catholic homeschool weirdo mom
Dorothy’s Neapolitan sweater is done! It should fit this fall. It’s pale pink and chocolate brown, basic bottom-up raglan, knit by the numbers. The yarn is Comfy, by Knit Picks, a cotton blend, super soft. I <3 it.
#knitting #sweater #raglan #squee
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Kittycat bookrest is best bookrest.
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God let me misplace my driver’s license so I’d get the motivation I needed to clean my bedroom. He also arranges for the children to shatter glasses so the floor under the dining table gets swept.
#LikeAnAdult #StuffYouCantIgnore #Sigh
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Fifteen years ago, this kid was born, and I became a mother. Happy birthday, Faith!
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Beautiful day here. Trixie, Dorothy and Clementine headed up the road to the big mud puddle at the end. There’s something very satisfying about throwing rocks in a puddle.
“Come on, Ti-tine!”
It was Clementine’s first real time outside doing kid stuff, short of eating mulch at the park. She dug in the dirts and had a grand time.
Gilbert, Abby and Gloria were having fun as well. They play this improv game, where one kid tells the other three objects and they have to work them into the story. They were amusingly scatological when I heard. You know, kids. Poop, funny, natch.
Dorothy was dancing. She’s always dancing.
We have a pretty good life.
The little girls love Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood. It’s a sweet little show. Dorothy has a few small toys that she treasures (and screams if Clementine touches without permission.) #danieltiger #uggamugga
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The birthday children blow out their candles. #twelve #fifteen
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Bede was very specific about the soft drinks.
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SpongeBob!
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Here’s what caught my eye on the internet this week!
Woman, 75, strangles rabid raccoon after it bit her during walk in Virginia botanical garden – She came back to finish her walk after getting treated for the bite!
To the Mean Stranger Who Judged My Parenting Abilities, Thank You – Sometimes when parents are doing things differently than you think they should it’s because they are, you know, different from you.
Wink: Bluetooth Basal Body Thermometer – Looks pretty neat. But I’m a bit nonplussed by this copy: “It’s good for couples as well. Knowing my wife’s charts help me understand her better. Her feelings change during the month and it’s good for me to be aware of what’s going on. Plus, birth control isn’t making her crazy any more, which makes BOTH of our lives better.” CRAZY LADYFEELINGS, BRO! AMIRITE?!?! *high fives* (Sigh.)
The 24 Types of Food Snobs – I’m a Sourcer. “He has a favorite farm within 30mi of the restaurant, and gets strangely excited if his chicken comes from within its fences.”
It Happened to Me: I’m a Demisexual – That means you aren’t sexually attracted to someone unless you have an emotional attachment to them. So, you know, it means “NORMAL.” Oh, Millennials. You are such special snowflakes. Or maybe you meant this ironically. I can’t tell anymore.
What is Papercrete – Why, it’s cement mixed with paper pulp, and it looks like a great building material for DIY.
That’s all for now!
White smoke! New pope! Two years ago! We were very excited.
#popefrancis #catholic
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The result of “Look very handsome!” Happy birthday, Bede!
Later it’s the Spongebob movie and tomorrow a family birthday with @ipoxitye as well.
#12yearsold
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One of my apples that fell very, very close to the tree.
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Faith got a haircut.
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Gloria and Dorothy are such friends. They are both snuggled up on the couch, watching The Wiggles. Dorothy’s endearing little toddler speech is so sweet. “Sit my lap, Ya-ya?” #instasquare
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I can just overhear the conversation between these kids and mine.
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Clementine can grab and run. Dorothy is having trouble with that.
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Clementine is wearing my favorite baby shirt ever, an 8-bit dragon. Behind her is Faith, in her Dipper Pines costume. She wore that to Braums today, to buy milk. Abby wore her steampunk goggles and leather fingerless gloves. Gilbert wore a Stampy Cat shirt.
And right now, they’re watching Video Games: The Movie.
The geek is strong in this one.
She’s got the world in her hands.
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Husband at GKC book club drinking beer and discussing thinky thoughts. Yeah, well, me too!
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Rain today, much needed! Dorothy and Clementine were fascinated. I think they forgot it could rain. The other children were not as pleased, as it ruined their plans to be outside all day revelling in life itself. Instead they are stuck inside and are vaguely whiny. Nobody has taken me up on my offer of things to do, like cleaning their rooms, but it did stop the audible grumbling. I’m going to knit and be thankful I am warm, dry, healthy and safe. 
That’s Dorothy’s Neapolitan sweater, coming along nicely! Once you get to the decreases at the top, raglans fly off the needles.
What caught my eye on the internet this week.
Elementary School Dumps Homework and Tells Kids to Play Instead – No link between homework and current or future academic success, yet parents complain. Sigh.
Have you ever wondered where books come from? – Aww, look at the little baby booklings without covers!
Why I Wear the Mantilla – I cover my hair at my parish, along with a few other women. This is why.
Alice Medrich’s Best Cocoa Brownies – Well. These look amazing.
How to #YOLO in Latin – yolo, yolare, yolavi, yolatus
A weasel riding a woodpecker as it would appear in Mouse Guard – Avaunt!
We’re moving kids from room to room. Faith and Abby will go upstairs. Gilbert will stop sharing with Trixie and Gloria, and start rooming with Bede, who will move downstairs. Eventually Dorothy and Clementine will be in Faith and Abby’s old room, but that won’t be for a while yet. They are still sleeping in my bedroom.
I am doing the moving for a couple reasons. First, I’m afraid that Bede could die if there was a fire, upstairs alone. The only people upstairs will be Faith and Abby, who are capable of negotiating a fire escape. Second, Gilbert can’t share with Gloria and Trixie anymore. He needs to be with his brother, who has become civilized enough to room with someone in just the past few months.
Here’s what the room for the boys looks like now.
What a mess! It looks even worse than it did because everything is everywhere. We’ll move the coathooks to the entry hall and before you know it this will be a functional bedroom, instead of a catch-all junk room.
This house is quite large. We added two bedrooms when we moved, bringing the total to six. With ten people so far in the family, it’s not overly huge. It is nice to have the room! We moved from a three bedroom house to this one, two kids ago.
I’ll post after pictures too.
Here’s what caught my eye on the internets this week!
Polish game recreates communist shopping hell – it’s like an anti-Monopoly. A printable English version is here.
Rock, Paper, Scissors of PC Victimology: Muslim > gay, black > female, and everybody > the Jews – It’s National Brotherhood Week!
Unschooling: The Case for Setting Your Kids Into the Wild – “What if they want to be doctors? They will be doctors. What if they want to be lawyers? They will be lawyers.”
9 things everybody should know about measles – Also, #10: for nearly everyone, it isn’t a big deal to get the vaccine or to get the measles. So, you know, get the vaccine if you have a chance.
The Life Of A Hand Model: Inside The Secretive World Of Parts Modeling – Remember George Costanza and his oven mitts?
Homeschoolers always have a map on the wall. We haven’t put one up in this particular house… until this morning! I realized a while back that some of my kids have no concept of nonlocal distance or political boundaries (or time, beyond an hour or less, but that’s for another day.) Homeschooling for so many years and so many ages means getting to do things again and again. Faith and Abby went through this years ago, and Bede, but now Gilbert, Trixie and Gloria are getting up to speed.
So I bought us a couple maps: a world map and a United States map. They’re both laminated, so I also got some Vis-a-Vis wet erase markers – the kind teachers use on overhead transparency film. The plastic is very smooth and will make using the markers a breeze. They’re good maps. The world map is the same size as the US map, which makes it a little small in my opinion, but the US map is about right.
Above, Bede telling me where New York is. Doesn’t the red duct tape just make the whole thing pop! Ha, ha. I’ll put it up with a better method; this was just because the kids wanted them up today, now, this very minute.
Those show the scale pretty well, I think. Bede is the size of a smallish adult.
The map purchase necessitated deciding what projection I wanted. Now, I favor the Robinson projection (no surprise there!) but this one is Winkel-Tripel, which is okay, I guess. (squints) It will do for now.
Ahem.
