We're very lucky.
Jack is the sort of child
we all assume we'll have
when we decide to have children,
and the sort of child
less experienced parents
congratulate themselves for.January and February 2004
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2006-08-10 - 11:52
Now then, where were we?
I last posted almost six weeks ago! Ouch.
Yep, the last month and some has been very busy. Please forgive me if I'm a bit scattered. A lot has happened lately, some of it relevant to Jack, and much of it not. I have been having a hard time switching gears and gathering my thoughts since things quieted down, so I figured I'd start writing and see where it leads. The hope, of course, is that getting started again will grease the mental wheels and the next post might actually be worthwhile.
We did get to the zoo, and it was great fun! more about that in a bit. We had intended to also visit the zoo for Dad's birthday in July, but that didn't work out. It was much too hot (a heat index near 105 degrees Fahrenheit) and both Rod and Jack were feeling ill, so we postponed that trip for a cooler day.
Layoffs are being announced "any minute now" and between the brand new mortgage and the fact that I genuinely love my job, it has me somewhat nervous. Well, ok, hyperventilating occasionally.
A trip to the zoo
As I mentioned, Jack "took me to the zoo to show me some elephants" for my birthday.
We had an amazing time! We packed a lovely picnic lunch and left early, planning to stay "a couple of hours" and the head home. Jack and I had never been to a real zoo before, and we spent 7 hours or so exploring. It was fascinating to see all those amazing animals, big as life! It was sad, too. Many of the animals were clearly stressed by being forces to sit in cages and be stared at. The polar bears and elephants paced and fretted. The various apes stared back at us and looked like they might be resentful. The baby giraffe, standing alone in her "hospital room" looked away from the activity behind the glass and seemed so lonely. Imagine out surprise when they started to shut the zoo down around us!
We did indeed see elephants. There were two elephants, Maggie, and her baby, Louie. Jack had insisted that he was going to show me "brown elephants" -- and while their skin was the usual grey colour, Maggie and Louie had recently taken a mud bath to keep the insects away, and they did indeed seem brown from some angles. Maggie didn't seem very happy about her life, but as is the way with babies, Louie played and showed off for his visitors and seemed quite content.
We also saw gorillas -- and we watched as one "toddler-sized" gorilla nursed. His mother, after several attempts to get him to pay attention, turned her back to us so her little guy could latch on and still flirt with us -- it was so sweet and so funny because it was so familiar. It isn't only human children that get so distractible!
It was an extremely hot day, and we stopped in the shade every hour or so to have a very light snack and a drink. We stopped even longer at the water exhibits -- they were covered shelters with glass walls looking into very deep water. We were particularly impressed to see a hippopotamus standing in water so deep only his nose was out of the water -- and we could see through the window to see all of him. Amazing! He was HUGE!
It wasn't until we were on our way out of the park that Jack suddenly seemed tired and wanted to be carried. Before that, he was always yards ahead of us, headed for the next amazing exhibit! To top off the day, just before we headed for home we all stopped at an ice cream shop and had a cone, and then it was time to go home.
Jack, of course, fell asleep before we left Toledo!
Paint!
The week after our trip to the zoo, we spent the long weekend painting the parlour. I love the layout of our house, but the white walls everywhere were really getting to me. I know, I know -- white walls sell better than bolder walls -- and when we moved in, the first thing that had to go was the orange walls in the guest bath and the guest bedroom, so I guess I am glad the whole house wasn't done in shades of orange. By the Independence Day weekend, Rod and I were ready to really start making a change.
Our dear friend Shelley came over to give us a hand getting started on Saturday, and we covered the white parlour walls with a deep Victorian Red. It took three coats to get it to look at least somewhat smooth -- then on Sunday, we (well, Rod, actually) stippled the red walls with a bit of matte grey to lighten up the effect. We had to repaint the back wall three times before he found just the right technique, but in the end, it came out just perfect! Finally, on Monday I went over the walls with gold paint on a rose leaf wall stamp. It took a while to figure out how to make that work without dripping, and there are places that it's best not to look too closely, but overall, we love the effect! It's now been a month and we still grin when we walk into that room and comment to each other what a beautiful room it is.
It's probably to be expected that the reactions of our friends have been split right down the middle and pretty much fall in one extreme or another. Some of our friends just love it and the rest are extremely polite. (A good sign that they're thinking "Oh well, it's just paint. It can be painted over easily enough when they come to their senses.")
What was Jack doing while we did all this? Part of the time, he was helping. The rest of the time, we took turns accompanying him to the "back yard water park" where he played in the pool, in the sprinkler, on the slip and slide, and with bubbles.
We also painted Jack's room that weekend -- it's a much darker shade of green than I had intended, but the effect is rather nice with a maple right outside his widow. It's sort of like being in a forest glade! We still have to get the posters bought, framed, and put up and put in window treatments, but the hard part is done.
The next project is the kitchen. It's white, too, but rather than painting it, we're concentrating on making it more usable. This weekend, we'll put in a spice rack that can hold our 100 or so jars of spices and get them off the countertops. We'll put in shelves for our dozens of jars of legumes and grains, and, if we have the energy at the end, we may well pull out the shelves in the pantry and reconfigure them to be more useful. Right now, the shelves are very deep and things disappear easily into the back corners never to be seen again. We plan to take out the front half of the shelves and turn them sideways so that narrower u-shaped shelves make everything more accessible and use more of the available space useful.
Pagan Home Schooling
We are working informally with an education consultant about Jack's education. Karen is a retired teacher and an aunt of one of Jack's best friends. We chat with her by e-mail and get together once in a while for dinner and brainstorming. It makes us feel far more secure that we'll hit all the subjects we should -- and in many cases, Karen can explain the meaning and intent behind exercises we might have been tempted to ignore. It's a LOT safer to ignore things if you know what you're ignoring.
Best of all, she's a really cool person with some fascinating interests! It's always fun to find people who share ones quirks!
Pagan home schooling is turning out to be a bit of a challenge because the pagan community hasn't developed much in the way of resources that are specific to our needs. So far, we seem to be content to adapt what others have come up with. Nothing wrong with that, but it does mean more work for the parents who reinvent the wheel each year in planning the year's curriculum and figuring our how to adapt what's out there.
And it's not that there's no material out there -- it just hasn't really been collated and made into lesson plans. The only organized pagan education I have found is the Goddess = Moon Circle Academy and I found that at least at the pre-K level it was pretty disappointing.
Oh, it wasn't bad.
It wasn't very challenging, but it was no less challenging than the other curricula aimed at three year olds and it was very light on pagan oriented materials for my tastes. They do have a Yoga-based "phys ed" element, though I wished there had been more of that -- a new asana each week, perhaps. And they offer some truly excellent science experiment ideas, but again, those are occasional. Perhaps I'd have been happier had we signed up at an older grade, since pre-K is largely play-based.
Then again, Jack presents a challenge that way.
He is, in a few ways, ahead of what is expected for a three year old -- he can and wants to read and write. "Academics" are what truly fascinates him and he's very analytical, so "play oriented" teaching doesn't capture his attention very well.
But he *is* only three. He has a very limited experience in the world and he's is a bit emotionally immature for his age. Discussions that are appropriate at 5 or 6 are far beyond him yet and the rambunctiousness that older kids so often enjoy leaves him rattled and weepy, making kindergarten material not quite right, either. I think the best way to describe it might be that developmentally he is a three-year old, but his interests are those of a somewhat older child.
Barb's Pagan Homeschool page has several lists of pagan-friendly books of various sorts. We'll make use of some of those as we create a curriculum for him.
Fire cars!
Every week, on Thursday after dinner, Rod goes into downtown Ypsilanti to meet with his "Star Ladies" -- that's what Jack calls the astrology group.
The group meets at an ice cream parlour on the same day that the classic car club has a rally right outside the ice cream parlour doors all through the summer. Jack doesn't care much about astrology yet, but he sure loves ice cream and classic cars (and motorcycles), so we often join Rod in town for the evening.
Jack is a patient boy, so I get to chat with the star ladies for a few minutes, then we go outside to walk up and down the block admiring the cars and motorcycles and enjoying the 1950-1960s music playing on loudspeakers, then we go back inside for Jack to eat ice cream and for me to chat with the astrologers again.
Then comes Jack's favorite part of the evening: at the end of the rally, as the cars pull away from their display spots, they drive slowly along the block to the applause of the crowds. A few of the cars have been souped up to spew flames from their tail pipes! Often two cars pull up side by side and have a 15 or 20 minute "competition" -- one shooting smaller, steadier flames and the other shooting more sporadic, but brighter and longer flames! These are Jack's beloved "fire cars".
Jack watches for the entire time, just mesmerized! The cars, of course, rev their engines while they're shooting flames, and at first Jack wanted to be held while he watched, but as the summer has passed, he's gotten braver and braver. Now he is happy to just hold my hand as we watch from very nearby.
He says that when he is big, he will have a fire car, too.
Oh joy!
More soon -- and thanks for your patience!
