What I'm Reading Now

This one will probably take me the rest of the summer to get through. It's called The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home written by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise. Thanks to my dear friend Chris who highly recommended this book. Here's a nice summary of its purpose (Amazon website):

Two veteran home educators outline the classical pattern of education—the trivium—which organizes learning around the maturing capacity of the child's mind. With this model, you will be able to instruct your child in all levels of reading, writing, history, geography, mathematics, science, foreign languages, rhetoric, logic, art, and music, regardless of your own aptitude in those subjects.

Although I've only begun reading this epic-sized book, I can already see how it's going to give me confidence to tackle home education. Even as trained educators for institutionalized education, these authors get straight to the point by emphasizing that parents are more than capable of homeschooling their own children. There's no need to have an early childhood development or educational psychology background in order to educate your own children. I'm so glad to know that since my educational and professional background are merely a bachelor's degree in Business Administration and about 5 years with a Fortune 500 corporation. Funny how homeschooling is making me more nervous than the days when I faced a room full of business professionals or when I wrote talking points for the CEO before he gave a speech or made a company-wide announcement. How can facing my three little ones with an elementary level book with ABC's be more intimitading than that? But it truly is! I have one shot at this and I want to get it right. This is way more important to me than all the work I did with a corporation. This is lasting...this is a legacy!

I'll give a virtual back pat to the first person who can point out the misspelling on Amazon's page about this book!

Funny Things People Say

Well, this time it was my dearest, most-well-meaning husband who said something really funny tonight. He said, "Maybe you should put the kids on a really tight schedule." Ha ha ha! Silly man! Putting these kids on a tight schedule is like trying to walk a cat on a leash. He was only trying to help since my main complaint today was feeling overwhelmed and feeling as if I'm falling behind on everything. When is this guy gonna learn to listen and to leave the advice to my girlfriends? Luv ya, Babe!

Don't Read This Book

Don't read Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream by David Platt if:

1. You want to maintain status quo
2. You don't want to be thoroughly convicted
3. You think attaining the American Dream is a noble aspiration
4. You've worked hard for your stuff and want to keep it
5. You think Jesus wants you to work hard to have things to make your life more comfortable
6. You believe material things are always a blessing
7. You think some are "called" to missions but not you
8. You don't like to be told that some of your "Christian" ideas are "straight out of hell."
9. You focus your efforts on hard work, planning and strategy and criticize those who don't
10. You don't like to dwell on the fact that thousands of starving children (and their parents) are dying daily from malnutrition - at this rate the same number of children in the city of Knoxville would be dead in 2-3 days (that's all of mine and yours if you live here).

...And I'm not even done reading the book. I'm about half way through it. I tell you, don't read this book unless you are ready for a heart transplant. It will shake you to your core.

The Latest and Greatest

It's been a while since I've updated here so I figure while I've got a minute - Griff and Schaeff sleeping and Lily busy with art supplies - I'll try to get up to speed.

It's busy times here. BJ continues to work steadily through seminary classes. He's taking an online elementary greek class. In addtion, he will be attending the Southern Baptist Convention in Orlando, with a weekend class in Kentucky about the SBC, in order to get 3 hours of on-campus credit. He's slated to take 2-3 classes this fall. Since we are in a more predictable schedule (read: sleeping a bit more) with Griffin, BJ is taking full advantage of this time to get some classes behind him. He's up early to get his reading done, and at night before bed he falls asleep with a textbook in hand...I believe this latest one is Baptists and the Bible. I will not lie, having a husband in seminary, who also works full-time, and who teaches and leads a Bible Fellowship class every Sunday morning, and who has 3 young children is not the easiest thing in the world. We are feeling a bit stretched. We are trying to be very purposeful with our free time because there's not much of it. We haven't watched a TV show in months.

The kids are all doing great. We are all set to go with River's Edge Christian Academy starting in August. The curriculum has been ordered, and we attended an informational parent meeting this past week. We met Lily's teacher at RECA and the other parents of the 7 kids (up from 5 just a month ago). The max. limit they will accept for this group is 10 so they could very well reach their max. before August. I'm excited for Fountain City to be getting something like this in our community.

Griffin started speech/feeding therapy two weeks ago. The therapy is okay, but he's still not eating solids any better. We just plod along in that area making small steps - he likes strawberry yogurt and he will sometimes tolerate the chunks in it. He still hasn't said his first word. Although, he loves the sound of certain words when we say them to him. It cracks him up when we say "disgusting!" He kackles and then repeats back "dadaduh!" Is it wrong that his first word might be "disgusting?" Not mama or dada, but disgusting!

Our friends the Holden's gave birth to their long awaited son, Cade. He is just perfect! Leslie had a long (28 hrs) and difficult labor and delivery but she was such a trooper. And she looked beautiful in the hospital - the new mom glow! They are home and getting settled into life with a newborn. I wish I had photos, but apparently I don't know how to use my new camera because the photos I took did not appear on the memory card when I got home. Uuuuggghhh. I'm so clueless with technology.

He Does As He Pleases

I have a friend who just learned that she is pregnant. She struggled with infertility for years and endured fertility treatments of various kinds which did not result in pregnancy. She decided to give up on "trying." And now she is expecting something that she has learned to not expect. I guess you could say she is unexpectedly expecting! Praise God! He has not changed, He will never change. His plans are the same yesterday, today and forever. Even when our plans and our emotions change by the second, God is never changing. He does as He pleases. The Lord gives and the Lord takes; blessed be His name!

Happy Mother's Day, etc...

Happy Mother's Day to all you mommies out there! You are a special creation and don't you believe otherwise no matter how you may feel from day to day, no matter how many piles of laundry await you, no matter how many tantrums your toddler may throw, no matter how many pieces of bubble gum your preschooler just swallowed within a 3 minute period, no matter how many times your infant awakes in the middle of the night just because he wants his mommy, and no matter that you don't have your children involved in every sport team, academic activity, or social playgroup. Being a mom is a tough job - by far the toughest job I've ever loved - but God equips us every day with exactly what we need when we call on Him. Go Moms, Go!

For Mother's Day my sweet BJ gave me a Canon Rebel camera. That should mean that the photos that I post on here should look near professional...well, as soon as I learn how to use the thing. I'm pretty excited to learn about my new SLR camera and learn some photog tricks.

We completed the parent interview this week for Lily's enrollment with the homeschool co-op at River's Edge. I think it went well, except for the fact that Lily sat the whole hour with her back to the Administrator and Board Member who were conducting the interview. Believe me, I tried to get her to turn around in her chair and face them and be a polite little angel. Fortunately, both gentlemen completely understood her discomfort with being in a new place. We purchased our homeschool curriculum and I can't wait for it to ship so I can begin looking through it and getting prepared. We meet the other kindergarten students and families next Tuesday at a family informational meeting.

Griffin has another feeding/speech evaluation this Tuesday. Turns out the first evaluation with UT Hearing and Speech was incorrectly scheduled. They don't do feeding therapy there. It was a miscommunication between our pediatrician and his referral nurse. We waited 2 months to get in with that speech pathologist. She completed the evaluation and then afterwards told me she'd need to refer me to someone else who does infant feeding therapy. Aaaaarrrggghhh! So now we will be going to Kids Rehab. Luckily they got us in very quickly so we won't have to wait another two months. I'm sure it was because Griffin's pediatrician diagnosed him failure to thrive and now it's officially on his chart. I'm so glad my identity as a mom isn't tied up into my children's ability to speak and eat on their own. LOL!!

It was a great Mother's Day and I enjoyed the beautiful cooler weather. I spent about 3 hours on my parent's porch swing with Griffin sleeping on my lap. Where was the camera when I needed it? I love being a mommy even on the days that it seems insurmountably difficult. Thank you Jesus for my precious gifts!

Busy

It's getting busy up in here! And I'm not neccessarily talking about my relationship with my husband. (I know, eeewwww!) Our home is getting seriously busy, much busier than I am used to handling. We have some homeschool co-op meetings and such coming up. Griff has had a speech/feeding evaluation which resulted in more appts weekly. BJ is trying to get as much school complete as he can. He just completed the spring semester and now has 2 more classes checked off. He has already enrolled in an online Greek class that will begin this month. In June he has plans to attend the SBC in Orlando and a 1-day course in Kentucky about the SBC in order to get 3 hours of on-campus credit. And then he'll transition right into the fall semester and possibly a week-long mini-term on the Kentucky campus sometime. We continue to serve at Sevier Heights and stay busy in that capacity. We love our church family and we find that serving there is such an awesome gift.

Just to update you, Lily is doing great with her glasses. She has come to rely on them. She wakes up and puts them on first thing because she can see when she wears them. She has another loose tooth which will probably fall out in about a week or so. I asked her if she were excited about the tooth fairy coming and giving her money for her piggy bank. Her reply, "No, mom. Fairies aren't real." I told her it could be fun to pretend anyway. I got a big s-i-g-h in response as if she might be willing to put up with my silliness.

Schaeffer (aka Schaeff or Schaeffey - names given to him by his loving sis) is full of himself lately. He says nearly anthing that comes to his mind. Sometimes it's pretty funny and sometimes it can be downright embarrasing. But it's cool to hear his thoughts and connect with him that way. The other night when we had lots of storms rolling through, he peeked out the window to see. The sky lit up with a flash of lightening and then he said, "Why did Jesus do that?" He's such a little man and I luuuuve him!

Griffin just celebrated his 1st birthday. We had a little party here at the house (photos coming soon). We were hoping for an outdoor cookout but weather did not permit. Instead we had bar-b-q chicken inside. We got to celebrate with Nana Kaye and Nana Faye. That was a special treat. Griffin is so sweet, and he's proving to be pretty fearless. He perpelled himself off the rocking chair and down a couple of steps all in one day. The bad part was that I was holding him in my lap when he did a nose dive off my lap and onto the floor. He's quick! Thank goodness babies are so resilient.

Well, I think that's it for now... I hope to update more often but it's not looking very promising.