I’m not sure why, but the other day, she ended up changing three diapers in one day for me.  Bonny Annie probably, on average, changes a diaper every other day, so this was kinda big.  By the third diaper, she was all heavy sighs and big eye rolls, and she’s made sure to tell at least five people about her fate.

Bonny Annie is a great big sister.  She helps with Cap’n Jack Henry a lot.  Just this morning, I woke up with a really bad headache, and she took over for me for about an hour and half or so, so I could take some Extra Strength Tylenol and lie back down for a while.

If I have a big chore project going on, she will play with him or put on episodes of “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody,” which for some unexplainable reason, entertains Jack Henry.

If I need to run in the store for just a few items, I can leave the car running with the AC and go in by myself, while she holds down the fort in the car.  She only occasionally needs to karate chop Dirty Harry, and all is well.

As a matter of fact, if you have a child, especially a girl, that is about 11 years old or so, you might as well go ahead and plan on having another baby soon.  It will be the easiest child you’ve ever raised because the girl child will half raise it for you.

And Jack Henry loves her.  He loves her so much that he gives her open mouth kisses…

This is a big step for the Cap’n because just a few months ago, you may remember, when she asked for kisses, she got something else entirely.

Actually, he may be biting her…

…but we have chosen to believe it is kissing.

Because she really is a good sister (and daughter!), one that deserves to be kissed.  Not bitten.  Or slapped.

…even without the multiple diaper changes.

(Psst…how did I do, Bonny Annie?  And when you’re done reading this, I think I smell something…)

First, I remember that the speaker asked a mom sitting near the front to please remove her toddler child from the room because his activity was distracting her.

Secondly, I remember the speaker recommending this book…

And then I remember buying it from her booth at the close of the conference, and I remember loving every moment of reading it.  Seriously, if you haven’t read The Hawk and the Dove  trilogy by Penelope Wilcock, you need to consider remedying that.  It’s so totally good!

Lastly, I remember her comments and suggestions about teaching handwriting to boys.

The sanctuary of the church where we were meeting was pretty full.  I’d say there was somewhere between 200-300 people in there.  We were mostly women.  The speaker asked us to raise our hands if we regularly wrote in cursive.  Almost all of us raised our hands.  Then she asked us to raise our hands if our husbands regularly wrote in cursive.  I’d say roughly about 10% of the women raised their hands.  She then went on to give an explanation of why that was.

Cursive is generally introduced in public and private schools in the second grade.  The instruction continues into the third grade, and by about halfway through that year, the child is expected to have it mastered, and cursive writing is required for written assignments from then until usually late middle school or high school.  By then most kids have access to computers and typewritten assignments are accepted and encouraged.

This timeline is usually fine for girls.  Girls are ready to trade in their sturdy block print and No. 2 pencils for purple gel pens and flowery signatures accented with hearts and butterflies.  Boys, usually, are not.  The speaker explained that there is a tiny muscle in a child’s hand that everyone needs to be fully developed in order to have success with handwriting and other fine motor skills.  This muscle develops earlier in girls, usually by the age of 7 or 8.  For boys, it develops fully later.  So, boys as a whole, will struggle with the skills they need for cursive writing simply because their hands and fingers aren’t ready for it.  If they could wait to learn cursive until 3rd or even 4th grade, they would have much more success and less frustration.

I was one of the women at that conference who kept my hand down when asked if my husband wrote in cursive.  Big D does not.  As a child, he struggled with it and hated it.  As soon as he was allowed to go back to printing he did.  Today he writes like this…

At times when he has a lot of writing to do, the large block letters get more and more undiscernible.  Big D’s signature is…ironically…a D, a big one. (…and that list is excercises that he was teaching to Dirty Harry’s baseball team, just in case you were wondering.)

I waited until this year, 4th grade, to start cursive for Dirty Harry, and it’s gone off without a hitch.

No complaints.  No fussing.  And believe it or not, he actually writes in cursive better than he prints….even if he didn’t dot any of the i’s in Philippians.  There are quite a few acceptable handwriting programs out there.  We used this one…

They have a transitional book, pictured above, that slowly and methodically introduces a child to cursive.  You can purchase it here.

Is cursive writing even necessary anymore?  I guess one could argue that it is not with computers being available to kids so prevalently.  Yet it was important to me that my children still learn it.  Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t let them do all their assignments on a keyboard.  Both of my older ones have taken pride in the accomplishment of learning cursive, and I’m sure I’ll continue the tradition with Cap’n Jack Henry in several years.

So, if you have a little guy coming along, you might want to save all those swirls and loops for a year or two longer and let that tiny, necessary, small motor skills muscle develop fully.  And I’m pretty sure he won’t need a purple gel pen either.

He was kidding.  Sort of.  You see, he sometimes called me Bunny, and he just made up a little rhyme about how I wasn’t a funny bunny.  Well, it stuck and was sort of a running joke of his for a long time. 

But truth be told, Big D really didn’t think I was very funny.  He thought I was witty.  For some reason this affronted me a little, and I set out on a mission to prove to Big D that I was indeed not just witty…but laugh-out-loud funny too.  I don’t know that I ever really proved anything to him, but I got a lot of mileage out of the fact that I was nominated for Funniest Home School Blog three years in a row.  It was a personal victory of great magnitude that I actually won this past year.

All joking and ribbing aside, Big D and I are just different kinds of funny.  Big D is more slapstick, silly, goofy funny.  Big D will go all out for a laugh.  He is loud.  He can be obnoxious.  He writes rap songs.  He does the worm.

 I am funny in a quieter way.  I daresay that there are many people who know me that don’t even know I’m funny.  Do you remember the Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks movie, You’ve Got Mail?  Meg Ryan’s character at one point is lamenting that she always thinks of witty and poignant things to say to someone after it’s too late to say them.  That is me, in a way.  I often do that, or I think of them and don’t have the nerve to actually say what I’m thinking.  Let me tell you…blogging and Facebook and the like have opened up all sorts of new avenues for my humor…in both good and bad ways.

If someone asked me which of my children were the funniest, I’d probably have to say Dirty Harry. 

 He has a quick wit and quirkiness about him that makes people laugh.  He also has the obnoxious thing going for him, that I don’t find particularly funny, but which his peers admire greatly.  Regardless, he is funny, and I probably laugh at things he says and does more than the other two.

Jack Henry, still a baby, is cute-funny. 

He makes us laugh with his funny faces and gestures.  He enjoys the attention, so will repeat what we laugh at, which makes us laugh more.  It’s hard to say what direction his sense of humor will take, but so far he’s pretty comedic.

Bonny Annie is the more serious one of our crew, I’d say. 

From the time she was very small, she was literal to the point of ridiculousness.  It took her forever to get jokes because she had a hard time seeing and understanding irony or sarcasm.  She’s gotten better at this as she’s aged, and her sense of humor has improved.  Over the past year or so, I’ve seen a side of her emerge, especially around her friends, that I have not previously been privvy to.  The other day she was invited to an end-of-the-school-year pool party.  She told me of a conversation that she and her friends were having about how pale their skin was.  At one point my Bonny Annie piped up, “I’m so pale people sometimes mistake me for a bucket.”  She said I wouldn’t believe how her friends howled.  One girl even posted it as her facebook status…a true sign that one has said something really clever.

“That was really funny,” I said.  “You must get your funniness from me.”

“Well, yeah.  Maybe,” she answered. “I think I get my smart-funniness from you and my stupid-funniness from dad.”

I’m glad she said that and not me.  Like I said…there are different kinds of funny.

A happy heart makes a face cheerful.

~Proverbs 15:13

Secondly, my washing machine’s draining and spinning function is on the fritz right now.  This meant that I had to handwash and rinse Dirty Harry’s baseball uniform so that he could play in it tonight.  Have I ever mentioned how difficult it is to clean Dirty Harry’s uniform even with the ease of an automatic washing machine?  Oh, I have?  A bunch of times?  Oh…well…let me just tell you…it’s even more difficult in a sink.  By hand.  Any romantic notions I’ve ever had of living in a past time before automatic washing machines ended today.

Thirdly, can you tell me how in the world that this cute little chubby booger…

…somehow turned into this long, lean big booger?

I’m clueless about booger evolution, except that it takes ten years.

Happy birthday, Dirty Booger…er, I mean Harry!

On the rare occasion that I actually blog on a Friday, I usually like to post something for my “Flashback Friday” feature where I delve into my legwarmered, teal eyeshadowed, BonJovied past and write about something ridiculously old-school.  I have something I could post about today that is extremely timely and interesting and bittersweet that would definitely count as a flashback, but I can’t post about it.  And I can’t tell you why.  I probably won’t be able to post about it for at least five years.  Don’t ask…I can’t tell.  Yet.

Soooooooooooooo…I’m going to post a little vignette about my three children eating breakfast.  Yes, eating.  Yes, breakfast.  Because these are the photos that inspired me today as I browse Big D’s site.

Big D took this series of photos in February when we were visiting his parents.  I don’t know why he took them, but I’m glad he did.  Big D and I have very different photo-taking approaches.  Usually, I use my point-and-shoot to try to record bits of our history.  I take pictures during holidays.  I take pictures at events.  I take pictures so that we will remember.

Big D takes pictures of emotions.  He captures feelings.  He records personality.  It is art.  I love that we have both kinds of pictures of our family.  Someday my kids can look back and remember what we did and where we went and what they achieved.  But they’ll also be able to look at these photos and know who they were.

They are just eating cereal, for crying out loud.  But one can look at these photos and know something about each of them.  We don’t just know that we went to Ma and Pa’s house and ate their cereal.  We know a little bit about them.  We see a little of their souls.  Some how, some way Big D clicked and captured a moment and captured their characters at the same time.

I love photography.

I love my kids.

I love my husband.

Happy Friday to you all…

I knew immediately that Dirty Harry was the culprit.  I knew this for several reasons.

1. Big D wasn’t home and would never put something like that on the fridge.
2. Clara doesn’t have thumbs, so grasping and placing magnets would be difficult.
3. Bonny Annie is generally nice and encouraging of her littlest brother and just wouldn’t say things like that.  Plus she was on facebook.
4. I didn’t do it.
5. Jack Henry, while certainly not dumb, is only 17 months old and doesn’t have a good grasp on the English language yet.  Plus he was taking a nap.
6. Dirty Harry does things like this when he is supposed to be doing his math lesson at the kitchen table.  Plus he’s known to randomly insult people…even babies.  I think it’s an almost-ten-year-old boy thing.

So, you can just call me Sherlock from now on.  I knew it was him.

I called him to explain himself.

Me:  Harrison, why did you put this on the refrigerator?

DH:  Because I was just playing around with them when I was getting a drink.

Me:  And the letters just magically spelled that your brother….your BABY brother…is dumb???

DH:  No.  It’s just that it’s hard to spell things with only one magnet of each letter.  I was going to spell ‘JESUS ROCKS’, but you need three S’s for that.

I was still clueless as to why he still felt the need to spell something insulting about Jack Henry, even if he was lacking needed letters, but the whole JESUS ROCKS comment momentarily threw me.  I told him he should not spell things like that, even to be funny.  And I also told him that he could stand at the fridge and spell four more non-insulting sentences about Jack Henry before he could get back to his previous activity.  He groaned and complained, but he finally came up with four more.

Okay, I was still not pleased with this effort.  If you are telling someone to fix Jack Henry, then obviously you’re implying that something is wrong with him in the first place.  But I let it slide.  I guess it might imply that Jack Henry needed a Band-Aid or something.

Another imperative sentence…but a nicer one.  If Jack Henry can be quizzed, then one is perhaps a little more confident in his cognitive abilities.

This was probably the nicest of all of Dirty Harry’s statements.  While Jack Henry does not literally glow, one sometimes feels he does when he flashes you one of his big grins.  I suppose Dirty Harry could have plans of coloring him with a neon highlighter as well.  I wouldn’t put it past him.  Just last week he colored on Clara with blue permanent ink.

Since this sentence lacks a direct object, it’s open to interpretation.  Jack Henry does indeed dump whenever he gets a chance…food on the floor, baskets of books, boxes of toys…you name it, and he dumps it.  And then, if you go the crude route, which I’m sure was Dirty Harry’s intention, Jack Henry does dump in his diaper…usually twice  a day.

When I was done with all my picture-taking, I asked Dirty Harry what the “She”, written in dry erase marker, with an arrow meant in one of the pictures above.

DH:  Oh, I wrote that when it still said, ‘JACK HENRY IS DUMB’.  The arrow was pointing at Sis, since I couldn’t spell her name.  I’d need two A’s and 2 N’s for that.

Something tells me he hasn’t exactly learned his lesson yet.

She is small, clean, calm and well-behaved.  The only problem we’ve consistently had is floor accidents.  She’s been the hardest dog to potty-train, but even that is not a large problem anymore.   Her accidents are fewer and farther between and are now truly accidents…and not just confusion.

But I’m growing concerned about her appearance…

I’m also a little concerned about how Bonny Annie is curling up her toes, but that is a topic for another blog post.

Is it just me, or does she ever so slightly resemble a Gremlin?

Maybe a little like this Gremlin…

But, unfortunately, a little more like this one…

I think it’s the ears…and the eyes.

I don’t know, but just in case, I better remember those rules about the Gremlins.  What were they again???

1. No bright lights.
2. Don’t put them in water.
3. Don’t feed them after midnight.

Okay, got it.

This is generally a hot topic among homeschoolers, especially newbies.  A large percentage of the time, people begin home schooling when their oldest child is early elementary age.  They either know they are going to try home schooling from the start and begin formal education in kindergarten, or they went the public or private school route for a year or two and then pulled them out and brought them home.  Sometimes there are other, younger kids at home already and them sometimes they might come a bit later.  Either way, at some point, most home schooling moms (and dads) will wonder how to continue to educate their school-age child(ren) with a dependent baby/toddler/pre-schooler needing their diaper changed or nose wiped or sippy cup refilled every five minutes.

For me, this dilemma came a little later in my home schooling adventure.  When I first began home schooling Bonny Annie, Dirty Harry was two, but I don’t remember ever having many problems.  I did strap him into a spare highchair for an hour everyday to watch Sesame Street.  This allowed me to do some math and language arts activities with my first grader, but he pretty much was right there with us for everything else, and by the time he was three, I was doing a little preschool program with him.

But Cap’n Jack Henry has been a different story.  Continuing our educational pursuits with him around has been interesting to say the least. 

But we are doing it.  And so to that end, I though I’d share whatever wisdom and insight I have on the subject, hoping that it might help a newbie homeschooler to hang in there while their little monkey scribbles on their worksheets and eats their glue sticks.  Or, after reading this, some of you may log off your computers and head straight to your nearest school’s office to enroll your youngsters immediately.  Either way I feel I will have done my part to be informative and honest.

1.  Use the littles’ naptimes wisely.

This is probably the single most important piece of advice I can give.  Sure, you may think you need a little nap yourself or perhaps you have your eye on the five loads of laundry that need to be folded.  STOP!  Step away from those ideas!  Use the baby’s nap for the subjects that are hard to do when he/she is awake.  For us this is usually our history and literature read-alouds, science experiments, spelling tests, and language arts lessons.  I try to cram us much into that hour and half as possible and then usually I can still find a few minutes to work on my blog or, yes, as much as I hate it, fold laundry.

2.  Train your school-age children to work independently.

My kids know that when Jack Henry is up and needing some attention that they will need to work by themselves.  For us, this might be silent reading, handwriting, or math.  You might want to have a folder or a plastic tray set up for them to place their completed work, so that when you get a chance, you can check it later.  Establish specific assignments that they are capable of before hand, so that when the baby is fussy or is being fed, that the older ones can just fall into their independent routine without any drama.

3.  Provide the baby/toddler with age appropriate activities in your school area.

Our school area is the kitchen table.  This area opens right up into our living room.  I’ve pretty much made this area baby-safe so that Jack Henry can roam around while I read a history lesson.  You have to just allow the kid to wreck the place during this time though, or you’ll never get anything done.  Jack Henry usually has floor time for about an hour in the later mornings, and this is usually what my living room looks like at the end of that hour…

Nice, huh?

When he’s done pillaging and ransacking, I usually read him a story or two and then put him down for a nap.  The big kids then will pick up the room for me.  They are usually ready to stretch their legs a bit, and it really doesn’t take as long as it looks.  Everything  has a place, so it’s a pretty simple clean-up.  Magazines and books in the basket, blocks in the wagon, Fun-Dips back in the box and put away in the cabinets, etc.  Yes, Fun-dips.  We have a box leftover from Valentine’s Day, and they are one of his favorite toys at the moment.  He just likes to take all of them out and put them back in, over and over again.

Since the weather has been so nice, I’ve opened up the windows, and this has bought us even more precious time as he loves standing there watching the birds in our yard or the cars pass by.

3.  Use your highchair.

Our highchair is right at the table where the kids school, so it’s very convenient to pop Jack Henry in and give him something to do.  But if you do most of your home schooling away from the dining room, I’d suggest investing in another one or a travel booster or something like that.  There’s simply nothing like containment!  I’ve just discovered that Jack Henry enjoys watching old “Blue’s Clues” episodes on our laptop from his highchair.  Or if I just need about ten minutes for a lesson, I might just give him a snack that he can feed to himself.

Okay, strawberry applesauce is probably not the best example.

No, definitely  not the best example.  Give him Cherrios.

You could also make your age 1+ child some of these crayons for highchair time.

4.  Use a pack-and-play.

Begin putting your baby in a playpen when they first start sitting up, so that they will be used to it and not feel like they’re in jail.  Also try to never use the playpen for a punishment.  You may also want to switch the toys that you keep in there regularly so that they don’t get bored.  We’ve followed these principals, and we get about an hour or so of playpen time from him everyday before he starts throwing things at us.  See….he loves it…

Ha, ha.  I just threw that one if for visual interest.  Here’s a short video to show you how content Jack Henry is in his pack-and-play…

He’s got some moves, doesn’t he?  And, yes, you will just have to learn to tune out whatever musical toys they may have in there.

5.  Don’t take everything so seriously.

Some days are just going to be bad.  Your baby may scream through your child’s recitation of the first sixteen Presidents.  The toddler might color on your entryway floor while you’re giving  a spelling test.  He might only nap for thirty minutes.  It’s okay.  It really is.  These days do not mean that you can’t be successful at home schooling.  Your baby’s antics will not keep your other children out of college.  As a matter of fact, the baby will only be a baby for a little while, so just allow your family to slow down and enjoy this season.  They may even learn a more valuable lesson from this experience than what is within the pages of their textbooks.

First of all, it means (and I’ve covered this one before) red dirt and grass stains on white pants because guess what a baseball diamond consists of?  Red dirt and grass.  And guess where your son (or daughter) will be most of the time?  Yes, in the dirt and grass.

It means that Big D is the assistant coach this year.  It means that you will see him less and less, that he will hibernate on baseball coaching sites, and that packages from UPS will be delivered almost daily to your doorstep containing practice tees and other coaching paraphernalia.  It means that you can’t call his cell phone while he’s at a practice because he won’t answer you, of if he does, he will have no idea what you’re saying to him.  It means that Dirty Harry is thrilled to have his dad as a coach.  It means that I’m extremely proud of him for sacrificing his time and energy to fill the gap…but that I still wish he’d pick up that darn phone!

It will mean that your teenage daughter just got a lot more bored.  She will need endless change and dollar bills for infinite trips to the concession stand.  She will need to have her cell phone charged so she can make lots of phone calls to her friends.  She will ask you about ten times in an hour and half if the game is almost over.  She will be flirted with by her brother’s teammates and friends, which will make you sick to your stomach and willing to comply with her requests to stay home.

It means that your child might pitch.  And subsequently that will mean that I, as a nervous wreck, will bite off all my nails (and I don’t bite my nails).  It means that I will drink a shot of whiskey (and I don’t drink whiskey).  It means that I will go to the parking lot to smoke a cigarette (and I don’t smoke).  It means that I will retreat to my van and eat a whole box of Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls (okay…I’ve been known to eat a few of those).

It means that I have to carry a twenty pound sack of taters on my back.  It means that he will cry and fuss a lot.  It means he will appeal to total strangers in the stands to free him.  It means that he will want ice water and Cheerios on demand.  It means he can’t have it because I’m not made of rubber, and I can’t reach him.  It means he’ll throw a tantrum, banging his head against my back.  It means I take him out of the carrier and hand him over to the bored teenager, killing two birds with one stone.

And speaking of birds, I never would have guessed that baseball would mean that we would have dirty birds.  But it does.  Because Big D and Dirty Harry…those stinkers!…broke my birdbath while playing catch in the backyard.  Dirty Harry threw the ball.  Big D missed it.  And my birdbath, which used to belong to my grandmother, was smashed in the process.

I’m proud of him and his strong arm, but that is ridiculous.

Don’t you just love baseball season?  I do.  I really do.

And he’s sweet.  And he does funny things.  And all in all, he’s been a fairly good, easy baby.

But in order to maintain integrity here on this blog, it’s only fair to let you know that the Cap’n has another side.  A more sinister side.  It’s sad but true.

For the record, we are trying to break that habit.  It has caused some uncomfortable situations.  He did this, not once but twice, to the kids’ TaeKwonDo instructor’s wife.  Mrs. Rodgers, if you’re reading this as you occasionally do, again, I’m VERY sorry for that incident.  So far, he’s only slapped people that he truly likes and greatly admires.

While, I did stop the taping to give him some baby discipline, one has to ask, “Did Bonny Annie deserve that?”.  She is thirteen years-old, and that’s all I’m going to say about that.