Harper begins.

It was a big week for dear Harper. She had a science presentation at school on Wednesday. She learned all about famed ornithologist Florence Augustus Merriam Bailey, and did a first person presentation to her class. She painted some of Mrs. Bailey's favorite birds. and told her class all about her crusade to get women to stop wearing bird feathers on their enormous hats, which was the epitome of high fashion in the late 1800's. I loved Bailey's "velvet fist" approach--instead of scolding her classmates at Smith that their fashion choices were encouraging the slaughter of millions of birds, she took them on nature hikes to show them birds in their natural habitats. It worked! They stopped wearing feathers, formed an Audubon Society, and spent their weekends birding in the forests of Massachusetts. Here, Florence and Roger Tory Peterson were discussing owls. I think they were a little awed that Lucy Audubon was right behind them.

On Saturday, she had her first Suzuki ribbon festival. She played her two songs ("Chant Arabe" and "Claire de la Lune") and got a medal. It was a special treat to have the Grandparents Pate here.

Then yesterday, she stood in front of our sweet church, proclaimed that she believes the life and death and resurrection of Jesus is for HER, was baptized, and partook of the Table. When our pastor and one of the elders interviewed her last week, our pastor told her,"Harper, you are why I came to Sugar Land! I am so thankful for God's work in you." Then after he baptized her yesterday, our entire church held their hands aloft and sang this blessing over her:

The Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord make his face shine upon you
And give you peace, and give you peace,
And give you peace forever.

The Lord be gracious to you,
The Lord turns his face toward you
And give you peace, and give you peace,
And give you peace forever.

Yes, I love our church. Yes, I was weeping throughout this. I wanted so much to look out at all of their faces, but I knew I couldn't manage to and still keep to my feet. So I looked down at Harper's radiant little face and was full, full of thanks.

Strep by strep

I will never learn that boasting about more frequent blogging will inevitably lead to some sort of plague. Helena woke up last Wednesday with a fever. I will take a moment to mention the very mixed emotions I feel when it becomes clear that one of the kids is going to have to stay home on one of the days they are supposed to go to campus. Thankfully, it has only happened twice, because they are not my finest mothering moments. OF COURSE, I am sad my children are unwell, but I am just the tiniest bit sadder that I am not going to get to do what I had planned for that day.

The pediatrician confirmed with a swab that Helena did indeed have strep throat for the second time this month, and this time, I had it too. So, we picked up our antibiotics, and came home and I wiped down the entire house with Clorox wipes. Harper woke up feeling puny on Saturday, so I took her and Hudson in for a swab.  They both tested negative, but the doctor suggested prophylactic antibiotics just in case. Maybe you'll remember that we made it almost 9 years without a single prescription medication, and now I am giving my kids antibiotics "just in case." But guess what? It is Wednesday morning and I am blogging in my quiet house while my strep-free kids are at school.

We did make it to church on Sunday, because the doctors had assured me we were no longer infectious. In spite of this, Helena announced, in a loud voice, during communion, to her sweet teen-aged friends Natalie and Gabrielle, "I cannot play with you today! I am ILL!! With STRECK THROAT." Then we came home and enjoyed the new fire pit the husband bought Saturday. S'mores are even better than antibiotics when you are STRECKEN. Also, yes, we have a hammock hanging from our playset. The kid also have one hanging in their room now.

Sonic youth

I don't want to boast about being on a roll, but I think I might be. I thought about doing that write an entire novel in the month of November deal, but I think blogging more frequently is probably about as ambitious as I can be just now.

We were in the bathroom at Whole Foods last week and the Mr. Mister song "Kyrie Eleison" came on and, naturally, I started singing it in a pretty loud voice. I told Harper it was a pop song from when I was in high school and that it has Latin words in it. She seemed very impressed. Not really with my singing because, boy howdy, it gets up a little out of my range, but that her burgeoning Latin skills are going to serve her in so many unexpected ways.

Today was a rough day, but we made it through. The grammar curriculum we are using (First Language Lessons) requires me to expend MANY MANY words. Today, just for Harper's lesson, I was supposed to read "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" three times through before we even started the grammar script. I wanted to stamp on those lovely daffodils, I did. Then we got to history and I was  FRAYED, and I was subjected to the soothing balm that is Oliver Cromwell and the beheading of King Charles. Also the plague and the London fire of 1666. Harper commented that she "used to feel sorry for the Puritans, but now I really don't."

Sunday afternoon we did a science experiment with red cabbage juice, vinegar, lemon juice, and baking soda. (note: we were actually supposed to do it on Thursday.)  It was pretty smelly and the kids kept eating the cabbage and taking sips of things. I warned them that not all chemistry experiments are edible. The first picture, I have just noticed, has captured Sasha engaging in one of her favorite pastimes: shredding a paper towel which she will then leave in a slobbery pile for me to pick up. The second picture was actually after we finished the experiment and Harper was using the acid and base mixtures to try to tie-dye some paper towels.

 

Car Talk

The saddest news I heard today is that Tom Magliozzi died. There are things to dislike about NPR, but The Tappet brothers have brought me joy for many years.

When I pick the kids up at school on Mondays and Wednesdays, we play at the park for a little bit, then we get in the car and take turns doing Roses and Thorns for the trip home. Each of us thinks of the best thing and the worst thing that happened during the day. Today, Helena's thorn was that "Mommy forgot to give me animal crackers for my afternoon snack and I only had gummy bunnies and there were only four small ones in the little bag!"  To which I say, in my head, "kids in Sierra Leone are dying of Ebola right this minute instead of counting how many gummy bunnies are in their individually wrapped, naturally colored, organic, non-GMO snack." Out loud I say, "oh, well, aren't you glad you had such a good lunch? With JELLY BEANS for a special treat?"

My roses were a bouquet today: Bach at morning assembly, breakfast at Buffalo Grille, a few errands, some quiet reading time at the arboretum, and then coffee with a new friend.  The thorn was that we got to our piano lesson and I realized Harper has practiced about 10 minutes total this week. Let's hope that hearing Mrs.F's mastery of Bach this morning inspired her to do better this week.

Did you know Bach had TWENTY children?? S.D.G. indeed.

and Tigger smiled his happiest smile and said nothing.

Three days in a row! That is a FEAT.

Hudson's book party went off very nicely, and then afterwards he took off his Tigger tail and he and some friends used it as nunchucks on the playground. Or maybe it was a sword? It was very hard to tell, but they were all Quite Earnest in their Ninja. Just what A.A. Milne was picturing, no doubt.

 

I spent two hours at the dentist today. The reason it took two hours is because I had not had my teeth cleaned in, perhaps, years. So there was much Dental Unpleasantness to endure. Which makes me want to never go again. Except that I have another appointment next Wednesday. To which I say BOTHER.

The unbearable lightness of being

I finally watched "Gravity" this weekend. I confess that, even in my extremely limited understanding of astrophysics, I was distracted by things careening when I thought maybe they wouldn't actually BE careening. The most stressful moments, for me, were when she finally got in those escape pods and the entire control board was in Cyrillic, and then Chinese characters. FRAUGHT. Because even if one is a brilliant medical engineer, one cannot possibly be expected to READ RUSSIAN AND CHINESE after only SIX months of astronaut training!! I actually mentioned this at church on Sunday to my friend Kelly's husband, who is a pilot in the Air Force, and he said that there was part of his training during which he was required to jump into planes manufactured in Russia and China and figure out how to fly them. He said the pilots before him had left POST-IT NOTES on the buttons to help with translating. Good GRIEF, can you even imagine?

Anyway, we took the canoe out again on Saturday, and I realized that there are many moments in my life during which I feel as though the entire control board is in a language I can't read. For example, "helping" the husband get the canoe loaded onto the top of the minivan. Also, in "helping" get the canoe down to the river. Also, in paddling the canoe in such a way that we don't run directly into river detritus. We launched into the Brazos River, and the husband was clanking with all manner of weaponry because of rumors of alligators and venomous snakes and even bobcats. Much to his and the kids' disappointment, the only wildlife we encountered was dragonflies, a Great Blue Heron, and a few other tiny, harmless waterfowl. Helena sits at the very front. Here she is, lolling:

 It is only natural that you are envious of my hat. Perhaps it is what scared off the alligators, venomous snakes, and bobcats?

On a related note, gravity and other physics concepts were rather unkind to Harper on the playground after school yesterday. She was running after a soccer ball and ran directly in front of a little girl who was swinging. Harper got a foot to the jaw, which was actually powerful enough to knock her into the air, and then unceremoniously dump her back down to earth. She was affronted, even as I explained that the swinging girl was utterly without fault. (Just for future reference, a wailing child is not easily comforted by a mini-lecture on potential and kinetic energy.) It was all very noisy, but she seems completely recovered today. It was actually a great time to remind her of an incident last week in which she tagged a little girl with too much force while they were both running at full speed, and the little girl tripped and tumbled heels over head, scraping various parts of her body. Moral: sometimes we ourselves are wounded by physics, and sometimes we ourselves are the vehicle for wounding others.

This little piggie

I am going to do a short post every day this week.

Our school, since we only have two campus days per week, does not spend any of that time doing traditional parties. Instead, whenever classes finish the books the teachers read aloud, there is a book party at the end of the day during which kids can dress as their favorite character from the book. I present Wilbur from Charlotte's Web for your viewing pleasure:

I tried to buy a pink shirt at Hobby Lobby the day before the party and there was nary a pink t-shirt to buy. And would you believe we didn't already own a plain pink shirt? Because we did not. So. I spent $5 on a yard of pink fleece and then spent 45 minutes sewing three seams (by hand because even though my friend Maggie loaned me a sewing machine 2 years ago, I still can't figure out the bobbin.) on this Pig Tunic Extraordinaire.

 

Wilbur especially enjoyed holding Templeton the rat. Her classmate especially enjoyed unfurling her piggy tail. It was RADIANT.