Ghost Story

This year has marked a change in our approach to writing. Meridian's been journaling since kindergarten (and reading through those old pages is a hoot!), and the journal has always been intended to promote writing fluency. There were never any corrections made, and the emphasis was not on correct spelling or grammar. It was a way to get her writing and her ideas flowing. After two years of solid journaling, her fluency is terrific, and it's time we focus more on the writing process. So, at the beginning of second grade, we introduced the steps:

Brainstorming was a struggle early on because after her experience journaling, she didn't want to "waste time" (as she called it) writing and organizing her ideas on a separate page; she wanted to just hit the ground running with her draft. Highlighters helped me win that battle - apparently office supplies hold the same strange power over my child that they do over me. I told her that after she'd brainstormed a bunch of ideas, she could use highlighters to help organize which ideas belong in which paragraph. Slowly over the weeks, she got the hang of this, and the highlighters were forgotten, abandoned to the much easier "scratch and scribble".

The draft remained the easiest part for her, but she was frustrated with the new "rules of writing" which slowed her down immensely: three full paragraphs (indented, and representing a beginning, a middle, and an end), proper capitalization, proper punctuation, neat hand-writing. These seemed to be a new method of mother-devised torture. She was also not well-pleased when I pink-inked her draft with edits; but after a time, she fell in step with the predictablilty of the whole thing, and would stand behind me approving or rebutting my edits.

This past week marks our first time reaching the final draft stage, which as you may imagine Meridian felt was tedious and unnecessary. She tolerated it fairly well, only because we did it during "handwriting" when it was a foregone conclusion that she was going to have to copy something anyway. However, after she was done, she was fairly well pleased with the results. And I love that they come just in time to mount on orange construction paper and hang for Halloween!

Meridian asked me recently if we could make up a password that she could use to ask questions and get really honest answers. The moment felt like she was confiding in me. It felt like a step-behind-the-scenes-of-our-life moment, where she was asking me to trust her with truths I feel are too big for her. She was seeking permission to sacrifice some of her youthful naivete. For a moment, my heart clenched. "Seven. You're only seven," I wanted to say. "Don't grow up so fast." Deep breath. Unclench.

The only right answer was yes. Yes, we can have a word that gives you carte blanche to seek knowledge without limitation. Here is the black check on honesty, my vow to give you what answers I have to the best of my ability and to help you find those I may not have. It was a solemn moment, filled with the earnestness of an important commitment.

It was also a precipice, and I was very much aware that I would not always like the feeling of free-falling that is sure to come as I grapple to find answers that are severely honest to questions I don't want her to have the answers to. So, with our password uttered, Meridian set out to solve some troubling puzzles.

The back story here is that for years I've had Meridian and her cousins convinced via bedtime stories that I am a fairy. My wings were taken away by the Fairy Queen for indiscretions they're not allowed to know about. Telling them too much about the fairy world is a violation of fairy law, and I cannot recover my wings if I elaborate. But I could tell them this much: through their relationship to me, they are all part fairy, Which led immediately to, "Why don't we have wings?" I concocted five levels of magic that they have to master before the Fairy Queen will grant them wings (and with wings, the power to perform fairy magic). The levels: 1) the magic of kindness and goodness, 2) the magic of honesty, 3) the magic of hard work, 4) the magic of empathy, and 5) the magic of love. They are all still working hard on level one. Meridian's cousins believe in this mythology whole-heartedly. Meridian, however, has grown skeptical.

So, now the question. Am I really a fairy? Imagine, as I did, the scales. On one tray of the scale, we have this powerfully motivating story that encourages character development and strides in the direction of moral living. I've seen the power of this story when I whisper, "Don't forget your levels of fairy magic," and misbehavior melts away. On the other tray, we have honesty. POW. One large sack of honesty, committed to via solemn vow and sealed with a secret password. Cross you heart and hope to die kind of stuff. The scale didn't waver near the middle and then slightly lean in one direction. Nope. The sack of honesty came down with powerful force, and made the decision all on its own. Heck - honesty is even one of the levels of fairy magic!

When she first asked for the password, I contemplated for several moments whether I would allow myself to split hairs, to use semantics to leave her belief in tact, to lead her down a path of charitable subterfuge. I could tell her that I'd never seen a unicorn, and end the sentence with an ellipsis. I could wonder aloud why there were so many songs and stories about unicorns if they weren't real - if someone, somewhere, some time hadn't encountered one. I could talk about narwhals, the unicorns of the sea, and say if those were real, certainly unicorns had to be, didn't they? I could say that no one alive had ever seen a unicorn, but that no one alive had ever seen a dinosaur either, and those were certainly real. In truth, that's the exact path I would have gone down in the pre-password days. Preserve innocence. Promote a belief in magic. Magic makes the imagination flourish. Save harsh realities for some later (unnamed) date. Yes, pre-password, I would have saved the unicorn and the fairy. I would have bought them at least another year of life, as I did last year for Santa Claus.

But as much as I don't want her to know that unicorns are make-believe, there are things I don't want even more than that. I don't want her to ever wonder if her mother is a person she can go to for an honest answer. I don't want her to feel that I cling so much to her simplistic childishness that I impede her ability or desire to grow up. That's her job after all, and facilitating her is mine. I don't want her to think her departure from childish things is something she has to protect me from.

There will come a day when the questions won't center on unicorns and fairies, but on sex and drugs, on how much of herself to sacrifice for a sense of belonging, and on other hard-hitting issues that punch me in the gut to think of. She needs to know that if she goes down a path that I don't want her to choose, that I'll still hold her hand. I'll still be there to talk to. We have a password, ...a pact. I will tell her the truth. And that frees her to tell me the truth: I don't believe in fairies, Mom. This was the best way I could find to let you know.

We incorporated fitness as one of our "classes" this fall. Twice a week, we spend an hour doing purposeful fitness activities. At least once a week, that is supposed to include a mile-long run. Admittedly, neither of us loves that particular activity, and it has happened less frequently than desired - maybe once every other week. Meaning, we've done it three times so far. The first time, Meridian panted and complained, and begged to stop at every block. We put a three-block goal in place, and would stop for water and stretching at that interval. On the second run, we silently agreed to that same arrangement. With that in mind, I set the school-year goal at running one mile without stopping by the end of the school year. Apparently, I didn't count on how much soccer would improve Meridian's fitness though. On this morning's run, she not only stayed ahead of me the whole time, but she didn't stop for her first break until we'd already run a half mile. We paused for about seven minutes, stretched, drank, washed off with a damp washcloth, and jumped right back in. And then, amazingly, that was the only break in the whole run. Now I'm thinking I need to revise the year's goal! A friend posted Cool Running's Couch to 5K training program on facebook yesterday, and I looked into that. I think I may do a revised version of that, starting around the 5 week mark. Meridian gets in two soccer practices and a game every week, so I think I will do all three training sessions myself, but only require one per week from her. That way we can keep our second fitness activity available for something more fun for her, like bicycling or dancing.

Overheard while Meridian played with her dolls: I was born to two very plain parents. They both like only plain colored, not-fancy shirts and pants. But my Grandmommy is fancy, and I got all my fancy from her.

Yesterday I made a meal that I'd made before and then labled the recipe "perfection". In the preparation I made several mistakes (forgot to bread the chicken, had no mushrooms in the fridge, overcooked the spinach,...). As I was setting the table, I said how disappointed I was that this meal wouldn't be the exact meal we'd loved last time. That's when my sweet daughter "kissed my boo-boo" by saying, "Every meal you make is delightful, Mommy." I love that girl!

Meridian just had her first soccer game of the season, and wow! What an improvement from last year. She scored the first goal of the season, and surprised us all with this awesome backward kick move to the free the ball from a mass of players. When not on the field, she led the other players on the sidelines in team cheers.

Our public library is really great. This fall they're hosting several sessions on modern artists. As such, we've taken on modern art history for this fall. We've been studying Matisse for the last few weeks, which culminated in the library activity last night. The librarian was great. She showed the kids pieces of Matisse's art, talked about what he was famous for, and asked the kids what they saw in his work. Then she gave them paper and hodge podge and had them construct their own scissor art (collages which could be abstract or realistic, and which Matisse moved more toward later in his life while convalescing.) Meridian had a flower arrangement in a window with the sun shining through. Parents participated too, and I had fun playing with abstract shapes. The conclusion to our Matise study was a trip to the Chrysler Museum, which has two works by Matisse in its permanent collection. A painting from the transitional period between Fauvres and Cubism, and a sculpture.

I'm pretending I didn't notice the huge eye-rolls from my family when I asked them to take a break from their game to go downstairs and clean up their trail of destruction. Instead, I plastered on a big smile and pretended that they responded with cheerful, helpful attitudes.

Meridian and I went shopping today, and she was dying to try on the smallest bra she could find. So, I let her, and as she stood admiring herself in the mirror, I didn't have the heart to tell her that if she got Mommy's genes, she wouldn't need one for the next, oh, twenty years. LOL. Poor kid.

Almost two years ago, I wrote this post about the value of memorization. We began memorizing poems then, and have continued with that all this time. We revised our methods a bit, as the suzuki method just became too time consuming as more and more poems were committed to memory. Instead now, we work on memorizing one poem, reciting it each day until it is firmly committed to memory. At that point it moves back in the memory box so that we say that poem once a week. After it's clear to me that the poem is firmly lodged in her memory, it goes to once a month. Meanwhile, we're continually adding new ones to be recited daily.

It's fun to be able to look back and see the growth, from our first poem of five lines to the Cherokee proverb that is our current poem. Meridian has been working on this one for probably 5-6 months, and is very excited to get to move it back in her memory box so that she only have to recite this one weekly. Here she is reciting Two Wolves.

A few weeks ago, Meridian found some caterpillars devouring our parsley outside. She captured a couple for her butterfly house, where they lived for a few days before one promply ensconsed itself in a chrysalis and the other escaped. The one in the chrysalis was on a serious mission because only maybe ten days later, a black swallowtail had emerged. We carefully set it free, and thought that was the end of that brief project.

Until, two weeks later, while dusting, my hand brushed against an odd rough-feeling something secured to the underside of a table runner. Well, being a mom of a seven year old, I assumed it was a gross, crusty booger, but when I flipped the cloth up, I found this stowaway!

Anyone who has or has had a seven year old knows a thing or two about attitude. Like how it can creep in, slowly, inching toward your sweet, unsuspecting, reasonable 5-6 year old; how stealthily it sneaks into her posture and her tone; how after showing its ugly face experimentally a few times without reproach, it attaches itself to her like a leech; and how you one day wake up and find that you are the parent of a child with her hip thrust out, hand perched haughtliy on said hip, eyes rolled back who sighs deeply in annoyance before uttering some sassy remark or another. I take comfort in knowing that you are out there. I am not alone, and this too will pass.

Funny thing though, I've been so busy noticing this transformation in Meridian that it has taken me a while to pick up on the distorted mommy version of this that I'd in turn become. Eye-brows arched toward the ceiling, back of one hand beating a steady rhythm into the palm of the other hand to punctuate my staccato words: how. many. times. must. I. tell. you? Then, eyes closed, deep breath. Barely louder than a whisper, scary voice: go to your room.

Hmmmm, ...exasperation turns out to be a much more powerful emotion than I'd ever given it credit for before. So last week, I talked about not being at my best in my parenting, and I want to use this week's journal to flesh that out because I think exasperation might just be my undoing if I don't get it on a leash. As I recently told my friend, Angela, defiance and attitude are akin to kryptonite in my world. All my reasoning abilities seem to go right out the window. So tell me. What do you guys do? How do you handle the attitude without becoming little mirror images of the child you're trying to correct?

A fair bit has to be tolerance - it's developmental, clearly she needs to work through these kinds of struggles. I want to let her do that, and stretch herself and grow. But I also want her to grow into a reasonable and respectful person. So, exactly how much do you tolerate, and where do you draw the line? When do you repress a smile and an eye-roll and let them carry on, and when does it cross the line into needing a reprimand?

I recently went back to my old bag of tricks, and just talked to her about it. I made it about myself, saying how I didn't like the tone of voice I hear myself using when I talk to her lately, and that I thought we were having disagreements too often. She agreed, which opened the door to me pointing out that I also don't like the way she has been talking to me lately and how she always has an answer for everything. We left the converation with goals for each of us. She is to try to get better at figuring out which thoughts need to be voiced aloud, and which ones are better just in her head. Meanwhile, I'm to work on using a gentle voice instead of speaking sharply when I'm annoyed. We agreed that we could give each other reminders, so long as the voice we used sounded like a reminder and not a reprimad.

That was two weeks ago, and it hasn't been perfect, but there has been progress. Still, I hardly think we're cured, and I expect that attitude will come in waves and varying degrees of strength, so I need to arm myself with coping mechanisms. Please feel free to impart your wisdom. It's not every day you get a free pass to give someone else parenting advise. Sieze the opportunity!

Our first week of school was a big success. We were more diligent with our memory box than we have been since we started it six months or so ago. We use it for memorizing poems and proverbs, as well as for daily practice on things I want committed firmly to memory. For example, there's a slip with a poem, and then one that says "write your address", and then one that says "find the 50 states on the map", etc. We're moving things through the various phases of memory at a much faster clip in the last week.

We did some formal study on the research process in preparation for a research project we're going to work on this semester: Our Family Tree. Meridian chose our topic, and is excited to learn more and to build a physical representation of her lineage as an art installation in our family room. Stay tuned for pics as that progresses. We're only in the concept stage at the moment. We went to the library to learn about research options, and while we were there got in our volunteer time for this month's community service project: we adopted a shelf at the local library, and are popping in twice a week to clean it up and keep it organized for the next month. After that, we'll use our twice a week slot for our next project, but we'll still love our shelf whenever we're in the library.

For art, we're studying Matisse this week and last week, to culminate in a library program where the kids will participate in a discussion on the topic and then make a Matisse inspired craft. We also love crafts, so we have ongoing project of creating a stained glass window from tissue paper on our picture window in the kitchen.

In science, we're studying extreme weather. We learned quite a bit about volcanoes during our visit to Volcano National Park in Hawaii last year, but we never got around to actually building an erupting volcano, so we're starting there. While we build, we've remininsced about our time in Hawaii and done some casual review of what we know about volcanoes. We'll have video here after we complete the volcano project (built, still hardening, needs a diorama, then eruption); then, we're moving on to other interesting extreme weather phenomena: tornadoes, hurricanes, sink holes, whirlpools, earthquakes, etc.

Math has been all about measurement for some time now. We've done measuring time. Now we're measuring length, and expecting to move on fron there to weight. Lots of hands on. Imagine Meridian with a clipboard and a ruler in the grocery store. On her clipboard is a list of items that she has to find and measure. She keeps busy and gets plenty of practice, while I shop. Beyond that, we play loads of family games, all of which end up involving a good deal of math skills. Math mostly just takes care of itself at this stage.

History is a favorite subject of ours and our units stretch for a year at a time. Last year, we studied Colonial America and the beginnings of the American Revolution. This year, we're continuing with that on the timeline, moving through the revolution and segueing into government. We use a ton of different source materials for our study of history, from historical fiction to first person re-enactments to video. Currently, we're enjoying the Dear America Series of books as well as Liberty Kids, a television cartoon series of the American Revolution. Meanwhile, the branches of government went into our memory box in preparation for our unit on government down the road.

Curriculum material aside, I've cooked dinner every night this week (except for pancit - that's a David meal), our house is spit spot, and we've made a good dent with our paint touch ups. All in all, we're having a blast, 7am alarm aside.

It feels strange to say "back to school" in our house since we're a "year-round, unschooling, grasp-the-education-as-it-bounces-around-you" kind of family. But we're switching it up this fall. We've evaluated our approach and found that while it suits us to a tee, we have concerns about whether a complete lack of routine might be a little too unbalanced. So, this fall, we're experimenting. We're playing school - complete with daily schedule. Not everything around here is changing - our view of education as child-led and extremely hands-on still stands, only now it's according to schedule instead of whim. I don't know that this is a permanent change - we're thinking of is more as a practicum experience for this fall, and expect to go back to our usual programming (or lack thereof) come Spring, but we'll see where this takes us.

We began officially yesterday, and got off to a rollicking start. Meridian enjoyed most about the structured approach the fact that we were together the whole day. We had slowly over the last year or so drifted into a kind of solitary approach to our days - Meridian's learning to read was probably the catalyst here. And while she loves holing herself up in a nook for hours and drinking in a new novel, and while I love the freedom that has given me to do some things for myself and by myself, I think without knowing it we've both been missing each other. So, one bonus of this new schedule is that we're together all day. Even now. While Meridian works on her journal, I sit nearby working on mine.

And that's another bonus! It's been so long since I was a faithful writer here. Recently on my sisters-weekend-getaway, Ryan and I were talking about parenting, and I was saying that for years one through five I was a kick ass parent. Parenting came pretty easy to me, and it's virtually true that I never raised my voice or showed frustration in my tone. In the last two years, that has changed. I find myself frustrated too much of the time in my interaction with Meridian. Now I realize that a good part of that is just her growing up, experimenting with defiance, and just plain not thinking that every idea I have is the bees knees. But I think a big part of it is also that I've stopped keeping this journal. This was my think space - my clear-my-head, step-back-and-reevaluate, figure-out-the-best-approach space. It kept me centered and determined. Having this back on a scheduled basis will be a huge asset, not only to school, but to life as a parent.

In addition to instilling an academic routine, I think this is going to do wonders for our household productivity. As the schedule keeper, I won't have time to get lost in the distractions that interrupt my life - the internet chief among them. Instead, whole Meridian moves through her work, I'm doing things around the house, knowing that I have only 35 minutes to execute them. Additionally, we've built a "Love Our House" component into our week, so that we'll once a week for 45 minutes tackle little problems around the house that have been ignored for too long. Yesterday, we sanded and applied a fresh coat of paint to all of the chipped trim in our bay window which is our primary workspace. Hopefully this trend will continue!

This experiment requires some sacrifices on our part. We're not participating in a co-op this fall since all of the little outings and extras that stem from that would be too irresistable and would pull us in too many directions. We're not taking off on any huge road trips as we love to do, but instead are committing to three months of in-the-home school, with daily outings as the longest in duration. We're probably not traveling as a family at all this fall - again, trying to commit to the three months. Since we like our family vacations on the long side, that means putting it off until Spring. But all in all, we feel optimistic adbout this next adventure, and will see where it leads.

The extractor has arrived, and thank goodness. That frame from two weeks ago still has honey in it - that method was definitely not going to work out for us!

Here you can see the honey starting to fly out and hit the outer walls of the unit. This will continue until the frames are empty. The honey will then be carried by gravity down into the bottom of the barrel.

From here, the honey will be drained into five gallon buckets. A gallon of honey is about 12 lbs. We estimate we'll get about three gallons this year, which means 36 lbs of honey, and then almost double that next season as the bees won't have to expend time and energy building our honeycomb. After the frames come out of the extractor, the honeycomb is still in tact, and goes back to the bees. They repair the damage that scaping the caps caused, and then refill it with honey. It's a very efficient system they've got. So efficient in fact, that it saves us even having to clean up. You see, after the extractor is emptied for the season, we need only to set it out in the yard and the bees will come lick it clean, transporting that honey back to the hive and into the newly cleaned up cells of the same honeycomb we drained it from.

The bees made it safely through the winter, despite the uncommonly cold winter we had. David and Meridian have been in the hive plenty through the spring and early summer, but this is the first time I've ventured back out with the camera too see how much the hive has changed since last summer. Our friend Lisa, a professional beekeeper, is visiting from Canada and David wanted to take advantage of her expertise in the hive.

Propolis. We like to scrape it off and save it - it has a kind of silly putty consistency when you warm it in your hands and work it. It has what I know will be a wonderfully nostalgic smell for Meridian later in life - a combination of smoke, honey, and beeswax.

In the lower right corner here, you can see the characteristic hexagonal shape of the honeycomb. There are also two drones to be found in this image. They are markedly bigger than the worker bees, with larger eyes, and larger wings. Click the image if you need help finding them.

There are typically in the neighborhood of 30,000 bees in a hive. This shot gives you an idea of what it looks like in the hive when they're just going about their business. This shot is taken across the top of a box, which contains ten frames. The slots you see are the openings that allow the bees down between the frames where they then conduct business. Bees are very particular about space; the little mathematicians know exactly what feels comfortable for their task. Hives have been manufactured to reproduce "bee-space", or the likely space the bees would leave themselves if they constructed burr-comb to fill a hollow in a tree or other optimal spot.

As Lisa lifts out a frame, you can see on the right the dark brown drone comb, which are deeper bullet-shaped cells, meant for laying drone brood. Since the male bees are bigger, they need deeper cells to grow in. The bees compensate for this by building shallower cells on the adjacent frame, or by not building out comb in that location. The color of the comb here is somewhat misleading. Bees recycle. They use their wax over and over again, repairing existing structures. As a hive ages, the wax grows darker as it absorbs little bits of this and that - the color of pollen stored within, smoke from the smoker, dead bee or other insect body parts, etc. The newer freshly produced comb is the pretty cream color you saw in the earlier photo.

Here's the drone comb closer up and from the side view. If you look at the bottom right hand corner of the photo, you'll see normal brood comb - it lays flat rather than protruding from the frame. Now looking back at the dark brown drone comb on top, in the dead center of the photo you can find, if you look closely, a swarm cell. A swarm cell is a cell meant to rear a future queen, with the purpose of establishing another colony with a new queen. We destroy these because we do not want any of our colony to swarm (AKA leave the hive forever) You can tell a swarm cell (or queen cell) from a regular cell by it's shape and orientation. These cells always face downward when the frame is hanging in the hive. Click the image if you need help seeing the different parts of this image.

Here Lisa Babey is scraping away the burr (drone) comb because it is not really essential at this point. The queen has already been mated, and drones are superfluous. This is where having an expert on hand to help out makes a world of difference. We would not have been confident just destroying a part of their hive, but Lisa assured us if they really need more drones, they'll build more drone comb. In the meantime, freeing up this space in the hive means more room for them to repopulate the workers.

Lisa and David examine a frame more closely for eggs and larvae. Lisa is satisfied that our queen is laying plenty and all is well in our hive. It feels good to know they're doing as well as they should be, and it reinforces all we've learned over the last year. Thanks Lisa!

Here's a view inside one of the deeps with one frame removed. Looking at the hive from outside, you may get the impression that they are four distinct boxes, but as you can see here, it's more like a four story building with no floors or ceilings separating the stories - the bees are free to move between them. We do use what's called a queen excluder between the 2nd and 3rd stories. This is a thin sheet of plastic with a hole in the center that the bees fit through, but the queen does not. This assures that the queen will not climb into the top two stories to lay eggs, which means that we can harvest that honey without fear of disturbing larvae. Lisa says we could probably take that layer out as the queen is really likely to stick to her bottom two boxes anyway, but for the time being, it gives us peace of mind.

Here is a brood frame. It is a perfect example of the typical rainbow pattern of feed, pollen, and brood. The brood are the capped cells in the center of the frame, surrounded by the rainbow arch of uncapped protein-packed pollen cells, and then book-ended by capped carbohydrate-laden honey cells in the far corners. Click the picture if you need help identifying the parts mentioned.

David and Lisa pose for a shot together. The frame that David is holding is completely full of capped honey, which means it's ready for harvesting! Very exciting!!

First we tried the "drip method". Here Meridian and Lisa mark the honey frame where it meets the top of the bucket to prevent spillage. The cells above that mark will remain capped to prevent honey from dripping out over the edge of the bucket.

This method is awfully slow though - ten minutes later, and not much progress. It didn't take long for David to order a honey extractor. It should be here soon - stay tuned!