The Imperfect Community

[julymom]

It seems like the community has taken a serious dive in posts since the IP asked for bloggers. What's up with that? It seems like every random though anyone has now that could easily just be a post on the community has turned into a blog. Does everything have to be a blog? Can't we just have conversations anymore?

[Jessica]

Blogs are the new thing now, I guess. Perhaps they've replaced forums?

There's still activity in the forums, on the Jon and Kate forum. LOL. Wouldn't you know it?

[mammaX3_MOD]

I appreciate the quick thoughts on the forums, because I read while my kids are eating breakfast (otherwise they'll wander away from the table if I'm not in the same room).
I don't always have time to read the loooooong blog posts.

[Scout]

I like the blogs, but I do miss the forum chit chat, too.

[julymom]

I knew I wasn't the only one! So, what can we talk about? Anyone have big plans for the summer? I'm quitting my job at the end of this month and moving to AZ for 2 months, and then off to....somewhere. The Army hasn't told us yet. Oh, and I'm homeschooling Cooper next year. What's new with you?

[mammaX3_MOD]

Heading back to my mom's in July for my HS reunion, and Dh and I are heading to Vegas (for the first time ever) for our 10 year anniversary in August. I'm too excited, I just bought 2 new Summer outfits for the trip, in the pouring-down, cold, Seattle rain today. Wishful thinking I guess.

[prescott]

The activity here on the forums was way down even before we added new writers on the blog. Seems like a lot of the old regulars drifted away for whatever reason.

I agree, it would be nice if *both* areas of the site were hoppin', like all the OT stuff in those long blog comment threads could easily be various topics over here... oh well...

[Anthromomma]

I like the blogs, although I always seem to miss out on the more interesting discussions in comments until they've already run their course. I've ventured into Jon and Kate forum land once or twice, but aside from the fact that I've never seen that show, well, I don't think that I would exactly fit in there.


I graduated last month (finally), but I'm spending this summer working in the department's archaeology lab--cataloguing and archiving old collections and doing research. Inhumanely boring stuff, but it's keeping me from having to look for a 'real' job for now. I was accepted into the medical anthropology postgrad program at Durham University, so we'll be moving across the pond at the end of September for four years. Most of the summer will be spent selling, storing and shipping all of our junk in preparation of the move.

[julymom]

Anthro, congrats on graduating! OMG, you're moving acros the pond???? Color me 7 shades of green because I'm just that jealous. Or first choice for overseas assignments is the UK.

Cool. Is this a function of having to move so much this year, or more of a philosophical choice?

A bit of both actually. I don't want to transfer him after just a few weeks at school. Mostly though it's a philosophical choice. I've always want to homeschool him, but obviously I couldn't due to my job. We had a lot of issues with K this year. Mostly with his teacher. She was a beeyotch. She wanted him to go to speech therapy. He went in for an evaluation and the therapist was amazed by him. His vocabulary tested in the 15-18 year range. She said he spoke clearly and concisely and didn't understand why the teacher though he needed to be there. He does, if you listen carefully, have a slight accent. This is mostly due to watching British cartoons when we lived in Germany. He was just learning to talk at that point, and picked up an accent. It's much better now, but if you watch him talk, you can see that he moves his mouth more like Europeans do when they talk (more to the back of the throat with tighter lip movement) than most Americans do. Your kids might pick this up too.
He also got in trouble a lot at school for talking. He DOES like to talk and there are times when he needs to be quiet (he's actually pretty good at this, even though sometimes it nearly kills him), but he got in trouble for talking in the bathroom. Not yelling, talking. WTF? It's the bathroom. He got in trouble once for talking too much at lunch. He also got in trouble for being the last person to line up coming in from recess. Huh?
He also learned a lot of stuff from other kids (mostly words and behaviors) that I was not happy about. We certainly don't plan to keep him hidden away, but I would much rather he learn behavior by meeting people of all ages, not just kids his own age, who are growing up with parents who have a different belief system and parenting style. I'm not worried about socialization. There are tons and tons of homeschool groups and hey, just going out in the world on errands, field trips, etc are great for socializing.
Plus, he was awfully bored most of the time. He was really irritable when they learned about farm animals. He came home griping about it and when I asked him what was wrong with studying farm animals, he looked at me like I was slow and said "Mom, I KNOW what farm animals are, what sounds they make and what color they are. It's baby stuff." Okay.
So, we decided to keep him home and work a curriculum around his interests. He's so excited he wants to start NOW. I have to keep him out of the stuff I've gathered so far. We're doing something similar to the Sonlight curriculum minus the bible stuff. Their curric is heavy on learning through literature and hands on activities. We'll be studying the ancient world, plants, the solar system, geography, dinosaurs, natural disasters and a bunch of other stuff in addition to math, spelling, handwriting, reading skills, French and music. He's very into ancient stuff and archeology so we're using a cross curriculum approach for that (science, math, history, geography). He could hold a whole conversation with you about ancient Egypt, the pyramids, mummies, Pompeii (he's fascinated by the cast of the dog they found), dinosaurs (how they lived, what they ate, how they died, etc) and how archeologists figure stuff out.
We went to Cahokia a few weeks ago and there were archeologists digging. He was over the moon! One of them came over and talked to us and told us what they were looking for. Unfortunately it was just starting to rain, so they had to cover up. The woman told us if it weren't raining they'd let him come in the dig site and do a little digging. We kept hoping the rain would stop, but no such luck.
Have you taken your kids to see Dinoraurus at the STL Zoo? If not, it's pretty cool. They have a pit in there with dino "bones" and they give kids brushes and let them excavate. He had a ball doing that.
He's told me he wants to be Indiana Jones when he grows up.

/ridiculously long answer

[Petulant Pixie]

The community had died off long before the blogs picked up.

Anthro—very cool about your plans to study overseas. I wish that we had an opportunity to live abroad for a while. I’m sure that’s going to be an unforgettable experience.

JM—good luck with home-schooling. We have a big home-schooling group at TKD, and I bounce the idea around every once in a while.

As for me, basically I am writing. I plan to get back to the novel (or a new novel if I open the completed one and determine that in the years since Liz was conceived it does in fact suck) when Liz starts kindergarten (in two years). In the meanwhile, I was hoping to get a few short stories published, so I could have some credentials to put in my query letters. My previous publications are so old, they don’t count. It’s better to not mention them at all, than to bring up something from 1994.

I have two good and solid short stories, but I can’t do anything with them because they’re memoirs. The general consensus out there is that if you can’t hide the identity of someone by changing their name and some physical characteristics (because they’re like your sister or something), then you need to either get their permission or just not do it. Because there will be law suits. Interestingly enough, from these law suits, it seems that if you can get enough corroboration to show that what you wrote is true, then the law suit has no merit, because people have the right to tell their stories. There’s only legal trouble if you fabricated any of it. But, it’s still a pain in the ass, messy and unfun to be sued by your sister. Which would happen. So, the stories will stay hidden.

There just aren’t any small, tidy, stories of fiction bouncing in my head. I have full blown novel ideas, but none for stories. So, maybe these little memoir things need to be flushed out before I can get to the making-up stuff anyway. I don’t know.

I know, it’s boring, because it’s not doing anything. It’s planning time by myself to sit and pound away at a little iBook. Not exactly fodder for good conversation. So, the rest of us…

We have a trip to Vancouver BC planned for this summer with my dad. That’s going to be a blast.

Katie’s TKD school is sponsoring her for Little Miss (our town name), which is really tearing me apart for a bunch of reasons. She wants to do it. It’s not a beauty pageant. The girls do not model or display talents or anything like that. The entire judging process is made on a series of interviews, where they’re basically looking for a very articulate, caring girl who is mature beyond her age and has demonstrated some exceptional leadership skills. Which really is Katie. There is a scholarship prize (have no idea how much) after the completion of her “Royal Year.” But, I’m such an introvert, and a feminist. It’s really weird that my daughter would be doing something like this.

Katie won State Champ 2008 in TKD for Traditional Forms, Extreme Forms and Extreme Weapons. So, she gets a big fancy uniform announcing that.

Alex, Liz, Mike and I are all living pleasant, normal lives with typical ups and downs, sans tiaras, sashes or STATE CHAMP uniforms. Which makes us seem rather blah in comparison, I guess, but we’re not. Having the little extrovert in the family is exhausting. I’m glad the rest of us are quiet and content with getting our joy from things like making honor roll, having a good standing in the school band, writing, getting raises at work, learning how to ride a bike, and dealing with giving up a pacifier. It’s like Katie’s on one end of the teeter-totter and the rest of us are on the other. That’s what’s needed for us to find balance. Alex does not seem to envy Katie at all, he gets a kick out of her antics and the attention she gets. And, if Liz is anything like me (and she seems to be a LOT like me), then she would rather die than have to be in front of a crowd. So, I hope that there is no feeling like she has to follow Katie’s footsteps as Liz grows. I know, I brag about her and then apologize for it. It’s weird to be the mother of someone so extroverted when you’re such an introvert.

Anyway, so we went from me writing looooong blog entries to a looooong board entry. But, that’s what’s up with us.

[Petulant Pixie]

And, some videos (since it's not the blog, I can do that)

This is Katie back in April or May doing her 1st place XMA form. She was really ON for this one. Click on the "view in high quality" option to the lower right of the video thing, then you can like see her face.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvUVikLYETA

This is Katie a couple of weeks ago at one of the (3) demos her school put on for the Kung Fu Panda movie. She was NOT on during this demo, lol, but she got better as the day went on. At the last demo, she did break that second board. On this one, Mike forgot to turn the camera on until half her from was over, so it looks like she started it on the ground, but she didn't. But, what she's using to get up is something she's learned in her private lessons with Mr Langford (the teenage kid holding the board for her in the first part) and it's called a "windmill-up," where you spin your legs to get up. But, I like this video because she's just like a 9 year-old in it, her cartwheels are lazy and her kicks are half-assed and personally, I like to see her slacking sometimes because it shows she's a normal kid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZN5vZSTNGs

And, here's Lizzie doing her "XMA Form" it's very cute

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF9hPQSbOPA

Alex has preferred to be behind the video camera instead of in front of it lately (for no good reason, there's nothing wrong with him, lol), but I hope to get some good footage of him in Canada soon.

[MainstreamMom]

Hi Everyone!!!!!!! I haven't logged-on in AGES and boy have things changed!!!!!!

What's the 411?

[Jessica]

[Anthromomma]

JM, Cooper and Seamus sound a lot alike. KG went well for him this year because his teacher 'got' him, and she's just an all-around amazing teacher. She does multi-level curriculum to keep all of her class engaged/challenged-- including the four ESOL students and one autistic student out of the twenty in his class. But the talking too much, refusing to do stuff that he finds boring, ancient Egypt, geography, dinosaurs, space (he's also very into geology, American presidents and flags of the world right now), that's all him, too. He's the kid who insists on going to the art museum at least once a month (basement, to see the mummies, and then second floor for modern art), and I'm seriously taking him to see Richard III (Shakespeare in the Park) on Friday because he has been begging for weeks (it's a long story, but it's less pretentious and abnormal than it probably sounds). I think he could really thrive in a more self-directed environment, but we can't afford a spendy private school for that, and homeschooling isn't really a feasible option for us.

Since you're leaving it doesn't matter so much, but there is a very active secular homeschooling group in StL. I have a couple of friends who homeschool and they found them to be a tremendous wealth of info when they were getting started.

[MainstreamMom]