Graveyard Workings

Once a year, my family travels to a tiny town in northern Arkansas, to visit a few tiny old cemeteries in the area where loved ones lie. At a couple of these cemeteries, we simply visit graves and lay flowers down, but at one, our "family" cemetery, there's a work day and reunion on the day we visit, and often we clear branches and leaves, make some repairs, and contribute to a potluck lunch.

Most of my family can drive up from their home also in Arkansas (although it's still a long drive on small roads), but other family drives down from Illinois, and this year, for the first time in too long, we, too, drove down from Indiana:

my great-grandparents--my great-grandfather died just a few months before I was born, but I was fortunate to have spent my childhood living just down the street from my Nana, who I spent the night with sometimes and who would bake me peanut butter cookies with cherry icing.

one of my Pappaw's baby siblings--you're going to be heartbroken at how many died in infancy or as very young children 

I do love the homemade markers, although most from this time haven't lasted. This one is by far the best.

Most of Pappaw's siblings are marked just by stones at head and foot, and Pappaw simply knows who is who and  points them out to us each year. At one point, my aunt and uncle hand-stamped stones for each sibling, but it's a hard climate there and they didn't hold up. This year for Christmas, all of us chipped in and each bought Pappaw a marker for each of his siblings--seems like a morbid gift, but he loved it. During our work day, then, we dug out a space and set each marker in dry cement that will naturally harden over time--sooner rather than later, as we happened to do all this during an utter downpour (of course).

Pappaw's father, who died when Pappaw was a child, leaving Pappaw as the head of the family.  I want to say that he was approximately Willow's age, but he quit school and went to work then.

Since we're studying the Civil War, I was thrilled to have the girls visit the grave of their great-great-great grandfather. It sparked some great(ly difficult) conversations about why your average person would choose to fight for the Confederacy. The girls don't approve, of course, but I hope that they can eventually learn to respect their ancestor's service, if never his cause.

 It was a whirlwind trip, and it played hell on my diet, but stuff like this, the very stuff that I used to think was SOOOOOO boring when I was a kid, is the exact same stuff that it turns out that I want my own children well-versed in, too. I want my kids to know their roots. I want them to know what the teeny little rural mountain area my side of the family comes from looks like. I want them to know what their great-grandfather's childhood was like. I want them to wonder why one of their ancestors fought for the South in the Civil War. I want them to count the years on the stones, and think about who lived when, and what the world was like, and what their lives were like, and why they died when they did.

I hope it becomes real for them, one day, even though their own lives seem so out of that context. During our trip, Willow, of course, asked why we had to go and look at all these graves. Matt said, "When Pappaw looks at these graves, he doesn't see the graves. He sees the people that he loved, and he remembers them." Willow's a lucky girl in that she doesn't have any loved ones yet at whose grave she must stand and remember them, but someday, of course, she and her sister will know exactly what Matt means, and they'll come to appreciate our graveyard workings more as they become sadly more familiar with how grief and memory work.

The Curious Case of the Completely Concealed Coop

A happy ending to report:

An animal control officer popped by today to check out our chicken coop, in light of the anonymous complaints they'd been receiving about it. She found our coop perfectly acceptable, said that the complaints they'd received had no validity, and gave us permission to continue keeping our babies there, saying that we could call her when we'd finished building our complete chicken yard and she'd come back then for her "official" inspection.

And thus the Curious Case of the Completely Concealed Coop draws to a close, it seems.

On to the next case!

Kid and Kitteh are Watching You Suspiciously

So, drama update: Animal Control finally called Matt back this morning, and the officer was very nice, except that she said she'd come by the house today to informally check out the coop and see if we needed to do anything to make it comply before the "official" inspection... but she didn't. But hey--the back deck and backyard and front porch could always stand to be tidied, right? No, ma'am, no hillbillies here!

But, but, BUT, she said that the real gist of the anonymous complaint was that the person said that they could see our chicken coop from their back deck. The city regulations say that there has to be a visual barrier between your coop and the neighbor's property, so that's why they came out that first time. EXCEPT you can't see our chicken coop from any of our neighbors' decks at all, as in their decks aren't even on the correct side of their houses to be able to see our coop. So the caller was definitely lying! I mean, I knew that they were lying, because our coop doesn't smell, but I figured that could always be a mistake, as in "Hey, I smell something gross! I bet it's those people's chickens!", but you can't make a mistake about being able to see your neighbor's chicken coop from your deck, especially if your deck doesn't even face their house.

All this means that the anonymous caller might not even be one of our next-door neighbors. Could someone down the block just hate chickens? Could the caller have named the wrong house, and it's just coincidence that we, too, have illegal chickens? Hmmm...

The benefit of this new development is that I'm not even stressed about it anymore, because now, it's a mystery! You know how much I HATE unresolved issues? Well, that's the exact same amount that I LOVE a mystery!

Next up: the kids and I begin to search for clues.

My Latest at Crafting a Green World: Bread Sculptures and our TIRE SWING!!!!!!! (and drama)

a tutorial for making edible bread sculptures

(such a great sensorial activity, especially for my girl who spends most of her day reading)

and a discussion of what is probably my kids favorite thing ever:

TIRE SWING!!!!!!!

helping Daddy

giddy with anticipation

gotta throw a rock over the right limb--tricky, tricky!

just swinging on the rock was pretty fun

putting tubing around chain to protect tree limbs and kiddo fingers

drilling eye hooks into the tire

hooking the tire to the chain using locking carabiners

Success!

and, because a new toy is nothing until it's a comedy prop

Thank goodness for a happy new toy, because our home is all about the drama today--the girls and I came home from letterboxing this afternoon to find a notice on our door from Animal Care and Control, saying that one of our neighbors had complained of a "chicken smell."

I'm not being one of THOSE people when I tell you that there is no such smell; the chickens were at a friend's being chicken-sat through Sunday, and I swear that even if the animal control officer had jumped into her car and raced over the second that she got a complaint this afternoon, four chickens can't put up a smell in three days.

Also, we take care of them.

Unfortunately, we are absolutely in the wrong in that, although we sent in our application for a chicken coop, Animal Control hasn't contacted us to set up an inspection yet, but I've been letting the chicks spend time in their new outdoor coop anyway to get used to being outside, knowing full well that having chickens without a permit is expressly forbidden. And so, I imagine when the control officer came by and saw no one home, she took herself a little stroll around our house, and what did she spy with her own eyes?

Yep. Four chickens in an unlicensed coop, duly noted on our form.

Oops.

Seriously, though--what happened to just saying to your spouse, "Do our neighbors have chickens? What's up with that? I'm uncomfortable with the idea of chickens. Are they even allowed to have chickens? I know! I'll go over and talk with them about their chickens! I'll express any concerns that I have, share my fears that chickens will smell, and hear their answers!"

Wouldn't that be a nicer course of action than saying something like, "Our neighbors have chickens! I hate and fear that! I'm going to call Animal Control and report them! But what if they're allowed to have chickens? I know! I'll make up a lie and say they smell! Then they'll get in trouble, and maybe those dreadful chickens will go away!

So Matt called the animal control officer's phone number left on the form, especially since she told him "to call ASAP," got no answer, and left a message. And the chicks are still in their coop, although now I'm wondering if I should squeeze them back into their brooder. Or borrow a bigger brooder from my friends. Or write a letter to all our neighbors mentioning how clean our illegal chicken coop is and how fresh it smells. Or give the boy chicks back to my other friend so that we're only keeping two illegal chickens, not four. Or put the chicks back in the brooder, clean the coop out, and deny ever having chicks in the coop just in case she didn't actually see them, after all.

I do NOT like unresolved issues. I like clarity, and a clear course of action. I like neighbors who discuss potential issues before calling up The Man. I like animal control officers who, after instructing someone to phone them, answer their phone.

Here's hoping that this time tomorrow, I'll also be saying, "I like how Animal Care and Control responded so quickly and was so willing to help us solve our problem, and how they handled our violation in a non-punitive manner! I like how we found a basket of muffins on our porch this morning with a note that read, 'I'm sorry I lied about your chickens. I actually love them. Of course they don't smell.'"

It's just as likely to happen as not, right?

Reading and Writing

Syd's still plugging away!

writing words in her speller's dictionary

reading a bit of an early chapter book at the library

Syd's still practicing every day, and getting a little better every day, but she still gets so frustrated and upset over unlocking unfamiliar words that I'm feeling like quite the troll mother for keeping her at it (although to be fair, five minutes ago she got so frustrated and upset over following the directions barked out by Willow's Bop It! that she shouted "I hate you!" at it).

I've got a couple of other strategies to try out soon, however. My friend Tina suggested having Syd choose board books to read, which is brilliant--each one is short, easy, completely do-able, and yet...a real BOOK!  It sounds like a great confidence builder, and great practice normalizing book reading. I also suddenly remembered reading on someone's blog once that they had a kiddo who, too, lacked the confidence to read a real book. This blogger--and I wish I could remember who it was!--wrote out every word on one page as a flash card, had the kid read those, then ordered them just as they were on the book page, had the kid read those, and only THEN presented the kid with the actual book and the actual page that she wanted him to read. This is also pretty brilliant, since we could spend days working through the actual words in the book, I could stagger the words that I know will be frustrating, and then, after having done all the hard decoding work already, Syd could have the satisfaction of reading an entire book smoothly and easily, just as she most wants (and expects she should be able to, sigh) to do.

This will likely wait until after our road trip, however, which is in just a week and a half. Until then, Syd's pretty happily working through the Montessori Green Series and a book of little reproducible easy reader mini-books (she copies them, fills in the blanks, illustrates them, staples them, and reads them over and over to anyone that I can force to listen to her--they've got some decoding to be done, some composition, some storytelling, and lots of great repetition and confidence-building in the reading). I might just hide the public library's reading form altogether until we're back home again (and she's forgotten that she pitched a fit and tried to throw it away), and then try my new strategies.

One day soon, this kid will be reading fluently, easily, and happily. One day soon, I'll find myself getting pissed off because she won't put her book down to empty the dishwasher, or put away her laundry. I'll gear up to chastise her, and then remember how short a time ago it was that reading was the most frustrating, most miserable thing I'd ever made her do.

And then instead of griping, I'll grab my own book, sit down next to her, and read beside her for the rest of the day.

Zooming through the Montessori Green Series

Sydney is just about a reader!

Our journey through to reading has been, shall we say... eclectic. Syd loved the Bob books... until she didn't.  She loved the moveable alphabet... until she didn't. She loved any kind of reading app on the ipad... until she didn't. I never could get too comfy in the game, never could plan for any one method to take us all the way to the finish line, because the kid would inevitably eventually decide that this way was no longer the way for her.

Only two things have remained consistent for the past two years:

1. Syd is surrounded by books. My goodness, I can't imagine children who could be MORE surrounded by books than these two children here. They have their wall of picture books, chapter books, non-fiction books, comic books, magazines, and encyclopedias in their room. They have all the picture books, chapter books, non-fiction books, comic books, magazines, and encyclopedias that belong to me and Matt to explore (except the sexy ones, which are on high shelves). They have our entire bookshelf in the living room devoted to all our library picture books, chapter books, non-fiction books, comic books, magazines, and encyclopedias. They have the library itself, which we visit two to three times a week (a few weeks we've visited up to six times, Foursquare tells me--yikes!). They have their magazine subscriptions. They have me inter-library loaning the latest Rainbow Fairies paperback for them from England (Thanks, IU Libraries!). Syd has her own CD player and her own ipod just for audiobooks; she's got our family stereo and our car stereo and the ipad for more audiobooks. She's got twenty digital books and audiobooks every two weeks from our public library's digital library. She's got me and her sister who constantly have our own noses in a book, and me and Matt to read to her, and ample time to keep her own nose stuck in a book (or, lately, a Smurfs comic book) many hours of the day
2. Syd has read out loud every day. Sometimes she's been proud to, sometimes she's been reluctant to, often she reads the same book over and over, often she succumbs to a giant temper tantrum if she can't figure out the next word, but she always reads. At least for my kids, "normalizing" something is the only way to get past certain roadblocks. If they are required to brush their teeth for two solid minutes every night before bed, eventually they will both stop pitching a giant fit about brushing their teeth for two solid minutes, you know? Even if Syd read that same damn book with "Mat sat" in it for a hundred times, she was at least practicing the notion that she is a reader.

Lately, at just the very cusp of being able to read for REAL real--as in, regular early readers that are actually interesting to a kid, not graded-level reading instruction readers that try to make something interesting out of three blends, five sight words, and all the consonant-vowel-consonant words you could ask for--I've been seriously grooving on the reading review train. Like the pedal bicycle that Syd can ride but refuses to because she lacks the confidence to try and the patience to struggle, Syd *can* read, but lacks the confidence to try and the patience to struggle. And unlike the bicycle, whose pedals we took off so that she could join family bike rides at her own level, I'm not ashamed to say that I am much more insistent, firm, and demanding with reading. I won't read her the directions on the box of macaroni and cheese or jar of soup or canister of oatmeal because I know that she can read them, even if she has to stop and throw a fit halfway through. I won't read her the directions on game cards, or the menu in restaurants, or the quiz questions on her Summer Reading Program form.

Yes, yes, I know, terrible parenting, but you already knew that.

To mediate that, though--back to the reading review train! As her life outside of school becomes suffused with reading for herself, straight into the deep end of the literacy pool, her reading lessons during school are super easy, all about going over phonograms that she already knows and adding and reviewing sight words. We love the Montessori Reading Series, and for our school lessons lately, we've been zipping through the printables of the Green Reading Set from The Helpful Garden:

I printed, laminated, and cut out the letter and phonogram cards, and kept one single, unlaminated copy of the word bank for myself. To play, I write one of the words on our dry erase board. Sydney reads it--


--and then I erase it real quick, with much fanfare and fuss. Then Sydney uses the letter and phonogram cards to build the word again from memory--

--and she reads it again after she's built it.

Syd really likes this game because it's do-able for her, so she has that happy feeling of accomplishment and mastery as she works, but it's also still a really great activity, since she's got to hold the word in her head and recreate it from memory, then read it again as her own construction.

For some reason, Willow is really intrigued by this activity, too, and likes to jump into Syd's work:

Very occasionally I can channel her enthusiasm into actually helping Syd--

But not for long, of course, because then otherwise, how would sisters fight?

The Second Girl Plays Softball

It was the day of Willow's first softball practice last year, and thus the day AFTER softball registration had closed, that Syd decided that she, too, really, REALLY wanted to play softball, too! Never mind the fact that I had probably asked her four times in the preceding weeks if she was sure she didn't want to play, and she had every time said definitely not; nope, decisions in the affirmative cannot possibly be made until it is exactly too late, because otherwise you can't sulk for an entire softball season.

And so for that whole softball season--every practice, every game--Syd was restless and bored and grumpy. She couldn't manage to find an activity to bring to settle herself, and she couldn't stop thinking (and talking!) about how she wanted to play, too, and not playing wasn't fun, and she wasn't having fun, and the only thing that would be fun would be to play softball, which we would NOT let her do, and it wasn't fair.

Sigh.

This softball season, Syd said yes and Will said no, so we still have only one softball player! And she's happy to be on that field, let me tell you:

Matt and I LOVE going to her softball games. They are a highly entertaining form of slapstick comedy. We cheer, and we clap, and we laugh our asses off:


It's VERY important to have a good sense of humor in Six-and-Under Softball.

Although a good game face doesn't do you wrong, either:

And oh, my goodness, having one of his kids on a team sport is basically Matt's idea of heaven:

Even though Willow isn't playing, she generally manages to keep herself entertained. She digs in the dirt, or cons her dad out of pocket change to buy junk food, or, mostly, does this:

The experience is going about as well as it possibly could for everyone, thank goodness. Syd's enjoying herself, doing pretty well, not fixating on her failures (this alone makes softball a great experience, and a big deal), and learning all that good sporty stuff. Her sister is cheering her on and keeping herself busy. Her dad is thrilled.

And her mom is getting a LOT of reading done there on those bleachers.