Intersection

This year Classical Conversations (our once-a-week homeschool co-op) was kind enough to put our history timeline to music. I have some issues with their musical choices at times (things can get a touch trilly, which is trying for me) though it is beyond dispute that putting words to music makes memorizing so much easier. Exhibit A: Harper was playing with the Scrabble tiles, and I came in to discover this. Romulus got shorted a bit with the two blank tiles.

At the end of the timeline song (September 11, 2001 is the last peg--when will there be something to add, I wonder?) the singer sings, "Timeline, timeline, I'm part of my timeline," and it gets me every time to hear the kids singing that. I don't think they get the whole "intersecting time and space" idea just yet (in spite of all the Francis Schaeffer bedtime stories) and I wonder at what age that happens. Maybe when they grasp the passing of time? I was thinking about how Helena refers to any sleeping she does as "my nap"--she thinks the 12 hours she sleeps at night is basically the same as the two hours she sleeps in the afternoon. I think Harper might be beginning to grasp it a little, now that she can tell time. But when you are seven, the passing of time is strictly reason for anticipation and excitement. For our safe, well-fed little people, there is no dread, no real tedium, no physical labor to speak of. I read this article in the Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago about how kids today (the safe, well-fed sort) aren't being allowed to experience adversity in any real way, and that it is leading to a lack of character. The author of the article called them a generation without grit. I'll confess that my kids are gritless. But I'm also not sure what real adversity is supposed to look like for them. Is losing every soccer game or not having a friend to sit by at lunch the same thing as some 9 year old boy during the Civil War having to keep the family farm running after his dad died on the battlefield, or a girl having to take in sewing instead of going to school during the Depression so that her family could afford flour?  How do we put our kids in authentic situations in which they can experience adversity? Let me know, would you, so I can again sleep like a normal person? When I have these little existential crises, I get a touch of insomnia.

On that note, and I think I have mentioned this once or twice, I love coffee. Perhaps to the point of idolatry. The good news is, I am content to drink the kind we make at home, and only in the morning. But the thought of that going away, ever, is so dire I can't ponder it.

 I just started reading a biography of Jonathan Edwards, trying to figure out what goals we need to have for the  kids. He started at Yale when he was 13. I'm still pretty sure I don't care if my kids even go to college, so we'll see if this changes my mind.

Harper painted a cardinal on this tiny canvas for Grandmother M's birthday. She has been nurturing a bit of an inflated ego lately. As she was putting the finishing touches on her cardinal, she queried aloud, "I wonder who is the best painter in the family now?" and I assured her that it was certainly still me, because I've had so many more years of practice. She conceded, but I think she secretly still thinks she's better. She also told me yesterday that she could definitely ride her bike fast enough to beat a car. Sometimes I pop her balloon of self-delusion, sometimes I say things like, "With lots of perseverance and hard work, who knows?!!" Her biking confidence is mostly stemming from a camping trip last weekend with the Daddy, during which there was trail riding on their bikes that apparently involved steep ravines and other dangerous endeavors. They were both pretty puffed up that they had done it without falling. Maybe because they were super stylish in their Keens WITH socks. 

Last night when we were reading the Jesus Storybook Bible, Helena asked me what Jesus' last name was. I told her 'of Nazareth' and also 'Christ' and sometimes, 'The Messiah." Then she asked how old God is. I told her infinity, and she seemed pleased. Then she went to bed and called it her nap. And dreamed, perhaps, of ballerina bears.