a very good place to start

Let's start at the very beginning...

Day One: April 18, 2011

So it was a good thing I made an email exception to Screen-Free Week, because on the very first day…….

I won this awesome ring sling from Mahreen at Veni Vidi Blogi!

It’s called Inara’s Rainbow (named after her adorable daughter) and is actually part of a wrap sent to her by Giselle at Granola Babies. Mahreen sent half of it to Jan at Sleeping Baby Productions and had a sling made, then gave it away via the 5-day-long Do Something Good Challenge.

And yours truly won it.

**jumpingupanddownontheinside**

More than that, though, Mahreen got me to look at old, ‘useless’ stuff in a new way. It started as a chance to win something beautiful, useful, and one-of-a-kind, and it ended with using brand-new eyes to look at everything in my house as an opportunity rather than hopeless clutter. Though I do still have plenty of hopeless clutter. I’m working on that.

anyway.

Day One of Screen-Free Week was a fabulous success, and not only because of Inara’s Rainbow. There was, of course, a lot of dish-washing, laundry, and the usual chore-type things, but I actually got to witness Zeke play. For hours. I don’t get to see this during the day most of the time, and it was so very gratifying to watch. I made a kid who loves to do stuff! How cool.

But I couldn’t help thinking, this child is literally learning every second of every day. I can’t believe I’d sometimes rather let him sit in front of the TV because I just don’t want to be bothered. My priorities suck.

Except they don’t suck: at least, not this week. We colored, we read books (including The Giant Nursery Book of Things That Go, which has about onehundredgazillion pages, and we read the whole thing), and we spent hours outside.

It turns out Zeke really likes hoses, watering cans, potted plants, and tilled dirt. He’s such a boy.

And I can finally see some flowers starting to open up in the apple orchard across the front yard (no pictures yet, thank you dead battery). Apple Blossom is SO SOON, and the place will be bursting with pink and white by then. It’ll be awesome.

Dinner was chicken on the grill with green beans and quinoa (my current favorite grain, mostly because I’m impatient and it only takes like 15 minutes to cook). After bath and bedtime, Adam came into the living room and turned on Top Gear, so I had to scram to the spare bedroom for an end-of-the-day email check and to read the New York Times. Print edition, people, print.

Also, see You Capture at I Should Be Folding Laundry for a looooooong list of blogs with beautiful spring photos. Mkay? Mkay.

It was a very good place to start.

spring-y-ness

Though it's technically been spring for weeks now, it's only just starting to be consistently spring-y. Last weekend was Daniel and Sam's wedding shower, and that was when I started to feel spring-y, myself. Friends came from far away, family gathered, and all was well.



Screen-Free Week starts tonight at midnight, and every time I tell someone about Zeke and I not watching TV or using the computer (except for what's absolutely necessary for work and communication), they give me an oh-you-poor-thing look and say, how will you ever make it through your entire spring break without tv? Won't you be bored out of your mind?

Um, no.

There are SO MANY things to do around here: so many stories to read, songs to sing, papers to color, plants to put out, boxes to organize. And it's Holy Week, so that means physical and spiritual preparations for Easter. I think we'll manage.

Jesus, Messiah
Name above all Names
Blessed Redeemer, Emmanuel
A Rescue for sinners
A Ransom from heaven
Jesus, Messiah
Lord of all...

-Chris Tomlin

the $300 Store table...

It started out like this, given to me by the nice Costco people to hold my fruit, cheese, and green beans:


Add a little bulletin board paper, glue, masking tape, and leftover die-cut letters and...

TA-DA!!!:


Lots of creative paper folding and fastening turned it into a neat little desk for Zeke's 21-month-old self. Not that I expect it to last longer than 2 minutes in its blemish-free state, but DARN IT it's cute right now!

Sling giveaway! But wait...there's more!

I'll be posting a new series of photos and lots of info about the last couple of months this weekend, as soon as the (long-awaited) LAST case study for my LAST certification class is over and done. Which means I won't have to take another class until about 2017...huzzah!

Anyway, in the interim I'm entering a very cool giveaway/altruism thing at the suggestion/urging/strong recommendation of Mahreen at Veni, Vidi, Blogi.

The prize = this bee-yoo-tiful sling:

Photo Credit: Veni Vidi Blogi

The methods = many and varied, but the coolest one involves repurposing old stuff into new stuff (or, at least, useful stuff). I'm still working on a strategy for that part, but I'll get cracking tomorrow morning before school, because it has to be completed and documented by Friday at midnight. Yipe!

And here we go...

CIO? No, thank you.

Let me be very clear about this: I do NOT think letting a baby/child cry it out is a good idea. Little people cry for a reason, whether it be hunger, discomfort, or a need to be cuddled, and I think we have a responsibility as parents to respond to those needs. Babies don't cry just because they feel like being contrary.

At the same time, though, I don't see any reason to go rushing in at the first peep. When I put Zeke down for a nap, occasionally he fusses for a few minutes, but usually is asleep within five. If he fusses longer than that (or does the kind of screaming that scrapes your eardrums) I try the cuddle-and-sway routine, which usually does the trick. If not, we scrap the plan and try again later. Maybe this means the laundry isn't done but, frankly, he's more important than laundry.

When we're out and won't be home for naptime, I do a front carry in the Kozy, and he'll snooze in there for a solid two hours.Finally, we usually end up cosleeping at night, which seriously cuts back on the crying and regular waking. Normally, we don't start out intending to keep him in the bed, but often I'll fall asleep when Zeke does, and then Adam just leaves him there when he comes to bed. This is made a lot easier, of course, by having a king-sized bed :)

People sometimes say, "But don't you want him to learn to fall asleep by himself? Don't you want to have a little time for yourself at the end of the day?" Of course I want both of those things -- but I'm not going to push either one of them. I didn't get into parenting to have time for myself, and anyone who does is delusional. Zeke WILL fall asleep by himself when he's developmentally ready to do so (and already does, sometimes). I'm just not that worried about it.

My basic sleep philosophy is this: I don't want Zeke to have negative associations with sleep. I know he likely wouldn't remember crying himself to sleep, and it probably wouldn't cause personality disorders when he's a teenager. That doesn't, however, mean it's the right thing to do for our family. I'll take loving cuddles over leaving him alone to cry, any day.

Summer Events of 2010 (well, most of them, anyway)

So there’s been a lot happening since my last post (in April, eek!). In lieu of lots of boring commentary, I’ll just add a sentence or two along with the slideshow of each event, and hopefully that will do the trick :)

Zeke’s first birthday was July 23, 2010. We didn’t do a huge party or anything; just soda, cake and ice cream for our families. In hindsight, blue icing was a dumb idea.

We left to visit Jeff and Linda on Topsail Island, North Carolina the very next morning. The beach was SO RELAXING. I didn’t realize how tired of the routine I was, and we had a great time. My cousin Steph met us down there after a couple of days, and we had tons of fun all week!

More pictures to come, mostly from reunion and the end of summer.

A gifted child is...

I stumbled upon this wonderful post at Unwrapping the Gifted (it was so fabulous that I'm now following the blog) during my students' resource period this afternoon. I've been hearing a lot of some of these myths lately, so at our last faculty meeting I had to stand up and talk with the other teachers about what the Spectrum program is, describe some of the elements of our curriculum, and let them know in no uncertain terms that they may NOT continue pulling students from my class to make up missed work. It wasn't the most pleasant announcement I've ever made, but it had to be said. I realize our program doesn't identify everyone it should, and sometimes it probably identifies kids it shouldn't, but we work on the assumption that identified Gifted students who are found eligible for Gifted services have a need for greater intellectual stimulation than the typical child. We DO teach, we DO have a curriculum (though it is, admittedly, much looser that your average classroom and isn't attached to any SOL requirement), and we DO assess our students (though we don't use letter grades as the measuring stick). More on all of this later :)

UPDATE 11/13/12: I started a blog specifically about gifted education not long after posting this entry.  Check it out here:  Pandora's GATEway