The Bitter Homeschooler’s Wish List

The Bitter Homeschooler’s Wish List

Oh this is hilarious, and so very very true. I guess, at times, I am a bitter homeschooler, too! Who knew?

Clinique’s Pore Minimizer Instant Perfector

In the dark of my bathroom, I’d say this product was miraculous. My skin went from tired and old looking to soft and youthful in like a nanosecond. However, when I went into the sun-shiny bedroom to show my husband, he thought it looked more wrinkled because the stuff was settling into the cracks, emphasizing them.

Maybe if I were properly moisturized it would have worked better. I’m not giving up yet.

Clinique never tests their products on animals.

What Women Aren’t Told About Childbirth

What Women Aren’t told about childbirth

I’ll send this to my MDDC. (Mainstream Due Date Club)I highly expect one wacko paranoid lady to tell me all about how I need to stop criticizing her for her choices (elective nonmedical Csec)even though I have never said anything directly to her. She’s hopelessly insane. It’s the first-time Moms who need to read it, there’s some good stuff in there. Enjoy. I’ll also send it to the MDC DDC for their pleasure. MDC is mothering magazine forums.

I think the figure that stood out to me- and I hope I’m not remembering the numbers wrong- was that 73% of the women who received episiotomies weren’t given a choice. AAHH- I can’t imagine having my crotch being cut open- “surprise.” I think I would slash the tires of the dr who did that to me- imagine, cutting a woman’s genitals, disgusting. totally disgusting. No wonder so many women are OK with circumcision when they have boys, I’d want to punish every man, too. Friggin’ sadists. I am so glad I have daughters, I hope the birth climate in the US changes before they become mothers, or that they live in a different country. One whose infant mortality rate isn’t over 20 or whose maternal mortality rate isn’t over 40. Don’t we just suck here? All these interventions, and third world countries are still safer places to birth.

OK- So there’s a lot of homeschoolers whose kids are finishing their degree very quickly, by combining CLEP and other testing-out-of-a-class options with distance learning. Here’s a really cool thing I found (OK someone found it and sent it to me) I just figured this would be such a cool way to learn the materials well enough to test out of the class, which is a lot cheaper (and faster) than actually taking the class. Here is a list of classes that Berkeley has online- It’s also a great way to expose a high schooler to University level classes. Not only are the classes online for free viewing, but so is the syllabus, etc. I just thought it was a fantastic Idea. The Lectures are archived as far back as Fall of 2001 (OK- they only had one or two back then, but still, it’s cool.) And each class has its own webpage where you can download the Syllabus. It doesn’t look like the midterms and Finals can be downloaded- but honestly, if you’re taking the class just to learn, wouldn’t the REAL test be passing your CLEP or other exam? I think the other tests are DANTE- maybe? and I can’t even begin to guess the other ones, I know they’re out there though.

Braids

Check out this video, how to braid hair.

It really just takes practice, I try to braid my girls’ hair every day because it keeps it looking smooth for a long time, and out of their face. If I do a good job, it can stay in for a whole second day. Enjoy the lesson, and I will upload some pictures of advanced braiding techniques soon, I have saved a few onto one of my other computers.

Our "school" rooms

OK so these pictures of our “school rooms” are the best I could do. IN the first image, taken in our living room, is a shelf that houses all of the current year’s school books. We use workbooks for Math and a few for Language Arts. Most of the other books are reference and fiction and non-fiction history and Science. That is the kids’ computer (non internet version) and above it is all of our educational software. The crate in front of the school shelf is our current bedtime story box, that spans from early readers to picture books. The matching crate on the bottom shelf is the current selection of board books.

In the following picture, it’s our dining room. Obviously, we eat there, too. This is also where we work on small projects. The dry-erase board has everyone’s math and language arts assignments for the week, and they are scored and crossed off so I can enter them into the homeschool tracker program.

The last 3 pictures are of our basement library. In here, I keep all of the non-current-year books. Since we’re using TWTM for our history rotation, the only history books I have upstairs are Ancient History (Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Chinese, Indian, South American and Israelites) Also we’re doing Life Sciences for our Science rotation, so I only have plants, animals and the human body upstairs. Also in the basement is our games, excess story books and board books (I rotate them periodically when I am sick of reading the same bedtime stories over & over again or when the kids request a rotation “we’re sick of these, can we get new bedtime books?” Our enormous collection of VHS videos and DVD movies is also in the basement. Otherwise, my kids would want to watch TV all the time (Thanks, Grandmas)

Incidentally, my 6 yr old has lost her Math book (5 pages from the end of the book, so we’re just going to skip those pages). If you happen to see a copy of Singapore’s Primary math text 1a or my 10 yr old Junior Girl Scout handbook, please let me know where it is.

Embracing Weakness

I used to try so hard to be tough- and I really am tough, so I’ve started faking “weakness” Knowing full well that it isn’t “weak” at all to ask for help and feeling very glad I can pamper myself this way, since for some women, it is really true- these limitations exist and cause trouble. Since this is my last child, I have given up on being tough, and embraced the luxury of limitations, consciously…

I don’t carry laundry baskets up & down the stairs anymore because I’ve told my family it knocks me off balance. The truth be told, I can’t reach the far side handle of the laundry basket and when no one is around, I just carry it differently (on the side or tipped over a bit) but no one needs to know that.

I don’t unload the dishwasher anymore because I have told my family that bending down like that makes me dizzy. It doesn’t, but it could, it sounds logical.

I don’t unload the washing machine because I have told my family I can’t reach that far inside of it to get it all. That is also logical. I really could do it if I turned to the side, but then, in order to get an even workout I’d have to do half in one direction and half turned in the other direction. I just don’t want to work that hard. Plus lopsided back and abdominal muscles can make it difficult for babies to descend into good presenting positions. (my interpretation of this website, whose inversion technique has really gotten my baby out of a stubborn transverse position and into a heads-down position, but baby really is spinning, facing a different direction several times in a day and causing me some really strange sensations as she constantly CONSTANTLY wiggles and squirms- I’m seasick, I swear)

I don’t carry any trays of anything at work because people feel bad when they see a pregnant woman carrying something heavy and it might be bad for business. I don’t get paid to be there anyways (we’re the owners) and they’ll have to learn to work without me one of these days, so they might as well not get too spoiled right now.

In all areas of life, I am trying to be as useless as possible, so that others around me can grow and thrive. It’s a service I am providing to the people I love; the opportunity to expand their capabilities. Someday they’ll thank me for it.

Other people have 6 daughters, too.

Things too stupid to comment on

My c-section is scheduled for 7:30 am PST (10:30 EST). It is such a relief to finally have this scheduled! Why doesn’t everyone have babies this way?!? It’s a whole lot less stressful!

WOW- I guess I could comment on the insanity of this statement. I could refer back to the post about maternal death rates rising as a result of increased unnecessary interventions. I could point out some studies ….

nevermind.

It’s to stupid to comment on, so I will shut up now. All the time, though I hear stupid things. Maybe I will just keep adding them to this blog to release them from my mind.

boy cousins

Ok so on My husband’s side of the family, his brother had a son, then a daughter. His sister had a daughter, then a son. HIs two cousins each had a son first, and cousin #1 had a daughter while cousin #2 is currently trying for her girl (I’m sure she’ll get it) On another part of his family, a cousin had 3 girls before she got a boy, and another cousin just had her first- a boy. My Sister just had a boy first and my step-brother and his wife had their first baby- a son. Here are both boys together. Liam is the little one (he was 5 wks early) and Mason is the older one (9 hours of pushing, 27 hours of labor.) No doubt when my sister and Sister-in-law have their next babies, they will be girls. I can’t be the major supplier of estrogen for the next generation. Basically, all but one of the families in our generation have one boy and one girl. One family in our generation had 3 girls and a boy. Two of the families have just one boy. One of the two are trying now for a girl, and the other one… I don’t know. I have 7 cousins on my side and NONE of them have kids, my sister and I are the only ones.