Articles from November 2009

Happy first week of Advent, dear readers!

Hail and blessed be the hour and moment in which the Son of God was born of the most pure Virgin Mary, at midnight, in Bethlehem, in piercing cold. In that hour, vouchsafe, O my God! to hear my prayer and grant my desires, through the merits of Our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of His Blessed Mother. Amen.

It is piously believed that whoever recites the above prayer fifteen times a day from the feast of St. Andrew (30th November) until Christmas will obtain what is asked.

If you have a moment, read this lead story in Time Magazine. Are you a helicopter parent? I definitely have some helicopter tendencies.

Also, I found this general societal comment interesting:

Some of the hovering is driven by memory and demography. This generation of parents, born after 1964, waited longer to marry and had fewer children. Families are among the smallest in history, which means our genetic eggs are in fewer baskets and we guard them all the more zealously.

A friend of mine stopped me today after helping to run the Thanksgiving party in my oldest son’s (4.5yo) preschool class. She just couldn’t stop laughing after talking with our M…

Cranberry sauce is a highlight of the Thanksgiving meal.

We are taking the week off to enjoy Thanksgiving. While we have done our traditional Handprint Turkeys, we are also reinforcing several weeks of reading from our Thanksgiving book basket by doing Narration work. This is a Charlotte Mason technique where the children tell back what they have read or learned. Try it with your children, the results can be cute or surprising, they remember such interesting details. I used a few prompts and had the children dictate to me while I typed their words. I asked them to tell me about the first Thanksgiving, Our Thanksgiving Traditions and what they were thankful for this year.

We are headed to New York to celebrate Thanksgiving with my brother. I look forward to cooking and having a relaxed family meal. He is a vegetarian so we are getting to experiment with some new side dishes, but I have also ordered a turkey from our local farm. I am looking forward to stuffing and sweet potatoes, but we are adding brussel sprouts and cauliflower this year in an attempt to use local, seasonal foods.

We are hoping to fit in some runs and perhaps watch the parade. I am especially thankful for my brother this year, who is a writer, a cancer survivor, a great uncle and friend. We don’t agree on everything, but we choose to get along and respond to each other with love. He is incredibly supportive of me, and I try to be so of him, too.

We have been chatting about how to help our children build routines, including getting ready to go in the morning and handwashing. B-Mama told us that her boys are reminded to wash hands well because she posted the instructions that they made in school near the sink.

You Montessori homeschooling supermoms (and everyone else too) will enjoy this coverage of a wonderful new Montessori innovation for dental students.

Montessori School of Dentistry Lets Students Discover Their Own Root Canal Procedures

The Good: The Waitress at the diner where I had breakfast with my two younger children this morning. She brought the children extra crayons and coloring sheets and hot chocolate with cream as soon as we walked in. I was on the phone getting a car maintenance quote when she delivered our breakfast order. Without being asked, she sat down, buttered bagels and cut them into bite-sized pieces, moved all the hot drinks and knives, started the kids on their breakfast, and stayed with them until I finished my phone call. God bless you helping hands and kind souls of the world.

The Bad: The Stranger who cloned my credit card and charged $487 at a Walmart in California this afternoon. My bank is USAA, the military bank. My M.O. is fiercely watching every penny as we budget through graduate school. Stranger, you’ve messed with the wrong people.

The Ugly: My First 2009 Christmas-shopping trip this morning at TJMaxx. The heat is on, as I have one week to buy (on a budget) for many dear family members who we will see next week at Thanksgiving. Gift giving is oh-so-not my love language. It is 1 hour past naptime for my 3-year-old Bean and 18-month-old Angelina. Bean in the stroller handles porcelain trinkets as he uses his feet to push off the shelves and roll himself to the top of the staircase. I catch him just as he begins to head down. Angelina is back in the Ergo pulling my hair and tantruming, having just finished eating chocolate out of a display which I must now purchase. I am drenched in sweat, frying alive in a turtleneck sweater which I cannot remove because of said Ergo. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Maybe, just maybe, we can get this all taken care of before Advent.

For better or worse, there’s rarely a dull day as a homemaker, wife, and mother of three preschoolers!

Lately, I am getting the sense that everyone is on facebook. You can stop laughing now, yes I am internet savvy, I have a blog, after all! However, until the last six months, I thought that facebook was just for people about 5 years younger than me, or for those who were really into online networking.