Home School By Design

Since the twins aren't eligible for Kindergarten for another year, and then only 2.5 hours a day, we've decided to home school. At least for now. It's been an exciting research opportunity for this reporter, and an eye opener for this research-happy mom.

There are so many educational kits to choose from! And do I have it in me to be a good teacher to these very individual twins?

We decided on Clifford the Big Red Dog Science series as well as the Magic School Bus. The twins are into math and science over spelling and letter tracing any day.

Our first day went off without a hitch, aside from the fact that I was so bored. I thought I'd be all over the Schofield Kiddie University. Nah. I'm with them on the science and math. Much more exciting, although my report cards I keepsaked (what was I thinking?) will tell a different story to my curious chillins, one day. We all struggled through the letters and spelling, which we've done many times before so I was frustrated that we didn't seem to be moving forward. It occurs to me, slow as I can be, that we've sucked the fun out of writing our names and objets of current obsession by doing it over and over. I'll be ogling Pinterest and home school blogs for new ways to learn to spell that excite all of us. Being there while we struggle together, watching their whole self light up when they master a letter or problem, it's the biggest charge of my life, and assuming there's up to that one moment. And we move on. So much to learn! It's exciting. Hope I'm up for this challenge. They certainly come prepared daily for anything, I mean anything.

No uniforms (they were too excited to start school to get dressed!) or sack lunches, just math, magnets and spelling. Lots of fun. They love science, sputter through spelling and totally dig math.


We used markers, chocolate for Morgan, bits of fruit candy for Jack, to add and subtract. They did it on their own a few times. No eating until we've made a full 10 from two fives at the end. I think I'm learning patience more than them!

We are doing a couple of kits this semester and practicing our handwriting and spelling so we can write a letter to Santa, their final exam! Jack asked how 5-2 = a letter to Santa. Uh oh. He's on to me.
 
Jack has yet to choose a writing hand, although if he gets flustered he tends to switch over to his left and go for it. He can spell his name, but the C is always backward. Always. He says it looks just fine to him, let's move on, Mom! 

We'll post pictures of our Clifford  and Magic School Bus educational kits, but for now let's just get them past the number 10 with bits of chocolate and fruit candy, and 5-2 = wonder.

Mommy Needs Two Minutes: A Moment With Depression, Yours, Mine and Ours

Mommy Needs Two Minutes: A Moment With Depression, Yours, Mine and Ours: Robin Williams, we'll miss you. He was a rare gem in a comic-lovers library, a mom's go-to DVD rescue and a journalist's ide...

A Moment With Depression, Yours, Mine and Ours

Robin Williams, we'll miss you. He was a rare gem in a comic-lovers library, a mom's go-to DVD rescue and a journalist's ideal interview.

I ran into him after a press conference for an Agassi event years ago. He was on the dais, as in truly "on." A reporter's dream for those often dreary press conferences. After the lengthy press conference about all the future funds, buildings and events info, I ran into him, standing alone by a room service cart full of refreshments, in the cavernous MGM hallways that run under the hotel/casino.

He was quiet, arms crossed at his stomach, head down, small, sad, polite smile. I thought he had just received some bad news. He looked deflated, like he could use a hug. So I did. I don't know who was more shocked. I couldn't help it. He thanked me, bark laughed, patted my shoulder and I walked away, cringing that I had crossed into his personal space like that. He just seemed like such a nice, sad man standing alone in that dark hallway.

Hope this sad event sparks more, much needed, talk about mental health and depression.

The Magic of Banality When Crazy Hits

I'm going in for a procedure tomorrow. Nothing big, pretty routine, but anesthesia will be needed and I am a coward when it comes to anesthesia. I'm always worried it's going to go badly.

So I've been a bit short with the twins, and the hubby, and, oh, everyone. Everything is getting on my nerves. I'm clenching my teeth and biting my lip while cleaning and sorting and crafting and stepping over non-compliant children who refuse to be the angels I know they can be. It's exhausting trying to take my mind off this uncomfortable 36-hour ordeal that is really only an hour of actual medical stuffs.

I'm up in the middle of the night, wandering around, feeling so silly for the niggling worry at the back of my thoughts. The twins have been checked, double checked and tucked in more times than they can count to, my attempts not to wake them up and cuddle on the couch. Then in the morning I'm crabby because they are asking for certain breakfast favorites and frowning at the fruit and the hubby is still asleep! The gall at 6 a.m. on a Saturday!

Anyway. Everybody went to their respective Sunday doings this morning, and I was left alone on a rainy morning. I started cleaning the kids room,getting into that stuff you know you have to do every time you walk in, but happily leave for another day. I waded into the toy box and took out the broken bits and then tackled the layer of crayon marks on their bunk beds. Swiping back and forth, the clean spot growing, the sun popped out from behind the thick rain clouds and lit up the room. I felt so calm for the first time in days. I was cleaning my twins' room, the babies I'd longed for, and my husband's kiss still lingered after he held me tight and told me it would be alright before he jumped in the car to go run some errands, including picking up chicken broth and ice cream. What a lovely gift.

I'm hoping to hold onto that clear moment. It's all good. I can't wait for them to get home and create chaos, take my mind off the worry and make me focus on the banality of my life that makes it so magical.

Winning the War in the Garden with My Homemade Arsenal

I am not known for my green thumb. In fact the hubby makes sounds like munchkins dying any time we pass a garden center. (Wait for it. There ya go.)

But I did feel obligated to keep other people's green investments alive if I somehow got to be the caretaker of a live, green backyard. In college we had a grapevine in a '40s era house some college friends and I rented. The gorgeous, sprawling vine began to wither soon after we moved in. I snipped off a few leaves and took it to the poor garden go-to guy at the local nursery who didn't run when I came walking in every few weeks with a new problem (or victim, as the hubby likes to call them).

We had bugs on the grapevine, lots of skeletal caterpillars, called such because they left just a skeleton of the leaves, killing the healthy plant.

I was really granola in college, so I found this easy organic bug spray recipe and tweaked it a bit. Sure enough, within days those little buggers had retreated.

Forward 20 years. We have some sort of invisible bug decimating our porch garden, as far as I can tell in the moments I spend going in and out of the front door with the twins in tow. So I whipped up this recipe for organic bug spray that wouldn't get on the kids as they brushed by our tomatoes, Meyer lemon tree and various vines and scented geraniums I have somehow kept alive in the six months since we've moved back to our little house.

Here you go! Use in good faith. It smells horrible, but only hurts tiny white flies and other vegetarians of the insect kind.

Kim's Knock Out Organic Insectisider

1 part chopped garlic to 4 parts mineral oil (I use tablespoons, but you can make a giant batch if you wish).

Let sit overnight in the fridge.

Strain the following morning. Fill a 16-ounce water bottle with tap water and a teaspoon of dish soap. Add the garlic mixture and shake to blend. Keep on the counter for up to one week.

Tip: Mark the bottle well. It will stink to high heaven and you will never be able to use it for anything else again.

After three days of spraying in the morning before watering (let sit for at least 30 minutes), the little vines are doing very well!

One Trip Too Many + Too Much Tulle = Inspiration

Their cheery disposition was ticking me off each time I stumbled over their many jolly faces staring up from the floor of the twins’ room.

All those stuffed animals, Barbies and other smiling, friendly faces were becoming a hazard to our vertical health.

I had bought some tulle when the hubby and I made a trip to Hancock fabrics recently. (Love that place!) I had planned to make a mermaid costume for Morgan, but this tulle was too blue so it languished in my sewing machine box for a few weeks, getting in my way when I went to hem the dining room curtains or fish out the seam ripper to redo her tiny dress straps, again.

Inspiration hit and, 

one no-sew five-minute project later, I’d solved two problems with three little items we had lying around the house.

I put up those sticky hooks that get all that commercial play during the holidays. (They really do work quite well, particularly if you like to move things around on a regular basis as I tend to do.)

 

I then put up the tulle and wrapped rubber bands around the prongs of the hooks and the tulle.

Then I put a happy little bow over each hook to hide the rubber bands.

Now Mickey, Mini and Hippo can host all the other orphaned animals from the bedroom floor for late night tea parties and what not, and I can walk safely in their room without tripping over a furry friend in the middle of the night!

One of those days in under three hours

Sunday morning, I had just come in from taking the clothes off the backyard line, my head ringing from hitting the glass hummingbird feeder full of sticky homemade feed, (every time). Phone rings.

It's Serene Sunday School Lady. She calmly tells me Jack is needing a little extra help today and could someone come get him, sooner than later.

My response?

"Is that him?!" Some child, apparently mine, is wailing and screeching in the background.

Serene Sunday School Lady: (Long pause) "Yes."

I can tell we've pushed her well past her serene point.

I text my mother, who has taken the twins to the early Sunday School, and jump in the car, hair dripping wet and slightly sticky.

We make attempts, Serene Sunday School Lady and I, to return Jack to his happy, chair-sitting self. To no avail.

Pull his happily seated twin sister out of Sunday School, skip the sermon, have a long, calm talk with Jack about listening and not throwing fits on the way home. He's very happy to be going home. Morgan tells me if I had listened in the first place he could have gone home, fit-free. Oy.

We get home, breeze in because Sunday is my day with the girls at promptly 11:30 a.m. Hubby is waiting at the door, hands on hips, parental glare firmly in place. Asks Jack why the fits again. Little guy! He apologizes, sits on his bed, no fun to be had for hours, or, in adult time, 4 minutes.

I go to the master bedroom, Morgan in tow asking why tattling is bad, and stick my head under the faucet. I'm explaining the intricacies of why snitches get stitches when the hubby comes into the room.

"I can't begin to know what to even ask at this point, but why?"

"Hummingbird food. In my hair."

"You're like some Charlie Chaplin character, I want to tell you to watch out for the rake before you step on it."