Our Biggest Summer Event

Silas Paul was born at 12:48am on July 5. I labored to fireworks :) After waiting and waiting and waiting some more, he did finally come. I had weeks of irregular contractions and was getting quite frustrated on 4th of July. We went to Mom and Dads for a cookout, contractions started again and were very strong but when Kaley and I went for a walk, they stopped! GRRRR

We came home and I spent 30m doing knee chest. Got up. Nothing. Forget it, I thought. I'm going to sleep! I got maybe 15m of sleep and at 10:15p a strong contraction woke me up. Sigh, here we go again, I thought. One at 10:20, 10:25, hmmm. They had never been 5 min apart like that. I took a shower, got out and woke up Mark. He timed them 2 and a half min apart and lasting over a minute. He wanted to call our midwives, I was hesitant. LOL. He had been telling me for days, when it happened it would be quick. I just couldn't even hope that after a 32hr birth last time. And here I was 17 days overdue again so I was having a lot of anxiety about the size of the baby and how it would feel as I pushed him out!

My first dear friend of a midwife walked in right after my water broke in my birth pool. I insisted she check me, 8cm and baby very high. I didn't know what I wanted or what to do. A contraction started and I jumped in the pool. I had another really strong one that I had a really hard time coping with. I'd been doing very well, praying aloud and feeling each contraction as an immense sense of pressure. My second dear midwife walked in, these ladies are some of my best friends and spent that loooong labor with me last time. I had one more and thought I felt a little pushy but thought that must be wishful thinking. On the next, as it started, I said, I think I feel push- and I started pushing and was a little panicked. But in that one push our little Silas was born into the water and swam up into my arms. And he was screaming. Loud and long.

I was over joyed and shocked. He was born after only 2 1/2 hrs of labor, 15 and 5 minutes after my midwives walked in the door and in only 1 push. He was our smallest baby, we could all tell right away. I had planned to have the two younger girls there but it was too quick and it was just Kaley, Mark and the midwives.

8lbs 4oz   20 1/2in

I just couldn't believe how the birth went. I'm also a little dazed because he cried all the time.

With the sweetest big brother a baby could have.

Sleeping on daddy.

Kaley always has a magic baby touch.

Sweet relief

Flat Rock

We had a day out this week. I needed to go up to Hendersonville way so we took advantage of that to go to the Carl Sandburg House. But we didn't go in the house :) It is a lovely farm with a large pond, nature trails, a goat dairy and adventures awaiting.

The Carl Sandburg House

First we had to be goofy in the parking lot. Cut poor Curtiss' head right off!

We decided this time, our second visit, that we would walk around the pond and enjoy the nature trail. It was a lovely damp shady walk and immediately we realized it was a perfect place for fungus to grow. I have never seen such a variety of mushrooms! I do not have the time right now to look them up, I am sorry to say, for I would love to identify all these. I didn't get to paint any in my nature journal either,  since my arms are full of Silas. Another season perhaps. Grace was able to get quite a few pictures of the varieties. Really all the mushroom pictures are for Kaley :)

This is Grace's hand.

This tree had a thick fungus growing all the way around it.

These little bright orange guys were my favorite.

This is how the kids walk to the goat dairy from the pond.

After our walk and picnic lunch at the pond, we headed to see the goats. Mrs. Sandburg was famous in her own right for her prize milking herd. And her husband fully supported and was proud of that.

Crazy  cartwheels

Grace was in heaven

This guy wasn't so sure about petting goats, but his peanut butter face is awfully cute.

 

After our visit with the goats, it was time to go and we walked back towards the pond. I was very excited to identify this plant. During my visit to Minnesota I discovered Milkweed. I had thought we had it in North Carolina but when I saw it there, I knew I had never seen it before. While walking around at the farm, I spied this similar plant. It is Swamp Milkweed. I didn't see any big seed pods like the Milkweed out west, but it certainly milked up when Curtiss broke off a leaf. It was also covered in tiny yellow bugs! 

It was a good day. We try very hard to make our educational philosophy a way of life. So I didn't want this to be a "field trip", but just something we do. I do wish I had done some nature journaling but was pleased the children sketched the goats in theirs.

This was a new identification for us. Iron Weed. It was growing along the edges of the pond.

This was a skink Grace caught. We watched his rather large friend catch a caterpillar and eat it!

This is Jewel Weed, it likes swampy areas and is blooming at this time of year here. It is important to identify if you run into...

Stinging Nettle. The juice from the Jewel Weed neutralizes it's sting. And it helps with Poison Ivy. 

One of my favorite late summer blooms, Hearts-A-Bursting.

Blueridge

For those of you who know me well, you know I'm spontaneous at times, having nine children has nipped that in the bud a bit, but it's just who I am. So when on my due date, my hubby (who I may have mentioned before is NOT spontaneous) woke up and said, Let's go to the blue ridge!, I was very excited. We drove up to the parkway, on the north end which was new to us. It was a good diversion for me as I knew I wouldn't be seeing labor for at least ten more days...

David was not with us so here is everyone but he and Silas. Who was with us but taking his sweet time about being visible.

My strong kids!

The mountain laurel was almost done blooming.

This my friends, is a stink horn. And that stuff that looks like dog poop, it smells like it, too. It's a fungus.

And I don't know what this was but I suspect also a type of fungus.

We bought a bunch of snacks and made a day of it. It was a great memory as our Kaley got married just a month later. We stopped frequently and walked some trails. We also stopped at this beautiful home that you can now visit.

It's been almost a year since I dropped this blog. Life happens and passes so quickly, and I've had to make priorities. Like pregnancy, children, adult children, weddings and births. My goal is to begin again to try to keep it updated with pictures of what we are doing and our life here. Really for my loved ones far away, so you can see and hear what's up with us. You know who you are :) Today I will just add some pictures of our summer activities, many done while we waited for our beautiful baby...

Here we are for Shakespeare on The Green. It was wonderful!

Cool book statue, it was a great park right in the city.

Benny and you can see how big those books are!

Everyone brought blankets and food.

Waiting to start, it was very child friendly, a great introduction to Shakespeare for our 4 and 2 year olds.

Max was excited about the feather he found. And the fact that we were under a flight path!

After the play we walked around the city and found this awesome fountain.

Sillies!

My next post will be some Blueridge pictures. I'll just work through the summer.

How October Finds Us

Well, the weather has been lovely. Fallish but not too chilly. We did finally start the wood stove when we had some nights that left us with frost on the ground. I've enjoyed 3, yes 3, drives up to the apple orchard and Lake Lure, getting lots of varieties of apples and some cider that was pressed before our eyes.



We have been plugging away at school, enjoying walking through modern history. I myself have learned a lot about the rise of communism, Castro and the Bay of Pigs, apartheid and segregation, Vietnam, JFK and MLKJ. As much as I have always loved history, I sometimes wonder if I was asleep in class. Or maybe just a product of my educational system of not having history as a story with ideas to hang facts on, rather just dry facts with no life.

We are currently reading out loud: The Hobbit, Miracle of Maple Hill, Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry, The Yearling and just finished Sounder. All lovely books. I have never read Roll of Thunder and after the first page we were all captivated. What an excellent writer! After the first few paragraphs, Benjamin ( who had been most affected by learning about segregation), said, "Hey! I think they are black!" I loved that they discovered this without me telling them all about the book first.

We happened to read about apartheid in South Africa before we read about segregation in the south and when we did read the later he was very upset. When we read about S.Africa it was another country, and perhaps seemed far away. But segregation was going on when his grandparents were his age, in the US which is supposed to ensure freedom to it's people. We had a lot of great discussions. I'm afraid we don't have any close friends who are black. I struggle with that, I feel like we are still segregating ourselves somehow. We would never do that intentionally but we really do not know any black families that well. Well, we did have some very sweet friends who were black that were from Africa. They were and are very dear to our hearts but it got to where I never thought about them being black. They were just who they were, we didn't see our skin colors when we saw each other. How it ought to be. They taught me a lot about Uganda and Africa.

We finish up our first term next week, wrapping up our study of modern history till we cycle around to it again in a few years. We start ancient history the second term and we are all looking forward to that. Curtiss is most excited about Archimedes, a kindred spirit for him.

So, the end of October finds us expecting a new little person at our house! Most exciting to everyone. I am so happy with how all the dates have fallen out, God is so good. For the first time, we will have a baby in the summer, which means daddy will be home for an extended babymoon! This thrills my heart. Even if this baby were as late as Max, Mark would still be home for at least 6 weeks. Oh joy! And no lesson plan worries for either one of us. We are all hoping for a little girl and we may even find out ahead of time. We have never done that!

So in the mean time, in the here and now, we are dealing with morning sickness. Well, I deal with the physical part, the rest of the family deals with the fall out of a sick mom. School we do with me semi prone on the couch, some of school is not getting done, housework is done exclusively by the children and dad and cooking as well. I don't go into the kitchen much. My survival plan is: lots of protein, low carbs (they make my blood sugar take a roller coaster ride), frequent snacks, a walk a day and lots of grace. That last part is hard. I tend to get really frustrated and down on myself for what I can't do. I am doing better this time than ever, just easing into the day and allowing myself to lay low. Part of that is all the lovely help I have now. The kitchen is always clean and I don't have to do it! I tend to perk up in the afternoon, so I walk then and try to enjoy the respite to prepare for the next wave. No fun, but this too will pass. And then it's all much better.

A Sample of Our Week

After lunch is our read aloud time. Ben, Maura and David chose books to read to me. It had become my favorite time of the day. Well, one of the favorites! Ben is doing so well. He was a late reader, but is doing quite well now. Each of the children has liked a different sort of book. Ben loves anything historical or about horses.




We are possum sitting for some friends on vacation this week. Thrilling for the children! Grace is their main caregiver since Kaley is so busy, working at Willow Tree School and going to college. She is doing a great job. Kaley does take the midnight and sometimes 3am shift.




Also a built in nature study to our nature study. This is Curtiss favorite of the four, the only boy, he calls him Tiny Tim or Timmy since he is the littlest.





We did nature study from our own back yard this week. This is lady's thumb, very pretty. And of course we sketched the baby possums.




Not from this week, but I love this picture so added it. All seven children (Max on Curtiss's back) enthralled that the pond at Crowders Mtn had been refilled. All these were taken with my phone, which is not a great quality, but is the way I caught some bits and pieces of our life.

School Time

It’s school time here and we are all starting to settle into a groove. Daddy is back at teaching and so far, so good on his school year. Kaley is very busy with her own school year, not only as a full-time student at the community college but as a teaching assistant as our local Charlotte Mason school, Willow Tree. It’s an adjustment, not seeing her as much, but it’s good and I am so happy for her. Now we greet two people at the end of the day and hear their adventures and share ours with them.

Kaley, with Jack, on a recent visit to MN

I was afraid I was over ambitious when I made our school schedule and lessons plans but I am finding it is going very well. And this is why…

…all I have said is meant to enforce the fact that much and varied humane reading, as well as human thought expressed in the forms of art, is, not a luxury, a tit-bit, to be given to children now and then, but their very bread of life, which they must have in abundant portions and at regular periods. This and more is implied in the phrase, "The mind feeds on ideas and therefore children should have a generous curriculum." Vol 6 pg 111

The beauty of Mason is that in our school we have about fourteen books going, in addition to math, handwriting, copywork, dictation, reading aloud, Spanish and Latin for Curtiss BUT that breaks down to reading for 30min or so of three to four books a day and is very manageable. I think the amount of books is what really threw me when I first began homeschooling. It seemed impossible to school that way and still run a home and take care of babies or toddlers or both. I found that frequent readings and doing different subjects between each reading to get us moving or use a different part of the brain is very refreshing and stimulating.

For me it was important to also not think of school time as something I put in a box from 9-12. It is okay with me now if we are doing school until 3pm. It is part of our life, the atmosphere of our home, our focus and purpose of how we live out our days. That was very freeing, and really, we still are done with school in the early afternoon. But it is the conversations that we have that are my favorite thing about educating my children. I am so thankful I am doing it.

I absolutely love how Charlotte Mason compares the ideas we give our children as an education to food. So all these books and ideas are the feast I am laying before them. Like Thanksgiving every day! We take a little here, a little there so we don’t get too full all at once but what a buffet we have laid. Yum Yum! Not just meat and potatoes here, but a rainbow of colors, delicacies of exotic kinds with a side of favorite comfort foods.

In devising a syllabus for a normal child, of whatever social class, three points must be considered:––
a) He requires much knowledge, for the mind needs sufficient food as much as does the body.
(b) The knowledge should be various, for sameness in mental diet does not create appetite (i.e., curiosity).
(c) Knowledge should be communicated in well-chosen language because his attention responds naturally to what is conveyed in literary form.
As knowledge is not assimilated until it is reproduced, children should "tell back" after a single reading or hearing: or should write on some part of what they have read.
A single reading is insisted on, because children have naturally great power of attention; but this force is dissipated by the re-reading of passages, and also, by questioning, summarising, and the like. Vol 6 pg 154-155