50mm f/1.8

I am so, so pleased with my new lens!

Goats are Hilarious

This evening we visited my aunt's farm for a family cookout.

R loved picking clover flowers for the goats.

The Playground Project

I have to admit, the Playground Project was not an original idea. In addition to following the Free Range Kids blog, I often read the comments. Sometime last week someone wrote about their summer project: critiquing neighborhood playgrounds. I thought it was a brilliant idea.

We have spent this week with our friends, 10yo F and his little sister, 5yo Little C. Their summer babysitter was unavailable, and I was happy to fill in. Fifty hours of childcare is a lot, though, and I needed some fresh ideas for giving the big kids the space they need to burn off big-kid energy while also considering the needs of 2yo R and Little C. Enter The Playground Project.

Over breakfast on Tuesday, I asked the kids what they thought was most important in a playground. They all had good ideas. We made a list of five criteria, with a sixth category of "Overall." We used a five point scale. I made a quick Open Office document, printed up copies, and we were off. We evaluated eight playgrounds on: 1-facility cleanliness (litter and graffiti) and state of repair (including restrooms and drinking fountain,) 2-swings, 3-slides, 4-bars, rings and monkeybars, and 5-special features (zip line, bridge, proximity to batting cage, bike path, etc.)

It was so fun!

Here is our overall winner:



This place was phenomenal! It had every feature you could possible imagine--turrets! Bridges! Multiple slides! A zip line! A suspended balance beam! Two sand pits! A climbing wall! A boat! Plenty of swings with long chains! A tire swing! Nice restrooms! A cold drinking fountain! Benches. Shade. Perfection.

I have a couple of lovely group photos from The Playground Project...but it is my policy to not post identifying pictures of other people's kids on the internet without their express permission, so these will have to do:

Lawn Care is Always on His Mind

The lyrics that accompany this piece? "Weed whacker song/ weed whacker song/ weed whacker song/ weed whacker song...."

Early July Update

R is suddenly reliable on the potty. He's been dry at night for a couple of months. He's dry in his carseat, even. It seems so early, I'm not sure what to make of it. I'm not complaining, though! The lessening of the laundry burden is huge. I'm not the best at keeping up with laundry, so cloth diapers required a conscious effort on my part. The independence he's gaining is huge, but also bittersweet. I wouldn't want to hold him back (or gah! hold on to the poopy diapers!) but I am kind of mourning the passing of the mothering-a-baby stage of my life.

C is looking forward to Girl Scout camp. I hear about it every day.

She has been reading about the American Revolution. Her goal with this unit study is to get a better understanding of why the colonists didn't want to pay taxes. She understands that we pay taxes to support schools, build highways, and fund libraries, museums and zoos. Balking at tax paying is untenable to her.

Her secondary goal is to understand how the American Revolution fits with the principle ideas in Guns, Germs and Steel. I have some ideas using the French and Indian Wars as a jumping off point, but I don't have any good figure-it-out-for-yourself source material. Any leads on general ideas (or specific sources,) would be deeply appreciated!

T is looking forward to braces (for her teeth) by the end of the summer. I'm a little concerned about what kind of hardship this is going to be for her. She is really sensitive to physical comforts. She only wears velour pants--denim and courderoy are too stiff. She hates combing her hair--it hurts too much. I'm convinced that the treatment we're going to do now is for the best, though. She'll have this implement for 9-12mos, and then she will be braces-free until we re-evaluate at around age 12. There is a good chance that doing this now will prevent the need to do extensive correction during adolescence. She's feeling pretty positive about it right now.

As a family we're looking forward to our camping vacation in several weeks. I'm considering working in a day or so to see Colonial Williamsburg. The kids are lukewarm about it, but in the past when we have attended historical re-enactments, they have really gotten into it. So, we'll see.

One is Silver and the Other's Gold...

A couple who is very dear to our family made it official last night--after 14?, 15?, 16? years of commitment. I met them as a couple in 1994. I've known them for longer than I've known my husband.

After such a long period of sharing lives, I can see how a ceremony might be anticlimactic. This was not at all the case. It was a glorious, tear jerking celebration of life and love. The ceremony was beautiful--the setting, the sentiments shared, the family and friends...I feel deeply honored to be a part of this circle of people who live so consciously and love so deeply.

The party...the party was fantastic. We caught up with old friends, some who have made new lives half a continent away, and some who live here in town but whose lives have taken paths that haven't paralleled our own. We shared old stories and found new things in common. And the homebrew...wow, one of those friends has developed an old love into a real talent!

Another of those friends lives in Indianapolis. D and I have always considered him one of our near and dear lifetime friends. His single guy, professional life and our family-centric lives have led us down divergent paths, obviously, but we keep in somewhat regular touch. Except this time, it had been quite a while. My heart swelled when I saw him yesterday. Nothing (and everything,) has changed since he shared that hovel of an apartment with D and me way back in 1995. It's funny how you actually can go home again, sometimes.

I read an essay recently on the value of friendship. It seems kind of funny and weird to type that out...value...like you could assign anything specific to it. But these old friends of mine, we've stuck it out through thick and thin (not just weddings and funerals, but all manner of things in between,) for about 15 years now. It's more that friendship itself is a value, like integrity is a value.

I feel so lucky and blessed.

My Two Favorite Things About Homeschooling

 

My favorite thing about homeschooling is that our course of study is largely driven by current interests.

We did the epic unit on evolution this winter, which led to classification and taxonomy. From there we have used our field guides to identify many of our garden plants and common insects. We moved into annelids, and I did a quick internet search for "earthworm curriculum" and came up with reams of materials for our study of the worms in our vermicomposting bin. Now we're on to the habits and lifestyles of gastropods. I think it's neat how the snails' shells tie into our recent study of the Fibonacci sequence.

My other favorite thing about homeschooling is the freedom we have to use living books--that is, books that are written by experts in the field who have a real love for and understanding of the topic. This is in sharp contrast to a textbook, which is written by a committee and subject to approval by a few key schoolboards before becoming available to the nation at large. Here is a good article summing up the problems with the textbook adoption process.

Anyway, back to living books. I have been gathering materials to revisit the period of the American Revolution, something we have been doing on and around Independence Day for the past 5-6 years. When I went up to tuck in the girls tonight, C was curled up with King George: What Was His Problem?: The Whole Hilarious Story of the Revolution. Her bedtime refrain "Just one more chapter!" was especially convincing, and being as it wasn't another Terry Pratchett novel (his concept of appropriate chapter length is flawed,) I agreed.