ability to be "in touch".

But after a year of chatting about the routines of my life, I find myself getting repetitive and I started to wonder what to write about next...I can only hold the children's interest with planting a garden and canning and building snowmen for so long. I can discuss the books Jack and I are reading, but many of those haven't been translated into Swedish and so they are of limited interest. And always writing about books gets dull, dull, dull. I write about some holidays ... especially the ones we celebrate that Swedes don't.

And of course, when I can get an anecdote out of Grandfather or Mamma or Pappa, I comment on that, but it's relatively rare -- certainly, I don't have an anecdote to work with once a month! (If you're a young parent, please don't put your parents, your children's grandparents, in this position. It may seem of limited interest that your child is on a 'pirates' kick or can name all the numbers up to 20 -- but, honestly, it's the stuff of life for a grandma!)

One thing I have carried away from all of those books on grand parenting, though, is the important role a grandparent has in a child's life. We are the keepers of the family history and our traditional role has been to pass that along. Having a strong sense of history and a strong sense of belonging to one's family grounds a young person, gives them confidence, and helps to protect them from the emotional battering that ordinary life can impose. I am not a psychologist, so I can't speak to the long term effects of knowing their family story has on a child. I can say, though, that if you as the grandparent don't tell those stories, who will? Will you allow your family's stories to be lost forever?

I wasn't able to share much of my family's history with my older children. At 30, I really didn't have much idea myself. In the decades since, though, I have been investigating, collecting, and recording those stories I can find. I started this new project of sharing my family history on Mother's day this year by recounting just a bit about *my* grandmothers for my grandchildren. I also made a small "scrapbook" by folding a few sheets of paper and sewing them together by hand with great big stitches. Then I cut out the part of my letter that was about each grandmother and pasted it, alongside a few photos, into the scrapbook, with comments about what they were seeing in the photos. In November, when my babies will celebrate Fathers' day, I will do the same for my grandfathers. Later, I'll do a book for each of my parents. (I know a lot more about them) and eventually, I will tell the tales I have heard about other ancestors, so those stories aren't lost completely. That's a good start -- but it's only few letters and we'll have covered what I know.

So, I kept looking.

That's when I remembered The Remembering Site! The Remembering Site is a non-profit initiative that lets anyone create an online autobiography by answering a series of questions. It costs $25 for a lifetime membership, and when you're done, you can e-mail your story, print it out at home, or you have have it printed and bound for a reasonable fee.

I started recording my memories there years ago to "someday" have printed as book for my children and grandchildren, but it occurred to me that the memories don't have to be in the form of book! The site consists of thousands of questions that you can use as a springboard in telling your story, and those questions can be used just as easily as a springboard for letters! (I can even paste the contents of the letters into my biography and get the two goals met at once!)

Of course, the rest of the letter can be more chatty and less important and when there is something more immediate to write about, I'll write about that -- but those memories will make the letters worth saving! As the kids get older, the letters will mean even more to them.

I am feeling a lot happier about my ability to forge a real relationship with my children's children... I still wish we could communicate more directly, but I am also working on that. Jack and I are studying Swedish using Rosetta Stone. So far I can talk about being under an airplane or over a horse...but eventually I hope to be able to use it to actually have a conversation. ;)

Smiffy's Herbal: Blood Root

I managed to ask the right friend, and we have identified our new discovery as blood root.

We missed our chance to photograph it open, because it opened one day and was pollinated and gone the next, but Rod assures me that it does indeed look like the pictures in the books for the 15 minutes it's open.

We've researched it and found that blood root is also called Pauson, Red Paint Root, Red Puccoon, Tetterwort, King Root, and sanguinaria.

It's a perennial, so we can expect it to reappear every year and (hopefully) spread. The root can be used a red dye or stain, and it has medicinal uses, such as in a poultice for sores and excema. It shouldn't be eaten or used in tisanes except by a very experienced herbalist since the proper dose is minute and slightly more than that can be fatal.

Ruled by Mars, and its element is fire. Not surprisingly, it's very protective -- a good thing to have growing around the periphery of our land! The biggest, reddest roots can be used (carried or worn) to draw love or to deflect negativity.

This has been so much fun that I've started exploring a lot of our green neighbors and I am working on Smiffy's Herbal. Not being an herbalist myself, its all going to be very derivative, but it's a start.

We have also hired an herbalist friend, Linda, to come over and guide us on an hour-long herb walk of our land in June. It's an open party, so if you live nearby let us know if you wan to come along. (Linda hasn't said yet how much she charges, but we'll let you know if you voice an interest.)

Germination problem solved?

I may have found another problem I had with germination this year, thanks to my friend, sweet Celeste.

Celeste and Dame and Grandpa John were over yesterday to help close out Jack's birthday week. (We were supposed to go to the zoo, but it was cold and wet and not zoo-like weather at all, so we went to the Dinosaur museum and then came to Chez Smiffy for dinner.) At one point during the afternoon, Celeste and I started talking about gardening, and as she desriberd her new "baby greenhouse" it dawned on me ...

Last year, I used those tiny peat pots, and I put them in a covered lettuce box to keep them warm and damp.

This year I used bigger containers and didn't put them in anything. They may have simply been too cold! So, I plan to rush out and cover the new plants from this weekend and see what happens. (Since I used fairly large cow-poop pots this time I'll need a solution other than lettuce boxes, but I'll think of something.)

Fitness Update
In other news, evidently my walking, though not as regular as I'd like, is enough to make a difference.

Uncharacteristically for me, I was quick and energetic all though the trip to the dinosaur museum! It actually felt good to be striding around. I haven't felt that way since last fall!

As I remember, this was what inspire me to get more regular in my walking last years, so here's hoping.

Thank you notes and kids...

It's that time again ...

With birthdays, comes the writing of thank you notes.

I think that getting into the habit of writing thank you notes is a very important thing for a young person. The younger we start writing them, the less daunting they are.

I am convinced that a part of the the reason so many people think with horror about writing their 'thank yous' -- and then end up postponing it forever, is because no one expects Thank You notes until suddenly, at age 8 or 9, we are handed cards and told that now we have to figure out how to write a formal Thank You notes. If we're lucky, we get a book to crib from.

That's not fair! What should take a few moments and a reflection on the kindness of a loved one becomes a horrible chore. There is a very simple form that makes it easy -- and with a bit of practice, we can embellish the form to make it very personal. But we have to be taught how!

Jack has been writing his thank yous pretty much from the time he could make an impression on paper. His first "thank you notes" were scrawls of crayon on a card to which Mamma added a handwritten "thank you". Then came the elaborate sticker creations to which I added Jack's dictated thank yous.

Once he was old enough to understand the concept (around his third birthday, I think) we started working on form. One day, it will be important to hand write his thanks, but at the moment, Jack doesn't write yet so we're using the computer. Much better to focus on the parts that he can learn reasonably easily and add the others parts as he develops. I never want him to think of this as difficult!

There are several standard parts to a thank you letter, and I coach Jack through each one. The nature of these things is that we do one after another, so he gets to practice what he's (re)learned several times.

First, we assemble the gifts. Next Jack picks one up (and if there were several from the same giver, he gathers all of them in one stack.)

I write "Dear" and I ask him who the gift is from. He tells me and I repeat "Dear Grandpa John".

Then I write 'Thank you for the" and I ask him what Grandpa John gave him, and we write down the name of the gift(s) and I read the whole letter to Jack.

"Dear Grandpa John, thank you for the Winnie the Pooh book."

Next, I ask Jack what he likes best about the gift, and we write that down. "I really like the pictures in this book!"

Then, I read the whole thing back to Jack and ask him if there's anything else that he wants to say...if there is, we add that (this is often moderately incoherent at the moment, but it's his letter. As long as the basics are there, I stay out of his way.)

Then we add another thank you "Thank you so much for remembering my birthday!"

and the signature "Love, Jack"

and we're done. I still do *a lot* of coaching, but because it's easy, we can do all of his notes in a half hour. (Cut and paste the first letter, delete the details, pick up the next gift and discuss it and add the new details...et voila!)

This way, Jack is learning the form for thank you notes, the idea that they're easy and reasonably quick to write -- and most of all, he is learning to think about the people who love him enough to give him gifts and about the effort they put into picking a gift especially for him.

Gratitude is good -- but if we don't express it, it's impotent. Everyone wants to be thanked! It's not hard to do...you just have to know the trick!

Now that he's older, it's time to start reading my own thank you notes to him, so that he can get the idea that once the forms are in place, we can embroider them to make them our very own! I think that birthdays are a good time to start that, because he won't be making an immediate comparison to his own notes like he would at Yule.

Happy Fifth Birthday, Jack!

Edited to add: No, that cake isn't pink. That, sir, is a Blueberry cake with blueberry frosting, decorated with dried blueberries and blueberry jam. Pink! Indeed!! *chuckle* Ok, so I failed to realize that blueberry juice in amounts small enough not to make a runny mess o the friosting ewas going to be pink. Jack liked it.

We had our first barbecue of the season yesterday, in honour of Jack's fifth birthday. Turnout was light -- and we had a blast!

Jack and the beanstalk

In other news, I have a chance to audition my photography to show locally. I have been pondering whether to do it or not and keep coming back to "Yeah, but none of it is 'presentation ready', and I don't want to spend the money...and then be stuck with large, display ready pieces afterward." Of course selling just a few pieces could pay for the printing and matting. Selling a few more could actually turn a profit. But...what's the chances of that? I'm still thinking. ;) But it looks like a few pieces may be picked up for publication in a small homeschooling magazine. That's fun!

The Mothers Day cards are coming along -- two are ready to go, so I guess my muse is back. And to help her along, a friend of mine loaned me an Accu-cut last night. I'm not sure how long I'll have it to play with, but I am, needless to say, immensely excited!

A different friend has lots a lot of weight recently and gave me some of her cast-offs. Thing is, S has far better taste than I will ever have. The clothes are front office-quality and look great (and very professional) on me. Every time I wear something to work, several people comment positively. That has been such a boost to me confidence!

Speaking of work...I'm not sure where the time went, but it's time I was in the shower!

Homeschooling Update

Jack turns five next week, and as his birthday has gotten closer and closer, we have seen all the signs that he's getting more ready for more organized schooling.

His awareness of the world has expanded amazingly, as has his interest in exploring ideas. Rod isn't ready to buckle down to "schooling" just yet, so we're sticking to what I can do on the evenings and weekends, which actually seems to be just the right pace.

I have mentioned before that Jack has been going through a serious dinosaur period. He loves them -- he knows their names and periods, what they ate and how big they were. Huge gobs of facts that he has collected from books, videos, and web sites. I'll admit that the fascination has always puzzled me, but I am old enough now to just accept that that seems to be how little boys work. ;)

Jack borrowed "Walking with Monsters" from the library, then "Walking with Dinosaurs" and Allosaurus: A Walking with Dinosaurs Special" and finally "Walking with Prehistoric Beasts". In the Prehistoric Beasts video, we had a brief introduction to hominids -- a perfect entry point for human history.

I borrowed Walking with Cavemen and bought him the companion book, which added a LOT more detail ($3 used...can't beat that!). Then I showed him my copy of Journey from the Dawn. Next we found Becoming Human, which though very interesting, is not exactly Jack's cup of tea. It's a photo-based documentary that was a little too in-depth a slow for a wiggly five year old. He watched it with some interest once through, but hasn't asked to see it again. I have visited the Discovery Store and found Ice Age Columbus and The Real Eve which both look pretty good and will problem be in Jack's stack of gifts for his birthday.

Frustratingly, I can't find much literature to help us learn about pre-civilized life. I found one called First Painter in the library catalog - - but the book has disappeared. Another was there -- but Anoonka's Answer is about a 13 year old girl, and I have a hunch that it's not going to be the sort of thing to keep Jack's attention. (I checked it out with the intention of looking it over myself. I am hoping I am wrong.) Of course, in running those books through Amazon to create links, I did find more. *laugh* I'll put them on the list, too.

So, that's history.

Using dinosaurs, Jack has been studying comparative measurement (math) using his new tape measure. He looks up how long a dinosaur was and measures that from Dad's desk chair and then compares that with another dinosaur, measured from the same point. Over and over and over and over...

He's also using dinosaur names to examine Latin and Greek root words. (pachy = thick, cephalos = head, etc.)

Since we want to use a Classical foundation for his education, I have also introduced Asterix and Obelix to give him a context for studying Latin. It's not a really literate introduction, but Asterix is available in Latin, so it will be one of the things he can use to practice, once he's finished with Minimus Book One.

It will also give him a context not only for studying Latin, but also for eventually studying the Roman Empire. Eventually. First we will be exploring the first settling of Australia and America, then the Sumerians and Mesopotamians, and on through time.

But of course, all of that is still at the planning and laying groundwork stage.

Mostly, on his own, Jack is obsessing with the Magic Tree House and Magic School Bus books. They're side by side at the library and not far from the Boxcar Children and the Bobbsey Twins. Mostly twaddle, I'm afraid. (Between that and all the videos and computers, this whole homeschooling thing is *not* going the way I had envisioned.)

We do read some really good literature, though...we have read Little House in the Big Woods and a lot of Thornton Burgess stories recently and we are now reading Ronia Robbers' Daughter. I was only familiar with Astrid Lindgren from her Pippi Longstocking stories and so I was honestly not expecting much beyond fun...but Ronia has surprised me by introducing depth of character, complexity of motivation, and some interesting ethical questions. We also have The Brothers Lionheart and Mary Poppins on the stack (though the stack is about 20 books deep, and we may end up pulling something else off first.)

And of course, there is "noticing" almost every day.

And now, abruptly, I have to go and actually keep company with the little man, who wants to show me what he's learning on the San Francisco Symphony's kids website.

Updates

It has been the sort of week that is both too busy to find time to blog much -- and not interesting enough to try harder. ;)
Between endless rounds of laundry, we have been on the run.

Fitness update: I have only managed to walk once so far this week. I have, however, established (thanks, Mark!) that I was 1.8 miles per hour. Way behind the 4 miles an hour I walked as a teenager, but not too shabby for the tired old fart I am now.

Crafting Update: I have been struggling with crafting. Even when I sit down with a very specific design in mind -- one I have made before, things aren't working well. Partly, I think, it's just a lack of creative energy right now and that happens from time to time. Partly, maybe it's my eyes. I have broken my glasses on a number of occasions and I think the lenses are scratched beyond usefulness. I'll see an ophthalmologist for my annual diabetes check and then I'll worry about getting the lenses replaced. Meanwhile, I have two Mothers Day cards and three birthday cards to get made. Hmmm...

Gardening update: I was not sure how much to worry about moon phase in gardening.

Last year, I wasn't specifically paying attention, but I did note that my planting happened at good times anyway. and as I talked about endlessly last year -- my results were astonishing.

This year, Ostara fell in a "bad" gardening moon, but we went ahead anyway. I have complained about the results...we have very few germinated seeds and none of the ones that sprouted seem to be thriving. I tried again under a better, though not ideal, gardening moon and already those plants are much larger than the many weeks older seeds, though not everything has germinated. I plan to try again next week under the 'optimal" gardening moon on Tuesday and see what happens.

I'll update the homeschooling stuff later. Now, I am off to the shower.

Money, money, money ...

You've all heard, I'm sure, that petroleum prices are through the roof and that food prices are sky high and going higher.

Well, as with the rest of the world, that reality has hit home at Chez Smiffy, too.

We have cut and scraped before, and cut and scraped some more. But we're still so tight than anything unexpected means a crisis and that means more cutting.

We never were big on shopping, except books. I am a sucker for books. It looks like my commitment to the library will have to be renewed and I will have to get better about getting back there every week. If we do that, it's free. The Friends of the Library sales are an exxcellent resource, too.

New clothes amounts to socks and underwear and one new item when something we've been using falls apart completely. I can't see how we can reduce that further. We have already cut out all the laundry additives and we use about half the detergent recommended, but I guess we could use a cheaper detergent.

We don't use high priced cleansers as a rule, but I plan to see what I can do with more traditional methods, like vinegar and baking soda.

We dilute our shampoo so that a bottle lasts months, and I make my own skin conditioners. Toothpaste is the most expensive part, but I don't see that as optional. Baking soda get teeth clean, but without my sensitive tooth toothpaste, I'd be in agony. I wonder if we could use cheaper soap. Rod and I have equal and opposite skin sensitivities, so soap has always been a challenge.

We are extremely reluctant to scrimp on the quality of food we eat, but we've cut back on the amounts of the expensive stuff. Instead of meat, we mostly use bone broth and we make two sausages feed three of us for a meal and a pound of ground beef makes three meals. We have cut back on the amount of milk we use. We have been mostly baking our own bread since we can make a $6 loaf for pennies by grinding the wheat ourselves.

In the fruit department, we had gone from 'whatever sounds good' to apples and oranges. Now it looks like we'll have to ration those, too. We had been getting whatever vegetables looked good, striving for maximum variety, but it looks like we're going to have to cut way back on that, too. There are still vegetables within our reach, but not much variety until the garden starts bearing. (I have renewed my determination to raise as much as I can this summer and preserve most of it to get us through the next winter.) I hate to cut into Jack's nutrition that way -- but his brothers survived and so will he. In this case, I think it's temporary.

Next comes coffee. Sad isn't it, that coffee comes after vegetables? But I know we can get cheaper coffee. And I can try to cut back on how much I drink.

We had already cut back as far as possible on the medical expenses, and now it's time to cut the vitamins and other supplements. (Again. Those come and go as cash flow allows.)

I used to be so good at this. Time to learn again, I guess. But now, off to work, so we have *some* cash flow to work with. ;)

(BTW, tone doesn't come through well in writing sometimes...this is all pondering options rather than complaining. I have gotten by on far less, so this is an no longer accustomed challenge rather than a complaint.)

I did it again!

I just managed to walk 1.5 miles again! I feel hot, but refreshed. I think I may be able to maintain this all week -- what a wonderful thought!

Building my hermitage

Things have been strange for me recently. I''m not sure how long it's been going on, maybe as much as a year and a half, but it has become very hard to resist.

As much as I love and miss my friends, as much as I enjoy their company when we're together, I increasingly find that my "perfect" evening or weekend seems to involve spending my time in semi-solitude. Washing dishes and laundry isn't as much fun as socializing -- but when I stay home with Rod and Jack and cook and clean and craft, I end up feeling much happier, more relaxed and less stressed. When we go out to socialize, I generally enjoy myself--and then I get home and the day ends and I feel like I've lost something precious. I think I may be turning into a hermit. It's not terminal. After I have had several quiet weeks, I genuinely enjoy getting together with one or two friends.

Menopause? Just too intense a year? I don't know. But it is wierd.

On the bright side, I managed to get four birthday cards made and three Mothers Day cards ready to be cut and assembled this weekend and I headed out to work this morning satisfied and rested.

Gardening

OK, well it's official.

The crop from my first planting of the year was a flop. Not only have I managed to keep very little alive, but the friends with whom I shared plants are *also* not getting much germination. One friend even reported massive amounts of mold, so that may be the problem. Our house is pretty damp.

Now that it's warm enough to leave the plants outdoors, I am going to run the tubs throuigh the dishwasher and bake the dirt as one friend suggested and then try again. This time, I think I'll wait until I have germination to offer to share. How embarrassing.

Noticing...that spring is here!

Edited to change autumn to spring. Not sure what i was thinking...

The guys and I went out noticing yesterday while dinner cooked.

It was wonderful to see signs of spring everywhere!

And speaking of "noticing", Harmony Art Mom over at The Heart of Harmony has been posting a series of Green Hour Nature Study Challenges since February. She starts out assuming that nature Study has not been a big part of your children lives, and that you know little about it, so it's an excellently easy place to start! She even suggests readings from easily available on the web, so it doesn't turn into "yet another book I should read" on the stack by your reading chair. We started this weekend, and the first lesson doesn't look much different than our usual noticing. Easy!

Hey! Rod made the local paper!

Check this out!

Jack turning five

Jack is just a few weeks away from his fifth birthday, and we have just recently started seeing the physical evidence.

First, he has simply matured physically, so that he very much looks like a five year old version of himself. That's fun to see.

But there have been developmental leaps, too. He has started to have that clear, literal mind that happens at about five which is entertaining in the extreme.

He has started to have "defense fantasies" of a sort that I remember well from my other boys and from my brothers, but but we haven't seen from Jack before now.

"If that dog rushes me, I do this, and I'll do this, and ... Dad what would the dog so it I shaked the stick at him like this"?

But for this Mamma, the single most exciting step happened last night.

At the age of two, children become immensely cautious eaters. Many won't eat anything that isn't "plain". No sauces (except that red nirvana, marketed as catsup) no stews or soups, nothing unfamiliar, where unfamiliar can mean it hasn't been served this week. It's extremely frustrating, though absolutely normal.

We gritted out teeth and got through it. If we served anything "complex", where possible we saved out the individual things and served them separately to Jack. He was aware that he was getting what we were eating, but without the sauce". He was allowed to eat what he preferred first, and then he had to take one "no thank you" bite of everything (on the openly agreed "You like familiar foods best -- but if you never taste them, then they can't become familiar") Then, he had to pick two things to finish completely. (We always made sure that there were at least two things that were both familiar and somewhat acceptable.) Then he could have seconds of his favorite part and dessert, if there was to be any.

It was tedious. I worried occasionally that we were raising my first really picky eater, as one food after another dropped from the acceptable list. Eventually, we also added the rule that 'if you don't eat a civilized amount of dinner, then when you're hungry again in the evening, which you will be, it will come back to haunt you, until it's gone.'

But, rules aside, we tried to ignore what he ate or how much. I made sure that there were at least three of his acceptable foods on the plate, but I served him whatever we were having. In Jack's case a serving being two or three bites. He could always ask for more.

Last night, we did exactly what we've always done -- Rod made Pork Satay with rice and vegetables. He saved out a bit of everything to be served plain on Jack's plate. I put two baby lettuce leaves, two grape tomatoes, and a plain raw mushroom on his plate from the salad bowl. And we sat down to eat.

Jack's first bite? Not the pork, not the carrots -- both familiar favorites. He grabbed the mushroom, asked excitedly "What's this?" and *he ate it!* And asked for another!! We gave it to him and tried not to stare as he wolfed it down ... he then proceeded through his pork and carrots. Then he asked about the grape tomatoes -- one gold, one red. We explained that last summer, when they were last available they had been one of his all-time favorite foods. That we had bought packages of grape for dinner and Jack had eaten every one of them before we even made dinner. He carefully cut them open -- and wolfed them both down. When they were gone, he picked through his rice for another slice of pork and found that he'd eaten it all. He asked for more, and I slipped a satay covered piece from my plate to his without comment. He poked at it for a moment, looking unsure -- but I'd given his a taste of my rice and satay earlier...so he asked me to cut it for him because it was slippery -- and he ate every bite.

I have no illusions that the picky eating stage is over just like that -- but this was certainly an encouraging light at the end of the tunnel!

Jack's Book o Dinosaurs

A few weeks ago, I found these odd little puzzles -- 3-D dinosaur bones. They were made by slave labour in China, and so only a dollar. I was embarrassed to do so, but I bought them anyway.

Jack and I poked around with them one evening -- and I eventually declared that this looked like a Dad project.

In the meanwhile, Jack and I worked on a Mamma project. We made a lapbook in which to record everything Jack knows about dinosaurs. We expect it will take a long time to get it all down -- and Jack thinks we might need another book to finish it all. (He may be right.)

Since the puzzle he and Dad worked on was a Dimetrodon, Jack dug out his Dimetrodon model to compare it to the skeleton.

The puzzle is slightly bigger, but we were able to see what bones did what. (And Mamma has her doubts about the anatomical verity of this puzzle.)

We took photos and and pasted them into the lap book, and then Jack narrated everything he could think of about Dimetrodon. (Jack had to help me spell the dinosaur names correctly. He looked them up and dictated the spelling while I wrote.)

And then we were on a roll...so we did Stegosaurus, too!

It was interesting to watch Jack read his book. I wrote down exactly what he said in most cases (a few times he took so long to get it out that I figured out what he meant and suggested an alternative phrasing - - and then wrote down whichever he chose. He rushed off to read it to Dad and I was fascinated by his reaction as he came to the phrases that didn't make sense the way he had phrased them. He stumbled over them, paused and said "Hmmmm. We'll have to rewrite this one", said it in a clearer way, and went happily on! I was so pleased that he neither ignored an imperfection, nor let it dim his joy in his creation!

Quick health update ...

OK, it was gently pointed out to me that I never updated folks on the final outcome of Rod's misadventure a few weeks back. I'm sorry folks, I thought I had. Things got moderately crazy when Al died two weeks after Rod's release and a few days after Al's funeral, our friend Bill went in to the hospital for triple bypass... welcome to middle age, eh?

Anyway, Rod's back in top form again. His doctors have each in turn been sure it was a heart condition and have each in their turn examined his heart from every possible angle. No sign of any heart trouble can be found, beyond some high blood pressure, which he is treating. After many diagnostic tests, it has become clear that Rod suffered a temporary anaphylaxic episode, due to allergy. Best guess -- either his cod was fried in oil (or dipped in batter) that had been contaminated with sea-food, which he knows he's allergic to -- or the "cod" was actually perch. Hard to say with fish and chips - -so no more fried foods for Rod anyplace that might have sea-food or perch.

As to my health, I have been home for two days with pneumonia. I still don't feel well, but my voice is back, though still rough and I am better enough to go back to work tomorrow.

It started out as the flu, as I mentioned a few days ago -- but because I had to push through at work, it took a lot longer to recover than I thought it should -- after a week, I was still getting sicker. When I woke myself up twice over the weekend with the whistling from my lungs, I gave in and went to the doctor on Monday. (Shelley had warned me that this flu went to the lungs very easily...)

I now have an antibiotic, an inhaler, and a steroid to drag along to work with me. This seems like a weird collection, but I haven't have pneumonia for years and I guess the treatment standards have changed. (I was expecting an antibiotic.)

Jack is, of course, in perfect health. What a guy! ;)

Longstanding hassle...

For about as long as I've had kids, the size of kids books has been a bit of a hassle to me. I mean, there is no earthly reason that children's books need bigger spines...except that the current arrangements makes them so hard to read on the shelf!

My older boys, being who they were, were quite happy to pull the entire shelf down in search of a specific book - - or even just to have a browse.

Jack, being who *he* is, is not happy to pull down the entire shelf. He tends to ignore books that are too tightly packed to read easily.

So, we display a few books here and a few books there around the house.

Some in the parlour, which are mainly non-fiction. History, language, poetry, science, music and art...

Some in the office, which are mainly fiction. Largely picture books -- novels live upstairs in Jack's bedroom.

A few stay out on a table or on the freezer when they're in heavy use. That would be all things dinosaur, for the moment.

And the rest languish in closets until they get their turn to cycle in again.

The big question is, can we find a better way? I have seen various ways to display homeschooling "topical" books. The one I like best is the rain gutter nailed into the wall. http://www.trelease-on-reading.com/oliver.html

But that method does require more wall space than we really have at the moment if we are to display more than a very few books at a time.

We tried using more bookends to separate them and that was easier to search through, but it didn't actually display them any better.

I am wondering whether anyone else has come up with any truly clever ways of making the picture book display more engaging and easier to browse. Ideally in away that doesn't require miles and miles of wall space, since we don't have that much. (The serious downside of an open-plan house is that there is a lot of space and very little place to put anything.)

I haven't found much -- but I've decided to head out to the hardware store to price rain gutters. A little is better than none!

But really, does your family have a great idea that might help us?

Happy birthday, Mom!!!

This is my Mom, with two of my five younger brothers, Jeff and Joel.

Amazing, isn't she? She never seems to get any older!

And with Jack, when she was here last Mothers' Day.

Garden update, 19 days past planting

I keep fretting that I am not going to get much germination from this first crop of seeds...but then I remember having much the same feeling last year and eventually almost everything *did* germinate.



However, a little digital assistance points out that I actually have quite a few greens in the lettuce tub (which I knew) and about 12 baby plantlings ... many of which I can't find with my naked eye. (Nor in glasses, for that matter.)

Maybe that's not so bad after all -- it just *feels* like a lot more than three weeks. I hope to take advantage of the waxing Cancer moon this weekend to plant the next round, since so far I only have about 1/3 of the plants I want for this year.