Homeschooling and Aspergers

I have always wanted to homeschool my kids. From the time they were babies, I wanted to be their teacher. Then I started working, figured I didn't know so much, and gave up on the idea. Meanwhile, Catie was getting more and more stressed out by the classroom environment and melting down more frequently. My wonderful mother, who in a previous existence was a teacher and homeschooled my younger brother, offered to homeschool her. When I mentioned the idea to Catie, her face was a picture of relief as she said "Oh, Mommy, that would be so much better. School is so... hard!" I know what she means. The classroom is so distracting for her, the teacher can't talk her through things personally, and overall it's easier for us to adapt to her than her to the classroom.
Eventually that may change, but today was her first day of homeschooling, and there were virtually no meltdowns. I can't stress how great that is. Mom handled academics in the morning, and when Daniel took a nap I taught her how to knit a garter stitch. She's working on her first scarf. She got to play outside, ride her bike, and read 6 chapters of Junie B. Jones. We have her on a two hour toileting schedule (for those of you with no ties to Aspie kids, they often have bowel issues) and had a lot of success! In three days I might cry out "What was I thinking!?!" but today was great.

New bike for Catie!

My friend the metal guy just dropped by with the bike upgrade for Catie! Turns out he's not just deaf, he's also from Bosnia. Man, what a job - to learn English when you can't even hear it properly, and learn a new method of sign language too! Because in each country and even in different regions, there are different dialects of sign. What means "nice" in one country could mean "bite me" in another. His name is Senad, but people call him "Bos" for Bosnia.
Anyway, he brought a great bike - hand and coaster brakes, good tires, all in all solid. He told me that he had 10 bikes, so if I didn't like that one he could bring me another, but this is perfect. I offered him a loaf of fresh bread, but he said it would make him fat! If Catie decides she doesn't like the color I can always spray paint it - it's red with black and chrome, very "boy".
She just informed me that any color is fine, but blue might be cool.
yay, new bike!

Sun!

It stopped raining! We had sun! I took the kids out to the playground and went bike riding with them - and not a moment too soon. Last night they were feeling so cooped up that I made a mistake I don't usually make. Chuckie Cheese. Free to enter, and there are a few free things to do, but everyone had apparently had the same social breakdown and brought their children to the overheated noise pit. I could not hear myself talk. For those of you who have gone clubbing, it's like clubbing for the underage. The other children were climbing on the whack-a-mole and basketball toss games. Big kids were blocking the plastic tubes that others were trying to crawl through. In general, there was a sense that instead of a place where a "kid can be a kid", it was "where a kid can get away with murder". I held my tongue for the most part, because this is also a location where police have been called to break up fights between parents. Like I said, going there is a mistake that I don't usually make.
After about 45 minutes I had had my fill and tried to round up the munchkins, which was nearly as loud as the rest of the place when Daniel protested leaving. I had to carry him, while Catie was screaming "But we didn't see Chuckie!!!".
So you can see, I'm grateful for sunshine and the opportunity to play outside. I'd take that any day over Chuckie Cheese.

still raining

Day 3 of continuous cold rain. Baked peanut butter cookies and some bread just in an attempt to make the world a cozier place. Plus we were out of bread.
I'm getting nervous about the coming winter. Our food storage needs to be heavily stocked very soon, and we need to get firewood cut, split and stacked. Why? I'm not a flu-fearing person, and usually don't bother with flu vaccines, but the outlook this year is grim. It seems that the swine flu may turn out to have a higher fatality rate than the seasonal flu, which was not the case before. We are also going to have some serious weather (so says the Farmers Almanac) this winter, and if lots of people are going to get sick I want to make sure we're ready. Stock up on basic medicines - Asprin, advil, tylenol, vicks vaporub, etc. Buy gatorade powder or know how to make your own electrolyte drink. Check the Mormon websites for emergency preparedness ideas - it's part of their doctrine to be ready for the "end times", and they are supposed to have months worth of shelf stable food. They usually have good tips, just don't act too interested or you'll wind up with two kids on bikes at your door, earnestly trying to get you to "just come to temple once".
Stay warm, stay free

weather...

This is the second straight day of cold, constant rain. It's like Seattle moved to central Pennsylvania, which is all the convincing I need to never move to the Pacific Northwest. It could be a lot worse, though - some parts of the state are already getting snow. We're used to snow here, but it's nice when it waits until after Halloween.
My mom bought a woodstove fireplace insert to increase the efficiency of our standard hole-in-brick fireplace, but it needs some repairs. The blowers need new wiring, the firebrick needs to be replaced, and it needs new door gaskets and a coat of high heat paint. So it's in our garage, waiting to be fixed, and meanwhile it's been so chilly that I gave up and started burning wood in the regular fireplace again. Even with the fireplace roaring along, we still had to turn on the furnace. Can't wait to get that insert installed! We'll be modifying the walls in that room to allow the heat to pass through to other areas, and hopefully be able to keep from using too much oil for heat this winter. And if we do wind up having another historic PA winter like '96 with the rolling blackouts and weeks on end stuck at home, we'll still be toasty. Folks around here remember that as the winter one of the bridges in Harrisburg washed out on national news.
OK, funny parent moment. My son was just chattering to himself in his bed, and he got too loud. I called to him "Daniel, be quiet." and he didn't quiet down. So then I said "Daniel, do you want a spanking?" His answer - "NEVER!" (heroically).
Stay warm!

Strange new twists

I could write about the fact that I haven't spent a single dime for the past week, but it really doesn't mean much. I haven't had anything to spend!
I could write about the fresh, homemade bread, cooling downstairs in the kitchen. Really, the biggest thing I've learned with bread is to make sure I mix a little flour in at a time and knead the tar out of it - success.
But what I've been working on lately is a book.
See, I'm a horrific bookworm. Harry Potter volume 7 had me submerged for 24 hours, at which point I finished it and ran to have hours of discussion with my friends. More recently, my sweet non-bookworm fiancee Jake found a great deal on craigslist and bought me the entire Twilight book series. I have about 72 hours that are kinda blurry in my memory - I was later told that my nose was in one of the books at all times. But then I finished, and like a junkie jonesing for more I went to the Twilight website. There I read Stephanie Myers bio, and realized that she sat down one day and started writing. She has 3 sons, and she would write whenever she could. Inspiring. Why can't I write? The answer came - I can.
So now I'm writing a book. It's fiction, but it's structured by my life. It's about a mother with two kids, the older one has Asperger's syndrome and the younger one is a little odd but not diagnosed. It's about the joys and struggles of being a single mom, being a mom of kids who are different, and the little things that happen along the way.
If you're out there, please hassle me and ask if I've been working on it!

Language skills really pay!

My big girl has mastered bike riding! She can start, stop, turn, coast and pedal with no help! Great news, right? Well, the bike that I grabbed for $5 at a yard sale is too small. It was OK for her to learn how to ride, but she needs a bigger bike ASAP.
I was mulling over this, driving around developments today. I saw a number of cool things by the curb (I have a pogo stick to sell, if anyone's interested) but no 20" bikes.
Then, as I was opening up the garage door, I saw the metal guy driving our way. This guy comes around once a week, collects any large metal objects and cashes them in for scrap. I had a sudden brainstorm. I grabbed a broken bike that I was thinking of fixing, dragged it to the curb, and tried to get his attention. Footnote - he's deaf. Not "old guy can't hear anymore" - deaf. So I dusted off my medicocre sign language skills and asked him if he happened to have a bigger bike in his truck so we could trade. He said "Not now, but I have one at home. I'll fix it and bring it by next week. How did you know I was deaf?" "Lucky guess?" I joked. "Yeah, right!" he shot back, laughing at me. I admitted my dad told me. He then proudly showed me the radiator he had muscled into his truck - that thing was 6 feet long and had to weigh 1000 pounds. Whoa! Then he explained he covered about a 20 mile radius in our area, hitting each neighborhood once a week. I guess he must do pretty well - I've never seen him without a healthy load. So he had no lack of bikes, and would be happy to help me trade up. Yippee! I'm going to have to bake something good for this guy - I want to stay on his good side!

Why I miss washing clothes by hand

Of all the things in the world to miss, why do I miss my hand operated washer and wringer?
When I left the SOM (in a huff) all the non-electric appliances stayed. After all, they were bought for the Silence. I came home to the wonders that included a dishwasher and a washer and dryer. my life should be easier, right?
I spent less time doing laundry when I washed it by hand. In about 3 hours, all the laundry for the week for a family of three could be washed, rinsed, wrung out and hung to dry. That included bedding, as often as not, and towels. Now, because I can do laundry at any time it feels like I have to do laundry ALL the time. There is no reason to wait for wash day - go put a load in. But I look at the piles and think "I could have all this washed by the time one load would finish in the washer". It would be done. And I could still do it, but without the wringer the clothes would take 3 days to dry. So I'm left, dissatisfied by modern technology. I can still hang the clothes to dry on our limited clothesline space, which helps, but I just want to have my washday back!
Ol' Blue the bike trailer is proving to be very helpful. I picked Daniel up from preschool with it last week, and got some much needed exercise.