Lately Life

I’ve been spending a huge amount of time with Levi, working on lessons. It’s been a bit of a roller coaster ride and I’m looking forward to a straighter, more horizontal stretch ahead. Please, assure me that’s what’s ahead. Okay, maybe I’m delusional.

So the other kids have been doing a lot of their own thing. For Luke, that means reading, riding his motorbike, organizing my drawers, playing with his snap circuits…

Then a little over a week ago, my sister dropped by some no-bake cookies for Russ. He had helped them with their computer and requested no-bakes for payment because he loves them and I never bake them (what does that say about me?!). Luke thought they were the best thing evah. He begged me to let him call Aunt Shan and get the recipe. I finally gave him permission, but I was distracted when he called her. A little while later he presented me with his rough draft, a final draft, the recipe printed by Levi on an index card, and an index card file with the label (from the label machine) “recipe box.”

This led to an interest in the corner of my kitchen counter where I shove all the recipes I print off from the internet as I need them. My organizational system must have left something to be desired, because he took the wad of papers, three-hole punched them, and put them in a binder he had labeled “recipes.” While working on this project, he found a recipe card for marzipan, which he promptly inserted into his own card file for future use.

The next morning he woke me up asking if he could make no-bake cookies. Seriously. So, like any really good mom would, I said yes. Mostly I said yes just so he would leave me alone and I could go back to sleep. And he had no-bake cookies for breakfast, which are no less nutritious than cold cereal or oatmeal with brown sugar, right?

I thought this would satisfy Luke, but the next day or two he was scrounging around in the kitchen cabinets for the ingredients for marzipan. Many of you have never tasted marzipan (or even heard of it), I’m sure. Essentially, it’s like almond-flavored play-dough. You mix almond paste (not butter, paste is totally different) with powdered sugar and corn syrup (super healthy) until you can work it into shapes without it sticking to your fingers. Then you add food coloring and other accessories (cloves, cinnamon, frosting leaves, sprinkles) to turn it into miniature fruits and vegetables. Some talented people, like my best friend’s parents, can make these specimens look very realistic. We’re not so talented. But it has been a Christmas tradition (one of our very favorites) since before Leif was born (we make it during our St. Nicholas Day party with my best friend and kids). Marzipan is an acquired taste—and we’ve all acquired it.

Luke found the ingredients. I had TWO cans of almond paste. Which means he’s made marzipan twice now. I refuse to buy more almond paste, because I have no self control around the stuff. And I want to keep its status as a special holiday treat.

Luke also got out a difficult puzzle of the United States (which they are studying this year for geography). This was a more intricate puzzle than he had ever attempted, but he was determined. His brothers helped a bit in the beginning, but he completed the bulk of the puzzle on his own.

Unfortunately that is our only table in the whole house (other than the one we’ve recently put in the office/library/schoolroom for Levi’s workspace), so it’s difficult to have large puzzles in progress very often.

Then there’s Leif. If Levi doesn’t give me gray hair this year, Leif will. The kid is so smart and so stubborn. I try to have everyone do math together in the living room with individual white boards. Leif and Luke are perfectly capable of doing Levi’s math (whether or not they want to), and I only have them do the warm-up, lesson instruction, and practice questions together. They don’t have to do all the problems for the rest of the lesson. But Leif is always sneaking off. Always with something new written on his white board. Have you watched a cartoon where a character takes off with a poof, a cloud of dust and some “dash” lines the only thing that remains? That’s what it’s like for Leif, but he leaves behind his white board instead of dust. Can you hear the sound effects that go with this next picture? Zip. Dash. Poof.

The silly thing is that he’s a whiz at math. After he threw a stubborn fit, I had him work through a common factors problem with me and he totally rocked it. Then he wanted me to take a picture of his math whiz face (above left).

Just today I wrote 90 – 33 on the white board (vertically, with 90 over 33) and asked him to do it in his head. He gave me the answer (no sweat) and I asked him how he did it. He said “Zero minus three is negative three. Nine minus three is six. Sixty plus negative three is fifty-seven.” He was adamant that it should be “sixty plus negative three” because he already had a negative number. He just turned eight less than two months ago. Maybe it’s the thousands of hours he’s spent reading the 25 Life of Fred books we own.

But if he doesn’t want to do something anyone asked him to do? Or wants to do something anyone told him not to do?

Heaven help me.

In more cheerful news, he is enthusiastically learning how to diagram sentences. Because sentence diagramming is da bomb.

Leif and Luke (and Lola) have also been enjoying a wide range of books and videos that correspond with our topics this year.

I always have stacks of books about math, science, geography, art, and more from which the kids can feast so that their world isn’t devoid of learning while I’m otherwise employed.

We finished up Columbus and the Pilgrims, and now we’re working our way through the Revolutionary War. It’s pretty easy to find a thousand pictures books on each topic.

October is the knee-deep mark for our 5th year of Classical Conversations. We’re wet up to our ankles with weekly choir practice (and music theory homework each week), weekly AWANAS for all four kids (date night!!), and swim team practice 3-4 afternoons during the week (which takes 3+ hours each afternoon). (Please don’t tell me that my children are unsocialized.) We’ve skipped several field trips because I just don’t want to add to our schedule.

Russ is now the head swim coach (sigh) in addition to his ten other jobs, and he’s prepping the house exterior to be painted. Not much down-time to be found.

That’s life.