Billy’s assignment: write one special thing about Fritz, something he loves about him.
Answer: He is my Jedi Master.
I don’t know which boy wrote this one, but they each had to write one way to show God you love Him.
Answer: If you love God, you should let girls go first.
Harken, young ladies. Chivalry is not dead.
Fritz read a brief fable about two cats arguing over a piece of cheese. They ask a monkey to arbitrate. The assignment was to convert the story into a dialogue. This is very difficult for him, so I walked him through the assignment. The English book helps, too, by starting the student off:
1st cat: That’s my piece of cheese.
2nd cat: No, it is not yours. I saw it first.
1st cat:
2nd cat:
Monkey:
I reminded him that he has much experience in bickering, so he was able to think of more lines for the cats. But for the monkey, he kept saying, “The monkey said that…” After several false starts, I finally read back to him his dialogue using different voices for the two cats. At the monkey’s line I pointed to him and said, “You’re the monkey. What do you say?”
“Oo Oo Ah Ah Ee Ee?”
The boy needs a beating.
Even if the targeted audience could read, I’m not sure they could read this:
Do not desterb inles it is a enmeanchesy.
The moster is in and the mene brothers are in too.
But I’m scared. I find poor spelling absolutely frightening!
I’m not sure what part of “straighten up your room before we leave for Scouts” included grabbing his brother by the arm and swinging him into the mini-Green Bay Packer’s helmet clamped on his bed’s foot board, but that’s what Fritz did.
I heard the howling, and knew it wasn’t good, but I waited. Even as I spied out of the corner of my little eye the two boys approaching me, I just didn’t want to turn around. And then they stood next to me, and I looked and saw what appeared to be a victim from some slasher film standing there, but, no, that was my seven year old.
Calmly I had him sit, and turn his head so that the blood wouldn’t get on the carpeting, even though I saw it pooling in his ear. Calmly I got a towel and had him hold it to the wound while I retrieved wet paper towels to try to clean up some of his ear…and neck…and hands. Calmly I thought how good it was that Bill wasn’t here, since he really doesn’t handle the sight of our injured children screaming in pain and bleeding profusely with as much detachment as I feel is necessary to be effective. Billy calmed down pretty quickly himself. If Mom’s not too upset, it must not be that bad, right?
Finally, I took a gander at the injury, and for the first time ever, decided that a trip to the ER was really warranted. Normally, I prefer a wait and see attitude on most illnesses and injuries. Let’s just take a few minutes to see if the bleeding stops or the leg still hurts or the arm is still dangling at that awkward right angle. But this one, no, I knew right away it needed something.
I tried to call Bill at his office, but he was off doing important things and out of cell phone coverage. I left a message on his cell phone voice mail anyway. I found a neighbor to watch the other kids, and headed for the hospital.
Bill showed up just before the doctor’s diagnosis. I was thankful to be able to leave to pickup the other kids and get them off to bed. Bill got to hang around for the ugly part – the treatment: five shots of Novocaine, and 5 STAPLES.
This excitement is killing me.
Bill and I were discussing music and how Song X is the exact same song as Song Y, just change the names.
For example, Faith Hill’s Mississippi Girl is basically Jenny From the Block.
I said it was like movies, and you could pretty much trace all plots back to Shakespeare. He covered everything.
Fritz wanted to know who Shakespeare was, and I said he was a poet and playwright from a long time ago (“The 1600’s”, interjected Bill – he lived from 1564 to 1616, good job, hubby). I said that he wrote a lot of plays and that many movies today had stories that were like the stories he wrote.
“Oh, so he wrote, like, Godzilla?”
No. You got me there, kiddo.
For birthdays, the kids get to pick dinner and dessert. As long as the request is reasonable, I will accommodate it. Billy asked for, and got, pancakes for his birthday dinner. Cake seems to be the traditional choice, but perhaps as they get older they might consider pie or cobbler or hot fudge sundaes.
Fritz asked for Church’s chicken. I suppose I could be offended that he wants fast food fried chicken instead of my own homemade version. But I don’t actually fry my chicken – I bake it in the oven. And I’ll be the first to admit that deep fried chicken is really really yummy. Childhood obesity does not generally occur in children who visit fast food joints an average of once a month, even if those 12 annual visits tend to be concentrated around family vacations, cross-country moves and birthdays.
And since it’s not only a ball game night, but also a Scout Pack Meeting night, I’ve got to squeeze dinner and birthday cake and presents all in by 530 pm. To have no dinner clean up to worry about saves me one more headache on a busy night.
And this is why I felt okay about cutting Fritz’s Dairy Queen ice cream cake a night early. We’ll sing again, and even light candles on the leftovers if he wants, but I won’t feel badly about following up the serving of the cake with an urging to hurry up!
I do feel badly that my husband wasn’t around when we cut the cake. He’s rarely home before 7 pm and didn’t expect tonight to be any different. But when I told him we cut the cake, he told me he would be able to come home early tonight and was disappointed we had already done that. Have you given him his presents yet? he asked. No, I said. But I was planning to, I thought. I think it’s a bit cruel to give a kid a gift right before bedtime or right before he has to walk out the door for a game. Fortunately, Nana and Grandpa’s gift arrived via FedEx earlier, and he had plenty of Legos to assemble today. I don’t think he’ll mind too much about having to wait until tomorrow to dig into the set we got him.
And now, it’s time for me to wipe down kitchen counters and crack the whip on house-straightening. Hurry up! We’ve got to go go go!
Today, you are 9. Sometimes I think it is amazing that you have been a part of my life for so long. But other times, I feel as though I’ve known you forever. As my first-born, you have changed me the most, first, by making me a mother, secondly, by forcing me to always think of someone else’s needs before considering my own, and continually, by growing and changing: just as I think I have finally gotten a handle on raising an eight-year-old, you go and turn nine!
You are old enough to light the candles on your birthday cake all by yourself, and you have no idea how terrifying this is to me.Last fall, after I tried to burn my house down, the fire department came out to check my smoke detectors. I was talking about school and kids with one of the guys and he said, “I’m in the third grade!” I said, “Me, too!” Even though I have a college degree and I feel that I have continued the learning process past my formal school days, I know that I am right there with my oldest child learning things I either never knew or forgot long ago. And since I will be repeating these lessons over and over again to a succession of children, I really can’t imagine that this “new” information, seen through adult eyes, won’t stick with me for much longer than it did the first time I was exposed to it.
Since I use the Baltimore Catechism for religion, and since I was educated in the ’70s and ’80s and that mainly through CCD classes, pretty much everything I teach from that book is stuff I didn’t know. Well…Who made you? God made me. I got that. But the concise and clear answers to much of what we believe and why we believe it were never transmitted to me. I really enjoy religion class.
In math and grammar, I’m happy to report, I haven’t learned much. I have had to check the answer book on occasion to clarify a punctuation rule or a part of speech, but not very often. The teacher’s math book is only used so I can check answers quickly and not because long division or averaging numbers is particularly difficult.
But of all the subjects, Fritz and I share an immense appreciation for history. I liked it back in my school days, too, and studied it quite a bit in high school. In college, I just didn’t have the time to take any classes given my heavy core curriculum load, except for one class, The History of the Low Countries, which I was able to take while studying abroad in Belgium (one of the Low Countries). Awesome class.
In the last three years, history for Fritz has been primarily American History and more specifically the time around the American Revolution. Each year, the curriculum gives more details about the 1700’s and expands the student’s awareness of where that era is in relationship to all of world history. When Fritz was in kindergarten, he summarized his knowledge of history like this: “First there was Adam and Eve, then there was Jesus, then there was George Washington, then there was us.” By now, I’m sure he can name a few more people between Adam and Christ, and our history lessons have exposed him to the Vikings as well as the big players from Europe who claimed the Americas and explored, settled, and fought over them: the Dutch, the Spanish, the French and, of course, the English.
These are lessons that I learned over and over again throughout my school days, but it is great to read about this period of history with a much greater awareness of the global implications of certain events, for example, France’s historical interest in aiding the Americans over the English in our revolution or the American Revolution’s influence on the French Revolution.
One of the books we recently read was If You Lived at the Time of the American Revolution. I really like the If You Lived… series. I’ve found them to be chock full of information but written clearly enough for young students to comprehend. At the end of this book, the authors state their intention of presenting a balanced view of the conflict and presenting non-Patriots in a fair manner. On Amazon, reviewers either gave it 5 stars or 1 star, depending on how they felt about the treatment of the Loyalists. Those who thought it was good, thought it was balanced. Those who thought it was bad, felt that the Patriots were portrayed as bad guys and that it only mentions the negative circumstances surrounding the lives of the Loyalists. I will admit that there is little mention of any suffering on the part of the Patriots. According to the book, about one-third of the colonists favored independence, one-third were loyalists, and the remaining third attempted to be neutral. Surely for every Loyalist’s child who wasn’t permitted to go to school, there was a Patriot’s child who had a similar experience. There were pockets of like-minded people, and human beings throughout history are not known for their kind and generous behavior toward those who think differently.
But since the winners write the history books, I don’t feel that a few kind words on behalf of real human beings who had valid reasons for choosing to support the crown will damage a young student’s budding sense of patriotism. And as for myself, this and other literature we read this year have made me ask myself where I would have placed my own loyalties in 1775.
I consider myself fiercely patriotic. I’ve lived “on the economy” in other countries for long enough to know that as bad as it might be here in some ways, it is better than any other alternative. This is home, and it doesn’t matter whether it is Ohio or Virginia or Pennsylvania or New Jersey or Florida or Kansas, it is all home. But Belgium is not Germany is not the Czech Republic is not England and none of them are the United States. I am eternally grateful for all the hard choices made by the people who lived here in the late eighteenth century who suffered, fought and died to create this country. I would really like to think that I would have been a Patriot and would have done my best to contribute to its founding.
But no matter how I look at it, I can not support actions like the Boston Tea Party which breaks both the seventh commandment which forbids the unjust taking of another’s property as well as the 4th commandment which includes obedience to lawful superiors. Perhaps if I were twenty years old in 1775, I would be cheering the heroes of that raid, but I can’t imagine that this 36 year old devout Catholic would be in favor of it. It is one thing to boycott a product and quite another to destroy it.
But in my final analysis, I look at my view of current events. I am conservative and religious and vote accordingly. But I do not always agree with the loudest voices belonging to this side. I don’t agree with every plank in every platform and certainly not with every vote by every Republican in Congress. There are times I think we make some poor choices as a country, but I still think it’s the best place on earth. I think about the polls that show “only” a 39% approval rating for the President, and think I might be in the category of the 59% who disapprove (it’s all how the question is worded…and what about being neutral as an option?). And I compare that to the one-third who supported the American Revolution, and I think the President is doing better than General George Washington would have been doing if the Rasmussen Report had been around back then. I do think I would have been a Patriot, and I have faith that our country, despite the doom and gloom predictions from all sides, will do just fine as we suffer through these difficult years of foreign war and domestic strife.
OK, I’m finishing the 3rd grade, I’ve learned a lot about the American Revolution, and I vote in favor of breaking ties with England. How about you? What grade are you in, what did you learn this year in school, and are you or are you not in favor of the American Revolution?
About 2 1/2 years ago, we replaced our crumbling, heavy, ten year old TV with a lightweight, flat screen LCD set. It is our sole TV. It came with a V-chip.
The V-chip is a nice thing. It doesn’t replace parental guidance and discernment, but it is convenient for those times when a young child inadvertently begins surfing the channels or an older child intentionally starts looking for alternative programming. We don’t get any premium channels, but it’s not R-rated movies that concern me so much. A brief visit to a country music video channel might coincide with the playing of Trace Adkins’ Honky Tonk, Badonkadonk, which is eyeful enough for adults and completely inappropriate for kids.
Up until a year ago, we had no problem with the V-chip, which we set at the most conservative level for all programming. Even Y-7 shows were screened. When you change channels, the programming comes on briefly – perhaps for 3 or 4 seconds – and then the screen goes blank awaiting the secret code if the rating is higher than the settings allow. Convenient for adult viewing after the kids go to bed, typing in the code frees all channels until the TV is turned off.
When we moved to this new house a year ago, our one option for TV (aside from satellite) was with the phone company and their fiber optic network. Soon thereafter I noticed that Bill would turn on a cop show or something like that after 9 pm, and it wouldn’t ask for the code. We checked the settings and did all the troubleshooting we could think of. The V-chip worked on some channels some of the time, but not always. I theorize that the problem lies with the phone company not broadcasting appropriate ratings. I considered launching a campaign to have them clean up their act, but decided that it wasn’t worth the hassle. The V-chip is a convenience, but isn’t my primary means of controlling what my children watch. They watch certain shows at certain times of the day, period.
But I do allow Fritz, the oldest child and the earliest riser, some freedom in channel surfing in the early morning. He knows the PBS stations and Disney and Nickelodeon (which doesn’t begin it’s Nick Jr programming until 9 am), and I will let him go between them. {Is the desire to flip between channels innately male, or what?} Once the younger kids get up, though, he needs to restrict his viewing to more appropriate shows (no Jimmy Neutron, for example).
For some reason, although we can watch drug deals, sex and violence without restriction at night, Bob the Builder was recently deemed too dangerous for viewing by my anonymous TV provider. Because the V-chip takes those few seconds to kick in, Fritz can see the show for a moment before the screen goes blank. Now, Fritz is too old for Bob the Builder, but he still enjoys it, and once Pete (my other early riser) is up, his viewing choices diminish. He and Petey will sit and watch the show together: Fritz will sing the theme song and interact with his younger brother the whole time. It’s quite cute. Fritz knows the show is on, but can’t view it. For a bit, we could fiddle with the channel and get it to come on, but in the last week or so, you had to type in the code to watch the show. So I did.
Fritz wanted to know the code. I told him that there was no point in having a code if he knew it. We’ve been back and forth on this for several days now. The code was the factory set code of “0000” – not exactly a tough thing to decipher, but it’s been working for 2 1/2 years now, right? But 2 years ago, I didn’t have a nearly 9 year old who desired to know the code. I wasn’t particularly shocked when he announced the correct code to me this morning. Won’t he be upset when that code doesn’t work tomorrow morning?
In another 2 years, perhaps he’ll be clever enough to not tell me that he knows the code. Perhaps in 2 years, I’ll be clever enough to have him think I don’t know it either. Just a half step ahead, that’s all I need…
Every now and then, you just have to teach your kid a big word. A little word won’t do.
Obviously, when discussing matters of religion, new vocabulary words like transubstantiation will eventually need defining. Perhaps your young man is into guns or crime shows or detective work. Ballistics might become part of his word list. And if your child is learning music theory, lots of long, foreign words like fortissississimo might be necessary to describe your child’s preferred style of expressing himself on the piano.
And sometimes, just regular conversation requires a good knock-out punch of a word. My parents always used big vocabulary words with us, and then directed us to the big dictionary to figure out what they meant. When big words started coming out of our mouths, they would praise us with, “That’s a fifty-cent word!” Eventually sophisticated vocabulary becomes a habit.
I often find myself using big words even though I know that the kids have no idea what I am saying. This most often happens when I’m getting excited about a topic, and the time space between my thought and the word coming out of my mouth is extremely brief. I’ll use the first words that come to mind, and they are often pretty hefty. Half the time the kids just ignore much of what I say and grasp the general meaning of my point. This worked to my great advantage once when I was pretty upset with the kids and started expressing in a loud and rapid manner exactly how I felt about their behavior. Out came one awful word, and I felt horrible and worried about using it – until I realized that nobody even noticed. They just thought mom had pulled out another big word that they hadn’t learned yet.
Whew.
Recently in grammar, Fritz is learning about adjectives. One of the exercises is to list two adjectives for each of the nouns. Horse: spotted, small. Boy: tall, skinny. Boat: big, fast. Building: tall, window-y.
Nope. That just won’t do. Window-y doesn’t cut it. I could have left it at that and had him come up with another adjective, but I also think a kid needs to learn how to express himself. If he wants to point out that a building has windows (as compared to places like many army buildings that don’t), this is a legitimate requirement. If there happens to be a word that fits the bill, why shouldn’t I teach it to him?
And so, Fritz learned the word fenestrated yesterday. We admire the city skyline filled with tall, fenestrated buildings. The prisoners longed for a fenestrated barracks so they would know when it was day or night. Fortunately, his grammar worksheet wasn’t being turned into a teacher who might think he was making things up. That happened to my nephew, Jack, whose third grade teacher, apparently unfamiliar with Lemony Snickett’s Series of Unfortunate Events, told him that penultimate was not a word. Ignorance is my penultimate pet peeve; arrogance is the trait I despise the most.
Reit This Way 