No.

Come on, really? People are calling this discrimination? Parents are mad that colleges won’t just believe what they say about their student’s achievement without any sort of corroborating paperwork or testing to back it up? Really?

These colleges aren’t making homeschooling parents (or students) jump through extra hoops. They aren’t asking for this stuff to punish homeschoolers or give them grief or because they get a laugh off of them. It’s not even because they think homeschooling parents are inherently dishonest. They just have no way to know from family to family what the standards are for any given subject, how rigorously or extensively any subject is taught and tested.

Public schools must meet certain standards — whether you think they’re high enough or too high, there ARE standards set for them that they must meet in order to keep accreditation. Private schools must also meet certain standards to keep accreditation. Accreditation is how those institutions receive external validation of their academics. Coming from an accredited school certainly doesn’t mean that a student is smarter or better educated, but it does generally mean that the student meets a minimum expected level of proficiency in certain subjects. It’s as simple as that. When public institutions make it up as they go along (“it” being grades, testing, whatever), they tend to get busted for it — hard and publicly. Haven’t you seen news segments on school systems being caught messing with standardized testing or failing standards and losing accreditation?

Standards can vary wildly from parent to parent, however, and educational method/philosophy to method/philosophy. There is no overseeing board for all homeschooling parents. There is no Department of Homeschool Education that sets minimum standards for performance. Parents aren’t assessed yearly under threat of funding revocation if their students aren’t demonstrating certain skills or testing to certain levels. Individual parents aren’t accredited. Because there isn’t a process by which parent-teachers can become accredited as individuals, they are asked by some schools to provide some other example of external validation of their academics. This isn’t asking something extra; it’s just asking the parent directly for what a larger institution would be expected to provide on behalf of the student: a means of demonstrating the means by which the student came by a set of grades.

If you’re sitting around feeling oppressed because the college won’t just take your word for it on a transcript, it’s time to suck it up and get over yourself. Your word isn’t infallible. Why on earth should the college treat it as such? Not all parents are honest with themselves about their students’ abilities. Public schools (and private schools) may not provide an ideal education for all/most/some (take your pick) children, but those types of institutions do have to answer to at least some sort of higher authority and adhere to a specified minimum set of standards — at least if they want to remain accredited, which most of them do — two things that many homeschooled parents do not have to do.

You chose to take/keep your child out of “the system.” Well, most colleges are part of “the system.” They will set expectations based on that system. If your child wants to be a part of that system, they’ll have to demonstrate they have met the standards set by that system. It’s great if they scored well on their SAT/ACT, but that’s only a part of the admissions process. Transcripts are another big part of it, and if the student (homeschooler or otherwise) doesn’t come from an accredited school/program, that student should expect that have to demonstrate that his/her abilities and knowledge are at least at a level that one would expect from an accredited program.

One of the costs of homeschooling is that sometimes you might be expected to provide a little extra proof for the grades you give your child, especially when that child is using those grades to apply to college. It’s not even a particularly high cost of homeschooling. Providing proof that your kid took the occasional standardized test isn’t a particularly difficult thing to do, either. Put on your big girl panties and deal.

PLATO Science has been passable, but it’s not rigorous enough for middle school and beyond. I’m strongly considering the Duke TIP Independent Learning class Foundations of Modern Biology: Genetics, Evolution, and Ethics for Captain Science’s science next year. It’s geared for grades 7-10, so it shouldn’t be too difficult for him by next school year. I think it will give him a tremendous foundation for understanding evolutionary science from multiple angles/perspectives. I love that it presents evolutionary science within a sociocultural context (TIP lists it as both a science and a social studies) and that it includes a literary element, through The Time Machine. I don’t totally love that the course is $55, the text book is $26, and the reader is $62, but that’s probably a small price to pay for a thorough introduction to biology. I’d probably pick up What Darwin Saw: The Journey That Changed the World as a read-aloud to include Tank (and Babypie, if she’s interested) and Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith for Captain Science. I was going to save this one until we got to that period of history, but I think the added contextual benefit of including this w/ his biology course makes it a well-timed choice.

I’m quite happy continuing with the Michael Clay Thompson language arts courses, but I’d like to integrate some literary criticism, some comparative literary analysis, and so forth. I think I’ll have to home-brew that one, just like I’ve done with history so far. I have an ever-growing list of things he needs to read. I’d also like to incorporate more creative writing into his language arts.

History…I have no idea! I really want something more thorough than we’re doing now. The History: The Definitive Visual Guide has been a nice spine, but we need something more thorough as we move forward in history. We’ll be covering the 1600s and onward, and I’d like our first pass of US history to be a strong one, providing a sound foundation for his later AP US History coursework. I think the only way to do that is through a lot, a lot, a lot of primary sources and well-written secondary sources. I have a feeling we’ll be relying on a “spine” text less and less as we move forward.

We love Life of Fred and I imagine we’ll continue with Life of Fred: Advanced Algrebra and Fred’s Home Companion: Advanced Algrebra. I do think that this Math and the Cosmos unit looks really neat, however. It might overlap nicely w/ the algebra skills he’s learning or give us something to work on as he wraps up Advanced Algebra.
Again, I think TIP does a great job of integrating multiple disciplines into one course.

Foreign language — definitely starting by next school year. Patchfire pointed me in the direction of Instant Immersion. At $50, compared to Rosetta Stone’s $200ish, I think it’ll be doable to have Captain Science take the Japanese course and for us to be able to afford a tutor at least once a week. I might see if there’s anyway we could go through my former high school’s Japanese language program for a teen tutor. Alternately, I’ll see who I can find either at the local university or through our network of Japanese speaking locals.

I’d love for Captain Science to be able to afford to take the online critical thinking course offered through Online G3, but I think that w/ the other stuff I want us to buy, the cost is prohibitive, especially since this is one elective of many we’d like to do. I will probably snag him the Critical Thinking textbook and develop a lesson plan for it.

I think we’ll continue with computer programming, but I don’t know where we’ll go once we’ve wrapped up KidCoder. Maybe check out the TeenCoder series? Maybe he’ll be ready for something much more robust by then.

It’s hard to project exactly what we’ll be ready to work on by then. As for Tank, he’ll have to have his own post, outlining K-garten plans, though I can’t really do those until I know where he’ll be in terms of reading and math readiness. Yikes. So much uncertainty, but so many fun options!

They’re born, these tiny little creatures, and then you blink and boom, they’re sitting, crawling, walking, talking.

Blink. Toddlers.

Blink. School age.

Blink. Puberty is right around the corner.

I’m afraid to blink, because before I know it, they’ll be grown and gone.

Every blink is a tremendous leap of faith that you’re not screwing it up horribly. It’s a prayer that you and your child make it through to that next blink mostly intact, mostly sane, mostly happy, mostly moving forward. Parenting can seem like one of the poorest investment portfolios, because, if we do it right, we aren’t the ones who see the “return.” We don’t see the outcome, at least not long-term. I know that’s how it should be, but 18 years seems too short a time to adequately prepare your children for another 50, 60, 70+ more years of life. I think, as a parent, you wish you could see ahead to the end, make sure you’re doing the right things so that it will all turn out ok for your kids. Maybe if you knew what they’d come up against, you could better prepare them to face it. You do the best you can with what you’ve got, but you never really know if it’s good enough.

Am I really preparing Captain Science to be ready to face the world more or less on his own in only 7 or 8 more years? Am I teaching him enough? Instilling the right habits? Modeling the right kinds of friendships and other relationships? Loving him fiercely enough? He’s suddenly closer to being a man than he is to being that tiny baby I brought home 10 years ago.

How can any parent really be up to that task? How can we make them ready for adulthood? How can we make ourselves ready for their adulthoods? I guess we can’t–not really. We just have to try our damnedest to get them through one blink at a time.

I’m thankful for many people in my life: my children, my husband, my parents, my grandparents, my brother and his fiance, my mother-in-law (and I’m also thankful she’s so sane), my friends, the homeschool community that has embraced my family. I could write a post every day for a month and not run out of people. I think that’s the mark of a truly blessed life. It does make it difficult to choose who to write about for my final “I’m Thankful for…” post.

Instead of writing something really profound about the amazing people in my life, I’m writing about a little incident that happened a couple days earlier and scared the ever-loving-PANTS off of me:

Officer Daddyman typically works late nights and I’m often in the bath or even in bed before he gets home. The other night, I was taking a hot bath, drinking a glass of wine, and reading Beatrice and Virgil, when Badge, our dopey but lovable beagle, let out two little “alert” barks. The “alert” bark sounds like “brorf” and is the noise Badge makes to let us know someone or something is walking down the street past our house. He alerts for passing people, other dogs, cats, etc. This isn’t unusual. After the alert barks, however, he did something he never does — he started making a low, rumbling growl.

The growl went on and on, got deeper and louder, and had a tone I have never, ever heard him use. I got out of the bath and had started drying off to see if maybe a cat or possum was on the porch, bothering him, when he started making the biggest, loudest, fiercest bark I’ve ever heard him make. He sounded like a Rottweiler, and a particularly large and ferocious one, at that. I popped my head out of the bath and saw him standing, body rigid and hackles raised…

Right in front of our front door.

I tossed on my clothes and made my way quietly down stairs. Badge had stopped barking and laid down in front of the door, facing it, still on alert. He stayed there for another five to ten minutes, before he finally relaxed with a “wuff” and went to lie down in his bed (the super plushy one that officer Daddyman bought him).

I don’t know what was out there, but I have no doubt that if Badge viewed it as a big enough threat to his family to go all Big Bad Dog on it, that it was a threat to his family. He was rewarded with several treats, many pats, and lots of “GOOD DOG!” praises. About a half-hour later, I heard coyote howls outside and it set him off again. I have no idea if it was a coyote in our driveway or something (or someone) on our porch that had him upset earlier, but whatever it was, the sound of the world’s most terrifying beagle made it scamper good and quick.

So while I have many wonderful people in my life, for that moment where I was home alone late at night with my kids, I was incredibly grateful for my doofy, goofy, dumb-even-for-a-beagle, but braver than all get out beagle-boy, Badge.

I’ll preface this by saying that my daddy is an executive director at AT&T. He has worked in the industry for about five million years, long before personal computers came about. That whole “Al Gore claims he invented the internet” thing? Well, my daddy actually built the internet, or the physical framework for it, anyway. When the first home computer came out, he brought one home, disassembled it, and put it back together…and made it faster. There is nothing my daddy cannot fix, computerly-speaking.

My daddy talked me through as much troubleshooting as possible over texting, then directed me to tech support. I called tech support and, after navigating an absurd assortment of menus, managed to get a woman who identified herself as [possibly] Eva. I wrote down “Eva” on my little note pad, in case I needed to know. I didn’t realize until a little later into the call that possibly-Eva had an accent of a type with which I am not familiar (she turned out to be in the Philippines) and she pronounced a few words oddly, so her name might not have actually been Eva at all. I’ll continue to call her “possibly-Eva” for the duration of this post.

Possibly-Eva didn’t seem to know very much about tech stuff for a tech support call center. She was clearly working from a script and any variation from that confused her. We spent an hour on the phone together before we got disconnected and she didn’t call back, despite asking for a call-back number in case we got disconnected. The high points of that hour included her insisting that “admin/password” were a very good username/password combination, because I won’t forget them, her coaching me through reconfiguring my router so poorly that my father had to spend an hour reconfiguring it again today, and her asking if I could “go upstairs and ask [my] dad for the router information” (to which I responded, “Um…he doesn’t live here, because I’m in my 30s, and this is my house.”). A service ticket was never opened for my issues.

My father had to call the support center himself to even get a service ticket. Let me remind you, he’s an executive director in this company, and they didn’t want to give him a ticket. He had to call again the next day to get a technician out to my house, at which point he was told it would be another four days before that would happen (and he did something he rarely does and which I never ask him to do, play the “do you know [x very high level manager over the technician's department] — well, he and I are peers and friends, and I’m happy to escalate this to him if I have to” card). A tech was at my house a few hours later, which is apparently a miracle. He was very nice, fixed some problems outside, fixed some problems inside, and when he left, the guys (my daddy and Officer Daddyman) turned out computers nothing would work. *headdesk*

They work on it for another half hour and can’t get it working. They go back over and work on it later and VOILA! It works.

We come home from my parents’ house and my laptop works on the newly reestablished network just fine. Daddyman turns on his computer and tries to connect and CRASH, there goes the network. Texted my daddy, rebooted the router, but nada. At my daddy’s instructions, turned off Daddyman’s computer, rebooted the router, and as you see, I am now online.

Beware: Officer Daddyman’s computer eats the internet! This is most definitely an Eff Off Friday.

Five and a half years after Captain Science was born, Tank rocketed into our family…and I do mean rocketed. I had just enough time between pregnancies to completely forget what to expect, which is good, because Tank’s was completely different from Captain Science’s. I had it so easy — almost no sickness, plenty of energy, no swelling, and all the weight gain going straight to my belly — that I think I was lulled into a false sense of security. I was certainly not prepared for Tank’s explosive entrance into the world. Good thing I was planning on a homebirth, because I never would have made it anywhere else! I went from “oh, I might be in labor” to Tank’s head popping out in its entirety as my water broke. Rocket man from the beginning, he’s lucky his Nana was able to baseball slide and catch him before he took flight.

No, he hasn’t slowed down since.

My Tank was not an easy baby. He took right to nursing, which as a relief, but the sleeping thing was another story. At a month old, he turned into the shrieking colic monster. At around four months old, he decided he could only be nursed lying down; I had to trick him by latching him on side-lying and then sitting up. I don’t think he was put down for more than a few minutes until he was nine months old. He was a funny baby with a huge, gap-toothed smile, but he also had a serious furrowing brow, which earned him the nickname “Dubious D.”

If Captain Science taught me flexibility, Tank taught me patience. Everything was on his time table and his time table was completely different from what Captain Science’s had been. He sat unassisted well at 3 1/2 months, crawled by around 5 months, but didn’t walk until 13 months old…at which point he took off running. He said just enough words by his second birthday for it to be “enough” words, then his vocabulary exploded overnight. He decided to use the potty at 19 months old, changed his mind after a week, then completely potty trained again at 22 months (this time, thankfully, for good). He demonstrated excellent gross and fine motor skills from an early age, draws beautiful and intricate pictures with an excellent sense of color, but still has only the vaguest interest in learning to read (though he really loves knowing how words are spelled). For Tank, the parts are so much more interesting than the whole.

Sometimes I think Tank is my maternal grandfather reincarnated. He has the same booming Ballard voice, the same dark good looks, the same roguish grin (often coupled with a “I know what I’m getting away with” wink), the same BIG stage-like presence. He’s not a large kid — tall enough, but with a slight build that makes him appear smaller than he actually is. I try to remind myself that my hoss of a younger brother (the original Tank, btw — Tank’s nickname is technically Tank Junior) started out that way, too, and could pick me up and carry me around by 14. Tank resembles his uncle quite a bit. He also looks a heckuvalot like Officer Daddyman, especially his mouth and those brows.

Tank wakes up early and hits the ground running. He goes non-stop until bed time, when it’s a struggle to get him to stay in bed long enough to actually fall asleep. Tank wakes up during the night to demand repositioning of his blankets, the hall light turned on, a drink of water, or an answer to any of a number of odd questions. Nothing in the world can convince him that 3am is a less-than-ideal time to ask about what ants eat or whether or not ghosts have their own planet (and what it looks like, and what they do there, and how we get there). He is full of questions, day and night, and he expects a serious and thorough answer. He’s highly observant, especially about the number/volume of things/people and their social relationships. From an early age, he could sort items into perfect even piles for people to share. He asks insightful questions about why people act how they do.

One of Tank’s greatest ambitions in life is to turn “hive” and “pay hootball.” He threw himself into soccer this year with abandon. He loves homeschool ice skating day, and even though he falls down, he gets right back up, because something as insignificant as a little gravity can’t stop him. He will run around the house when he gets excited until everyone watching him gets dizzy. He loves riding his bike. He will play hard until forced to stop. I can’t stop him from leaping onto and off of things, turning things over, dumping things out, scaling the cabinets to find a hidden piece of Halloween candy. He talks non-stop, even though most people can’t understand a word he’s saying. He is movement and energy in a boy shape. Sometimes he’s selectively deaf (two hearing tests have confirmed that any hearing problems he has are selective) and exceptionally naughty. Sometimes he’s the sweetest boy, wanting to sit in my lap and cuddle me.

Last year, when Captain Science start homeschooling, Tank wanted to badly to stay home with us. He enjoyed the little preschool he attended for a few days a week, with his best friend Dimhibbins, but what he really wanted was to be here with us. More than anything else, Tank loves us. More than anyone else, Tank adores and wants to be like Captain Science — so of course, he torments and annoys him endlessly. Tank waffles between devouring workbooks and snubbing anything resembling curriculum. He’s a Gemini, though, so duality is his way. He keeps me on my toes, which is something I probably needed to get better at, anyway.

He’s a delight and a joy, a handful and then some, a bull in a china shop, a little artist (sometimes of walls and his body, too), and an unbroken spirit. I wouldn’t trade him for anything else in the world, and I am so grateful for him.

I am thankful for Captain Science, who is turning 10 on Sunday. Double-digits, as he has pointed out several times in the last few weeks. That’s a Big Damn Deal(tm).

My pregnancy with Captain Science took me by surprise and I wasn’t quite prepared to be a mom at 21. Luckily, after a loooong labor and a hard first few weeks, we got it together pretty quickly. I spent the first 4.5 years of his life as his only parent–my ex-husband left when Captain S. was 7 months old and his infrequent visits petered out to nothing and then into a request to give up parental rights–with the help of my own parents, until I remarried and Officer Daddyman adopted him.

Captain Science was a pretty easy baby, incredibly (almost frighteningly) quick to learn. I could usually reason with him, which (I learned w/ child #2) isn’t all that typical. When he was really set on something being a certain way, though, he dug in his heels and nothing could convince him otherwise. He spoiled me in the “parent as teacher” department, saying his first two words by six months (Mama and “NO!”, used correctly), learning his upper and lower case letters by 18 months, reading simple words by two, and able to read most of the young reader books in the house by three. He potty trained completely in two days. He did so well in his pre-K that his teachers encouraged me to put him somewhere more challenging, because, “He already know everything we teach.” He was always a little gentleman, introducing himself politely with a firm handshake. He loves his “women,” as he collectively referred to me, my mother, my grandmother, and my great-grandmother — yes, he was lucky enough to spend his first three years of life as the sole member of the 5th generation of five living generation.

When he got older and went to first a Montessori and then public school, things got harder for him. His nature was too sweet to understand the bullying nature of children under poor adult supervision…or the bullying nature of petty adults in positions of power. He was on an asthma-maintenance medication for several years that contributed to the anxiety and a growing depression; we immediately took him off the meds when we figured it out. He skipped a grade and could have skipped another, academically, but emotionally, he was still a little boy, not ready for the meanness he encountered. He continued to perform well in school, but he became withdrawn and unhappy. My happy and outgoing boy was slowly becoming sullen and introverted. We put him in therapy, only to discover that the terrible social dynamics at school were his only real source of unhappiness. Home was where he felt secure. We made the decision to start homeschooling.

Oh, my Captain Science! I never would have taken that leap if he weren’t exactly the kind of boy he is. I couldn’t let the public school system systematically destroy all his beautiful quirks and uniqueness. He needed more security and more academic challenge. It scared me to death to consider it, because it was big change, and I feared change, but Captain Science has been challenging my preference for stasis and pushing my beyond my boundaries since he got here. For him, I could do anything.

Now, a year and a half later, we’re so much happier. Though we have frustrating days, homeschooling has brought us closer and made both of us lightyears happier. I enjoy him. Captain Science is a remarkable boy, growing into an equally remarkable young man. He has his moments of moodiness, when I jokingly call him “Book 5 Harry Potter” (CAPSLOCK HARRY!!!) and moments of selflessness, like how he cares for his younger sister. He loves Legos and computers and science and reading…always, always reading. He can’t sit down at the table without reading the cracker box or pass by my desk without picking up any flier or magazine. He loves language, both written and spoken, and plays with it well. He writes creatively far above his age.

He is a truly delightful boy and I am so grateful that he came into my life.

He also just came over here and said, “What’s a parasite?” What? “Something you see in Paris.”

That’s my boy.

Just now, an affirmation from Louise L. Hay appeared at the top of my Facebook news feed: ‎”I am safe; it’s only change.”

I’ve never done well with change. As a child, I dragged my heels over anything new. I liked to wear the same things, eat the same things, do the same things in the same way at the same time. I have ever been a creature of routine bordering precariously on a creature of habit. New things are scary.

Having children has helped someone with the fear of change, because you have to be adaptable when you have children, but I am still resistant to it when it is presented to me. Daddyman jokes (accurately) that he knows I’ll always put up a huge fuss about new things when I find find out about them. I stomp my feet and insist I won’t go along with it, but when it comes down to the actual time of doing, I’ve usually adjusted to the idea and am able to handle it just fine.

The message from Louise Hay reminded me that I don’t really need that have that period of resistance. New may be scary, but scary doesn’t always mean bad. Reading that affirmation gave me a warm, safe feeling in my chest. It was exactly what I needed to see today; not because any change is looming on the horizon, but because it could be and I’ll have to deal with it when it comes. Won’t it be less exhausting if I didn’t have to freak out about it? Wouldn’t I be happier if anticipating the very potential for change didn’t send my heart racing and my head pounding? I think I would be.

I’m going to post this affirmation on my desk somewhere, so that the next time something new comes up, I have that little reminder that the world isn’t ending, the poles aren’t shifting, and I’m not falling into an abyss. It’s only change, and we’re always changing.

This week, Captain Science took the practice tests and rewatched parts of the unit based on areas where he still had problems. He’ll do the mastery test tomorrow. Our big science fun this week, however, was taking Ninja Houseguest with us to Fernbank for their special exhibit Water. So timely and a lot of fun. The boys really enjoyed the working pump well and I got a kick out of trying to lift a jug of water of the type traditionally carried on one’s head (here’s a hint — didn’t make it to my head). The very favorite activity at Fernbank remains the giant bubble table, however. Tank made some huge ones!

A quick rundown of the rest: Captain Science wrote a nice paragraph for Essay Town about formality vs. informality. His argument was that allowing informal writing gives writers the ability to write more and so do more easily. It was a convincing argument, to be sure, and it also wrapped up the “Formality” chapter. He also did chapter IX in Caesar’s English II. In Life of Fred: Beginning Algebra, Captain Science did chapter 37 and a “Your Turn to Play.” He did a chapter of KidCoder on programming sounds. The result was a lot of annoying beeping when he successfully programmed it, but he did such a great job with it this week. I feel like we probably did some other stuff, but eh, I don’t even care that I can’t remember them.

I’m going to try to force next week to be productive, which might make me crazy.

You will have the exact same conversation about thirty-eight times in one day. You will have the same conversation about twenty-two times the next day. You will have the conversation fifteen times the day after that. You will have the same conversation three more times before the next “same conversation” starts up.

Babypie has entered “same conversation” age with a fury this past week. Our conversations thus far have centered around two subjects, Ponyo and the driveway beast that poops in Babypie’s pants. Like I could make this stuff up!

We recently discovered Ponyo, the 2008 Miyazakii film, is available on Netflix instant watch. We’re huge Miyazaki fans and the boys have always loved Totoro, so we figured we’d give Ponyo a shot. It’s as adorable, if bizarre, as I expected. Ponyo in her fish state looks a bit like a Waldorf doll, which I find amusing. The boys enjoyed the movie a lot, but the one who has really become obsessed with Ponyo is Babypie.

Now, I’ve historically been a “no/limited TV for under 2″ kind of mom, but when you add that third kid, sometimes your standards slip a little. Babypie likes to sit with her brothers and watch a movie, even if she doesn’t watch it that closely. Ponyo, however, has been declared the greatest Babypie experience of all time. She calls it “Baby inna Wawa” (baby in the water) and talks constantly about the baby inna wawa, baby go byebye, baby aw’off, [Sosuke says] “MOM! MOMMY!”, Baby inna Wawa Mahmoum (baby in the water Ponyo). She tells me about baby inna wawa all day. If I don’t give the right responses (“That’s right! Ponyo does live in the water.” “Yes, Sosuke is very sad when he can’t find his mom.”), she will repeat the conversation louder and louder until I give them.

Yesterday, we upgraded to a second conversation, so at least I now have some variation. Every morning, I ask Babypie if she slept sweet and if she had dreams. Yesterday morning, she said yes, so I asked what she dreamed about. “Poop pants.” Oh, you dreamed you pooped in your pants? “Cow.” What? You dreamed a cow pooped in your pants? “Yes.” Ok, then.

Later in the morning, she declared, “Beast poop pants!” (She actually says “beat” and “boop” and “pans” which I think is cute) A beast pooped in Babypie’s pants? “Yeeeeeah! A beat!” What kind of beast? *points out the window* “INNA DIE-WAY!” A beast in the driveway pooped in your pants? “YEEEEAH!” Oh no! That’s terrible! “YEAH! BEAT BOOP PANS!” Oh dear, what a bad beast! “BAD BEAT! BEAT BOOP!” Yes, very bad. “Beat boop pans!” Really? You don’t say! “Beat inna die-way…”

I”m not sure which conversation I prefer, honestly. The beast one is funnier, but I do try to discourage poop humor. That’s parenting for you, if you are childless and ever wondered. Ponyo, beasts, and the same darn conversation over and over again.

Luckily, she’s an amazingly adorable little beast.