Trip to Nashville

We took a trip to Nashville abut a week ago to visit Chris's family and celebrate some birthdays. First we stopped at Shelby Park, where both Chris and his parents had played as children. There is a railroad bridge there that goes over the river, and the girls were excited to get to see a train cross it!

on the boat ramp by the river

We visited Great granny, and she got out some old costume jewelry for the girls to play with!

How fancy!

Great Granny with Cecilia

The next day, we got to go swimming in Great Granny's neighborhood pool! It was such a nice morning, and being in the pool felt great to this pregnant lady! ;)

Gran and Cecilia

Caroline and her cousin

Caroline swimming underwater... she has gotten pretty good at this!

three cousins about to jump in together while Great Granny watches

one... two...

...three!

The funny thing was how they never could get their timing quite right... at least, not while I was taking a photo! This time, the girls jumped in ahead of their cousin...

...and here, he jumped in before Caroline! They were basically yanking each other into the water, whoever happened to jump first...

Cecilia had decided she was done with the jumping for now... she was very brave to jump in holding only her cousin's and sister's hands. Lately she would only jump to an adult while holding their hands. I think she's forgotten that she would jump into the pool alone, no hand-holding, when she was 18 months old!

They almost jumped at the same instant this time!

Caroline jumping in on her own

In the afternoon, we got to see more family... Chris's Uncle and Aunt along with Papa and Margaret came over for birthday cake! Caroline and Cecilia got them to play My Little Ponies!

Everybody played outside awhile...

Here is one of their favorite things to do outside: ride in the wagon behind the lawnmower. They pretend the lawnmower is a horse and they are riding in a carriage. They each got a turn to drive, too!

And believe it or not, this is not our last mini-vacation before the baby is born in three weeks... we'll be in Atlanta for one night in a few days, and then, we are done for awhile!!!

Celebrating the Feast Day of St. Clare

Last week, the day before St. Clare's feast day, we had some friends over to do a craft and play! St. Clare of Assisi is known for starting a group of nuns called the Poor Clares after the model of St. Francis of Assisi. The monstrance is one of the symbols associated with her, because she held up a monstrance containing Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament, and enemies who were invading the town turned and fled. So, we had some coloring sheets of St. Clare along with a monstrance craft.

I found this craft here at Catholic Icing and bought the supplies, thinking it would be an easy one for Cecilia to do at some point, and then I had the idea to use it as a craft that is associated with St. Clare.

This was easy for the three year olds to do... they just glued a gold paper doily onto another paper and then glued a white circle of cardstock (for the Eucharist) in the middle. Then they used stick-on jewels that I found in the craft store dollar bins to decorate all around their monstrances however they wished. I made the stands for the monstrance by drawing them on gold cardstock, and then the kids cut them out and glued them on first, so the doily was on top.

After doing the craft, I turned on the St. Clare Glory Stories CD for them to listen to... although my kids ignored it since they've heard it enough that they go around reciting parts of it...

Caroline and her friends wanted to make a pattern with their jewels.

For a snack, I decided to make something Polish for the feast of St. Maximilian Kolbe, whose feast day was coming up that weekend. Part of the reason for wanting to do this is that I am a quarter Polish myself! These are yummy Polish cookies called Kiffel... mostly butter so of course they are yummy! They are also filled with ground walnuts, so there is some redeeming health value in them. ;) I only made a quarter of the recipe but could see making the whole batch for Christmas treat-baking!

The three year olds eating their snack outside... I just thought this was such a cute photo of them!

Here are my girls with their finished monstrances... I forgot to get a photo of everyone with their finished work! Cecilia wanted to cut hers out... probably trying to get the most mileage out of the forbidden scissors, which she hadn't used since the unfortunate alterations she made to some dress-up clothes...

St. Clare, pray for us!

Bowling!

We went bowling about a week ago as a Sunday afternoon family fun outing... it has been so hot that this was perfect! The girls got free bowling passes from the local library's summer reading program, so we used them as a way to beat the heat!

Cecilia could actually lift the ball somehow!

This ramp is neat... little kids can use it to roll the ball down if they can't actually roll it well themselves. Not sure that it leaves much of a point to the game, but Cecilia enjoyed it!

Caroline could roll the ball somewhat, but it is still a long way to the pins!

And a few more of Cecilia lugging the ball around...

To Baby Lucy

Sweet Baby Lucy,

I feel you moving inside me. You squirm and push, and I wonder... is that a foot? Is it your tiny rear end poking into my ribs? Or could it be your arm? Are you head down now? At 36 weeks, I am sure it is getting tighter in there, and you have less room to kick but plenty of room for squirming. I can see your movements... you are getting so big! One night last week, your daddy fell asleep to the feeling of your squirming against his arm.

How blessed I am to feel you moving! It is the most special feeling in the world of which I know. Of any feeling experienced, this one is the most amazing. And it is fleeting... one day soon, I will be empty inside and no longer feeling your movements. Then, I will be feeling and seeing them on the outside, also amazing to behold. But there is something very different and sacred about the feeling of movement from the inside: I'm the only person in the world who will ever feel your movements in this way. Think about how amazing that is! And each push, shift, twitch, and jab makes me smile contentedly at the reminder of your presence within me.

I know you have to come out. And of course, I am eager to hold you in my arms! Still, there will be a bit of sadness as I miss the feeling of life within me. Will I ever feel it again? No mother can ever be totally sure if she will get to experience the miracle of life in this way again... it is up to God. Being in this season of life, the child-bearing years, I want to savor and embrace these movements, knowing that they will be gone from me far too quickly.

Sweet baby, enjoy your time here inside me. Enjoy the undisturbed space, the safety and security of being in such a controlled environment. You have warmth, you have food, you have what you need to finish growing, all regulated in a controlled way. Do you feel the occasional tightening, readying you for birth? Do you sense that something is going to change soon? If you could rationalize, would you want to leave that safe space at all? I can assure you that although the world is not as peaceful on the outside, I will do what I can for you to make your transition here as smooth as possible. I will do my best to give you warmth, food, comfort, love. Life will be different once you are no longer within me, but not terribly so. I will give you my presence and physical contact as long as you need it, and, although you wouldn't believe it now, one day you won't feel the need to be touching me constantly. You will grow so quickly! I want to feel your presence against me and savor it rather than wish it away. These feelings of your movement from within are only the beginning, and that knowledge will make it beautiful for me to have you here in my arms rather than in my womb.

Is it silly for me to wish I could always feel a baby's presence, moving inside me? Maybe so. But it is a feeling that brings such joy and contentedness. What a privilege and a blessing to be able to take part in the miracle of life in this way!

First Grade So Far

We have started off our school year well here and are now in the third week! We hope to finish the fourth week before taking a little vacation to Tennessee next week.

Here are some of the things we are doing this year... in random order...

Once a week, we are reading one of the fables in our Aesop's Fables book. I read it aloud, and then Caroline narrates, or retells, the story to me while I type it. Then I print it, and she puts it into her fables book and illustrates it.

Here are two she has done so far: The Young Crab and his Mother and The Dog, the Cock, and the Fox. If you click on it to see the larger image, you might be able to read it...

We are also doing the same thing with Old Testament stories. I am reading one per week from a Catholic children's Bible, and Caroline retells it as I write it in her book. Then she works on copywork: a verse from the Bible story that is important or sums up the story well. This is glued into her book and she adds an illustration. So there are three components here: her narration, the Bible verse, and the drawing.

Here is her first page, The Story of Creation.

This is her page on Adam and Eve in Paradise. Again, I think you may be able to read them if you click the pictures to see them larger. Caroline really goes into detail in her Bible story narrations! She has far less detail when retelling an event that happened to her or explaining something we did as a science project or a trip we took. She narrates stories very accurately.

Here is Caroline's science book... we have titled it Rivers, Lakes, and Oceans. We are studying bodies of water and water in general this year. We took a trip to a nearby lake and observed the plants and animals there, and then Caroline made a scrapbook-style page of our visit:

She narrated the trip to me as I typed, and it is pasted into the book at the top. Then she put the photos in and wrote notes about them and what we saw at the lake. We plan to choose one water area to make several trips to over the year so we can observe changes in wildlife and plants as the seasons change.

This is Caroline's Liturgical Year Notebook. I showed it before in the post about our plans for first grade. Under the "saints" tab, we have added some copywork from a story we read about St. Christopher. Caroline also colored a picture of him (from Fenestrae Fidei) and narrated the story to me as I typed (and it is almost a whole page single-spaced, so I didn't take a photo of it)... it is on the front of the page with the story quote. Every week or two, we will read a different story that corresponds with the liturgical year, and we will add copywork and projects to this notebook. This is an ongoing project that will cover a few years, most likely.

For math, we have been using Math U See and so far, Caroline really likes it, and she understands the concepts very well. We made a poster of "decimal street" to practice learning place value and regrouping.

This is our timeline... only one event card up there when I took this photo, but now we have four, including one before this one which shows the universe and earth being created billions of years ago. It is a long piece of yarn across the top of the wall in our schoolroom, and as w read about each event or person, we add the picture to the timeline. It is a very basic introduction to history and gives an overview of where to place certain events in time. We also read a good children's book or three about each event if we have them available through our library. I envision taking the cards down and mixing them up at some points throughout the year and having Caroline re-order them.

And back to the Liturgical Year Notebook... I said this was in random order... Caroline painted a St. Benedict's Cross after we read The Holy Twins in July (which is when his feast day falls). She also copied a quote from the story, and we made these into a page for her notebook.

Here's a look at some Circle Time stuff... Caroline puts the date on the magnetic calendar and any saint magnets for the day, then she writes the date on the whiteboard easel. She also writes the time of the day and counts coins and writes that on the board as well. On this day, she counted two amounts and wrote them both, and then I gave her the directions to circle the amount that was less and draw a box around the greater amount. Under that are a few letters for Cecilia to name. Then there is a word given, and Caroline reads it, decides what the vowel pattern is, and writes as many other words as she can in the same word family. I have also put sentences on the board for very basic editing practice... they are missing beginning capitalization, or capitalization of proper names of people, and they are missing ending punctuation. I have also done some where she circles the correct verb use in a particular sentence. Also in Circle Time, we sing a different hymn each month (August is Hail, Holy Queen) and read a couple of poems daily from A Child's Garden of Verses and The Child on his Knees.

And back to water, and science... we did a puddle experiment this week. We poured water out to make a puddle in the shade and a puddle in direct sunlight. Then Caroline traced around the puddles and we observed them every 5-10 minutes to see what happened. She is going to make a page in her book with pictures and her retelling of what we did and saw.

This is something we will do here and there throughout the year called the Nature Logbook... the page was created by our homeschooling neighbors. We looked up information on mallard ducks since we saw them at the lake, and we filled out a page. Our notebook has sections for insects, mammals, birds, plants, and...

chickens! Yes, technically they should go in the "bird" section, but I figured we'd have many chances to observe them and gather information about them... experiment on them and such (kidding! ;). We are currently tracking their daily egg-laying with a bar graph. That blank day was one where we forgot to record the number of eggs... luckily, we have not had any one-egg or no-egg days! They are not at top-laying capacity right now, but they are still producing pretty well for this heat wave, I think! We finished this graph today and so I need to print out a new one for the next few weeks!

And on to social studies...
In addition to the basic timeline, we are doing something called Family Geography. So far, we have filled out a family tree going back to Caroline's great-grandparents and glued it into her book. Then we plotted where each person was born on a map for her book...

...and we also put stickers on the wall map to show everyone's birthplace. Next, we will look at old family photos showing the areas in which people were born or lived later in life, and we'll learn more about those places... things like climate, land features, location. We'll also try to include some regional recipes and fun stuff like that!

That is basically what we are doing for first grade... we do one Bible story a week, one fable a week, one timeline event a week, one day of family geography, one day of water study (as well as nature study at water environments)... math is daily, and copywork from the Bible verses and liturgical year stories is almost daily. We also do five minutes of the St. Joseph's First Communion catechism daily and will add in seasonal and liturgical year crafts here and there. So far, so good! I am feeling good about getting several weeks knocked out before the baby is born!

Wordless Wednesday - Panting Chickens

The Feast of St. Anne

Caroline's "nameday" saint, St. Anne, mother of Mary, calls for a special celebration... we celebrated this way last year as well, so I think it is becoming a tradition! St. Anne is typically pictured wearing red and green, and her feast day falls in the summer, so we have watermelon-themed refreshments!

Caroline helped me roll the cookies in frosting to make the green rind. And, while I hate to admit it, fancy all-natural food coloring just kinda stinks. I actually had to add a little of the nasty fake red stuff to make the cookies turn slightly pinkish! Maybe because it was whole wheat flour, thus already brown... regardless, the raw dough looked like raw hamburger meat. Sorry if anyone was trying to eat while reading that just now...

Anyway, they tasted great! I can't find the link and am too lazy to get up and find the paper onto which I printed the recipe, but they had honey in them instead of sugar. We also had our watermelon "smoothies," as the girls call them, which is watermelon lemonade with mint... refreshing in this heat!

Caroline also got a new St. Anne holy card, as usual. Next year, I think she will get a St. Anne medal and a chain to wear it on... shh, don't tell her! ;)

Reasons I Love Homeschooling

The Flowers

by Robert Louis Stevenson

All the names I know from nurse:

Gardener's garters, shepherd's purse,

Bachelor's buttons, Lady's smock,

and the Lady Hollyhock.

Fairy places, fairy things,

Fairy woods where the wild bee wings,

Tiny trees for tiny dames -

These must all be fairy names!

Tiny woods below whose boughs

Tiny fairies weave a house;

Tiny tree-tops, rose or thyme,

Where the braver fairies climb!

Fair are grown-up people's trees,

But the fairest woods are these;

Where, if I were not so tall,

I should live for good and all.

Each month, we are reading a poem from A Child's Garden of Verses. We read it daily, and by the end of the month, Caroline has it memorized. The Flowers was July's poem. When Caroline and Cecilia were playing outside yesterday, they took out their little toy fairies and ponies. I overheard Caroline reciting the poem as they played with the toys in the garden. Forming a relationship with the poetry, living what she is learning as it is woven into daily life... this is a truly living education and one of the reasons to love learning at home!

Random Bits

So I guess it is time to be really concerned about the educational institutions in this area when my six year old is correcting signs posted in public bathrooms: "Employee's must wash hands," one said. Caroline asked me, pointing to the apostrophe, "Why is that there? They don't need it there, because the employee isn't owning anything." I told her that I didn't understand it, but it seems that many people think words ending in vowels have to have apostrophes when you are talking about more than one of them. Growing up with a last name ending with the letter i made this very apparent to me... and now that my last name begins with s, it is just as bad, but in a different way. I am destined for last name errors forever, ha ha.

You know, when I go to the gym, I just swim laps in the pool. I don't "work out" on the machines. So maybe I am clueless on this, but it seems like there is certain music that does not really lend itself to being work-out music. A while back I heard "Hotel California" as I walked past the exercise machines and thought, "Hmm, that'd be interesting to run the treadmill to, I suppose..." Today, I heard "Rooster" by Alice in Chains... can anyone actually, physically manage to work out to that song? It'd be like working out to Smashing Pumpkins, or Nirvana... or something really slow and peaceful, like James Taylor. I don't think it would be physically possible! Maybe Richard Simmons can do a "Sweatin' to the Depressing Alternative Music" video and prove me wrong...

Caroline was playing with our painted saints and was making them study their specific fields... she had the priests studying "priestogy," the nuns studying "nunnogy," and the mothers studying "mommogy." "You know, it's like geography, Mommy!" she said.

So I am getting to that point in pregnancy where everybody feels the need to comment on my size... I get the, "When are you due?" and "Getting close, now, huh?" comments now. I like to watch the somewhat horrified expression on the asker's face when I respond with a smile and, "Six more weeks!" Apparently they don't think six weeks is "getting close" at all! And, well, neither do I, really... sure, it feels like I must have more than one baby in there, but anyone who comments with, "Are you sure you're not having twins?" is just rude. Haven't gotten that comment yet this time...

I notice the baby image on my pregnancy ticker is now head-down. I think this little one is, too... she had hiccups for the first time, and they were down pretty low. My others had hiccups non-stop. This one has had them twice that I have noticed. Maybe that's good? I don't know...

I am making fig-filled granola bars as I type... okay, I am not really that good at multi-tasking; I already made them and they are in the oven. Our fig tree is going nuts, so I took some figs to a friend (several friends now, actually!), and she came up with this recipe based on a fruit-filled granola bar recipe. Smells great, and I hope it turns out well for me!

Speaking of baking, I am having a slight bit of nesting instinct, wanting to bake more and such, but I am also physically not too comfortable with back pain and sore feet, especially by the end of the day. My mom was going to buy me some really nice, comfortable, cushioned shoes... she has a SAS store right down the street from her house and bought herself some before she did a bunch of walking on a recent trip to Italy. Well, we got there, and they were closed. Boo. Sore feet to continue for me. I wore her pair all day at a conference last weekend, and I could definitely tell the difference. Then again, buying shoes during pregnancy may ensure that they are too big postpartum... aren't you not supposed to do that, like you're not supposed to get eye exams during pregnancy???

Maybe I have mentioned this before... Cecilia has nicknamed the baby "lump baby." Yes, she has a real name.. well, uh, almost, that is...

Anyway, on the slight nesting... I have a few lists I really need to tackle, too. I have a "before baby comes" list, a homeschool to-do list, a pack for the hospital list (that one's still in my head and not on paper)... and then the around-the-house stuff I'd like to get done (or The List Formerly Known as Spring Cleaning... oops).