Are You Familiar with the Book of Job?

Since I've been able to catch up on some computer things lately, I find that I have a few things to post on my blog. So while my husband is busy with chain maille, I'll share some of my recent thoughts.

I have found myself contemplating the book of Job lately. Now, I don't know many Christians, let alone non-Christians who are very familiar with this book of the Bible. They may know the general story line that Job goes through a lot of suffering, but if they look any closer, they tend to get bogged down in the language and give up reading it. Tim has actually taught the book of Job at church a couple of times and I have found his approach helpful in understanding the flow of the book and the big ideas presented. So, I'll share his method to give you some background on how I came up with some of my ideas I wish to share later.

First, When you read the book of Job, you need to read the whole thing in large chunks. It is a story with an introductory narrative and ending narrative. The main portion of the book in the middle is a series of speeches in the form of a debate between Job and his friends where God gets in the last word. If you read the book more like a Shakespeare play than a storybook, you have a better idea of how to go about it. Most people stick with the easy reading of the beginning and end, but leave out all of the meat of the middle. Almost all of the main points in the book are made in the debate section. They are big issues on suffering, justice, wisdom, God's involvement with mankind, and life after death. Job is a man who through no fault of his own is placed in the midst of suffering that most people never experience. He is a man of great faith and trust in God, and his suffering is a test of that faith. In the debate section of the book you see him progress through his struggle from a why me? attitude to nearly grasping the need for the resurrection. Along the way his friends debate with him using all of the various arguments people have used throughout history to explain suffering and the justice of God. They even use what is considered orthodox theology against him. Job points out that their arguments don't hold water and don't fit his situation and what he is going through. In the end, God himself speaks approvingly of Job and his struggle to understand, but blasts his friends for maligning his name.

In reading the book of Job, you have to be willing to wrestle with the big issues of life and not be content to fall on platitudes. There is a lot to make a person squirm in this book if you think that you have everything figured out nice and tidy.

So, with that as a brief background. Let me say that I've been feeling lately that I've been gaining insight to the dynamics between Job and his friends. Many of you know that we are expecting a baby who has the chromosomal anomaly "Trisomy 13" and as a result of this she is not likely to live long. Since we were hoping for a healthy baby to cherish for many years to come, this was a big shock. Since learning of this diagnosis, we have come to terms with it and are doing the best we can by living life in the present. We are not ignorant about what this means for us or our baby. We have researched what it is and what it will mean for our lives. We understand the underlying causes and what medical hope there is. Yet we do not feel ourselves to be suffering in anything like Job's situation. In fact, it sometimes feels like we have to encourage the people around us who are suffering for us. We know that when our daughter dies, we will grieve. Knowing about it ahead of time, just seems to provide glimpses of the grief we will have later. But in the meantime, we find ourselves on a completely different page than the well meaning people who are trying to encourage us. They seem to think that they have to bolster our faith (since we don't give the answers they expect to hear). It reminds me a lot of Job talking with his friends. Let me try to explain it for you.

I can see now how Job, having to live with his suffering on a day by day basis, has a different perspective than those who see it and its ramifications on a purely theoretical level. We are living with this trial in our lives in a similarly daily way in which we will live with it from now on, no matter what the outcome. We have had to make life and death choices for our daughter. We have to face the prospect of her highly likely death and that it would have to take some very big miracles to change that outcome. We have to face explaining the death of a little baby to her big sisters and brother. The reality that not all babies are healthy and thrive has come home to us. Life in America with good health care and low mortality rates has insulated us from how common this used to be and how common it still is in the rest of the world. We feel our faith providing us an anchor that holds us firm as we negotiate this unknown territory. We feel the need not for the big miracle to "fix" the problem for us and cause it to disappear, as much as we feel the need for the strength of simple faithfulness to get through what lies ahead.

Whenever I encounter one of these well-meaning friends, I am not offended by their comments. I am not insulted by insensitivity. They usually ask if there has been any change in the baby's situation. Or without asking any questions, start talking about how we need to keep praying for a miracle. I am simply struck by the thought that they don't understand what they are saying.

Now I am not one of those people who disbelieve in miracles. I have seen enough miraculous stuff to know that God still does miracles. I had an elderly friend who was literally going through kidney failure with the expectation that he had only hours or days to live. After much prayer by the people who cared about him, he mysteriously recovered. It amazed his doctor whom he then preceded to outlive by another 10-15 years. I knew a student where I worked who struggled with the difficulties of having one leg shorter than the other. She sought healing for years and was miraculously granted that the length of her legs would match and she no longer suffered the effects of the problem. I also knew briefly a young woman who was struggling with the physical recovery from having been hit by a car several years prior to my meeting her. She had the un-nerving way of mentioning how God talked to her. She kept praying to God for healing. One Sunday she told us that God said that he was going to heal her. Three days later she died after being hit by a car as she crossed a street. Sometimes miracles don't happen the way you expect them to. There are numerous stories out there that people can tell of miracles that have happened in their lives. But, when you are dealing with miracles, you are dealing with exceptions to the rule. If miracles were routine, they wouldn't be miracles and they wouldn't have their intended effect. The Bible is full of miracle accounts. The Bible is also full of accounts where miracles didn't happen and people were expected to live faithful lives anyway. I am convinced that God doesn't just hand out miracles like a fairy godmother, if we just believe enough he will do the impossible just to make us happy or save us from some of the unpleasant things in our lives. I think God wants his miracles to make a difference in the big picture. We tend to be looking at a much smaller picture than God is.

Knowing what we know about our daughter's condition, it would not only have to be fixed in her chromosomes in every cell in her body, it would have to be fixed in the multiple organ defects that have taken place as she developed in the womb. That would be a big miracle. Would we be happy to have a healthy daughter? Absolutely! So why don't I pray for the big miracle? Because I can't see what "big picture" good it would do. People in our society are very skeptical. When faced squarely with a miracle like that, they do not decide "OK... God must really exist after all." They assume that the initial diagnosis was wrong, the tests were messed up, the ultrasound pictures weren't accurate or any number of excuses to avoid believing a big miracle. Would a big miracle in our situation do much good beyond our little circle? Somehow, I don't think so.

On the other hand, what about the small miracle, which is what I pray for. If God grants us the ability to live simple faithfulness through our trial, what good would that do? How many people are hurting and struggling in their lives? A lot. How many of them expect a miracle to save them from it? How many of them would instead find greater hope in their own lives by seeing someone go through a struggle successfully relying on God through simple faithfulness rather than that person being one of the few who are granted a special miracle? Somehow, the small miracle seems to me to fit better into doing the most good in the big picture.

So when I encounter these people who are trying to encourage me by telling me that God can do anything, don't give up, we're praying for a miracle, and so forth, I get the feeling that they are doing the same thing that Job's friends are doing. Unlike us they are not intimately connected with the situation, so they haven't really needed to wrestle with it and think it through deeply. It is very easy to sit back and rest on cliches and platitudes. It is easy to say what you think God should do, but that doesn't change the fact that God does what he does in each situation based on that situation. The moving of God's Spirit is not controlled by us to do as we wish. We are the ones who are supposed to be sensitive to God's Spirit to be thus moved and controlled to do as He wishes. It is so easy to have a surface conversation, say the "right" things, and be completely wrong.

So what are the real right things to do and say? It is good to listen. If you aren't sure if someone wants to talk about it, ask them if they care to talk about it. Until you hear the person who is going through some suffering or trial talk about it, you don't really know how they are doing. Only then can you figure out how to respond appropriately. If the person says something that shocks you or conflicts with your sense of the way things are or should be, don't immediately try to correct them. Try to understand that they have a different view of things based on their personal experience. Until you have a better understanding of their experiences, you may not have a complete view yourself. It is OK if people spend time wrestling with the big issues when they are going through struggles. Look at all the major figures of faith from the Bible, not one of them had an easy faith experience. They argued with God. They ranted and raged. And God worked with that. It was the people who thought they had all the answers, that God had trouble with. So if you are tempted to stop people from struggling with their faith, and just hand them the clean-cut answers you like so much, stop. Don't do it. Let them struggle. Instead, you might point them to examples of others who have also struggled so they can see something that they can relate to. It seems that in the midst of our struggles, we have the opportunity to understand things much more deeply and better, than we would otherwise.

Is this nesting instinct?

I've always had trouble differentiating my normal level of wanting to get things accomplished from the overdrive version most often referred to as the "nesting instinct." The nesting instinct is supposed to be where a pregnant Mom starts to be compulsive about getting things ready before a baby comes. For some women it occurs as late as when they begin labor. For me, I think it is not much different from my normal behavior where I'm planning ahead before I'm even pregnant.

This past week, however, has been pretty busy and I've begun to wonder if I'm pushing the limits of sanity. Over last weekend, we finished up our taxes and I sent them out as soon as I could. We've been doing schoolwork, much to the Pillowfight Fairy's dislike. We've finished our math curriculum and grammar curriculum and as a result, I'm speeding up our history lessons to get as many of them in as possible before the baby comes. The Fairy told me today that she thinks a better schedule would be school on Saturday and Sunday and the rest of the week off. She has a bad case of spring fever. I've been staying up late nearly every night working on next year's curriculum, not just for the Fairy but for the Adrenaline Junkie too. Last night I took the time to do some much needed mending. Yesterday, was Tim's day off and I scheduled us for some new family pictures, which took a big chunk of the morning. (It was about time, the last time we had family pictures made was nearly three years ago.) So family will be glad to hear that we will have new pictures for them very soon.

Today felt like a bit of a marathon. I added a trip to Target to return merchandise to my usual trip to get groceries. By the time I got home, unloaded the groceries, and put them away, it was lunch time. After lunch we all went outside to play and I decided to go ahead and weed the garden. Now our garden is relatively small (compared to what it could be). I've only planted about a third of my garden area this time. But, I've neglected it a bit and it has gotten rather weedy. Those of you who have seen me in person lately know that I am... ahem... really big right now. At nearly eight months pregnant, I make people nervous that I'm going to have the baby any moment. Perfect strangers come up to me and ask if I need help, when I'm doing what to me are perfectly normal things (like lifting my two year old out of his stroller and into a car seat). I have a definite waddle when I walk. I can't move quickly or easily. Watching me get up or down is either painful or comical to watch (or both). But yet, I determined to weed my garden. Now, I do have a nice long handle cultivator that I could use to get between my rows. But, I needed to get the weeds out where they are growing alongside my veggies. I needed to do close work. How in the world was I going to do that? The garden cart didn't have enough room to be used since I have narrow and close rows. I couldn't stand and bend over long enough to make much progress (I did that a few weeks ago and I wouldn't be able to do that again). Kneeling would be impossible, I would need a rescue to get me back up. I finally found a way. We have some plastic stack able patio chairs. With a little experimentation I discovered that if I place one just right, the legs of the chair just fit within two neighboring troughs. I could place my chair so that I could sit in the garden with each foot in a trough and a row directly in front of me. If I sat at the front edge of the chair, I could pivot so that I could reach one row to the left, and one row to the right as well as weed the one in front of me. I wasn't too high to reach the ground, and I wasn't so low that I had trouble getting up. It worked. So I spent the next three hours weeding the garden. As a result, I know what veggies are actually growing in half of my garden. The other half of the garden will have to wait for another time. I exhausted myself.

So what am I growing? Well, the snow peas are doing fairly well and are about eight to ten inches high. I found one lone plant of broccoli, five or six cabbages (better than my one cabbage last year), a few celery seedlings that are barely visible, and a dozen or so onions. It looks pretty pathetic. In the half of the garden that hasn't been weeded yet, there should be carrots, parsley, spinach, and two kinds of lettuce. Among the profuse weeds I have so far only identified a few bits of carrot leaf and one spinach. I haven't seen one lettuce despite the fact that I planted three rows of them. It doesn't look like our garden is doing that well this year. Our fruit trees and other berries seem more promising (except that we seem to have a dying cherry tree). Also our recently planted flowers and bushes around the patio are growing and looking good.

So, it kind of begs the question: Am I going through some kind of extreme nesting instinct? or am I simply off my rocker to be concerned about my gardening at eight months pregnant?

Responsibility? Is It Counter-Cultural?

OK... now that the tax forms are done and in the mail, perhaps I should bring up the topic of responsibility.

This is one of those topics where I'm not sure if I am diverging from the larger society or if I am just holding to a traditional view while society is diverging from me. But, I have noticed more and more that our general society is severely lacking in an understanding of responsibility. The lack of responsibility is becoming so mainstream that otherwise conservative, traditionalist individuals are showing signs of behaving in ways that, if not irresponsible, are an abdication of responsibility. What do I mean? Hmm... let me give an example.

What has parenting looked like in the past? A few centuries back parents would raise their children by their side, teaching and guiding them in life until they are capable of living independently. Perhaps some elite wealthy families would hire help for doing this, but even then, the parents were still responsible for the raising of their children and would be judged as successful or unsuccessful in that endeavor by surrounding society. As our society has become ever more complex, we have become used to the idea of specializing in an occupation and hiring experts to do certain tasks. That in itself is not bad. It makes good sense. But, the flaw that I have been seeing so much lately is that in outsourcing our job of raising and teaching our kids, we are not retaining the responsibility for raising and teaching them. We have started to expect others to be responsible for that. That is what I mean by an abdication of responsibility.

This is not a problem just in the area of parenting. Let's see how many areas I can find and list off the top of my head.

1. Children not learning to be responsible with money, because someone else always provides it for them (parents, grandparents?)
2. Teenagers given a car to drive without having to be responsible to provide the car, the insurance, and the income for maintenance.
3. Students not taking responsibility for their own education. Instead they "do time" in school until they are "free." Actually earning their grades and taking an active part in their education because it is theirs and will shape their future is an unusual display of responsibility.
4. Young employees taking the "doing time" mentality of school to their workplace. So many seem to have the idea that showing up is all they need to do earn the paycheck. I remember several years back when I worked as a Temporary Secretary. I would have a day job here and a week-long job there and would consistently have supervisors who were surprised that I actually expected to do useful work instead of filling an empty desk chair while pretending to be busy (like the usual temps. they would have).
5. Young lovers expecting to find their romantic ideal who is of course perfect and will fulfill every wish and dream, but forgetting that they have an obligation to be the type of person worthy of that dream. Relationships involve two people and both people have the responsibility for making the relationship good or bad.
6. I've already mentioned raising children. How many people put their children in daycare and preschool, not because they have thought through their choices ahead of time, or have a clear necessity, but because they simply want to have someone else do that for them. I suppose if they don't want to spend that time with their kids, it might be better off for their kids to be taken care of by people who do want to be around the kids. But too often I hear an attitude expressed that suggests that some of these parents want kids, but don't want to be troubled by raising them. That is someone else's responsibility.
7. I'm a little biased about teaching kids, being a homeschool mom. Before I list my next item, let me say that homeschooling is not for everyone. I see plenty of benefit in all of the choices for teaching kids. But, how often are parents abdicating their responsibility to be in charge of their children's education. My husband and I are taking it upon ourselves to educate our children. We are responsible not only that they are being educated, but that we are actively pursuing what is needed to give our kids the best education we can, and doing it ourselves whenever possible. Not all people homeschool, but they still have the responsibility to be in charge of their children's education. How many parents communicate with their kid's teachers and help out when needed at school? How many are involved with decision-making in PTAs or School Boards? How many parents don't even know what their kids are learning from day-to-day? It has become someone else's responsibility. Parents have become too used to letting "experts" or politicians tell them what kind of education their kids should have, when those people have never met their kids and don't have the responsibility for raising them.
8. Responsibility for our individual or family budget/finances. If you don't understand money, you need to learn. Even then, there are basic concepts that most people know, but they ignore. Things like "don't spend more than you earn." These simple truths are ignored, not because they can be gotten around, but because people have convinced themselves that it'll be taken care of somehow. If they aren't responsible, someone else will take care of it (a bailout) or someone else will have to take the consequences (like bankruptcy). Yes it is possible to get into bad financial situations while doing all the right things, but it is less likely. Most of the time people get into bad financial situations because they made bad decisions, listened to people who told them what they wanted to hear, and rationalized that everybody else is doing it. The bottom line is that each person is responsible for their own finances. Outsourcing some of the managing of those finances is OK, but don't try to outsource the responsibility.
9. Political abdication of responsibility. This can be politicians not taking responsibility for their actions (whether personal or professional) or it can be citizens giving up their rights and responsibilities to the government.
   

I'm sure you have noticed ways in which people in our society give responsibility to others that ought to be their own. I cannot say that I am a perfectly responsible person. But I can say that I have struggled with societal norms for most of my life in this area. As an American, I have a cultural tendency to want to be independent. As a Christian and a Conservative person in general, I understand that their are some important ways we need to depend on each other for the good of the whole. As a youngest child (and the only girl), there was a temptation to be overly dependent on my family and get away with what I could. But, I felt my conscience nagging me that I needed to be responsible for my sake and for the sake of those closest to me. My parents won't always be available to help me when I need help. Other family members have other commitments and obligations, too. If I am abdicating my responsibilities, I put them either on the people I love and don't want to burden or I put them on inappropriate surrogates. Is it appropriate to expect an employer to pay me money, if I don't provide work or service in return? Is it appropriate to expect my husband to be the person who makes my dreams come true, without taking responsibility for my part of the relationship? Is it appropriate to expect someone else to be responsible for the children I chose to have? Is it appropriate to expect the government to take care of any bad decisions I've made and be responsible for my happiness and welfare?

I do not want to abdicate my responsibilities. I will still have to outsource some things, but I need to be the one who is responsible in the end. I guess my point in all of this is to encourage you to consider how you might be tempted to follow the crowd and abdicate your responsibilities, too. Adults take their responsibilities seriously. To give them up is to return to the position of the child. I don't know about you, but there were a lot of things I didn't like about being a child.
Besides, do you really want to live in a society where no one is responsible for their actions?

One post a month?

Well, I do intend to get back to my series on how I look at the world differently. I'm contemplating a post on the abdication of responsibility in our society. But for now, since it is late already, I'll just give a quick update on how the fight against chaos is going lately.

We've been on schedule with the homeschooling. However, I've had to make this past week a vacation week because of two sick kids (and a Mom). I only had one more vacation week scheduled and I hated to use it early. But you do what you need to. As a result we have just six more weeks of school left on our schedule, and eight more weeks to the baby's due date. That's cutting it pretty close. Fortunately, the schedule is thinning out a little as we finish up some things early. Our math program should be finished in just two more weeks. I'm planning on spending time playing math-involved games after our math curriculum is finished. The Pillowfight Fairy was introduced to the game of dominoes (count by five scoring version) by my parents this past week and did quite well. The two girls also played their "Papa" at chess. He held his own against the Fairy, but was blindsided by the Adrenaline Junkie's nary a care aggressive playing style. I think he was a little embarrassed by being beat by a four-year-old, but not too much. After all, she's his granddaughter and she can beat someone at chess while only four.

I've got my garden in, but haven't seen much beyond weeds coming up. The only thing I recognize as desirable so far are the snow peas I planted. Other than that we have some stray onions that must be left from last year as they came up in completely the wrong place. I'm making an effort to keep them watered properly, so maybe they are just delayed with the weather. I did plant fairly early. Our fruit trees, grapevines, brambleberries, and blueberries are all showing healthy growth so all is not lost.

I had my latest round of doctor's appointments this week regarding the pregnancy. I am still in good health (not counting the cold). We had another detailed ultrasound to determine whether or not to have a caesarian delivery. The results are good. The concern was that the fluid in our daughter's brain would have caused the head to grow unusually large. That has not happened. So I have the go ahead to go through childbirth without the surgery. From my point of view that is a big plus. There are no changes as far as abnormalities that we already knew about. Our daughter is showing a strong heartbeat so far. So she may make it to term or close to it. She is also tending to be slightly smaller than my kids so far, but not drastically so. The medical concerns at this point are whether the abnormal pregnancy will trigger abnormal reactions near the end. My doctors want me to keep an eye out for signs of preeclampsia (more likely in these situations). The other concern is that the placenta (sharing some of the faulty DNA) will cause problems near the end of the pregnancy. I find it reassuring that so many people are praying for us. It helps me stay hopeful and happy, as I take life one day at a time. We really don't know what will happen. We don't know when the baby will be born. We don't know how well she will be able to survive after birth. We don't know what to expect. So we just concentrate on what we do know. I still have to take care of myself. I still have to my best for the kids currently depending on me. Tim still has to go to work. We still do laundry, get groceries, and take care of the house.

Other things going on? Well, those of you who follow my husband's blog know that he is about to embark on a new hobby. I'm finding it difficult to find the energy to work on our taxes in the evening (Yes, it needs to be done, but I can't do it when the kids are awake).

The Happy Boy is growing fast and not just physically. He is starting to talk a lot more and much more understandably. He is starting to build things with legos, color with crayons and play with his sisters. I even had a fleeting feeling once this last week that he was starting to understand reading. He pointed at one of the Pillowfight Fairy's school binders and said "Math". And, it was indeed the math binder. I couldn't figure out how he would have known that without reading the word on the binder, since I don't usually get it out or talk about it during the day. It just sits on the shelf like all the other books and binders as far as he is concerned. He also moved a chair in his bedroom, climbed up and removed the pendulum to the clock in his bedroom yesterday when he had a little free time after his nap. I think back to the stories my Mom told of my older brothers when they were his age and even younger and understand why she hesitated to have more kids. Let us hope that the Happy Boy uses his powers for good. He is acting anxious to be a big kid like his sisters.

As for the Adrenaline Junkie, I am still debating about when to start Kindergarten with her. She still needs to polish up some things I consider to be preschool level, but in other areas, she seems ready to move to Kindergarten topics. It doesn't really have to be much of an issue here at home since we can teach her at her pace. But, it matters at church. You see her birthday is just a few days after the official school year cut-off date. She would be kept behind a year (from our perspective) simply because of an arbitrary date if she were in public school. But, our church advances students to their new grade in the summer, a full six months before her birthday, and almost certainly before she is ready to change over. Added to this she is in a boomlet group at our church where there are around 20 kids in the Sunday School class. There is a 4/5 year old class and a Kindergarten class that will be able to accomodate them, but it is still a lot of kids to spread out even to two classes for those ages. One person suggested I could teach her at her academic level at home and keep her in her age level at church, but when I see it from my daughter's perspective that wouldn't work. When people ask her what grade she is in, she will respond to her school grade from home and will notice if she isn't in it at church. At this point, I think I will start a little more preschool work and reading practice at home during the summer. Then, when she seems ready, we will start her Kindergarten program in homeschooling her. The transition at church could be at the next convenient change of quarter.

So that is what's been going on with us lately. I've had a lot on my mind. Not to mention trying to get things ready for when the baby comes. After all, we may get to bring this baby home even if just for a little while. We have to have the basics ready, just in case. So, don't expect another post from me until after I get the taxes done.

Unconventional Thoughts About Exercise

I was debating with myself about what to talk about next. Television was an obvious topic, the others are not as obvious. Now conventional wisdom about exercise seems to be:

1. It's good for you.
2. It helps balance out other bad behaviors.
3. It is work and only health nuts actually enjoy it.

My take on exercise is slightly different:

1. It's good for you if done in moderation.
2. It does not balance out other bad behaviors (those bad behaviors need to be dealt with in their own context).
3. It is only work and unpleasant if you are choosing your exercise poorly or overdoing it.

So starting with that ground work. Let me share some of my thoughts on exercise. When I was a kid, I played outside a lot. But, by the time I was about junior high age, I spent most of my time indoors. I watched a lot of TV and I was a bit of a book worm. My family would go camping and hiking a good bit as I was growing up. We also had a garden. We would go on neighborhood bike rides (which I hated with a passion). Also on my own I learned to ride a unicycle. I was also in Track and Field both in Jr. High and briefly in High School. With these types of activities, I discovered that I was actually a relatively active person despite my indoor tendencies.

In college, I had to still take some P.E. classes so I chose a par course fitness/jogging class, an archery class, a hiking class, and a wellness class where you chose your exercise and had to keep a log about how much you did. To one degree or other I enjoyed these classes. But, in college your time is valuable and I resented the time taken away from the other things I wanted to do. When you have a test to study for or a paper due in the morning, an extra hour out of your day can be burdensome. As soon as I completed my P.E. requirements, I turned my back on routine exercise with pleasure.

However, I have a few eccentricities that helped me stay in shape. I hate elevators. I am highly susceptible to motion sickness and elevators make me feel queasy. So, as long as I wasn't over-rushed for time, I would take the stairs instead. I also think it is pointless to drive circles in a parking lot looking for a close parking space. It reminds me of a vulture looking for road kill. I would rather find any parking place and spend that time walking to the place I need to be. I also happened to choose a college to go to that had an exercise program built in to attending there. Pepperdine University's Malibu campus is built on some coastal mountains overlooking the ocean. It is a great view. But it is on numerous hillsides. You literally can go up an down several hills in the course of a day on campus and there are stairs everywhere you go. It is possible but not easy to get around if you have a wheelchair (It takes a bit of planning). When I was a student at San Jose State, my library science classes were on the sixth floor of Walquist Library. I took the stairs most of the time unless I was late for class. Since having kids, however, I have had to resign myself to elevators. strollers don't work well on stairs or escalators.

But, Other than choosing to walk or take stairs instead of finding a method taking less effort, I didn't do much exercise. I was a college student. Then I was in the work world. That takes up most of the day and then meals and sleep account for most of the rest of the day. The few hours left to use as I chose, became time for TV, movies, reading, or sewing. All of which are rather sedentary.

It wasn't until I married that I started to do much exercise. Tim and I would occasionally take walks in our neighborhood on the weekends or on summer evenings when the sun was up late. After I wasn't working and became pregnant, my doctor emphasized to me the importance of exercise while I was pregnant. So I started to take walks on my own in the morning and walks with my husband on weekends and summer evenings. I discovered that I enjoyed this exercise for it's own sake. I liked looking at the houses and trees and seeing things at walking speed rather than driving speed. Then after the Pillowfight Fairy was born, I would take her out with me on walks first in a front carrier, then in a stroller when she was old enough to sit up. At this point, I realized that I relied on these walks for sanity. It got me out of our tiny apartment to breathe the fresh air and experience the seasons. It gave her some interesting things to see everyday. We both tended to be cranky if we didn't get our daily outing. I have kept up this routine ever since. Whenever schedule and weather allows, we get out and have a walk. Some of my neighbors have commented on how we look like a parade at times. Oh yes... neighbors... we actually get to know some of our neighbors from these walks.

The kids don't always appreciate the walks (especially the Pillowfight Fairy who isn't allowed to ride in a stroller), but they actually have fun playing along the way once we are outside. The two oldest are old enough to walk the route without rest stops now. The Happy Boy is confined to the double stroller for the duration (mainly because he's two and obeys like a typical two year old, plus he runs faster than I do now). I use the double stroller just in case the Adrenaline Junkie gets tired or hurt along the way, so I don't have to try to carry her as well as pushing a stroller. I have decided not to give the kids a choice in this matter. The walks are good for their mother's morale and the exercise is good for them. That should be reason enough.

In the process of this lifestyle of the last eight years, I have come to some ideas about exercise that are different from where I started.

1. Our modern American lifestyle is work intensive and recreation intensive, but unless your work or recreation has much activity in it, you don't have time for exercise. To exercise, people have to give up something else like sleep, time with family, favorite pastimes, etc. In a situation like this, it is unlikely that people will even want to make time for exercise on a regular basis because it is taking the place of something they would rather be doing.
2. Working out at a gym has it's benefits (you don't have to own and store the equipment at home for instance), but it is not as nice as taking a walk in the woods. To make exercise convenient to us, we tend to put it inside buildings and keep it fairly structured. That does not allow us time to relax our minds and feel the enjoyment of a natural environment. Even my walk in the neighborhood is walking among man-made things, but at least we can watch the plants grow, feel the breeze, and enjoy the change of seasons.
3. Most people who start to "exercise" for their health, start too big. I think the reasoning is that if I do more it will result in a change of habit. The problem is that starting big, wears you out too much and results in bad experiences. The more bad experiences you have the less likely you will stay at it until it becomes a habit. Start with a small change in habit. Something easy. After that much is a habit, you can increase it in some way to make it more challenging. Before long you not only are participating in some decent, challenging exercise, you have developed a habit, and still enjoy it.
4. Too many people choose a type of exercise because it is the trendy thing to do. If you are a particularly social person who needs to do your exercise in a group environment, by all means pick a popular pastime so you can do it with friends. Otherwise, choose something that suits you. I can't stand team sports, personally, so I'm not going to join a softball league. I'm a bit of an individualist, walking is just right for me (I just have a built in entourage).
5. People need to think a little more creatively about exercise. Walking when something is close, instead of driving gives exercise and saves gas. Don't prize the close parking places, let yourself walk. Take stairs instead of the elevator. Do your own yard work instead of hiring it out. Do your own housework instead of hiring it out. Do some aspects of your job involve bending or lifting, consider it calisthenics and weight lifting (just be sure to use good posture). You can actually purchase pedometers that you can wear during the day to measure how much you walk during the day. My parents got some through their HMO through a program that was trying to promote exercise. The idea was to try to work up to 10,000 steps a day as a routine level of activity. Think about your activity levels and embrace the activity rather than avoiding it.

Well, I'm having trouble thinking of more to say, so I must be done with this topic. I would like to hear other people's ideas about novel ways to include exercise into a busy schedule. What works for you? Our society is much more atuned to self-indulgence than self-discipline. How do you find ways to be active in your routine?

Unconventional TV thoughts

My husband challenged me recently to go ahead and share my unconventional thoughts on various topics. I readily acknowledge that I think differently than the majority of the population on these issues. However, instead of just writing me off as an oddball extremist, I hope instead that you will reserve judgment until you have considered my reasons for thinking the way I do.

I thought that I would start with my unconventional thoughts about television.

I was a kid in the 1970s. There wasn't a lot of concern back then about what kids watched on TV. It was pretty much assumed that if it was OK for the parent, it was OK for the kids. Parents would limit TV programs more on the basis of what made them uncomfortable, rather than what they considered bad for their kids. Besides, there was still some censorship and widespread public ideas of propriety. However, those things were starting to slide downward quickly. By the end of the 70s, many households had cable TV with all sorts of Adult-only viewing available to their kids. We never had cable TV at my house, but my friends did. My parents still don't have cable TV. We were late adopters of video recorders, also. But we did watch TV. My Dad was and still is a bit of a news junkie. He likes to either watch the TV news or listen to the radio news pretty much all day long, or at least several times a day. My Mom is more of a TV/video watcher when it comes to good stories (Movies, Mysteries, Dramas, Comedy, etc.) My brothers had their favorites and introduced me to Science Fiction. I grew up watching lots of TV. When I got home from school, I wanted to watch afternoon cartoons, then eventually I started liking the shows that ran in syndication after the cartoons. Then of course the sitcoms that came on after that. There was the evening news that my Dad watched when he got home from work. Then the prime-time shows after dinner. Before you knew it I was begging to watch the shows that were coming on as I was going to bed.

My life wasn't completely filled with TV at first. I still had to do my homework. But, I had to do it while someone else was watching TV in the next room, tempting me to lose focus. I still went to play outside and play with friends. But, the older I got, the more interesting more of these shows became. Eventually, I became what I consider to be addicted to television. I am not using the term "addicted" lightly. I think that I showed what are clinically defined symptoms of addiction. Here is a list I found for alcoholism and drug use, into which I have inserted "TV" to to show what I mean:

• use of drugs or alcohol (or TV) as a way to forget problems or to relax
• withdrawal or keeping secrets from family and friends (watching TV secretively)
  
• loss of interest in activities that used to be important
• problems with schoolwork, such as slipping grades or absences
• changes in friendships, such as hanging out only with friends who use drugs (or TV)
  
• spending a lot of time figuring out how to get drugs (or how to watch what you want)
  
• stealing or selling belongings to be able to afford drugs (lying to watch TV)
  
• failed attempts to stop taking drugs or drinking (inability to control TV viewing when it's available)
  
• anxiety, anger, or depression
• mood swings

I was addicted to TV. Thankfully I woke up to the fact that I was not becoming the person I wanted to be. I suspect it was while I was at college and didn't have a TV available to me that I started to realize how much it had taken over my life. But, every time I was back in a TV environment I was sucked back into my bad TV viewing behaviors. I even branched out a little when we got a video player. Now I could watch one program and record another to watch later. But I started realizing that I was having trouble finding time to watch everything I wanted to watch. There weren't enough hours in the day. I also found I had a weakness for video watching. But getting videos from the video store was expensive to do all the time, so I started checking out videos at the library for free. Yeah I was finding ways to further the habit when I could.

When I had time without a TV for prolonged periods, I discovered that I actually could live without it. I started to realize that I was spending too much time with friends just watching movies instead of catching up on our lives. I was becoming disgusted at the worse and worse quality of what I was seeing on TV and in movies. I finally decided to give up my own TV in my room at home. That helped a little, but there was still the family TV. I started to consciously avoid the living room when the TV was on, and started doing other useful things in my room instead. I started reading all the books I had which hadn't been read yet (I had always meant to get to them eventually). I started reading some of the great works of literature that I had always heard about but never actually read before. I started doing hobbies like quilting. I found that the more I did this, the less of a lure the TV had for me. When I finally married, I found myself marrying a man who had lived without a TV for a few years and who had discovered the freedom of not having a TV. We consciously made the decision to do without a TV in our household. We do allow ourselves the luxury of the occasional DVD played on our computer. But even there, we have become quite picky about what we will keep in our video collection. And currently at least half of our videos are kids' videos, for which we consider there to be some redeeming qualities. I also limit how much video time the kids get. No watching videos all day unless sickness is rampant in the household!

After having made this journey from TV addiction to non-TV household, I have developed some very unconventional ideas about TV. I hope you will be patient with me as I share them with you.

1. While not everybody who watches TV is tempted to addiction, I am guessing from my own observation that the majority of Americans have some level of TV addiction. This idea is reinforced in my mind by the number of news stories I have read over the last few months showing concern that not everyone will be prepared for the switchover to digital signal broadcast only.
2. It is assumed in our society that everyone has a TV. It is considered a necessity. Even many people in extreme poverty have TVs. We are constantly getting calls to try to switch us from either satellite TV or Cable TV to the other. The caller never asks "do you have a TV?", they ask if we have satellite or cable. They don't know what to say when I inform them that we don't have a TV. I have lived without a TV for 8 years now. It is not a necessity.
3. Even wary consumers are being brain-washed by their TVs. Some people are more resistant than others, but eventually the incessant, yet entertaining commercials have their effect. They actually start believing the lies they are being fed about products. And I think that the vendors know this, because it drives our TV programming.
4. I don't know if our social moral standards have declined because TV standards have slipped or vice versa, but they have definitely gone that direction together. I do know that I have had to build up my own standards from their previous low in my absence from TV. Now when I happen to see TV elsewhere I am appalled at what is considered normal.
5. The TV news is atrocious. I remember thinking back in the eighties that it was turning into a banal repetitive waste of time. I remember noticing that they would start the newscast by giving a summary of the night's stories, then they would slowly air short snippets of stories while giving teasers for the stories to come. However, they were spending so much time repeating what they were going to tell you, that the actual news stories were not much more than the teaser they already gave. Then they would finish out the newscast with a review of the night's stories. Back then, I noticed that I could find out more about what was happening in the world by reading my local newspaper. Later I decided even that was similarly biased. I found non-American news magazines refreshing. Although they had their own biases, they were different ones and I actually heard a few things you didn't get in the American news media. Now I am much happier with news on the Internet. If I want to know more about something, It's easier to find more about it from a variety of viewpoints.
6. I think the TV news media thinks it has the power to shape public opinion. To some extent, I think they are right. For all those people who watch the news (over and over again), they eventually think that the news as presented is the real story. Fewer and fewer people are able to tell the difference between a well documented story and an opinion piece. Fewer and fewer people are able to tell that they are not being given the complete story. It is brain-washing again. If you tell people something long enough they begin to believe you. If you convince enough people, you can change their behaviors and sometimes turn a lie into the truth. The end of the Vietnam War is a classic example of this in my mind. Militarily the war was being waged successfully, but the American news media turned the tide of American popular thought, which put political pressure on our country's leaders. They in turn finally pulled out of Vietnam in defeat, when militarily we did not need to leave in defeat. I completely believe that the news media's coverage of the Iraqi war was an attempt to re-enact this senario.

Whether or not you can agree to these points, I hope you can at least mull them over a while to see if you can see any truth to them. I notice every now and then that our pediatric clinic encourages families to turn off the TV for a week every year in an effort to improve children's health. I would encourage everyone who uses TV in their life to have a regular "TV is off" time. If it is widely acknowledged to be good for our kids, it is probably good for the rest of us, too. It also allows those who are too enmeshed in it, to start to make a needed break from it. Try it. Once a week, once a month, certainly more than once a year... take a break from it. Find out what else you like to do with your life.

I, personally, would like to see a measurable percentage of the population to begin to live without TV again. That itself could be transformative for our society.

Garden roulette

Every spring the same question comes to mind. When exactly do I plant my spring garden? You see, I haven't lived in this area all that long... just five years. I'm still learning when spring hits. Last year I thought I got a nice early start by planting on the first of March. But, most of our cool weather plants couldn't take the warm weather even that early. So this year I thought that I would try to get an earlier start. But how much earlier? We had a ridiculously mild January with many days getting up to 80 degrees by lunch time. But our nights were fairly cold. Then just when I thought it might stay mild, the frost came back.

I remember from my childhood in the Bay Area, that we would usually get some spring-like weather that caused everybody to plant their spring gardens. Then the frost would come back and kill everything off. Then people either would replant or give up. So, I'm trying to figure out if the same thing happens in this area. Did we get an early false spring this year? I've decided to take advantage of the prolonged rain forecast for the next week. I planted most of my spring garden today (in the middle of February) before the rain started up again. So we will see if I guessed right this year. In the meantime, we shouldn't have to worry about watering our garden for a week or two.

I hope I guessed right. If I'm right, we will start getting our spring veggies ripe in March and April this year. That is just about right for this year since our baby is due in May. I'm thinking that I'll be taking a bit of a break from gardening during the summer. If I plant anything for summer it'll be something that doesn't take a lot of constant care. I suspect that our family, friends and neighbors will be getting more of our fruit produce this year, too. Somehow I can't picture myself doing much fruit preserving while recovering from childbirth.

Maybe I'll skip summer gardening and do a fall garden instead. Then I'll have to guess how early it needs to be planted so that we get a harvest before the cold weather hits. If we stay in this area a long time, like we hope, I might get good at predicting the seasonal changes.

Month-long musings

It has been about a month since I've posted last. A month ago, we had just learned about our baby having trisomy 13 (confirmed since then) and had the hustle and bustle of Christmas. I've had a month to think about all sorts of deep thoughts. I've decided that I should take some time to share my thoughts, since I've gotten the impression that many people who know me, aren't sure how to talk to me anymore. They seem unsure about how I'm taking our news and don't want to say the wrong thing. For those of you in that category, I guess you haven't figured out yet that I'm fairly tolerant of what people say to me as long as they seem to be well intentioned and polite. I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt. So to help out these people and to share my thoughts with the rest of you, here follow some of my musings about our news of the last month.

I was not very familiar with Trisomy 13 before the diagnosis came. I was vaguely familiar with the term "trisomy" but I had to read up on it and learned quite a lot from the genetic counselor. It is a very serious condition and usually results in early death for those who have it. This was not something anyone wants to hear that their child has. It was a shock of course. But, I am not a person under the delusion that misfortune can't possibly come my way. Some people tend to say "why me?" when bad things happen to them. I tend to say "why not me?" There is nothing special about me or mine that would prevent misfortune from coming our way. Added to this, I am very aware of my age and the fact that the risk for birth defects increases as my age increases. Although the risk is much higher than if I were twenty years younger, I am realistic about the statistics. If I have a risk of 1 in 20 of having any chromosomal problem in a baby of mine, that means I have a chance of 19 in 20 of having a child with no chromosomal problem. Most women my age who have children, have healthy children. I was aware of all of this information before I became pregnant and before we heard the diagnosis.

Once we heard the news, we were very sad. But, we wanted information to help figure out what it meant for our child. So we took time to research what we could. It didn't make us feel any better. But, it did help us come to terms with what is knowable. Trisomy 13 results in several abnormalities in a child. No two children are completely alike in how they are affected. From the ultrasound, we have some knowledge of our child's abnormalities (at least those detected from an ultrasound). We know that we won't know everything about her abnormalities until she is born. We also know that we can't know for sure how these abnormalities will affect her ability to live and grow until she is born and is trying to live on her own (instead of inside Mommy). Many of these babies don't make it to birth. Many don't live more than a few days after birth. About 5% live 6 months. very very few live beyond that. That is what we know. That is also a little about what we know that we don't and can't know ahead of time.

When faced with the certain knowledge that you are going to lose someone you love in the near future, how do you react? How to you live after that news hits? Well, you still don't know when it will happen. You still have others that you love and care for to consider. You still have to go about everyday life. You still have to eat. You still have to sleep. You still have to do laundry and do basic housework. If you don't do these things, life becomes extremely unbalanced and you start to go downhill yourself in depression. Fortunately for us, we have three bouncy, energetic kids that need our attention and care. They help us to remember to live life day by day. After all, that is how all of us need to live. Today is the only day we know we have, so we have to do the best we can with what we have. I still have times (in the middle of the night when I get too uncomfortable to sleep well, usually) when I consider what is coming in the future and I start to miss my baby girl early. But most of the time, I'm in good spirits. I can still laugh and play. I can appreciate a sunny day or one of my children remembering to say please when they ask for something. I actually forget sometimes that people who have heard our news, expect me to be a morose, tragic figure, who is sure to be near tears at the drop of a hat. They come up to me with tears in their eyes and sad words and I feel the urge to cheer them up. I don't feel like a morose, tragic figure. I am also beginning to see our situation less as tragedy and more as life as it really is -- Riding down the road of life without the training wheels, so to speak.

I try to give myself perspective. My life is pretty good. Many others have had tragedy of one kind or another hit them. And yet, they survived and were perhaps the better for it. I like to think that God has his reasons for letting these things occur when and where they do. I do believe that God is in control, which is a thought that gives me comfort. We live in a world that is not perfect. It is corrupted by sin and the ripples of that cause all sorts of unpleasant things in our world. Yet God is able to take those unpleasant things and make something good and right come about. We tend to see our baby daughter's "abnormalities" as defects and undesirable. But, we don't know how God sees them. These abnormalities may result in a more precious relationship and stronger lessons in life than we would have otherwise had. She is still our daughter. It is still our job to love her and be her parents until she returns to God. She is still part of our family. None of us knows for sure how long we have here on earth. Life is a precious gift. We choose to face this situation with a love that is willing to feel the pain to come. We don't need to lose the joys of today, worrying about loss tomorrow. Nor do we need to shelter ourselves from future pain and thereby cut ourselves off from the support we have around us.

We have had a lot of support from people. I know we have literally hundreds of people praying for us. We have family and friends who are willing to help any way they can. We have good doctors who are doing the best they can to be helpful, supportive and give us the best care they can. I feel blessed by this crowd of people rooting for us, and feeling sorrow for us, too. The load is lighter because of it. I don't know why this tragedy in our lives feels so non-tragic right now. We really would have preferred to have another healthy baby. But this is our current reality. As a result, we seem to be learning things about life and faith that we would not have learned any other way. I wish I could say more about that now, but I don't think I can until the time and the perspective of hindsight helps me do so.

I also feel blessed that I am still in good health. The pregnancy itself is going as it should. The only thing wrong is a chromosomal problem that has severely affected our daughters physical development. When birth comes, that will be the time of decisions and our next chance to really know much more about how our child is doing. We don't know how well or poorly her abnormal organs will work. We don't know if she will live long enough to bring home. We don't know what life will look like during that time. But, I haven't been worried about my own health. I've been able to get my usual exercise. I've been able to continue caring for our kids and home. Tim has been able to continue working and not worry about things at home. I've been able to continue homeschooling and planning for next school year's work. I like to think that I'm mentally healthy, too. I am not in depression, which I imagine is a temptation to many in such a situation. If I am somehow mentally unbalanced and acting strangely, no one has brought it to my attention yet. So I have hope for the future.

Faith, Hope and Love... hmm. That sounds familiar. Yep, that is what gets you through the tough times alright. It's a combination I highly recommend.

Reflections on Christmas

It has been quite a while since I posted on this blog. Homeschooling has been pretty routine, so that didn't seem like a noteworthy topic. I have discovered that my allowing for only one week off school for the Christmas holiday was not very realistic. First of all, I need time to prepare for Christmas even if we keep it simple like we did this year. Secondly, The Pillowfight Fairy can't concentrate on school work if she hasn't had a chance to play with all of her new toys yet. So we are taking a second week off to help satisfy the kids and to allow the parents some time to get life back to normal.

For those of you who follow my husband's blog, you know that we received some unwelcome news that our expected baby is not the healthy baby we had hoped for. She has many defects that will probably take her life fairly early. This is not the kind of news one likes to get at anytime, let alone Christmas. But after the initial shock and sadness, we are finding ourselves managing fairly well.

Christmas is usually one of our most stress-filled holidays. I have to consciously limit my Christmas activities or I make myself sick. Added to that, we frequently have one or more of us involved with a Christmas program of some kind (practices are not easy to juggle when there are young children). Then there has been a death or other family struggle/tragedy in most of the holiday seasons for the last 15 years. On top of that is the "who do we spend which holiday with" family politics. Don't get me wrong. I love my family and I am quite fond of my in-laws. I like spending time with them. But it is not easy to pack up the family for a visit on particular pre-determined date, especially in winter. And somehow, kids are never on the same schedule as the adults, which adds to the general stress. Then there is the fact that all three of our kids have birthdays plus Christmas in the space of about three months and we are inundated with new stuff, requiring sorting, storing, rearranging, and the discarding of old things.

With all of that, somehow this has managed to be one of our better Christmases in years. The family Christmas celebration was just across town for us this year, so we didn't have the travel stress. None of us were in a Christmas program this year, though we did attend a couple as audience members. We did keep our Christmas simple. I didn't have a lot of time to prepare ahead, being busy teaching up until the week of Christmas. Then I had extra doctor's appointments and big issues on my mind regarding our baby. Somehow, anything other than simple would have been way out of place this year. I did have a cold, but it was going away by Christmas instead of just coming on.

All this makes me reflect on what would be an ideal Christmas in my opinion. My ideal Christmas would involve:

• Spending time with immediate family doing simple things that we don't usually get to do.
• Not being concerned about other people's expectations of gift giving and simply giving gifts as prompted by our hearts and perhaps doing more gift giving to those in need rather than people who have everything they need.
• Remembering that Jesus is what the celebration is all about.
• Treating the people around us better than we usually treat them and perhaps better than they deserve.
• Move the focus off of what we want, and put the focus on what God wants and what others need.
• Maybe we could sing and dance more, too.
• As much as we treasure particular things, we should never let them stand in the way of the lives and relationships we need to treasure more.
  

Somehow when issues of life and death are on your mind, most of the stuff that goes on around Christmas is so trivial it is ridiculous. But without those big life and death issues weighing on the mind, those trivial things start to take over. Although the unpleasant things of life are in fact unpleasant, they do help us keep in perspective what is important.

Accountability

About a month ago, I was talking with an older gentleman at church (whom I respect) and he brought up the subject of homeschooling. He had heard that we were homeschooling and, not knowing much about it, he was curious. He was not on the attack and he wasn't trying to condemn. But, I found it interesting that instead of bringing up the socialization topic like most non-homeschoolers do, he asked me to whom am I accountable.

I had a simple answer at the time that I think satisfied him, but I've been thinking about the question on and off ever since. The more I think about it, the more I think he was on the right track with his question. I'm sure that this "accountability" question probably raises just as many hackles with homeschoolers as the "socialization" question does. But, think about it for a minute. In the socialization question, people are saying that it is important to be like all the rest of us who educate our kids this other way. In the accountability question, it is asking who do you answer to keep you on track and doing what you should.

The way I see it, accountability is important to everybody. But, this gentleman realized that accountability is a separate thing from being like everybody else. Most people think that if you are like everybody else then the accountability question is taken care of through normal channels and they don't have to think twice about it. However, most homeschoolers are not satisfied with the accountability provided in the normal channels and for one reason or another reject the idea that they need to be like everybody else.

The public schools are accountable to parents, school boards, and government regulation. Private schools are accountable to parents, school boards, government regulation and in the case of religious private schools the faith tradition they are a part of. Homeschoolers are also accountable. Except in their case the parents are the school board and the teachers and the administration. Homeschoolers also have to satisfy whatever government regulations have jurisdiction over them. Many homeschoolers are part of a support group which can be an accountability partner for them to stay on track. Religious homeschoolers are either accountable within their faith tradition or accountable directly to God.

All of these methods of accountability are useful and good within reason. But any one of these can get overbalanced and become a tyranical dictator rather than an accountability partner in the education of our children. It is also this that scares people when they hear horror stories of parents who use homeschooling as a screen for mistreating their children. The public decides suddenly that there isn't enough accountability if it was allowed to happen.

The things that I see in all this is that there are good individuals and bad individuals and all of us have some mixture of the two (so don't get too puffed up about being a good guy). It is in every parent's best interest for their children to thrive and succeed. If we all operated on this self-interest, there would never be a parent who mistreats their children. Unfortunately, there are and they are not limited to any one segment of the population. For this reason, I understand the need for accountability. I consider myself personally accountable to God for my actions. I am also accountable to my husband, and he to me, in how we conduct ourselves with our children. We are accountable to extended family, who love our kids as much as we do (and for the record, most but not all are happy that we homeschool). We have church connections that help us be accountable as good parents. We are not thoroughly connected to a homeschool organization for accountability, but we do have several casual friendships with other homeschoolers. Living in California, we currently do not have many governmental regulations to be concerned about. On the whole, I think we are sufficiently accountable while at the same time having the freedom to decide what is best for our kids.

I would challenge all parents (public, private, or homeschool) to consider to whom you are accountable. If you have a long list, you are probably doing all right. If you have a very short list or an empty list, you probably need to find yourself people to hold you accountable to be the person you need to be for the sake of your children.

Half-way Point

As of today, we have completed half of what I have planned for a 36 week year. We have completed week eighteen on time, without letting the schedule slide. I am quite pleased that we've been able to do that since I expected that sick days and other surprises would have caused us to push the schedule later than planned. But, so far the sick days were few enough to allow us to catch up with just a little extra work per day.

Keeping on schedule is very important for me this year. This is partly because I don't want anyone to be able to claim that I am incapable of teaching my daughter at the high standards we have set. There were some who upon reading the coursework we had planned, said that we had bit off more than we could chew and that we should thin it out and be more realistic. I have news for those people: It is working. Our daughter is being challenged at an appropriate level. She is not showing signs of being in over her head. She is making steady progress in all subjects. Some of it she likes. Some she doesn't. When I look at various standard lists of what my child should be learning in first grade I find that she is either at grade level or above.

The other reason I find that the schedule is important to me is that according to my calendar, my six week on one week off plan (with an extra week off for Christmas) results in ending our "official" 36 week year on April 24th. Exactly 3 weeks before my baby is due. I do have more work planned at a more relaxed pace during the summer. But, doing much schoolwork with a newborn infant in the house is folly as far as I'm concerned. 3 weeks is not a lot of wiggle room and babies are rarely inclined to appear at convenient times.

So if I'm on schedule and pleased with my daughter's progress, why am I nervous? It just dawned on me this week that I won't have the month or two of planning before the next year starts. Those months will be taken up by baby care and lack of sleep. I don't recommend doing meaningful planning in those circumstances. That means that I have to guess how my daughter progresses to the end of the year and make plans early.

With our bought curriculum, this isn't so bad. She is doing well with it. It seems well-paced for her. We will just pick it up at the next level. I'll just have to preview it to make sure there are no surprises. But I've made up my own lesson plans in a few areas. Preparing for a new year with these takes a lot more work. For instance I need to finalize new lesson plans for religion, literature, art, and science. I also need to research how we plan to teach cursive and get ready for that. I also need to research grammar curriculum since our daughter will be finishing up her current program early and I'm not sure that publisher has the next level to just pick up where we left off. You can't do planning like that in a day or two.

But even with the nervousness, I'm starting to get a little excited at the prospect of something new for the coming year. I always loved starting a new year when I was a kid. Besides, next year we are going to be studying two of my favorite areas of science: Earth science and astronomy (Yay!)

For our literature studies I have been trying to do literature from the time period we are studying in history. This year it has been Ancient history accompanied by myths and legends of the nations we study with Aesop's Fables filling up the empty spaces in the schedule. (As a side note: I highly recommend Aesop's Fables for children. My daughter loves them and they teach wisdom. They are also the perfect size for beginning narration training.) Next year we will be studying from the fall of Rome to the Renaissance. Yeah it's a cool time period to study. However, I'll have to take a slightly different approach to the literature since the writings from this time period are not necessarily child-friendly. One suggestion I've come across is reading lots of biographies of people from this time period. That idea has merit, but I'm sure that there are at least some primary sources that we could read parts from. Just think of all of the religious writings, scientific writings, chronicles, eyewitness accounts of historical events, fiction, and plays. Surely some of that could be read to a 2nd grader. But the question remains: "which ones do you choose?" There are a whole lot more writings available for this time period than for the ancient world. Any suggestions are welcome.

Religion won't be hard, just time consuming. We are reading through the Bible. By my schedule, we will be in the book of Numbers by the end of the school year. We are taking it very slowly in small chunks. So far we have only skipped a few passages that I didn't think I could explain with a simple explanation. I know we will skip more later on this year for boredom and redundancy reasons. However, I am trying to give as much of the original as I can since it all relates together and gives the broader context for later teachings. This means that I read through it all ahead of time to plan what those daily chunks are going to be.

With art I think I will probably take a different approach next year. I like the book we used "Drawing with Children," but I've found that it helps my daughter only so far. The Pillowfight Fairy has gotten to a point she is comfortable with and isn't making much progress. In fact the book encourages self-expression to the point that my daughter doesn't even want to do a straight copy job without altering the picture to fit what she wants it to be. I figure my daughter has no lack of self-expression. She is very good at it. What she needs to learn is a little more artistic discipline to learn new methods. So I'm on the lookout for something that can help us in that direction.

I have researched cursive enough to know that it is more commonly started in third grade. However, both my husband and I think that she is ready for it and will probably like it. She is becoming rather comfortable with writing and has developed a very nice print style. She likes her letters to be somewhat artistic. She is also sometimes frustrated when she tries to read script and then gives up. With her temperment, we can picture her either loving cursive because it is pretty or hating it because it requires constant practice. We don't think she is too young. My mother who has excellent penmanship first learned cursive writing in first grade. Of course more things were handwritten back then.

So as you can see, I'm already switching gears into my planning mode. I also have to keep in mind that I might be starting the Adrenaline Junkie on Kindergarten sometime next year. So I'll need a schedule that will allow me to teach two kids at different levels while having a toddler/preschooler and infant keeping me hopping. I keep hearing that the first year of homeschooling is the hardest. My question is, "Is that my child's first year of homeschooling or my first year of homeschooling?" Because this is my third year of homeschooling and it has been comparably challenging to our first year when she was a reading preschooler. And from this vantage point, although this year has been going smoothly, it isn't easy. Next year somehow seems like it will be harder with two students and two distracters.

Extreme tiredness

I had thought that I was doing fairly well this pregnancy with being able to stay awake and just keep on going. Yeah... so I do need my afternoon nap. Yeah... so I tend to run out of energy fast in the evening. But, last night I reached a new depth of tiredness that I had never achieved before.

I fell asleep while reading a book. OK, that seems like a perfectly normal thing to do. Let me revise my description to give you a better idea of how extraordinary this was. I was reading Dr's Suess' ABC to my son, aloud. I knew I was tired, but I didn't realize how tired I was until I felt this fuzziness fade over me and I woke myself by hearing myself continuing to talk as if I were reading but strange words were coming out of my mouth.

I had fallen asleep while watching videos with my kids. I have had close calls in the car on long afternoon drives (why I don't drive long distances in the afternoons when I am pregnant anymore). I had fallen asleep while breastfeeding. I had fallen asleep while bottle feeding. I have heard of people falling asleep while standing up. I have never fallen asleep while I was reading aloud before. Parenthood really is exhausting. First-time parents find that out pretty fast. What nobody tells you is that if you keep having kids, you learn new depths that you didn't know existed.

To be fair, some of the sleep deprivation is self-inflicted since I am determined to keep on going and keep up a normal pace of activity. I am grateful my husband can step in and help with the kids in the evening when I completely lose steam. Though I think he is getting tired of doing bedtime routines for all three kids while his wife is asleep on the sofa.

What is our child's educational level?

UPDATE: added a link to the site that estimates reading level with a little more detail about it.

The question came up again recently about what is our daughter's educational level. Since we are homeschooling and can tailor her education to fit her individual needs, the actual grade level is just a convenient label to us. Her peers are six. She is six. She attends a first grade sunday school class and thinks of herself as a first grader. But what educational level is she at? We don't feel the need to get her tested to determine her level so how do we know what to teach her?

Well, I guess we started with reading. She can read. So now it is a matter of what she likes to read. What stories grab her attention? What stories does she read to herself and what stories does she prefer to be read to her? Lately, I've been getting a lot of "step 2: intro to reading books" from our local library. They are simple chapter books with easy stories and vocabulary. The Pillowfight Fairy finds them easy and fun. Her little sister likes them too. The older reads them to the younger, then they spend the next week reenacting the stories in their free time. According to the information on these books the reading level is grades 1-3. That gives some clue, but as I said, the Fairy finds them easy. On the more advanced level she enjoys reading some of the Beatrix Potter stories. I found a site that gives the reading level for book titles that you enter. It is called Scholastic Teacher Book Wizard and you can find it here. When I looked up some of these stories on the site's "Bookalike" search engine it ranked the reading level and I found that the stories have a "interest level" of kindergarten through 2nd grade, but has a reading level of 3.5 grade level. "House at Pooh Corner" is listed as interest level of 3rd-5th grade and reading level of 5.1. Books that she prefers to have read to her are some like "Stuart Little," "Charlotte's Web," and "The Wind in the Willows." I don't think it is because they are too hard to read. I think it is because they are longer chapter books with longer plot lines. She can't finish them in one sitting, so she prefers to be read to so that her imagination can just take it all in. If she were reading it herself, she would still be dealing with the mechanics of reading and couldn't enjoy it as much. So we just try to get her good books, whether for her to read or for us to read to her. Our theory (taken from Charlotte Mason) is that if the child reads good literature and interesting books, the reading abilities follow along nicely.

We also started her out doing some spelling work to try to reinforce the phonics we had taught her. She loved it and is now in the second book of our chosen curriculum (Spelling Workout) which is labeled as for 2nd grade. I found that I couldn't advance her too fast in this curriculum, because it is aimed at a child who also has similar writing and thinking skills to the older age level. So I have extended the life of the curriculum by following the series of spelling lessons with vocabulary work taken from the dictionary in the back of the workbook.

Thanks to some of the spelling and vocabulary work we have done, she has made good progress with her writing skills. She doesn't like writing sentences, but she can do it well enough now that she will sometimes compose several sentences for fun during her free time, on whatever topic is of interest to her at the time. She still prefers to use simple words when writing, but she will take a chance on spelling a more complicated word if it is the one she wants to use. As far as her ability to write, I would rank her as about 2nd or 3rd grade. However, the content is more along the lines of a 1st grader's simpler view of the world. During the course of our current school year I have increased the amount of writing that I expect from her. She used to do one sentence per writing assignment at the beginning of the school year. Now she is doing three sentences per writing assignment. I have added an additional sentence every six weeks. It has worked out so well that I plan to continue it until she is writing six sentences per assignment by the end of our school year.

We are using Horizons math with her at the 1st grade level. We are satisfied with the steady and challenging work she is getting with it. She is picking it up at a reasonable pace. She also seems to prefer word problems, which I detested when I was her age. But it fits the way that she thinks.

As for her other subjects: history, science, religion, art and music. This is more fluid. None of it is actually graded. The history is designed to be used for any kid between 1st-4th grades. The Science is handled in a similar way. The teacher adjusts the lesson for what the child is capable of. The art is simple enough for any age level (child through adult). For religion, we are reading from a children's Bible that is at a 3rd grade reading level. The piano work is based on completion of lessons in order rather than "grades." So these areas of study either mirror her progress in reading and writing or they train for specific skills that are not quite so age related.

Just writing this post is reinforcing to me that the basics of reading, writing, and math really are the basics. I feel it is important to develop these abilities so that she will always be challenged a little more. If we can keep her at the level of steady improvement at a challenging level, I think she will be capable of the same level of work in the other subjects that are dependent on reading and writing and eventually also math. So, I guess my determining factor in our child's educational level is in reading, writing, and math. She is reading and writing much better than the typical six year old. She is doing math at a first grade level. She still thinks like a six year old however and has the emotional and activities needs of a six year old. I sort of see the information she is picking up in history, science, religion, art and music as frosting on the cake. She is learning new facts that she doesn't have a lot of context for yet. We are trying to provide some of that context for her. But I can see good things coming from following our current path. For instance, how many six year olds are confident about how to spell: Egypt, Pharaoh, Abraham, and Osiris. She is learning about lots of different kinds of animals. She is hearing the actual bible stories instead of paraphrases. She is getting training in art and music at a level that suits her abilities.

We still have a little over half a school year's work yet to go, so it will be a while before I can start planning for next year. But, I can see how each year lays a new layer to the foundation she is building on. I don't have any concerns about her not being ready to advance to new levels in reading or writing. She is right on track with her math. This year's work has shown our plans to be successful as far as material covered and educational level to follow. Looking ahead, I can still see the basic subjects (reading, writing, and math) to be the arbiters of how challenging the other subjects (history, science, religion, and fine arts) will be. And in the end those other subjects will become foundational later on when she starts hitting the logic stage, and she has to start wrestling with the facts that she has already been exposed to.

The more I look toward the future, the more I get excited about the shape it is taking. I almost feel sorry for my daughter that she doesn't have the perspective yet that allows her to look ahead at what the future holds for her. She has had such a good beginning. Yeah, she grumbles and gripes with the best of them. But she incorporates what she has learned into her play as if it is now a natural part of her. She doesn't realize how much she has changed in just the last few months. To me, as her parent, it is exciting and hopeful. I almost look forward to the day when we will be wrestling over arguments and grappling with great ideas.

In the meantime, I'm starting to teach the Adrenaline Junkie phonics. I get to learn how to juggle the educational needs of two kids in a more formal fashion. I get to figure out what my second daughter is ready for and whether we will start kindergarten next school year or in the following. (Her birthday is just a few days after the official cut off, so that will be it's own challenge.) After that, maybe I'll write another post about educational level. After all, I don't have a lot of experience dealing with more than one person. I'm sure I'll have figured it out a bit more after that.

Why do we homeschool?

As I look back over the last two and a half years of homeschooling, I have realized that our original reasons for homeschooling have transformed a bit. So I was wondering if I ever posted about why we homeschool. After looking back in my archive, the answer is: not really. I have mentioned reasons in passing, but mostly I wrote about how we decided to homeschool, not why. So in an effort to spread some enlightenment, I'll try to address the whys of our homeschooling journey.

Both my husband and I went to public schools growing up. We did not have any horribly traumatic experiences that changed our lives forever and caused us to swear that we would never inflict that on our children. We both had good educations growing up. But, neither of us saw our good, public school education as problem free. We each have our weaknesses and strengths. As a result, we saw that our good, public school education allowed us to coast on our strengths, while avoiding the need to address our weaknesses. As for socialization, you could say that neither of us saw public school socialization, in general, as a positive thing. In every group of people (in school or otherwise), you have leaders, followers, and a few odd balls that neither follow the leaders, nor inspire followers. The public school system is designed to work well for leaders and followers. Both Tim and I were odd balls. As a result, we saw how it did not always work well for people like us.

After High School, both of us went off to college. Tim went to a state college and I had a varied journey through a public junior college, a private university, a state college, and a small private college. We had good educations and got decent jobs. As newly married adults, we found that we were both of the mind to examine the choices we made before we automatically followed the crowd. As a result we found that we often did not follow the crowd. One decision we made early on that went against societal norms was to do without a television. Our household has been TV free since 2000 and we haven't regretted the decision.

As we started making plans for having a family, we would talk about what we wanted for our children and the topic of education would eventually come up. We both were of a mind that we wanted not just a good education for our children, but an excellent one. We expected that we would be the ones to decide what that education would look like when the time came. We talked over the pros and cons of public, private and even homeschooling, but never came to any conclusions. After all, we didn't actually have any children at that time so it was all theoretical.

Once we had our first born, the Pillowfight Fairy, theory started to be met with reality. We were a happy little family with nary an educational care until about the time she turned two. You see, this little girl was a bit on the early side for just about every childhood milestone. But, since she was our first child, we didn't have much perspective on what was normal, except what the people around us would tell us. They were astounded when she was crawling and pulling to a stand at six months. She was walking by nine months. They were shocked to hear her pronounce words perfectly at ten months. She had memorized some of her favorite books by eighteen months and could recite them to herself happily. By the time she was twenty months, she had words like "metronome" in her speaking vocabulary. But what really started to make us realize how unusual her skills were was when she memorized the 50 states by shape, location, and name (sometimes mispronounced) two weeks after her second birthday thanks to a map puzzle she was given. That sort of tipped us off that this kid was not learning things in quite the same way as the other kids her age. That is when we started evaluating what should we do for her education.

The first question was whether or not to send her to preschool. Many of our peers were planning to send their kids to preschool when they turned three, partially to prepare them for school, partially to give them some fun activity with other kids, and partially to allow the parents to do other things. When I looked into what was taught in preschool, I realized that my two year old already knew most of it. So, academically that choice didn't make sense. Socially, we are not isolated. Between our church connections and my MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) group, she was getting lots of time with other kids and fun activities. As for myself, I was still going to be a stay at home mom. By this point, we had our second daughter (the Adrenaline Junkie) and I was going to be home taking care of her and didn't see any reason to ship off one kid so that I had more time alone with the other one. So Tim and I kept thinking about educational options. by the time she turned three, we had decided that we can do her preschool years at home. That way we can teach her what she is ready for and not be concerned about being out of sync with the preschool. Besides, I just didn't like the idea in my gut to send her to someone else to teach when I was perfectly capable of doing it myself. I don't think kids should be separated from their families as much as is common in today's society.

Not long after we solved the preschool issue, wouldn't you know it but our little angel decided to spontaneously start sounding out words on her own at three and a half years old. That's when the next question came up. Do you delay teaching her to read because that happens later in school or do you go ahead and teach her and deal with the fallout from that decision later. Tim and I both agreed that you teach what a kid is ready to learn, regardless of whether it is convenient. So, we did a little research on reading lessons, did sounding out practice with her, made a few mistakes and came back to phonics in the end. In the process, we were discovering more about how our daughter thinks, how she reacts to lessons, what kinds of strengths and weaknesses she had. We were also watching how she interacted with other kids her age. We knew that the decision about kindergarten was just around the corner. Would we put her in public school for kindergarten? Would a private school be better? What about homeschooling? We knew that at the rate she was going, she was going to be academically advanced for her age. But socially and emotionally, she was not. We knew that if we placed her based on her age alone, she would be hopelessly bored. We knew that if we placed her based on academics, she would be horribly handicapped trying to deal with kids more socially and emotionally mature than her. We were realizing that, based on our own experience in the public school systems, that public school would be a bad fit. The more we researched and read, the more we realized that a private school would not be much better. The issue we were dealing with was how to teach a kid who was her own category. There was not going to be a classroom of kids exactly like her to put her with. We wanted her to have an excellent education, but we were not willing to make the compromises necessary to force her to fit into a classroom setting. The classroom setting became the focus. You see, any time you bring a group of people of varying skills into a classroom to learn, you have some who learn quickly, some who learn at an average speed and some who for one reason or another learn slowly. You also have to deal with the dynamics of one teacher having to juggle the needs of all of the students. No matter how good the student-teacher ratio, the attention given has to vary based on need. We knew our daughter to be a fast learner. We found that she also has a lazy streak and resists new things if she thinks she doesn't want to put much effort into it. After all why work to learn something when you could just learn the things you like that don't take much effort at all? We could see her in a classroom setting excelling in her favorite topics, but getting bored and not doing what she was capable of, since it wasn't expected. Yet at the same time, she would be labeled as uncooperative or even behind in some areas because she would refuse to do the work to learn the material. There aren't many teachers willing to break through our child's stubborn/lazy streak to get her to do what she is perfectly capable of. I have even noticed in the community classes and chuch classes she has been in, that she has a knack for manipulating the teacher to make exceptions for her. The more we watched her as we taught her at home, the more we realized that the classroom environment was the biggest issue we had. We also realized that we as her parents could get better results from her than other teachers. I think this was partially because we knew her so well and partially because we have a vested interest in her success.

So, If we didn't put her in public or private school because of the classroom dynamic, that left homeschooling. Homeschooling solved a lot of issues for us. We didn't have to worry about what the other kids were learning and whether our child was on track with that. We just had to teach our child what she was ready for. We didn't have to worry about whether she was emotionally or socially in sync with her peers (she will always be a little out of sync), she would be in an emotionally and socially accepting environment of her family. We had already been teaching her from infancy, and knew that we could. I never had any doubts as to my ability to teach the subjects. My own education was well rounded to the extreme. My college majors were (in chronological order): Physics, History, Library and Information Science, and Bible and Theology. I have taught adults how to do basic research at the college level. I have the ability to teach my own children. The only thing that was still an open question for me was whether I could do it as well as raising my kids (the third child being on the way at the time), taking care of the house, being a wife, all without exhausting myself or destroying our family. I am ambitious, but I do recognize that I have limitations.

What finally helped me realize that I could in fact do homeschooling, was a visit from Tim's uncle and aunt. They homeschool and I was able to watch them in action and pick their brains a bit to understand what homeschooling looks like at the daily level. Like most people with a institutional school background, I was still thinking within the box. If I tried to homeschool before that point, I probably would have exhausted myself by trying to reproduce the school setting at home. After that visit, I had a new vision for what school can be.

Ironically, we have chosen a completely different path than Tim's uncle and aunt. We did our research, figured out what was important to us, and figured out what we thought would work with our child. As a result, we have chosen to follow the classical model of education with plenty of emphasis on history and literature. Up through our daughter's kindergarten year we just worked with reading, writing and arithmetic. This year is her first grade year and we have added spelling, grammar, memorization work, history, science, religion, art and music. So far we have covered 13 weeks of school and seem to be on track with our goals.

During this time I have noticed that my ideas about homeschooling have continued to evolve and develop. We have found homeschooling to be very freeing. We are able to cover the material much faster than is done in the classroom setting. Once she has mastered one lesson we can move on to another or otherwise adjust the schedule as needed. We can take holidays and breaks when we need them rather than at the convenience of the school schedule. If we suddenly need to travel, we can either take a break from school or take it with us. We can work around illness in a more flexible way.

We have also found that we are more in tune with our responsibilities as parents and teachers to give our child an education that is tailored to her abilities. We now see having someone else teaching our child as "outsourcing" the job that is our responsibility. The biblical exhortation for parents to teach their children as they go about their everyday activities resonates with us like it never did before. We always expected to teach our children in that way, but now with homeschooling, we find that the verse mirrors what we do much closer than it would otherwise. We also feel more empowered to be active participants in our child's education. We don't have to find an expert on children's literature to read to our child. We don't have to wait for a specialist to tell us how our child is doing, we can see for ourselves by being there when it happens.

We have found that we are separating the concepts of learning from school insofar as lessons don't have to look like the schooling that we had. Yes, our daughter has plenty of sit down lessons. But, she also likes to play verbal games of word problems at the dinner table (her initiative, not ours). She likes to read to her sister (reading practice or social time? Maybe both). She decided one day, during a lesson on addresses, to write a letter to her aunt and uncle who live across town. So we had a lesson on proper epistolary composition which I've been wanting to do with her, but it was her idea completely.

We have found homeschooling to increase our joy. We get to hear first hand some of the quirky things our daughter comes up with in that brain of hers. We get to see the younger kids wanting to do "school" too. We get to enjoy our kids for who they are as we help them reach toward their potential. Each one of our kids is different. The younger ones might even fit in slightly better in the classroom setting than our first child. But, at this point we can see the benefit of homeschooling so well that it seems silly of us to even consider it. Our second daughter is much more active and loves to act out the stories read to her. She is also more precise in her writing and drawing than her older sister was at this age. Our son is slower to talk, but has managed to learn his phonics sounds before he turns two. He seems to be a self-motivated thinker and problem solver. We are expecting a fourth child in May and are curious to find out what this one will be like.

We do have daily struggles over how much work our daughter puts into her lessons and whether we have made reasonable goals. But, through these struggles we know each other better and find ways to work together to meet our goals. Our daughter is even learning some negotiation skills. It is said that relationships become strong when you struggle and work together. It is our hope that at the end of our homeschooling journey that not only will all of our children have an excellent education, but that the relationships will be strong because of the journey we have followed together. We hope that this homeschool journey will not just prepare our kids for their future lives but will teach them about life itself and how to live it well.

Mommy Fashions

I've been thinking lately how silly some of my fashion choices have been lately. To give you some background, please understand that I have never been a fashion maven. But, I do have a conscious fashion identity that I have shaped and molded in various ways since Junior High School. I like certain styles and rejoice when they come back into the latest trends. I hate other styles and think that those clothes should be buried somewhere obscure in the deep of the night. I tend to like classic styles (those styles that last longer and don't really follow the ebb and flow of the current fads). I also like a few fun eccentric things, that most people would probably avoid simply because "everyone isn't doing it." I tend to do my own thing and toyed with going into fashion design in during my High School Years. It is probably good I didn't. I'm too much of an independent thinker. I've never noticed anybody treating me like a trend-setter. In addition, I have a huge practical streak. Practical and Fashion almost never work well in the world of trendy culture. It drives me nuts every time I find something that works for me because it is practical, then within a year I can't find it anywhere because the latest thing pushed it out of the market. But the latest thing is cutesy and very impractical.

So, what kind of fashion choices have I made that amuse me? It is the Mommy Fashion thing. Things that I do simply because I'm a mommy. Things that I probably would never have thought of otherwise. Auntie Jean pointed one out to me about a year ago that I hadn't really noticed, but was kind of funny. No matter what I wore, I would always add a little touch of white, usually tossed over a shoulder like a loose scarf. This bit of white scarf was of course a burp cloth made from a thin cloth diaper. I've done this for most of the first year and a half of each of our kids' lives. To someone who knows me, it's become my normal fashion. To a complete stranger, they probably wonder about my sanity.

Another one I noticed this past summer was a fun little colorful accessory. If you plan ahead, you can even coordinate with your day's outfit (which I never did). This accessory was a pacifier on a strap that was usually clipped to my belt-loop or pocket. This position ensured that the child to whom it belonged would not be dragging it through the dirt. But, for my benefit, it provided a fun little swinging motion every time I walked somewhere.

The latest addition to my wardrobe that amuses me is a pair of shoes. I love shoes. I am one of those people (if I didn't have a practical streak) who would have a pair of shoes to match every color of outfit I own. I have always liked three inch spike heels (which make me 6 feet tall). This is not at all practical with young kids in your life (possible but not practical). I also happen to be rather active. I don't do sports. I don't do a gym. I don't run or bike or swim. I walk. I currently have a daily walk of about 1.2 miles (pushing a double umbrella stroller). I have found that with a combination of young children and the daily walk, I am incredibly hard on shoes. I usually would choose athletic shoes as the most practical choice for my daily footgear. No matter what brand I would choose, It would fall apart quickly and I would be shopping for shoes again. Cheaper brands fell apart faster. But the expensive ones didn't last long enough to justify the expense. My last pair of athletic shoes looked terrible (cracking, tearing, soles pulling away from the shoe) in just one month. What's a mom to do?

Heh, Heh...

Men's workboots. Stanley brand. Steel Toes! (how many times does a mom have her kids step on her toes!) Fashion-wise they resemble black and grey hiking boots. They were $30 at Payless ShoeSource and half price on day I bought them. It took me about a week to break them in. So far they seem to be doing a great job. We'll see how long they last.

So, it makes me wonder what is next? Knee pads? Face mask? Funny hats? Then I started to wonder if other people do strange things like this or is it just me. So if any of you reading this have stories to share, please do. I would love to know that I'm not the only one.