Simon is 7 years old today!! Just a lazy family weekend watching videos, bad tv, and eating cake and ice cream! Simon opened his presents today and received more legos (shocking!), a transformer toy, some videos and a video game, some books...
I have to post pictures again sometime soon, but JD's broken arm post summed it up with how the kids look right now :) Gwen's hair has been brushed, however....so she doesn't look quite so feral.
On an unrelated note. No.Gwen.Is.NOT.Potty.Trained.Yet. I offer $200 cash to the first person who can train her -- even if it takes 6 more months. I can't take this anymore. I have yet to hear an idea that we haven't tried yet (except paper training her like a dog or duct taping her to the toilet...I just can't bring myself to do that.) Yes, we have bribed, threatened, taken things away, tried to reason with her,tried being stern with her, tried putting her hand in warm water as she sat there, stickers, charts, potty boot camp, treats (m&m's, twizzlers, pop, etc), money for her bank, take away her allowance, potty videos, potty books, take treats away, beg, pleaded, cried, picked out cool undies, had her wear undies and pee in them, have her wear undies under diapers and let her pee in them, keep her in wet undies, make her wear wet pants, pullups, let her run around with a n*ked butt, blah blah blah blah blah....I give up...seriously...if you have an idea that does not involve duct tape or beating the child, I am all ears. Somebody call Nanny 911--I don't even care if she calls me a bad parent--if SHE can potty train Gwen, I'll take all the verbal abuse that she can throw my way...and I don't even watch that bloody show.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Friday, February 13, 2009
The Boy Got Broke
Well, after many years of jumping, bouncing and leaping through the air, Simon finally broke his arm. It happened like this:
We have a large dog crate in our basement, which we use periodically to keep Liesl (a Husky mix) in when we have big parties. The crate is about 3 feet tall. A few weeks ago I brought it upstairs for the kids to use as a fort. They love it. We also have some large rubber balls the kids love to play with. The balls are about 1.5 feet in diameter.
Well, the other night we were watching The Simpsons and I was researching telescope eyepieces online. Barb was upstairs. When I wasn't looking Simon apparently took one of the big rubber balls, put it on top of the dog crate and started bouncing on it. I didn't see it happen, but I very definitely heard a "CRASH" followed by a prolonged "SCREAM".
In and of itself this is not unusual. As I mentioned, Simon is a natural born jumping, leaping, bouncing machine. He is always banging himself up and he often screams like crazy when he does it. What was unusual is how long he screamed and how long it seems to hurt him. He usually forgets about a minor injury after about 3 minutes. Not so this time. He was still crying and moaning after 15 minutes so we figured something was really wrong.
So, I took him to the ER. Fortunately, we were their only customers that night and they got us in and out pretty quickly. Well, we were there for about an hour and a half, but it felt pretty quick to us. I had the forthought to bring along some of Simon's Garfield books so we spent the time reading those to each other. It took that long to get the X-Rays read and to find out that he really did break it, but after that we got to come home. It was after midnight at this point, but we were both wide awake so I got us some McDonald's fries and we came home to watch some Star Trek before heading off to bed.
They did give us a CD with his X-Rays on it, though, so we could bring it to his doctor. Of course we made copies of our own. Here they are:
As you can see, it isn't the most serious break in the world. But it was apparently quite painful.
Here's a picture of Simon and Gwen today:
Broken Boy and Princess Girl!
Hmm, between her messed up hair and the crazed look on her face, Gwen looks more like "Feral Princess Girl". (Actually, Gwen's personality seems perfectly consistent with the image of a cheerleader raised by wolves, but that's another story. :)
So, because he busted up his writing arm we've declared an early "Spring Break" here at Shady Tree Academy. No more lessons for a couple of weeks. At least the boy isn't hampered from reading his Garfield books. He's totally obsessed lately. He stays up hours later than everyone else just reading Garfield. I wonder where he gets that from?
Oh, and I moved the dog crate back down in the basement. I know he'll find other things to bounce on and leap from, but at least I'll get rid of the obvious candidates.
We have a large dog crate in our basement, which we use periodically to keep Liesl (a Husky mix) in when we have big parties. The crate is about 3 feet tall. A few weeks ago I brought it upstairs for the kids to use as a fort. They love it. We also have some large rubber balls the kids love to play with. The balls are about 1.5 feet in diameter.
Well, the other night we were watching The Simpsons and I was researching telescope eyepieces online. Barb was upstairs. When I wasn't looking Simon apparently took one of the big rubber balls, put it on top of the dog crate and started bouncing on it. I didn't see it happen, but I very definitely heard a "CRASH" followed by a prolonged "SCREAM".
In and of itself this is not unusual. As I mentioned, Simon is a natural born jumping, leaping, bouncing machine. He is always banging himself up and he often screams like crazy when he does it. What was unusual is how long he screamed and how long it seems to hurt him. He usually forgets about a minor injury after about 3 minutes. Not so this time. He was still crying and moaning after 15 minutes so we figured something was really wrong.
So, I took him to the ER. Fortunately, we were their only customers that night and they got us in and out pretty quickly. Well, we were there for about an hour and a half, but it felt pretty quick to us. I had the forthought to bring along some of Simon's Garfield books so we spent the time reading those to each other. It took that long to get the X-Rays read and to find out that he really did break it, but after that we got to come home. It was after midnight at this point, but we were both wide awake so I got us some McDonald's fries and we came home to watch some Star Trek before heading off to bed.
They did give us a CD with his X-Rays on it, though, so we could bring it to his doctor. Of course we made copies of our own. Here they are:
As you can see, it isn't the most serious break in the world. But it was apparently quite painful.
Here's a picture of Simon and Gwen today:
Broken Boy and Princess Girl!Hmm, between her messed up hair and the crazed look on her face, Gwen looks more like "Feral Princess Girl". (Actually, Gwen's personality seems perfectly consistent with the image of a cheerleader raised by wolves, but that's another story. :)
So, because he busted up his writing arm we've declared an early "Spring Break" here at Shady Tree Academy. No more lessons for a couple of weeks. At least the boy isn't hampered from reading his Garfield books. He's totally obsessed lately. He stays up hours later than everyone else just reading Garfield. I wonder where he gets that from?
Oh, and I moved the dog crate back down in the basement. I know he'll find other things to bounce on and leap from, but at least I'll get rid of the obvious candidates.
Monday, February 09, 2009
Math Lessons
Simon has been getting a bit tired of doing his math lessons lately so I've been looking for other alternatives.
Yesterday we were playing with Cuisenaire rods. Just playing around. He took it on himself to figure out the total length in centimeters of all of our rods. So, without my input he counted up all the 1cm rods and multiplied by 1. Then he counted up all the 2cm rods and multiplied by 2. This went on for all 10 different lengths and colors of the rods, until he was multiplying the size 10 rods by 10. Each time he did this I wrote down the answer. When he was done I gave him the 10 numbers I'd written down and he added them all up. The answer: 577cm in Cuisenaire rods.
We didn't discuss it ahead of time, but after that I told him he could skip his math lessons for the day.
This morning he said he wanted me to find multiplication problems on the computer. After a bit of searching I found this cool multiplication problem generator. I printed a page out for him and he's working on it now, as happy as can be. These are the same sorts of problems as in his regular Singapore Math workbook, but somehow this is different and more entertaining. Besides, he loves multiplication and hates subtraction. This way he gets to pick the kind of math he does.
In truth I like the Singapore math workbooks because they methodically take him through the steps to learning increasing levels of difficulty. But, I also like the unschooling approach now and again. I can't really argue if he wants to find new, fun ways to do math. But, since he's almost done with the 2nd grade Singapore math book anyway, it's probably time to find other things to do.
Yesterday we were playing with Cuisenaire rods. Just playing around. He took it on himself to figure out the total length in centimeters of all of our rods. So, without my input he counted up all the 1cm rods and multiplied by 1. Then he counted up all the 2cm rods and multiplied by 2. This went on for all 10 different lengths and colors of the rods, until he was multiplying the size 10 rods by 10. Each time he did this I wrote down the answer. When he was done I gave him the 10 numbers I'd written down and he added them all up. The answer: 577cm in Cuisenaire rods.We didn't discuss it ahead of time, but after that I told him he could skip his math lessons for the day.
This morning he said he wanted me to find multiplication problems on the computer. After a bit of searching I found this cool multiplication problem generator. I printed a page out for him and he's working on it now, as happy as can be. These are the same sorts of problems as in his regular Singapore Math workbook, but somehow this is different and more entertaining. Besides, he loves multiplication and hates subtraction. This way he gets to pick the kind of math he does.
In truth I like the Singapore math workbooks because they methodically take him through the steps to learning increasing levels of difficulty. But, I also like the unschooling approach now and again. I can't really argue if he wants to find new, fun ways to do math. But, since he's almost done with the 2nd grade Singapore math book anyway, it's probably time to find other things to do.
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