Moving

My blog has moved. The new blog is http://www.xanga.com/syhndi

Acceptance

I heard from an old friend of mine today. She has found a new love and is very happy. There is one problem, though. Her parents cannot accept that her new love is a woman. Or perhaps what they cannot accept is that their daughter is not the person they want her to be.

Sometimes I wonder how well I will accept my children as they grow up and surprise me. I have a niece who is currently working as an exotic dancer. It's hard for me to accept this. I just don't want her to be a dancer. I do think this line of work is not a wise choice for many sound reasons. But all those reasons aside, I still don't want her to be a dancer. It's not who I want her to be. I'm certain her parents feel the same way. But she didn't ask our opinion. She makes her choices and she is who she is, regardless of what we all want. We love her anyway.

Will it be okay if one of my kids is gay? Or if they become Christians? Or Republicans? Or Democrats? What if they don't like to read? Or if they send their kids to public school? Will it be alright if they devote their energy to aqcuiring mini-vans, boats and vacation homes? I hope I can accept those things.

But should I be accepting of my children no matter what they do? Do I accept my child for who he is if he is a drug addict? Or she a battered wife? What should a parent do when her child chooses to travel a dangerous path? What can a parent do?

Hope for the best, and be glad, for the moment, that they are little.

Katie's Lord of the Rings Drawings

In order, we have Aragorn, Gandalf, a close-up of The Ring with a Barrow-Wight in the background, Arwen, The Ring in Frodo's fireplace, Lothlorien, Tom Bombadil, Farmer Maggot's house and his dogs, The Ring with a finger slipping into it then with the finger invisible, four beds with pillows and a brown mat so that Black Riders would think hobbits were sleeping in them.

A Love of Hobbits Leads to Geography and More

Ok, here's a little "how they actually manage to learn when they are just doing there own thing" post.

As some already know my children, especially Katie, are obsessed with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. This all started back when Katie was three, I think, and we checked out the old Rankin and Bass cartoon of The Hobbit from the library. She loved it, so we dug out Matt's battered copy and offered to read it to her. We would flip throught the book to an exciting bit, and read ten minutes or so. We were never sure she got much out of that, but she kept asking for more. Eventually I found an edition with really well done, large full-color illustrations by Michael Hague and ordered it from Half.com. We have definitely gotten our money's worth out of that item! I think we have read it all the way through only once, but still we often read a bit here and a bit there.

Over time the interest in the story has waxed and waned. For awhile I thought The Hobbit phase was over. Then Katie ran across the old Rankin and Bass cartoon of The Return of the King at the library. I was skeptical, but we watched it, and it turned out to be a fairly good intro to the story of The Lord of the Rings. This started readings from the three LOTR books, and recently we embarked on a full reading for Katie.

Tom does not care for The Lord of the Rings, as we haven't yet found an illustrated edition. He likes to have a picture to look at while he listens. Or a map. One of Tom's favorite things about the Tolkien books are the maps in the front. He loves to sit with Mama or Daddy and look at and talk about the maps. We trace the journeys out, talk about individual places and even make up pretend travels. Well, Tom does most of the pretending. He just tells me where the dwarves, dragons and hobbits went.

After quite a lot of Middle Earth map discussions, I decided to print maps. There's a good one at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle-earth. I gave several copies to Katie and Tom to do with what they would. They traced out journeys on them, different colors for different characters. Katie even drew her own map and told us the story of Frodo's, Sam's, Pippin's and Merry's adventures with a visual aid!

All this interest in maps nudged Matt to pull out his poster-sized RuneQuest "Fantasy Map of Europe" and hang it on the living room wall. Now, the kids will ask Daddy to "talk about the map" and he will grab a yardstick and point to places in Europe and tell a little about them. "You guys have probably heard about Athens before because it is a very old and famouse city" he says, or something similar. "It was in a story" says Katie. "Um, yes, I'm sure you've heard some story that took place in Athens. We did read some stories about Hercules . . . " Katie pipes up "It was A Midsummer Night's Dream!" "Yes!" says both parents, some astonished.

Now Tom has asked for a map with pictures on it, so I have promised to put together a map of our town, with pictures of some of the important places we go - Grandma's, Grammie's, the library, WalMart. We've also decided we need a world map on the wall so when we read a story that takes place in a real place, we can point it out on the map.

All of this from picking up a cartoon video at the library one day!

Do All Kids Do This? Or Just Mine?

Foot-bothering - Tom likes to bother things with his feet. Especially board games, his father and the cat.

Hobbit-obsessing - Lately whenever eagles, bears, bridges, rings, swords, or a myriad of other seemingly unconnected words come up, Katie screams "Hobbit" and starts singing "Hobbit! Hobbit! Hobbit! Hobbit! Hobbit all the way!" to the tune of Jingle Bells.

Inappropriate Standing - If there is something in the room that one should not stand on, my children will move to it as quickly as possible and then . . . stand on it.

Food Puppetry - All food - every bean, cereal flake and granola crumb - must be animated, usually as a character from a Tolkien novel (see Hobbit-obsessing).

Laundry-tossing - I left a basket of clean, folded laundry in the living room as I put away the towels. I came back to find my children gleefully throwing items of clothing into the air one by one, yelling "Chorizo!" with each toss.

Only Six?

Steph tagged me, I'm It. Topic: "Six Weird Things About You"

1. I think Steve Buscemi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Buscemi)is really very sexy. My husband finds this more than a little disturbing.

2. I have a fear of largeness. Things that are really oversized, like giant redwoods, really bother me. I feel queasy just thinking about them. I am also bothered by large quantities. When I hear that a water treatment plant processes some mind-bogglingly huge amount of water every day, it disturbs me. Sometimes I will be driving on the highway and will notice how very many cars there are. Then I will start thinking about how much gas all those cars are burning, and how many people are driving all those cars, and all the houses those people live in and all the air conditioners in those houses and all the electricity to run the air conditioners and all the oil to generate the electricity and then I have to make myself stop thinking for awhile. I know this borders on mental illness, but as it hasn't yet started to interfere with my daily functioning, I choose to consider it a quirk.

3. I never vote. Not because I forget to go, or it's too much trouble, or I can't decide for whom to vote. Without getting into a big political rant, the reason I don't vote can be summed up in the bumper sticker "Don't Vote. It Only Encourages Them."

4. I do not know my right from my left. I can figure it out with the little trick of holding up both hands with index fingers and thumbs out. The hand that looks like an "L" is the left hand. But I still have to do that every time.

5. I like peanut butter and pickle sandwiches.

6. I cannot chew gum without swallowing it. I used to be able to do this, but sometime around the end of high school I lost the ability. My theory is that alcohol destroyed the very brain cells that are vital to not swallowing gum.

So, there it is. My weirdness laid bare for the world to ponder.

I'm going to do what now?!?!?!?

Some of us moms from our local homeschooling group are putting together co-op classes. Parents and/or kids will teach classes that other kids and/or parents can take. I am very jazzed about this idea. It is the sort of thing that has rattled around in my head, but I've always put off thinking about until the kids were older. But now here it is, and someone else is taking on most of the responsibility!

I have signed up to "facilitate" (that's "teach" in the vernacular) sixteen classes! These are one-time classes, not weekly meetings, so that isn't as busy as it sounds. Mostly I am sticking with the preschool set, as that is what I am used to with my own kids, but I am venturing into the older kids territory for a couple of classes. Let's see, I'm teaching cooking, yoga, beading, painting, theater, bug hunting, closed-form poetry, and a whole bunch more!

It is, I have to admit, very exciting, but also more than a little terrifying! What do I know about teaching (or facilitating) a group of little kids to do anything? I can barely get my two little ones to do anything! I am a shy, mousy little person! I am not someone who teaches yoga classes to preschoolers! Speaking of yoga, perhaps it is time to take a deep, cleansing breath! Ahhhhhhhhhh.

So here is the plan. I am going to do a lot of planning. I am going to have a very clear idea of what should happen in the classroom. But, I still want to be flexible. Kids are great at throwing surprises your way! I am going to have to rehearse acting like a confident "good" teacher-type person. It is sort of like pretending to be someone I'm not, but not exactly. I will actually be pretending to be someone I'm not-very-often.

Wish me luck!