Fiddledeedee

This post is my entry to win a camera in the “Share Your Favorite Lesson Plan” Contest sponsored by Sprittibee and Academic Superstore.

One thing that we’re working on this year in Math, is skip-counting. You know, 2,4,6,8 and then there’s 3, 6, 9, and the all important 10, 20, 30, anyhoo, you get the idea. This hasn’t been easy for Emme, who is 6 and working on Math U See – Alpha level. I know that there’s a wonderful cassette that I can purchase to reinforce skip counting but we all know how cheap thrifty the Mommy is.

So, I devised my own easy way to practice all of our various skip counting groups, and it’s free. And free is good. We have a tennis ball that we toss in the back yard, and anytime someone catches it, we call out the score by yelling “2.” If Mommy catches it, then we yell, “4.” And so on and so forth. If you miss, you start over. Repetition is important when learning skip counting, and because of the way Mommy throws and catches, we are afforded quite a lot of repetition. In fact, I’m such a notoriously bad throw that my children are a little afraid of me. When we go somewhere in the van, I drive, the baby sits in the middle row of seats, and the two girls are way back in the cheap seats. I keep a snack bag packed at all times, and if they have a drink or snack request, I can simply toss it back to them. However, as of late, whenever I am about to toss something, they both shriek “NO MOMMY, WE’RE FINE!” It seems that I’ve beaned them one too many times. Bad mommy.

So to make a short story long, Emme has learned her skip-counting. So much so that she wanted to teach her baby brother. The other day she was tossing him the tennis ball in the kitchen and skip counting. Now, we have a hard-and-fast no-throwing-the-ball-in-the-house rule. Daddy sternly said to Emme, “You had better not break Mommy’s coffee pot.” Emme stopped mid-toss and said, “You’re right Daddy, that would really make Mommy insane.”

True. And it could set the math world back a couple of grades.

Momma is sportin’ some new shoes. They’re called Crocs. I wear them everywhere. To church, Wal Mart, the mailbox, I really need never remove them. But to be honest, I was a reluctant Croc owner.

One day, Fiddledaddy came home and announced that he had happened upon these shoes called Crocs and that he must have a pair, and so must Fiddledeedee. “Never heard of ‘um. Don’t need ‘um,” was my reply. He showed them to me on the website. “I’m sorry Tom, but those are the ugliest shoes that I’ve ever seen. You go ahead, but count me out.” This was one time that I was glad that he didn’t listen to me.

Now, I’ve never been known to be a fashionista. Quite the contrary. I’m usually about 10 or more years behind everyone else. If I could, I’d still have my 8-track set up in my kitchen. If Boomama is correct, the 80’s fashions are making a comeback. I’m all like, “I still have those clothes in my closet! Groovy!” I haven’t really taken into account the extra 15 pounds I’m lugging around. Or gravity. I’ll look like a stuffed sausage in my sassy black leggings, but I’ll be in fashion. Finally.

Anyhoo. My selection of footwear in these last number of years has been narrowed to blue Keds. Or black Keds. Depending on how fancy the function is. I haven’t seen heels since my first pregnancy. And by the way, I’ve heard it’s just a wive’s tale that your feet expand after pregnancy. Wive’s tale my bunions. I put on 40 pounds with both girls, and 50 with the boy child. All the water weight went to my feet. And stayed.

So, now I’m the owner of a pair of hot pink crocs. When Tom brought them home, I put them on to humor him. I haven’t taken them off. These are the most comfortable pair of shoes I’ve ever worn. I wear them with everything. Dresses to church, moomoos to the beach (I’m kidding about the moomoos, sort of), jeans, everything. I even wore them to the homeschool convention, was on my feet for two days, and my feet and back didn’t hurt a bit! In fact, now we all have a pair. Well, the girl’s crocs are knock-offs because Mommy is cheap thrifty. My son is content just to use his sister’s crocs as a chew-toy since Mommy hasn’t found any in his size.

The Crocs company should hire me as their spokesmodel. My crocs are going to look fantastic with my sassy stretch pants. Work it.

I was rifling through my jewelry drawer, looking for a small empty box to put Emme’s first tooth in. We cleaned and shined the tooth and needed the box so that it would be presentable to the tooth fairy and all. Emme is standing right beside me, grinning like a toothless cheshire cat. I find a small box and shake it. There’s something rattling around inside. I open the box, and there underneath the yellowed cotton square, are 8 1/2 tiny teeth. My mother was a notorious pack rat. And a sentimental one at that. It should also be noted that the same drawer holds a small envelope containing a bunch of gold teeth. I have no idea where or who she got those from. But it’s very telling that I still have them in my possession.

”Wow” exclaims Emme, “what is that?” “Those were my baby teeth, my Mommy kept them.” “Why didn’t the tooth fairy keep them?” Uh-oh. Busted. I came up with some lame story about all good tooth fairies making sure that the mommys get the baby teeth back after the tooth fairy is finished with them. She bought it.

I wrestled with just telling her the truth right then and there. About the tooth fairy, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, menstruation, the whole sordid truth. I don’t want her to find out the way I did. It was the 5th Grade. An awkward time to be sure. I was standing in my front yard with my very best friend, Karen Klosterman. She was already wearing a bra, tall, had beautiful long chestnut brown hair, and I wanted to be just like her. Instead I was short, bra-wearing was a good two years away for me, and I had stringy blonde hair and freckles. To add insult to injury, I had just lost my two front teeth. Ten years old, and finally loosing my two front teeth. I have my 5th grade class picture in my mind. There I am, grinning all big. I was actually proud that I had finally lost those teeth and I wanted everyone to see that I had finally lost those teeth. I should have been horrified by the outfit and hairstyle I wore. Anyhoo. So Karen, very casually, spills her guts about Santa Claus. And sex. All in the same breath. I ran inside sobbing to my mother. Karen was right on the money about Santa, but she had her sex information all wrong. I decide to keep mum to my toothless 6 year old.

Emme has been clamoring to lose a tooth for about a year or so. Ever since her younger cousin started loosing his teeth. I told her that she might end up with her mother’s teeth, and they wouldn’t start falling out of her head until she turned 10. That didn’t make her feel any better. I had a very real fear that the younger sister would lose a tooth first. If that were to happen, there would be no peace in our house. Ever. So Emme asks me to check to see if any teeth are loose almost daily, for a year. I go through the ritual, like any good mommy. Finally, a few months ago, I check, and am surprised that indeed, a top front tooth is loose. It’s still loose to this day. It was an unexpected bottom tooth that made it’s exit tonight, after a little bleeding, much complaining, and a lot of wailing (mostly on my part).

The curious little sister has dropped this tiny tooth twice already tonight. So we decide that it should be wrapped in tissue in a sealed envelope, and placed under Emme’s pillow. When I tucked her in, Emme informed me that she was going to stay awake all night to watch for the tooth fairy. I told her that the tooth fairy wouldn’t come if she were awake. She grinned and said, “Mom, you can go ahead and take it if you want.” I smile and kissed her goodnight. No way. I’ll wait my turn to get it. And then I’ll stash it in a little box at the back of my jewelry drawer.

My husband approached me about homeschooling when my oldest daughter was 2, and we had a newborn. So, I didn’t have two brain cells to rub together, no REM sleep to speak of, and it had been a while since I’d seen the inside of the shower stall. Timing is everything, husbands. Incredulously, I looked at him with bloodshot eyes and said something to the effect of “Are. You. Insane?” I believe I cried. And I may have owed the cuss jar $1.50, but I really don’t remember. I think God gives us “fuzzy memory” syndrome, so that we will keep having children.

Happily, time was on my side. No hard and fast questions needed to be answered. Well, other than, “can I die from lack of sleep?”, or “are you 100%, absolutely certain, positive beyond a shadow of a doubt that caffeine is bad for a breast-feeding mommy?”

Over the next few years, God placed wonderful homeschooling moms right in my path for me to trip over. I became annoyingly inquisitive whenever I would happen upon any homeschooling mom. Then, when my oldest daughter turned 4, I had the opportunity to attend a homeschool convention in Orlando. My husband was supportive as he thought that this meant that I was softening to the idea. I simply looked at it as a much-needed mini-vacation for the sleep-deprived mommy.

Color me surprised when I attended every seminar I could physically get to (and ordered tapes for ones that I couldn’t). I spent hours in the exhibit hall pondering the latest curriculum, carrying on conversations with the vendors like a seasoned homeschooler. I left feeling empowered. Not so much like I’d been on a vacation, but a journey of discovery.

Valerie Bendt, the author of “How to Create Your Own Unit Study” wrote something that has really summed up my reason for homeschooling. She said, “As home educators, we are often unjustly accused of sheltering our children from the real world, when in actuality we possess the greater potential for sharing the real world with our children. Is the real world six or seven hours a day with your peers studying isolated subjects that are seldom integrated and even less frequently related to the real world? I think not. (If the real world is obscenity, sexual perversion, disrespect for authority, and so on, then by all means I want to shelter my child from that! I want to shelter myself as well.)” Amen sister.

So after a few years of prayerful consideration, I finally agreed with my husband that our children should be homeschooled. He was unfazed. It is no surprise to him that it sometimes takes me years to agree to anything. So, we officially began homeschooling when Emme turned 5. I may have been a little overzealous that first year. I understand most new homeschooling moms are. Maybe my kindergartner doesn’t need to be able to recite the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution.

So now, happily, I’m homeschooling a 1st grader, and a K-4 student. And no one’s in therapy. I‘ve loosened things up a bit and we’re not just learning, we’re having fun. We even threw in a new toddler to the mix, just to keep things fresh.

I am a little concerned, though. After a particularly exasperating day with my 3 children (ages 6 and under mind you), we were driving by the newly built high school in our area, and the 6 year old had this conversation with me:

Emme: “Mom, what’s that?”

Mom: “The brand new high school.”

Emme: “Is that where I’m going to go to high school?”

Mom: “No, you’ll still be in Homeschool! Isn’t that neat?”

Emme: “Who’s going to be my teacher?”

Mom: “Why me, of course.”

Emme: long pause. “I think I want a newer teacher.”

I have to stifle a chuckle. I also need to remember to call my Dad for my weekly “I’m sorry for everything I put you and Mom through when I was growing up” speech.

(This is my entry to win a camera in the “Capture the Educational Moment” Contest sponsored by Spunky and Academic Superstore.) I’m a sucker for a contest! Besides, this is a random drawing, so there is no pressure.

“My Mommy died. Now Aunt Trish is my Mommy.” I crane my neck up and over the kitchen bar to hear the Barbies converse with one another, as animated by Emme, my 6 year old. Her 4 year old sister’s doll replied with “Cool!” A lesser Mommy would have been hurt.

I’ve noticed this is a recurrent theme in the Barbie saga. My children are always killing off the Mommy. YOU HOOOOO! Who cleans your clothes? Kisses your boo-boos? Lets you eat Rice Krispies for dinner? (Don’t judge me, it’s only on rare occasions…….like Fridays). I just want to know, where do they get the idea that murdering the Mommy makes for a better story?

And then it hits me. Let’s recall some of the Disney characters that all children love, shall we? Ariel had no mother. Jasmine had no mother. Belle, again, no mother. Pinocchio? Nope. Cinderella? Dead mother replaced with wicked stepmother. Same goes for Snow White. Tarzan’s mother was killed by a wild animal. Mowgli from “Jungle Book” was motherfree. Nemo’s mother was killed off before I had eaten my second Milk Dud. Bambi? Oh the horror. I refuse to let my children watch that one. I’m still traumatized watching Bambi’s mother get blown away. Okay, so Sleeping Beauty had a mother…… who allowed 3 FAIRIES TO TAKE HER DAUGHTER AT BIRTH AND LIVE IN THE WOODS.

Makes you wonder. What kind of nightmare mother did Walt Disney have? Behind every well-adjusted kid out there, is a strong and brave, perhaps slightly bedraggled Mommy reminding him to wash-his-hands-after-using-the-bathroom. C’mon Walt, give us a break!

One of my favorite “Mommy moments” came during a time when my entire household (with the exception of me), was sick with a nasty cold. Emme looked up at me with a red nose and said in a nasal voice, “Mob, if you ged sick, we’re really godda need Jesus.” Truer words were never spoken.