Santa Claus delivered an easel on Christmas. All five children got a kick out of it. The boys learned to play Hangman from Dad. The girls practiced drawing stick figures. Well, the twins, who are three years old, draw stick figures. Taylor teaches maths.
1 x 100
______
100
The air has been so dry and clear lately that we just had to go outside for a World History lesson.
The children, the boys more so than the girls, are learning about Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Ancient Greece. Actually, the MAIN lessons this month are about Ancient Rome and the Roman Empire, but the boys needed a little bit of brushing up on their other Ancient Mediterranean/Middle Eastern histories.
We were all sitting in the shade of the Front Yard Hammock, enjoying the crisp breezes, the occasional wake of vultures hundreds of feet above us, and the flittering of zebra longwing butterflies, and listening to my narration and chatter about the ancient civilizations when a big, old, mean, nasty pickup truck with a trailer hitched to it pulled up a few houses down. Three or four men got out and downloaded their “landscaping” equipment and began making horrible, loud noises that I could hardly hear my talking about the first Olympic games. So we packed it up and continued our lesson in the homeschooling room. We still heard them and their lawnmower, leafblower, and edgetrimmer because we leave the windows open.
Dad has been working on something with the Macintosh computer. Something about hard drive, terabytes, operating system, and many other words that I’ve been told are English but I don’t remember exactly…. I do recall Panther Cheetah Bobcat or something big cats like that.
I taught Taylor a few more pieces on G Major on the piano. She’s not really playing any F-sharps yet because her pieces are only do through so (and F-sharp is ti).
August 23, 2001: Second official day of home school. At 10:00am, we all took a break from maths and whatnot to prepare peanut butter sandwiches and goof off on facebook. Taylor walked to me with a white pebble in her hand and told me very calmly, “I lost a tooth.” The information didn’t really sink in, so I looked at her curiously and saw a gap in her mouth, where her tooth used to be. “Oh, Taylor! You lost your tooth!”
I texted Dear Husband about the event.
I’m not sure if it was that night or the next (we’ve learned that the Tooth Fairy doesn’t come during rainstorms, and it may or may not have been raining that evening) that we placed the tooth in the special wooden box, rested it on the sill, and said good-bye.
As usual, the Tooth Fairy left a note with instructions to brush regularly and be kind to brothers and sisters. She also brought Taylor a Schleich Eyela Elf Fairy. I’m thinking that may be what the Tooth Fairy looks like.
Taylor just completed her first sewing project. It didn’t take long at all, about fifteen minutes.
My cousins and aunt from Alabama came down for a visit. They brought some toys for the boys and twins and a Simplicity Lockstitch sewing machine for Taylor. She was really happy and carried around the machine in its packaging for a day and a half. I told her that I’d teach her to sew as soon as we had time, but with all the home projects that we had, Dad and me, there really wasn’t any time.
Yesterday, before we left to a pool party, I taught her to sew straight lines. But the bobbin thread was too tight. The needle thread was too tight. It was just getting frustrating. I tinkered with it a little; my own sewing machine is nearly a decade older than I am and keeps me versed in sewing machine mechanics.
This morning, I figured that I had about an hour to tinker with the bobbin and the tension some more, and I finally got the thread to behave. After stitching straight lines and zig zags, I thought it was time for Taylor to start on her project.
I had a scrap of fabric hanging around from the twins’ dresses, just big enough to make a little pillow for one of Taylor’s dolls. When I sat her down, she was upset with me because I took too long to get started. I explained to her that I wanted her to have a good experience with a sewing machine. (There are few things more frustrating than a machine that doesn’t cooperate!) I taught her to start with a reverse stitch as an anchor. She sewed straight lines down the side until she reached the end, where I taught her to lift the foot, turn the work, drop the foot, and sew another straight line. She did that for three sides until she was about three inches from the end. Reverse stitch to anchor.
She turned the work inside out and stuffed it polyester fiberfill. As she was doing that, she kept exclaiming, “This is so cute! This is going to be so cute!”
I was thinking about teaching her to hand sew the pillow shut, but I wasn’t in the frame of mind to teach her to wield a needle and produce a whipstitch. She used her machine again to stitch it, practicing the reverse stitch to anchor, forward straight stitch, and reverse stitch again.
Once that was completed, I took a picture of her with her first project and the sewing machine.
I’m thinking about her next project, something that still involves straight lines…
Our cat, Stupid White Cat, ran away for the last time. If he does decide to come back, he will not be allowed into the house again.
About a month after we acquired our cat, Taylor developed a low-grade on-and-off fever. She was like that for a few days. Some of our other children were passing colds to one another, so we thought it was that… UNTIL… I discovered a lump in Taylor’s underarm. I knew exactly what it was. After some e-research and thinking back upon my own experiences, Dad and I concluded that it was cat scratch disease, or a Bartonella henselae infection. She had all the classic symptoms, from headache and loss of appetite to mild fever. After a week or so of this, we took her to the doctor who asked us if we had a cat, and he gave us a prescription for amoxicillin and clavulanate potassium, which is an antibiotic paired with a molecule that gives it an extra punch.
After a couple of days of taking the medicine, Taylor started doing better (no fever, normal appetite), but her little lump didn’t go away. In fact, I think it got bigger. Dad would massage it to encourage it to drain. Nothing. She even developed a non-itchy skin rash that looked like measles! It was everywhere, from her face to her soles. Now, I can’t be certain if it was from the antibiotics because we were also eating a ton of mangoes: there are people who get rashes from just touching mango skin or sap, eating mangos, or eating too many mangos. Just for good measure, we stopped feeding the children mangos, and Taylor finished up her 10 days of medicine.
The rash went away. Whew!
Warning: Gross nastiness follows; Read at your own risk. But her little lump wasn’t little anymore. It was a big ball. Dad said that it is most likely filled with pus (eww!) and could take months to drain (double eww!). At least Taylor wasn’t holding her arm up to protect her lumpish ball anymore, creating muscle tension in her shoulder and neck, positioning herself to develop awfully bad posture.
After a month (I took her to the doctor the day after Memorial Day), she started getting what looked to be a heat rash under her arm. It looked like the skin on the ball was chaffing, rubbing awkwardly against her own skin and clothes. Because it didn’t hurt her anymore, she was bring her arm all the way down, molding the ball to look for triangular, like a pyramid. She also behaved like her normal self, roughhoused with the boys, and came crying out of the room a couple of times, saying that a brother had hit or kicked her on the lump. “It was an accident!” they’d cry in defense. Still, it was scary as heck as a parent to see this weird, chaffing, soft-on-the-outside, hard-in-the-inside, mushy small golfball thing under my daughter’s arm.
On the first Thursday in July, I was getting our of the shower to get ready to go to work when Taylor opened the door and looked at me sadly. She didn’t look guilty. She didn’t look confused. She had an expression that I’ve never seen before that covered sad, guilty, and confused. She pointed to her underarm without saying anything. I got really worried! “What’s the matter?”
“Somebody vomited on my arm.”
“What?”
“Yea, look.” She showed me her shirt and her underarm.
“Oh, honey! That’s pus! Thank God! That’s a good thing, Taylor. Take a shower and get washed up. Let’s try to drain it as much as we can.” She didn’t understand that we were waiting for the thing to abscess and ooze out. I cleaned it up, gave her a fresh shirt, and went to work. I cleaned it again when I got home and again in the morning and again and again and again.
That Sunday, my brother’s daughter was having a pool party for her birthday. I took the five children while Dad stayed to watch the space shuttle Atlantis’ docking with the ISS. The boys swam in the pool and had a good time while the girls sat under the shade of a mango tree and ate and talked with the other ladies who weren’t going in the pool. I told Taylor on Saturday that she wasn’t going to swim because she had an open wound. She understood and had a good time at the party.
My dad walked up to me with a concerned look on his face, “What happened to Taylor’s arm?” I told him that it looked waaaaaay better than it did a week before. My mom also expressed concern, and I explained to everyone, “I know it looks nasty, but it is on the road to healing.”
So today, after keeping the wound clean, Taylor is back to her old self again. Thank God!
Dad has been catching frogs and lizards, snakes and butterflies and keeping them in the house for a few days (or hours). Several weeks ago, a lizard was caught and kept in a five gallon bucket. It has its tail missing, and we watched the regeneration. The boys named it BlackTail. We buy food for them at the reptile store, usually small crickets.
On April 3, after some heavy rains, Dad mowed the lawn, moved some crates around the backyard, and did some general “Spring” maintenance. I was getting ready to play the piano at the church, so it must have been around 10am. That afternoon, the children’s maternal grandfather came down to visit. He was in the backyard wit the children, playing “Blobberball” (a game they invented that’s a little like dodgeball) when Ty discovered freshly molted snake skin. He came into the house, very excited about his find. We all went out to the air conditioning unit to take a look. And what a sight! It really was freshly molted skin, with the eyes and mouth intact. The loud noises of the lawn mower and the moving of materials did not deter this snake to do his business. All of us were in awe of this, even though it is just skin. Grandpa was slightly confused about what had happened, having never seen snake skin in his many decades.
We have seen an Everglades racer around the property. A few months ago, we found some broken skin under the Suriname cherry hedge. He was spotted crawling outside the window of the girls room and took refuge in the cherry bush for a few days. This could be the same snake that was seen by Dad in the front yard with a mouse in its grasp but fled as Dad walked up. (The mouse stood in fear for a moment before running away). We could only assume that this was the same snake.
Some days ago, Taylor picked up a mason jar and its lid, walked to me and said, “When I come back inside, you’re going to see what I just caughted.” Crazy thoughts ran through my mind… until she came back with a little sprout. “I’m saving it from the mulch.” Looks like she found a sunflower seed that fell out of the bird feeder and began to sprout. Dad knows that sunflowers don’t like being transplanted, so he told her to put it in the compost pile, where it would be useful.
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Last week, Taylor and Dad went outside to transplant some tomatoes. Taylor got some hands-on experience with plants, soil, and water and one-on-one time with Daddy. What a lucky little girl!
Earlier this week, Taylor went with Dad to run some errands (bank, post office, general shopping). They came back with a plant that was put under Taylor’s care, a Painted Lady hibiscus. As the children were running around playing Tag and climbing trees, she carried the shrub with her in its pot wherever she went. She was very cautious of her little plant.
This morning, Dad called me and asked to speak with Taylor. After she hung up, she made her way out the front door. I asked where she was going. “I’m gonna go look at my flower.” Her hearty Painted Lady had bloomed two huge flowers. It does look wonderful. It makes her happy to be taking care of it. I think what she likes about it is that it’s pink… and it’s a flower… and it’s so Girly!
My True Love made dinner and got all the children dressed into their pajamas. I came home from work at 8pm, and we watched Rankin/Bass’ “The Little Drummer Boy.” The two younger babies went to bed afterward, and the three older children stayed up to watch “Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol.” Ty and Kyle went to bed before it ended because they started feeling a little bit sick.
Kyle has been fighting a cough for a few days. Ty just started yesterday afternoon. I hope that they both feel better on Christmas Day.
Taylor stayed up to watch the Christmas Carol in its entirety and got a little bit scared when the Spirit of Christmas Future went to visit Ebenezer Scrooge. My True Love and I explained to her that it was just a drawing and that it was necessary to scare Mr. Scrooge because he needed to learn a lesson. My True Love told Taylor that there are no bad guys in the story, and that she doesn’t have to be scared. I tucked her into bed with the drawing of a manger scene that she made and a drawing of the angels’ announcement of the birth to the shepherds.
Edited to add: I lost this post but just found it. I’m glad that I did write it because I had forgotten all about Taylor’s being scared and how her drawing comforted her.
I don’t know when they started doing this. It was either during or immediately after blinking. Both Kendall and Talon, who are two and a half, climb up the “monkey bars,” which aren’t your normal playground equipment but are metal bars and poled fixed in concrete. They stretch their arms up to the second bar while standing on the first bar, which is only about two inches off the ground. They each climb in unique ways but both end up with their feet on the second bar and hands on the third. It does scare me, but I recall Taylor’s ability to climb those bars when she was about that age, maybe even earlier.
Taylor is among the population here that can maneuver straight across the bars at the top. Originally, the structure was a shed, with canvas draped around the bars, so the top is the roof. Sometimes she cries for me when she finds herself stuck at the top, but I simply tell her that she has to get down. She always finds a way down where I don’t have to touch her, not even guide her steps. She just needs encouragement, and she finds a way.
She has also acquired the beading bug. Well, the arts and crafts bug. She’s always been a pretty good artist, in my opinion, chosing crayons over colored pencils. She once drew herself walking with Daddy, holding hands, toward the van, and looking at each other. One can clearly tell that she was looking up while Daddy was looking down. I think that’s pretty amazing. She’s now into beading and jewelry making. I finally found a good elastic material that doesn’t fray as the bead is inserted.
Kyle is playing the piano behind me. He’s using the book that my brothers and I used for piano lessons, the book that Ty used. The same exact book. My name is in it along with the dates that I learned the pieces. My brothers’ names and dates are written in, too. Ty, well, I didn’t write Ty’s name. I’m thinking I should have. Anyway, he’s preparing for a recital in the spring. He’s going to play “Hunting Song” and…. well, I’m still not sure what else he’ll play.
Ty is learning the “Star Wars” theme on the piano. He reads music better than I did at his age. He doesn’t practice as much as he should, being that it’s a difficult piece, but when he does play it, it sounds about what it should.
He’s also teaching himself third grade maths, including equivalent fractions and mixed numbers. I never know what to give that boy to challenge him. His cursive is perfect. His narrative paragraphs are descriptive. His knitting is a little tight, which is his only current flaw. That, and he likes to take initiative and do things his own way, which are not the way he was instructed.
I love that the play “Hide and Nature Seek.” The three older children are so sweet and fair with the young twin girls. Well, not always, but for the most part, they let them win or make it easy to find them or something darling like that. And other times, they fight the way siblings do.
ANNNND….. we have built our portfolio of English, American, and German folk songs:
Seven Joys of Mary
Greensleeves
Wayfaring Stranger
Blue Tail Fly
Fiddle Dee Dee
Ballad of the Boston Tea Party
Hopp, Hopp, Hopp
Bakke Bakke
O Tannenbaum
Es war eine Mutter
Ich bin ein Musikante
I think our next song will be “Swanee River.” I just have to find and write down the verses because I know only the piano melody.
They also sing solfege, the octave, third and fourth intervals along the octave, arpeggios major and minor, and chords in solfege I, IV, and V7. I’m so glad we home school. I can’t imagine how ignorant they’d be if they went to government school!
Taylor and I went on a picnic at our favorite park, Bill Sadowsky, to celebrate her 5th birthday (tomorrow). We also walked the nature trails and followed it up with a visit to another park where we saw two crocodiles.
