Summer Is Winding Down - An Update

Wow, it's been a long time since I posted!  Sorry about that.  We've been so busy this summer, blogging just keeps slipping my mind. 

We've had a very full and very fun summer so far.  We've been slowly incorporating some structured, scheduled homeschooling each day, including a lesson from Phonics Pathways and a mixture of Saxon Math and MEP.  We've also been doing a new read-aloud, "James and the Giant Peach," by Roald Dahl.  Syd adores it.  She begs me to read her several chapters each day, and we're already two-thirds through it, despite only starting it earlier this week! 

Sydney is Now Ready for Summer

Is she rocking the Ginnifer Goodwin OUAT pixie cut, or what?

We're Home!

And we had a wonderful vacation.  Duluth is so much fun!

Why I Love Minnesota

I have lived in Minnesota, the gopher state and the land of one thousand lakes, almost my entire life.  Except for my brief stint in the Army in my early twenties when I lived in California for a few months, I've always resided in some part of Minnesota.  I was born and raised in the forested wilds of the north, right along the US/Canada border and the shores of Rainy Lake.  I went to college in Duluth, a decent-sized city that is a hub of art and culture, and is almost painfully beautiful, situated on the shore of Lake Superior.  Now I live in the rural farmlands of central Minnesota, surrounded by lakes and picturesque farms everywhere I go.

While the state isn't on most people's top ten lists of where they'd like to live- possibly something to do with our association to hotdish, lutefish, and funny accents- it really should be, and here's why:

1. Minnesota is full of stuff.

In Minnesota, you can't throw a stick without it landing in a state park.  Or a museum.  Or a music festival.  Or a bustling farmer's market.  Or...  Well, you get the idea.  Even in the small town I now live in, we have two museums, a huge farmer's market, great shopping, an amazing library, more parks than I can count on both hands, a YMCA so great that I almost cried the first time I walked in, a state park, miles and miles of paved bike trails, and an entire chain of lakes.  And we're talking about a town of right around 12,000 people.  When you get to the bigger metro areas, like Duluth or the Twin Cities, there's so much to do that you can stay busy for an entire year without having to do the same thing twice. 

2. We're a generally healthy people.

We're not perfect, but Minnesota is a very health-conscious state.  We're consistently at or near the top of "healthiest state" lists.  Even better, because of the huge amount of farmland in our state, it's very easy to get your hands on locally-grown, organic produce.  If I want fresh eggs from free-range chickens, I walk two block to the farmers market and pick up a dozen for two bucks.

We take good care of our land, too.  The state as a whole is very concerned with maintaing our clean land and water.  Like I said, we're not perfect, but we're miles ahead of a lot of other states.

And you can't beat the quality of medical care here.  We're one of the best in making sure everyone has affordable health insurance, and we're full of great hospitals.  Mayo Clinic, anyone?

3. Homeschooling is a cinch.

It used to be a lot more time-consuming, but now all you have to do is, basically, send a letter every year.  The first year you give them your basic info, and the following years, your letter says something along the lines of, "Yep, still homeschooling."  That plus doing annual testing, and you're all set.  No portfolios, no umbrella schools, no lengthy forms, no recording every hour of your life.

4. Speaking of academics, we're smart, too.

Ranked ninth in the country, actually.  Not too shabby.

5. We have jobs.

According to this report, the unemployment rate in Minnesota is only 5.8 percent.  Not too bad, when you compare it to the rest of the country.  And I know that where we live, a lot of those are manufacturing jobs that pay pretty decent and don't require a college degree.  The hubby has one of these, and we're grateful each and every day.  From looking in the newspaper, there are many more to be had.  Seems like every manufacturing company in town is hiring lately.  Add that to a reasonable cost of living, and it's actually not too hard here to live on a single income.

6. Minnesota is beautiful.

I Feel Yucky

A couple of nights ago, I was sitting on the couch, minding my own business and reading a magazine, when I was hit with excruciating abdominal pain.  As someone with obsessive-compulsive disorder, I was, of course, immediately certain my appendix had just burst or was well on its way, so I went to the clinic to get checked out.

By the time I got there, I was in so much pain they had to give me a shot of demerol.  (That helped, heh.)  It turns out it wasn't my appendix that had burst, but a large cyst on my right ovary, which can be nearly as painful, believe me.  There was fluid all over the place from the burst cyst, they told me after reviewing the ultrasound, and I was going to be in a lot of pain for the next couple of days.

I am.  Ugh.  I hurt.  And I feel sleepy and depressed.  The vicodin doesn't help with that, but at least I can be out and about when I'm on it.  Otherwise, I'm trapped on the couch whimpering and holding my tummy.

I don't know if it's my poor ovary with the owie on it or what, but I am wiped out.  The medication I'm on to treat my OCD hasn't been working so great today, and all I want to do is crawl into bed and sleep until tomorrow.  My shoulder hurts too, so naturally, I'm worried that I'm bleeding to death internally.

Blech.  Having OCD and PCOS isn't fun.  I may have to buy myself ice cream today.

Where We Homeschool: A Tour

Many families that live in the luxurious confines of a palatial manse wonder how those of us with homes under a thousand square feet can possibly homeschool our children.  And so, to demonstrate that it is possible, I've put together a short photo tour of the spaces within our home that we use to homeschool.

Of course, it helps that we only have one child.  If we were up into the double digits, we probably would have some space issues.

First up is the living room.  We divide up our time homeschooling (indoors, anyway) pretty evenly between the living room and the kitchen.  Syd likes to work at the coffee table, because it's just the right height for her to sit up to with her little stool.

You can see my matronly blue rocking chair and Syd's perpetually overflowing toy bin in the background, along with a small bookcase hidden away in the corner.  The photography on the wall was taken by the hubby.

Our main living room bookcases are right out in the open:

This is directly across from the couch/chair area, and it holds books.  Lots and lots of books.  As well as Syd's small math center, where we keep her manipulatives.

To the left of this is my printing area.

You can see my Brother laser printer neatly tucked away on the side table, as well as our tv in its natural state (off).  This is where I kick back in my cozy recliner and do all of my homeschool planning and printing after Syd has gone to bed for the evening.

Next up is the kitchen.  I do a lot of baking and cooking from scratch, so we end up in here quite a bit.  Syd does all of her messy projects at the table.

She still needs to use a booster seat because the table is quite tall and she is, well, not.  You can see the stickable whiteboard up on the wall with our daily checklist and a piece of Syd's artwork, as well as my very unorganized pantry shelves.

It's not technically part of our homeschooling space, but the above is where I spend a lot of my time in the kitchen.  Note the messy counters and dishes in the sink.  The oven and fridge are directly across from this space.

Finally, I constructed an art line in the other corner of the kitchen to hang any of Sydney's artwork that needs to dry and/or be shown off.

Also known as "the most important place in the world" due to the presence of the coffee pot.  You can see my cookbooks stored under the microwave, and the hook where I hang my ever-growing collection of reusable grocery bags.  Sydney has a little desk you can see part of in the lower right corner, but she prefers to sit at the table\ most of the time.

And that's it.  We do have two bedrooms and a bathroom as well, but since we don't exactly do much homeschooling in them, they aren't included on the tour.  Plus, they're messy.

Your Monday Dose of Cuteness

I think my older cat, Arwen, is learning to tolerate our new kitten.

I came across them like this yesterday:

Then I went to do a few things in the kitchen.  When I came back out into the living room, I found this:

It's not really a snuggle- more that Arwen was using Sebastian as a footrest- but it's progress.  Baby steps.

Our New Friend

After a lengthy discussion with the hubby about whether orange cats are cute or horrifying (I think the former, he for some strange reason is clinging to the latter) we adopted a new family member!

He is quite possibly the cutest kitten I've ever seen in my life.  I'm sure the hubby will agree when he gets home from work.

We have tentatively named him Sebastian, though that may change when we get to know him a little better.  Right now, he's still somewhat timid and has been watching us curiously from beneath a side table.

I'll post more pictures in the days to come because really, who can resist kittens?

Why We Chose to Homeschool

Image: Photostock

When people find out that I am a) a Pagan and b) have decided to homeschool Sydney, they're usually a little confused.

"But don't only really conservative Christians homeschool?" I've heard more than once.

Nope.  And here's why.

My interest in homeschooling began when I was in college, long before the idea of having children was even on my radar.  I was studying both Anthropology and Literature, and my classes for the latter were often shared by the future teachers at UMD.

As time went on, I became casual friends with several of them, and during our idle before-class chitchat I learned that they spent a good deal of their time learning things like "how to design an attractive seasonal bulletin board" and "ideal desk placement."  When it came to the actual information they would be imparting to the young minds in their care, however, well, they didn't spend a whole lot of time on that.  The lesson plans would tell them what to teach, so they didn't have to know it themselves beyond what they picked up in a handfull of low-level liberal arts classes.

Also, many of them were dumb as bricks, god bless 'em.  Don't get me wrong, they were lovely, caring people, but their responses in class and the written work I saw sometimes made me wonder how they'd ever graduated high school.  On multiple occasions, one of them would say, "I was going to major in [whatever] but it was too much work."

These are the people we've entrusted to shape the minds of the future.

Some were quite smart and driven, of course, and I have no doubt they'll make wonderful teachers.  But the seed of a thought had already buried itself in my mind- when I had kids someday, there was a good chance their teacher had only gone into the field because Art History was just too darn much work.

Then, in my final year, I found out I was pregnant.

Future-dh and I had been told that, with my PCOS, the odds of me ever getting pregnant were slim to none, so we hadn't bothered with any form of birth control, figuring that if I did get pregnant it would be a miracle.

Enter dd, my miracle child that I conceived about a month after ceasing birth control.

As she grew and I became interested in all aspects of parenting, specifically attachment parenting, I learned some disturbing things about our school district.  Namely, that it sucks.  The sixth grade has a problem with children cutting themselves.  The educational standards are hovering somewhere around basement level.  Bullying is widespread.

That was it for me.  Very early on, I decided that I was not going to allow dd to have a substandard education interspersed with violent bouts of bullying, like I'd had as a child.  I'm a smart, educated women with an IQ that places me squarely in the "highly gifted" range.  If anyone was going to teach my child, it was going to be me. 

Dh agreed with a great deal of enthusiasm, and we've never looked back.

Rosie the rat has passed away.

The other day, Rosie was playing with Arwen, the cat.  Rosie loved to do this, and the cat actually seemed to enjoy it too, so I didn't do much to put a stop to it.  Then Rosie ran up and started grooming Arwen's leg, and the cat let loose a massive wallop with her paw that caught Rosie in the head.

Rosie seemed okay for a few hours afterward, and then we put her in the cage for the night.  Yesterday, when I got up, however, she wasn't well.  She was sluggish, and dragging her back legs.  She didn't want to eat much, and she curled up next to me, squeaking in pain.  We decided to watch her and see if she improved, and yesterday evening, she did seem to feel better.  I still stayed by her cage for much of the night, because if she did pass, I didn't want her to be alone.

This morning, things had not improved.  At all.  This time, her entire front half was paralyzed.  She was trying to push herself around with her hind legs, dragging her front arms and face over the floor.  She was gasping for air, and not eating or drinking anything.  The lightest touch brought forth a heart-wrenching squeal, and all she wanted to do was nuzzle up to my neck and not move.

We couldn't bear to see her in so much pain, so we brought her to the vet and had her put to sleep.  It was a hard decision, but given that she most likely had either a brain or spinal injury, there would have been nothing we could do, and unable to eat or drink, she would have died on her own anyway.  We just wanted to spare her any more pain.

Goodbye, Rosie.  You were the most loving and intelligent rat I've known, and it breaks my heart that you couldn't stay with us longer.  Be at peace, my furry little friend.

A day at our house.

I know how much I love reading these on other blogs, just to see how other families structure their day, so I figured I'd do one of my own.  And I'll be perfectly honest about how it usually goes- this isn't the "Ideal Daily Schedule that has Never Actually Happened."  Times vary a bit each day.

8-9am: Wake up, stagger (me) or run (Sydney) out into the living room.  Once I have control over my major motor functions, I cook breakfast while Syd plays or sits at the table.  Then we eat.

9:30ish: I begin to drink a pot of coffee and go online while Syd watches twenty to forty minutes of educational cartoons, depending on how groggy I am and how much time I need to rejoin the human race.  Can you tell I'm not a morning person?  We have the tv off for the rest of the day, but I still feel guilty on the mornings it's closer to forty minutes.  Oh well.

10ish: After Syd has finished absorbing very crucial musical knowledge from Little Einsteins and I have finished absorbing enough caffeine to kill a small horse, we usually ease into our day by doing some reading.  If we are reading a FIAR book, this is when we do it.  We generally spend the morning reading, playing, drawing, and listening to classical music.

1pm: Lunch.  Usually leftovers from dinner the night before.  When you're a family of three, you have lots of leftovers.  Recipes do not scale well to three servings.

2pm: After lunch is when we do our outings.  If we are going to go to the library or a museum, or make a trip to the park, we do it now.  More often we're getting groceries and other mundane tasks.  Also, if we are doing a science project or unit, we do it in this window of time.

3-4pm: We make our way home and I start getting dinner going while Sydney plays and talks to daddy about her day.  If dinner that night is especially labor-intensive and Syd is getting restless, I'll install her at the kitchen table with an art project or have her help me with dinner.

5-6pm: We eat dinner.  After dinner, Sydney helps me pack the hubby's lunch for work the next day.  If I forget to let her help me, she get's extremely irate.

6:30pm: If Syd wants to do a Funnix lesson, we usually do it now.  The hubby and I sit and talk while Sydney plays or reads.  We both read books to Syd, and if she and daddy are going on a walk, they do it now.  I might tidy up or read a book of my own.  If it's Friday, which is when we have our Family Pizza and Movie Night, this is when we start the movie.

8-9pm: Bedtime for the short one.  After she's out, I wander back out to the kitchen and do dishes, clean, and go online, read, or maybe watch a movie with the hubby.

11-Midnight: I usually make it to bed somewhere in this window of time, if I'm not having some kind of OCD-induced freakout.  If I'm stressed about something, it's more like two or three.

And that's our day!  People are sometimes surprised when they hear that we're doing FIAR, a phonics program, and a science program, but as you can see, it doesn't exactly consume our entire day.

Finally, I got to hack off most of my hair.

Well, I didn't do it.  The nice lady at Fantastic Sam's did.  And I am thrilled!  It's hard to tell in most of my pictures, but my hair was long.  LOOOOONG.  I'd occasionally have to untangle the rat from it, it was so long. (I wish I was kidding.)  But now, it is short and managable.  And, I dare say, quite cute:

And the best part is that I got the haircut for free (aside from the tip) because I donated the giant hairy hunk to Locks of Love.

The second best part of the day was when I explained the rat entanglement situation to the stylist and she nearly threw up on my head, then asked if I'd washed my hair since letting the rat touch it.  Good times.  Don't worry, I gave her a generous tip for having to touch my apparently plague-infected head.

Our newest addition.

Please welcome Rosie, the newest addition to our household:

Isn't she a sweetie?  Sydney adores her.  She's a black hooded (striped? ) rat, still pretty young.