It's All History

The other day, Luke, Nayelli and I went over to Granddad's to interview him about his life. We played (or I played it) as a school thing (I still haven't told Luke the secret.... he blows secrets), when really Luke was doing it undercover to get some valuable information from Graddad for his 90th birthday. I've always wanted to ask him about his life, so I'm glad we were able to do that. Something I admire about Granddad is that he's always been an amazing storyteller, even if his stories are mostly half-truths. (Ask him about the day he met Grammy and he'll talk about strolling down the sidewalk with a red wagon, meeting this little girl who was picking her nose.) Anyway, it brought up to memory my blog. Why? Because I was wondering if one day someone will be curious enough to ask me about my life. Or will my kids want to hear about how it was when they were growing up? I love hearing stories about when I was little, stuff that I just can't remember or I was too young. Some of it would have been really helpful while I was pregnant, or nursing, or dealing with some feeling that everyone goes through. So, with that said.... I'll just continue with what we're doing now and go from there.

Luke

I've been looking for things for my kids to do lately. After Luke broke both of his feet when the church shelf fell on him, we've been taking a break from soccer. Since then, we joined 4H because it was something cheap to do and at the same time Bandit would get doggie lessons. FYI - while 4H only costs $15 a year to join, doggie lessons can get expensive after buying the right show collar and leads, training harness, treats, treat holder, brushes, poo poo bags, and extras. Now Luke has been in 4H for 2 years and going on his 3rd. Last year, we added Entomology to his projects. Good thing we did because when all the sports and meetings were cancelled due to Covid, he was still able to go outside and find bugs and participate in something. Now that we're back in school (or I should say "virtual school"), it has been abundantly clear that Luke needs something physical to do. In virtual school, they don't provide those Specials classes (art, music, physical ed.) and I'm afraid he's going to develop a gut and become absorbed in Minecraft, ARK, and other weirdos who play those games on Youtube. 

School is going ok. At first it was hard doing every subject a day, but when we switched to our version of a block schedule it worked out much better. He generally understands the math because it's all multiplication. They've added in crud like finding patterns and critiquing other peoples' math work. We just work through it and move on. I've given him real world problems... like we figured out that it would be cheaper for us to go with Disney+ and buy two movies than stick with Netflix. We also found out that if I wanted to put Mila and Luke into sports, we'd have to plan on at least $75/mo. It's the important things... There have been hidden things in there like variables and powers, but we haven't gone too far into it. He's understanding English concepts. Why are they still talking about nouns in 5th grade, though? Was 1st - 4th grade all for nothing? I don't understand. The Reading curriculum is garbage. Don't even get me started on that. I wasn't sure about Science, but it has been surprisingly fun. The entire first unit has been on the Food Web, but they've broken it down into your various animals, plants, decomposers, and next, worms. This last week we had mold growing on food in our kitchen... on purpose... in Ziplock bags. Grosssss. But curiosity got the best of us and we started researching why mold grew quickly on some things and not on others. Before this stay-at-home business, Luke didn't much care for History, but now that he's been home with Mom, he's starting to grasp it's importance and impact. We've gone through movement of people into the Americas, Native American life, and exploration. Now we're getting into colonization. Points that have stuck out to him are the Mayan calendar and people thinking the world would actually end in 2012 and how unfair/cruel taking over Native American land (which they didn't even consider to be property) was. I'm excited to get through the colonization lessons because I'm hoping he'll be able to do a colony replica project on Minecraft, something I created to help the lesson sink in. 

I really like having Luke at home. He's fun and interesting, and a lot of times parents don't get this one on one time with their kids. It's something to really appreciate and not take for granted. 

Mila

Mila is in school four days a week. She goes with her mask on. ALL day. She's a trooper. I'm starting to notice a little weirdness, but I'm glad she's meeting new friends her age (a lot of them BOYS! Oh no!). The second week of school I got an email from her teacher. The teacher said that she wasn't responding to her name and sounded a lot like asking me if Mila was hard of hearing, or had ADD or something like that. Like any parent, I was defensive and furious at first. But, I answered back politely (probably more stoic than anything)... that Mila is a creative kid and she's 5 years old and still getting the hang of school. I think it all came down to an incident in the car rider line where Mila heard another little girl called with either the same name or a similar name. I don't call her by her full name at home so I can see how this would be confusing if she's just listening for her first name. 

I'm honestly not too thrilled about how schools are handling Covid. I have this feeling that it's all political. Anyway, funny story to explain Mila's personality. She's been home on Wednesdays. She is required to attend the two 1-hour Zoom meetings on that day, otherwise she'll be marked absent. During the first meeting they sing a dumb "good morning" song and talk about feelings. Then they get into the letter sounds that they've been talking about all week. The teacher does all of these sign language moves for the letters (but I don't think it's real sign language...) and has all of these little rhymes or jingles for each letter. It's seriously annoying and almost over-stimulating. I get a headache watching the teacher. And sometimes they read a book. That's just in the first hour. And they can't eat during the meeting. And they can't raise their hand; they have to touch their nose. And they have certain signs for Yes and No. And they have to sit up with their hands in their laps. I'm like - I can barely get Mila up in the morning, I'm not turning her away from a cracker during your dumb song meeting. Mila would be more likely to do better work if they would let her have Wednesday as a relax and rest day. An all day siesta. If you think about it, there are kids that are going half days to Kindergarten, so why is there so much requirement out of the one day? And these are days that parents have to be the teacher, or find someone to oversee all the work. I can't imagine the single parents who are working and have multiple kids. On top of that, the teacher gives out like 10 assignments to complete. This week we had 4 that had to do with the letter they're learning, 2 for math, a reader that had to do with the science or history of coronavirus and our feelings about it, and the rest was specials or learning games/activities around the house. My 5-year-old can't concentrate that long. She needs breaks. She understands the letter. The highlighting the letters and circling letters and cutting them out and gluing them next to pictures that make the sound and coloring the animals realistic colors... it's too much. It isn't helping. It's putting a damper on her creativity and burning her out on the letter. We were playing one of the letter games on the computer and it asked Mila to choose the picture that starts with the M sound. Her choices were mud or pizza. She pointed to pizza, "because mud is gross". Later she had to pop M balloons. She told me to pop a balloon that wasn't just so she could see what would happen. That's curiosity! She knows what the letter is because it's drilled into them over and over again... kiddos need to explore! I was talking to Vero the other day and she was explaining how public schools are arranged to create people for the workforce. Everything in school promotes industrialism - creating docile factory workers. Why are there school bells? It's regimented. It resembles the workman's check-in and check-out time. Why is there a cafeteria line? It looks a lot like the assembly line. Why is the work standardized and focuses on literacy? Because they just wanted compliant, literate workers. I'm not saying being literate is wrong, people need to know how to read and write, but what happened to letting kids explore their interests... even at a young age? 

So, Mila is very creative. She draws princesses all the time - with big lips and poofy sleeves on their dresses and high heels and sometimes even makeup and long eyelashes. She makes me books and books and books. (Really they're a picture folded up hot dog style, but I love them.) She plays with play-doh and makes me food. She puts on "shows", which is her hopping around the living room doing karate-type moves. She does her own makeup and makes videos. Art is definitely her thing. Keep that fire going, girly! <3 

Nayelli

It's taken me a few days to write this... so now that I'm typing this portion, Nayelli is officially 2 years old. For her birthday celebration we took a day trip to the Omaha Zoo. Her favorite animals were the zebra and giraffe (both very similar to a horse). She also thought that the orangutang that licked the food off the glass was hilarious. The rest of us enjoyed the tiger that took a bath right in front of us and the sea lions that followed our fingers under water. In fact, it had such an impact on Luke that he now wants to be a zoologist when he's wanted to be a paleontologist for the longest time. Nayelli picked out the biggest stuffed zebra she could find at the gift shop and carried it around with her the rest of the day. Now it sits in her bed. We've had ice cream throughout the week, and yesterday we watched her Tia's softball game.

Nayelli is fairly independent. While I'm teaching Luke in the morning, she'll watch Elmo and other Youtube videos on the iPod, iPad, or my iPhone. I'm glad it's learning, but I just hope she doesn't get attached to these i-things. She also loves athletics - she reminds me a lot of her Grammy and Great-Grammy. She likes to do these backbends while I'm changing her diaper! And she'll play catch and run around, even though she runs a little funny (tummy first). 

She said her first complete sentence the other day, but I can't remember what it was. Her faces are too funny - so many expressions. When she gets in trouble or is acting up, first I'll ask her, "Do you need a spankin'?" and she'll usually stop. If I count to 3 and she still doesn't do what I've told her, then I'll pretend to spank and just slap my own hand, just to make a loud, frightening noise. And if that doesn't work, she'll get a little spank on the leg. She doesn't like that. Like her sister, that will hurt her feelings. But, she reacts differently. She doesn't make a peep. She'll stick her bottom lip out and the tears will come out, and you'll see her shoulders heave up and down. And we'll tell her in a serious tone, "Put away your lip." There's other times where we'll put her time out. Overall, she's a pretty good girl.

Now, I might have said that early... because ON HER BIRTHDAY she got into her sister's pink lip stick and it went all over her lips and hands, feet and pants. AND OUR CARPET! Luckily, it was all able to come out of the carpet, and she just looks like she drank some red Kool-aid. Also, both my other kids started their "Terrible Twos" early and went through it really quick. I haven't seen anything in Nayelli yet. Or have we, as parents, finally learned with the third child how to parent? :D