a) This isn’t posed. That’s just her face.
b) I didn’t buy that shirt for her; it was in a bag of hand-me-downs.
c) It’s kinda true.
Captain Science is finishing up the Renaissance/Elizabethan era today. I don’t think an in-depth study of Shakespeare is necessary at this age (though he is reading part of an adult biography of Shakespeare), but I do want him to read and watch Shakespeare’s plays throughout his life. Today, he will read select scenes from Romeo & Juliet, then he will watch those same scenes from the 1968 Romeo and Juliet and 1996 Romeo + Juliet. I really wanted to include the BBC production in there, too, but it isn’t available on Netflix instant watch, and since we only get one physical disk at a time, I am sticking with the available versions.
Why the movies? Because plays were meant to be watched, and lacking easy access to a stage production (while the Shakespeare Tavern is just downtown, we missed R&J for the year), movies are the easiest way to see the play performed. I think that most moans and groans over reading plays come from the fact that plays are not written to be read, but performed and seen.
Today, he’s reading the Prologue and act I, scene I (through the Prince’s speech), Mercutio’s Queen Mab speech, and the ubiquitous balcony scene. Since I’m Mean Ol’ Mom, he’ll be writing about it. THE HORRORS!
My mother-in-law shipped us this box of treasure for Babypie’s second birthday party:
Contents: Pink fairy dresses, rainbow fairy wings, dark pink sparkly star wands for four two-year-old fairies (well, technically, the rest of the wings are coming in a second box, with pink tulle and other fairy goodies).
This little nibblet is turning two in a week and a day:
I’m pretty sure that isn’t possible.
I’ll be back to talking about homeschool soon, I promise, but for now, I have to wax a little nostalgic (and a little sad) that my little 9lb 4oz stawberry baby is now a giant 25lb almost-two-year-old who is already too tall for most of her new 2T t-shirts! *sniffle*
The Feminist Breeder is doing a wonderful series of posts called Letter to My Daughter (incidentally, also the title of the Maya Angelou book I read this month for my FBAM), where mothers write letters to their daughters as adults. What would you like to say to your daughter? What would you like her to know about you or your feelings for her when she is an adult? If you have something to say to your own daughter that you would like to share, you can find out how to participate here. You might have to “like” The Feminist Breeder to read the note.
I think it’s a wonderful idea. I’m looking forward to reading all the posts from all different kinds of mothers to their all different kinds of daughters. I have a letter my mother wrote to me when I was a girl, maybe late elementary school or early middle school, that I treasure. I think it’s fantastic that The Feminist Breeder is encouraging other mothers to write letters like that for their daughters and to share them!
And yes, the very first post in the series is from yours truly.
What do the Rosetta Stone language curricula have to do with creationist pseudo-science?
Yeah, my first answer would have been “nothing,” too, but now, if you “like” Rosetta Stone Homeschool on Facebook, The Old Schoolhouse magazine will be happy to send you free creationist e-books to befuddle, mislead, and indoctrinate your children into the glorious world of creation non-science. All you have to do is email gena@tosmag.com and you’ll be sent a list of The Curiosity Files e-books from which to choose*.
Personally, I’m having a hard time choosing. Which burning scientific inquiry do I most need answered?
Does the dung beetle really “bring glory to God?”
What does the Bible tell us about MRSA?
Were blue diamonds sent as a special gift to us?
Is the blue-footed booby an “evolution stumper” that “defies the theory of natural selection?”
Can these handy curricula can help hammer home the important fundamentalist idea that “male and female roles [are] very different?”
So hard to choose! *sigh*
Seriously, folks. Pseudo-science like this is insidious. It’s dressed up in fun little packages, but the stuff inside is designed to lead children away from real, evidence-based science. I genuinely pity children who are taught to blindly accept creationism, rather than developing a truly scientific mind and learning to discern fact from fancy, evidence from belief, and science from religion. Let faith be faith and science be science.
*A friend told me about this giveaway, with no info as to the name of the curricula that would be given away, just that it was science. Yes, I suspected that any science e-books given away by TOS would be creationist. However, I was under the impression that Rosetta Stone was a secular curricula, so I’m curious why the “reward” for liking their company’s homeschool curricula branch is a decidedly religious curricula.
Babypie and Rhubarb are a team of Veterinary Princesses (or Princess Veterinarians), healing Rhubarb’s new stuffed otter and the kitten and puppy at Babypie’s new Critter Clinic. Dresses were discarded upon discovery of difficulty of pottying in taffeta and crinolines. They are Practical Princesses, as well.
Dress-up 2.0 today:
Happy Pi (is Wrong) Day!
Saturday seems like a good day for linking, so here are a few good ones that have come across my desk* this morning:
- Hold your babies close. You aren’t spoiling them (really, you can’t spoil a baby), but you may be giving them a better ability to recover from fights with future partners.
- While the Egyptian revolution wasn’t really a “Facebook/Twitter revolution,” social media did play an important role in revolutionaries’ ability to communicate with each other and the world. In return, the Egyptian revolution taught Al Jazeera how to embrace digital media and social networking to better report the news as it happened.
- NP-in-training and abortion provider Dolores P. provides an honest look into what it’s like to be an abortion provider, sharing her personal experiences on both ends of the table. While her humor is a little morbid, especially where her own life and health are concerned, she is completely respectful of the women coming into her office. [Just a note here, Smrt Lernins is a pro-choice blog; while I am happy to engage in a wide array of discussions, one thing I won't tolerate is anti-choice comments.]
- The next time your kids are climbing the walls, just remember, they could always be literally climbing the walls.
- The eastern cougar has been declared extinct. Sadness.
- See? I’m not the only one calling the “mommy wars” a bunch of BS. The Bloggess says so, too. Of course, she also probably offends everyone in the process, but that’s her MO, so if you’ve got punkin’ feelins, apply elsewhere.
- Ok, women. Are you pissed off yet? (and please, don’t give me the “that’s why I’m glad I don’t live in GA/the South” response — similar bills have been introduced in South Dakota, Utah, Nevada, and probably some other states, too — this isn’t a Southern problem; it’s a religious right wingnut problem)
- Also, lets stop portraying women as disposable while we’re at it.
- Patchfire has been posting videos every day. Some educate, some entertain, some delight, some just make you say “oh HAIL YEAH.” Please go enjoy and comment, letting her know how much you enjoy her little project for March.
There you go, folks. Some links to make you think, to make you glad or mad, to make you read something or watch something a little different. Enjoy (or not. Whatever. Do what you want. I’m not the boss of you.)
*Yes, I have an actual desk. It’s an IKEA Expedit and I luff it. It is currently piled high with crap that was on our old bookshelves, but which hasn’t yet been situated in our new bookshelves (also Expedit).
I’ve had a lot of new readers on the blog lately, many of them not homeschoolers (and some of them not even parents at all).
I don’t think I over-glorify homeschooling. I really try not to. I know I have a strong pro-homeschool bias and that comes out in my posts. We’ve been through multiple different school settings before coming to homeschooling as the best option, so I feel like I’m usually writing from a good basis of experiences. If I make homeschooling seem easy or a constant stream of enlightenment and super-duper fun, please forgive me for presenting it thusly. It ain’t necessarily so.
Here is the blog’s honest truth: Sometimes it really, really sucks to be a homeschooler. The last two days have been those days. For the record, trying to homeschool with a pounding migraine is far from fun. Basic parenting stuff is difficult with a migraine; now add teaching lessons and checking work and driving around signing up for homeschool soccer on top of that. Not fun. Homeschooling does contain a lot of fun and enlightenment, and sometimes it’s even a little bit easy, but it also has a whole stinking heaping of “suck it up.”
I really wanted to write something else riveting to keep my new readers coming back for more, but right now I think I’d rather prefer my new readers coming over and taking turns pouring shots of scotch down my throat…and I don’t even like scotch. It’s been that kind of past two days.
I am running dry of brilliant new ideas, y’all. Migraine-brain isn’t very good for that. Any suggestions? How about y’all talk amongst yourselves?
I’ll be the first to say that if you’re getting most of your parenting advice/information from Parenting magazine, you probably need to trot on down to the library for a while and find some actual books on topics of child development, breastfeeding, and maintaining a healthy marriage. Parenting is not interested in you knowing about those things. I think they hit a new low with their article 20 things moms should never feel guilty about, however.
First, they lure you in with #1-4, which all seem pretty reasonable. Then suddenly you’re being given horrible breastfeeding advice (the kind of advice that will tank your supply and/or screw with your baby’s ability to nurse correctly; if you want to formula feed, do it, but if you want to breastfeeding, don’t screw it up by supplementing and giving early bottles) and being encouraged to lie to your friends to make yourself look good, lie to your husband to spend money behind his back, take joy in the [perceived] inferiority of others’ children, and make yourself sexually appealing for random men (but not wanting to have sex with your partner, to whom you’re also lying about money, is totally ok). Oh, and leave your kid to sit in a diaper full of poop, because there’s nothing wrong with that, right?
Parenting magazine doesn’t want you to feel guilty, but I do (well, sorta — see below). I think a healthy dose of guilt is far superior to an unhealthy dose of lies, damn lies, and leaving your kid sitting in poop. If you’re wondering why this is a Secular Thursday post, it’s because I’d like to point out that guilt isn’t solely the purview of religion, just like morality and ethics are not solely the purview of religion. Being non-religious (or even atheist) doesn’t mean you exist without moral guideposts or aren’t still eaten up with the things you do wrong (or “wrong”). Guilt IS what helps guide our moral compass. Feel guilty, but feel guilty about stuff that will actually help you, not stuff that will hinder you.
A list of 20 is kind of overkill, though, so we’ll just go with 6, because this is a blog and nobody wants to have to turn the page. With that in mind, I present to you:
1. Undermining yourself before you ever give yourself a chance to succeed. Whether it’s breastfeeding, homeschooling, going back to school, or learning a new craft, skill, or hobby, don’t set yourself up to fail. Don’t give yourself that “just in case it’s not going perfectly, I can quit” out; make yourself stick to it long enough to get past the rocky parts and see if it really is the right thing for your (and/or your kids). Look for one or two of the best resources on whatever it is you’re doing (don’t clutter yourself up with too much advice from too many disparate sources) and line up one or two support people who you know will be your cheerleader. This isn’t advice to feel guilty about not getting it right or not being 100% successful or changing your mind about what’s right for you; things don’t always work out as planned. The real failure is in not having the faith in yourself to give yourself the kind of fair chance you’d give anyone else.
2. Short-changing your accomplishments and only talking about your chid(ren)’s. One of the worst things women do to themselves isn’t to play up their kids’ milestones and accomplishments, but to downplay their own. That your kid sleeps for an hour longer that someone else’s kid is only an accomplishment in the short term, and it’s the kid’s accomplishment, not yours. Don’t make your child’s mini-milestones the only things you ever brag about. You are awesome; talk about it. If your friends don’t ever want to hear that kind of stuff, they’re not really your friends…or maybe they’re too afraid to talk about their own accomplishments and need a little support to find what’s great about themselves! Encourage them to embrace their own awesomeness, too — it’s so much more pleasant and less petty than playdate one-ups-man-ship.
3. Lying to your spouse/partner about your needs. Not all partners are equal when it comes to supporting their partners’ needs, but if you don’t even tell them your needs, how do you expect them to rise to support them? I know we want our partners to be psychic; they aren’t. You shouldn’t be sneaking off to get a manicure or a massage — not because you shouldn’t get those things, but because sneaking is beneath you and it’s beneath your partner. You’re an adult, for Pete’s sake! Tell your partner what you need, or you two really aren’t “partners;” you’re just two people who hang out together. If, after talking to your partner, s/he isn’t supportive of your needs, that’s a completely different issue, but when you lie to him/her about it, you aren’t even giving him/her the chance to step up.
4. Hiding how much money you spend or where you spend it. See above. Grown-ups don’t have to sneak around. Not only are you potentially wrecking your relationship with your partner by being dishonest (which sows a whole lot of doubt-seeds), you’re also potentially wrecking your family budget by hiding how money is spent. Not every family works off a budget, but having a carefully planned budget makes it a whole lot easier to plan for the hair cut, massage, pedicure, drink w/ the girls, etc. Don’t sneak; clearly express your needs and wants. Again, if at that point, your partner is unsupportive, it’s a different issue, but there’s nothing to be gained by sneaking around.
5. Treating your kid like a purse or a watch. Your child isn’t an accessory that you put on when s/he matches your outfit. Your child is a person. We don’t make other people sit in a pile of their own poop, ok? That’s just not cool. Parenting is often inconvenient, but try not to treat your children as though they were an inconvenience. They aren’t. They’re people, your people, your delightful wonderful tiny people who adore you and to whom you are the Master/Mistress of the Universe. Give yourself permission to show up a little late for appointments, just go ahead and accept you might have to watch your favorite show on Tivo or Hulu later, don’t leave the oven on, and stop to attend to your child’s needs when they arise, rather than when it’s most convenient for you.
6. Not giving yourself permission to be human. Humans are inherently flawed creatures. We screw up royally at almost every turn. Out best laid plans gang aft agley all over the damn place. We also waste so much time beating ourselves up over mistakes we’ve made that are over and done with. We wallow in our failures. Next time you screw up big time, instead of drowning in guilt over how you didn’t do it right, try to assess what can be learned from the screw-up and then say, “I’m human and humans screw up sometimes. What’s next?” When you hold yourself to impossible standards, you make yourself miserable and you aren’t a treat for those around you. I don’t mean to not set high standards. I’m not saying to excuse yourself for slack-assing through life. I’m not saying break wind at a state dinner (you know how I feel about manners). Just acknowledge you aren’t always going to get it perfectly right every single time. Accept it. Release that need to always be perceived as perfect. This is an area where I constantly struggle; I still feel guilty about a host of mistakes (ranging from insignificantly tiny to immeasurably huge) I’ve made over my life. I’m working hard to ditch the guilt over messing things up. Join me!
*And by “feel guilty about,” I mean, “give some consideration to,” because who the hell am I to dictate your guilt or lack thereof? I’m just a blogger, y’all, and Parenting is just a magazine. We aren’t the guideposts for your life. Listen to your instincts, make an effort to educate yourself from reputable sources, and if what I say helps you in any way, more power to both of us. <3 Peace out!
