Mr. 0 is 5 months

 
 
 
 

Mr.0 continues to get bigger and bigger. Last week he discovered his tongue and he spends quite a bit of time right now sticking out his tongue at whoever will join him in this game. And just a few days ago he learned how to blow raspberries and now is a drooly mess as he does it over and over again. He can roll from front to back although often gets frustrated when his arm gets in his way. He has rolled from back to front once but has not quite mastered it yet (he seemed rather surprised when it happened). We decided to give him some mashed bananas as a 5 month celebration yesterday and he ate it up, loving every bit. By bite number 2 he had mastered it. Definitely the boy with the most enthusiasm for his first food. He likes sitting in the Bumbo and watching everyone at the table and seems to understand that reading Good Night Moon means bedtime. He's growing like crazy and is long and lean with big cubby cheeks that everyone here loves to kiss.

Mr. 2 on the move

 
 
 
 

A visit with family

 
 
 
 

Treasure Island

While in San Diego we spent an afternoon exploring Kit Carson Park where I played when I was about Mr.8's age. The boys discovered a stream and were immediately happily trekking through the mud to throw stones, stomp in water and hit things with sticks. Following the stream it went back into our very own Treasure Island. With Mr. 6 in the lead, the boys followed it back into the wilderness and enjoyed great adventure. Or so I'm told as I refused to climb down into the mud and watched from the bank. Mr. 2 had trouble keeping up, occasionally having to ask his big brother for a hand. He really does want to do everything the big brothers do.

 
 
 
 

A walk

We headed out on a chilly Tuesday to get some fresh air and decided to explore the new Alewife Brook Path. It's been under construction for months and we've been monitoring the progress as the path was made and the wooden walkway grew. It is now complete and we have an alternate route to the bike path. There were puddles and mud due to the recent rain and Mr. 2 fell behind as he stomped in each one. Mr. 8, balanced on the edge of the wooden walkway, asked if he should use a summoning spell on him as I tried to encourage Mr. 2 yet again to move a bit faster. That would be great I told him. He turned on the narrow board and promptly toppled off onto the ground a few feet below. As I gave him a hand back up, he told me wryly, "Maybe I should have used a balancing spell first."

There's a map at the end where our little path joins the main bike path and Mr. 2 loved studying it and telling me where we were and where our house was. All very confidently as always. While I was looking at it, I momentarily lost track of the boys. I turned and called and discovered the older boys near the top of the embankment for Route 2 with Mr. 2 hot on their heels. "We just want to spy on the cars," I was told. Hmm... Spying on a busy highway is not the activity I had picked out for our nature walk - not to mention dangerous. I told them no and they reluctantly climbed down.

Where there is water...

There are boys.

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Letter from a Birmingham Jail

Last year, we took note of MLK day by watching King's "I have a dream" speech with the kids, stopping many, many times to see them through the questions. I am no expert in the history of civil rights, so I picked up Letter from a Birmingham Jail for the first time, and was floored.

It's quotable ("Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"), instructive ("In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action."), and contains rhetorical fire that befits a practiced preacher (See especially the arc of how '"Wait" has almost always meant "Never."'. It leads with a quote by Niebuhr, which feels safe and academic, and then swiftly moves to the gut-punch of "When you [...] see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky.")

This year, after a semester of practice with primary sources in homeschool, we decided to try reading a couple pages of the Letter to the kids. We got about 1/3 of the way through in half an hour while the kids quietly played Legos. (A common trick when getting through denser material, around here.)

Mr. 8 was curious how "there are some counties in which, even though Negroes constitute a majority of the population, not a single Negro is registered", and wanted to argue the point of the Niebuhr quote that "groups tend to be more immoral than individuals".

Mr. 6 insisted on vocabulary and context boosters: "lamentably", "cognizant", "Macedonian call for aid"

Mr. 2 spent the rest of the evening saying "ALabama", "AlaBAma", "AlabaMA".

All said they want to read more tonight.

Mr. 8's Reading Log

In the past week Mr. 8 has read:
Figgs and Phantoms by Ellen Raskin,
The Gammage Cup by Carol Kendall,
The Whisper of the Glocken by Carol Kendall,
The Betrayer's Fortune by Dave and Neta Jackson,
Mr. Pipes and Psalms and Hymns of the Reformation by Douglas Bond, Ron Farris and Michael J. McHugh,
Poetry for Young People: William Shakespeare, edited by David Scott Kastan and Marina Kastan,
Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome,
and today started Dragon's Blood by Jane Yolen.
And that's not counting the random other history and science books he read. Seriously how do I keep this child supplied with books!

Story cubes

Mr. 2 told me this story with the story cubes:
There was a lock, then a hand, and then there was a cheese, and then a microscope, an eye. It goes right here. Then a tree, a lock, a airplane, and a sword. Then a phone, that's what I have.

He then went around in circles. What a story!

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Mr. 2's color book

Last night I printed out pages for a little color book for Mr. 2 to make. He loved it and spent an hour carefully coloring all the pages (my first child that actually wanted to spend time coloring). He was so proud of it!

Mr. 2 says "It's really, really cool." He also says his favorite color is blue like his big brother Mr. 8. Luckily we have lots of blue to pass down to him.

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Rolling

Mr. 0 has been close to rolling for the last week but rolled from front to back twice today and almost from back to front. Time to start relocating the hundreds of swallowing hazards in our playroom!

He's getting big - last week at his 4 month visit he was 16lb 12oz and 26.5in which is 90th for height and 75th for weight (this is off the top of my head so I may be a bit off). We got an exersaucer yesterday thanks to a friend who saw an e-mail offering one (we have super neighbors) and he loves it. He loves to sit in the Bumbo and watch us and he will sing with you when he's in the mood. We're still working on bedtime but he's a super good napper. He is well loved by his brothers who all love to sing him a little song Mr. 8 made up.

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Rolling

Guess who rolled over? He has been close but did it twice today. Yikes - time to get those legos to a safer location.

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Our day

Today was the kind of day I pictured when I decided to homeschool - everyone excited to learn and creatively going about it. We're talking about genes and DNA this week and Mr. 8 remembered this DNA kit that Mr. 6 got last year for Christmas. We pulled it out and made a double helix (Mr. 8 is currently translating it into protein - he had to add a start codon). Mr. 6 and I then extracted his DNA from cheek cells and made DnA ink which he wrote his name with. There were also detective games and online pictures of different cells as well as the usual math and grammar. To top it off, Mr. 8 had the best piano lesson of the year. What a day!

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Getting dinner done

The end of the day is always a little crazy and it's hard many days to get dinner together. Yesterday we were offered a free exersaucer and had many, many due library books so we ran a few errands and returned right around 5pm. I let the big brothers have their computer time and Mr. 0 happily watched from the Bumbo. Few crazy evenings go this smoothly.

We continue our love of the Hardy Boys. Much less complaining about errands when there's a Hardy Boys to listen to. However I still had to bribe with cookies when we returned as I had said we didn't have to leave the house earlier and no one was feeling 100% (minor cold for everyone). So after dinner I turned the Hardy Boys on in the playroom and Mr. 2 helped make chocolate cookies,

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A new beginning

We started yesterday with a new schedule and new enthusiasm for school (okay, it was just on my side but it's contagious right?) and had a great day. I decided we should do biology - human biology - rather than physics which was definitely the right choice (note to self: play to your strengths). We finished the day talking about cells, reading Enjoy Your Cells, and drawing cell diagrams. The boys loved it. Success! I am excited about doing labs although we're probably too young for dissection. I am going to try blood typing though!

Today was fine until we were walking home from piano lessons. Both boys started whining about quiet time and finishing school. Whining makes me cranky so it did not start our afternoon off well. By now they should have figured out that quiet time is really for me as much as them (a fact which I regularly tell them). And then Mr. 0 proceeded to cry throughout the entire quiet time, only falling asleep right as everyone came out. We got to work on finishing up the Christmas cards, stuffing the envelopes with pictures, letters, and birth announcements with the Hardy Boys in the background. I started on the address labels which proved impossible and everyone had to 'help' with the computer. We slipped back to crankiness and whining and I almost locked myself in my room for a time-out. After a brief meltdown, there was a family hug and peanut butter balls were passed around and everyone felt much better.

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The man in blue

Caught!

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The man in blue

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Looking for the secret entrance

The case is back on! It turns out 'C' who had been caught by the police escaped and so the boys are looking for the entrance to his secret hide-out. Definitely Varnum they know but need more clues.

Of course there is a man in blue watching. Do you think he can be trusted?

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A new year

What better way to enjoy the new year than peeking in to see the three older boys engrossed in the Hardy Boys on CD while David pumps up tires for a post-quiet time ride? January 1st and 52 degrees is a bit unusual but very appreciated in these parts (I need to write it down so I can remember it when it's been below freezing for weeks).