Ten Hat Duck

So, we have a new name for our rock band--Simon has a bunch of plastic chips with words on them and was putting random words together and came up with "Ten Hat Duck" which I think would make a great band name. We'll file that one for later.

Tomorrow is the first day of school for Hawksbill--the beginning of his last year of graduate school--yay yay!! I am so excited. Just think--Eight more months and he will be D.O.N.E. I cannot even contain my excitement--well, I will be more excited next May, but for now...yay!!

We have started our family homeschooling and although I have only been home for the first week of homeschooling and not as active a participant as Hawksbill, we have found ourselves kind of, well, accidentally unschooling. This wasn't the plan!! Not that we need a plan, however, it turns out the Saxon Math we bought is well, kind of slow and boring. I mean, it isn't terrible--it is completely scripted so that if you wanted, you could literally read word for word from the book to teach math--it tells you every word they think you should say to your kid during a math lesson, but when we got to the worksheets Simon doesn't seem very interested. You see, the worksheets seem to assume your kid doesn't know how to count to 5 yet, and well, the first 13 worksheets are fairly repetitive asking your child to "color in 5 squares," or "draw five animals" etc. so when I ask Simon to draw five animals, or color in five squares, he usually looks at me and asks, "Why?" Good question. And...AND...the boy is a stickler for following order and does not want to skip ahead to the worksheets that might be more interesting to him. No, mommy, we are only on lesson 13B...we can't do lesson 20A now!!! That is not the right order.

Plus, the reading lesson book we have be using periodically, that we had planned on using this fall, seems a little too advanced at this point. Simon can read, but trying to explain the difference between to, too and two seemed like too much right now.

So, basically, what we have been doing is playing with all the math manipulatives that came with his math books, and reading to him at night. He is still listening to his, "Story of the World," tapes at night (which is a taped version of the history lessons we planned on reading to him). The funny thing is, we really didn't think Simon would pick anything up from just listening to those tapes, but he loves to listen to them before bed over and over again. One day he said to us, "I think it is funny that Saturn is Jupiter's Daddy since Saturn is smaller than Jupiter!!" What?? We asked him where he found that out (and of course, I had to look it up since I had no idea if Saturn was Jupiter's father--he is) and he told us he heard it on his tapes at night!! Yay yay!! So, I am glad he likes those, and is actually getting something out of those...

Which brings us to the unschooling. I am sure we have mentioned about 257 times that Simon is obsessed with planets and the solar system, so the last few weeks he has been obsessing even more playing different online games with his dad and learning the names of all the stars in his favorite constellations. Hawksbill couldn't be happier that they share the same obsession with Astronomy and maybe someday we can buy a real telescope to look at the planets and stars at night...we shall see....it is fun to watch our kid name every freaking planet and moon and then wonder why he is asking us to type the planets' names in a certain order until he explains he is listing them from smallest to largest or some other weird planet or space fact...so cool :)

Although I am still resistant to the idea of completely unschooling our kids, I am really not too worried about it this year since this is kindergarten and I think Simon has mastered almost everything he needs to know for kindergarten already...this year is more of an exploration of what he likes with a touch of, "I hope he likes some of the things I like, too, but I won't be too pushy." Ha! We shall see.

Which brings me to another story of telling people Simon isn't going to school this year. I was sitting with some coworkers who asked about Simon going to kindergarten this fall, and my gut told me NOT to bring up homeschooling, so I said, instead, "Simon isn't going to kindergarten because it is optional." They both seemed ok with that explanation and then went on about how a friend of theirs is homeschooling their 3 kids and what a disaster that is and why anyone would do that because these kids clearly can't read or even speak properly, and how could anyone homeschool with more than one kid, how could you concentrate with diapers and other kids and distractions, etc....I did my best to defend this family who are completely unknown to me, but did not mention that we are homeschooling because, well...what would the point have been then?

But this last month of summer has been a blur. We went camping for a weekend early in August in an attempt to see the Perseid Meteor shower (I saw one falling star, Hawksbill saw two, but that was it for us), and it was fun, but kind of rushed. We just went to the Bay City State Park, but the beach was kind of gross, so we tried to travel north to find another beach and it ended up raining on us, so we turned around and went to Lakeport which was nice....3 days after this, Hawksbill left for his long weekend of gaming for the 2nd annual Foot Foot retreat, and the day after he returned, I spent the week in D.C. for work. I am home now and glad to be back...that was the longest I have ever been apart from my family and I'd rather not do that again. However, I did have the chance to hang out with our attorney :) and his girlfriend for an evening while we grabbed some lovely Mexican food and then they gave me the "nickel tour" of D.C.!! Very fun--I wish we could have hung out longer, but we all had work to do and had to get up early the next day.

Last week since my boss and program manager were both out of town on vacation, I had the pleasure of trying to put together a grant proposal with only one professor to help with writing out the text. Also, I usually do not do the budget part or the footwork of getting signatures and approval from various departments, and I have to tell you it was not a pleasant experience. Even trying to get the proposal delivered properly by UPS was a killer as the deadline was 4 pm on Friday. When you open up "track package" and see the word, "Exception--need a correct suite number in order to deliver your package" when you know full well the correct suite number was typed boldly on the package, while arguing with UPS customer service claiming they are "looking at the label and can't see it!" well, just adds to the frustration. But, the proposal made it before the 4 pm deadline...I just hope I put it all together correctly. Sigh...fingers crossed--I think this one will come through--knock on wood, etc....

Next week our crazy schedule starts up again...I know we can do this because we did this last year and survived...but I hope it is a little easier this year. I know work itself will be harder for me since I have two half-time jobs instead of one full-time job and I think I have a lot on my plate, but it will all work out. What could possibly go wrong, eh?

I know I already wrote a book but my short update on Simon and Gwen.

Right now Simon is beyond obsessed with the solar system. He is now memorizing the names of the moons and will quiz ME on, "Titan is the moon to which planet, mommy?" I always get this wrong, but he has fun showing me which moon belongs to what planet. Simon also likes taking all the shapes out of his math manipulatives and making these cool, almost mosaic looking space creatures. I can't wait until we have a digital camera so I can quickly take a picture of his art and post as he likes to destroy his stuff as quickly as he makes it. He is also asking me to teach him to count by 3's then 4's then 100's then 1000's...I think he is on a quest to find the biggest number ever, but I keep telling him no matter how big he chooses I will find a bigger number....I am no fun. We have also been playing checkers together and some of his other new games listed in posts below.

Gwen is presently talking and talking and talking some more. She isn't throwing quite as many tantrums as she used to, (thank goodness). She likes to repeat things that we say and for some reason, it sounds weird to me when she uses words like, "actually," or "interesting," or anything larger than two syllables. I don't know. She is also obsessed with a little baby doll she bought with her allowance making sure she feeds the baby, and dresses the baby, etc. Gwen is so, so...girly...I find it kind of weird. I try to buy her clothes outside of the "pink" range, but unless it has Hello Kitty, a princess or flowers on it, forget it. Sigh...so much for having a tomboy.... we don't even have any Disney princess movies, yet she still finds it and wants it. Totally freaky to me. Hawksbill read some article (sorry I don't have the reference) that was trying to make the claim that women are actually genetically programmed to like colors like pink as we used to be the hunters and gatherers and needed to find things that stood out well against a green background. That still doesn't explain her need to call herself a princess though....{{shudder}}. Gwen is also obsessed with lego blocks right now and likes making huge castles with them--and by castle, I mean she likes to stick together as many legos as possible on top of each other and calls it her castle :)

That's it for now...tomorrow is the big day--Hawksbill has his internship and I hope he likes it. I will be working from home and arranging my schedule to fit work the best I am able...just 8 months to go...I will be counting the days.