There’s been an excess of tattling going on around here. So, we had a talk about maybe not telling me every time a sibling looked crossways at you. So, Chickadee comes down stairs telling me about something Nuthatch did to her. I must have given her one of those looks because she quickly said “I’m not tattling. I’m conversating on a situation that happened in my life.”
Today I was organizing our filing stuff–you know, all those receipts, bill stubs and various pieces of paper that invade the house and go into a pile of “stuff that should be put somewhere important.” I ran across a folder of reports I did in college and started reading through them. It was very eery—I didn’t even remember writing some of them (or reading the books that went with them). Some of them were very memorable though—ones where I really got into the subject/book/author, etc. I loved writing big papers–doing the research to really pull something apart and then putting it all back together again with words wrapped up in my own experience. I ran across one with a long personal note from a particularly tough professor. One part said “I am truly impressed by the quality of your journal text. Are you planning to go on to graduate school right away? … This text is excellent in content and form and reveals a budding ethnographer…. ” Grad school, me? Oh yeah, that was the plan.
It just really hit me that it wasn’t ME who wrote all that stuff, it was someone from before who had not stopped to ponder creating a family and had a path laid out in a completely different direction–a path that faded away. It was someone who could conjure a complete thought and write a coherent sentence—someone without the needs of many other people constantly swimming through and reorganizing themselves in all available brain space. I’m not sad—the life I’m leading now was quite intentional–but reading through my college stuff made me remember bits and pieces of how I thought my life was going to go at that time. It was a life that was to be determined by my whims and needs and imaginings rather than others.
It all does make me wonder if it is time to find something–just a bit of something–to work towards—something that is just my own. Ah, I must be getting old, the mid-life crisis has landed. Or maybe it is just PMS.
On my nightstand: Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman. On it’s way to me– Have fun. Learn stuff. Grow (David Albert’s new book) and various beach reads are awaiting packing
Bluebird: Just re-read Eragon and Eldest and Magyk. On it’s way to take on our trip - Flyte.
Chickadee and Nuthatch: reading A Kiss for Little Bear and Little Bear’s Friends. Also just found the series We Both Read and we all really like them. For read-aloud: How Much is a Million, The Reason for a Flower, Every day life of the Aztecs, Maya and Inca.
On audio tape in the car: Just finished up Cricket in Times Square and Wind Boy is on its way to us.
The overall favorite fiction story from our Mexico unit: 
We have a critter keeper that generally sits in our school/play room waiting for the temporary guest. At the moment there are some walking stick eggs that we hope will hatch some day.
Last summer Bluebird brought in a horn worm caterpillar. I tried to explain that it was a common garden pest and we weren’t trying to keep them alive, but she would not be deterred, so into the keeper he went and she would get fresh tomato plant leaves for him to dine on daily. Eventually he disappeared, presumed buried into the soil at the bottom to pupate. Flash forward to this weekend when I happened to walk by and there was a new critter in there–a HUGE moth. We’d forgotten all about him being in there. Bluebird released him to the wild, to I’m sure create havoc on this year’s tomato plants.
It’s always nice to get a bit of perspective on the rough days. We’ve had a few rough moments over the last couple of weeks.
My little nuthatch, to put it bluntly, has just been not very fun to be around. He’s snarky and antagonistic (to everyone, he’s not saving it all up for me), but not all the time. He’ll be a dream and then suddenly turn on a dime and be retched. To the point where I was wondering if I would need to send him to school next year–I just felt that the lack of structure was contributing to his unhappiness. Then I noticed this weekend that he has caught up to chickadee in height and I asked if he wanted to measure himself on his growth chart (he’s been monitoring closely hoping to get to that 48″ mark so he can ride the good roller coasters this summer) and I confirmed that he has grown over an inch in the last month. I think his allergies were really bad last week too—the combo was enough to make anyone grumpy I’m sure. So, we’ve weathered the storm and this week it just seems like we had a few moments. I don’t know if he’s doing better this week or if I’ve been able to ratchet up my compassion and understanding enough to flow through it.
The other rough spot was our dealings with the local public school system for chickadee. After over a year break, dh and I decided that speech therapy would be beneficial to her and we contacted the school district. They did a whole round of testing and then called me in for a meeting–me with a teacher (who had never met her but I guess they need a “real” teacher at these meetings), two special ed people, a speech therapist and I think one or two other people. Very intimidating and I’m not easily intimidated. They were nice, but their report was very difficult to listen to. I won’t go into details, but she is behind where they say she should be (which I knew) and her testing revealed profound weaknesses in areas related to visual perception and mathematics. It’s not really a matter of believing in their numbers or not, but getting to a place where I understand what it means (or doesn’t mean) for us at home. She does struggle with the things their testing revealed she has weaknesses in and to discount in total their testing would be to not accept this as part of who she is. I don’t know what the future will bring, if she will get it some day or not (as they seem to believe), but I do know that the best place for her is at home where she has time to work on things at her own pace and not be told daily that she is failing.
Nuthatch spent quite a bit of time today studying friction, velocity, inertia, and more in the physics lab that is our backyard. The specific experiments involved an aluminum bat, a wooden bat and various baseballs–one of whose density was quite a bit higher than the others. The pursuit? Finding the “sweet spot” on the bat that would make the ball sail the farthest. The biggest struggle of his existence must be trying to make due with his severely sports challenged family. He, who has never met a sport that he didn’t like (or didn’t excel at) must put up with parents with neither interest nor aptitude in any organized sport. The poor boy has had to work his brain overtime to try to absorb the rather complicated rules and strategies of baseball (just which base does the ball need to be thrown to?).
A last look at our baby bluebirds from last week. It was getting pretty crowded (and messy) in there. They fledged on Tuesday this week. We meant to wake up early and be watching, but I overslept and by the time I got up they had gone. We set out some mealworms and mom and dad came and got mouthfuls and flew up to the trees with them but we haven’t gotten a glimpse of them yet. We cleaned out the nestbox and put it back up and they’ve already been scouting around so we’re hoping for a 2nd brood soon.
We went to a stream discovery at the nature center last week. They learned about stream ecology and then waded into the streams with nets to catch some critters. After some pretty serious science study it devolved into water play–how could one resist!
One more shot–one of our visiting Orioles. This is the first time we’ve had them come and they have become regulars so far this year.
Such has been our week—lots of sun and outdoor time and lots of bird watching. We’ve had some hard times this week too—of which I’m trying to organize my thoughts and come up with a post about.
Bluebird handed me this card on Mother’s day. Yup, spent last year’s Mother’s Day in the ER watching my eldest get 35 stitches (many of them deep suture). My wish this year? To avoid the ER on Mother’s day. I got my wish and had a pleasant afternoon hiking some trails at the arboretum.
I’ve decided that the birds have put some sort of marker in the trees alerting others to the fact that we are a great place to stop. We now have several baltimore orioles who are spatting with the hummingbirds over our hummingbird feeders. At one point today, at the same time, I was able to see 1/2 dozen goldfinch, a few orioles, a downy woodpecker, a hummingbird and bluebirds, not to mention the tufted titmouse and chickadees and nuthatches that are always around or the red head and red bellied woodpeckers who just didn’t happen to be around that second. We just had a bay window put in our dining room and we just sat and watched for over an hour this morning.
Our bluebirds should fledge next week. We are watching mom and dad spend all day going in and out of the nestbox but it is no longer safe to check in on them, for fear that they might fledge early.
When I moved over to blogspot I decided to stop using my kids’ real names but didn’t take the time to think of any spectacular nicknames. Well, now I’m tired of using their first initial and since we’ve been into birds lately they each decided which bird they’d be.
A. is now Bluebird. Because she loves them, and they are sweet and generous and protective and after all bluebirds help mama take care of their younger siblings and since she’s 13 and the two youngers are almost 1/2 her age, she does a bit of caretaking.
J answered almost immediately that she would be a chickadee. Exactly what I was thinking–bold and cheerful (and just a tad noisy!) and they always bring a smile to my face. She is definately my little chickadee.
Little A was harder, as I usually refer to him as my monkey boy, but we decided on nuthatch because they are not content to sit on a branch in a tree but scurry around climbing up and down and are always busy busy busy.
So, for now, until I get tired of these nicknames my children will be referred to as Bluebird, Chickadee and Nuthatch.
On A’s shelf: Jacob Have I loved (book club), the most recent Guardians of Ga’hoole.
J and little A: Finished reading Little Bear. Jordan wants more little bear, Alex is thinking the Nate the Great looks appealing. Read alouds: Elena’s Serenade, Isabel’s House of Butterflies, Meet Paddington, the just received Spider and Click magazines.
For all, various books on Mexico, the Maya and Aztec.
In the car: listening to Cricket in Times Square and they are really enjoying it.
On my shelf: I’m in a reading rut. I hate that, but everything I pick up just seems blah.