FullOfStitches.com blog.A good laugh leaves me in stitches!

Reading Brigitte Jordan’s Birth in Four Cultures is beginning to open my eyes. Yes, it’s a suggested reading book for my schooling (midwifery), yet she delves more and deeper into how natural learning occurs than many other books I’ve read. I’m in chapter seven now, where she describes the native midwife teaching her to perform prenatal massage by placing her (midwife’s) hands over hers (student) on the mother’s belly. The midwife’s knowledge is more in her physical body than in her spoken words.

The chapter also references another work: about Liberian tailors and how they apprentice. The apprentice starts off more play than work, allowed to work with the least expensive items – fetching and cleaning, learning what is in the shop, then moves up to sewing the less expensive garments (like previously cut pieces to be sewn together, and I’m guessing his button skills will be well practiced by now) well before he is ever allowed to cut fabric.

So do we when teaching our children.

They play with the bubbles as we clean the dishes. They sweep up little piles with the dustpan and brush while we’re sweeping the larger floor. They play with dough while I’m making bread. These activities teach them responsibility, importance, and hospitality.

Christ is known to talk in parables, but how did He teach His disciples to be mighty men of God? (Men who when with Him were recorded mainly as squabbling over who would be the greatest!) These men witnessed His humility – taking the time early each day to pray and align His desires with His Father’s, associating with and healing those that most of His people felt were undeserving..

How frustrating can it be to be the only (thinking/able/rational/fill-in-the-blank) person in the vicinity? Homeschooling, no, Parenting can be a huge lesson (for us!) in humility, patience. They need to play, yes, but they also need direction. If there is a child, there is learning, but what would be the cost of constant play? To move a family from poverty takes a parent willing to read to the children. To motivate a child takes interaction. To continue to live learning takes mastery of the basics and advancing challenges.

My challenge this weekend: prepare for the schoolyear. What “schedule” will we have? What materials are still in want? Prepare!

Since I’ve been off my feet, I’ve been an insomniac & just fatigued all day. My foot is finally feeling better. The bump near my toe joint (?) went down a day or two ago & I’ve been wanting to try this recipe for a while. It’s been years since I made pasta!

Yes, I do prep work with the Little Guy on my back. He loves watching the mixer do its deed & has a much better view up there than on a chair where his fingers are at risk. This also happens to be the best way to get a tired baby to sleep when all needs are satisfied. I’m holding him. He’s content, safe, in the conversation, and capable of seeing what’s going on. After all, if I ignore him, I’m just a hair tug away! & I hate hair pulling!

So, pasta! The recipe is a basic egg pasta recipe, so perhaps the length of kneading time helps it more, or that substitutes not using the crank at the end. It does call for flavorings in the pasta, which most don’t. I don’t have the Italian pasta flour, so I’m trying this with cake flour (big no no? I don’t know). If this doesn’t go well, I’ll give it a go with all-purpose. I like whole wheat, but figured that I need to learn the “art” before I get too crafty. Maybe I’ll pull out the old pasta book I have & make green spinach pasta..

The girls are “doing teamwork” to work the dough. The dough seemed a bit dry, but with a good pressing, it’s come together nicely. TJ put a stockpot of water on to boil & we’ll be enjoying our “House-Made Pasta” in no time!

Delicious!

Dear Mr. Principal,
TJ is a student living in my dorm. He has a brilliant mind, yet is wasting it. His room was left a mess -against regulatory policy- and when he failed to clean it, those excess things were removed. He has since gone into the storage department & removed the items he desired.
Also, as per regulations, he has certain set “chores” to do each morning. Today is Thursday, & it has come to my attention that the said work was left undone. Indeed, the scanty work he performed this AM was not complete.
Please advise me on how to proceed with this young man. I perceive him to have an underlying brilliance that I do not wish to be tainted with such tarnish.
If you would like to schedule a telephone interview with the student, please advise me of a good time.
Thank you, the staff.

In class today, I introduced the SWR Learning Log to the girls. As we went along, I explained that we would be writing example words that include the letter making the different sounds. This page was a learning experience for me!

For the letter A, its sounds are /a/, /A/, /ah/. The example words were /a/: am; /A/: apron; /ah/ wasp.. MissB spelled that last one W-O-S-P.

When we got to Y as a vowel, I again explained that we would be using Y to say it’s vowel sounds, /i/, /I/. The first word was gym, /j-i-m/, using a G for the /j/ sound. They both wrote G-I-M.. And Y also says /I/, as in cry, /k-r-I/. Guess what? I want to cri, too.

Deep breath, they’re just learning & will sort it out as they learn the rules.

A simple experiment: light a candle, cover it with glass and time how long it lasts.

Now, uncover, place a plant next to the candle, relight the candle, cover with glass, and time the life of the flame.

Which one lasted longer?
Why?

The children had lots of fun with this. They decided to try doubling the number of candles, too.

I’m terrible about going to the library. At our local library, there are computers with baby games central to the children’s section. Surrounding that are “early readers” that seem to have more about magic and witchcraft than much else. It’s certainly hard to find history books that don’t have children using magic to be in history instead of stories about people (including children) of those times.

I’m leaning more & more to library trips on piano lesson days, but that means the older children, who really need to learn to use the library, would miss out. I’d use that 2 hours to walk to that library, check out the books & walk back.

The other option, which will be more difficult for me, would be to go to the different branches myself and pick one I find the books more accessible, then start taking the children. Maybe on bikes.

This is certainly a learning curve for me.

The children asked me to make cookies on Saturday. We didn’t get them mixed up until just before bedtime, so into the fridge went the dough. After lunch today, we pulled it out and they made up some yummy cookies. After dinner, they decorated them.

I gave a bag of frosting to each of the children, reddish & yellow to TJ, pink to MissA, purple for MissB, and MissC loves blue. I even got to help decorate my cookies for Ben:

Little Guy has been fighting his naps. He’s at that lovely age when babies think they don’t need any sleep. At all.

Being a loving mother, I nurse him well, set him in bed, and shut the door. The other day when I checked on him, he had my silver clock on his chest. Today, his snuggly of choice is the phone.

The landlady had a termite inspection now that the rainy season’s past. Sure enough, there were some under the house, by the office. So, they sprayed, and ended up removing the old wood paneling in the office (circa 1979 I think it said, by the inscription on the wall “Dona loves Freddy”) because the little bugs had climbed up to eat that. Thankfully, not the beams in the wall, though.

That left some ugly walls in desperate need of paint. Ben wanted the job done right, not just done, and to pick the color, so we’re painting today. It was a close decision between Robin’s Egg Blue and Light Turquoise (really, they’re practically the same, the turquoise has just a hint of green when you hold the chips next to each other). The latter won out in the end.

We also took the cottage cheese off the ceiling and painted it white. The room is looking so much better!

We finished the first coat late, so I aim to get pics in the day light.