Category Archives: random

April 2, 2011 · 4:33 PM

A Day in the Life

A few weeks ago, myself and another unschooling friend spoke to a graduate class about unschooling. Since then, I’ve been contacted by handful of students wanting to interview me, learn more, and use our family as a case study for a final project. At first, it was just through email, but yesterday someone came to visit, observe, and talk with us in person.

I was nervous… worried that it would be the day that the kids would bicker, the washing machine would overflow, and the dog would finally catch and kill a chicken. Thankfully, I worried for nothing. None of those things happened, and in fact she was able to witness the kind of unschooling day that just unfolds like a symphony.

She arrived in the late morning, and by the time she’d gotten here I’d already had a lengthy conversation with Spencer about electrical circuits (complete with diagrams, by yours truly). I’d also had a lengthy conversation about the inner workings of a hand grenade with Everett (also complete with diagrams, by Everett) We’d picked up together, tended to all the animals, and gathered the morning eggs.

When she got here, we’d settled into a comfortable rhythm for the day. Tegan wanted to paint, so she was set up at the kitchen table. When she’d finished painting, she switched to making hand prints, then washed up to play with – and name – all the wooden letters in her Tegan puzzle. Everett had tired of writing his name on little post-its around the house, and was out back experimenting with water, mud, and physics. He was quite proud of the simulated hand grenade he’d created by filling a tube with water, and plugging the end with grass, mud, and a pin fashioned from a small root. Paxton spent most of his time on the computer, and Spencer alternated between computer time and adult conversation with me and our visitor. We introduced her to the rats and the snake, and spent a long time on the back patio watching the chickens and talking about school, learning, and upper level math.

I’d promised the kids we could go to the store to get the ingredients for homemade ice cream, so after she’d left we made our one – and only – outing for the day. Car conversation included genetics, war, and public transportation. We got our ice cream makings, and a fun dinner. When we got home, we pulled out the globe. Our guest was originally from Lebanon, so we found its location on the globe, along with several other countries that we’d wondered about. The geography discussion turned to talk of history, and more wars, and a good chuckle over a Friends episode where Chandler concocted a whole ruse about getting transferred to Yemen for work.

The evening held scooter riding, ice cream making, movie watching, and trouble shooting on our new (failed) camera battery.

And it was very, very good.

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March 22, 2011 · 10:27 PM

To Do (Or Not To Do)

Don’t you love it how, when you’ve got something on your mind, you suddenly see it everywhere? It’s like God and the universe and all of humanity just get together and throw not just signs, but big, honking HUGE signs in your path until you act on them.

I’ve blogged over the past few days about how I’ve been a little bit… lost lately. A little bit overwhelmed. My husbands says I’ve been in a funk. I say I’ve been “creatively (and probably mentally, emotionally, and spiritually) blocked.” No matter what you call it, I haven’t been me lately. And one thing that helps me, one thing that always helps me, is getting more organized. I KNOW this. I know this well. And yet…

I still fight it, tooth and nail, every time.

No, no, no! Screams my inner child. I am a free spirit! I do not need lists, I do not like schedules, I’m a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of girl! I work well in the chaos. I will not change my ways. I will not, I will not, I will NOT!

I sort of stubbornly cling to the madness instead of admitting I might need a little help. Now, I’m not a big Dr Phil fan, but for better or worse it’s his voice I keep hearing in my head..

“How’s that working out for you?”

And it’s not. I’ve been spinning my wheels and getting nowhere. And I’m tired. I admit it. But what to do about it?

And this is where God, the universe, and all of humanity come in. Everything I’ve seen, read, or listened to the past several days has said the same things: I need to make a to-do list. I need to get back to basics. I need to remember what’s important. I need to prioritize. I need to take baby steps. I need to make a to-do list.

A list? Come on. A list will not solve my problems. And ordinarily, when I’m thinking clearly, I would tell you that I LOVE lists. Lists are my friend. Lists make me happy.

But now, really? A list? I’ve been resisting this for days.

This morning, I signed onto Twitter, and the very first tweet I read was from someone who I find almost irritatingly upbeat, positive, and inspiring. It read:

The easiest way to improve time management is to keep a to-do list.

Oh alright already, I’ll make a stinking to-do list!

So this morning, I did. And wouldn’t you know, I was more productive today than I’ve been in weeks and weeks, and I felt like I had way more time to spend with the kids. How is that even possible? But somehow, it is. I thought about what was important. I prioritized. I took baby steps. I got back to basics.

I still pushed the 3 year old on the swings. And I watched Dora. And I played Memory. And I played Uno Moo. And I baked. And I connected with my boys. And I went to bed at a decent hour, on freshly washed sheets. Instead of lamenting that I wished I had more hours, I actually felt like I had gained hours. I felt calmer, I felt less frazzled, I felt less scattered.

All because of a to-do list? Well, no. But it was a step. And sometimes that’s all it takes.

“Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Filed under about me, random, simplifying

March 17, 2011 · 11:49 PM

Blips

This picture is from last year, but it makes me happy, so I wanted to post it again. Today was a good day, and a fun day. The kids and I spent it at a friend’s house, where they had a scavenger hunt, jumped on the trampoline, baked Irish-themed goodies, and even braved the pool. It really was a lovely day.

But…

I’m still feeling regretful that I was less patient than I would have liked in dealing with the ten year old when he didn’t want to get off the trampoline, and with the six year old when he burst into tears for the fourth time, and even with my husband when I got home. I’ve been distracted, and scattered, and unfocused for longer than I care to admit.  The house is nearly unlivable it’s so messy, half the kids are coughing (or sneezing or runny-nosed or feverish, again), and I am tired… tired and unable to sleep, one of the most frustrating and continuous conundrums of my life. 

I was telling a friend recently that unschoolers sometimes paint too rosy of a picture.  That it’s such a joyful life that everything just sort of flows.  That it’s always happy and moonlight and roses and rainbows.  And make no mistake… it IS a joyful life.  It IS a happy life. 

But sometimes… sometimes, there are blips.   And because I always want to keep things real, I think it’s only fair if I share a blip or two.

Welcome to my blip. 

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Filed under life, parenting, random, unschooling

March 11, 2011 · 8:29 PM

Life With a Three Year Old

This is my favorite coffee mug

We bought these mugs about 5 years ago, and they are still my favorite mugs for my morning coffee.  They just make me deliriously happy.  We originally bought 8, and are down to 7 (which is pretty darn good, considering my tendency to break things.)  I have a few other mugs that I will use, depending on my mood, but this is the mug you’re most likely to see if you drop in on me on any given day.

Yesterday, I was on cup number three.  I took that final swig, set my cup down, and saw this:

It looked like a ramen noodle, but we don’t buy ramen noodles.  It could have even been a small worm, which in some ways might have been preferable to what it actually was.  I asked Tegan if she knew what it was, and she very casually peered into my cup, went back to what she was doing, and said,

“Oh, that’s my dental floss.  I put it in there.”  Because naturally, the most normal and sensible thing to do with your dental floss when you’re done with it is to put it in your mother’s coffee. 

She’d put used dental floss in my coffee.  Used dental floss.  In my coffee.

“How about next time, you put it in the trash when you’re done?  Or you can give it to me, and I can put it in the trash for you?”

“Okay, Mommy.”  Sweetly, innocently.

Never a dull moment.

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Filed under parenting, random, Tegan, unschooling

March 6, 2011 · 9:12 PM

Moving Day

The kids wanting to be moved in the trailer

This weekend, we moved Mom and Dad into their new house, a larger house just a few houses down from their current one.  We made trip after trip, back and forth, stopping only to enjoy pizza, beer, and soda.  (And as a side note, who decided pizza and beer would be the official moving foods?  I don’t think I’ve ever helped with or participated in a move where we’ve eaten anything else?)  After we got most everything set up, Everett amused himself when he discovered that doing this:

Made his hair do this:

We all toasted with some champagne

And enjoyed the view

From their back patio

That’s Sedona in the distance

The boys loved helping carrying and moving – the heavier, the better.  Tegan has been fighting off a cold and cough for a few days now, so she wasn’t quite her normal animated self, but she took her responsibility to help with packing and loading boxes very seriously.  And she was, as always, ready for her close-up.

Mom, Dad, and their littlest princess

I’m excited to make new memories in the new house, and to have yet another place to watch the kids grow, play, and explore.

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Filed under family, random

February 17, 2011 · 10:08 PM

Nostalgia

I had a post all planned for tonight. Got ready for bed, replaced my jeans with yoga pants, got a glass of water, got all settled in with my laptop…. and proceeded to stare at my screen. And stare some more. No words. I’m very much inside my head tonight. Not in a bad way, but in a I’m-so-distracted-I-can’t-possibly-write-something-new kind of way.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the past, and about what brought us here. In lots of ways, I feel like the person that I am – and the family that we are – was not really born until we moved here to Arizona. Everett was just a baby when we moved, Paxton 5, and Spencer (who will be FOURTEEN the day after tomorrow) was 8. And we of course had no idea that we’d eventually have a Tegan. In more ways than one, we were different people when we moved. And for better or worse, our life together will now forever be divided into “before” and “after” that move.

In my little journey into the past, I went back to re-visit some old posts. This one from November 23rd, 2005 gave a recap of the week-long trip as we moved across the country. It was odd to read it, almost as if it’d been written by someone else. But I read it, and I remembered. Bittersweet is the word that comes to mind… such a big move for us, such a huge leap of faith, but one that we were so very very excited about.

Here is the post from that trip, the bridge between “before” and “after”:

Day 1 – Departure

We planned to leave NH at 8:00 AM, and ended up leaving at 8:45. Not bad considering that it was a cold, rainy, dreary day. The first leg of the trip went incredibly smoothly. The boys slept off and on, and we rarely heard a peep from the animals. We had lunch in New York, and it was also somewhere in New York that I first noticed that our trailer swayed like crazy everytime a tractor trailer passed us. I vowed I wouldn’t look back anymore, because it freaked me out, but of course it just made me look EVERY time. The drizzly sky finally completely opened up and poured on us as we entered Pennsylvania, and we all laughed as we ran through the rain into to PA Welcome Center. First overnight stop: Mifflinville, Pennsylvania. We got some sandwiches from Arby’s, then spent the evening playing the bingo game that Paxton got in his kid’s meal at lunch.

Day 2

We woke to freezing temperatures and snow. It snowed on and off all day, but thankfully never enough to delay our trip. We entered Ohio, and had lunch in Akron. There were tears in Akron too – lots of them – over where we were going to eat. A scene was made, and I think there’s a distinct possibility that we won’t be welcome at that Subway ever again. Ah, traveling with kids. Everyone felt a lot better after we ate, and we enjoyed a gorgeous sunset coming through Columbus. The boys broke out their gameboys after lunch, and I ate my way through a box of Junior Caramels while I read two more magazines and caught up on all my pop-culture news. We noticed a strange thump in the trailer, and couldn’t figure out what it was. We were excited to see gas prices drop below $2.00, a very good thing since our 4Runner was barely making 11 MPG with the weight of the trailer. Second overnight stop: Dayton, Ohio. There was a Perkins right next to our hotel, so that fit the bill for dinner. We’d never eaten there before, but the boys and I were able to get pancakes, and Mike got some sort of meat, so we were happy. The hotel was NOT a four-star establishment, and I had to laugh each time I found something wrong…. a lamp that didn’t work, a missing clock, a shower drain that didn’t drain, and not even a single spare roll of toilet paper.

Day 3

This time we woke to the first casualty of the trip. My Christmas cactus, lovingly grown from a shoot from a plant that was originally my Grandmothers, was frozen dead in the truck. Our luck continued through the morning into Missouri. It was a boring stretch of highway, and a rough stretch of highway, so much so that I was starting to feel carsick. Everett was starting to get grumpy and bored, so I picked up a little chalkboard for him to play with. It kept him happily drawing for 20 minutes or so, until he found more creative uses for it, like bopping his big brothers in the head. It revived me a little bit to come into St Louis, and I took several pictures of the arch. It finally started to warm up a bit too, something that made us all happy. We played the alphabet game in the afternoon, and we got to “Z” just as we passed a Lake of the Ozarks sign. Third overnight stop: Lebanon, Missouri (at a much nicer hotel than the night before.) We rolled into the parking lot with less than a half a gallon of gas, checked in, and ordered a pizza. While we waited for dinner to arrive, the boys ran around the courtyard for a good half hour, waving their arms over their heads, shouting “We’re freeeeeeeee!!”

Day 4

We had a rough, windy ride first thing in the morning, but it cleared up as the morning wore on. The boys played their gameboys, and I finished the second of the 4 books I brought with me. We crossed into Oklahoma, and had lunch in Tulsa. We saw our first official cowboy in Wendy’s, complete with Wrangler jeans, cowboy boots, hat and silver belt buckle. The boys were excited at lunch because they got new prizes in their kids’ meals (we’d already eaten fast food enough times that they’d gotten some repeats) The day was going smoothly, if long, and we booked our hotel for the night. We were about 60 miles away from our destination, and I turned to Mike to tell him what good time we were making, how happy I was that we were ahead of schedule. BOOM. Or bang or pop or whatever words conjure up a dreadfully loud and sudden explosion sound. In the ten seconds it took me to realize we weren’t in fact being shot at, but had blown a tire out on our trailer, Mike already had the truck under control and was maneuvering it onto the shoulder. Unfortunately it happened on the one of the worst possible places on the highway… a barely-there shoulder, a tight curve, and a 75 mph speed limit. We just sat in the truck for a minute, looking at each other, while tractor trailers zoomed by fast enough to make our teeth rattle. We did have a spare, but neither of us were comfortable with Mike changing a tire by himself on that section of road. We wanted a professional, preferably with flashing lights. We called AAA, who sent someone out, and it took about 20 minutes for him to arrive. It was dark by this time, and 2 of the 3 boys were crying, exhausted and freaked out. It was a quick fix once he got there; and ten minutes (and $120) later, we were on our again, stopping at a closer hotel than planned. Fourth overnight stop: Elk City, Oklahoma. We were exceedingly thankful to get there safe and sound, and the hotel room – complete with its hot pink sheets – was very inviting. I stayed with the baby, while Mike and the older boys ran out to pick something up for dinner. I found Racing Stripes on HBO, and thought they’d be excited about that when they got back. They were.

Day 5

Everett woke up hot with a fever, but with no other symptoms. I felt bad making him get in the car for another day of driving, but knew that he’d get the sleep he needed to fight whatever it was off. And sleep he did. We drove around most of the morning looking for someplace to buy another spare tire for the trailer, but it was a difficult feat being a Sunday when everything was closed. Walmart’s tire center was open but did not have the right size. We took the chance while we were there to grab a few things we needed… snacks, baby tylenol, another magazine, new magnadoodles for the kids. The guy at Walmart sent us to a truck stop, also open, also wrong size. We finally found a service station that appeared to be open. The guy who worked there, called in on an emergency repair for somebody else, was gracious enough to help us. We were back on the road by 10:30 AM, and finally crossed into Texas. Lunch was at McDonalds in Amarillo. The boys wanted an icecream after lunch, and were bummed to find out that their icecream machine was broken. After lunch we crossed the border into New Mexico, and it was just as beautiful as I remembered it from the first trip. There’s just something about the miles and miles of wide open spaces, mountains, and red rock buttes that’s good for the soul. I love the southwest; I always have. The difference between this time and our trip in June is that in June it felt like a vacation, and this time it feels like going home. Fifth overnight stop: Albuquerque, New Mexico. The kids made me smile when they walked into our rather typical $60 a night hotel room and said, with all sincerity “Wow, what a great room!” We had dinner at an interesting cafeteria-style family restaurant in a not-very-nice part of town. We’d promised the boys icecream…. and the icecream machine was broken there too. We headed back to our hotel, and to the McDonald’s sharing its parking lot, for icecream and another night of much needed rest. We pulled out the US map as we had every night so far, and marveled at how far we’d come.

Day 6

Everett’s fever was thankfully of the 36 hour variety, and he woke up cool and happy and his usual stinker self. The older boys however woke up with their own unique versions of impending colds… Paxton a hacking cough, and Spencer a flurry of sneezes. We’d set the alarm for 7, but not being used to the time change we woke up at 5:45, ready to get going. We had our first really good cup of coffee of the trip when I spotted a nearby Starbucks. Mike ran in for them, and came back swearing that he was never going to Starbucks again…. too many complicated choices for a simple cup of coffee. We enjoyed a relaxing drive through the rest of New Mexico, and I finished my 3rd book of the trip in between drinking in all the scenery. We crossed into Arizona before noon, and began the long stretch of desert highway. Exits were few and far between, so when we stopped for a bathroom break, Mike decided to fill up the gas tank just in case. He was already up to $40 before he realized that the gas was almost FOUR DOLLARS a gallon. We shed our jackets sometime around lunchtime, and enjoyed the warm air. Lunch was at Denny’s in Holbrook, and we decided to call it a nice early day. Last overnight stop: Flagstaff, AZ. We stayed at a nicer hotel than the previous ones, in a two-room suite, which was fitting for our last night of the trip. We got their at 4:00, enjoyed a complimentary cocktail social hour, gave the kids baths, ordered room service, and vegged out in front of the TV.

Day 7: Arrival day

We woke up early again, and were lounging around in bed watching the local news. Mike got a weird look on his face when he heard that it had dipped below 20 degrees overnight. I just stared at him until he said “Paxton’s fish.” It had been so warm in the evening, we hadn’t thought about the fact that we were in the mountains and that it might get cold at night. Paxton’s fish – who’d made it completely across the country just fine – had been left in the truck in the cold, and didn’t make it. We’d brought him into the hotel with us the nights we knew it was going to get cold, but were fooled by the warm Arizona evening. We felt HORRIBLE. Paxton was of course sad, but handled it better than either one of us would have expected. He seemed as excited as the rest of us that it was our last day of driving, and that we were only 3 hours away from our new home. We fueled up at a nice breakfast buffet, complete with belgian waffles, and let Everett run up and down the corridors while Mike loaded up the truck. We took it easy on the 2 hour drive down to Anthem, both because we didn’t want to blow another tire and plummet off the side of the mountain, and because our overloaded trailer didn’t let us do otherwise. The views coming down into Phoenix were, as we remembered, spectacular.

We got to my sister’s house at noon, and it was like no time had passed between us.. certainly not 4 months. We chatted and visited, and the kids wasted no time getting down to the business of playing with their cousins. It was warm and sunny and happy, and it felt good just to be there. We called our realtor and set up a time to meet her at our house. As we drove down to Tempe, I was literally so excited that I thought I was going to hyperventilate. I had to keep telling myself, and the kids (who were nearly bouncing off the ceiling) to calm down. We underestimated how much time it would take to get there, and we were 15 minutes late meeting the realtor. The house was very easy to find off the highway, and the area was just as she’d promised – a nice, clean, beautiful family neighborhood. She promised we wouldn’t be disappointed, and we were not. One misconception I think people have about Arizona in general is that everything is drab and brown, and it’s just not. As we drove into the development there was green grass and palm trees, petunias and marigolds, and a whole bunch of gorgeous blooming bushes that I’ve yet to learn the name of. It was everything we’d hoped for… and if it hadn’t been for the occasional crying, the fever, the blown-out tire, and the dead fish, the trip would’ve been too perfect. We made it safely across the country together, and it’s all good.

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Filed under about me, memories, random, traveling

February 11, 2011 · 3:36 PM

My Ode to Valentine’s Day

I sort of hate Valentine’s Day. Not with quite the amount of passion that I hate it when people text when they drive, or use apostrophes when they pluralize their family name… but I hate it all the same.

Even as a kid, I remember the anxiety I’d feel over those Valentines parties at school… having to have a perfectly decorated box, and picking the right cards, and comparing and analyzing what the cute boy that both myself and my best friend had a crush on wrote on our valentines. It was nerve-wracking.

And in high school, they always sold carnations on Valentine’s Day. People would buy them for their significant others (or their crushes, or their pawns in making other people jealous) Then a big deal would be made about delivering said carnations to students during their classes. A lovely and exciting thing if you were one of the people receiving a carnation. I never was. If I did have a boyfriend, we were broken up by the time February rolled around. My junior year, I actually had a boyfriend in February, and as silly as it was, I was excited to think that I’d get a carnation on Valentine’s Day. I would get to be the one to ooh and ahh over my beautiful carnation and my thoughtful boyfriend while the rest of the class waited to see if they too, were going to experience the thrill of that artificially dyed flower and crinkly paper.  My excitement was short-lived however, as he broke up with me ON Valentine’s Day.

I will always remember that afternoon in French class, when my teacher was calling on students to ask them what they were doing for their valentine.  And when he called on me, I had the distinct honor of being the only one to have to answer:

Je n’ai pas Valentin.

That was the year that I officially swore off the holiday forever. (Yes, Mike W, you were the one who ruined me for the most romantic holiday of the year. For the rest of my life.) I’m kidding. Kind of. But oh how that high school drama hurt at the time!

The following summer, of course, I would meet my now husband. I have had the same “valentine” now for 20 years. And to his credit, when we were newly together and he was still “wooing” me, he did get me flowers and chocolate and sweet little nothings on Valentine’s Day. One year, after we were married but before we had kids, he even booked a special weekend away as a surprise.

But I still hate Valentine’s Day. I do. I’m the Valentine’s version of Scrooge. Going in to the grocery store right now makes my skin crawl…. all the balloons and pinks and hearts and flowers and cards… It’s so commercialized and driven by money and just… icky. My biggest objection though is just the fact that it’s a specific day set aside to tell people that we love them, to be sweet and kind and giving because it’s Valentine’s Day. Shouldn’t we be doing those things anyway? Whatever happened to a gift of chocolate on a Tuesday, in the middle of June? Wouldn’t it mean so much more then, when it’s “just because”? Why not send your loved ones nice notes any random old time that you’re thinking of them? Why not get your best friend (or your husband or your child) that present that you know they’ll love now, instead of waiting for Valentine’s Day, or Christmas, or their birthday? Why not surprise your spouse with a fancy candlelit dinner in the middle of the week, on March 17th, just because you want to?

It should be noted that because I don’t want to pass my anti-Valentine bias onto the kids, we don’t completely ignore it. They’ve participated in many a Valentine party, and I never pass up an excuse (any excuse) to try a new cupcake recipe. But I just think there’s something odd, and silly at best, to a holiday that’s devoted to love and romance, and a sentiment that should be part of our lives year-round.

Or maybe I’m still bitter about those darn carnations.

Either way, I’m greatly looking forward to the 15th.

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Filed under about me, holidays, random

February 9, 2011 · 2:48 PM

Feeling Crafty

By nature, I’m a highly disorganized person. I’ve blogged about it before, so this is not anything new. I tend to make a mess out of everything I touch. But the fact remains that I will forever be in love with things that make me FEEL like I’m being organized. I walk through Staples and Office Max and just sigh with pleasure.

So I get very excited when I come across do-it-yourself organizational projects, especially quick ones, and even more especially, cheap ones.

Someone posted this idea for a free menu planner, and I thought, “You know what I don’t have?  A free menu planner.”  As much as I like the concept of planning meals in advance….  ah, well, you know the rest.  Nice in theory, but in practice, not so much.  But maybe if I have a fun menu planner, I’ll actually use it.  And it’s cute.  And it’s free!  So after three failed attempts (I have issues printing things at the correct size) I printed it out:

Next was a trip to the Dollar Tree with the two little ones, for a $1 frame. 

I trimmed the heck out of it, 

Put it in my dollar store frame, and grabbed a dry erase marker (Is there anything greater than dry erase markers?!)  And voila.  For a dollar, some ink, and a couple of minutes of time, we now have a nice, reusable, menu planner.  And the illusion of organization.


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Filed under projects, random

February 3, 2011 · 12:13 PM

An Important Message From Tegan

The girl and I are usually the first two out of bed in the morning (excluding Mike, who is long gone for work before we even think about getting up) Most mornings, I check my email and Facebook, and she sits in my lap while she wakes up. This morning we were looking through some new pictures posted by a friend, and she was asking questions about the kids she was seeing.

I don’t mind answering questions. Not only do I not mind it, but I appreciate it, and I relish it. It’s such a huge component of any interaction with a toddler! And it’s sweet to sit with her, just the two of us, and look at pictures together.

But,

She asks hard questions. Questions with answers that I just have no way of knowing, at least not with the kind of detail she would like. And so, I would like to request (on behalf of my daughter) that when you caption your children’s pictures on Facebook, that you take just a quick second and include the following:

The names and ages of everyone in the picture.

The name and age of the person taking the picture.

If the person taking the picture is a parent, whether or not the children in the picture have another parent, and where that parent is at the time of the picture taking. Especially whether or not they are in the bathroom (and if they’re in the bathroom, whether they are going #1 or #2. Or are in the shower. Or the bath.)

Whether or not the children in the picture have a dog or a fish or chickens.

Why they’re wearing the clothes they’re wearing, and where they got them, and whether or not someone helped them get dressed.

Who combed their hair, and did they have tangles.

Whether or not their shirts have buttons in the back.

If it’s taken outside, how long the trees have been there.

If their legs aren’t showing, whether or not they do in fact have some, and whether or not they can walk.

And finally… a brief description of why you took the picture, why you put it on Facebook, and what you did when you were done.

Thank you.

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Filed under Facebook, parenting, random, Tegan

February 2, 2011 · 8:46 PM

Wednesday Wisdom

One of the questions – which isn’t really a question, but a request – that unschoolers get alot is “Describe a typical day.”

I think a “typical” day is a really subjective thing, and depends on a whole bunch of factors.  But my favorite days, which are just as typical as any other – are the days when I can go to bed thinking, “Dang, we learned/talked about/did/saw some cool things today.”

Here’s a little sample of what we learned and talked about today:

What the expressions “Another country heard from,” “Opening a can of worms”, and “The early bird catches the worm” mean

The role that yeast plays in baking

The fact that if you pour orange juice into milk, that you can’t “turn into back into milk” no matter how much you want to.

What the word “sous” means

When the first dishwasher was invented, and when it became commonplace for the average American to have one.

The difference between a debit card and a credit card

What elephant pee smells like (it does not, as Zoey 101 would have you believe, smell like licorice)

Ways to preserve a laptop battery

How to fill out a check

And finally, when the 3 year old says, “I just love baking powder SO MUCH!” it means she’s eating powdered sugar, straight from the bag, and that there will more than likely be a mess involved.

I can’t wait for our next typical day.

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Filed under random, unschooling