"Sistah"

William learned a new word this week. You can hear the affection in his voice when he points to Lily or Abigail and exclaims, "Sistah!"

Also, in follow up to the post about the colors dvd, the tutor said today that William said all ten colors on the color chart correctly. It's been a little over two weeks since we started watching that video. What's more important, he's started naming colors of things throughout the day. Praise God!

You will know them by their fruits

Last night we had a belated 40th anniversary celebration for my parents. Thanks to a couple amazing sisters-in-law, it was a beautiful evening. (Hopefully pictures will be coming soon.)

My parents are so easy to celebrate. Afterwards, Eric made the comment that they are a great example of humble faithful service- maybe not impressive at first glance, but now their labors are coming to fruition, and it's striking. It's such a pleasure to rise up and call them blessed because they are- and we are blessed because of them. I love you, Mom and Dad!

Preschool Prep Colors DVD

With all the curriculum and treatment conversations that go on in the special needs world, it's hard for me to understand how I didn't know about the Preschool Prep dvds until recently. I guess I had seen them around, but didn't understand how they differed from other educational videos.

We have a good bit of experience with preschool educational videos in this house. Not that I think any particular video is a magic pill. But, hey,we're going to be watching movies anyway, so it doesn't hurt to make some of them educational. We've tried Baby Babble, Winnie the Pooh, Leap Frog, Hooked on Phonics, Sesame Street, Boz, and others. William has learned things from them, some more than others.

What makes preschool prep different, is it's aimed at a young audience (1-2 year olds), the audio is extremely simple (music and whatever words the child is suppose to be learning- nothing more), and they did a study documenting the extreme success of the alphabet video.

That alphabet video is a bit much for William. But he loves the colors one. Each color has a personality, theme music, and setting. They act out silly or fun little scenes while repeating their names over and over. It progresses from each color acting out their own scene, to each color taking turns finding things that match them, to them working together to color pictures. It ends with them all dancing.

We started watching the Colors dvd last week. At that time William could not name any of the colors consistently. Today both his tutor and speech therapist reported he knew red, blue, and green. When he gets all 8 colors, I'm going to move on to shapes, then numbers. Hopefully after that he'll be ready for the alphabet one (which has upper and lower case). There are also 3 sight word dvds we will hopefully be able to benefit from in the future. God has provided again!

Retest

Lisa, William's amazing speech therapist, came as usual today. When she walked in, she explained that she was going to retest William today. That was a surprise to me; she had just tested him in the spring. But she explained that he's made so much progress over the summer, she wanted to retest him to get a better sense of where his language skills were at. Praise God!

Creation Wall

We've spent the last month putting together this creation mural. The posters across the top are William's. The ones across the bottom are Lily's. Lily likes to point to them and sing Mrs. Leinhart's (my kindergarten teacher's) 7 Days of Creation song with me.

One night, I was sitting on the couch nursing, staring up at the half completed mural, when Eric looked over at me. He was confused for a minute. Then he said, "You love home schooling, don't you?" Yes, I do!

Our New "Pinano"

Pretending

Lily pretending to roast marshmallows at the campfire she built herself.

William pretending to be Santa Claus. It's so sweet to hear him say, "Ho, ho, ho" and "Merry Mismus!"

First Day of Preschool

Lily is in the Big Room this year at Miss Karen's table. William is at his beloved Miss Bonnie table again.

One of the Reasons I Love America

About ten and a half years ago, I was assigned to do a cultural report at college- pick an ethnicity and research any particular cultural aspects that might be good to know when working with them as a speech therapist (my major). I picked Muslim Arabs.

The day we presented our reports, there were prospective students sitting in on the class. My professor picked me to go first. I think she thought I was a safe bet. Wow, was she in for a surprise.

At that point, I was planning on heading to Pakistan for two years as a nanny for a family from my home church. The father, wanting me to be fully informed, had given me biographies of women from Muslim Arab situations. Ten and a half years ago, much of Muslim culture was unknown to the general American public. I remember my prof being totally dumbfounded, asking again and again for clarification.

That was spring of 2001.

The morning of September 11th, Eric called me. I had been in the college library, and knew nothing about the attacks. I went to the dorm lobby to watch the news on the tv, and I couldn't fit in the doorway. That night our church held a prayer meeting. As we talked afterwards, Eric said, "You don't seem upset." It was a critique.

"I'm sad, but I'm not surprised," I answered. "It was just a matter of time. Americans are so oblivious." I must admit, I was a bit embarrassed about that last point.

That's not true any more. In the past ten years, American awareness and understanding of Muslim culture has increased dramatically. And the part I just love is that people's interest in Muslims is largely a positive thing.

Americans are generally not bitter. Americans are generally not angry. They want to help Muslims, they especially want to help Muslim women. Regardless of what their political position on our military presence there, they want to help bring religious freedom to the Arab world. When I first agreed to go to Pakistan, the Frontiers brochures proclaimed how missionaries to Muslims were literally one in a million. That's not true any more.

I think one of the reasons Americans have been so slow to understand the Muslim concept of honor and revenge is because it is so different from how we generally operate. Americans think materialistically- "If you're angry, it must be because there's something material you want. We can help you get that something so we can all be happy together."

Of course, because Americans are materialistic and selfish, they may not be as hospitable as Arab Muslims. But there is a beautiful sense of forgiveness. Sometimes I wonder if Americans aren't angry because they've forgotten. But this weekend has proved otherwise to me. People are remembering, but they are remembering without anger. They have forgiven.

July 1, 2001, Eric asked me to marry him. I wrestled with giving up the call to missions. Yet God made it clear that this was His plan. When Sept 11th came, the family I was to go with to Pakistan postponed their trip indefinitely, and it felt to me like God's confirmation for me to be here.

Now, when I get that family's updates (They are in Southeast Asia; they weren't able to get into Pakistan), or when I drive past the Muslim food store, or when I see women in Muslim dress, I wonder what my life would have been like. I wonder why God had me stay, and if I'll ever get to go in the future. God has given me a good life here, and I'm grateful. On weekends like this, I'm especially grateful for my fellow Americans.

"This Halting of Decay"

Housework has never been my thing. I love my husband and kiddos, but cooking for them and cleaning up the messes they create has never been my thing. This week I received fresh inspiration for doing housework from an unlikely source.

I started reading Sharon James' God's Design for Women. She starts out reviewing feminist history. As part of that review, she quotes Simone de Beauvoir talking about the life-sapping nature of housework, "Washing, ironing, sweeping...all this halting of decay..." For some reason, that description changed the way I see my housework, in a good way.

I'm surrounded by decay- leftover soggy cheerios, poopy diapers, spit up, sticky juice stains, snotty tissues. But I don't need to be discouraged about that. Just like how doctors are pushing back the Curse by fighting cancer and godly politicians are helping bring about justice in a fallen world, I'm halting decay in my little corner of the world. Even if I'm just kicking toys out of the way to make a path through the family room, that's bringing a little order to chaos, pushing back the Fall.

Starting Home School

We've actually done little bits before today, but today we started the alphabet, so it felt official. I remember trying to do this three years ago with William. What a difference! It helps so much that he's older now and he has a younger sister who's really into it.

"Look! I am Thomas!"

Beautiful Slavery

Legalism is one of those things that can look so beautiful from a distance. A friend of mine who's on the long journey out of that world (not Amish but very legalistic) stopped by today. Talking to her is such a good reminder to me.

Jesus sounds harsh when He calls the Pharisees white washed tombs, beautiful on the outside but full of rotting bones on the inside. But those who have been there know He was speaking the dead truth.

Tight Rope Walker

I've commented a number of times how William would make a great tight rope walker. The other day, I came outside to find he had put a long board (smaller than a 2x4) across the basement stairwell and was enjoying bouncing his way across. Even this easy-going mama freaked out. I honestly wasn't afraid he'd mis-step; I was afraid his bouncing would break the board. So now William's board is across the (water-filled) sandbox, and I can enjoy his balancing techniques. And to think he's never even been to a circus...

Sibling Influence

I also have a cute little video of Abby playing with the Thomas roundhouse, but alas, I still can't get my videos to play on the blog.

I Need to Go to Bed Earlier

Between sickness, staying up working on little reno projects, and getting up early with Abby, I've been pretty exhausted lately. For example:

-I've left Abby's baby food on the table the last three nights.

-I told Eric last night that for my birthday I wanted to go to that place where there's a path along the road that has statues for all the different countries. "I think it's by the embassies." "Here in [our city]?" Eric asked confused. "Yeah, I think we passed it on the way to the art museum," I told him. My wise husband smiled and said, "I'll look into it."

-Then this morning William woke up soaked from his belly button to his toes. I had given the kids baths last night. I put them in their jammies afterwards, but since it was going to be a while before bed, I didn't change William into his nighttime diaper. (He's been doing really well staying dry during the day- 6 days in a row now. But last night demonstrates nighttime is a different story.) The good thing was, he wasn't upset at all; he thought it was funny. But now I have another load of laundry, including figuring out how to get out red playdough that melted into the sheet.

Note to self: Go to bed earlier tonight!

Visiting the Dinosaurs

We made a visit to the Natural History Museum today to see the dinosaur bones. I didn't get any pics inside with the actual fossils- I was too busy directing the children. But here's a couple at the picnic area outside.



They also have a live animal section outdoors. The picture on the bear is from there with some mothers helpers I took with me.


When we got home, we made dinosaur crafts. Instead of doing the ones I planned, William made himself into a dinosaur.