James & Joel plan for the future

Joel: Only a few kinds of Star Wars ships are real.



Dad: Oh, really?



Joel: Well, I KNOW X-wings are real!



Dad: You think X-wings are real?



James: They're not real yet... But that'll change when I grow up.

Anna + art

There's nothing spectacular about stick figures. When I took Elementary Art Education class they taught us the developmental stages of 'art' beginning with stick figures. The first 'stage' had large heads with limbs coming directly out. Both boys drew those first. Not Anna. She skipped that and headed straight for 'normal' stick figures at age 2.



A couple weeks ago I saw her trying desperately to cut paper with plastic pretend scissors. She was actually succeeding even though there was no blade whatsoever. So I caved in and gave her safety scissors. She usually sits at her toddler table next to my desk during school. Feels official. So she sat there through school all morning cutting little strips of paper. The school room looked like a tornado had hit! The next day I challenged her to cut AROUND the pictures on the pages. Sure enough she started cutting different shapes out!




Our friend Kathleen said she taught kindergartners who couldn't do that! I don't know how exceptional 2-yr-old cutting of objects may be, but I know there are lots of art supplies in our future...

The First Real Haircut

Well, since moving to Congo Anna has really needed a haircut.

I was originally planning to be a 'purist' about long hair, and didn't want to cut her hair -ever. But God gave us a little girl with enough hair for 2 people. Kent and I were always told we had thick hair, and now Anna seems to have doubly-thick hair! Even when I put it up she gets so hot and sweaty with all that hair. I finally caved in and cut more than her bangs.

So here's her First Real Haircut: I took off about 3-4". Her baby hair had ringlets (another reason to avoid chopping them off), so I didn't notice until I cut it that her hair was almost down to her waist! Ack! (She's only 2 and a half...)

Of course, she got to watch Wallace & Gromit while I was snipping away...

...and the new do! Doesn't she look older?

I'm still missing those baby ringlets,
but there will be other fun things about this new toddler Anna to enjoy.

The 2 meter nap couch!

Here is the sofa we designed and had local carpenters build (next door actually) extra long so that Kent can actually stretch out on the couch and take a nap. Yes, at over 6 feet tall, he needed a 2-meter couch. One of his favorite things is to stretch out on the couch on Sunday afternoon, and he has endured many a short or horrible couch over the years. It is handcrafted from local mahogany, and was carried 50 yds to our house by 4 men to the front yard where you see Kent and our friend Faustin sitting. I guess they're technically sitting on the driveway...

They left it there in the sun as Kent wanted to re-sand it and give it another couple coats of the darkest varnish we can buy. All work is done outdoors in all kind of weather and conditions, so often paintbrush strands, bugs, dirt and other tiny things get shalaqued right into the finish. Yeah, good to do your own finishing. I guess I was hoping for a black-ish color, but the red in the wood shines through. Indoors it does look a shade or two darker. Now I need to buy thick foam mattresses, cut them up in the right dimensions and sew slip covers for cushions. Then use the extra foam pieces cut up really small to make throw pillows. I'm hoping we'll have a 'real couch' by Christmas, but it's not looking like a sure thing. For now, the Thermarest is a decent substitute, and weekend napping has commenced. =)

Math-U-See, Math-U-Do

Our bouncy, baby Joel grew up and as his Kindergarten teacher/Mother I've recently discovered that Joel seems to be kinesthetic learner. I vaguely remember jokingly calling him 'my satelite' because while I stand around talking to people, he literally walked in circles around me. It was fun when he was 2... The traditional classroom would probably 'do him in' with all that sitting still in your seat! We have practiced the Ten Commandments on Sunday afternoons for years, and Joel can finish the sentences if we start them. He knows them all at some level. And yet, could not say them independently. That is, until... we drew stick figures and put them on the floor and had him jump and say each one! Now he doesn't need any help at all!

One day during school I found him doing his 'easy' +0 facts like this:

Well, as you can imagine handwriting is tedious to say the least. Handwriting Without Tears has been fabulous and lived up to its name, but writing eventually pervades every subject in school. We've used Math-U-See for 3 years now and really love it! So Joel is in Math-U-See's Alpha book this year (Gr. 1 ish) and got to writing his numbers in order 0-100. This lesson was tough last year even for his bookworm elder brother, but asking Joel to SIT and WRITE from 0-100 must have looked like death. The first day after an hour of struggle we were at 27. Ouch. The second day we tried poster paper and markers (that's fun, right?!). We got to 53... with marker on the wall. Ouch.

This kid doesn't need Math-U-See, he needs Math-U-Do! There are great manipulatives and he is learning his math concepts and adding facts really quickly when he can start off my building them in blocks, but writing 0-100?! No way. With James I forced him to make it through twice and called it good enough. But Joel didn't seem to have place value down quite as sure, so the 0-100 exercise should be good (is it 36 or 63?) I finally came up with a way! In Reading we had success with the alphabet by laying out all the letters on cards on the floor and organizing them, so why not with math?

I spent a few hours creating 0-100 color coded cards (in his HWT number font), and voila! Happy kid.

(Okay, so he whined and needed help the first two times, but after that he couldn't wait for mathtime!) I think I have a new product for them to sell! 0-100 cards with the correct blocks colored on the back (and nicely laminated and all of course). Then there were tons of other games we could play with them like 'pick a random card and build it in 10 seconds!' Happy kid. I'm sure someone out there has a much cooler name for that one. Or 'pick a row and turn them all over and read them'...

I'm just beginning to unlock the 'key' to happy kid Joel's learning style, but hey!
Happy (learning) kid.

My Genius

I guess I knew Kent was a genius the first time I saw him.

We were sitting in Dr. Carlson’s Morphology & Syntax class, both taking it for ‘graduate credit’. He raised his hand to ask a question from the front row, while I hid in the back frantically taking notes. Sad but true, I didn’t even understand his grammar question (never mind the answer!). I’m proud to say that I passed that class with a higher grade on the final exam than Kent, but it was him who really understood ominous grammar concepts like: Split-ergatives, copulas, and deictic centers. I just knew how to take tests.

Fast forward a year when we were off to do field research in rural Kenya where Kent sat chopping up foreign tones, vowels and verbs. Seeing him get so excited about finding a pattern in the instrumental or dative made me realize 2 things: 1) I am really not a linguist at heart. While I love many aspects of our work, I will surely never be a famous grammarian. And 2) Kent really wasn’t showing off his intellect for my benefit in Morphology class, he really does think in big words.

Years later God gave us James, who has inherited a bit of his father’s beautiful mind. To see the two of them interact lately has been a bizarre mix of awe and fright. This morning they discussed amphibian parenthood while passing a puddle of tadpoles. Yesterday over breakfast (after James asked for 2 dolphin-shaped chewable vitamins) Kent and James built a chart of all possible vitamin combinations and calculated the probability of getting the two animals he so coveted. I tried not to roll my eyes. Why should I be surprised? They had a great time, and now instead of complaining about not getting what he wants, James will check out how his probability stacks up. Thankfully, Kent let me talk him out of starting James on Homer’s Iliad just yet. After all, he IS still six years old for one more week. Sheesh! Why rush childhood??

No, what I’m really blogging about, and what has impressed me most these past few months, is how Kent can apply his genius to completely unknown and foreign things and conquer them. It’s more than the male need for spontaneous adventure. He has next to no experience with home-improvement projects (hey, we’ve never stayed anywhere long enough to fix things!). And yet he has figured out how to re-plumb this house (let’s not downplay the wonder of running water!), rewire our electricity to run on 3 parallel systems (city power, solar batteries or generator), and build furniture. Case in point: His first woodwork, our new mahogany dining table:

And all this in a place without Home Depot!

[Yes, that is a paint brush sitting in gasoline in a Quaker oats can (the local paint thinner).]

Guess this genius is coming in handy!

(‘Red-Green’… ‘If they don’t find you handsome, at least they’ll find you handy!”)

Looks like I got the best of both worlds.

A budding chemist?

Family Quote Book

Some of you know that I have always loved keeping a 'Quote Book' of various foibles and hilarious things said by yours truly and those nearby. I think truth really is stranger than fiction, and that laughter really is good medicine. Why not write down those tears-of-joy moments to enjoy later? So in honor of Anna's new 'notable quote' in the sidebar (which she uttered last night after dinner) we dug out the family Quote Book and read through some of the funniest things written down in our own little history. I can't begin to share the whole of it with you, so I will leave you with the 2 that the boys found most funny. Here's James and Joel's top picks:

Joel (2 yrs old) comments on his older brother over breakfast:

"James have yogit his chinny-chin-chin!"

(after an entire MONTH of fascination with the 3 little you-know-who's)


Okay, maybe it was funnier after 9pm, but how 'bout this one:

James (almost 3 yrs) and Mom discuss bathtime (planning, ever planning!):

J: "I want to go first." (before Joel)

Mom: "But you chose the SECOND bath when I asked!"

J: "Well, I want the second bath FIRST!"


Gotta love toddler logic. It seems the best lines come between 2-3 years of age. I almost want to freeze time so my kids will stay young... but then again I enjoy who they are becoming as well watching them clean something up on their own!

Debut album, track one

In response to her last video, her uncle commented that we need to give her an instrument.  As if we hadn't, bro. :-) So here is living proof, with the alligator xylophone/piano pull-toy.  Which she normally just plays like a piano (or, alternately, bangs with the stick, but not as often).  But today, by special request, she sang along.  So now we officially have two with the "hey, I wonder if THIS would make a cool sound if I beat on it?" gene.