{SQT} Second Week of Advent

1. Grandfather Passed Away

My dear grandfather, John D. Baldwin, M.D., passed away this Wednesday. We were on alert for the past week, receiving daily or more frequent updates from Nebraska until he passed. I was sneaking in many prayers in quiet moments amidst my duties.

Grandpa was a Board-certified and practicing psychiatrist for 50 years, very accomplished in his profession and chief of the hospital, a published author, a world traveler, avid fisherman, and a goofy guy. We will miss him so much.

Below are photos from our last visit to him, just two months ago for his wife's funeral.

He was given exceedingly good and loving care for these last months from one of his daughters and her husband who moved in with Grandpa. I suspect this was, in its way, one of the fondest periods of his life. For this, I am so grateful and may we all be so blessed as to witness the best way for a family to take care of its elders.

I am sobered to be only 42 having only one parent left living and no grandparents at all.

In your charity, please pray for the repose of the soul of my grandfather.

2. Weekend Festivities

The past weekend was busy with festivities, as we hosted a birthday party for John's 13th and a very belated birthday visit of friends for Mary's 11th. Mary also enjoyed a St. Nicholas celebration with her youth orchestra, the boys had their monthly homeschool football game, and some of the children attended two Nativity plays at church.

My newly 13-year-old invited me (!) out with his birthday money to buy air plants (as he and I have been admiring them for months) and to treat me to ice cream: what a gentleman! He started school at 6:00 a.m. and worked diligently in order to be able to finish his work and take me out at 1:00 during my only available window that week.

3. Joseph's First Confession

This was a sacrament week, always a joy for a Catholic family! Joseph (6-1/2) has been preparing for his First Confession. On Saturday, he went to his two-hour retreat at church, his dad chaperoning and big sister being an assistant helper to the nuns.

Then on Monday evening, we all met at church for a marathon night of girls' choir practice, boys' altar server practice, a crowning of Mary in honor of the Immaculate Conception (Margaret was asked to be the girl who did the crowning!), Joseph's First Confession, and neighborhood Christmas caroling.

Margaret crowning Mary

Joseph asked me to be the parent who stayed for the Holy Hour while he did his First Confession, so Chris took the rest of the crew with all the parish teens and their families to go caroling.

Joseph before First Confession

Joseph had been very nervous ahead of time, which is typical, but came out and whispered to me that he was wrong, he was very, very happy, and he was sure he was even happier than his Mama right then. After praying his penance and finishing the Holy Hour, he asked to go back into the church to light a candle and say another prayer.

Joseph praying after First Confession (not his penance)

 Meanwhile, the big group was back from festive caroling and enjoying cocoa and sweet treats!

Goose egg on forehead from being dumped out of a laundry basket by a certain 4-year-old brother

4. Scholastic Scenes

After repeated adjustments, I've found what I think is a good rhythm for teaching the Story of Civilization for history (designed for K-8th) to my four different grades.

Monday: I read aloud the chapter while the oldest two are taking notes. Learning how to take notes in a Roman numeral outline is an important skill that requires actual instruction and practice. I read aloud (instead of playing the CD) so I can stop often, spell proper nouns, and direct the students to be sure to write down certain facts. The goal for my third grader is to listen carefully and my goal for my first grader is simply to sit still for the half hour, so he is allowed to play with a quiet toy.

Tuesday: I ask the review questions orally and we do one activity from the activity book. Many activities are offered, but I choose only one: a map or something else.

Wednesday: We listen to the chapter again--on the CD this time. Often there is a coloring page to do or a freehand drawing assigned to occupy their hands.

Thursday: First we talk through the narration activity on a specific topic. I ask questions from the youngest child first up through the ages so that the littlest kids have some opportunity to give information before being shown-up by the older kids who know more. Children are required to raise hands instead of shouting answers and this takes so much practice for homeschoolers. After doing the narration (which jogs everyone's memory), the third, fifth, and seventh graders take the weekly quiz. Then I pass out red pens for grading and read the answers aloud, not just "Number 1 is D," but the whole sentence. Children are being taught not to make any indication of their answers ("Yeah, I got that one!" or "Awww, I missed it") so that nobody can tease anyone else about their grades. Then they pass their tests to me to hide away. Lastly, the fifth and seventh graders are required to turn their oral narration into a short essay to submit by the end of the day (writing skills!).

Looking up weekly vocabulary words and getting distracted by "sooo many interesting definitions!"

Teaching simultaneously grammar to the third grader on my left and spelling to the fifth grader on my right

5. Teaching Cooking

I'm no font of patience, so every time I'm asked by an eager child to cook something himself--at nearly every meal--I have to hold back the selfish desire to cook it faster and easier by myself.

The latest four-year-old is now expressing the age-typical desire to "do it myself!" He's been practicing spreading his peanut butter and Nutella all week. Then he triumphantly announces that he is going to put the two slices together himself and, voila!

I remind myself that letting a tot go slow and do it himself leads to big kids who can and enjoy to make a dinner themselves, like our 11-year-old cooking the below meal with her pals.

6. Saint Lucy's Day

We put up the tree and lights adjacent to St. Lucy's day (associated with light). Ornaments will appear later.

This is the first time I've ever had a tree in the front window, which delights me!

We celebrated St. Lucy's day in a quicker fashion than normal in between 7:00 a.m. Mass and getting ourselves to a production of "It's a Wonderful Life" at 10:00.

I cooked sausage, too, before remembering it was Friday!

Black eye from an unfortunate run-in with a playground swing!

Attending "It's a Wonderful Life"

7. End of Hockey Season

Friday marked the end of this hockey season before a few weeks off until the spring season. Kudos to the ice rink for making it festive: after the last practice was a pizza party and the last game was made notable by the players skating onto the ice under spotlights and with their numbers and names being announced, just like in the pros. Our whole family attended to root for John!

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{SQT} Triple Feast Week

1. Feast of the Immaculate Conception

For the Feast of the Immaculate Conception on Saturday, we attended the 8:00 a.m. Latin Mass, and then joined two other families out to breakfast: six adults and 19 children!  I was grateful when some folks came up to the parents and appreciated the good behavior of the children (all of whom were sitting, talking quietly, without electronic devices) and even asked parenting advice! (I feel like I don't have much to give, but maybe those other two couples do!)

Then our three families visited Gingerbread Lane at The Ballantyne Hotel: always an elegant and free event!

2. First Snow

Our fair city was anticipating its first snow Saturday evening through Monday morning. Weather predictions varied wildly, with even up to a possible foot within Charlotte, but it was not to be. Our part of the city experienced snow alternating with freezing rain, so the end result was an utterly sloppy mess.

3. Feast Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe

We watched this 20-minute, subtitled show this year (instead of the CCC cartoon) and the children really liked it, one of whom was in tears (the good kind)! Then we enjoyed eating taco night.

4. Feast Day of St. Lucy

On the eve of this feast of light, I put up our tree . . . an artificial tree! This year, I finally 'waved the white flag' and requested of my husband that we buy an artificial tree because I can no longer carve out all the time necessary to obtain a fresh tree, manage it, sweep up the needles, manage all the cleaning after it is gone.

With four young helpers, it took us only half an hour to assemble this tree and get it all fluffed out.

We will hold off on decorating it for some time yet, but these lights will remind us that the birth of our Jesus Christ is yet coming at the end of Advent!

Never mind me, Mama, I'm not up to anything! (thinks Thomas, 15 months)

Mary (10) made lussekatter (cinnamon rolls) from scratch by herself the evening before the feast day. She even insisted on cleaning up, wiping counters, sweeping, and vacuuming all by herself because "that's part of the job, Mama!"

Sadly, in what will become known as the St. Lucy's Day Mishap, Mary was not available for the morning of the breakfast, so Margaret had to step into the shoes of the Lucia Bride.

It was bittersweet for Margaret who, as younger sister, has begged for years to be the Lucia Bride, but now that she was called to step into the role, she didn't even want to do it without her dear big sister.

In the evening, we got the little ones into pajamas and drove around looking at Christmas lights. This was the first time Thomas (young 3) could ever remember doing this, so he kept up a regular questioning about where we were going and were we going to see Christmas (as if Christmas were a person, place, or destination)? And David (15 months) exclaimed, "Wow!" loudly and clearly every time we passed a particularly good display of lights, which was often.

On the subject of David, I make note here in lieu of a baby book on paper that he is currently saying seven words (which is about how many Thomas could speak at 24 months!):

• Mama
• Dada
• Daiper
• Wa-wa (for water)
• Yum-yum (for food and nursing)
• Wow!
• Na-na! (for no-no)

He has ASL signs for:

• MORE
• WATER
• NURSING

5. Thomas

Little boys are so cute! Chris traveled on business again and this time, Thomas (3) was ready with some negotiating skills.

"Daddy, are you going on an airplane?"

"Yes."

"Daddy, are there chips on an airplane?"

"Um, yes."

"You bring chips back from your business trip? For Thomas? ONLY for Thomas?"

Thomas and David packing themselves in Daddy's suitcase

Well, somehow Thomas got Daddy to promise to bring him back chips. Then he talked to me about the chips all during Daddy's absence: "Daddy is bringing chips to Thomas ONLY."

Indeed, then Chris brought a bag back for Thomas, and Thomas convinced us that he could eat them for breakfast.

Just like a scrappy fifth child to do that!

Chips: the breakfast of champions

Thomas is suddenly showing so much phonemic awareness, which delights me especially this time around, given his earlier delayed speech.

One day this week, he was munching on pretzels and kept asking me, "what letter is this, Mama?" which, honestly, I was mostly ignoring because I was busy. Then I looked over to discover that had bitten them all into what he hoped were letters and he had tried to create writing.

The following day, he found in our school room the wooden letters I used in earlier years and has daily requested I bring them down so he can lay out the letters very carefully, matching whatever I spelled for him.

"Me making a star, Mama!"

John (12) and Thomas (3) have become quite the cooking pair, as Big Brother loves to invite this joyful little one to cook with him.

6. Joseph

Little boys are so cute! Joseph has been dressing up as a soldier all week, patrolling around the house to keep us safe.

As soon as we had put up our Christmas tree, Joseph ran to get the most treasured gift he had: three clay balls he had made and then dried hard. He stuck them in the tree as decorations.

Yes, by clay balls, I mean balls of dirt from our back yard.

So, imagine then, when one fell to the ground and shattered. I heard wailing so serious that I ran with speed to investigate and found it was not a child's broken limb but Joseph's broken heart because "it took me half an hour to make that ball and days to dry it!" I rocked him in my arms while he grieved and I thought of all the treasures we cling to and how God's great distance from us can see that what we've lost is merely as common as dirt.

Would that I would give up my "dirt" treasures to better put my sights on the treasures of heaven.

Do you have any sibling pairs (at any given time) that are best of friends and worst of enemies? Yeah, we do, too!

Reading aloud The Jungle Book to little brother--she read the whole book to him this week!

7. Scholastics

This week wraps up our homeschool before the Christmas break.

This was my first time experiencing "finals week" as a mother-teacher, in this case for our sixth grader. It has been fascinating for me to step into middle school, especially as a homeschool hybrid being run by other teachers. During our elementary homeschool, my children's only familiarity with tests is at their annual standardized testing as required by the state . . . and even then I tell them each year that the test is to test me: am I teaching them properly or do I need to teach them better?

I'm rigorous and they're learning very well, but they don't have much exposure to subject tests along the way, nor do I calculate for them subject grades for the year.

As can be expected, John and I have made some fumbles about studying all his class notes and material during the semester, and it has been (more than) a full-time job just completing all the material at hybrid school and home school. But this week, I taught him how to study and we drilled, drilled, drilled for his exams in Latin and History and Grammar. We will see what the results show!

Next week, we have a lofty goal that each Friday afternoon we turn all his notes into flash cards and then incorporate studying those each week.

Over the break, we will still have daily music practice, and actually intensifying music theory study because of rapidly upcoming competitions. And John still has history work due upon his return (and he has set a personal goal to do extra credit and get ahead!), but mostly we will be CLOSING THE BOOKS.



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