bibliomom

My Monkey likes art. He likes it sooo much that when he was a preschooler, he refused to draw for almost a whole year because his circles weren’t round enough.

(Really, you’d think that would have tipped me off that we were swimming in the deep end of the gene pool, but nooo, you can’t teach me anything.)

Eventually, he started drawing again and we’ve never looked back. But now that he’s all big, we actually have to start officially linking art into his curriculum, or at least log what we already do. And since I’m am now a) part of an impromptu co-op with adoptingmama and another friend and b) the one with the art history minor, I am also c) the one teaching an art class to a group of eight or nine kids on a semi-regular basis. All of which has made me start thinking more seriously about curriculum type stuff.

Before I get started, I would like to state the obvious and say there are as many ways of teaching art as there are people, and what’s important to one person might be deemed unnecessary by another. Teaching your child about the life cycle of a frog or building a baking soda-and-vinegar volcano is not what my husband would call real science. Real science (to keep up my husband’s inflection and attitude) is far more than spitting out random facts or blowing things up. It’s fun and useful, but has about as much to do with real science (there go those darn italics again) as, well, Michelangelo’s Pieta does with the tissue paper handprints my child brings home from Bible class.

So first, think about what your actual goals are. Do you just want to do some fun, creative and messy projects? Fabulous. Because that’s what this section’s about. I love books like Mudworks which is full of easy, fun recipes for all kinds of different modeling doughs and ideas on how to use it. Basic playdough for daily sensory activities, baked dough for beads and jewelry, gingerbread dough for the creative baker, and novelty doughs using everything from peanut butter to dryer lint. Completely fun and great for preschoolers up through middle school.

It’s not art.

But it is a really fun and completely age appropriate craft. And you can find ideas for school appropriate crafts everywhere. Parenting magazines? Full of them. Holiday themed, Season themed – Usborne books like Pirate Things to Make and Do are also full of themed activities – and themes can be good if you have a reluctant artist. And yes, I just said “artist” in the same paragraph where I explained that this isn’t art. Art vs. Craft is not a fight I’m going to get into. Yes, I call these craft projects when I’m feeling all snippy and self-righteous, but I think they can also be completely appropriate for art class, especially for younger kids, special needs kids, kids with visual or fine motor skill delays or just plain old reluctant artists. (Which I think are usually kids who quit art because of some kind of delay, anyway.) Art should be fun in the same way that school should be fun, and process focused art – art where the doing is more important than the final result – has a very important role in making art accessible and enjoyable. Hopefully at some point, you’ll be able to start tying those projects into larger lessons about media, technique, and a variety of artists and works. At the very least, these projects can be great for fun, fine motor skill development and adding a kinesthetic component to other school lessons. (Can I tell you how many alphabet letters with beans glued on them my daughter brought home last year?.)

So, this section isn’t much of a book review, is it? But that’s okay – I mostly just wanted to get “school crafts” out of the way. These types of projects are as old as the hills and have about as many variations. Go online and search for “Art Projects for Kids” and you’ll get about a million results.

No, wait – I lie. Google says 17 million plus. My first ten search results include:

Enchanted Learning

Amazing Moms

Crayola’s Website

How Stuff Works

Bright Ring

and the blog that was actually titled Art Projects for Kids

Now, most of these are the old school, cut out handprint, paper towel tube, aluminum foil sculpture variety. Personally, I can’t stand 99% of these projects, but everyone knows what a pretentious snot I am. I know – “Egg carton flower bouquet not good enough for ya, heh?” Well, no actually, it isn’t. Transforming household junk into painted, themed junk doesn’t really turn my crank. But there are some genuinely fun and creative projects mixed in among the beaded toilet-paper-ring-napkin-holders, so sift my darlings, sift.

The Bright Ring link is a little different as it seems to be run by the publishers of the aforementioned (and much loved) Mudworks book. This site is nice because it gives sample art projects from a variety of their books – a try-before-you-buy kind of scenario. It stinks because they left out the illustrations, so you have to rely on the text alone.

The Art Projects blog is also a little different, since it seems to include information about specific artists and DIY projects for sale, as well as focusing a bit more on technique and materials. Please remember this list is not made up of my personal favorites – it’s merely a sampling of what’s out there.

So there you have it - Part 1. Next time I’ll try to include something that’s actually useful.

I am a total slacker. Granted, when I started this blog, I didn’t expect to end up with a special needs kid. I already had a high need kid and thought that my quiet baby girl was God’s way of telling me, “It’s okay – you’ve done enough. Why don’t you take all that free time and go start a blog or something?”

So, four years and one autism diagnoses later, I’m just as busy as always. The difference is that my sweet little Bug just got on the bus and headed off for first grade. She went to therapeutic preschool at Sorenson for two years (a truly amazing school) and to a special Transitional Kindergarten class last year, but those were both half-day, four day a week programs. That’s four days a week where Monkey and I desperately tried to cram as much school work into those hours as possible and I spent the rest of the day trying to keep Bug from … well, from destroying anything crucial.

This year, Bug’s going to be off at school all day. Which is both tremendously difficult and a huge sigh of relief. Academically, she gains nothing by going. She taught herself reading and basic math in preschool, so as a dedicated homeschool parent, it’s really hard for me to write off yet another year of academics in favor of social therapy. But it also means that Monkey and I won’t have to rush through school work so frantically. We might actually have time to go out on field trips without Bug. And I might actually get to be off duty for a few hours a day. Feeling like you’re on red-alert guard duty whenever your child is in the house gets really old after the first few years. It also makes it incredibly difficult to give another child, say, a high need kid with his own significant speech and social delays, the time and attention he needs for school.

Anyway, to continue making a short story long, I’m going to try and actually review books. I know – shocking on a blog called Bibliomom. But I’m hoping I can finally do more than just write therapeutic attempts at humor and actually do something useful.

Because I really do love books. My husband also loves books. And being that the last time we went out for breakfast, all four of us were sitting there quietly reading when the waiter brought our food, I think it’s safe to say our kids are as passionate about books as we are. (Seriously – it was one of those moment that made me think, “OMG – the two of us were barely functional enough to survive childhood – what were we thinking when we decided to have kids?!”)

So, I’ll have to try and change up my reader categories and start adding in some of the cool stuff we find for homeschool every time Monkey and I start a new unit. And if I can better reading materials for a hyperlexic first grader, so much the better.

So adoptingmama and I are back from our latest triptastic journey. After each of us spent a week plus with our esteemed spouses cavorting around Northern California, we sent them packing back to Washington and took the show on the road.

And what a show it was: six children, two women, and one mini-van. I felt like I was unloading a clown car every time we made a pit stop. (Seriously – it was like, “Holy, cow! Are you not all out yet?! What, are you keeping spares back there? Keep moving! Yes, I need both twins. Can’t you see that old lady with the dog trying to beat us to the potty? Go! Go!”)

But we made it safely down to San Diego where we invaded my sister J’s house and successfully added a crazy aunty, a hesitant uncle and two large dogs to the mix. Stir widly, and that was us on vacation.

Wahoo.

Well, it was a good trip. We hit Legoland and the Wild Animal Park and the beach. I also got acupuncture, cupping, and a giant shopping bag full of Chinese voodoo herbs – pretty standard for me on a trip to visit my sister.

No, what made it especially fun was all the little “extras” that we picked up on the trip. Adoptingmama picked up a lovely chest infection. I acquired little sunburnt wings flaring out from my armpits, a bronchial cough, a torn off toenail, and a back that looked like I’d been attached by a crazed octopus (thanks to the cupping). So I really could have lived without wildly tripping in the La Purisima Mission parking lot during the drive back. Bonuses: skinned up knee and palms, plus an awesome limp that stayed with me as we hiked the Redwoods.

I could have also lived without the pulled muscle from the aforementioned bronchial cough. Special Bonus: having to bend over to cough. But most of all, at the end of our my three week journey, I could have lived without slipping on my own bathroom floor and splitting open my elbow. Bonus: getting my elbow butterflied back together and having to sleep with my arm on a pillow for the next three nights. While I stayed bent over to cough. And tried not to hurt my knee any worse.

Ah, sweet vacation. I might recover from it, yet.

So being a co-op shopping, cloth diapering, no-plastic-in-the-microwave, grass-fed organic beef kind of gal, I’ve always gotten a lot of flak from various people.

Well, okay – not flak as such. More like, blank stares when I tell the nice little Girl Scout that I don’t buy cookies containing high-fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated fat. This continues when her mom thinks for a moment, then pulls out another box and says, “But these are sugar-free.” Seriously – the woman used to be a high-school math teacher. And people wonder why I homeschool. (For more about the cookies, see this op-ed piece or this Fork & Bottle rant. Just remember “0 % trans-fats per serving” just means they monkeyed with the serving size.)

Granted, it’s better in the Pacific Northwest. I’m a freak, but at least I’m a recognizable species. Breastfeeding isn’t common, but I’ve never been thrown out of a restaurant. People treat my desire to eat food made out of actual food as a special dietary requirement, (“now, you can’t eat artificial colors, right?”), and my homeschooling is treated as eccentric, but not freakish.

Unfortunately my poor friend gamesprite has moved to St. Louis where she’s been openly mocked for having admitted to such freakish behavior as making her own baby food and natural childbirth. I mean, doesn’t she understand there’s a reason God made formula in a can? If you go and do something radical like feed a baby real food like breast milk, it might go all crazy and expect to eat real food for life! It might not be happy with plastic school lunch pizza, cheezy poofs, and McDonald’s heart-attack-in-a-box Happy Meals.

And Lord knows, we couldn’t have that.

Now, like gamesprite, I spent much of my childhood in the South, so I understand that things move a little slower there. But seriously – who are these people?! Who still thinks that breast feeding is “unsanitary” and that a home cooked meal should be assembled from as many cans of Campbell’s creamy mushroom soup as possible? As my husband said, “I don’t understand – if she went back to the 50s, why does her cell phone still work?”

So gamesprite, it’s time to bring the 60s to St Louis! I know that’s still 40 years behind, but they have to start somewhere. For starters, wear this awesome pro-breastfeeding shirt that says, “I Make Milk! What’s your superpower?”. I know you’re not currently breast feeding, but who cares? You’re racked and eccentric – they might still believe it ;-)

For seconds, try the awesome “Homeschool Moms Rock!” shirt at Homeschool Boutique. Feel free to pair it with the equally awesome Homeschool Princess shirt that they carry. (Just wait till I finally get Bug through the last of her therapeutic public school, and I’ll buy one for her so the Evil Twins can match.)

So get out there, girl! If you don’t have the sense to move home already, the least you can show your pride and say that, yes, you are our kind of weirdo.

So this last week adoptingmama finally got her new house!

It’s very exciting – the kids were like, lined up at the front door with their sleeping bags going, “Mom - do we have the key, yet? … How about now? Should we go ahead and get in the car? Mom … Mom!”

So they’ve been roughing it at the new place since last Thursday, and by Sunday morning at church, The Word Was Out: adoptingmama was in her own place and out of mine.

And the interrogations are cracking me up!

I kept getting asked, “Wow – so do you feel like you have empty nest syndrome? Your house must be so quiet!” She keeps getting asked, “Are you guys still friends? Do you still talk to each other?”

Now I’m not sure if everyone just knows that adoptingmama’s so fab that anyone would miss having her around, or if they all just know that I could drive a saint to the brink of insanity, but I still find it hilarious that we get asked such different questions. And then there’s the looks of total amazement when we tell them that, yeah, we’re fine, we still talk to each other and even over the course of a weekend, have been back and forth to each others houses a half-dozen times.

I mean, Lord have mercy, the two of us trekked down to Ikea 3 times over Memorial Day weekend! If that’s not sistahs for life, I don’t know what is ;-)

And after getting up at o’dark-hundred for a Memorial Day run to Ikea, a full day a the church picnic, and a half-hour of furniture unloading to boot, Twin A stood there in my house, hands behind her back as the rest of her family trailed out to the car.

“Um, your Mom’s leaving – were you planning on staying here for the evening?”

“Yup.”

“Oh. Well, it’s okay with me, but you should probably check with your mom first.”

A short chat later, and Twin A and Twin B stood on my porch, waving goodbye to the rest of the family.

“This is our first sleepover!” said Twin B.

“Where should we sleep?” said Twin A.

(Umm, in the bed you’ve been sleeping in for four months?)

Empty nest? I have four new nieces and nephews who’re already planning out of summer full of sleepovers, field trips and Rock Band; I don’t see that my days are going to be changing all that much.

Adoptingmama just has a way better place to sleep come night time ;-)

Children on the Autism spectrum have many … unusual traits. Hyper-oversensitivity or under-sensitivity to sound, vision, texture or taste and obsessive-compulsive behavior towards certain tasks or topics are two of my personal favorites. So when my daughter gets off the school bus on a rainy spring day with a denim mini-skirt, a parka, bare legs and cupcake print rainboots, I know that everyone from the janitor to the speech therapist assumes that it was a texture or color issue, or something else unavoidable.

But it’s not. Other than a bit (okay – a little more than “a bit”) of a pink obsession, she’s actually fairly fashion conscious for a six year old. No where near the fashion victim level, but deeply concerned about her clothes “making a match” and not “looking dorky”.

So Bug’s not the problem. Autistic fixation isn’t the problem. No, the problem’s much taller and geekier than that, namely, her dad.

Yes, the man who had the audacity to tell me the night of the ill-fated mini-combo, “Did you see? I matched her skirt to a black top!”

Well, yes, aside from the fact that black matches almost everything in the known world, very few people send a kindergartner to school in a mini-skirt and a turtleneck with no tights.

Especially not in a parka and rainboots.

Excuse me – a hot pink parka and rainboots.

When I brought this up, he looked hurt and said the parka was “unavoidable”. Of course this *is* the man I had to red flag last month for trying to wear olive green shorts with bright red tee-shirts, so it’s not exactly a new problem.

Now, I am sooooooo not a fashion person. The princess gene my daughter so obviously possesses is just as obviously not from me - I still have to hold up print shirts to solid pants to make sure the dark browns match. I know my limitations. But when my daughter got off the bus today wearing orange and pink floral capris, a baby-blue and white shirt (with pink sparkly pigs), brown mary-janes with athletic socks and a sparkly orange headband, I felt like the stylin’ queen of the cul-de-sac.

And really, really stupid.

Ah, well. It’s only clothes. Though I really should go back through her drawers and match up her outfits again. Especially since her dad is still kind enough to put her on the bus in the morning.

Poor bug; even her princess gene is no match for her father’s utter lack of fashion sense. It’s probably just as well she lacks the social maturity to realize how dorky she looks – she’d never go to school again. That, or she’d toilet-paper him while he sleeps – it could go either way.

Now, I hope you’ll excuse me while I go try and convince my son that shirts and pants can not be declared a “match” through a common geometric theme. (“Um, honey – striped beach pants really don’t match your striped dress shirt …”)

You know, it really never occurred to me that a battle could be uphill both ways.

So, a couple of Sundays ago, we were sitting around the house watching the rain start looking substantially more solid. I was coughing my head off and had completely missed church due to the third … or was it the fourth … week of bronchitis.

DH, ever tactful said, “OMG – are you ever going to stop coughing?”

“I don’t know … hack hack … going out in the cold last night totally … hack hack… set me off. I need to like, …hack… go to the desert and dry out or something.”

He looked out at the falling slush, grabbed his computer and said, “Okay, let’s go.”

“What?”

“Mmmm, yeah, M’s online … yeah, he’s fine with it … and there’s nothing pressing here … and I can do that one thing better there, anyway …”

He snapped the computer shut and told me to start packing.

Seriously.

We were out of the house in about two hours, fleeing the cold front that was moving in. We spent Tuesday in Mountain View so Scott could work at the main Google complex, and by Wednesday night we were at my sister’s in San Diego.

Do I still have a cough?

Well, yeah – a bit. But thanks to warm(er) weather and Julia’s mad Chinese medicine voodoo skillz, I don’t go into massive respiratory arrest every time I go out in the cold. It wasn’t exactly toasty down there, but it wasn’t snowing like it was here, and we got a daily dose of vitamin C from Julia’s personal herd of citrus trees. Best of all, I actually got to see my husband for more than five minutes at a stretch. It took a while to get used to talking to him in person instead of IM over the computer, but I managed.

Now, how awesome is that?

As a good geek wife, I have learned to deal with the euphemisms of the computer world. Which is to say, when I call my husband to see if he might be stopping by the house sometime in the next week, I’m no longer surprised if he just yells, “It’s all blowing up!” into the phone a couple times and then hangs up.

Geek wife translation? “Sorry dear, things are really hectic at work right now. Don’t wait up for me tonight, because I might not be coming home until morning. If I make it home at all.”

Geek Life really is it’s own thing. But since I grew up a Navy brat, it wasn’t that hard of a transition: military life and geek life are both unique cultures almost completely removed from the 9-5 job set; both have their own jargon and special job requirements; and both are such lifestyle shapers that the culture affects not only the employee, but their entire family. And let’s not forget the bizarre hours that are almost incomprehensible to those outside of that life. In the military, it was “Dad’s on cruise for the next three months – if you’re really good, maybe he’ll bring you something from Japan.” With my kids it’s more like, “Honey, I know that Dad’s home for the first time in three days, but he was paged 120 times yesterday, and he’s still trying to get Zurich back online. Maybe if we’re lucky, he’ll play Xbox with us after dinner.”

But while my husband is a born geek, he didn’t come from geeks. (Well, at least not directly – his Grandmother was a main-frame programmer, but that’s another story.)

No, his family does construction. Serious construction. Concrete, steel, heavy machinery - the works. Let’s put it this way: when I brought my kids up their farm this last summer, they went out to pick cherries.

In the boom truck.

A thirty foot boom truck.

Needless to say, listening in on his phone conversations with his family is fascinating.

“Wow – that’s a lot of snow, Mom … Six foot drifts? … Well, yes, I guess the excavator would take care of that … ”

But this morning the collision of construction and computers was running full tilt.

“Well, it’s been a really busy week at work, Mom … Yes … Well, out of all of the services my group runs, all but one crashed spectacularly and publicly …”

“Yes, Mom – that’s bad …”

Sensing a lack of comprehension, he tried harder to explain:

“Okay, pretend you worked at a factory … You went in that morning expecting to see machinery clicking and humming along … Uh-huh … and instead, you opened the door and saw a giant wall of flames … .”

“No, Mom, it was wasn’t actually on fire … though that has happened before …”

I love my in-laws – they’re fabulous people. I love that they can bring an excavator down when we need to take out a diseased tree and are willing to drop everything to spend quality time with their grandchildren. Their current understanding of geek culture extends to: he makes good money and seems to be paying his bills.

I think I can settle for that ;-).

So, we’re over a week into co-habitating with adoptingmama and her lovely family …

Oh, wait, did I completely fail to mention that we were doing that? My bad ;-P

Let’s back up.

Last summer, adoptingmama decided they were really, really going to be leaving the idylls of Hawaii in order to return to the rain laden charms of Seattle. (Okay – all of you rolling around on the floor crying, “Why? Why? Dear Lord WHY?!” can get up now – she has her reasons.) Being a tidy and organized person in both mind and house, she wanted to get all her waterproof duckies in a row.

“So, I want you to ask Scott before you answer, but would it be okay if we stayed with you guys while we’re looking for a house there?”

“You know we’ve talked about this before.”

“I know, but I just want to make sure …”

Of course my beloved husband said it far better than I ever could: “All the rest of your sisters have lived with us – why not her?”

And that’s the point, really: family is ultimately a decision. Adoptingmama and I didn’t grow up together and don’t share a biological tie, but at this point we’ve decided we’re family, so it’s all good.

She’s afraid her family will wear out their welcome – I’m afraid she’ll drive herself crazy trying to get my kitchen floor clean. (“Do you have a putty knife? I think I can get this up …”) She keeps stressing out about imposing on us – I keep reminding her that she’s the one living in a basement. And Scott just keeps saying that as long as they don’t charge us for all the play therapy her kids are giving Bug, it’s all good.

(Have I mentioned that I adore my husband?)

So it’s been fun. Maybe not quite as much fun as when all ten of us were staying all their place in Hawaii with warm beaches and vacation time to burn, but still fun. ;-)

Right now, it’s the middle of the night and I’m sitting in front of a warm fireplace, watching the snow fall. I’m sick with a cold, you see, and was able to sleep half of yesterday because I had someone else to help take my kids to Church, feed them and clean up after them. Tomorrow, God willing, we’ll all wake up to another fun day of playing and homeschooling, hot tea and knitting, and generally spending our time taking care of our children, our husbands, and ourselves. We both know that life is a gift and that every day is a blessing, so we’re trying to make the most of this special time our families are spending together.

I have four sisters. Two of them are biological. The other two are by choice. I know that whole, “it takes a village thing,” but it doesn’t really work for me. I think it really takes what I am blessed enough to have: a family.

A friend’s nine year old daughter began picking a fine bone of contention with her father.

“Stop being pedantic,” he said, immediately provoking a response of, “But I don’t even know what that is!”

Our friend looked over at my husband, who immediately looked at me.

“Cyn? Care to define Pedantic?”

I, of course, shot him a dirty look and pulled up the relevant wikipedia page.

“Did you know that “pedant” has an archaic female form? It’s “pedantess”.”

Then I turned to my friend’s daughter and said, “That is, by definition, pedantic.”

And all the adults snickered.

Three college educated adults and none of us were willing to risk a less than perfect definition for a balky eight year old.

As my friend said to his daughter, “Well, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree …”