Hot Cross Buns

Good Friday...

Home Alone-Catching the Moment

Oh man. I am the only one in the house right now. The last time this happened must have been...I don't know. I remember a moment while in labor with Charles, who will be 10 in July, when my midwife told everyone to go on an outing and leave me to labor in peace...

I'm not even sure what to do with myself; I could clean up the school/playroom, or make dinner or finish the Easter egg I've been working on. Never mind, I see one of them coming up the driveway now...he's turning, leaving...gone!

Someday I will miss them all, but just now, I think I will turn on something 19th century-ish on Netflix and work on my egg.

School During Holy Week

There is so much to look forward to and to prepare this week, and the weather, if super-cold, is at least mostly sunny...well, if we don't count the snowstorm on Monday...and we don't, except as a phenomenal display of nature's beauty, and nothing stayed on the ground. The bunny will get through.

New day, new hopes, new plans. This morning; handwriting and math, an outing to see The Lego Movie and pysanky egg dying this afternoon. If only someone had not dumped the yellow dye down the sink, sigh. We'll have to make do with orange, turquoise and green this year. The application of wax was begun last week, but it has been so busy that we did not get far. 

Yesterday was our weekly math class with the most amazing teacher. She comes with her daughter and works with my girls and one more; 4 different levels, sometimes all doing the same thing, sometimes working on their own with supervision and help. I had tried to keep up when they had a 6-week unit on principles of trigonometry and some triangle work...that's about all I could tell you on the topic. I tried, I did. I want to be an inspiration to my children, but they are, and always will be, a better version of humanity; smarter, stronger...and more importantly; younger!

My brain knows its own mind too well. It likes to read history, philosophy, knit, appreciate art and music, and take long walks. It has discovered an interest in physics and botany, but this, sadly, does not extend to linear equations.

In homeschooling, being authentic is vital. Anyone can teach the rudiments of what children need to become educated, but living one's passions takes guts and confidence. I have learned to do what I love and seek help for my weaker subjects. In any case, it makes living with me nicer, a non-negligible point, non?

Mama Fitness: Advice from Down in the Thick of Things

1) DO NOT ask friends for dieting advice. Or at least not in a public, social network sort of place...like a blog or FB, where what ever dumb idea you may have briefly had will forever brand you a crazy person. Be private in your inquiries, very private. Or take the risk of regretting it for all eternity. The person responsible for your health is you. A healthcare professional and one best friend is about all you need...and a way to make calorie-free, gluten-free, sugar-free donuts that taste the same as any normal, cake donut with chocolate frosting...or powdered sugar...

2) FORGET fad dieting. Common sense, statistics and all of my friends on FB will tell you; there is no better way to set yourself up for a re-gain of even more weight. I do not know if pursuing a low-calorie diet for a few weeks is a fad or a necessity. More research required.

3) HAVE A PLAN and stick with it. Premeditating the joy you will get from the food you have planned for each day IS a good thing, and allows for portion control, as you have just obtained all the pleasure you were expecting to get from that little bowl of yogurt. More would just be redundant. Go have a glass of water. Or something.

4) DO have someone with whom you can talk this over. If I blog, it is partially to encourage myself. My husband has incredible self-discipline when it comes to food. He also loves to eat. He is a great sympathizer for me in this journey. (Even though he has never been even 10lbs. overweight in his life.) You need girl friends too!

5) WINE, a word; I find that using this teeny tiny, two-ounce glass for a portion of wine makes life beautiful. If wine should be a forbidden item on my menu, then this little jewel is a treat. That might work for chocolate cake too; I'll have to dig up the kids' old tea set and try.

Mama Fitness; Check-Up Day

So...I am in great shape. My doctor is very pleased; my glucose levels are down, the good cholesterol is up, my blood pressure is perfect. Yaaa me. Yet, I still weigh in 20lbs.heavier than 3 years ago. It is discouraging. It is ridiculous. It is perfectly vexatious. 

When I began this series on shaping up again post-baby years, post-40ish, I did not expect the initial weight-loss phase to last so long or be so difficult. I have a healthy lifestyle; fresh produce, lean, healthy proteins, hardly any grains, exercise 5-6 times a week. I think some weight-loss should naturally follow. 'Snot. I AM toned, strong, healthy. I am grateful. I do not want to put this good health in jeopardy for a smaller skirt size. I love working out, the buzz exercise gives you is better than chocolate...um, a fresh hair cut and a glass of wine. I not only take the stairs, I walk to the bakery and bike to the grocery store. My lifestyle is better. I am not essentially thinner.

I am considering a short-term, super low-calorie diet to kick start things. This is not my first choice, and it may not even end up being a choice at all, but two health-care providers; both a midwife and an MD, have suggested it may be an option I should look into.

Any experience with the HCG injection and very low-calorie diet? Here is the new protocol, post-Simmeons version of it: http://www.dremma.com/.
There is good and bad all over the internet, as usual, but I know none of the participants personally. It would be one course, with a doctor and a plan; for food, for supervision, for long-term weight-loss.

Cate and Lucy

Sunday Snapshot

A lot of people ask me, and I have had the same curiosity about your lives...what really happens in a typical day at your house?

I am in the role of observer today, as I recover from being ill, so from my corner of the sofa (not the one in the sun, it was taken over when I got up for a minute, so, the other sofa), I can tell you. Dad is doing dishes in the kitchen after our Sunday meal. Duncan is playing a new tune on the guitar, as Charles beats a drum to keep time. Gael is doing a slow, Native-American sort of marching dance around to the same beat. But a minute ago, the little guys were outside trying to fly a remote-control helicopter. Amazing that they did not even try it inside today.

The girls have done with their terrible bickering over who is going to clean what part of the shared bird cage and have gotten down to business. Puppy is in his bed, in the sun, looking out the window, just in case a squirrel should dare venture into his territory.

On the plate for later; lesson-planning. I've decided to make my own; horrors! worksheets for French and math for the rest of the year. I like our Spanish program, but I want the French to fit the particular needs of my family, and that's a hard bill to fit. Thierry will take the kids who want to go to the library, then to fly a kite.

I managed a picture in secret. I'll post it from my phone. Aah, and Cate has allowed me to take one of her with Lucy. Coming up.

Sunday Here

Tipi Completed

See former post. This has been a project long in the making. Charles and I had a real collaboration of ideas and labor. He can now decorate it in any way he wants...or not. He has spent the last two days in it and is proud of his efforts. Instructions coming tomorrow.

It's a French Onion Soup Day

...and fresh, homemade bread with a fire in the hearth. Outdoors is the scent of cold, wet and wood fire smoke from a chimney, one of the best smells in my whole little world. It will always remind me of life in a French village in the rainy winter season, of host families, then friends and neighbors, once upon a time.

Plato, Socrates and 6th Grade

Though my daughter is in 6th grade now officially, we took some time out to read aloud the last dialogue, Phaedo, of Socrates together, looking at the meaning in more depth than we had previously in 5th grade. In Waldorf education, each level is meant to build on the foundation you have built in the past, taking it to new levels and new places in each cycle.

Why did we choose to go back to the Greeks? Why, in order to better understand the Romans, of course! Valentine, 12, chose a project that highlighted the lives and features of 15 Greek/Roman gods and goddesses. She realized early on that the Roman gods were often a newer, renamed version of their Greek counter-parts.

Roman civilization borrowed so much from that of the conquered Greeks. Romans were smart that way; they adapted and adopted the culture of the peoples they overtook in order to better rule. Their law and forms were instilled everywhere they went, but the writings, beliefs and wisdom of the new part of the empire became enmeshed with what it meant to be Roman. Nowhere is this as true as with the Greeks.

Socrates was a precursor of so much that is part and parcel of our Judeo-Christian heritage. Many times in literature there is an explanation of how this or that "came about through the christianization of the world", but some of those very points can be found in the dialogs of Socrates. One example of that is the notion that suicide, as an idea, is immoral. In many cultures, it was viewed as an honorable way to redeem a failed life. Socrates disputes this, saying that we belong to the gods, they created us and we may not destroy their creation. Sound familiar?

The Waldorf sequencing of teaching makes sense as it follows a child's development. What makes sense in homeschooling, however, is knowing where your own child is in her journey and meeting her there. Build on the old wisdom, it has always been there and it will guide you to new places. Look around you and into your reading with new eyes each day. Have fun, this is childhood, a time for joy!

Native American Unit: Tipis and Walks in the Woods

This is what happens when you take a PTC to pick up some PVC for your Tipi:

And in this crazy, cold, snowy winter with Mama in a boot for my stupid foot, this was the first walk we took together in an eternity. Mrs.Thaw made an attempt at melting it all one day, but it is back down to 3 degrees again. Last week's warm weather bliss:

I have been in the throes of indecision concerning the tipi. Charles and I have researched the ways different peoples traveled and lived in tipis in times of yore in our block on Native Americans, and researched the ways different experts today recommend replicating one. I am not sure if he needs more authenticity or quicker results. Today will tell...there should be a tipi pic tomorrow. 

We searched high and low for poles this time. When we built a (very unsatisfactory) tipi for Valentine's third grade, we used bamboo poles that splintered while trying to drill holes and shortly afterward as well. Not fun. Not safe. 

Charles, Gael and I spent 2 interesting but grueling hours at the hardware store looking for poles. The only ones long enough were either poplar, at $12.95 a piece, or curtain rods, ranging from $17 to $59.95 per unit. We wanted 6 this time. Out of budget. Charles astutely suggested we give up and get PVC pipe. He knew it would not quite feel or look authentic, but he also knows, from multiple boffer-building sessions, that it is cheap, easy to saw and comes in 10-ft.lengths. 

For the "hide" we also spent hours exploring options. The craft store options were not the best (which was determined only after an hour of shopping with two young boys in a store full of...stuff), but the fabric store had just what we needed; fake leather and cheap. The craft store did, however, yield a whole section of "leather work" kits, and Gael went home with a neat moccasin kit that he badgered his siblings and I into making NOW, so he could feel like an Indian too. 

We shared a story and tea when we were all home and snug; a Hopi legend of the Warrior Maiden by Ellen Schecter.

Homeschooling and Daddy

I don't think I mention enough the great importance of the man I love in our lives, in my life. When I dream of what sort of people my children will be when they grow up, their father is the role model of a loving, unselfish, disciplined, impassioned, life-long learner I hope they will become. 

I can teach them about so many things; make sure they can read and count and know a bit about the world now and in the past. Yes, I believe fiercely in education, travel and hard work...but an educated, well-traveled, hard-working yet cold-hearted, greedy, power-monger is a more dangerous entity than an uneducated, lazy one. The latter will know better how to work the system and do more damage.

Kindness and a strong sense of accountability are to be developed as they move through childhood and out into the world. There are ways to cultivate it, as I try to cultivate wonder and curiosity too, but the best method is to have a good example of it right in your own home and heart. The ways their father proves this love and responsibility every single day, are, for starters, in the long hours he works. They are in the care he takes of us and the extras that go beyond it all. He is the one who will stay late to help with a church or show choir event, and still be up on Sunday morning making pancakes for everyone. He will take the sheets to the washing machine in the middle of the night while I help a sick munchkin get into clean jammies. He'll make sure the snow is shoveled for me, even if I have to leave at 4:30am for work. That's love.

I HATE the presence of phones, i-pods and computers at our table at any time...but I have to admire the ease with which we can share new information with each other. Thierry is an advocate for technology, and he is amazing at finding and sharing relevant, fascinating stories with us about events and people past and present. 

He uses the library; reading books he has heard of, books on topics he is pursuing (favorites: computer technology, relationships, money management, science and biographies of old heavy metal stars), and books he finds out on shelves that peak his interest. Duncan has picked up on his style; reading an eclectic mix and sharing endlessly with us bits and pieces of what he reads, both in books and on his dreaded i-pod. Cate emulates this in a different way; checking out each week a monstrous number of books on topics ranging from naval architecture to learning Italian.

As for self-control; Daddy wins every contest. There can be cake, donuts, fresh bagels, candy and soda in every corner of an office space, and he will calmly ignore it all, warm up his lunch from home in the microwave and eat it, rejoicing in his thrift and calorie-consciousness. He gained 4 pounds while in Germany a couple of weeks ago; he's lost them again already. This does not mean he does not have all the "savoir-vivre" of the French. A seven-course meal with wine is one of his greatest pleasures in life, especially if there is a drop of good armagnac to follow. 

And he's funny. He is way more fun than Mama. The kids used to have a "Mama's Gone Dance" they would do if I were going out, leaving Daddy in charge. Of course, he made this up to keep them from getting sad, but they would jubilate all over the living room if he started up the song. I think they still do.

His enthusiasm for adventure makes life a joy. He loves his travel time for his job, and, once we get everything packed into the car or plane, even likes to explore new worlds with the whole family. Although homeschooling was not an option Father would have Thought Best when we first started, at all. his support and belief in me have made it the marvelous experience it has been thus far. Thank you, honey!

A Visit to the Putnam Museum

 Sometimes a science and natural history museum can be more than you bargained for on a cold winter's day. A playground:

A building site:

A young artist's canvas:

A space in which to collaborate:

Or to cringe before the explosion...a lieu of discoveries.