M&M Reads "Cowboy Sam and Dandy"

I can't believe how much M&M's reading has improved in just a couple of weeks. A week and a half ago she could read only simple cvc (consonant-vowel-consonant) combinations, and now she's reading words like "cowboy," "horse," "soon" and "eating."

Kids and Computers Meme

You didn't know you'd started a meme, did you, Phantom Scribbler?

It's too cute not to turn into a meme . . . if you want to do it and you don't have kids, you can use a pet or a stuffed animal or plant or something creative. :)

Why I'm interested in allergies and corn avoidance

(Eleventy-One Things About Me #38: Allergies of one kind or another have had quite an effect on my life.)

This post is an intro to be linked from the News for Corn Avoiders blog, to explain to the readers there who I am and why I'm contributing to a blog about corn allergies.

Who is Purple_Kangaroo, why is she contributing to a corn avoiders blog, and what is her experience with allergies?

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I am a homeschooling mom of three young children, married for 7 years to my first (and only) love, whom I call DH for Dear Husband. I have an extensive family history of food and environmental allergies, and grew up dealing with multiple allergies and intolerances of my own and of family members.

When I cook for my extended family, we have to avoid gluten (we have some celiac family members), dairy products, corn, soy, oats, all cooked fruits, pork, nightshades, grapes, sulfites, and food additives like MSG and preservatives, among many other things.

I've had a long line of unexplained and misdiagnosed illnesses from early childhood, and the clinical diagnoses that have seemed accurate include multiple allergies as well as fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, IBS (irritable bowel syndrome), back & neck problems (some structural, some from injuries), migraines (more like small seizures than like headaches), and exercise-induced asthma.

Some of the diagnoses I've received, such as juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, have been wrong, and others (like the possible lyme disease and the theoretical allergies to my own growth hormones--a theory of a regular allopathic MD, not an alternative practitioner) were never confirmed.

Quite a few of those issues have been caused or exacerbated by allergies. As we've pinpointed and eliminated various allergens, several of the "incurable" or "unexplainable" health issues have greatly improved or even disappeared.

I recently underwent skin-prick testing for environmental allergens and tested very allergic to at least 17 out of 38 items, most significantly dust mites. Others included mold, cats, and various grass, weed and tree pollens.

I've noticed that a lot of the fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue symptoms I still suffer seem to be connected to environmental allergen exposure, particularly to dust mites. Currently our family is in a process of trying to make our home less friendly to dust mites.

My known food allergies include blackberry leaves (severe swelling on contact with the thorns, and throat swelling if ingested), avocado (symptoms similar to food poisoning), milk (eczema, digestive disturbances, joint pain, and possible other symptoms), as well as most antibiotics (giant hives) and a number of other medications. I did not have a positive skin test to milk or avocado, and was not tested for blackberry leaves, but multiple oral challenges have confirmed that those are problem foods for me.

However, it wasn't my own allergies that made me get involved in allergy research and support groups, and endeavors such as the no-corn blog.

Both of our first two children had mild allergies in early childhood, one to milk and one to soy. But it was when our third child, Baby E, was born that we began dealing with truly severe allergies.

From the time Baby E was a few weeks old, we realized that she was extremely sensitive to soy. If I consumed even a trace of a soy derivative, Baby E would begin crying while nursing at her next feeding. She would flail around and scream hysterically for hours, inconsolable and in obvious pain. She would develop diarrhea and an immediate diaper rash, and would sleep only fitfully for short times, often waking up or whimpering in her sleep even if she was held, and immediately waking screaming if she was put down. She was miserable during the day, and none of us got much sleep at night.

I ended up cutting out dairy products (even the butter and yogurt I could tolerate in small amounts), soy, wheat, nuts (I was already avoiding peanuts), fish and chocolate. Eventually (after 5 months without chocolate!) I was able to add everything but soy and other legumes back into my diet.

Eliminating soy and a few other foods helped, but still Baby E had quite a few fussy periods and didn't sleep much at all. The pediatrician kept saying it was teething or colic. I felt something else had to be going on.

Finally, after about a year of severe sleep deprivation, we took her to an allergist. The events that led us to pursue allergy testing were two incidents, only a day apart, where Baby E was exposed to trace amounts of foods.

The first day she touched her big sister's empty corn dog stick (containing soy and corn) to her mouth. The resulting reaction was similar to her reaction when exposed to soy through my milk--diarrhea, stomach pain, itching ears and mouth, diaper rash, etc. But this time instead of the usual 2 to 4 hours of crying, it went on with greater intensity for over 6 hours.

The next day Baby E got hold of an empty box of animal crackers (also containing corn and soy) and held it over her head, showering her body with crumbs. The reaction was similar to before, but this time also included a full-body rash and lasted for over 24 hours.

We were able to get a doctor's appointment the next day, and he referred us to an allergist.

As of this writing Baby E has skin-test confirmed allergies to corn, soy, red kidney beans and mold. She may also have an allergy or intolerance to other legumes, nightshades (potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, etc), hazelnuts, and possibly other allergens as well.

Her soy sensitivity is severe enough that if I ingest soy lecithin or other "non-allergenic" soy derivatives, the amount in the breastmilk will cause a reaction. Corn derivatives like citric acid are a problem for her, also. She has had likely reactions to bread made with yeast grown on corn sugar, and confirmed reactions to goat milk yogurt made from goats that had consumed corn. A couple of weeks ago, she had an allergic reaction at church after touching the floor and then her mouth--there were probably cookie or bread crumbs on the floor.

As her mother, I've spent many hours researching allergies (particularly corn and soy allergies) and contacting manufacturers to find out which foods are safe for our family. I've been glad to use the writing, research, and speaking skills I learned in college and in other life experiences to my family's benefit in learning to deal with allergies.

It's been a lot of work figuring out how to shop and eat, but we're beginning to adjust to the lifestyle change. We've even managed to find a babysitter who has family members with corn and milk allergies, so understands the logistics of dealing with an allergic child.

Best of all, the first day we finally managed to be completely corn-free, Baby E slept through the night. Since then she's been a much happier and easier baby as long as she's not accidentally exposed to an allergen.

It took three weeks of intensive research and trying to avoid corn before we finally pinpointed most of the ingredients such as xanthan gum that were contaminating even products labeled as corn-free. It wasn't until we cut out all corn derivatives (including the supposedly non-allergenic processed ones) that we saw an improvement.

Interestingly enough, as we've adjusted the household's eating habits for Baby E's sake, the whole family has begun feeling better. With a diet excluding nearly all processed, bleached and refined foods, we're all seeing an improvement in our health.

It's a lot of work living allergen-free. Of all the allergens we've dealt with, corn is the most difficult to avoid--especially because of all the hidden and undeclared sources in food. We still end up with reactions occasionally from some food we thought was safe, or from cross-contamination. But most of the time Baby E feels great now.

It's hard, but the results are worth it.

M&M Loves You

M&M wanted to sing a song for her cousin.

Ruff, The Dog Who Loved Pancakes

We had pancakes for breakfast this morning. While we ate, AJ told me a story about a dog who loved pancakes.

It was so detailed and she told it so smoothly and with such excellent syntax and transitions that I thought maybe she'd read it somewhere. But, no, she said, she was just making it up as she went along.

"Once there was a dog named Ruff, who really loved pancakes. Every day he would go searching for pancakes. He would look and look until he saw someone with a pancake, and then he would JUMP UP and try to get it. And whenever he tried to get a pancake, he got it. He really loved to eat pancakes.

One day Ruff was walking down Maple Street looking for a pancake. Suddenly, he looked up and saw two girls talking to a pancake seller . . . "

I got her to tell the story into my phone for Blogger, but the second telling missed out on a lot of the best parts. She got a bit flustered talking into the phone, too.

Still, I think it's a great little story. Hearing her tell it is very cute.

Another tidbit: Yesterday AJ said to me, "Mommy, it really makes me feel wonderful when you smile at me."

Appointment Report

Well, I took Baby E to the doctor tonight. We had the very last appointment of the day, at 7 p.m. Unlike some other doctors at the end of the day, Dr. B didn't seem prematurely shut down or "done, done, done" with the day. He seemed relaxed and talkative, in no hurry to rush off because we were the last appointment of the day. He remembered the other girls and asked them how they were, too.

Dr. B. verified that Baby E has no ear infection and no concussion. Her lungs and everything else checked out perfectly. He said it's possible she could have a bit of a headache from bumping her head the other day, but that wouldn't be what's causing her odd behavior and extreme pain. She is starting to cut a few molars, but that didn't seem a complete likely cause either.

We agreed that it probably was an allergy issue yet again. She was feeling much better by the time we arrived at the office, and we chuckled a bit about that. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized there was a pattern to the fluctuation in her mood and fussiness level.

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She definitely had a reaction that started during dinner Sunday night. She was better by breakfast, then fussy off and on during the day. Yesterday afternoon she was fine, then in the evening after dinner she got fussy again, especially after her before-bedtime snack.

She was fine when she woke up this morning. Shortly after breakfast, she got really grumpy and fussy. A few hours later, she was in a great mood. Then we had lunch, and she got whiny again. Just before her nap I fed her a snack, and during the snack she started refusing the food and acting really miserable again. That's when she was so tired and yet the pain was waking her up. It took several hours before she started smiling again after that.

See a pattern, anyone? She got miserable after each meal.

I'm pretty sure Sunday night's dinner was a culprit, but this reaction has lasted too long to be just that. In fact, I'm pretty convinced now that it wasn't a single lingering reaction, but rather a series of reactions. We'll still need to challenge nightshades, because it seems that she's had problems with nightshade-containing meals multiple times.

But it seems there was more going on in this situation. I think some other food caused another reaction after she had mostly recovered from the Sunday night reaction.

There are two suspects. She had one, the other, or both at nearly every meal and snack over the last two days.

One is bread. It's a bread that seemed safe looking at the ingredients, but she's refused to eat in the past. When I called the company, Nature Bake, I quickly got to talk directly to the owner, Mr. Dahl. He's a delightful man who takes great pride in his product, is very knowledgeable, and went out of his way to track down the one fact he didn't know off the top of his head in answer to my questions. He verified that there's no corn or soy in the bread we were buying, and they're very careful about declaring all ingredients on every label.

The only possible problematic ingredient could be the yeast. Mr. Dahl said that they use two kinds of yeast in their bread. One is Fleischmann's (not the quick-rise version, which contains corn, but the reportedly corn-free regular yeast), which seems to be fairly safe (I use it in my own baking), and SAF, which is made by Lesaffre yeast corporation (the maker of Red Star).

Since Red Star grows much if not all of their yeast on corn syrup, I was concerned about a possible reaction. The owner of Nature Bake was kind enough to contact the company about it. They replied by sending him a document certifying that their SAF yeast tested free of corn protein and corn DNA--an answer which seemed a bit too specific and limited to me. Obviously, corn must be used in the production of the yeast if they were testing it for corn protein and DNA content.

So I contacted Red Star myself. They replied with a letter restating the same thing, and adding that their yeast does not contain corn even though it's often grown on corn.

There have been questions as to why “corn” is not included on the label. The reason it is not is that there is no corn in the yeast. Yeast is a living organism that grows by consuming sugar as food. This process is very similar to animal growth. Chickens, cattle, hogs and most other animals are feed corn products, but do not list corn as an ingredient on the meat packages.

Lesaffre Yeast Corporation has had its yeast products tested for corn DNA by an outside laboratory, Gentics ID. There was no corn DNA found in any sample.

The other potential problem food, which Baby E has also eaten at almost every meal today (and the largest amount just before her worst spell this afternoon), was some jarred baby food. We opened it last night and ended up putting most of it in the refrigerator after she ate only a few bites. She didn't have much of an appetite today, so I kept been giving her a little bit off and on, to try to use up the rest of the jar while it was still fresh.

She started refusing to open her mouth and acting really uncomfortable immediately after finishing most of the jar this afternoon--and she hadn't had any of the bread at that time.

It was a sweet potato and chicken dinner by Earth's Best. The ingredients seemed completely safe, but I know that Hain Celestial group (the parent company) uses corn-derived ingredients in most of their products. A past call to Earth's Best verified that the citric acid in the fruit baby food jars is corn-derived, and many of the baby foods they make contain corn. I thought the vegetables with safe ingredients would be okay, and she's seemed to do fine with them in the past.

However, if the food is manufactured on the same equipment as the corn-containing baby food, it could be a russian roulette. Some jars of food might be fine, while others (near the beginning of the run, perhaps, directly after a corn-containing food) might have been cross-contaminated with corn ingredients. I guess we really need to just stick with the Organic Baby brand food with citrus-derived citric acid when we need to use jar food.

It could have been either the bread or the baby food. My guess is that it was both.

I gave her a dinner containing no nightshades, no bread, and no jarred baby food. She was quite cheery and normal all evening, went to sleep easily, and is now sleeping peacefully.

I guess we really need to stop trying to coax Baby E to eat things she doesn't want to eat.

Fussy Girl

Baby E is still so miserable today that I called and made a doctor appointment. She slept better last night, only waking maybe 3 times, but she's so very fussy today.

She keeps crying sharply, but nothing I do seems to soothe her. She wants to be held, but then cries to get down, only to cry harder and throw herself pitifully on the floor when I put her down. She has taken a couple of naps, only to awaken prematurely, crying. When I pick her up she'll doze off again, then wake up crying in my arms moments later, and repeat that cycle several times.

It seems to be lasting too long to be a reaction to something she ate two days ago. I doubt it has to do with hitting her head, but I'll ask the doctor about that anyway.

I'm thinking maybe ear infection?

We'll see what the doctor says. At least our regular pediatrician (the fabulous one) is on call, so we'll get to see him at the after-hours clinic tonight.

Bell Peppers

The part for our dishwasher came today, just as I was halfway through the pile of dishes on the counter. I screwed the little bolt in, loaded the dishwasher, and started it. It hummed away merrily while I dried and put away the dishes I had washed. It seems to work great now.

Baby E is sleeping, finally, and I need to go to bed too. She kept us awake for most of the night last night.

After several weeks of avoiding nightshades, we decided to test our luck with some Chicken A La King I'd made and frozen a number of weeks ago. It had chicken, rice milk, green bell peppers and mushrooms in it.

Baby E just had a piece or two of the chicken, but she strongly disliked the sauce and wouldn't eat the chicken--always a bad sign. I noticed, too, that she started pulling at her ears and rubbing her eyes during the meal--another bad sign.

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When she fell and bumped her head (with some help from her sister) right after dinner, though, that really complicated matters.

She spent the next several hours being fussy and whiny, holding her head, rubbing her eyes, passing lots of gas, acting like her stomach hurt, and intermittently flailing around screaming. It's so hard to know exactly what's wrong when she's unable to communicate exactly what she's feeling. She kept fussing, wanting to nurse, and saying "ow". She screamed whenever I tried to put her down and walk away, and she worked herself into an absolute frenzy within minutes when we tried to put her to bed. It's hard to explain the intensity with which she cries when she's in pain like that--it's definitely different from a "don't-want-to-go-to-sleep" or even an angry tantrum cry.

Between the head bump, the nightshades she had eaten, and her cold, we didn't know what to do or think. The pupils of her eyes seemed fine and she didn't have any of the classic symptoms of a head injury (plus, she hadn't cried all that hard or for very long, and didn't have much of a bump on her head). But she kept crying, seeming to be in lots of pain, and acting very unlike her normal self.

We agreed that if she didn't improve soon, or got worse, we would call the doctor. Just as we were trying to decide whether to call, she finally fell asleep, and she did seem better after that. Her symptoms were the classic "something's not right" and "baby in pain" signs we've become accustomed to when she eats food containing corn. But we're pretty sure she didn't have corn, and she reacted similarly the last time we ate this same meal.

We spent a worrisome night checking on her frequently when she was sleeping, and being up with her when (more often than not) she woke crying or slept fitfully, whimpering. She was up many times during the night for extended periods of time, and finally ended up tossing and turning in our bed for a few hours before falling into a deep sleep an hour or two before it was time to get up.

She woke up in a great mood and seemed to be feeling fine, but after mid-morning she was grumpy and fussy all day--not surprising for a child as tired as she had to be. I was barely functional today, too, and the older girls--both coming down with colds now--weren't much better. We just did Bible, math, phonics and reading today, and left it at that.

I'm just so glad that Baby E's pain-filled sleepless nights seem to be avoidable simply by changing our diet.

The prospect of cutting out all nightshades in addition to corn and legumes, though, seems rather bleak. If we do end up having to take that step, it will certainly significantly limit our already-limited diet.

We're not going to make assumptions, though. Maybe it was the mushrooms and not the green pepper that caused her trouble. Maybe she's allergic to only green peppers, and not other nightshades (although her response to potatoes in the past has not been encouraging in that respect). Maybe there was some trace of unidentified corn or soy in the meal. Maybe it really was the bump on her head, or just her being fussy and grouchy because of her cold or some other reason.

In some ways it would be so much easier if she had more clear and specific allergy symptoms. If she got a distinctive rash every time she was exposed to an allergen, at least we'd know she wasn't just being fussy for some other reason. With symptoms like crying and sleeplessness, it's a matter of degree--and, for a large part, of instinct. We know when she's not acting "normal" and when something is abnormal to a large enough degree that we know something is really wrong.

We're cautious, though, for several reasons. We don't want to jump to conclusions or make assumptions.

For one thing, we don't want to start cutting out more and more foods and making our lives more difficult without being sure it's really necessary.

For another thing, my first thought that she might be reacting to something has occasionally been wrong.

For instance, I once thought Baby E was reacting to having her face washed with a baby wipe that had several iffy (possibly corn or soy) ingredients. But, after trying unsuccessfully several times to reproduce the results, I decided that my sister-in-law was right: she'd just gotten red streaks on her face because I'd rubbed a little too hard trying to get a stubborn crusty off her face, not because she'd reacted to the wipe solution. She has very sensitive skin which turns red easily--just the pressure from picking her up gently, the grip of a hand on her little fingers to help her walk, the contact point where she sat down, or the touch of her clothes on her skin can leave red marks on her skin which take quite a few minutes to fade.

Cornstarch in the diapers, the wrong laundry soap, or the chemicals from disposable diapers do definitely seem to cause problems for her--probably because they all involve prolonged contact of fairly significant amounts of substances against her skin and mucous membranes. But brief, occasional skin contact with things like baby wipes, rubbing alcohol and other external substances doesn't seem to have a drastic effect on her.

It's really good news that I don't have to worry too much about her touching a baby wipe containing corn derivatives or a newspaper printed with soy-derived ink. Putting those things in her mouth may be another story, but I haven't seen any clear contraindication to external exposure with small amounts of allergens. That's such a relief. Even though I still try to minimize her skin contact with corn and soy as much as possible, it's nice to have at least that one thing I don't need to be quite so careful about.

I don't look forward to the trials with nightshades that await. My sister Sparrow has severe problems with nightshades, and I know how ill even trace amounts of any nightshade make her. We'll take Baby E and me off nightshades again for a week or two, then I'll probably try mushrooms first a few times to make sure it wasn't the mushrooms she was reacting to. Then we'll probably try bell peppers again, then potatoes, and finally tomatoes. Just pinpointing whether she's allergic to nightshades or not will be a weeks- or months-long process that very well may involve quite a few painful days and miserable sleepless nights, and of course could be potentially dangerous if she were to have a severe reaction. More likely, though, just lots of discomfort.

That, or we could go back to the allergist and have a skin test done again. That would be fairly definitive if it were positive (and she does have a definite history of positive skin tests to foods she has these kinds of issues with), and could save us a lot of trial and error. If it were negative we'd still have to do the oral challenges to see whether she had a differently-mediated allergy or an intolerance to the foods, but at least we'd know there was little chance of an anaphylactic reaction.

However, the allergist seemed to discourage us from testing for too many things. The more foods you test for, he said, the more the chances of a false positive. Testing for too many things can be counterproductive. The tests are rather costly and time-consuming, not to mention somewhat invasive and uncomfortable.

But, on the other hand, a reaction from an oral challenge is probably more uncomfortable and severe than a reaction to a skin test, and with the skin test at least we'd have medical personnel on hand in case of (an admittedly unlikely) severe reaction.

Maybe we'll do something in between. I think what we may end up doing is waiting until she's recovered from this current illness (she hardly coughed at all today, and her runny nose seems to be drying up as AJ's runny nose and general ill-feeling increases). Then we'll probably test mushrooms (which I think won't be a problem) and after that at least one nightshade (maybe tomatoes, which she's been begging to eat because she likes the bright red color). If she has a clear reaction that can't be attributed to anything else, then I'm guessing we'll probably head back to the allergist to test again before trying more oral challenges. But I really don't know.

We just have to continue taking it one day at a time, one decision at a time.

First Wink

Baby E just winked at me. She's been trying and trying to wink over the last several days. Usually she just manages to close her eyes and open them again.

I didn't think it was possible for a 13-month-old to figure out how to do something like that, but she did--albeit a little unconventionally. She closed both eyes, then opened just one and kept it that way for quite a while. I winked at her again, and she did it again . . . and again. It's awfully cute.

I really need to get a picture of this.

September Sunshine

Baby E still has a nasty cough, so she and I stayed home while DH took the older girls to church. There's a special service today, with baptisms and baby dedications. Baby E has been sick both times we've had a baby dedication since she was born. Hopefully next time (in 6 months) she'll be well enough to go and be a part of the service.

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Baby E has discovered the joy of baskets. She'll find a little basket, fill it with blocks or balls, and carry it around delightedly. Right now she's filling up her basket and then climbing into the little inflatable pool in the family room to dump it out. Then she'll fill it up and dump it out again several times before filling it up and taking a tour around the room with it.

She's asking to use the potty more consistently (instead of us just guessing or trying to read her signals). She'll get the potty and pat it, or pat her diaper and say "otty!" or "go!" until we help her go, and she's getting quite good at "holding it" if it takes us a few minutes to get her to a potty.

She's saying new words every day. Today while DH and the girls were getting ready to leave, she stood at the top of the stairs calling, "Guys! Guys!" While I had her sitting on the potty a few minutes ago, she started pointing at the wastebasket and saying "Og! Og!." It took me a minute to realize that she was telling me there were pictures of frogs on the wastebasket. "What's that?" is still one of her most commonly-spoken phrases, but it's getting clearer and easier to understand.

On Friday both older girls did water-measuring for math. M&M is working on concepts of more and less (which she already understands quite well) and AJ was counting how many cups of water it took to fill various larger containers. It was a lot of fun, but I did end up wishing we'd done the exercise outside. Even with several large towels on the table and nearby, we ended up with large pools of water on the table, chairs and floor. The girls helped clean it up, though.

The highlight for me was seeing AJ get so excited when she realized that differently sized and shaped containers could hold the same amount of water. We had fun guessing how much water a particular container could hold, and then testing our theories. I have two one-cup measures that I've wondered for years if were really accurate, because one looks so much larger than the other. It was fun to test those out and verify that, yes, they do actually both hold the same amount of water. AJ nearly jumped up and down in her chair, she was so excited.

I did take some pictures and will post those later . . . right now I'm at the laptop instead of at the upstairs computer where the pictures are stored.

Our dishwasher broke on Friday, so we're washing dishes by hand until the replacement part comes in the mail. Last night I cooked several meals to put into the freezer, so we have some catching-up on the dishes to do. We were so tired last night that we decided to just leave them for today.

Our neighbors are out in the yard today, putting up a fence between our back yard and theirs. I offered to help, but they graciously declined. We're splitting the cost of the fence, but it's nice of the neighbors to do all the work of putting it up. I'm so excited that the fence is finally getting done. Once we get the front panels and a gate up, I'll be able to relax a bit more when the kids are playing outside.

It's such a beautiful sunny day that I think Baby E and I will go outside for a while. We'd better enjoy the sun while we can, before the rain and the cold set in for the winter.

Almost On Schedule

Well, today is the first day we've actually managed to start school before 10 a.m. and get done before 3. That's encouraging.

The older girls are having quiet time now. Baby E is acting tired but refusing to take a second nap. She seems to be feeling a bit better today, but has added a cough to her symptoms.

I'm feeling particularly fatigued today, so I think I'll try to lie down with her and see if that helps her go to sleep.

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I heard back from the allergist this morning that my celiac test had a "high normal" result in the "equivocal" range for the IgG antibodies--meaning it's neither positive nor strictly negative. The allergist said this was nothing to worry about and requires no further action.

I'm not sure what, if anything, that exactly means, but I'll be getting a copy of the test results in the mail soon. Then I'll have more specific information that will enable me to make myself crazy consulting Dr. Google. :)

Tonight I get to attend a menu-planning event sponsored by our church MOMS group. We'll all bring our favorite recipe books and plan some menus.

We're really enjoying school, all of us.

Currently AJ is learning about Christopher Columbus, studying measurements, and identifying vowels and consonants. In English today she learned about syllables, practiced identifying them, and added -ed and -s endings to words. We talked about birds, and composed an essay about hummingbirds (she narrated and I wrote, then we edited it together).

M&M is reading better every day. In math the last couple of days she's learning about creating patterns. We made fingerprints today and talked about how no two fingerprints are the same, and then she composed a brief essay about it.

I'm glad I didn't try to skip ahead too much in math. M&M had a little more trouble grasping the concept of creating various patterns from the same objects than I'd expected. So we're going to spend an extra day or two on that. Today I had her do an activity creating different shapes and pictures from colored shaped tiles. She enjoyed that.

AJ is supposed to do an activity tomorrow weighing things on a balance scale. But I don't have a balance scale and am not sure where to obtain one, so I'm going to switch that lesson with another one to give me the weekend to make, buy or borrow a balance scale. Conveniently, that will put both girls doing liquid-measuring exercises tomorrow. That will be fun.

I realized today that I skipped a few too many lessons in the first grade English book for AJ, so we backed up in that a bit. We're going to start near the beginning and go systematically through most of it, I think.

She's learning how to tell the difference between vowels and consonants--a hard concept to explain! I think I just memorized them as a kid; I don't remember learning the how or why. The best way I've come up with to explain it is that vowels are the letters with two sounds (long and short). We also talked a little about open vs. stopped sounds, but I'm not sure that really makes sense. She'll have to end up memorizing them also, I think, but if anyone has any ideas for a better explanation I'd love to hear them.

We've also started reading Farmer Boy from the Little House on the Prairie series. All of us are enjoying that. It's good literature and history all at once.

Wordless Wednesday: Mysterymommy Liz's Idea

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Baby E's Cold

Poor Baby E. It's so hard to have a cold when you're a baby and don't understand.

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She doesn't understand why she can't breathe through her nose, and she doesn't know it's only temporary. So it scares her.

She keeps patting her face and head and telling me, "Ow. Ow." She wants me to do something about it. I can't even give her Tylenol; just hugs and lots of fluids.



She can't figure out why icky yellow stuff keeps oozing out of her nose. She'll point to it pitifully and say "Nose? Nose?" over and over again.

But, of course, if I try to wipe it she screams and shakes her head frantically, covering her nose with her hand and trying with all her might to get away. Her poor little nose is so sore and red by now that it must feel like I'm rubbing it with sandpaper.



All she really wants is to be held. Is that so much for a baby to ask?



It doesn't help that she's still working on cutting that 8th tooth.



Between that, the frequent requests for milk, the fact that we all overslept this morning, the dreary rainy day, and my own oncoming cold, we haven't gotten much school done this morning. It's nearly noon and I've accomplished nothing more than cooking breakfast, letting the kids watch a Spanish video, and having them do their chores and read a book.

I'll be getting out the sling to try to get some schooling done with the older girls if Baby E doesn't go down for a nap soon. Right now the older girls are playing with an inflatable swimming pool (a gift from Aunt J) and a bunch of balls and blankets in the family room while I feed Baby E. (Great idea, Liz . . . thanks!) They're getting lots of exercise, so I'm calling it P.E.



At least we have the luxury to take a light school day if we need to. Even if we weren't talking about kindergarten and preschool, there's absolutely no need to worry about the kids getting behind in their studies at the rate they're going.

Yesterday they each did two math lessons (about 5 pages per lesson), just because they didn't want to stop after one. I'm having to skip a lot of the first-grade English course because it's too easy for AJ, and M&M read four (4!) books yesterday because she's fallen in love with reading. I don't think they're in too much danger of lagging behind the median academic level for 4- and 5-year-olds at this point. :)

Vanishing Blogroll

Just in case you noticed that the blogroll is gone from the sidebar . . . it's not permanent.

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I'm going to start from scratch, though, and will be experimenting with blogrolling instead of bloglines for the blogroll. I like the idea of having an indication for recently updated blogs in the list. I'm still subscribed to everyone's feeds in bloglines, though.

Many of the blogs linked in my blogroll were defunct blogs that nobody is posting on now, and some are blogs I haven't taken the time to read in months (and whose authors could probably care less whether I have them on my blogroll since neither of us reads the other's blog). When I started the list, I was basically putting every blog I came across that I thought mildly interesting into the feed. But the list got so long it was about as much use to me as no list at all.

My goal is to have the blogs I read on a semi-regular basis and/or the blogs of people who read The Purple Puzzle Place in the blogroll, plus a few that I think are worth linking to for some other reason.

Don't worry--if you're a regular reader here or someone on whose blog I show up semi-regularly, you'll be back.

Once the blogroll gets back up, if you'd like to be listed and you're not on it, please do leave a comment or drop a note. I probably just missed you in all the construction dust.

In the mean time, I hope nobody was counting too much on using my blogroll to find a particular blog. :)

Punctuation Traffic Signals

Well, after the girls took 3 1/2 hours yesterday morning to do their chores (which should take 20 minutes), I decided we needed a solution. Last night I made carrot-oat bran muffins with raisins, so they would have something quick and easy to eat for breakfast.

This morning I informed the girls that I would be starting a video at a certain time, whether they were ready or not. Whoever was done with their chores at that point could watch it, and if they took too long to do their chores the video would be over before they finished.

They finished their chores in 20 minutes.

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Now they're watching an animated portrayal of the story of Creation (which is what we're studying in Bible class this week) while I pop in some laundry, do a few other things, and write a quick post.

Baby E is sick with a cold. She's miserable, poor thing. Last night she kept waking up in a panic every time she tried to breathe through her nose. I ended up sitting up with her dozing on me the first shift of the night, then DH finally got her asleep in her crib for the rest of the night.

Getting such a late start yesterday threw off our school day, but other than that our second Monday morning went very well. Just a couple of brief highlights: M&M is really taking off with her reading, and is reading an early-reader book every day. She's especially enjoying handwriting practice and math, also.

AJ learned yesterday about punctuation. I liked the way the BJU 1st grade English program had me explain punctuation using a traffic light. AJ is very interested in traffic lights and how they work, so color-coding the various sentence parts with green, yellow and red worked well for her. She narrated a composition, and I made sure there were some sentences with commas and semicolons in it. Then she colored all the capital letters at the beginnings of sentences green for go, the punctuation at the ends of the sentences red for stop, and the commas and semicolons in the middle of the sentences yellow for pause. We also did an exercise with reading the same sentences with different inflections according to the various punctuation marks.

Baby E is doing a fine job entertaining herself with various toys (anything that opens and closes and allows her to take objects in and out is a hit), snacks and naps while we work on school. She's napping better with a slightly more regular schedule, so that helps a lot.

Baby E is so fascinated with her newfound walking skills that she can entertain herself for quite some time just walking across the living room and back, then picking up a toy and carrying it across, then putting the toy in the cupboard and getting another one. She squeals and holds her arms up in the air when she gets walking fast, like she's riding on a roller coaster. It's very cute.

M&M reads "Al"

Unfortunately, audioblogger can't record more than a few minutes at a time. So, here's 4 minutes (I think) of M&M reading a book about a dinosaur named Al.

Free Garage Sale, Errands and Friends

We had a busy weekend here.

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Starting on Friday, we hauled a bunch of stuff we weren't using out into the driveway. I put up "Free garage 'sale'" signs, and we put ads online saying that we had a pile of stuff in our driveway, free for the taking.

It was quite a success. Almost everything we put out disappeared, even things I didn't think would be taken (such as opened, partially-used boxes of cornmeal and other food). We were even able to get rid of several larger items that were just creating clutter, such as some extra chairs and strollers. I'm really glad we were able to give the things to someone who could use them.

One lesson we learned, though, was to put anything portable that we didn't want taken completely out of sight, not just well away from the labeled pile on the opposite side of the yard from the driveway.

Saturday morning, a friend came over to help DH move some furniture around, and we worked on organizing and decluttering. Then I took a load of toys and clothes to sell at a local consignment shop.

On Saturday afternoon I went over to JT's house to help her prepare and freeze a number of meals. We made double batches of two kinds of soup, which gave them about 5 meals from each kind. Then I cut a package of steaks into thin slices and JT put them into freezer bags with marinade, ready to pull out and thaw for a beef-and-broccoli stir-fry when needed. I thought that was a great idea, and if I can find a good marinade recipe we like and can eat I'll give it a try with some chicken or beef.

It was especially fun to see JT's son who is just a few months younger than Baby E. I kept laughing, because he did so many things that Baby E does, that I thought were quirks of hers. I guess they're gestures and mannerisms that are common to the age, not just unique to Baby E.

On the way home I went shopping for some things the kids needed. I ended up being away from Baby E longer than I ever have been before, but it went pretty well.

Yesterday at church, BAby E had her first time successfully using a public restroom. She'd been fussing and squirming, so I took her to the bathroom and she used the toilet there! I was so proud of her.

After church, we went out for lunch with some friends from our home group. As we were trying to load everyone into the car to leave church, Baby E suddenly started screaming hysterically and flailing around in pain. Nothing I did seemed to help. She didn't want to nurse, and even spit out the teething tablets I put into her mouth--something she's never refused before. It was so intense that I was keeping a close eye on her to see if she needed the epi-pen. The only thing I could think of was that I'd let her get down on the floor at church, and then she'd put her hands into her mouth.

I felt terrible for letting her get down on the floor and allowing her to be exposed to allergens that way. With all the cookies at church, plus the crumbs from communion that morning, there were sure to be crumbs of corn- and soy-containing foods on the floor. But she's over a year old and walking--how can I keep her from ever being on the floor? I don't know, but watching her suffer because of something I could have prevented had me in tears along with her.

Finally I took off her socks and shoes, which were on a bit too tight, and rubbed her feet. That calmed her down enough that we were able to put her into her car seat. She was kind of floppy and lethargic once she calmed down, but that could have been partly because she was so tired. I sat in the back so I could keep a close eye on her, but she seemed okay.

She was still fussy for most of the rest of the day, though, and I was definitely afraid to put her down anywhere at McDonald's while we visited with our friends and the kids played in the tubes. I had a few snacks for Baby E and myself, so we ate puffed rice and ginger slices while everyone else ate hamburgers.

After that we made a run to get some baby food and a few other necessities from the health food store on that end of town. We do our grocery shopping now in increments, because most things we can have are carried at only one store in the area. We get yogurt and applesauce one place, baby food, crackers and cereal another place, produce another place, meat at a butcher shop, and bread and rice milk at still another store.

We had our first "family meeting" last night, and made plans for the coming few weeks. I think the kids are going to enjoy having more input into our family affairs.

I was really tired, so DH sweetly took care of the kids and put all three of them to bed by himself while I went to bed super early. That was so nice. I slept for about 11 hours.

This morning several of us seem to be coming down with colds, or possibly just suffering from allergies with the weather change.

As soon as the girls finish their morning chores, we'll start our second week of school. I'm really looking forward to it.

School and Chores

Well, I think we're starting to get the hang of school.

I fell asleep with Baby E by 11 last night and then she and I both slept until she woke up at 6. I've been dreaming about textbooks and lesson planning--last night I woke DH up begging him to help me find a non-existent red teacher's book that I desperately needed in my dream.

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AJ has gotten over the first hump, I think, and is really enjoying school now that I've cut down on the amount of writing she has to do. I'm having her do more of the work orally, and with both girls I'm doing a better job of interspersing other activities with the reading/writing/desk work type of stuff, and finding more hands-on things for them to do.

AJ has been asking a lot of questions about blind people and how they do things like read and find their way around, so I'm adding in some reading and activities about that. Yesterday I showed her what Braille looks like and had her read a short description of the Braille alphabet and its development. Today we'll probably watch at least part of a video about Helen Keller. I'm going to see if I can find some library books about blind people, seeing eye dogs, etc. too.

M&M and I skimmed through the rest of the first K5 Beginnings unit yesterday, doing the most relevant activities. She's really enjoying school and her enthusiasm is contagious.

Today M&M and I are starting with the real reading in lesson 30. It will be a little below her level, but it takes a systematic approach to grammar and phonetics that I think we'll want to cover, even if quickly. Besides, she'll love the story in lesson 30--about a baby duck who wants to make the sounds of the other farm animals. It includes lots of fun sound effects like "m-ack" when the duckling is trying to moo, and "rr-rr-rr-rr-ack" when he's trying to crow.

She's reading fairly proficiently now. When I made new chore charts for the girls this week, with a few added tasks, I didn't even use pictures. She only has to ask for help reading a few of the chores.

In case anyone is wondering what kinds of chores a 5-year-old and a 4-year-old do around here, I'll post the list. For now, I have them both doing the same chores. Their daily chore charts look like this:

Morning Chores: Potty, Get Dressed, Put Away Pajamas, Make Bed, Pick Up Bedroom, Eat Breakfast, Clear Table, Brush Teeth, Wash Face, Brush Hair, Wipe Bathroom Sink & Counter, Feed Puff

Evening Chores: Tidy Desk, Pick Up Family Room, Pick Up Playroom, Put On Pajamas, Put Away Clothes, Pick Out Clothes for Tomorrow, Pick Up Bedroom, Brush Teeth, Wash Face, Brush Hair, Potty

Giving the girls haircuts last week really helped to streamline our mornings. They're able to brush their own hair now, and it looks presentable with nothing more than a quick brush. They like their haircuts, even though I'm not very proficient at cutting hair. I did AJ's first, and ended up getting it shorter than I'd intended trying to even it out. M&Ms turned out better, with a nice soft shoulder-length bob. But she kept insisting she wanted hers shorter, so I kept going until I finally said, "No more! That's as short as I'm going to cut it." She loves it. AJ reminds me a lot of their beloved cousin EM with this haircut.

The girls also do other chores to help out and earn pennies, such as setting the table and helping clear it off, sorting and putting away laundry (they don't get paid for those), vacuuming, loading/unloading the dishwasher (I do the sharp/heavy/high things), tidying up, dusting, keeping an eye on Baby E and entertaining her while I fix dinner nearby or put in a load of laundry, and washing things like the floor (they really love being given a wet rag and allowed to scrub things, and being able to squirt lemon oil on a rag and rub it on the wood cupboards is even better!). They don't do all of those every day, of course, but they enjoy helping with whatever I'm working on that day, and sometimes choose helping with housework over playing.

Well, it's 7 a.m. and time to get up, so I'd better go and pop some muffins or a coffee cake into the oven that's been preheating while I write this.

Wordless Wednesday: Big Girls

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School Starts

Well, just a few days before we were scheduled to start school DH and I decided that the curriculum we had picked out wasn't a good fit for our family. So I've been staying up very late (2 a.m. is the earliest I've been to bed in the last week, I think, and 6 a.m. the latest) trying to come up with a new curriculum and approach on the fly, and doing lesson planning.

I had gotten some distance into the K-5 material earlier, and with every page I was thinking, "AJ is going to be bored out of her mind with this, and this, and this . . . oh, there's something that we might want to cover . . . wow, that one is really below her level . . . most of this stuff is way below M&M's level, much less AJ's level. If I do this curriculum with AJ as written, she is going to hate school."

Most of the stuff we had picked out for M&M didn't really seem like it was going to work well as anything other than a supplement, either.

So, after a discussion with DH, we decided to have both girls do something almost completely different than we had planned.

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We're going to have M&M do the K-5 Beginnings program, or at least parts of it, instead of AJ. We're doing the first few introductory lessons with M&M and then I plan to skip all but a few activities in the first third or more of the course. We'll skip ahead to the parts that will be more interesting and challenging to her.

M&M can read and write, add and subtract, intelligently blend colors, draw recognizable objects, and do all sorts of things that aren't even on the radar in the first part of this program. So I don't see much point in having her do months of nothing but "color the frame around the letter a to develop visual recognition of the letter" types of activities.

I'm picking and choosing some of the other activities, like having her listen to a story and answer questions about it, narrating beginning compositions, etc, and we'll be working on reading at more of a first-grade level within a few weeks I think.

So far I'm ending up picking and choosing what to use from the core curriculum and then supplementing or changing things for probably 75% of the stuff we're using, even after revamping our plan.

With AJ, we're doing some first grade materials (mostly English, writing and grammar) and having her do some of the 2nd-3rd grade and up supplemental reading. For reading, I'm using an old 2nd-third grade primer which is rather advanced, and having her read other books that are more on her level. At the moment she's reading Betsy-Tacy as one of her reading activities for school, and she's loving it.

She started off reading the first chapter yesterday:

It was difficult, later, to think of a time when Betsy and Tacy had not been friends. Hill Street came to regard them almost as one person. Betsy's brown braids went with Tacy's red curls, Betsy's plump legs with Tacy's spindly ones, to school and from school, up hill and down, on errands and in play. So that when Tacy had the mumps and Betsy was obliged to make her journeys alone, saucy boys teased her: 'Where's the cheese, apple pie?' 'Where's your mush, milk?' As though she didn't feel lonesome enough already! And Hill Street knew when Sunday came, even without listening to the rolling bells, for Betsy Ray and Tacy Kelly (whose parents attended different churches), set off down Hill Street separately, looking uncomfortable and strange.

But on this March afternoon, a month before Betsy's fifth birthday, they did not know each other. They had not even seen each other, unless Betsy had glimpsed Tacy, without even knowing her for Tacy, among the children of assorted sizes moving into the house across the street. Betsy had been kept in because of bad weather, and all day she had sat with her nose pasted to the pane. It was exciting beyond words to have a family with children moving into that house.

With those first paragraphs, AJ was hooked.

I'm having her tell me about the chapters after she reads them, and I'm always impressed at the details she understands and remembers. In her free time she's choosing to read books like Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle (which we're also reading as a family) and Paddington at Work We're also using the Christian Liberty Press kindergarten science and history with her for school. We really like the science book, and the history is pretty good for the most part.

We're doing Bible with both girls together. For now I'm using the BJU K-5 Bible program as a jumping-off point, with lots of freedom to depart from that and add or change things. Today we followed up yesterday's lesson on Samuel by acting out the story of God calling to the boy Samuel, and the girls loved that. We also talked about the temple, the priest's garments, the curtain and the Holy of Holies, and Hannah's prayer and promise to God. I really enjoyed hearing the girls tell DH all about it tonight, and was surprised at how much they remembered.

The girls have started working in their Singapore math books, which they enjoy. As we expected, the first part is very easy for them, but there are a few skills that it's good for them to review, and they're buzzing through them quickly. M&M is going through about 10 lessons a day (and then only stops because I tell her she has to), and AJ is working through quite a few at a time also. AJ's math book has her working quite a bit on writing her numbers, which she finds a bit tedious but definitely needs to work on. Handwriting is a weak point for her.

We're adding in some things that the kids find more interesting and fun, too, like adding 130 plus 4 or figuring out how many people would be fed if you had 6 grapes and gave 2 to each person. Both girls really seem to enjoy math.

Yesterday was our first day of school, and it was a lot harder than I'd expected. Both girls whined and complained, called things "boring" that I'd put a lot of effort and preparation into, got frustrated when they had to wait while I helped the other with something, wanted to see what the other was doing when I asked them to work on separate things, and wanted to wander off and do their own thing when I was trying to do something with the two of them together.

Meanwhile, Baby E whined incessantly when she wasn't building herself a stool to climb up on the couch and get into the hamster cage, throwing a tantrum because I wouldn't give her the book I was trying to read to the girls, or getting into some other mischief.

Today I reorganized a bit, left out some of the repetitive things in various subjects, and took a more relaxed approach with a few more hands-on activities, and it went much better. It probably also helped that we didn't have chiropractor and allergist appointments like we did yesterday, which meant that Baby E's nap didn't get interrupted and she was in a much better mood.

DH and I have been looking into a literature-based program called Sonlight. So far we're very impressed with it. It has options to study at a particular grade/age level with variations for different reading levels, so that a child like AJ or M&M can be reading at a 4th- or 5th-grade level of difficulty, but with a kindergarten level of themes.

Many materials that are at AJ's reading level are really too mature for her age, and she still needs kindergarten-level instruction in many areas even though she's so advanced in areas like reading. It seems like Sonlight does a really good job of balancing reading level with maturity level.

They include a lot more depth and context in things like history, too. Sonlight history is much less US-centric than many other history programs, and gives a more honest view, it seems, of various cultures and time periods.

The Christian Liberty history is the best textbook I've seen for the age level, and is the only kindergarten history I could find that seemed to be remotely challenging and interesting for AJ's level. But it still oversimplifies or puts a spin on some things to the point that DH and I think it's kind of misleading and confusing in a few chapters (such as skipping everything between Apostle Paul and Martin Luther in the summary of church history, and following the all-too-common pitfall of exaggerating the "Christianity" of certain important historical figures in a somewhat misguided attempt to make some facts and periods of history seem more "Christian" than they really are) so we'll end up supplementing or skipping those parts. (We really like the CL science book so far.)

We want to teach our kids from a Christian worldview, of course--but not at the expense of a full, honest, contextual view of history and other subjects. We tend to think that claiming an event or person was more godly than they were tends to backfire, and probably won't prepare the kids as well for life or even deepen their faith as much as a less sanitized approach would.

It seems from what we've seen so far that the Sonlight curriculum avoids those pitfalls. It appears to make history more accessible, interesting and memorable while at the same time taking a more in-depth and accurate approach to it and other subjects. We could even continue to use Singapore math (it's even one of several math programs they offer) or another program we choose for math and a few other subjects, while using Sonlight for science, history, reading/grammar, etc.

Not that any "curriculum" will be perfect . . . I doubt we'll ever find something we end up using from start to finish exactly as written for every subject. Of course not. But we're thinking we'll end up trying Sonlight program next year. We're strongly considering ordering the kindergarten program this year even though we now have a self-built curriculum that will probably be workable for at least the first half of the year.

If any of my readers have experience (good or bad) with Sonlight or know of anyone who has used it, I'd love to hear about it. It would sure be nice not to have to essentially create our own curriculum from scratch every year, but to still have something that seemed to fit our family's needs well.

Baby E, meanwhile, is enthralled with her newfound skill of walking, and wants to do it constantly. No longer is she content to be carried or slung--she wants to be ON HER OWN FEET, thank you very much. Not that she stays on her feet for long--she's still quite wobbly and falls down a lot. But walking is suddenly the most interesting and fun activity in the world--next to climbing up and sliding down everything she can scale, that is.

Today at lunch she was making us all laugh by trying desperately to wink. She tried blinking both eyes first, then she took her little hands and was pushing one eye open and closed with her fingers. It looked like it should hurt, but she was so delighted with our laughter that she kept doing it until I took her upstairs for a nap.

Later, she was holding her ear and I wondered if she had an earache. But then I realized that she had her hand cupped over her ear while she repeated, "Hewwo? Hello? Hi dere! Hi!"

She was pretending to talk on the phone.

Baby E does an amazing amount of imaginary play for a 13-month-old.

And now, I'm off to bed--far too late again. Even my allergist scolded me today for not taking care of myself. (BTW, I didn't test positive to any food allergens, which was a nice surprise after testing highly allergic to so many environmental allergens. I know I have some food intolerances, but for the most part those aren't as scary or as difficult to deal with as Baby E's food allergies.)

I simply must figure out a way to get more sleep and prioritize better in getting things done.

(Hint to self: spending many hours building an elaborate wardrobe [complete with hanging rod, a shelf, a net for small accessories, and a swinging door with a knob and latch] out of a cardboard box for the kids' playclothes was probably not the best use of an entire evening this weekend, even if it was fun--and even if a couple of the kids' textbooks recommended setting up a dress-up area as part of school preparation.)

Officially a toddler

Baby E walked all the way across the family room today, all by herself. She's wobbly (I guess that's why they call it toddling), but she's walking; really walking. She's been able to do it for a while, and would walk up to 10 steps at a time if there was strong motivation. But until yesterday and today she hadn't really had the desire to just launch herself out across a wide open space and start walking.

She's not really a baby any more. She's truly a toddler.

Should I start calling her Toddler E? That just doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

Besides, she's still my baby who likes to fall asleep in the SPOC (simple piece of cloth) wrap on my chest.



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Today we went to a local thrift store that sells clothing by the pound and things like books very inexpensively. We were just looking for a couple of books, but when I walked past the clothing bins the distinctive stripes of a Hanna Andersson playdress leaped out at me. Digging through the bin I found 5 Hanna Andersson dresses in excellent condition, three of them playdresses, in AJ's and M&M's sizes. I found quite a few cute Gymboree, Gap and other name-brand items in really good condition, too.

Apparently someone with a kid about the age of my older girls had donated a bunch of really nice clothes, and the employee was just sorting them out of the donation bin into the pay-by-the-pound bins as we came in. I'm really excited about that. Getting those clothes really helped our back-to-school wardrobe, and it's hard to beat 95 cents a pound!

I'm thinking I'll go back tomorrow to quickly look and see if the leggings that match the dresses showed up farther down in the bin.

Mostly this weekend I'm working on getting ready for school to start.

AJ's lesson plans are mostly laid out for me in the BJU Beginnings K-5 program, but I have to add Bible and Math and we are supplementing with some extra science, history and reading since she is so far above her grade level in reading and comprehension. We'll do some beginning Spanish, too.

M&M's planning is a bit more difficult. I am using Before 5 in a Row as a sort of leaping-off point, and we'll do Bible and Spanish together. But Before 5 in a Row is more a list of ideas than a curriculum, so I have to figure out how we're going to use that and some other resources, and essentially come up with my own agenda and lesson plans.

I don't want to be too structured, and both AJ and M&M seemed to do fine with unschooling last year. But at the same time, M&M is desperately wanting to "do school" and is constantly asking to do workbooks and projects. She'll want to do what AJ is doing, so I need to come up with things to keep her busy while AJ and I are doing the K-5 work.

I'm having second thoughts, too, about the K-5 curriculum. At least the beginning part seems to be right at M&M's level, although AJ would enjoy it too. I could just have the two of them do it together, but I don't really want to put the girls in the same grade for everything. And if I had M&M do K-5 now, when she's 4, what would she do next year or the last part of this year when AJ is in first grade?

Anyway, that's what I'm up to this weekend. I'm excited about starting school once I get over this hump of planning and preparation. DH and I agreed that we're going to set aside several hours at least one evening a week for me to focus on preparation for the next week's lessons. That will give me a chance to look over the lessons, gather needed supplies, etc.

Right now I'm trying to sketch out a general overview for the whole year (or at least the first semester--we'll see how far I get) and do in-depth preparation and supply-gathering for at least the first couple of weeks.

We're going to start out studying Genesis 1, learning a bit about the planets and solar system, and doing some math and phonics review. I plan to work in lots of hands-on art projects and other activities, and make sure we all do some active play or exercise every day.

By the way, I did end up returning the Chicco stroller I had bought. It seemed flimsy, and Baby E didn't like it. She was uncomfortable with the recline and just really disliked sitting in it. She's much happier in the twin stroller or something with a front bar that's more comfortable and allows her a little more wriggle room.

I took stock of the strollers I had and wrote up a summary of each one and what it needed in order to be usable. One was missing a hood, another was missing a basket, etc. Then I found someone selling a cheap Peg Perego stroller almost exactly like the old Peg I had. I bought it and am going to see if I can combine the good parts of the two strollers in order to make one good stroller out of them. That should be fun.

DH and I have been making a lot of progress on organizing our schedule and working on the house. DH has been decluttering and vacuuming in preparation for steam-cleaning the carpets, and I've been getting clothes laundered, organized, and pared down. It's encouraging to see some progress with that.

Oh, and the best thing that happened this week was that we found a babysitter that I think will be a good fit for our family. She answered the ad I put in the homeschool newsletter, and it turned out that we know her family.

She seems to really like the kids, they like her, she wasn't too rattled by Baby E's crying the last little while before we got home, and she has family members with severe food allergies, including allergies to milk and corn. It makes me feel so much better leaving Baby E with someone who understands and is experienced in dealing with food allergies, especially one as difficult and complicated as corn.

Wordless Wednesday: Dorothy the Miracle Baby

More here.

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Miracle Baby

Miraclebaby's daughter Dorothy was born today, a little after 5 p.m. She was a few ounces over 8 lbs (DH can't rememer if it was 2 or 3 ounces). The induction went well and we have a healthy baby! Hooray!

Congratulations, Miraclebaby and family!

Blogging Blues

The past couple of weeks have been mostly uneventful. Lots of little things . . . chiropractor appointments, shopping trips, much meal preparation and housekeeping, a little bird trapped in our van (we did manage to get it out), conversations with the kids, illness, a teething baby . . . that sort of thing.

I haven't had the time or energy to write the thoughtful and involved posts I'd like to write, and I don't have the motivation to write a lot of little inane posts at this time. I'm not sure the rambling journals of "what we did today, what I cooked, what I learned about food allergies and what my plans are for tomorrow" are interesting to anyone but myself, and lately they haven't seemed interesting even to me.

We're planning to start school soon, but I'm not even close to ready for that. This past month's changes in diet and lifestyle have pretty much taken over our lives and left few resources for anything else.

Right now I need to focus time and energy on finishing a couple of graphic design projects--a business card for my dad and a logo for my mom--and getting ready to start homeschooling. Then it's full-bore into school.

I had really hoped to have some organizing and decluttering done before we started school; it would make things so much easier if we could find things and if we had more usable space in our home without constantly tripping over things. But I've given up on that idea. If I wait until I have the house under control we will never get started with school. I'll just have to content myself with small, gradual, and hopefully relatively consistent progress.

I expect that once the girls and I get into a school routine, I may be able to fit more blogging back in. Maybe I'll even be able to come out with something interesting or insightful once in awhile (but don't hold your breath).

There is one post I really want to write, sparked by a discussion on someone else's blog. I started writing it about a week ago and then it sort of fizzled, but another event has added to the motivation to write about it. So we'll see if I get to finishing that.

Right now I'm just tired, not feeling well, and very busy. I'm feeling a bit like a hamster running crazily on an electric wheel that won't stop turning. I don't really feel like writing much. It's not just writing, either--I'm pretty burned out with just the basic childcare, allergy research, doctor and chiropractor appointments, meal preparation, and trying to catch up on the ever-getting-away-from-me housework. I'm having trouble doing anything that requires much mental energy lately.

I did finally break into the meals I froze a few weeks ago and had been saving for "when I really need them." Those are so nice to have. Those days that it's so tempting to go out to eat, it's helpful to know that there's a fully-prepared meal waiting at home in the freezer just needing to be heated and served.

I expect the lull in blogging is temporary--I usually can't not write for long. But, for now, I am being gentle with myself and not pushing myself to come up with something to write just to be able to say I posted something each day.