Adventures in Sideways Living

Happy New Year!

2010-12-31T21:48:00.002+13:00

I posted the following on a homeschooling forum today - and I thought, hey, what a good thing to pop on my poor neglected blog. It's a short and sweet wrap up of our year that was - hope your year went well too. xoxo

"Well, so long 2010, it's been nice knowing ya, don't let the door hit you on the way out.

This year has been, well, just another year, really. It's our second year of 'proper' homeschooling, and I feel like I both found my stride and lost my way a little - I think we've got a good routine going, and I'm happy with my overall curriculum choices, but I think now that Miss6 is almost 7 I need to be introducing a bit more work that requires her focussed attention and I'm not totally sure what direction that will take us. The down side is that as the year progressed, I've been letting the laptop draw my attention away from the kids during the day and consequently I've been 'reactively' parenting - putting out fires, yelling and generally not being on top of my game. I need to be more disciplined in this and not turn the computer on during the day, and also start the day in prayer and be mindful about what we're doing that day as a family with each member's needs in mind (including my own!)

In non-educational spheres it has been the year when my (probably last) baby turned into a toddler, my toddler turned into a little girl and my little girl turned into a big one! I am both sad and happy about all of those things. Merl got made redundant and started a new job, and we bought a second car to accomodate that, with all it's accompanying repairs and expenses. I've also finally decided to get rid of my saggy tummy and get some real exercise on a more than sporadic basis.

At the end of this year, I am thankful for my Saviour, my wonderful family, my good marriage, and the freedom to homeschool!

So how has 2010 been for you? Good, bad, scary, challenging, indifferent?... Here's your chance to say goodbye to it all, and no matter how your year has been, what is something you are thankful for?

Nope, we're not dead

2010-07-31T14:12:00.002+12:00

That's right - still in the land of the living. Life is pretty full around here and blogging has taken a back seat (which, with a people mover, is a loooong way back).

Some of the things taking my attention and energy at the moment are

the kids
Of course. Beautiful, smart, funny, engaging, energetic, hilarious and infuriating by turns, my babies take up by far the most of my time. And most days I love it. At the moment I'm using a more 'Classical' approach to the education bit, and it is working well - it satisfies my own need for actually feeling like we are 'doing something', but because it is very literature based it's not boring worksheets or make-work and the kids like it. Miss6 is still the only one I really require to do any work, but Miss3 hates to be left out and begs to do maths too... so what's a Mum to do, except bring out the flash cards for her too? MrBaby will be Mr1 next month. Boy has the last year flown by!

SHEAF
If you mosey over to this blog you'll find our local home education support group. I've been neglecting this blog in order to look after that one.

NCHENZ
And I recently somehow found myself on the committee for the National Council of Home Educators. Which has been kinda busy this last couple of weeks with lots of adminy type stuff.

And that's about it, really.

See you next time!

A spot of gardening - sowing winter veg

2010-04-17T20:48:00.005+12:00

Well howdy folks, long time no see!

Our little MrBaby slept ALL NIGHT last night! (perhaps to make up for not sleeping at all - okay, perhaps for an hour or so - the night before!). Even so, I have a little bit of headspace to be blogging.

Aren't you lucky?

I thought I'd do an update on our garden.

Having completely neglected my veggie patch (and all the rest of the garden) in order to pour my energy into the baby and his sisters for the last 7+ months, I had the urge to get my hands dirty a couple of days ago.

So while Miss6 sat inside reading a book and MrBaby had a wee sleep, Miss3 and I sallied forth.
First, we took a couple of days to double-dig the small garden patch, incorporating the manured straw from the chicken's coop into the top-soil. If I was tougher and more dedicated it could have been done in one day, but I'm not. Big deal.

Meanwhile, I looked up the gardening book to see what would grow as a winter crop in our climate. The answer? silverbeet, cabbage and cauliflower. Excellent. I have seeds for a variation on that theme, so I set them aside and went back to readying the patch.

Once the soil was well dug and raked out to a (relatively) fine tilth (not anally retentively fine - but not too lumpy either), I marked it out into square-feet.

I'm using the 'square-foot' approach instead of the 'rows' approach. The idea is to plant out the veg into little blocks of plants. You can fit more into the patch, and it's better for soil health and weed control than having great stretches of bare earth open to the weather. Anyhow, I've never quite managed it before, so I figured it was worth a crack.

The patch is about 12 square feet, so I planted out 6 this week and will plant the other half in a couple of weeks to give a bit of a succession for the winter, instead of a glut (I hope).

So far I have 2 types of silverbeet (swiss chard), red cabbage, green cabbage, pak choi and kale

Now all I need to do is remember to keep it moist.

And find some way of keeping the chickens off it.

Radio interview with Haami Sam Tutu Chapman

2010-02-06T14:24:00.005+13:00

While folding my epic pile of laundry this morning (5 days' worth = lots and lots), I was listening to the Waitangi Day broadcast on National Radio. Kim Hill was hosting the show from a tent in Waitangi and her interview lineup was particularly interesting this morning.

Her interview with Sam Chapman was remarkable - not just because of what he had to say, but because Kim (who can be frightfully abrasive and intolerant of views that clash with her own) was a gracious host who let him express himself without talking over him.

Haami (Sam) Tutu Chapman is a youth and community worker based in Otara, Auckland. Earlier this week in the New Zealander of the Year Awards, he won the Local Hero category. This interview contains one of the clearest pictures of the gospel of grace that I have ever heard. I wish I had the courage to follow his example more closely.

The morning's lineup can be found on the Radio New Zealand National/Saturday page - just make sure you're looking at Saturday, 06 February 2010

I'm not sure if this will work, but I'll put the Sam Chapman interview mp3 link here. Hopefully you'll be able to download the podcast directly. Yes, it is 43 minutes long, but you'll be left with a warm glow inside.

Now, I know that they only keep some interviews on their site for a couple of weeks, so if you want to listen to it, get in quick :~)

Welcome to 2010

2010-02-01T17:03:00.001+13:00

Things are kinda crazy around here - not sure how much blogging will get done as I try to work out my new routines with home educating a 6 year old and a 3 year old while dealing with the ever-changing routines of a 5month+ teething baby!

For those who know me IRL, I still keep up with facebook. For those who only know me here then do feel free to keep checking back in every so often - I'll try to post something at least monthly (but no promises!)

have a lovely year!

pik n mix

2009-12-19T10:16:00.005+13:00

I thought I'd do a quick catch up on the last month's events - how the baby is doing, happenings in the land of home education, what actually happened to our Jesse tree...

Okay, so, the previous post was all about how I was going to be super-mum and bake cinnamon ornaments every week for our Jesse tree. Yeah, well. It turns out that super mum doesn't actually live here after all! Who'd a thunk it?

So instead I printed off the ornaments and readings from this site, laminated them for future use, drew an outline on a big bit of paper and voila - this year's Jesse tree. Not too shabby, and a whole lot less stressful. The plan is that by next year I'll have a fabric tree with velcro dots all ready and waiting. But we'll just see how that goes, won't we?

Here's our wee fella. Just too cute for words. I'm starting to wean him off sleeping in the front pack. My body is too decrepit to carry him around 24/7 and my knees have been protesting for a week or so, and now my left hip is giving me gyp about it, so it's time that he learnt to sleep in the bassinet during the day and not just at night. Sadly, he doesn't think so! Yesterday worked out well, with him even resettling himself for one sleep - an hour and a half! But today he thinks he should be asleep on ME and is very indignant about being put down in another room. He'll get over it. I'm surprised at how much more energy I have from not carrying 6.5kg of baby around all the time. But I'm also a bit sad that our snuggly newborn has moved onto his next phase already.

Here are his big sisters reading him stories while he couldn't care less cos he's in his Jolly Jumper! I must remember to pack it for when we are up north these holidays. Miss5-and-almost-6 had the idea to read to him first, and deliberately chose a babies' story about animals so that he would find the experience educational. Miss2-and-almost-3 is 'reading' aloud her favourite Hairy McLary book for him, because anything her sister can do, she can do too!

Which brings me to the next photo. Miss5-and-almost-6 found that the grapes we had bought at the supermarket had seeds in them, and wanted to plant them. So she carefully spat out the seeds, got some potting mix and little pottles and planted them all nicely somewhere outside. Miss2-and-almost-3 clearly couldn't see the point in messing around with potting mix and little pottles... or even in removing the seeds from the grapes. And she figured she'd try it with tomatoes too.

Our last stop on our photo tour of the month is the not-class photo of the home educators group that I belong to. We got together at one of the local parks for a picnic and mess-around, and to take a photo of everyone who made it that day.

If they look a little droopy and bedraggled it's because they are. It poured with rain the whole time, just clearing for about 2 minutes during the photo-taking before bucketing down again. It wasn't terribly cold - just very very wet. Thankfully there are little shelters with roofs and seats for us mums to sit in and keep ourselves, the food, the bags, jackets and shoes, and MrBaby dry. The kids loved it. It's not often they get to play outside and get soaked to the skin, warmish rain being very unusual here.

jesse tree

2009-11-27T15:21:00.002+13:00

Advent is nearly upon us and in place of the standard store-bought Disney-branded advent calendar we're going to do a Jesse tree again.

We did this last year too, but it would appear that I completely didn't blog about it! How about that.

From one of the numerous sites about Jesse trees

The Jesse Tree is a centuries-old family Advent devotion that has enjoyed a resurgence of popularity in recent years. It has particular value since it helps both kids and adults alike to locate Jesus, the Messiah, within the lineage of the shepherd boy who became King of Israel--David, son of Jesse.

The whole idea of the Jesse Tree comes right out of a classic Advent passage from the prophet Isaiah: "A shoot will sprout from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit" (Isaiah 11:1). The Jesse Tree is hung with ornaments representing Old Testament people and events and lead up to Jesus. The traditional symbols hung on the tree are based on the genealogy of Jesus as reccounted by the first chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew.

A selection of sites about Jesse trees, including some where you can just download and print out the various symbols:
Jesse Tree-an Advent Tradition
Download Jesse Tree Ornaments
Jesse Tree Advent Custom
Jesse Tree Instructions
Making a Jesse Tree

We're planning to bake our ornaments out of gingerbread-man dough and hang them on a branch. Only time will tell if we're actually organised enough to do this! :) The first baking day will be tomorrow, and we'll do a week's worth each Saturday. Worth a shot.

Interview with John Taylor Gatto

2009-11-21T10:53:00.003+13:00

Break out your tinfoil hats, people!

This interview with John Taylor Gatto is fabulous. If you've never come across this perspective on schooling before, you will be rolling your eyes at his breathtakingly nutty conspiracy-theorist ravings.

And then you will begin to wonder if perhaps he has a point afterall...

An interview with John Taylor Gatto

A couple of things you may like to keep in mind:
1. Until the end of WWII, eugenics was not a dirty word - it was considered a noble and patriotic pursuit throughout Europe and the US
2. Even though NZ's schooling history is different to that of the US, the current trends, goals and ideals of schooling and educational theory are often American in origin.

Heads in the sand

2009-11-14T10:30:00.001+13:00

This protest action tickled my fancy

Heads in sand G20 protest - Europe

Elephant on a trampoline

2009-11-08T18:46:00.003+13:00

We have a new favourite video clip in our house

Resulting comments from various members of the family;
"Wow!"
"Careful, Mr Elephant!"
"Don't believe this, Mum, it isn't a true video"
"Hmmm, they've got the physics a bit wrong there..."

Night feeding

2009-11-01T20:34:00.008+13:00

This baby seems to be the one for trying out new stuff. I never got the hang of feeding lying down with either of the girls, but its working out this time. Yay. Especially "yay" for the first thing in the morning feed...

My big discovery was a way to keep my shoulders and arms warm and snuggly, while not completely covering the baby with the duvet. The solution is simple, once you think of it - I wear my dressing gown to bed! ta-daa. The duvet only gets pulled up to my waist, thus keeping the baby's head well clear of a soft, downy smothering, and I stay super-snuggly warm.

Image (and nice position instructions) from ParentingWeb

So that is what I do first thing in the morning - or if MrBaby doesn't re-settle after his normal night feed, which I still get up and do on the couch while listening to National Radio.

I know some people successfully bed-share with their babies all night, which theoretically makes feeding during the night a cinch. All good if it works for you (and if you never attempt it after consuming drugs or alcohol, don't smoke, and don't have too-soft, fluffy bedding - all of which dramatically increase the chance of SIDS when combined with bed-sharing). But, as Merl will tell you, I am a world-class fidget in my sleep.

I cannot stand to stay in the same position, or even facing the same side for much longer than about an hour and a half. But moving the baby wakes him up. And I don't want to turn my back to him. So total bed-sharing is out. When MrBaby was very very little he slept with us most nights, so I know of what I speak.

So we 'co-sleep' - he's in a bassinet in our room, which allows me to respond to him before he gets majorly distressed, and most nights he ends up in our bed sometime around 5.30am. Then he feeds, I doze off, and generally we have a good cozy start to the day/end of the night.

The 3am-ish feed is a different kettle of fish. If I feed him in bed at 3am then I fall quite deeply asleep while he's feeding and then he, quite naturally, doesn't want to go back to his bassinet - and who can blame him? But then I have the 'aargh, I can't fidget and roll over' problem I described before. Instead, I get up and feed him in the dark in the living-room while listening to the radio. He's much happier to go back into the bassinet this way, though I'm not entirely sure why.

The radio is great - it keeps me from falling asleep on the couch and waking up horribly stiff and sore, and there are some really interesting programs on - mostly repeats of interviews and documentaries from during the day when I don't have the radio going. Yay for National Radio. An added bonus is that our radio is also a flashlight, so I can briefly switch it on to get MrBaby properly latched without needing to turn the main lights on.

Our torch-radio (flashlight) (except ours is yellow)

After 2 months, it's nice to see that we're getting to know our little guy and working out how he's different from either of the girls, and learning the kinds of things that will work for both him and us.

Wearing my baby

2009-10-31T10:41:00.006+13:00

We have found a better way!

MrBaby has settled into a cosy new routine. He'll happily sleep in his bassinet (in our room) at night for 3 or 4 hours, from about 10 or 11 pm until about 3am. Then he'll have a long lazy feed (he doesn't feed any other way) and about an hour and a half later will usually settle back into the bassinet for another couple of hours sleep.

That bit of his 'routine' is unchanged - the new and better bit concerns what happens for the rest of the day...

The first feed of the day is followed by an extended wakey time - he's very happy to lie with his pants off and kick for a while on the change-mat - or the babygym for variety - or being held (with pants on) by his sisters, while Merl and I buzz around getting dressed, dressing children, eating breakfast and generally getting started on the day.

I used to then put him back in the bassinet (following the exalted 'feed, wake, sleep' rhythm that worked so well for Miss2). Cue much unsettled crying, which stopped when I picked him up, and started as soon as I put him down, and continued in this pattern until he was obviously out the other side of 'tired' and was now also 'hungry'. This continued for much of the day, while I completely failed to get anything else done as I spent most of the day either on the couch feeding, or standing beside the bassinet trying to get him to sleep.

Now I might have a go at settling him in the bassinet, but if he doesn't settle fairly happily (i.e. still not happy after a couple of attempts to resettle him) I give up, give him another feed and pop him into the baby wrap.

Baby wraps are magic!

If I get the position right, he can feed whenever he wants to have a wee top-up, and he sleeps very happily tucked up on my chest. Instant quiet, instant peace, and I am able to read stories and play games with the other children without continually yo-yoing into the bedroom. And at the end of the day, he still cluster-feeds himself into a coma and I can pop him into bed. Bliss.

Now the girls have got their own babywraps for their own babies...

...and their elephants too. (Miss2 has got a little pink elephant tucked into her wrap in this photo). She then proceeded to jump around like a kangaroo with a baby in its pouch. Extremely cute.

My first foray into baby-slinging involved a 4m length of fabric which I had in my fabric stash. This was long enough to wrap over one shoulder, and around my middle, but not both shoulders. It was okay, but not very comfortable for more than an hour or so, and I felt a bit lop-sided. So I looked for improvements, and found a couple of great websites showing lots of different ways to wear your baby (links at the end of the post). I'm borrowing wraps from a couple of different friends to see what works for us, before getting my own.

This was the first 2-shoulder wrap I tried. A friend made this wrap using a 6 or 7 metre length of muslin. I can see this being a good one for summer, being a lovely open-weave cotton. It is comfortable, but not very stretchy/flexible, so I found I needed to tie it just right or it pulled quite tightly in places.

This one is the Moby wrap, borrowed from another friend. It is awesome. Its a soft, tight-knit cotton which is not very stretchy at all, but is stretchy enough to easily adjust around the baby and myself. Folks, we have a winner. Now I just need to decide whether I can be bothered making one myself or if I'll just buy one (they seem awfully expensive for what they are).

I know, I know 'making' one only involves going to the fabric shop, choosing some fabric, slicing it in half lengthwise and overlocking the edges - but that's possibly more hassle than I can be bothered with just right now. And by the time I have enough headspace or time to do something like that, the baby won't be a baby anymore!

Babywearing sites:
Wrap Your Baby - Very clear step-by-step instructions, with photos, for lots and lots of different ways to tie the wrap.
The Mamatoto Project - Includes instructions for using different types of cloth, including shorter scarves and traditional wraps from baby-wearing cultures. The videos are particularly helpful.
La Leche League NZ - Articles on all things baby, including babywearing
Make a Babysling - instructions for making your own.

visual catchup

2009-10-21T22:21:00.006+13:00

Some photos from the last few weeks. No, Merl and I aren't in them, because we are usually behind the camera - or are too exhausted-looking to be fit for public viewing.

Look below the jump for the pics.

Grandma (Merl's Mum) and the girls. I am very lucky to have my MIL. We get on very well and she is brilliant with the kids. She came to stay for just over 2 weeks when the little guy was born and was just generally brilliant.

Grandad (my Dad) with MrBaby and Miss2. It's great to be living so close to Dad. And I think he's much more involved with the kids than he would have been were Mum still alive. He used to back off and leave the child stuff to her, but he's been really great - he looks after Miss2 every week while I take Miss5 to her swimming lesson, and tomorrow he's going with Miss5 to the fracture clinic - hopefully to get her cast removed. Yay.

Miss2. Really getting the hang of hide and seek.

Who says the baby gym is just for the baby?

Oh, yes. Remember I mentioned Miss5's cast? Here's the x-ray...

And here's the cast. She fell off the top bunk at 4am. When Ben was still only a few weeks old. Yeah, that was fun. Thankfully she was only in a lot of pain for that first day, and now she even has a super-duper water-proof cast on that she can go swimming in! Very cool.

Aisling Symes update

2009-10-16T20:20:00.002+13:00

At the very time that I was blogging on Monday evening, the Symes family were informed that their little girl's body had been found in a storm drain near where she went missing a week earlier.

There was no foul play, and no abduction - she had fallen in the fast flowing water drain and drowned (there had been heavy rain recently). Searchers had not found her because her body was swept over 20 metres down the drain.

You may think me heartless, but my first thought was "Thank God". The wee poppet was not being tortured by some sick weirdo, frightened and desperate for her Mum. Her parents are now spared the waking nightmare of other parents who never find out what happened to their babies. There is no prowling child abductor stalking suburban Auckland.

All of which is cold comfort for Alan and Angela Symes, who will never hold their small one in their arms again.

My spirit weeps.

Aisling Symes

2009-10-12T21:12:00.005+13:00

This week I've been deeply affected by the disappearance of Auckland toddler Aisling Symes.

Aisling's family were tidying up a relative's house, to get it ready for sale, last Monday afternoon. Both parents were there. Both kids playing happily. Aisling's Mum was doing something with the washing machine, saw Aisling watching her, turned back to turn the tap off, turned around again and Aisling was gone. She hasn't been seen since.

Every parent's worst nightmare.

Police searched the neighbourhood for 2 days, including nearby waterways, but have since concluded that she must have been abducted. But there are no leads, and no ransom request, and absolutely no clue as to where she might be.

They are hoping that she has been taken by someone who has a desperate urge to have and care for a child, and that she is alive.

We can only pray that this is the case, and that this person will have a fit of remorse and drop Aisling off somewhere safe to be returned to her family.

This has struck particularly close to home as we have children the same age as the Symes' kids. Miss2 even looks kinda like Aisling - blonde, cute, round-faced.

We even know what it's like to have a child vanish (as do most parents, at some point). Miss5 wandered out of church one Sunday when my back was turned for a minute or two (she was three at the time). We found her half an hour later in the pet shop at the corner.

That was without a doubt the most frightening half hour of my life.

I spent the whole time telling myself it was OK, she'd be just around the corner, or inside playing with the bigger kids and then I'd feel silly for being so scared. Trying not to think of all the terrible things that could have happened. Trying to walk, not run, to stay calm and not to panic because that might actually make it real.

I simply cannot imagine living for a whole week with that icy cold terror settling into a certainty. It would drive me absolutely over the edge and into the abyss. To know that even if she is now found 'safe and well', that the scars of this experience will never leave the family. That I would never really know everything that had happened to her while she was away.

That sometimes, monsters do exist, and our fears are fully justified.

If you, or anyone you know, is in the North Island of New Zealand, this little poppet may be near you.

Do you know anyone who has had a young 'cousin' come to stay 'for a while'?
Any new toddlers in the neighbourhood?
Anything just not gel, or that feels wrong?
Keep an eye out for wandering kids - if she was snatched that way, she may be released that way too.

And, of course, pray.

'cause only a miracle will give this story a happy ending.

Note:Update post here

Sensible policies for a happier Britain

2009-09-28T21:56:00.003+13:00

Just stumbled on this. Just what our country needs to bring us out of the recession.

(Please don't)

Ideas worth spreading

2009-09-11T20:45:00.004+12:00

We've spent alot of time recently (exhausting our 5GB per month datacap) looking at seminars from TED, an invitation only conference that puts the presentations online for free.

From "five dangerous things for kids" to "why we do what we do" and "social innovation", these seminars make for excellent and thought provoking viewing.

Miss5 has even sat through a 'magic' presentation, wanting to watch it multiple times.

Now to watch a presentation about wireless electricity.

Please don't

more photos

2009-09-07T20:14:00.005+12:00

More photos from the last week - this time, you can even see his little face!

sunbathing to help with some slight jaundice

Miss2 gets a chance to be a 'BIG sister'!

Our three children - aren't they beautiful?

Just to prove it hasn't been all baby all the time :)

He's arrived!

2009-08-30T10:59:00.002+12:00

Mum a bub are both doing well. Mr0 was 10lb (4.53kg) when he got weighed. We don't know yet how long he is but he's already out of the 00 size stuff.

Now to survive night feeding...

keeping on keeping on

2009-08-26T15:08:00.002+12:00

Yep. Still pregnant.

For a general pregnancy/quilting obsession update, see after the cut...

The final few days of pregnancy suck. (Oh please let it only be "days"!) I feel like I've been in the early stages of labour for about 3 weeks now - I get a couple of hours of proper contractions here and there - strong enough to stop me in my tracks and get the wheat-sacks out - but just when I'm thinking it might actually be ready to roll it all dies down and goes away. Very frustrating!

I'm not sure what's worse - worrying that when I finally decide that I am in labour I'll be 10 minutes away from pushing it out and have to give birth in the carpark - or the other nightmare scenario of turning up at the hospital thinking that I've been labouring well for a while and must have made some progress to find that I'm only 2cm and have hours and hours of work still to go! My midwife plans to do a 'stretch and sweep' on Friday (the 40 week mark) so I guess I'll find out then a little more about the state of play.

As far as 'schooling' goes, we've gone ultra-unstructured the closer we get to the baby's due date, so the kids' 'work' has mostly been colouring in, role-playing with dolls and puppets, reading, chasing the chickens around the yard, helping Daddy cook tea... just generally living life.

As far as 'what do you do all day?' goes, I've discovered hand-piecing patchwork and am now subject to a whole new craft addiction I had been carrying on with piecing a quilt that my Mum had only just started (having finished the other one), but found the paper-piecing technique to be tedious, and the colour-scheme she chose to be dull and boring. So I checked some quilting books out of the library for inspiration and found one which has step-wise instructions for hand-piecing using a running stitch (instructions are great - Jinny Beyer doesn't even assume that you've threaded a needle before). This is much much much faster, so I've set Mum's 'boring quilt' aside and am making a bright scrap-quilt using random bits and pieces from my fabric stash. I plan to use the 'Squares and Triangles' pattern from this book by Lynne Edwards (also from the library), but have just started by making the random-fabric four-patch blocks so there's room to be flexible with my final pattern if I change my mind!

I never thought I'd enjoy hand-piecing. But it really is more convenient than machine piecing. I'm sure the machine would be tons faster - but I just never get around to sitting down in front of it. Hand-piecing is easy to do on the couch in the evenings, and in odd moments here and there, so it actually gets done.

Other than that, we're just hanging around waiting for the baby to be born. It all feels a bit surreal, really. I've been organised and ready for almost too long now - I'm starting to un-organised again (taking things out of the hospital bag because I need them for something else, the bassinet is somehow not made up properly anymore, the 'baby' corner of our room has had a few piles of non-baby stuff stashed there 'out of the way'...)

still hanging in there

2009-08-10T19:01:00.002+12:00

Just a short note to say that I haven't forgotten about my blog, but nothing has happened around here that has struck me as particularly bloggable lately.

So I'll just give you the boring update...

The baby and I are now past the 37 week mark, and my midwife says that 37-42 weeks is 'full term' so if I go into labour now then that is a good thing.

Bring it on, I say.

The quilt is finished - I sewed the binding on last night, and it got washed this morning. I was a bit worried about this as the quilt had some rust stains in it from when my Mum stored it - she'd (very uncharacteristically) left the needle stuck into the fabric. 25 years in a not-always-dry cupboard does horrible things to needles. But, wonderfully, most of the marks came out with a very ordinary warm wash on the delicate cycle in the machine. There's a brownish shadow where the worst mark was, but it's not very obvious, and I'm now confident that it will come out with a gentle spot remover. So that's brilliant.

I'd post a photo but the camera is packed away in the 'going into labour, get me to the hospital' bag, and I just know that if I take the camera out of the bag, it won't make it back in, and the poor child will the first one without newborn-birth photos. So you'll just have to use your imaginations. It's a 'Grandmother's flower garden' single-bed sized bedspread - slightly shorter than a proper single blanket, but wide enough to sleep under without gaps at the side. Mum used calico as the background colour, with the 'flowers' being navy blue centres, with bluey floral then green gingham surrounds.

I finished it with a straight binding, no border, since this was the easiest thing to do. Before she died, I did ask Mum how she'd intended to edge it, but with the combination of a 25 year time-lapse and chemotherapy induced exhaustion, she (understandably) couldn't remember. There were a couple of half-hexagons missing from one edge, too, so I compromised as best I could, and I'm pretty happy with the result.

That's about all that's been happening here - hopefully there will be news of the happy variety in the near future. I tell ya, if this baby goes over the 40 week mark, I will cry.

Fossils

2009-07-22T19:49:00.007+12:00

Remember this post about rocks?

Barb-Harmony Art Mom (of Outdoor Hour fame) suggested in the comments that a rock that we thought was just a pretty painted rock, might be a rock with shell fossils embedded in it.

And she was right!

I finally got around to having a closer look at the rock, and you can clearly see that those white circles are little shells - like pipi or cockle shells.

I found a good New Zealand shellfish identification guide, here. It's hard to tell what sort of shellfish these are, since the outer surface isn't really visible - the ones which would have been on the outside have broken, leaving only the outline shape of the shell. We are not going to break it open to see more!

So that's pretty cool. We now officially have fossils in our rock collection!

The only downside is that we found this rock in our garden, quite clearly placed there by the previous owners of the house (now both deceased), so we have absolutely no idea where it was collected from. It would have been nice to be able to 'complete the paperwork' for this specimen, but we're pretty happy just to have seen it and to know that it is possible to find them ourselves.

And it will get bigger...

2009-07-17T21:00:00.005+12:00

Just took another belly photo.

I'll be 34 weeks tomorrow.

That leaves another 6 weeks for this baby to get bigger.

And then it has to get OUT.

bed rest

2009-07-13T18:55:00.003+12:00

Well, almost bed rest.

Self-imposed couch rest, really.

At 33wks of this pregnancy I've been having braxton hicks contractions on and off for over a week now. So far they've tapered off after about an hour and half, and they stay about 8 minutes apart and never last longer than about 30-45secs, but each time I get them they either last for a little longer, or they are a little stronger, or they take longer to settle down.

Last night was the first time they've woken me in the night.

So, in an effort to stay pregnant for at least another 3 weeks, I'm self-imposing as much 'bed-rest' as I can manage. The more time I spend upright, the more frequently I have contractions, so my goal is to keep horizontal as much as possible. Merl has dropped down to half days and I'll be using DVDs to babysit the children in the mornings!

Meanwhile, I doubt there'll be much internet browsing or blogging happening. So if I'm not around for a few days or so, that is why!

On the plus side, I'm getting some quilting done on a quilt that my mother started for me for when I moved into my big girl bed. Yes, you read that right - it's a UFO (unfinished fabric object) from 30 years ago. Mum passed it onto me to finish about 6 years ago, when I made my first quilt - by machine. I've never really had the patience for hand-quilting (and this is an entirely hand-pieced, hand-quilted beastie), but now I've got little else I can do, and the sewing is very therapeutic and rhythmic and I can even read stories while I do it, so long as the kids hold the books up for me!

I'm hoping to get it at least mostly finished before the baby arrives, or it may well spend the next 30 years in a cupboard. And I'd really rather sleep under it myself. A precious joint-project with my Mum, whom I'm missing horribly at the moment.

Honest Scrap award

2009-07-08T20:15:00.005+12:00

I am still making up my mind about the whole blog 'award' thing. Part of me thinks of them as chain-letters (albeit fairly benign ones), or thinly veiled self-promotion (hey everyone - I've given you an award and now you have to link to my blog on your blog!). But on the other hand, it's an award. And it is nice to know that someone out there, who doesn't actually know me in real life, is interested in my aimless ramblings. And I like her blog too, so I don't mind promoting it here :)

Alecat at Serenades and Solace has awarded me the Honest Scrap award.

To keep this award, there are some rules by which I (and future recipients) must abide:
1) Say thanks and give a link to the presenter of the award.
2) Share "ten honest things" about myself.
3) Present this award to 7 others whose blogs I find brilliant in content and/or design, or those who have encouraged me.
4) Tell those 7 people that they've been awarded HONEST SCRAP and inform them of these guidelines in receiving it.

So, here are 10 "honest things" about myself (warning, I am tired and unimaginative - these are not the 10 wittiest honest things, or the 10 most interesting honest things... they are just things)

1. we have ugly carpet in our living room
2. the mouse infestation continues unabated
3. I am 32 1/2 weeks pregnant
4. I love the Princess Bride
5. both Merl and I need to refer to the commemorative cross-stitch to double-check the date of our wedding anniversary (thank goodness my sister-in-law gave us one!)
6. I read a lot of mystery novels and am ecstatic that our local library has just stopped charging rental for them
7. We are at the library almost weekly
8. We have fish and chips for dinner every Friday night
9. We don't have a television, but do use the computer for movies and other media
10. Star Trek - the Wrath of Khan gave me nightmares for weeks and weeks when I saw it as a kid. The thought of little grubs crawling into those poor men's ears...

As for passing the award on, these are a few places that I visit...

Rhonda Jean at Down to Earth no longer accepts awards because she gets so many, so I won't pass it on to her - but I'll keep her on my list of 7. Lots and lots of old-fashioned cooking and gardening and soap making and philosophising on the wonders of simplicity and greenness.

Kris at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers is one of my must-visits. There's always something new on her site, and its always thought-provoking, informative or just plain helpful. And frankly, she should win an award just for the name of her blog.

Missy at Caffeinated Jive is a good read. I first came across her as a contributing author to some no-longer active unschoolers combo-blog thing that I can't remember the name of now. Refreshingly non-republican (has anyone else noticed how few non-republican american homeschool bloggers there are in the world? I found Missy's blog about the time of the last US election and was utterly ecstatic to find someone who didn't view Obama as the antichrist - who in fact thought he'd be a good thing - yay!)

Katherine at No Fighting, No Biting is a homeschooling US Navy-wife convert to devout catholicism. I like reading her blog because she is quite different to either myself or anyone I know around here, which is also refreshing.

OK, I know that's only 4, but I really really need to go to lie down now. My belly is aching and it needs to be horizontal. I haven't finished - but I may do so later. Or not. We'll just have to see.

Quick hits: Panda Style

2009-07-07T20:22:00.002+12:00

Miss 5 was in the process of getting ready for bed and ran into the living room naked and holding a book.

Miss 5: Daddy, listen to this about Pandas!

Me: Why are you naked? Finish getting into your PJs

Miss 5 (in a superior tone): THIS is about NATURE

Quite.

I'm back!

2009-07-03T19:16:00.005+12:00

2 year olds should not repeatedly press the power button of the computer!

It leads to the family not being able to even boot up said computer. Which means, in this household, that there is no internet, no email, and (most importantly perhaps) no DVDs.

Fortunately we could still play the Wii, so all was not lost. But it has been an odd week.

It started with the death of the computer (long live the computer!). Fortunately we have a wonderful friend who potters around with the actual hardware of such things for fun. So it has been returned to us in full working order, and luckily, with no memory loss! Yay! No catastrophic data loss! It even remembers my log-ins for things - which is more than I can usually do. It only needed a new motherboard, CPU, power thingie... (no, I don't really know what they do - Merl has tried to explain it, but I confess that my eyes glaze over a little).

Then Merl went to Wellington for more work stuff. Inconvenient. He'd only been back for a week, and was requested back at 'head office' again - at short notice (like, a phone call on Friday to say 'be here Monday morning'). Usually we have at least a couple of weeks notice. Anyhow, it was only a couple of days this time - not a full week like it normally is. And I have friends who are raising children all by themselves all the time, so I should just suck it up. But I do miss him when he's gone. Especially at the end of a long day. AND there was no computer to play DVDs for the children at the witching hour, either.

But all was well, as he returned home Tuesday evening.

Wednesday was great - I felt full of energy and pottered happily around the place. We visited my aunt in the morning and had a good natter over coffee while Miss5 hung out with my uncle outside, setting up their bird-feeder. Then we came home to a freshly cleaned house (I am the only full-time Mum I know with a cleaner - but I just can't quite seem to feel guilty about it!) and got stuck into some actual school work! (I know! shock! actual lessons!). Miss2 had found a CD in my 'teacher box' with a fire safety song on it, so I followed their interest by producing the Teachers Manual for a fire safety unit (provided by the Fire Service) and we made a big poster about fire, and discussed safe and unsafe fires, and how important it is to 'Get Out, Stay Out' if the smoke alarms go off, etc, etc. And then after lunch we made bird feeders ourselves, and I re-hung the auto-feeder for the chickens at a better height for them (I will post more about this in a chicken post later in the weekend I think). I even cooked a real dinner! Wednesday was great.

Thursday was a bit different. I woke in a bit of pain - sore lower back, a bit achy, hadn't slept well, that sort of thing. Then the ligaments in my belly were agonisingly sore for most of the morning - not easing up when I lay down or anything. So I spent the morning on the couch with a couple of wheat-sacks, while the kids engaged in 'self-directed learning' with colouring and reading and finger puppets and all sorts of things. I noticed that I was having Braxton-Hicks contractions. On and off. No real pattern. Nothing to worry about. Probably. I'm only not-quite 32 weeks pregnant, so it can't be... It'll be fine... sweetheart, can you go through to Mummy's bedside and bring me the pregnancy books from the bedside table please?

Hmmm. Symptoms of pre-term labour are - lower back pain, contractions (usually falling into a pattern and getting stronger), lower abdominal pain. Hmmmm. I'm probably fine, I say to myself. There's no pattern there.

Later in the morning I notice that I'm having a 30second contraction about every 10 minutes. But after about 5 of them they go away. So that's okay, I say to myself. They've stopped now.

I have lunch and return to the couch. I end up by having contractions on and off the rest of the afternoon - but still no pattern to them - but I'm starting to get a little more concerned - so when talking to a friend in the early evening on the phone I ask her what she thinks.

She, very sensibly, thinks I should have phoned my midwife hours ago. So I apologetically phone my wonderful midwife (who is flying out of the country on her holiday the very next morning). All her back-up people are busy. She sighs and says "you really don't want to be in labour now - they'll ship you out because NICU is full". I say "I know I don't want to be in labour now - how can I make sure that I'm not?" And she says "well, you'd better meet me at the hospital right now."

The upshot being that, I was hooked up to the monitors for long enough for her to decide that I might be in pre-term labour, and go and get authorisation to do a swab-test for it. I never knew there was a swab-test for pre-term labour, but there is. It's really expensive so they don't do it unless they think there's good reason. It's a check for some sort of fetal factor which, if present, indicates that labour is likely within the next couple of weeks. Cool, huh?

And I was 99.4% likely to NOT be in pre-term labour. Which was absolutely wonderful and my midwife and I happily went home at 11pm. (She to do the suitcase packing that I'd interrupted). But she did warn me to take it very easy over the next few weeks because the test does have a small margin of error, and I didn't want to risk anything.

So today was another day on the couch. And, thankfully, we have a computer again and the girls spent the afternoon reacquainting themselves with Asterix and the Berenstain Bears before we tottered out to the library about 4pm.

So that was my week - how was yours?

Mathematician's Lament

2009-06-22T21:09:00.006+12:00

This is a wonderful article about the beauty and art of mathematics. It's a 25 page PDF document, so go grab a cuppa and prepare to have your concept of 'maths' turned on its head.

This is an absolute must-read if you're planning on conveying any sort of 'maths-learning' to anyone else, and an important read even if you're not!

The Mathematician's Lament, by Paul Lockhart, 2002

Short bio of Paul Lockhart here

Don't

Rodents

2009-06-17T20:31:00.003+12:00

It would seem that mice like nice warm houses as much as we do. Go figure.

It would seem we are a trifle over-run. (Apologies to all those who have already heard me go on at length about our mouse issue - there's nothing new here, but I still have a need to get it off my chest!)

I knew we had a small mouse problem - the odd dropping here and there, the occasional full trap, that sort of thing. I figured this level of rodentry was acceptable, given that we have active compost heaps, chicken food, and a lots of hiding spaces in the garden. And no cats or dogs. Some mouse encroachment was inevitable, I figured, so long as it didn't get out of hand! About a month ago I made sure all the food was in mouse-proof containers, found one open box of cornmeal that was well-moused (which I got rid of), and figured that would keep their numbers down, or at least, easily managed by the one trap in the kitchen.

How wrong I was.

Our living area is semi-open plan. There are double french-type doors between the living room and the dining room, and an open doorway from the dining room to the kitchen. The french doors are usually kept open, except in really cold weather when we shut them to keep the heat (from the heatpump) in the living room - usually in the evenings and overnight. Yesterday these doors were closed pretty much all day as I and the girls kept the living room toasty warm. They stayed shut overnight too.

I have once seen a mouse run from the kitchen, through the dining room, into the living room and along the living room wall behind the sofa. I have no idea where it went after that - I couldn't find it. I didn't think much of it (except to go re-load the trap) - just "gosh the mice are getting brazen, time to step up the trapping". It never occurred to me that I had just seen a mouse using one of their super-highways.

This morning while sitting in the dining room with my morning coffee I noticed a large amount of carpet-fluff in the doorway to the living room. "That's odd," I thought, and went closer to inspect. Mixed in with the fluff was a considerable amount of mouse droppings. And on closer inspection I found that the little blighters have chewed the carpet bare along where the french doors close - apparently in an attempt to dig through and re-open their super-highway. I then noticed a similar, but much smaller, bare patch with associated carpet fluff at the other door out of the living room.

"How big is my mouse problem?!" I muttered to myself, and stalked through to the kitchen to investigate. One clean and empty trap. The mice have (once more) successfully removed the bait from the trap without springing it. Great. What about the bottom cupboard where the cornmeal box used to be? Oh. Oh dear.

There was a whole layer of mouse droppings in this cupboard (despite there being no available food in it), and in the adjacent cupboard (which has never had any food in it).

With brush and shovel in hand and droppings and carpet fluff cleaned away, I went on a further investigation of the super-highway.

The rubbish bin and paper-recycling area yielded further copious quantities of mouse droppings, and some nibbled cardboard.

sigh.

I turned to the internet for advice. It is not comforting. A house mouse can have a litter of up to 6 pups, each month. One mouse usually means a nest. They don't usually range far from their nests, so if you see a mouse the problem is likely to be yours - not your neighbours (not that I thought for a second that my neighbours, all of whom have large dogs, and are more obsessive about their sections than us, were the source of our infestation!). The advice boils down to: seal up all holes larger then 1.8cm (a U.S. dime was the 'measurement' given - so then I had to look up how big a dime was - annoying), trap, trap, trap the highways, poison in the roof and floor cavities, get rid of clutter (which is a nesting place haven) and if that fails, call in the professionals.

So we went out. I needed to run away from the problem for a little while.

And then we came back and the day continued along its happy course. We had dinner, we said goodnight, we put the kids to bed. I availed myself of the bathroom...

A mouse ran into the bathroom.

I could do nothing except lift my feet off the floor and squeek "eeek mouse! go away!" (I didn't want the kids to leap out of bed to investigate). It ran behind me, and I couldn't see it! And I am now hugely pregnant and can't twist around at all, so I was just stuck there with my feet in the air hoping the mouse would get back where I could see it, because I knew there was no exit at ground level behind me and I sure as heck did not want it climbing...

Fortunately it ran out to behind the door.

I made my escape with all due haste, leaving it an escape route into the laundry (and thence out the back door, I hope!).

I have since set all the traps we have - 4 of them - mostly in the kitchen and one in the living room.

I do not know the exact route the super-highway takes - it concerns me that there were scratchings at both living room doors - trying to get out of the living room. I have no idea where an entrance point in that room might be - unless there is a largish gap in the floorboards somewhere behind the couch or piano, or possibly through our disused fireplace. At 30 weeks pregnant, however, I am not shifting the piano to find out! (Merl can do that this weekend).

There is no earthly way of effectively sealing the underside of this house. We know one entrance point for the mice is in the kitchen, where the sink and dishwasher pipes exit the house, but there are nooks and crannies everywhere for them to come in.

Properly ridding the cellar of clutter is on our 'list of things to do'. The underneath of our house is packed to the brim with hoarded building, gardening, painting, you name it supplies from the previous owner. Loads of stuff that is just junk - it might have 'come in handy one day' if it hadn't been stuck in a damp mouldy cellar for 40 years. Now it's all just a rusted, rotted pile of junk. Which we bought with the house. At some point we will get around to hiring a skip and clearing it out, but thus far that has fallen into the 'not this weekend' category. This provides nesting-sites aplenty for mice - right beneath our floorboards.

And that's pretty much where our mouse situation is at. I heard one of the traps go "sproing" while I was typing this, and I'm in two minds as to whether to go investigate it this evening - giving the trap the chance to trap another mouse overnight - or to wait until morning and check all the traps at once.

I'm also not that keen on actually handling dead rodents. I don't know what diseases they commonly have in this country, but I doubt that they can be good for unborn babies (given that we're not supposed to deal with cat faeces, I can't see that dead mice is any better).

I'll need to find my disposable vinyl gloves.

SNOW!

2009-06-16T10:33:00.004+12:00

Some photos of last night's snow at our place. I took some at 7.30 this morning while it was still dark (and the kids were miraculously still sleeping!).

And of course, there's the compulsory "children enjoying snow" photo...

Outdoor Hour #6 - Collections

2009-06-14T20:40:00.008+12:00

Okay, so we did this nature walk a few weeks ago. It turns out I'm even slacker about blogging them than I am about doing them!

I've decided to relax about our 'chosen subject' of rocks and minerals, and just keep it to being a simple walk while keeping our eyes and ears open to the world around us. I was starting to 'over-plan' and then not go out for even a simple walk, because I didn't have time or energy to execute 'the plan'.

Typical perfectionism. Which I am learning to recognise and roll my eyes at.

We are still using the Outdoor Hour framework as a guideline, so I'll give you the short and sweet summary for week #6

Read with your child something about your chosen area of study
Take your walk
Note in your notebook anything you saw that is related to the study topic
Give an opportunity to draw or make some other notebook entry
Start a collection, if appropriate

Well, we really just needed an outing in the fresh air. We had had endless days of rain and grey skies and suddenly were blessed with a fine, clear, breezy, crisp winter's day. I suggested a stroll around the neighbourhood to keep an eye out for interesting rocks, and Miss5 asked if she could bring her kite.

So, after a very brief internal struggle ("if we fly kites, we won't be looking at rocks... oh who cares? So long as they are outside and enjoying it!"), we popped the kite into the pushchair, wrapped up warmly and ventured up to the playground.

Let's go fly a kite...

It was wonderful!

We didn't open the nature journal at all once we got home - just snuggled in the warm indoors with chamomile tea and bikkies. (Since reading that Madeline had chamomile tea after falling in the water, Miss5 has taken a liking to it. And whatever Miss5 does, Miss2 will copy, so I've got two little herbal tea drinkers!). And that was the end of our 6th Outdoor Hour.

However, since this is the 'collections' post for the Outdoor Hour, it is a good time to show you our rock collection

Miss5's rock collection

We use an egg tray to keep each rock separate and cushioned a little from its neighbour. Under each rock is a slip of paper giving the date and location we found it, and its identity, if we know it.

The rock on the far right is there because Miss5 likes the white circles on it. They are paint or glue or something like that, but since collecting is as much an aesthetic exercise as a scientific one, the painted rock has its place here.

Why Jesus never married

2009-06-09T21:31:00.004+12:00

I'm sure this has been a burning question for you. Certainly Miss5 was pondering it on our way home from church on Sunday.

Here is the dialogue that ensued...

Miss5: Jesus never married

parent (can't remember which of us said what, but its immaterial): that's right

Miss5: 'cos Jews never married

parent: Ah, no. Jews get married. It's just that Jesus spent all his time telling people about God.

Miss5: Yeah. Instead of getting married and getting his wife to do it.

So now you know.

As I recall, we were both laughing too hard to set her properly straight on this one, although I think we did make an attempt...

Found it!

2009-06-06T21:05:00.002+12:00

Or rather, the internet has told me where to look for it, and I will do so as soon as the weather stops being truly awful.

Found what? you ask... The dipstick! Of course.

It's in the most logical place imaginable.

Under the front passenger seat.

How silly of me. Of course I should have looked there.

Apparently the Toyota Estima/Previa/Tarago (depending on which country it is sold in) is a "mid-engine car". So the engine is mounted under the front seats, not all out the front under the bonnet. Which makes sense when you actually look at the vehicle - there isn't enough room out the front for an engine.

But does make it an exercise in lateral thinking when looking for things you would normally find under the hood!

On the plus side, my Owner's Manual should arrive this coming week, so hopefully it will hold the answers to all future questions of this nature.

Go greased lightning!

2009-06-04T18:49:00.005+12:00

Or, perhaps not quite greased lightning. I somehow can't see John Travolta and his greasy crew getting very excited about our new people-mover. But I'm pretty excited. And off the top of my head, that song from Grease was the only car-pride anthem I could think of.

We are now the owners of a 1999 Toyota Estima Emina. Yep. We decided that a station wagon just wasn't going to be big enough for our growing family. (Well, not when relatives come to stay or we want to take a friend somewhere). As an aside, try saying "Toyota Emina" 5 times fast. Do you hear it? Worlds worst marketing decision.

But this post is not just about showing a photo of our new vehicle to our out of town relatives. It is also a book-review in praise of Auto Repair for Dummies, by Deanna Sclar.

Not that our car needed repairing at all - it survived the trip back from the Lakes District (where we bought it from) very well.

No, what I like about this book is that it starts with you as an absolute beginner (it explains, with diagrams, the difference between a standard and Philip's screwdriver, for instance), and walks you step by step through the whole shebang of car maintenance and repair.

I bought this book about 10 years ago when I got sick of suspecting I was being ripped off by my mechanic but having absolutely no idea whether I was or not. Being completely and utterly ignorant of the workings of my car meant that I couldn't tell the difference between a good mechanic and a bad one, or between a necessary repair and a waste of money.

With the help of this book I became quite proficient at the (very very) basic level of DIY car maintenance. Although I never got around to doing an actual oil change, I did replace the fuel and air filters and just generally took better care of my machine - making sure the tyres were properly inflated, being able to replace windscreen wipers, that sort of thing.

Once our first child came along and we replaced my old faithful hatchback with a sensible stationwagon I stopped doing the car repairs. For one thing, I was heavily pregnant at the time and just couldn't face getting down on my hands and knees in the garage. For another, the newer car had more stuff under the bonnet to get my head around - and everything just looked different. And once the baby was born I simply didn't have a couple of hours at a stretch to potter under the hood of the 'new' car to work out where everything was. So it just became easier to just rely on the mechanic again. We knew we had a good one, so that was alright.

When Merl drove our new beastie home, however, I was itching to get under the hood. You see, we bought this car via TradeMe (New Zealand's version of ebay), and didn't get it mechanically inspected or anything first (though we did get a VIR to check it was free from finance claims etc etc). I know. I know. Madness. But it was a very very good buy and even if it needs a couple of serious things done to it, we'll still be paying less than we would if we'd bought it through a dealer.

To set my mind at rest, I turned once again to my trusty Auto Repair for Dummies and performed the Monthly Under-the Hood Check. To see what I could see. Basically, all was more or less well, but there were a few things that I noted. Despite the car having been 'serviced' 2 weeks ago, the air filter was utterly filthy - so I can conclude that the 'service' was probably just an oil and filter change, and she's probably due a proper tune up. The hoses and wiring all looked in good nick, but the battery housing is quite corroded and the battery looks like it might even be leaking a little (despite it being new last year). So I think their mechanic was crap. The tyres were also horribly under-inflated - instead of being at 2.3kg per cm3 (approx 230kPa) - as specified on the little door decal, it looks like they were at 23 psi - not at all the same thing!

The one thing that completely stumped me was the search for the dipstick! I have no idea. I looked and looked and looked, and couldn't even see where I might add the oil itself, let alone find the dipstick. So if you know where to find such a thing on this model vehicle, I would be very grateful for the information!

By the end of yesterday, I'd inflated the tyres to their correct pressure, replaced the air filter and worked out how to use the CD changer (very important). I feel quite chuffed with myself. I'm sure it's driving better already, but she's still making the occasional funny noise. I'm now thinking that we might take it in for one of those 'pre-purchase inspections' just so we know what we're looking at. And then book her in for a full service and tune up, because I am, of course, heavily pregnant once more and am not going to do it myself.

One last word in praise of the Monthly Under the Hood Check-up. These things are really easy to do, and the very action of looking and seeing how your car is doing means you are far more likely to take her to a mechanic when something starts to go wrong, rather than waiting until it is very expensive and inconvenient.

Check the air filter
Poke all the belts to see if they're frayed or loose
Inspect the battery for corrosion/leaking
Check the levels of all the fluids - coolant, brake fluid, transmission fluid, windscreen washer fluid etc - in new cars these mostly have see-through reservoirs that you can just look at and see if its between 'max' and 'min' level
Squeeze the hoses to make sure they're neither spongy and bulgy nor brittle
Check the oil
Inspect the wiring to see if anything is loose
Check the windscreen wipers
Check the tyre pressure
ta daa!

Deanna Sclar of course gives detailed instructions on how to do each of these things (including how to open the bonnet of the car...), and although the first time I did it on my first car it took me a good hour, once I knew how to do everything it only took 15 minutes. Not a bad time investment when you consider that "taking care of these things can prevent 70% of the problems that can cause highway breakdowns".

All good.

Preparing our children for the future

2009-05-28T20:35:00.001+12:00

Tree grows inside man's lung

2009-05-15T20:04:00.009+12:00

This article caught my eye a couple of weeks ago and has been waiting for an opportunity to be blogged. There's actually a picture of the wee fir tree inside the lung, if you follow the link to the news story.

Tree grows inside man's lung

A Russian man who was being operated on for a suspected tumour ended up having a fir tree removed from one of his lungs.

The 5cm tree, was discovered by surgeons when they opened up Artyom Sidorkin, 28, according to Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Gazeta.

It is believed Mr Sidorkin inhaled a seed, which then sprouted into a small fir tree inside his lung...

The article continues...

He went to doctors complaining of extreme chest pain and coughing up blood.

Surgeon Vladimir Kamashev told the newspaper he was sure it was cancer.

"We did X-rays and found what looked exactly like a tumour. I had seen hundreds before, so we decided on surgery."

The tree was discovered when surgeons took a biopsy before removing the major part of the man's lung.

"I thought I was hallucinating," said Dr Kamashev.

"I blinked three times as I was sure I was seeing things."

"It was very painful. But to be honest I did not feel any foreign object inside me," a relieved Mr Sidorkin told the paper.

Craziness. And I always thought that those stories of not eating seeds because they'd sprout inside you were utter wives' tales. Turns out that, if you're a bit woolly on the difference between swallowing and inhaling, the old wives might not be so wrong after all.

Outdoor Hour #5 - making a list

2009-05-11T20:49:00.003+12:00

As I was sitting down to read over the suggestions for our next Nature Study, I remembered that I hadn't as yet shared our previous Outdoor Hour. About a week and a half ago we looked at the Outdoor Hour #5 - making a list.

You may recall that our focus topic is 'rocks'. The task for this session is, briefly;

Pick one item in your focus area to study, turn to those pages (in the Handbook of Nature Study, by Anna B Comstock), and read to your child about that subject. At the end of each section, there are observation ideas for each subject and these observation suggestions will be the parent’s reading assignment this week.(see below) As you find things in your focus area, keep a running list in the front or back of your nature journal of those items.

Then, during the walk, to quietly observe anything we came across, but paying special attention to items in the focus area.

On this occasion, we went for a walk around the block. Miss5 requested a visit to the playground but the wind was bitterly cold so I restricted our outing to once around the block.

According to Miss5, we heard "chickens bok bok", "trees rustling", "a tiny sparrow chirping in a tree", and "noisy cars".

We found a lovely white stone with orange markings through it, just over the road from our house. Miss5 coloured in an outline of this once we got back home, and discovered the joy of coloured-pencils (which allow a much closer colour match than felt pens).

Passing one house, which is under construction, we saw a trench cut in the ground, which allowed us to see the layer of topsoil, and the layer of clay beneath. And we saw many retaining walls made out of igneous rocks.

Miss5 also collected a handful of different leaves and a couple of flowers for our nature journal.

For the readings, instead of using the Handbook, I read out a short passage about igneous rocks from the book Geology Rocks by Cindy Blobaum. I borrowed this one from the library for its "50 Hands-on Experiments!", and have been very impressed with it. We'll be more likely to use the Handbook when we come to study some of the more 'alive' bits of nature, as Comstock's treatment of Geology is quite cursory.

The Geology Rocks! experiments associated with 'igneous rocks' seem worth doing too - looking at the effect that cooling rate has on the formation of crystals in a substance (using molten sugar). This will (hopefully) demonstrate why some igneous rocks are shiny and glass-like, while others are coarse and grainy, when they both started out as magma. I plan to do this with Miss5 tomorrow, and (weather permitting) go on an igneous-finding walk later in the week - but we shall see how the week pans out!

catch-up on the week that was

2009-05-08T20:46:00.003+12:00

My goodness! Has it been a week already since I last posted?! How time flies when the whole family has a tummy bug...

But we're all better now. The bug only lasted 2 days for me, and even less time for the rest of the family, although I have stayed fairly wiped-out for the rest of the week. Thank goodness for the 'self-directed learning' approach to home educating! It's enabled me to notice all the learning that Miss5 (and Miss2) are doing, even on the days when we don't do all (or any) of my planned learning activities.

For instance...

Today Miss5 spent a good 10 to 15 minutes reading poetry aloud to Miss2 - noticing for herself some of the different ways that words can be used, and some of the different layers of meaning in the poems. Her favourite is called "The Chameleon" by Roger Stevens (from the Poetry Alive! Footprints in the Butter anthology), which you really have to see to appreciate, and I can't find a copy on the 'net. But essentially it is the word "tree" repeated many many times, as a 'shape poem' in the shape of a tree - and the words "you can search all day but you'll never see the chameleon hiding in the" hidden within the myriad "tree"s. This appeals to her on many levels and it's neat to see her enjoying poetry all on her own initiative.

She has completely devoured a book on Cleopatra which I got out of the library. I had decided it was possibly a little old for her and put it aside to just take back to the library,but she found it and read it before I'd realised. So we have had a couple of discussions about how even grown ups can make bad choices, and just because famous and royal people did things, doesn't mean they were good things to have done (like... extra marital affairs, suicide, murder, that sort of thing). Which are good discussions to be having, I just wasn't really anticipating having them with my five year old. I've heard her announcing "Hey (Miss2)! Let's read our History Books! Here, I'll read this one, and you read that one." Then she gives Miss2 a less-favoured book on Egypt from the library, and they both lie on the floor with their books in front of them, reading away (or, in Miss2's case, just doing whatever her big sister is doing). Miss2 will occasionally announce "Hissty book!"

Lots of colouring in. This is all colour experimentation ("hey Mum, when I mix orange and purple, I get brown!"), social studies (various costumes being appropriate for different roles), realism vs interpretation ("I'm just going to do MY birds like this, even if God does his differently"), and narrative composition (she makes up stories that attempt to unify the different pages of the colouring book into some storyline that makes sense).

Playing with her sister. This is big for things like negotiation of personal boundaries, sharing, being considerate, self-defence, thinking ahead (putting delicate things out of reach), a sense of perspective (Miss2 pulling a bookmark out of a book is not the end of the world - we will find the chapter again), forgiveness, graciousness, and other important life skills. I am really impressed at how well they play together, given that Miss2 is definitely in 'toddler mode'.

Playing outside. This week she has brought in lots of leaves and flowers and is starting to notice which trees the different leaves come from. She found a small branch with some dead leaves on it this week and was able to tell me which tree it must have come from, based on the type of bark. So her observation and problem-solving skills are improving. Also lots and lots of trampolining and some tree climbing has got to be good 'physical education'.

Playing games. The maths skills acquired when playing card and dice games are fairly obvious - but its the sort of thing we do for fun on our family nights, rather than as a formal schooly lesson.

So there you go - all that on top of: learning how to write the letters 'c' and 'o';reviewing the other letters she already knows (i,l,t,u,w,j,y,n,m,r,h,b,p,k - we learn them in 'families' of similarly shaped letters); learning about 'odd' and 'even' numbers, and why they are called odds and evens; acquiring cultural capital through our read-alouds of Black Beauty and various Fables and Fairy Tales; and generally running around and having a good time with the other kids at our local weekly home educator's get together (which we don't get to weekly, but really enjoy it when we do!).

The only thing I'm a little disappointed about this week is that we didn't get a Nature Study done (we did do one last week, I just haven't blogged it yet!). The weather has been okay - I just have forgotten to take my iron tablets more often than not this week and my brain has largely been out to lunch and my body has been lying down and falling asleep whenever it thinks it can get away with it.

This is me, not panicking

2009-05-01T20:02:00.006+12:00

By now, if you haven't heard of the imminent swine-flu epidemic, I'm not sure what you've been doing with your internet surfing time, but it hasn't involved keeping up to date with current affairs.

Here in New Zealand we've got 4 confirmed cases, 12 probable cases, 116 suspected cases and 388 people in isolation. Out of a total population of 4 million. Which is either massive or miniscule depending on how you look at it, I guess.

So, naturally, my thoughts have turned to what I can do here and now to prepare for an actual epidemic, should it come to that.

Step one of the flu prep kit

What you see here is the fruit of my first rush of blood to the head.

3 weeks supply of paracetamol for 2 adults (each adult may take 2 tablets, 4 times per day. That's a lot of tablets!). Paracetamol is for controlling fever and easing the achy symptoms of flu. If the 'flu comes to our house, Merl and I will need this to make sure that the kids get looked after, food gets organised, dishes get cleaned, that sort of stuff - even when we are sick ourselves.

Okay, sure we probably won't need an entire 3 weeks supply, and it probably isn't good for you to take that much every day for 3 weeks - but I've erred on the side of caution. I'd also hate to need paracetamol for a headache and find that everyone else has beaten me to the supermarket that day.

paracetamol for the kids.

Sick kids are miserable. Ease their symptoms any way possible.

hand sanitiser (in pump bottle) For when we are out in public - I have sent one of these with Merl to his work and one lives in the car. You're looking at the spare one. We 'wash' our hands when we get back to the car after being in the library, the supermarket, anywhere that people may have coughed or sneezed and then put their hands on what we've touched.

This is a new thing for us. I've never done this before, although I do know people who do this as a matter of course. It has always seemed a little too far toward paranoia for me. But there you go. I must remember to pack some into my tinfoil hat.

honey, garlic, ginger, cayenne pepper. Ingredients for my kick-a-germ joy juice. I've got lemons on the shopping list. This is good for the early, shivery stages of flu, according to my alternative medicine guide. Fever can be eased with elderflower, peppermint and yarrow infusions, apparently.

Personally, my money is on the paracetamol, but a good strong herbal tonic with honey makes you feel better. And if the swine flu actually does come to town, we'll be fighting it with all guns blazing. We have peppermint in the garden (and I saw some yarrow the other day, too, now that I think of it). Perhaps I should go on a herb gathering expedition this weekend and get some drying in preparation.

tea tree oil. A decongestant, antiseptic all-round goody. Use for head-pickling or room-infusion.

This is fabulous when the kids are night-coughing. I have an old thermal coffee mug that I half-fill with boiling water, drop 3 or 4 drops of tea tree oil onto the top, and leave the mug steaming in their room. Sometimes I'll refresh the hot water in the middle of the night. This really does seem to ease their coughing.

Vicks vapor-rub. One of those strong-smelling eucalyptus, camphor, linamint rubs for rubbing on the chest.

I can't use this directly on Miss5's skin - she comes out in an irritation rash - but I wipe some on a tissue and pop it inside her pillowslip to help her breathing. She doesn't get the chest-warming benefits, but something is better than nothing! Miss2's skin is not so delicate so we can use it normally with her.

In my thinking, there are multiple layers of preparedness for the 'flu.

1. Preventing the spread
2. Dealing with the immediate effects of the 'flu illness
3. Preparing for possible complications of the 'flu itself
4. Preparing for possible social implications of the 'flu

Let's take these one at a time

1. Preventing the spread
For now, I'm happy with hand-sanitizing when we're out. If an actual epidemic is declared, we'll look at keeping away from libraries, supermarkets, swimming pools and the like. In preparation for this, we should check our pantry for essential supplies. Do we have enough of the basics to skip the supermarket for a couple of weeks if we have to?

Also, there may be people in our family/community who need us to care for them while they are ill. How can we minimise risk of catching the 'flu from them and bringing it home? Should we consider face masks? Disposable gloves? For us, this will depend on how fatal this 'flu turns out to be.

2. Dealing with the immediate effects of the 'flu illness
Not much you can do here, beyond what you'd normally do for a 'flu. Stay home, stay in bed, keep your fluids up, take paracetamol.

There is tamiflu, of course, but in NZ at present that's only available over the counter from the pharmacy if the pharmacist actually sees you and confirms you are suffering from 'flu-like symptoms. Or you can get it on prescription, but most doctors are only writing scripts if you actually have the 'flu. Which is all very sensible. The last thing we need is for people to be downing tamiflu like water at the first sign of a cold-virus, and creating the ideal conditions for tamiflu-resistant influenza. Regardless, in NZ just now, tamiflu is available if you have the 'flu - but it's not part of your preparedness kit.

Basically, ease your symptoms, and go to the doctor if you think it is swine flu, or if you suspect secondary bacterial infection, which can cause bronchitis and pneumonia.

3. Preparing for possible complications of the 'flu itself
This is the bronchitis/pneumonia bit. The very young and the very old seem to die of secondary complications of the 'flu. This is why it's important to keep them coughing the phlegm up. The first reason is so that it doesn't sit in their chest and foster infection. The second reason is so you can keep an eye on it to notice if it looks infected (brown or green phlegm is bad - go to the doctor for antibiotics, and really go to town with garlic and tea tree oil).

Oddly, in pandemic 'flu (as opposed to seasonal 'flu) there is often a bunch of people who die at the peak of their fitness, aged 20-40 years old. This is from what is called a 'cytokine storm' - essentially a super-effective immune response that leads to massive organ failure. There's nothing you can do about this except hope it doesn't happen to you.

4. Preparing for possible social implications of the 'flu
This is wide-ranging, and depends on how severe the 'flu gets. If the polio epidemics of my grandmother's childhood is anything to go by, the schools, theaters, swimming pools and all other communal type activities will close down for some months. This wasn't such a big deal when everyone had a huge veggie garden and nobody considered hanging out at the mall a valid social pastime. So at one level, this comes back to making sure you have plenty of food in the cupboards, to minimise those trips to the supermarket.

It also means making sure you have some board games, books, DVDs, computer games, bikes, a trampoline, a deck of cards... whatever it takes to amuse you and your family without leaving your neighbourhood. As home edders, we're pretty used to having our kids around 24/7, but if you're not, you should brace yourself for a couple of weeks for a form of culture shock - as you get used to hanging out with each other a lot more than you have been.

And of course, the darker side could be more job losses than we've already seen (especially if there is a massive shut-down of the CBD), meaning even less money. Meaning a well stocked pantry, a little bit of savings and perhaps some judicious spending before the going gets really bad, could go a long way.

By judicious spending, I mean things like making sure the kids have their winter coats and shoes bought, or putting in a veggie garden. I don't mean replacing the lounge furniture because you don't like the colour any more...

So there we have it - my personal take on the swine flu and what I consider to be sensible precautions.

Outdoor Hour - focus on rocks

2009-04-23T19:12:00.007+12:00

In this week's Outdoor Hour (#4) we are encouraged to pick a focus topic, to give our Nature Time a bit of direction for the next few weeks. Given Miss5's obsession with bringing home pocketfuls of rocks, I thought that would be a good place to start.

We went for a wander around the neighbourhood. We live in a hill suburb that was part of the post WWII housing boom in this country. I had a pretty good idea that if we ventured down one of the roads cut into the side of the hill we might get to see some exposed rock and perhaps discover what sort of rocks lie beneath our neighbourhood.

Sure enough, we found this lovely cutting only a block from our house. The road cutting is at least 40 years old, and possibly more than 60 (the suburb expanded in the 1960s, so the road may have gone in then, or it may be from the early days of the suburb in the mid 1940s).

Close-up of the rock layer

We've got no way of taking a rock sample, since we don't own a rock hammer or pick, and after emailing a geologist friend of mine, we aren't going to buy one. They are expensive pieces of equipment to have on hand for what might be a passing fancy in a 5 year old! However, she did suggest that a heavy household hammer and a heavy duty chisel in the hands of an adult would do the trick for most rocks, being careful of flying rock chips and shrapnel (i.e. wear safety goggles!).

So as yet, the rock remains unidentified, but at least we found it!

Then we wandered around to a nearby playground. The kids chased a magpie, rolled down the grassy hill, played on the swings and merry-go-round and generally had a good time.

While walking we also stopped to use our ears and heard little warbly birds which we think were probably silvereyes/waxeyes - since they were the birds we could see in the tree close to us.

Another fun trip out!

Confessions of a pregnant homeschooling greenie

2009-04-22T19:13:00.003+12:00

Looking back over my blog, I'm aware that it may be possible to come away with the impression that things like homemade bread and yoghurt are standard fare in our house, that disposable nappies are only reserved for dire emergencies, that we have an extensive and productive garden and that we spend oodles of time immersed in improving books.

Time for a reality check

If these things get blogged about, it is generally because they're so novel and exciting that I want to share them.

Sure, before we were expecting baby#3 I hardly used disposable nappies/diapers, and I cooked from scratch most nights, and I almost never used the clothes drier. But there come times in your life when you just need to *let it go* and do it the easy way.

I had a day about a month ago when I looked at the wet clothes in the washing machine, looked at the bright sunny day outside, and gave in to my exhaustion. The clothes went into the drier because on that day it was honestly a choice between using the drier and leaving the clothes wet in the machine. Since then I confess that the drier has been getting quite a work out.

I also confess that I can't recall precisely the last occasion I used cloth nappies. I know it was within the last few weeks, but I think it was actually Merl who put them on Miss2. It wasn't me!

Tonight for tea we had fried chicken-and-cheese-sausages with tomato sauce (ketchup), and as a token gesture, a corn-on-the-cob each. That was it. No wholesome fresh-dug potatoes, or wholemeal bread, or salad, or anything. Sausages and corn. Miss5 looked at her plate and said "this isn't a very healthy meal, Mum". I replied, "Nope, but it's not too bad - you've got corn, and you can have an apple for dessert."

My microwave is getting quite the workout too.

The 'garden' is currently one bare circle waiting to be planted out, and one circle full of wheat-grass that is overgrowing the valiant struggle for survival of the veggies. And some herbs. Mint mostly.

As for the books, well, we do spend oodles of time immersed in them. They just aren't all 'improving' ones! Miss5 reads tonnes and tonnes of Asterix. I read bulk quantities of historical whodunnits (okay, I do get annoyed if the history is wrong, but they still really are pulp fiction). Merl reads a lot of fantasy/science fiction - some of which is brilliant and 'improving' - some of which is pulp escapism.

We are happy, lazy and messy people. When I get less tired then I will be able to lift our sights up out of bare-minimum housework. But until then, *letting it go* is working quite well for us!

HTML hassles

2009-04-21T20:15:00.006+12:00

As you can see, I'm playing with the templates. But I seem to have broken that neat little function of being able to put most of the post behind a cut.

sorry.

I'll see what can be done

[later - Ta da!]

Aha! I am the champion :) I worked it out without having to ask merl for help! (he set it up in the first place)

Family Treasures

2009-04-20T20:32:00.009+12:00

Not my books - this picture is from somewhere in internet-land. But aren't they pretty?

I was examining the bookshelves at my Dad's house the other day, as is my habit, to see which books I wanted to rescue that day.

You see, although my Mum was a prolific reader and book hoarder, my Dad is not a reader. He has been known, now that Mum has passed away, to randomly sweep a shelf of books into some bags and donate them to a book sale.

Well okay, he only did it once. But in that shelf of books was a leather-bound copy of the Wind in the Willows, with beautiful colour plates, which Mum had been given as a child. I had quite deliberately left this book at Dad's house because I thought it would be safer there than on a shelf in my house, with the hands of small children reaching for it. Aaaaarrgghh.

I haven't quite articulated to him how devastating this was, but I did quietly request that the next time he gets an urge to purge books, could he call me first and I can go through them first? I didn't want to upset him, really, as there is nothing he can do about it anyway - and it is only a book, and I do have another copy of the Wind in the Willows (which is beside the point). And it was at least partly my fault for not telling him that I had left the book there on purpose - I had already removed plenty of books from his house, so he was reasonable in assuming that I had already taken anything I really wanted. But it being at least partly my fault just makes it worse, of course. Anyhow, he has promised not to get rid of any more books. phew.

However, I no longer see Dad's house as a safe place for books, so I rescue a bag or two each time we visit.

This last time, I spotted a copy of the Pilgrim's Progress. Which I confess I have never actually read, but which, like a lot of classics, is on my list of things to read 'one day'. So I picked it off the shelf and popped it into my bag (along with an encyclopaedic dictionary, a NZ pictorial history, some dictionaries of music, the Tell Me Why books...).

Book Depository picture - not my Great Grandma's copy

It turns out that this Pilgrim's Progress was a Miller's Flat Presbyterian Sunday School Prize awarded to my Great-Grandmother for achieving 52% in Scripture and 56% in Catechism in the Assembly's Exam, in December 1908.

How cool is that?!

I am very happy to have rescued this book - it even more than makes up for the Wind in the Willows, because this is the only thing I possess that was my Great-Grandmother's, whereas I have lots of stuff (too much stuff, to be honest) that belonged to my Mum. This is my Nana's mother, who died when Nana was only 13 years old. I can only imagine how much my Nana must have treasured this book.

The only thing I know about my Nana's mother is that she died young, and that my Nana believed that if she had lived my Nana would have been allowed to finish her schooling and perhaps even attend university. In the event, Nana (their only child) left school when her mother died, to keep house for her father.

But now I have her Sunday School prize of 1908, and I shall treasure it. It is a treasure not just for the book itself, though I'd have been happy to find any copy of The Pilgrim's Progress, and not simply because it is a link to one of my forebears about whom I know very little, but mostly it is a treasure for what it meant to my much loved Nana. This book was one of the few links she had to her own mother.

And now it is mine to treasure in turn.

Outdoor Hour - Autumn tree study

2009-04-18T19:44:00.005+12:00

For this week's Outdoor Hour we continued with the studies in the order they were written - meaning we're up to #3 (starting to draw) - and we took Barb's advice and incorporated study #36 - the seasonal tree study.

Miss5 chose the ornamental cherry tree that we can see from our living room window. This is a great tree for climbing, and is also where we hang the bird feeders in winter, so is one of the girls' favourite trees. The aim is to follow the tree through the year and note how it responds to the changing seasons.

It was a beautiful Autumn day, and we spent most of the morning outside soaking up the warm (but not hot) sun, and using all of our senses to study the tree and its surrounds.
Miss5 even drew a picture of the tree in our nature book! Usually she refuses to draw, as her perfectionism rears its head, and she wants to colour in an outline that I have drawn. Which is completely fine - we all do new things when we feel confident enough to try. I usually make some comment about it being her drawing, and not to worry too much if it isn't quite how she wants it to look in her head - which she usually completely ignores and simply re-states her position that I should draw it and she should colour it in. Which is what we usually do, since I don't want it to turn into a big "issue" - it's hardly the end of the world if she doesn't draw things free-hand! As Anna Botsford Comstock says, no child should be compelled to keep a nature journal.

So I was pleasantly surprised when she decided to draw her own picture of the tree this week. If I recall correctly (it was some days ago now), she said something along the lines of "everyone is bad at something when they first start learning, aren't they Mum?", which I gently reassured her was correct - and that the important thing was to enjoy what you're doing, and the more often you do it the better you become.

Queen Cleopatra #2

2009-04-11T09:33:00.004+12:00

Life is full of silly coincidences, isn't it?

This week a Facebook quiz told me that the Shakespeare character I most closely resembled was Queen Cleopatra. Now I have actually never read Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra (although it is sitting on a bookshelf less than a metre from me), but I understand that the comparison is, um, unlikely. But who am I to question the accuracy of a Facebook quiz?

The concidence of this week was that we finally got around to making a Cleopatra wig!

Miss5 has had an interest in Ancient Egypt on a long, slow simmer for 2 or 3 months now. It started with a chapter book about young Cleopatra which captured her imagination. The fires were stoked with the arrival of a box of books from my sister, which happened to contain the Egyptian Queen Beauty Book, from the British Museum. I've already blogged about her milk and rose petal bath. We've also made a sparkly Egyptian dress.

Miss5 has been asking for some time now to make the Egyptian wig described in the book. But the instructions said to start with lots of black or brown wool, proceed to make lots and lots of plaits and then attach these plaits to a head band.

Miss5 can't plait yet. Now I may be the worst homeschool mum in the world, but I'm just not going to sit down for an entire afternoon plaiting wool, when I know that even if she sat beside me and learnt how to plait she would completely lose interest after about 5 minutes.

So I'd been pondering it for a while when the solution came to me - polarfleece! Polarfleece doesn't fray at a cut edge, so it is perfect for making fringing out of - and what is a wig, if not a long fringe? So, one excursion to the fabric shop later, we had the supplies. They didn't have black fleece, so we settled for brown, and Miss5 chose a very sparkly trim as the headband - fit for a princess indeed.

Tadaa!

She really is excited - she's just trying on her 'sophisticated' face

And of course, Princess Clary had to have a turn too, because she wants to feel what it is like to have hair

Miss2 getting in on the act

Miss5 was so excited that she wore it for the rest of the day, and Daddy was very surprised to find that we didn't have Miss5 in the back seat of the car - Royalty had accompanied us to collect him from work!

Outdoor Hour Challenge #2

2009-04-09T11:53:00.004+12:00

This week's Nature Study was to "Challenge yourself to take another 10-15 minute "excursion" outdoors in your own yard again this week. Before setting out on your walk, sit with your children and explain to them that when you remain quiet during your nature time, you are more likely to hear interesting things..."

We spent about 15 minutes sitting in the backyard near the tree house, just listening to what we could hear. Well okay, I spent it sitting. The kids explored the 'jungle' section of the garden, but they were fairly quiet and we did keep stopping to see if we could hear anything.

Miss5's comment was "but I want to go for a walk - there is not as much nature in our garden as there is outside the gate!" But her mean ol' Mum had had a terrible night's sleep and was really only capable of wandering out to the garden and sitting on the chopping block. We'll go for a walk next week maybe!

Once back inside (and after lunch) we sat and had a think about what we had seen, heard and felt while outside (as suggested in the study).

One word for things you heard
bells, birds, chickens

Two words for things you saw
blue sky, grey sky, brown leaves

Three words for things you felt
rough brown bark, splintery smooth wood (the saw horse), soft green grass.

Nature journal
We are keeping a family nature journal this year, with Miss5 perhaps keeping her own volume next year. I did the writing and drew some outlines and Miss5 happily coloured in things that we'd seen and heard, adding in her own little pictures as needed.

I'm enjoying this series!

Chickens update

2009-04-07T20:11:00.009+12:00

Miss5 takes most of our chicken photos. An endless fascination.

I recently had someone ask me for a chicken update - especially with how well they are coping as the weather turns cooler. So here it is!

The girls are doing well. Belle went into her molt almost as soon as she arrived, but after a few weeks started laying again. Abigail looks like she's just starting her molt now - we've had only one egg to 'harvest' for a few days now (although back to two again today), and there are feathers starting to fly around the coop again. I hope she gets it over with before the winter arrives properly or she'll be a little chilly for a week or two!

While we were in Wellington for our holiday a couple of weeks ago the weather down South here took a turn for the worse. (Remember, in this part of the world, 'South' means closer to the Pole and further from the equator - i.e. colder). I got a worried text message from our friends who were chicken-sitting - would our chickens cope if it snowed and what should they do?

Well, actually I had no idea :) But there wasn't much they could do anyway. Before we'd left we had moved the dome to the most sheltered part of our section - right under some trees that would provide protection from the wind and rain. The chickens still like to sleep in their beer-crate nesting box, so would be out of the wind and close to each other for warmth. I also know that plenty of people keep chickens in this city, and I've not heard of a chicken freezing to death. (Trust me. It would make the newspaper. "Unseasonal Cold Snap. Feathered Family Pet Falls Fowl of Freezing Temps").

So my advice was not to worry. To give them extra food the next day (they eat more when they're cold), and to make sure they had plenty of straw in their coop and nesting box.

In the event the snow never arrived (or if it did, it was not in this part of town), and they coped just fine.

Chickens are pretty hardy animals. They will go off their lay if they get too cold and miserable, but they don't lay in winter here anyway, as there are not enough hours of daylight for them.

Advice I have heard includes feeding them warm porridge in the morning and making sure their sleeping quarters are dry and draught free. Also to make sure their water is neither too cold nor too hot - I guess warm water in the morning on those really frosty days.

The key thing to remember about chickens in this climate is that our climate isn't really that cold! People keep chickens in places like Russia and Canada (with fancier and warmer accommodation than I'm providing, to be sure).

My plan for winter at this stage is to continue converting the rabbit hutch into a nesting box/roosting house that we'll set up next to the dome over winter, and use the dome more like a deep-litter run. This is a 'work in progress' (which means that it has been started and not finished...).

Changes made since the 5th dome post:
- water container. When we were given the chickens, we were given one of these

Self-filling water dish

Or at least, something that looks very similar (you wouldn't believe how long it took me to find a photo of this on the 'net. There are too many products in this world for cats to drink out of). This works very well, so long as you peek in whenever you wander past the dome and scoop out the dust and straw and muck that they've kicked into their water in their scratchings. Once a day to clean it out and refresh the water is fine. The chickens drank more in the warmer months, but I really like the security of knowing that they will have water if we forget for some reason - especially now that Miss5 has the responsibility of feeding the chooks in the morning. So long as I have fed them and topped up the water the night before, this is not something she needs to worry about.

Okay, that's probably the main change :) Everything else is pretty much the way it was the last time we took a tour of the dome.

The biggest thing, really, has been that we've started using the dome over the veggie patches. Having done this for two patches, now, I can say something with feeling. Do NOT feed your chickens wheat seeds while they are on a veggie patch. Linda Woodrow feeds hers sprouted wheat, which would be okay since it is unlikely to survive the chickens and the elements to turn into wheat. But I now have a lovely veggie bed with seedlings of cabbage, cauliflower, red cabbage, kale, kohl-rabi, and turnip... and wheat everywhere! Am not impressed.

I am not feeding them wheat any more, since they clearly aren't eating much of it, and am giving them pellets morning and night. I found that with the size of this dome, the chooks devastate everything growing inside within 24 hours and are back to depending on outside food sources after that.

However, the veggies are loving being in the freshly chickened veggie beds, so that part of the permaculture equation is working well!

For our instructions on building the dome, start here

Outdoor Hour Challenge #1

2009-04-03T13:00:00.005+13:00

I've found a lovely resource for Charlotte Mason-style nature studies.

The Handbook of Nature Study blogsite has got over 50 once-a-week Nature Studies, each lasting about 20minutes, based on Anna Botsford Comstock's Handbook of Nature. (available free online here).

Each of these studies is called an Outdoor Hour Challenge, despite them not lasting for an hour. So this is our new regular posting - our participation in the Outdoor Hour Challenge.

The site creators recommend doing the first 5 studies, then joining in with the current challenges, so at this stage that is the plan.

Outdoor Hour Challenge #1

First, I ascertained that the reference book for these studies is not available at our local library. Then I checked its availability for purchase. My oh my the current exchange rates have put a damper on my 'just buy it from Amazon' plans. 6 months ago the NZ dollar was buying 80cUS, it's now buying about 48cUS. Not pretty. So despite my distinct preference for paper books over electronic books, I pursued the electronic option. If, after a few weeks, I decide that we'll continue with these studies, I may seriously consider buying it then.

I dutifully did my reading from the book, and was so taken with her viewpoint and opinions that I bored Merl silly by continuing to read bits out to him while he was trying to read a book :)

On Tuesday the kids and I went for a walk to the local park/playground. This is a fairly utilitarian green space with some swings and a see-saw and three young trees. All the way there I was gently calling attention to things in the gardens we walked past, to the complete lack of interest of my children.

When at the park, I decided to pick up a few of the autumn leaves that had fallen from the young trees, thinking that if Miss5 didn't get interested in anything then at least I would have something to investigate.

Happily, on the way home, she collected a rock off the road, so that was brilliant.

At home, we sat around the table and looked at the things we'd collected, and generally just chatted about our walk.

That night I found a couple of online field-guides to identify rocks and trees, and the next day we investigated the rock. Miss5 had recently read the Magic School Bus Rocky Road Trip, so we had a look at their discussion of igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks, then used the Rock Key to id the rock - Basalt!

Cleaning the rock from surface dust etc

Some of our tools

The next evening I identified the leaf as coming from a maple tree, using this guide, and passed the information on to Miss5 (which failed to rock her world, given that she had never been interested in the leaves to start with).

In all, a successful wee study. Miss5 was quite interested in investigating the rock (her favourite bit was using the magnifier that Grandma had given her for Christmas), and we've begun a 'rock collection' in an egg tray, as recommended in the Magic School Bus book. She has always come home with pockets full of rocks and gravel whenever we go anywhere, and now we can at least see something to do with those stones (other than sneak them out to the garden, or getting annoyed when a pocket full of gravel ends up in the bottom of the washing machine!). Perhaps it will encourage a level of discernment about what stones actually get brought home... but that might be too much to hope for.

An irish omelet in our garden

2009-03-29T21:03:00.002+13:00

We did some harvesting yesterday! It's so cool when you can head into the garden and get food out of it.

No photos, sorry, cos we left our camera cable at Merl's parents' house, so you'll just have to use your imagination.

It all started because the chickens were in dire need of a change of location. They had been in the same place for the 2 weeks we were away, and then a further week while they waited for us to get around to shifting them. The dome was starting to smell and needed some fresh ground.

But, of course, before they could go onto the next veggie bed, the potatoes needed to be dug. Merl did a valiant job of digging up the two rows of potatoes I'd planted at the back of the bed. From an initial 'investment' of about a dozen or so smallish potatoes, we got a bucket and a half of good-sized tatties - most of a paper sack full. So that was awesome.

While we were lifting up the droopy tops of the potato plants I discovered a row or two of onions that I had completely forgotten I'd planted. Most were on the small side and some had started to go slimy cos I'd not harvested them soon enough, but I'm pretty darned excited. I have never grown onions before, and now I've got about half a dozen lovely onions to braid up into one of those old-fashioned onion strings. Of my own onions!

Having seen that I'd left the onions a bit too long, I went and pulled up my elephant garlic. This was a little disappointing. Next year I'll plant them somewhere sunnier and just generally better. Only three of the cloves I planted grew to produce a flowerhead, and each of the three bulbs when I pulled them were underwhelming in terms of clove size and number. But the bed that they were in is in shade for most of the day and alternates between being terribly dry and extremely wet. Not ideal. So I hope for better for next year.

While I was prowling around the garden I noticed that the parsley I had left to seed was indeed seeding, so I harvested an envelope of seed from that too.

So there we have it - potatoes, onions, garlic, parsley (from the other, younger plants) and the continuing supply of eggs from our cooperative chooks.

Sounds like an Irish Omelet to me!

Now all we need is a milk cow so we can make our own cheese... (Well, okay, that might be a step beyond what our suburban section can handle - but what good is an omelet without cheese?)

Daddy, do you have tentacles?

2009-03-23T19:04:00.003+13:00

So said miss5 as I was driving along.

Me: No, I don't have tentacles like an Octapus.

Miss5: I mean like when a dog licks itself, like on grandad's cup. Do you have them?

Oh. Testicles.

Please don't
I told you not to :~)

Albatrosses

2009-03-14T19:23:00.013+13:00

Forgive us our absence! We are currently on holiday in the North Island of our beautiful country, but will be home before we know it. Merl is up here for work, so this time we all decided to tag along and catch up with friends and family living in the capital.

But this post is not about Wellington - that will wait for another time! This is all about our trip to the Albatross Colony that is just out of our home town. This was another of those brilliant home-educating 'school trips', organised by one of the other home edding parents in town - like our trip last year to the Aquarium.

The kids started off in the 'education room' had a wonderful introduction to the birds who live/visit/nest on the headland (from left, the Yellow Eyed Penguin, the Spotted Shag, the Stewart Island Shag, the Little Blue Penguin, the Red-billed Gull and the Northern Royal Albatross). We discussed which were endangered, which were declining but not currently at risk and which were doing just fine at the moment. The Albatross and the Yellow Eyed Penguins are the endangered ones, and are hence the ones which everyone wants to see the most.

After this intro, the kids were split into two groups, as the observation room for the Albatross has a limited capacity. We were in the first group so proceeded to huff and puff our way up a fairly steep hill to the observation room. Miss2 made a valiant effort to walk all by herself, but at one point was making two steps forward and one back, so I carried her most of the way.

It was worth it.

Here is a parent and their chick - the only one of my Albatross photos to turn out okay. Three nesting sites are visible from the observation room, and we were fortunate enough to see two parents feeding chicks while we were there, and super-lucky to be in the right place at the right time to see one of them take off to fly out in search of more food. The parents share the feeding of their chick - often leaving it alone for a day or more while they go looking for food. The chicks are huge, but as a species they are not well adapted to deal with ground-dwelling predators like dogs - explaining why this site is the only mainland nesting site of Albatross in the world. All other nesting sites are on remote islands.

After returning to the education room, and spending some time looking at the information around the place
-about plastic pollution and how Albatross often mistake it for food - feeding it to their young and sometimes poisoning and starving them to death as a consequence,
- playing with a set of scales and a model real-weight chick to see how the rangers weigh them to check on their progress
- looking at a world map to show the different Albatross species and their distribution around the globe
- etc
we were joined by the other half of our group and took a walk down the hill to Pilots Beach. Again, Miss2 needed to be carried quite a lot of the way, which in my increasingly ungainly pregnant state was getting to be quite a mission. Thankfully one of the other Mums, whose kids are older, offered to carry her back up the hill! 2 year olds are a substantial weight (especially our two year olds), but the push chair would not have been suitable for the terrain so we were left with few options...

Still, again it was worth it!

This is a fur seal, sunning itself on the beach. If we were insane we could have gone right up to it and touched it. As with all wild animals, however, seals need a good deal of respect. They may look like awkward lumps while on the land - but they can still move fast, and they are heavy. They're not usually agressive - just playful - but humans generally don't like to play the games that adolescent male seals play with each other! So we gave this one a good 3 to 5 metres space and made sure not to get in the way of its escape route to sea. It responded by serenely ignoring more than 40 curious human intruders to its beach. Very civilised.

Human access is only allowed to about 1/2 the beach so that the seals and sea lions (which have only just started to visit again, after an absence of some years) have some space to lie about unmolested.

No sea lions were there that day - but I remember them from when I was a kid. Sea lions are huge. And not to be trifled with. (like the Dread Pirate Roberts...)

Along this same beach there are heaps of Little Blue Penguin burrows, which the penguins return to at dusk. We didn't see any penguins this trip, but I have seen them in the past, and they are very very cute. Again, though, it's important not to get in their way - not because they'll jump you, but because they'll just stay in the water and wait for you to go away, leaving their chicks going hungry in the burrows, while the parents get colder and tireder in the water.

After slogging it back up the hill to the Albatross Centre (with Miss2, thankfully, being perfectly content to be carried by this other, wonderful Mum), we met for a brief re-cap in the 'education room' and then sat and nattered over lunch. The nattering was good, as I got to meet some new people (or rather, I, being the new person, got to meet some of the old hands), and got to know better some I had only met once or twice.

Just to top off a wonderful day, I saw one of the Albatross flying around over the car-park when I went out to get our lunch from the car. Brilliant. In all the times I've been out to the colony over the years (but, admittedly have always been too cheap to pay the fee to see the nesting sites) I have never seen one flying. And that day I got to see it twice.

Magnificent.

Photo catchup

2009-03-01T21:24:00.010+13:00

It has been ages since we emptied our camera's memory card, with the result that mid-way through Miss5's last day at Kindy, we received the "Memory Full" notice and had to hurriedly scan back and delete some useless ones so we could be sure to catch the all important cake and candles shots.

We consequently have a large back-log of photos that we haven't shared with the world, so do join us on a trip through the last couple of months!

This is the rabbit hutch that I'm midway through converting into a little chicken coop for our two hens to spend their nights in. Yes, it's little, but it's much more spacious than the beer-crate they are currently using, and as you can see - two little human chickadees feel quite at home there.

And here's the view from the top. The kids are having their afternoon tea, having chosen a box instead of all the other, more comfortable and (to my mind) exciting places like the tree house.

Miss2's birthday party - the cake

Yay! She blew the candles out!

Miss2 feeding her baby. She initiated this game all by herself.

Oops! Dropped some of the food!

Miss5's last day at kindy. She made the hat all by herself and had a wonderful day Here's a close-up of the cake. This was a wonderful gift. I mentioned on Facebook that I'd be buying Miss5's cake this year, and a friend offered, out of the blue, to bake and decorate one for us! Very much appreciated!!

And these final two photos are an eloquent example of Dad-physics. These batteries are the ones I took out of the smoke-detectors, so they've been running down their charge for a year, but even so, this is not a Mum-physics lesson. Merl decided it would be a good opportunity to teach the girls about touching batteries onto your tongue.

Yes indeed.

The second photo is taken in the split-second after Miss5 had done so.

However, the batteries must have been worn out enough for the zing to not be too bad, because Miss2 spent the next 2 or 3 days wandering around touching her tongue to the batteries just to get the kick out of it.

I've since done the responsible Mummy thing and explained to Miss5 that you must only ever do it with worn-out batteries, and I've hidden them away from Miss2. Merl insists the batteries will come in handy for electronics experiments, so I'll have to put them somewhere safe and label them as used batteries. Then we can throw them out in a year or so when we find them again and they've gone all melty and yuck...

The Fresh Prince lied to me

2009-02-23T20:32:00.004+13:00

It turns out that 90s sit-coms are not reliable sources of historical information. Who knew?

I clearly remember the moment, sitting at home after school watching the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air finding out something about African American identity that he didn't already know. He was suitably humbled and even granted his namby-pamby cousin a degree of respect for knowing something that he didn't.

You see, the Fresh Prince had thought that negro spiritual/gospel songs were simply ways of bouying themselves up, of giving themselves some hope for the future, and some way of taking their minds off the hell on earth in which many of them lived. But no! His cousin (whose name completely escapes me, so I'm going to have to google it...Carlton!) Carlton knew the true history, and then Will Smith and the entire audience did too...

You see, the story goes that many of the early negro spirituals were 'code songs', giving precise directions and instructions for escaped slaves to find their way along the Underground Railroad - of safe houses where people would give them shelter and help them escape to the north/Canada.

I have loved this story for years, and whenever I hear or sing one of those classics like 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot', or 'Wade in the Water', I'd remember the secret purpose of those songs. I would thrill in the daring and terrifying escape plans, and the communication from field to field as a song got passed along. I never found out any more about it, but that little snippet was enough to fire my adolescent imagination.

The other day we had a CD of Sunday School music playing and there was one song which went

The animals went in one by one
There's one more river to cross
something something rhymes with one
There's one more river to cross

There's one wide river
And that's the river of Jordan
One wide river
There's one more river to cross

The animals went in two by two...

Which I thought was odd. The story of Noah's ark and the animals has nothing to do with the River Jordan. So I thought it must be one of those special songs. I thought that I would finally find out more about these secret code songs, for which I assumed there would be a whole pile of information. Which led me to the internet, of course. Which led to the shattering of a really good story.

Because, you see, there is absolutely no evidence that spirituals were used as precisely coded instructions for anything. All 'reputable' historians who have looked into it have sadly concluded it was a nice story but have placed it into the 'urban legend' category, with the first references to it arising in the mid-20th century. The other type of historian have continued to talk about it, but mysteriously fail to include any reference as to the source of their information.

Which makes me a bit sad.

But in the process, I have learned some more about the Underground Railroad, of which I was utterly ignorant (aside from knowing its name). I also found The National Geographic's Underground Railroad game, where you are a slave seeking to escape from a Maryland farm in 1850. Duly bookmarked for when the kids get old enough to not have nightmares about it.

I have also learned that 90s sit-coms starring teeny-bop rap artists are not reliable sources of information. Who'd a thunk it?

Victoria Fires - a tribute

2009-02-16T17:41:00.002+13:00

This month's fires in Victoria, Australia have been horrendous. These fires are the worst natural disaster in Australia's history. As of today the death toll stands at 181, but that has not been updated for days as forensics examiners struggle to identify what are human remains, let alone whose remains they might be.

New Zealand is very close to Australia - both geographically and culturally - and I weep at the news that is flowing from Victoria.

Here is a multimedia tribute, hosted by Stuff (NZ news) but originally from The Age (Australian news).

Our Darkest Day

I cannot begin to imagine the horror of wanting to escape, but having no idea where would be safe, where the fire is, where it's going next, or how to save my babies. So many families have got a single surviving parent who has lost their spouse and all their children - my worst nightmare.

Using drawers as 'seedling flats'

2009-02-15T19:58:00.002+13:00

This year I've been sprouting my own seeds and actually successfully coaxing them into seedlings and then into actual plants in the garden! This is very exciting and a big advance on my prior attempts to grow from seed - usually I'd forget about them and they'd either fail to sprout, or sprout and wither due to neglect.

Not this year

I've been roughly following the instructions given by John Jeavons in his How to Grow More... book. Instead of making my own seed sprouting mix, or using my own, rather poor, soil, I bit the bullet and bought potting mix from the garden centre.

Step one is to fill your seedling flat with soil and lay out your seeds, then water etc and generally look after them (sorry, this is not a step by step how to sprout seedlings - but there are lots of those on the internet :)

My cool innovation was to use discarded dresser drawers as my seed-sprouting containers. These are small enough for me to lift easily, and hold a sensible amount of seed for our small vege patch (while still allowing me to give excess away to friends). I drilled drainage holes in the bottom, but otherwise use them unmodified.

They are not painted in any way, or I'd be a bit cautious about lead paint.

The reason this has worked so much better than any other attempt I've made to grow from seed is that I've got them set up right outside my back door. So any time I exit the house I can see my little plants and give them a water and some TLC if they look like they need it. This is good. As a result we've already feasted off lettuce this year and this week I've got cabbage, turnip, kale, kohl-rabi and red cabbage to transplant into little re-used yoghurt pottles to get bigger and tougher before putting them in the garden.

So there you go. Works for me. All pretty exciting stuff :)

Sorry, it's too dark for photos just now but I'll take some tomorrow and update during the week.

Science on the Brain

2009-02-07T15:26:00.002+13:00

Science on the Brain is a site we've spent a bit of time at lately. Miss4 loves watching the videos, and although we've never actually gone ahead with any of his suggested further experiments, I've filed them away in my head for future reference.

Marshall Brain is also the creator of the How Stuff Works website, a father of four, and an enthusiast for how technology works and what science can mean in every day life. Science on the Brain is a collection of short videos (about 5 minutes) aimed at primary school kids, giving demonstrations of scientific principles and offering suggestions for further exploration.

Topics include measurement (your own height, lung capacity, jump height etc), insulation, why you need salt to make ice cream, what yeast eats, how far is a lightyear and a bunch of other stuff.

Highly recommended.

cumulus clouds and sheep

2009-01-24T10:05:00.003+13:00

Yesterday morning was a very slow start to the day, so we dropped Merl into work in the car, because the bus was long gone by the time we'd finished breakfast.

Driving around the harbour we could see the whole harbour basin filled with cloud, but the hills around it were in bright sunshine. It was very cool.

Miss4 began a discussion on what type of cloud it was. (She's an avid 'Magic School Bus' reader).

Miss4: "That's a stratus cloud, because it's so long and thin... there are other types of cloud, like cumulus and cumulo-nimbus clouds. Yeah, cumulo-nimbus clouds are when the wind comes along, takes the top of a cumulus cloud and the whole thing gets big and dark - that's a storm cloud. Cumulus clouds are big puffy fluffy white ones..."

Daddy suggested that Cumulus clouds look like sheep

Miss 4: "Yeah, just like sheep. But without the legs. And they're not alive."

I'm glad we got that straightened out.

Making a Chicken Dome - Day 5

2009-01-21T18:46:00.006+13:00

Mission accomplished!

If you want the stepwise instructions, begin your adventure with
Day 1 - making the frame
Day 2 - crossbracing the dome
Day 3 - making the door
Day 4 - covering the dome with chicken wire
Day 5 is populating your dome with chickens!

As you can see in the photo above, we attached the door using sophisticated rope and bungee cord technology. The 'hinges' are loops of nylon rope at top, middle and bottom of one side. the 'latch' is a bungee cord or two at the other side to keep the door shut.

Bungee cords are also working well at keeping the tarps over the top of the dome. The tarpaulin is important in this setup as chooks don't like getting wet. (They also don't like things flapping above them, so there is possibly a better way of doing this. I shall give it some thought).

You can also see the roost/perch. This is a pruned treebranch, painted with motor oil to kill any mites that might be lurking and hung up using tie wire. Apparently chooks like roosts of about 5cm to 8 cm wide (2 to 3 inches) so they feel nice and secure. We've since found that our girls prefer 5cm, not 8cm.

On the left is Mk1 of the water bottle. It's a recycled milk bottle with the sides cut out and enough room at the bottom for water to sit. Not ideal. This needs to be topped up about three times a day at the moment and I'm going to use a different system. To the right is a tuna can with shell-grit in it. The chooks can help themselves whenever they want some. The tuna can for the shell-grit came with our chookies and it works really well.

Here are our ladies and their nesting box in the background. The nesting box is an old beer crate with a couple of planks nailed on the front to give a bit of privacy. In the front is the lovely Abigail - she is our egg-layer at the moment as Belle (in the rear) has started her moult. They are Brown Shaver hens which are a modern hybrid breed, bred for egg production. We get brown eggs - one a day from Abigail.

Things we have changed since the photos were taken:
These photos were taken the day after we collected our hens and settled them in. That was about 10 days ago and there have been a few changes.

nesting box - this is now raised off the ground on a couple of cinder-blocks. Abigail started laying her eggs on the floor of the coop, and one book we got from the library (Free Range Poultry by Katie Thear) suggested that raising the box up will help clear up any confusion as to what constitutes a nest.

This does seem to work, although I still find the odd egg on the floor - I suspect it gets kicked out of the nesting box at night because both ladies refuse to sleep on the perch and instead cram themselves into that little box to sleep. This is not a long-term option since their feet will start to get hurt if they stand flat all night. It seems that the classic 'Linda Woodrow Dome' will need some modification for our quite cold nights (and chickens who are used to sleeping shut away in a box). I have plans to modify a rabbit hutch we have lying around to turn it into a nesting box/perch house which we can sit alongside the dome - so the dome will be more of a 'run', rather than a complete housing solution.

perch - The one in the photo is too fat - the chooks wouldn't use it. We now use a more slender branch - more the 5cm end of the scale than 8cm - and they happily sit up on that during the day (but not at night - see above).

water - I've attached the water container to the dome using wire, instead of rubber bands. This is neater, doesn't warp the container and is easier to get the bottle out for cleaning and refilling. I am, however, going to spring for a watering system, because this one needs filling morning noon and night, and chooks can die if they get too thirsty. It's just too risky.

food - I've made another container, just like the water one, for layers mash pellets. The chooks get plenty of garden and kitchen waste, but it is of variable quantity and quality, especially at this stage when we are just establishing the system. With a supply of mash off to the side the chooks can top up when they feel the need. Some days they eat it all, other days its hardly touched.

sand - I did add a tray of sand so they could have a place to dust-bathe, but they pecked it a few times, covered it up with mulch and dust-bathed in the dirt instead. So I took it out again.

orientation - we swung the whole thing around a bit to provide better protection from the Southerly that came up during the weekend (the Southerly is the cold wind at this end of the world - there's nothing between us and Antarctica except a couple of uninhabited islands and a few penguins).

In all, it has been a very successful first week of chicken ownership, even if the steep learning curve (and my pregnancy tiredness) has meant that we've only just gotten around to sharing it with the world! If my kids can't find me, they're learning to check outside at the coop, or inside at the windows overlooking the coop - I am enjoying sitting and just watching them go about their business.

Oh, and one other chicken link. Radio New Zealand's National Program has been running a series on keeping backyard chooks, where the presenter converts his Wendy House into a chook house. Lots of good advice and chicken photos at the Funky Chicken Farm, including a video on how to check the pelvic space of the chicken to see if she's ready to lay (videos on Page 5 'book book book'). This has been very timely and I keep 'shushing' the family so I can hear what they're saying - thankfully each episode is only about 15 mintues long!

Edited on 7 April 2009 to add
Chicken Update - How we're doing 3 months on - found here

Baby #3

2009-01-14T21:35:00.005+13:00

Yes indeed, I am 8 weeks pregnant!

According to one week-by-week guide I read last week...

You may have either gained or lost a few pounds, but are not showing yet.

Oh yeah?

Clearly written with the first-time mother in mind, methinks (or perhaps for those with functioning abdominal muscles...)

Making a Chicken Dome - Day 4

2009-01-10T16:36:00.007+13:00

Hopefully this is the second-last post in our epic chicken-dome/tractor/coop making adventure!

Day 1 is making the frame
Day 2 is crossbracing the dome
Day 3 we made the door
Day 4 is covering the dome with chicken wire...

I got an email yesterday from the current owner of 'our' chickens letting us know that the time was getting close for them to be re-homed. This engendered a flurry of activity at the homestead as we had only half-covered the dome with chicken wire and it was definitely not ready for chickens!

The easy step-wise type instructions are simple for Day4. "Cover the dome with chicken wire, remembering to leave the doorway open".

That's it, really. But there are some handy hints to go along with this.
1) Wear gardening gloves. Your hands will thank you
2) Use tie-wire to attach the chicken wire to the dome. A pair of needle-nosed pliers can be helpful for this, but not strictly necessary
3) The pointy cut-ends of the chicken wire can be wrapped around neighbouring wire to anchor them together, instead of using tie-wire.4) If dogs are a problem, make a foot-long 'skirt' of chicken wire to lie on the ground, out from the base of the dome. Cut darts into the wire so it will lie flat.
5) If you think sparrows and other scavenging small birds will be a problem, use fine-gauge chicken wire - bird netting I think they call it. This is the stuff we were able to buy easily from the garden shop. We also re-used ordinary chicken wire that we found under our house, so our dome is a mix of the two. I don't think I'll mind feeding sparrows, but I don't know how I'll feel about that in a few months :)
6) Tying the chicken wire to the frame is much easier with two people - one on the inside and one on the outside, pushing the tie-wire through to each other.

We collect the chickens on Monday or Tuesday evening, so our next post on this topic will include pictures of our finished dome, complete with inhabitants!

I can't wait!

In the meantime, for those of you with unsatisfied chicken urges, Rhonda is having a "Kitchen Table" post this weekend all about chickens. Lots of excellent advice from Rhonda and everyone else who has contributed to this fine idea.

Day 5, Chicken Dome Completion!

I must be doing something right

2009-01-07T18:01:00.002+13:00

Whenever I put Miss1 down for her afternoon sleep, I give Miss4-and-almost-5 a chance to get anything she would like to play with out of the room. They share a bedroom and so there is usually a half dozen toys and/or books that get ferried from the room and dumped in a pile in the hallway, just in case she might need them in the next couple of hours.

Recently, we had the following exchange...

Me: I'm about to put [Miss1] down for a sleep, it's time to get anything you need out of this room

Miss4-and-almost-5: (with a slightly puzzled frown on her face) But there's nothing I need in here.

Me: (in utter disbelief) Really?

Miss-4-and-almost-5: (as if explaining the obvious) There are lots of things that I want, but nothing that I need. They're not the same thing, you know.

make your own apple cider vinegar

2009-01-03T20:35:00.008+13:00

Here's the scenario:

It is New Year's Eve. You are at a friend's house and have offered to make the Guacamole. Your friend hands you the perfect avocado, the pottle of cream cheese and gives you directions to the chives in the backyard. They then reach for the apple cider vinegar from their cupboard and say "Ew gross, what is that?!" You come over for a look and see a floating disk of slime in their bottle of vinegar.

What. do. you. do?

If you have been following Rhonda's wonderful blog, you reach for it and say "Oh Cool! You've got a Vinegar Mother! Do you want it? Cos if you don't can I have it? Please?"

Yes, truly.

Rhonda's got a couple of posts on making your own vinegar here and here. I was so inspired I decided to try it myself. I had been idly thinking about making my own vinegar using one of the recipes that don't start with a 'mother', since I've been feeling like vinegary things lately (mmmmm, pickles), but after having such a lucky find on Wednesday I was propelled from idle thoughts into definite action.

vinegar ingredients

So here's what you start with. Apple juice (the bottle on the left), a sterile container to make the vinegar in (on the right), and your 'mother of vinegar' (in the centre). I used 3L of apple juice and a gallon container. Use less if that's what you've got.

the 'mother of vinegar'

Here's what the 'mother of vinegar' looks like when poured out into a small bowl. I vaguely remember an old boyfriend making 'kombucha' - some odd mushroom drink thing that's supposed to be fabulously good for you. It looks a bit like that.

apple juice and red wine, with mother added to each

Then I split the mother, by gently pulling it apart with a couple of butter knives. Then poured one half into the apple juice and the other half into a half-litre of red wine leftover from a dinner earlier in the week (I figured I might as well make red wine vinegar while I was about it!). You can see the mother floating in the apple juice.

the vinegars-to-be, in the hotwater cupboard

The jars were covered with muslin cloth to allow them to breathe while keeping the vinegar flies out, labelled with the contents and the date, and put safely away in my hotwater cupboard. Rhonda says you can leave it on the bench to ferment happily, but I don't have that much bench space, my little projects need to be kept away from inquisitive hands, and frankly my bench top is not the warm 25-30degC that she enjoys in her northern Australian climate. The hotwater cupboard will do nicely.

Now all I need to do is be patient for anywhere between 2 and 6 months.

It's very exciting. I'm not sure I can wait that long!

homemade dishcloths

2009-01-02T14:34:00.003+13:00

my hand-knitted dishcloth

The first time I heard of people knitting their own dishcloths I knew I'd found the weirdo fringe of simple-lifestyler greenie people. I mean, why would you do that?! I can cut the standard blue-striped supermarket cloths in half and make a packet last a whole year by frequently washing them and never letting them stew in their own stinky juices on the bench (gross).

And then I kept coming across people saying how great homemade dishcloths were. They are even cheaper than store-bought (especially if you have a hoarded yarn stash inherited from several generations - as I have). They ostensibly last longer. And if made from 100% natural fibres can be composted at the end of their lives.

So I figured it was worth a try.

Our current batch of store-bought cloths are all just about to give up the ghost - they have started to split lengthways and generally fall apart. I thought about writing them up on the shopping list, but hesitated. Knitting a rectangle would take all of an evening and if it works as well as everyone says, then we wouldn't need to purchase any dishcloths anymore.

Off to the wool basket I went. There I found a bag of coloured cotton yarn that my Nana had bought for me when I was about 9 years old. I distinctly remembering begging her to buy it for me because the colours were so pretty. She did so, reluctantly, on the condition that I would actually make something out of it. That bag of yarn has been niggling at my conscience in a very low key way for nigh on 23 years. So that's another 'point' in favour of knitting the dishcloths!

I used this pattern here at Groovy Mom, and you'll find plenty more here at Knitting Pattern Central. I used no7 (4.5mm) knitting needles and 100% cotton, double-knit (8ply) yarn.

With some trepidation I used my new dishcloth the next night. I was skeptical because I wasn't sure if it would absorb the water or just move it around. And if it did, would it wring dry enough to not leave the bench soaking wet when wiping up? And would it get clean again once I washed the pots? Had I just wasted an entire evening knitting a useless thing?

I am so happy with the result that I now have 5 dishcloths in my drawer!

These cloths work way better than the supermarket *(rhymes with chucks)* cloths. The ridging from the knitting mean there's a bit of texture to rub the pots etc clean. The cotton is completely absorbant (like a towel), but the open weave means it wrings out to just damp for wiping the table etc. And they can be safely sterilised at the end of the day by scouring them with hot water from the kettle, or nuking them in the microwave for 1 minute.

Making a Chicken Dome - Day 3

2008-12-28T10:40:00.007+13:00

The continuing story of our Chicken Dome.

On Day 1, we erected the frame
Day 2 was crossbracing day
Day 3 sees us make the door.

Linda Woodrow gives instructions for making a snake-proof door in her book, The Permaculture Home Garden. Something fairly sophisticated would also be needed if you have raccoons to contend with. Here in New Zealand, however, we have neither snakes nor raccoons and need only to worry about the neighbourhood dogs. Therefore, a simple hinged door will suffice.

Step 1 - Locate the offcuts from the arc-pieces from Day 1. We found ours in various places around the section, having been used as hobby horses and swords for a couple of weeks.

Step 2 - Choose a place for the door and measure the size of the frame. This picture here, taken from the crossbracing day, also serves to show where the doorway is. The door will go in the space bounded by the purple and red lines.

Step 3 - Cut the piping to fit, taking into account how the pieces will attach to each other.

Step 4 - Drill holes in the ends of the pipes, and securely attach with tie-wire.

Step 5 - Ensure your door is not twisted, and is 'square' (as square as a rhombus can be - symmetrical I guess)

Step 6 - Cover the door with chicken wire. We are using a double layer of wire to help deter those neighbourhood dogs. We'll likewise also cover the whole bottom half of the dome with two layers of wire.

Day 4 is covering the frame with chicken wire.
Day 5 - chicken dome completion!

Merry Christmas

2008-12-26T09:18:00.004+13:00

Merry christmas everybody. Miss4 is completely spent after the excitement of yesterday and is holed up in our bed for the morning. Leaving Miss1 the attention of TWO parents and all of the opened presents from yesterday. The winner: 'pretty things'.

Here she is modelling a whole set of hairclips covering her entire head:

toast and the spanish armada

2008-12-20T14:00:00.002+13:00

Miss4 likes to make shapes with her toast at breakfast, on the odd occasion when we aren't having porridge.

This morning I was vaguely aware of the running commentary of the shapes of her toast, as she created a different object with each bite...

Look! A big boat...now it's a shoe!...a gun. bang bang! I'll shoot you (miss1)...

That's when my ears tuned in more closely, but the toast changed shape again before she got too involved with the gun...

Now it's a little boat! Gunpowder (shake shake goes the toast), and now fire!, then the boat gets launched whooosh towards the big Spanish ships. Here's Elizabeth's little ships, and over here (appropriate gesture) are the other ships. Whooosh goes the wind and blows the fire ships towards them. Oh No! the Spanish ships can't get away. Crash!

And there you go. The bare bones of the Spanish Armada's defeat at the hands of Elizabeth I's navy in 1588. Brilliant.

oven dried tomatoes - recipe

2008-12-17T19:57:00.007+13:00

Store bought tomatoes, washed and ready for anything

I'm experimenting with more ways to put my tomato surplus in the 'pantry bank', so to speak. Having recently purchased the first two Destitute Gourmet cookbooks, I was keen to put them to good use. I've already baked the Oaty Crisp biscuits (cookies if you're in the US) every week, so that justifies the purchase of book 1. This week I'm drying tomatoes in my oven. (Handily justifying the purchase of book 2 - justifying to myself, I mean. I'd be annoyed to fork out money for recipe books I won't use).

Before I get into the pictorial extravaganza, I'll point out that drying stuff in a warm oven for hours is not exactly 'destitute' cookery. It would have been far more frugal to blanch and freeze them, or bottle the tomatoes to use in recipes in place of tinned ones. But it was fun.

If I could rig up a solar dehydrator for use on those long hot mid-summer days then it would cross the threshold into true frugality (especially if I found a cheap supply of olive oil...). But for now, here is how I interpreted the instructions given me by the great Sophie Gray.

First, preheat your oven to 125degC

Wash your tomatoes and take off the green bits. Slice them in half and poke holes in the skin with a wooden skewer (or a fork if you don't have any skewers).

Excuse the state of my oven - I don't clean it often

Lay the tomatoes on an oven tray or two and pop them in the oven.

Wedge the oven door open slightly with the handle of a wooden spoon. This allows the evaporating water to escape the oven, and allows the tomatoes to actually dry.

One spoon, artfully placed

I think I left mine too long. You're aiming for soft fruit-leather type consistency, without them being juicy - no juice should ooze out if you squeeze one. But mine are a bit crispy round the edges - for some reason I was heading more for banana-chip consistency (which is odd as 1. I hate banana chips and 2. We do eat sun-dried tomatoes, so I'm not unfamiliar with their consistency. Weird. I'll just put it down to a bit of a head cold). The book says up to 6 hours, but mine were still a bit juicy then. Use your judgment and make notes for yourself for next time.

When they're done, put them into sterile jars*, pour olive oil over the top until the jar is full and screw the lids down. I'm hoping that soaking in olive oil will soften mine up somewhat.

These dried tomatoes are not bright red. Apparently bought ones are soaked in something first to keep them red coloured, so your homemade ones will have that artisan-craft additive-free look to them. And you get bonus flavoured olive oil for all sorts of goodies once you've eaten the tomatoes.

From 3 kilograms of tomatoes (about 6 pound, give or take) I made 2 jars of dried tomato goodness. So I guess one way that this beats freezing or bottling fresh tomatoes is the space saving component. That's a lot of concentrated tomato flavour in a couple of little jars.

Enjoy!

*I sterilised the jars by taking the tomatoes out of the oven, and putting the jars in, at 125degC for 10 to 15mintues. I sterilized the lids by pouring boiling water over them and leaving them to sit for the same time period. If you have your own preferred sterilization method, then use it. Tomatoes are quite acidic so are a bit more resistant than other foods to 'close enough is good enough' sterilisation standards.

Quotable quote - what the world needs

2008-12-15T14:58:00.005+13:00

"Do not ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and do that, because what the world needs is those who have come alive."
Howard Thurman

I can't work out how to stop it saying "read more" when there isn't anything more to read. Sorry

lacto-fermented tomato relish

2008-12-14T18:51:00.009+13:00

Tomatoes are in season in New Zealand and are consequently very economical. Apparently there have also been issues with exporting them this year, so there is quite a glut of them. All the better to buy up large and preserve them for the rest of the year.

This year I've decided to try one of the Nourishing Traditions lacto-fermented relishes, as well as the usual Edmond's Cookbook relishes and chutneys that all kiwi families know and love.

Step 1 - gather your ingredients. In the photo above, you see
1 Capsicum, or Bell Pepper. Recipe said green, but I used an orange one, then photographed a red one. This needs to be seeded and chopped. i.e. cut it open, throw away the bit with the seeds, and chop up the skin and flesh.
5 Tomatoes. Recipe said 4, but mine weren't very big. Skin them, remove the seeds, and chop.
1 Tablespoons Salt. Recipe calls for natural sea salt. What I have is iodized table salt with anti-caking agent. The purists will throw their hands up in horror. Go ahead.
2 Chillies. Recipe says fresh jalapenos. I have dried chillies of indeterminate species, harvested and dried from a chili potplant I was given. Remove the seeds and chop, being scrupulous about washing your hands afterward. Chili juice burns like fire.
4 Tablespoons Whey. Mine is some liquid strained from homemade yoghurt. Recipe says you can omit this and add more salt, but doesn't say how much more salt.

Then I went for a walk in the garden and gathered 3 green/spring onions and a few leaves of vietnamese coriander/cilantro.

These were also finely chopped, and everything was mashed together in a glass bowl, along with 1/2cup of water. (Tap water. I can hear the screams of purist agony from here).

The mix was then poured into a large preserving jar, tightly sealed, and placed on the bench for a few days (2 to 4 depending on how warm your house is) for those friendly lacto-fermenting bugs to do their thing. Then place it somewhere cool for storage.

Traditional Sauerkraut is probably the most widely known lacto-fermented food. I've not eaten ordinary sauerkraut, but have enjoyed Kimchi, the spicy Korean version. When cabbages are plentiful in my garden, next year sometime, I'll give that a go too.

Making a Chicken Dome - Day 2

2008-12-13T20:54:00.014+13:00

The making of our chicken dome continues. Day 1 is here. We managed to erect the general frame of our PVC pipe chicken dome but hadn't crossbraced it (made it stable), or put chicken wire and a door on. Day 2 is crossbracing day.

You will need:
twine (we used sisal 'garden twine')
a crochet hook (or equivalent piece of wire)

The bracing is really important for giving the dome strength and stability. At the end of Day 1 the structure was very wobbly. Now it can be picked up easily from the side without it losing its shape.

First you make a 'skirt' of diagonal crossbracing, circling the dome, between the base of the dome up to about 30cm from the ground.

This is followed by horizontal crossbracing between each vertical strut, at that 30cm level, creating a support ring made of twine, 30cm from the ground.

The third lot of bracing is bowbracing and runs vertically from the top support ring (made of plastic piping) to the middle support ring (which you just made from twine) at the point of each vertical strut. I combined this bracing with a bowbracing around the inside of the top support ring as I threaded the twine from one strut to the next, but I don't know how much extra stability this gave the chook dome.

Here's the step by step version, with helpful and informative photos! Since it's almost impossible to see the green twine that we used for the bracing, we've added exciting coloured lines to show where the lines are for one wedge of the frame.

bow bracing - connecting two points on one of the vertical struts, like stringing a bow (coloured purple in the picture)
horizontal cross bracing - connecting from one vertical strut to a neighbour at the same height (coloured red)
diagonal cross bracing - connecting from one vertical strut to a neighbour at a different height (coloured yellow)

Step 1: Make the extra hole

Mark off about 300mm above the ground on each vertical strut. Drill a hole big enough to comfortably fit the twine through twice.

Step 2: Crossbracing

Tie all of the diagonal cross bracing at the bottom.

Tie all of the horizontal cross bracing and the bow bracing.

And you're done.

Day 3 is making the door.
Day 4 is covering the frame with chicken wire.
Day 5 - chicken dome completion!

Brainchild Casserole for the Slowcooker

2008-12-11T18:37:00.003+13:00

Using a Slowcooker is absolutely the best way to cook casseroles and lamb/pork roasts. A friend requested (and named) "Brainchild Casserole", so here it is.

You will need:

500g braising/stewing steak, cubed
2 large onions, chopped and microwaved in butter
5 large carrots, chopped
2 capsicums, cored and chopped
6 mushrooms
1C cashew nuts
2T sunflower seeds

1/2t Cinnamon
1t Tumeric
1T crushed garlic
1T Oregano
3T Bisto (instant gravy)
1/4C Worcester Sauce

2C water

Combine the first seven ingredients in your slowcooker.

Mix the next six ingredients with some water and pour over the casserole. Add the rest of the water.

Turn slowcooker to 'low' all day (8 hours).

Do not

Making a Chicken Dome - Day 1

2008-12-06T19:44:00.028+13:00

Exciting news. We will inherit a pair of chickens in January. Now they need a house. The handymum found in her most excellent book The Permaculture Home Garden instructions in how to build a chicken dome, which is a lightweight chicken 'tractor' that can be moved around the section. It's a compromise between free-range (which isn't practical because of our vege garden and the neighbourhood dogs) and a permanent coop.

Armed with this knowledge our brave heroes ventured forth (pictures and details below the cut).

Linda Woodrow gives instructions in her book for a dome 12 metres in circumference - this is large enough for about a dozen chooks and far too large for our section. So we had to adapt things a little.

Our chicken coop is a hemisphere with a ground circumference of 6m. This will give enough room for 2 to 3 chickens (the recommendation is 1sq meter per chicken) This is what you will need:
5x 6m class 12 PVC pipe, 20mm wide
pvc glue
tie-wire
(you also need a drill, pencil, tape measure, hacksaw and maybe even cellotape)
plus some other stuff you might need but we haven't used yet:
baling twine
shadecloth
bamboo or pine slats
small dark box as a laying box
woven plastic tarp
4 tent pegs
water container

Step 1: Making the base

Take one of the 6M pipes.
Put some pvc glue in the female end of the pipe (the instructions are on the glue) and make the pipe into a circle.

Step 2: Attach three more pipes as the frame of the coop

Take three of the 6m lengths and cut them until they are 4.2m each. If you use the full 6m length for the frame your coop could look more like a bullet - like the picture on the right....

Make a mark with your pencil on the base circle every 1m, so there are 6 marks in total. Drill a small hole through each mark going from the outside of the circle to the inside. This is what you will attach the frame to.

With the 4.2m lengths drill a small hole about 15mm from each end, making sure that both drilled holes are in the same orientation (so the pipe doesn't have to twist).
Then bend a 4.2m length over the base circle so that the ends touch two holes on opposite sides of the circle, with the middle of the length arching into the air. Use tie-wire to connect the arch to the circle, with the end of each arch inside the circle. Repeat for the other two arches.

Tie-wire / Cellotape the three arches together at the apex to form a primitive frame:

Step 3: Add a support circle
I wasn't sure whether the PVC pipe would be flexible enough to bend into this smaller circle so I opted for the much softer and more flexible Polybutylene pipe.

We used the sophisticated method of marking 1.25m high on the frames with a pencil, and holding it up on the inside of the frame to determine what length we want it. After marking that we chopped off the excess, made it into a circle with the connecter, and marked out six equal portions on it (which turned out to be 730mm).

Then out with the drill again to put six marked holes in the support circle and six in the marks on the frame. I again drilled through the support circle from outside to inside, which this time around was a little inconvenient since the Tie-wire didn't line up neatly when going from one pipe to the next.

Handymum showed off her needle threading prowess by doing four connections in the time it took me to do two.

Voila!

Day 2 was a week later :) Crossbracing the dome.
Day 3 is here. Making the door.
Day 4 is covering the frame with chicken wire.
Day 5 - Chicken Dome Completion!

pottery

2008-12-05T21:07:00.005+13:00

This school term we've been able to join with some other home educators for a fortnightly pottery class. Here's Miss4 showing me which bowl is hers.

We spend a couple of hours every other Friday morning at the pottery club rooms. Miss4 spends the first hour inside with the clay, while I follow Miss1 around giving her scraps of clay to play with as she sits up at an unused wheel and pretends to throw pots, or rolls balls of clay, or generally starts touching things she shouldn't, climbs step ladders to the sinks, opens cupboards, touches other people's works... and occasionally runs around outside in the sun. The second hour is more or less the same except that the smaller kids from the class are kinda done with the work and they all hang out together outside, climbing the bush-covered bank behind the clubrooms, building 'campfires' and generally having a blast.

I've gotten to know one of the other Mums quite well and we generally find time to sit and have a natter and some morning tea (she brings coffee in a thermos and I bring bikkies - a mutually beneficial arrangement).

The tutor is really good with the kids, and copes very well with the large age range. There are two 4 year olds, a 6 year old (whom you can see with Miss4 in the photo), a couple of kids about 9 or 10, and about four or five in their early teens. There's one of those "what a small world" stories about me and the tutor - her husband is a cousin of my father-in-law, which we discovered more or less by accident when she called in to collect Merl's Grandma to take her to the airport. I would go into more 'she said, she said' detail but it would get long and rambly and pointless (trust me, I've already written it out and deleted it!). Anyhow, she's very good at getting the kids to make stuff with the clay, enjoy the process, and doesn't insist that they all sit down and be quiet while she explains stuff the kids don't think they need to know. (She gets them started and is great at jumping in with needed information once the kids realise they need it - and doesn't mind explaining it again individually later)

We've got one final class remaining for the year, so that's when we get to see how it has all turned out. I'm really excited to see the results. I think Miss4's coffee mugs are going to be way cooler than my 'ugly mug' that I made when I was a student.

queen cleopatra

2008-11-28T18:27:00.003+13:00

My sister gave us a treasure trove of kids' books at the weekend, and we have been having a great time exploring them this week.

Miss4's current favourite is a book produced by the British National Museum all about Beauty Secrets of Egyptian Queens. It's an activity book with pop-out cardboard jewelery, lots of information about a whole range of Egyptian Queens, and suggested activities - like making an Egyptian style wig, how to make a long linen tunic and...

milk and rose petal bath

...how to have a bath like Cleopatra - using milk powder instead of asses' milk, for convenience sake. Thankfully, since donkeys are in short supply in this suburb.

Miss4 has been switching between being Cleopatra and Elizabeth I this week. Sometimes she's both at the same time, which makes for interesting conversations among her toys.

You treat me like I'm your slave

2008-11-24T21:23:00.003+13:00

So said Miss4. as she took some breakfast plates through to the kitchen.

Our wonderful big girl is taking off reading, and has just discovered where I have hidden all of my graphic books. No, not like that silly. Asterix, Dilbert, Calvin and Hobbes and The Farside. The latter three are impenetrable due to their heavy use of irony, which is beyond her at present ("Calvin is a naughty naughty boy").

But she can and does devour Asterix, which has lead to a number of interesting questions about Romans, punching people, slaves, and of course, falling into the magic potion.

We now have the kinda good problem where she just goes and hides for long stretches of the time and we find her sitting on the toilet or in her room reading. Jobs take a distinct second place, which is why we have to be firm, which is why apparently we treat her like a slave.

Which is why we have to explain to her.....

advent conspiracy

2008-11-20T14:23:00.001+13:00

Spend less. Give more. Be free.

shower caps

2008-11-19T19:37:00.003+13:00

Miss4 and Miss1 in their new shower caps

Thanks to this very easy to use tutorial at Sew Delish our girls now have new shower caps.

Miss4 had been protesting about having a shower in the evenings because she doesn't like having her hair combed out and then dried (it's very tuggy). So we thought we'd give a shower cap a try.

I used a large plastic postage bag for the plastic layer and some old cotton sheeting for the blue layer. The only thing I had to buy was the bias binding - and at 99c a metre these are economical shower caps.

The tutorial says to use a circle 55 to 66 centimetres diameter, and I made mine 51cm, due to plastic bag size constraints, but this is a fine size for a child's head. If I were to make one again I would use a lighter type of plastic - perhaps rubbish bag weight.

Both girls have been wearing the caps as 'casual day wear' around the house since I finished them yesterday. And the shower this evening went very well, with no hair-drying required.

All in all a very successful project.

Young Tory of the Year

2008-11-16T13:04:00.002+13:00

From 1995. The more things change the more they stay the same.
From "A Bit of Fry and Laurie" UK comedy show.

Life Without School

2008-11-15T21:52:00.002+13:00

Life Without School is a 'community blog' which I check regularly. There are a range of contributors, with a new article posted roughly weekly.

I've been inspired and reassured by the articles - each written by a home educator sharing an insight or tip or general musings on life. The contributors follow the "inquiry-based, learner driven approach" (the swanky phrase I've recently adopted because 'unschooling' makes people nervous).

Highly recommended for a bit of inspiration.

homemade tortillas

2008-11-14T20:17:00.003+13:00

Mixing the oil into the flour

I tried making my own wheatflour tortillas the other night. We had leftovers, and not many of them, and I needed some way to make the same dinner over again look like a completely different dinner. Solution? Wrap it in a tortilla!

Personally I don't know how people roll them thinly enough to make them look like shop bought tortillas - mine ended up looking a lot more like naan bread once they were cooked. But that is not a bad thing. Naan is in fact very good.

Since it was my first attempt, I stuck to the recipe exactly - next time I'll use butter instead of oil and at least some wholemeal/wheatmeal flour in with it, perhaps up to 50/50.

As for the tools to use, you can use anything to mix the oil in - you don't have to use the nifty pastry cutter (or blender) that you see in my photo. I like to use it because it was my Mum's. It also spreads the oil through really evenly. I don't use it to mix the water in though - it just gets clogged up. That's when I switch to my wooden spoon.

I don't think I used quite enough water - they were not really soft enough to roll out easily. But be careful not to add too much. Soggy dough is a bit harder to correct.

Apparently these freeze well, but I'd probably need to triple the recipe to have any left to freeze.

Tortillas

2 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons oil
about 3/4 cup warm water

Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl (or food processor), add the oil and then slowly add enough warm water to form a soft dough. Knead on a floured board for about 5 minutes then allow the dough to rest.
Divide dough into 10 or so small balls and roll out thinly.
Cook them quickly in a greased, moderately hot pan for half a minute or so, until they bubble and start to brown. Turn and cook the other side.
Keep them in a damp tea-towel to keep soft and reheat in aluminium foil in the oven.

building community

2008-11-12T18:53:00.004+13:00

I cannot surpass the two posts I'll link to in a minute. The suggestions are excellent, the approach is hope-filled, and the goals are admirable.

In North and South this week I read a prediction for the economic downturn. The man is Bruce Sheppard. The words are as follows

"...We're all going to have to reflect on the kind of society we want to become. We're going to need to learn to be charitable and show decency and respect towards one another again..."
And if we don't? "We will descend into anarchy because there won't be enough cash flowing around to make everyone a winner. We'll be staring at a South African-style future." Rampant violent crime and home invasions."

North and South, December 2008

Perhaps not coincidentally our vicar at church has been talking about the transforming power of hope within communities - and for communities to adapt to doing things in new ways.

Over at Green Bean Dreams there is an excellent post on building community.

Please do go and read the post. But just in case the link breaks (as they do), here are a few choice snippets. Green Bean says;

There are a million ways to do it. Sign up with a local green group. Join a church or, if you already belong, attend an event or volunteer to be on a committee. Put together an email list for the neighborhood. Plant a garden in your front yard. Set up a cocktail table in a cul de sac. Ask other parents at your child's school about carpooling. Ask a neighbor to borrow an egg or a cup of sugar. The ways to build community are as simple and as limitless as can be.

But here's the catch.

Building community is hard. It will tug you out of your comfort zone. It will force you to interact with others - particularly, others whom you do not know well or at all. That is, after all, the point.

In many ways, it is easier to make your own yogurt, plant an edible garden, make jam in a silent kitchen. That is more comfortable for most of us and certainly for myself. I don't have to talk to anyone when I harvest lettuce or stir in the yogurt culture. I can sit in the quiet cocoon of my own home and reach out only through wires and cables. I don't have to look at anyone's face. Or struggle for something to say. Or wonder afterwards if what I said sounded stupid. If I talked too much or too little.

This is true. Christ did not tell us to go live holy lives in isolation - He was all about community and bringing hope to the world. And that means the community of people around us.

The other good post is the one which tipped me to Green Bean's blog. Melinda at One Green Generation uses Green Bean's post as a starting point and then expands on it from her own experiences. All a community group really needs is a few friends sitting around deciding to do stuff and inviting others to join in. Be brave and actually get out there and join in with them!

Hattip to the Simple, Green, Frugal Co-op for having Melinda write for them too :)

something i didn't know about flies

2008-11-10T19:41:00.003+13:00

caution, not for those with weak stomachs

Flesh fly. Sarcophaga spp. Image from wiki entry

Miss4 was on a fly hunt today. The warmer weather has brought a few of them inside and she is an excellent fly swatter (what passes for hand-eye-coordination training around here).

Today, she swatted a fly and decided to do a little investigating. After all, we do encourage an 'enquiry based, learner directed approach' donchernow, so despite my own qualms about the grossness I remained silent as she proceeded.

Taking a wooden block, she carefully squished the fly on the windowsill to see what she would see.

What she saw was live young! How cool is that?? I didn't know that flies could lay live maggots - I thought they all laid eggs that went through the usual egg, larvae, pupae, fly process.

After ascertaining for certain that we were indeed seeing what we were seeing, I sent her off to thoroughly wash her hands and the wooden block while I got rid of the fly and maggots.

I've just done some investigating online and found that it must have been a flesh fly. Some species of flesh fly lay live young (try saying that 6 times fast) and thus are useful to forensic entomologists (people who look at the insect colonisation of dead bodies to determine time of death etc). I like their scientific name Sarcophagidae - meaning 'flesh eater'.

There's a you-tube of someone doing the exact same thing if you really want to see it. Some people will put anything on youtube, won't they? I didn't watch the whole thing, it was too gross to see twice...

farewell helen - post election reflections

2008-11-09T21:13:00.005+13:00

I will miss you, Helen Clark, farewell and enjoy your retirement.

The NZ election results came in on Saturday night, with a clear government able to be formed by National and Act.

(for anyone not familiar with New Zealand's voting system, we have multiple parties, elected based on their overall percentage of the votes, who then get to negotiate with each other to try and form a majority group who can be the 'government' - it's actually more complicated than that, but that's close enough - for more info, see the MMP wiki)

So. A swing to the Right.

Which is not the way I voted :) I did reconsider my vote for the Greens in the end - I ended up ticking the Progressive's box, whom I decided actually more closely aligned with my ideals.

I totally support the Greens' environmental policies, and I love their insulation scheme for poor peoples' homes, but I was uncomfortable with some of their other private member's bills that were passed in the last few years. A little too much of the government legislating how you behave in the privacy of your own home/private premises etc (like the anti-smacking bill, and the anti-smoking legislation - both of which I agreed with the aims of - but felt that the legislation was sloppy and rushed, and consequently had unlooked for consequences - like what a CYFs caseworker might now do when a neighbour reports a smack, or Returned Servicemen not being able to smoke in their own RSA clubs).

So. To the future. Some of my friends have said that they would plan to leave the country if Helen were re-elected (to which I always replied "and go where??"), and today my bro said that some of his friends were now planning to leave the country. Go figure. I still reply "and go where??" The whole world is having an economic meltdown. OK, sure, the last time New Zealand had a Right Wing government in power during a recession, they retrenched (causing massive job losses - the government and its infrastructure projects being a major source of employment), set a target of 10% unemployment (i.e. always to have at least 10% of people unemployed), slashed welfare to 'make people want to get a job' (while actively planning not to have jobs for everyone), got rid of state-housing, sold off or deregulated state assets like the railways and power companies (so the railway system was sucked dry and left a wasted worthless husk, while we now have power companies raising consumer fees by 10% 'because of the hard times' while giving their execs 100% pay raises).

But they wouldn't be stupid enough to do that all over again. Would they??

Despite the fact that many of those very same people are likely to have cabinet positions.

And Roger Douglas, of Rogernomics fame, likely to return to cabinet.

...[sigh]...

But even so, NZ is still an awesome place to live. I can't think of a place I would rather be.

My hope is that people will come together to help each other out during the coming hard times, just as they did last time. That the church will respond with compassion and grace and practical help to those who are desperate - as it did with the Hikoi of Hope in 1998. And we will remember that no government, no political system, no leader with a charismatic smile can ever rescue us.

Neither can the church - a bunch of people mostly doing their best to follow Christ each day, some days better than others, mostly fairly averagely.

Only Christ himself.

And even then, to be honest, sometimes the divine 'rescue' initially looks like a worse option than staying with what you have. I'm sure the thought crossed Jesus' mind on his way to his execution. In fact, scripture says it did (Luke 32:39-44).

It's late and I'm rambling (and making lots of typos which I'm having to go back and correct), but I guess what I'm saying is that even though I am less than stoked about our election result, I am confident in God's sovereignty, confident in his goodness, and hopeful to see what good he will create from the situation. There is always goodness - and every good and perfect thing is from God (even if our vew of God is too small to make the connection obvious).

I have a secret - a merl post

2008-11-06T19:56:00.004+13:00

And it is this: Today is the sixth day of Movember. It's a great opportunity for the women in your life to develop character.

The rules: Have a bare lip on October the 31st, and then compete with other guys at work to grow the best moustache (something which you have almost no control over). All in a good cause.

This year it's even more exciting than usual because Miss4 and I have decided to keep my Moustache growing a 'secret' from the wif.

Comments from Miss4 in the last week:

Won't she be so surprised? But don't tell her. It's our secret.

It's so soft and warm (stroking what is essentially three day old stubble).

You should stop talking to mummy and tell her not to talk to you. That way she won't find out you're growing a moustache.

and then today: snow

2008-11-06T13:01:00.004+13:00

Yes, truly, snow. And hail.

Remember what the weather was like a couple of days ago?

Well, we woke this morning to snow on the hills. The weather at springtime in a temperate, coastal climate in the pacific ocean is completely mental.

We embraced the moment and, taking morning tea with us in the car, went driving looking for some snow to play in. And we found some! It was fairly sub-par, as snow goes, but it was good for a wee snow fight. It was Miss1's first experience of snow and she wasn't that stoked. She was far more interested in stomping in the muddy puddles and after about 10 minutes was trying to open the car doors to get back in the warmth (or perhaps to get access to the biscuits/cookies we brought with us).

So after a couple more snow balls we called it a day. We climbed out of our wet snow clothes, and warmed up with some hot chocolate from the thermos (fair trade hot chocolate, of course!) before heading back home.

One more thing we wouldn't be able to do if Miss4 was at school next year!

an afternoon in the sun

2008-11-04T18:32:00.002+13:00

Afternoon tea on the lawn with Princess Clarey (the bear in the dress).

Yesterday was a beautiful day - not so hot that you'd burn, but nice and warm while lying in the sun. This photo was taken in the late afternoon, with Miss1 having her catch-up afternoon tea after her long afternoon nap. Miss4 and I had already had ours, sitting on a rug in the shade. Very civilised.

I've decided it's a good thing the election is this weekend, because I'm done with politics for now :) I occasionally get a rush of blood to the head about things, but I'm over it now. I figure that both the major parties are self-serving politicos, and the smaller parties are more or less forced into extreme positions just to make themselves visible to the media.

I was going to put a quote here to express and validate my cynicism, but it turns out I'd mis-remembered it. Perhaps this is better - it is inspirational and optimistic, if only we can find the party to vote for that reflects what we consider to be "high ideals and heroism"

Exercise caution in your business affairs,
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you
to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals,
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Desiderata, by Max Ehrmann

helen clark - eminem parody video

2008-11-01T20:41:00.004+13:00

We thought this was funny.

I'm coming to the conclusion that I don't want either National or Labour to win the election. This rather hampers my strategical voting powers...

By the way, there's a good intro to NZ politics and MMP here, explaining the system etc for an Australian audience, if you're a foreigner and interested in our upcoming election. Or even if you're a kiwi and need a reminder.

Saw the other day that some of our kiwi school kids here reckoned they wanted Obama to win the NZ election, the odds are fairly low...

tuatara nest on the mainland!

2008-10-31T21:42:00.001+13:00

How cool is that?!

http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/top-stories/5115331

Who you should vote for - a Merl post

2008-10-30T05:53:00.007+13:00

Every wonder why otherwise sensible and intelligent people could make the absolutely awful and unfathomable decision of choosing to support their terrible political party, the party which would take the country to hell in a handbasket and would make you consider emigrating to another country if they won the election? Me neither.

So without further ado, here's a guide to voting for the parties in the upcoming New Zealand election:

Act. You should vote for the Act party because they are the natural party of libertarians. Standing for both economic liberalisation to moral permissiveness, if this is you then Act is your party. Please disregard the hypocrisy of Rodney voting in lock-step with National to condemn several morally permissive pieces of legislation, or the fact that he spoke up in favour of those issues before he became leader of what is left of the Act party. He proudly represents Act's founding principles and puts party before self, even if the party might only be himself after the next election. Vote Act!

National. You should vote for National because it really isn't such a big deal that what the party says in public is quite different from what they say in private. Please. Give us more credit than that. Since everybody know about National's 'secret agenda' of welfare cuts and selling state assets to anonymous donors, it isn't really a secret agenda. It's like advertising really. It's not a lie if the advertiser doesn't expect the public to believe it. And that's why you should vote National.

United Future. Vote for Peter Dunne because you might get an extra MP who you've never heard from into parliament. But at least it won't be the Christian Democrats!

New Zealand First. Accounting is hard. Really hard. That's why most people pay accountants to handle their finances for them. Who could blame Winston for taking a pugnacious and grandstanding approach to dealing with the media, when it's precisely this approach that has served him so well for his entire political career? So what that only legitimate disciplinary approaches for his alleged misbehaviour need to come from either the Prime Minister or the Privileges committee, both controlled by Labour and amounting to a smack on the back of the hand (note: written before the privileges committee found against Winston). If Labour disciplined him before the election they would be committing electoral suicide by bringing down their own government, and who expects them to put principles above political power? They are politicians. Winston is New Zealands most consumate politician, and really, who in parliament is more interesting? You should vote for New Zealand First.

Labour. Usually the major opposition party campaigns on a 'get the buggers out' platform. You should vote for Labour because they've apparently forgotten that they are the incumbent government and are arguing for re-election primarily to protect the treasury benches from National. And charges that they are a tired party with no new legislative ideas (having passed fewer pieces of legislation in the last term than any government in the last 20 years) are ridiculous. Who cares that in the last term they have frequently resorted to the delaying parliamentary tactics usually used by the opposition to obstruct legislation simply because they don't have any other pieces of legislation ready to be debated next. They are not National. And that's why you should vote for Labour.

Jim Anderton and whatever he's calling his party at this election. You should vote for him because there just might be enough people like you this time round to get Matt Robson back into parliament. Maybe.

Maori Party. You should vote for the Maori Party because they reject all the PC rubbish of recent times. Call a spade a spade, and they do. Multi-Culturalism is absolute rubbish, and serves only to distract people from what's really important, Bi-Culturalism. The Maori Party take a refreshingly different approach to campaigning. They are the only party not slavishly courting your party vote (since they will be creating an electoral overhang in parliament and really don't need party votes to hold the balance of power post-election). And that's why you should give your electorate vote to the Maori Party.

Greens. You should vote for the Greens because although they are not and never will be more than a minor party, every private members bill that passed in the last term of government was a green initiative (although they were definitely helped by the Labour government not having any government legislation that they really wanted to pass, making more private members days available than usual). If you want more social engineering and moral decay in society this is the party for you. Remember the anti-smacking bill? Outrageous. People should be allowed to assault their children as God intended. And climate change? Please, that is the product of media hysteria and has been thoroughly debunked. You should vote Green.

The Frivolity of Evil

2008-10-28T20:10:00.006+13:00

I was passed an article to read this morning by a fellow kiwi home-edder. "The Frivolity of Evil", by Theodore Dalrymple. It's a discussion of the repercussions of the fusion of the welfare state and a culture that says that the highest good is never to feel bad about yourself.

The full article is here.

Now, personally I have grave reservations about abolishing the welfare state. I think the parties on the Right end of the political spectrum have a lot to gain by having a desperate and hungry workforce - when employers have 100 people desperate for the 1 job you've advertised then the employer gets to set any conditions they choose. High unemployment and no welfare sets the stage for exploitation, child prostitution and indentured labour (more honestly known as slavery). On the other hand, welfare sets the stage for selfishness, apathy, eternal adolescence, dependancy and depression.

Right now our society sees the evils of Welfare because that is the system we live with. Some years ago the Political Studies department here had about half a dozen academics - all but one had been born and raised in the West. These 5 were all vehement Socialists/Marxists/Communists etc. The one academic who had been raised behind the Iron Curtain was a fervent Capitalist/Democratist.

We see the evils of the system we are in.

But anyhow, I found the following quote from the article to be very thought-provoking...

...sooner or later the summation of small evils leads to the triumph of evil itself.
...There has been an unholy alliance between those on the Left, who believe that man is endowed with rights but no duties, and libertarians on the Right, who believe that consumer choice is the answer to all social questions, an idea eagerly adopted by the Left in precisely those areas where it does not apply. Thus people have a right to bring forth children any way they like, and the children, of course, have the right not to be deprived of anything, at least anything material. How men and women associate and have children is merely a matter of consumer choice, of no more moral consequence than the choice between dark and milk chocolate, and the state must not discriminate among different forms of association and child rearing, even if such non-discrimination has the same effect as British and French neutrality during the Spanish Civil War.

The consequences to the children and to society do not enter into the matter: for in any case it is the function of the state to ameliorate by redistributive taxation the material effects of individual irresponsibility, and to ameliorate the emotional, educational, and spiritual effects by an army of social workers, psychologists, educators, counselors, and the like, who have themselves come to form a powerful vested interest of dependence on the government.

Randomness and children

2008-10-24T20:48:00.003+13:00

Miss4 helping in the garden

Miss4 has spent the last two or three days in this dress-up dress. It was actually my flower-girl dress from when I was 5, but it is now the firm favourite dress-up. I think she's being a princess most of the time, but it varies.

She now teams it up with a light blue baseball cap, with a dress-up wedding-veil secured over the top of it. Startling, but surprisingly pretty. She got lots of indulgent smiles from strangers when we went to pick up Merl's Grandma from the airport a couple of days ago. Today the dress and hat/veil were complemented by a shoulder purse (containing a small pony), a tote-bag (containing a stuffed zebra, koala, and two toy rabbits), and the blue surgical hair-net she was allowed to take home after her operation - not worn as a hair-net, but brought into service as a special cocoon/cradle for her toy panda and a couple of dinky cars.

I like hanging out with kids. They're so random.

Merl's Grandma is staying with us for just over a week. It is really wonderful to have her with us, as we haven't seen her since Christmas, and every day is precious! She's our girls' only remaining Great-Grandparent, and my heart gets a lovely warm feeling in it when I see the connection they've made with her.

Back to the theme of randomness in children...

Conversation in the car today:

Miss4: Why did M have a pirate party? Why wasn't it a mermaid party?

Me: Well, I guess he preferred pirates. But that's okay, cos you went as a mermaid anyway.

Miss4: He should have had a mermaid party.

Me: Well, it was his party. He can have any sort of party he wants to.

Miss4: What if he'd had a Sky party instead?

Me: That would be cool. Then people could come as clouds or birds or aeroplanes or stars or all sorts of things. What other things?

Miss4: Fairies, and other flying things.

Me: What would you go as?

Miss4: A mermaid.

on holiday

2008-10-17T20:00:00.006+13:00

Our family spent a wonderful 5 days in the North Island visiting Merl's family last week.

Here's Miss 4 playing ball in the sun with Grandma and cousin S. The rules of this game could briefly be summarised as "don't hit people with the bat - hit the ball! The ball!" On the whole, good sportsmanship abounded, but 3 year old boys with a bat in their hand seem to need constant refocusing on the true task at hand!

Miss1 really loved the whole trampoline thing. We have a tiny little one at home - but nothing compares to a 'real' trampoline.

Especially with a ball. Balls make a good thing better.

We even took the opportunity to leave the children for a 'sleepover' with Grandma and Grandpa for one night while we traveled to our old home town for a friend's wedding. It was the first time in 5 years we've been childless. I cannot describe the feeling that washed over me as I realised that no-one, not a single soul, would be calling out for my attention in the night.

'Bliss' would come awfully close :)

I slept like a log until I woke to the dulcet tones of Merl saying "what's the time?" And it was 7.30!!! That's a royal sleep in, that is.

Wedding was lovely, children had behaved well and not been at all distressed by our absence while gone (although Miss1 wouldn't let me out of her sight once we'd returned). All in all a wonderful trip, with the only down-side being that we can't do it more often!

reading in the dark

2008-10-14T19:52:00.003+13:00

It's about three quarters of an hour since the girls went to bed, and I've just discovered that Miss4 is even more of a replica of her mother than I'd thought. She was curled up in the passageway with a book trying to read in the dim light coming through the glass front door.

Hmmmm.

So I sent her to bed with dire warnings of eye strain and short-sightedness (I've been very short-sighted since I was 8 years old), then had a quick conversation with her Dad.

The choice is either to ban night-time reading or to allow it under the covers with a torch (so as not to disturb her sister).

We figure that if she's anything like either of us (and boy is she like us both), she'll disregard the banning of the reading and just continue to read via streetlight and moonlight. So, the torch it is. We shall have to get one of those dynamo ones so we don't go through lots of batteries.

Go the Greens

2008-10-13T21:06:00.006+13:00

Well, if I was to vote in our upcoming General Election purely based on their home education policies, I'd have trouble deciding between the Greens and Act.

NCHENZ, the National Council of Home Educators New Zealand have an "Election 08" section on their website, where they have posted responses they have received from parties to enquiries about their education policies.

Since I feel that I would spend lots of time crying in the shower trying to scrub myself clean after voting for Act, that leaves me with one clear choice.

Okay, so I was probably going to vote for them anyway, but this makes me even happier :)

The other proviso is that I haven't seen the policies from National or Labour. But I think we can guess that Labour (the incumbents) won't move too far from where we are - which would also make me happy. And we know that National wants to bring in national standardised pencil-and-paper testing of every grade level even at primary schools. No word yet on whether that will extend to private schools or home-edders, but I am firmly opposed to this policy even in state schools, so it almost doesn't matter what their home-ed policy is.

As for United Future, whose voting base has generally been conservative Christians, I hear rumours that they want home educators all to operate through the Correspondence School. Hmmm. Not my cup of tea either. And not something that will fly with the bulk of the Christian home educators either I wouldn't think.

24 Oct 08
Edited to add:
United Future have clarified their position. The person who answered a question saying that homeschoolers would all have to work through the correspondence school was under-informed. (I'm guessing that, like many kiwis, he thought that homeschoolers were people who used the Correspondence School).

Anyhoo, UF are supportive of homeschoolers and see no reason to change current system etc etc.

Tracking Wages - A Merl Post

2008-10-07T21:10:00.004+13:00

These graphs seemed interesting to me. From No Right Turn.

ig nobels 2008

2008-10-07T17:10:00.002+13:00

The Ig Nobels are in for this year.

Although the coca-cola and exotic-dancing research subjects have, predictably, caught the imagination of the media, I personally liked the Peace Prize. Imagine needing to dish up a salad while preserving the dignity of the ingredients...

Here there are in full, from the Improbable Research website.

NUTRITION PRIZE. Massimiliano Zampini of the University of Trento, Italy and Charles Spence of Oxford University, UK, for electronically modifying the sound of a potato chip to make the person chewing the chip believe it to be crisper and fresher than it really is.

PEACE PRIZE. The Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology (ECNH) and the citizens of Switzerland for adopting the legal principle that plants have dignity.

ARCHAEOLOGY PRIZE. Astolfo G. Mello Araujo and José Carlos Marcelino of Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil, for measuring how the course of history, or at least the contents of an archaeological dig site, can be scrambled by the actions of a live armadillo.

BIOLOGY PRIZE. Marie-Christine Cadiergues, Christel Joubert, and Michel Franc of Ecole Nationale Veterinaire de Toulouse, France for discovering that the fleas that live on a dog can jump higher than the fleas that live on a cat.

MEDICINE PRIZE. Dan Ariely of Duke University (USA), Rebecca L. Waber of MIT (USA), Baba Shiv of Stanford University (USA), and Ziv Carmon of INSEAD (Singapore) for demonstrating that high-priced fake medicine is more effective than low-priced fake medicine..

COGNITIVE SCIENCE PRIZE. Toshiyuki Nakagaki of Hokkaido University, Japan, Hiroyasu Yamada of Nagoya, Japan, Ryo Kobayashi of Hiroshima University, Atsushi Tero of Presto JST, Akio Ishiguro of Tohoku University, and Ágotá Tóth of the University of Szeged, Hungary, for discovering that slime molds can solve puzzles.

ECONOMICS PRIZE. Geoffrey Miller, Joshua Tybur and Brent Jordan of the University of New Mexico, USA, for discovering that a professional lap dancer's ovulatory cycle affects her tip earnings.

PHYSICS PRIZE. Dorian Raymer of the Ocean Observatories Initiative at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, USA, and Douglas Smith of the University of California, San Diego, USA, for proving mathematically that heaps of string or hair or almost anything else will inevitably tangle themselves up in knots.

CHEMISTRY PRIZE. Sharee A. Umpierre of the University of Puerto Rico, Joseph A. Hill of The Fertility Centers of New England (USA), Deborah J. Anderson of Boston University School of Medicine and Harvard Medical School (USA), for discovering that Coca-Cola is an effective spermicide, and to Chuang-Ye Hong of Taipei Medical University (Taiwan), C.C. Shieh, P. Wu, and B.N. Chiang (all of Taiwan) for discovering that it is not.

LITERATURE PRIZE. David Sims of Cass Business School. London, UK, for his lovingly written study "You Bastard: A Narrative Exploration of the Experience of Indignation within Organizations."

kereru, bruised ribs and puppets

2008-10-06T21:09:00.008+13:00

All features of this last week, which has been moderately eventful, as these things go.

For a start, I spent the latter half of last week waiting to discover whether I had Shingles or Pneumonia. Turns out it was neither (thankfully). I had a bad cold and extremely sore ribs on one side - couldn't cough, laugh or even breathe deeply. Went to Dr who sent me off for a chest x-ray and started me on antibiotics in case of pneumonia, but said he suspected shingles, but wouldn't be able to tell until the rash came up. Spent next couple of days in pain and feeling unwell. People from church prayed. X-ray came back clear. I no longer feel the slightest bit unwell. But ribs are still very sore.

Yesterday I recalled being viciously (albeit accidentally) jabbed in the back by a small person's elbow about the day before my mysterious rib pain began. That sort of thing happens all the time so I'd forgotten all about it. Bingo. So I had a cold and injured my rib-cage. Still, at least I've had the x-ray now and know there's no rib cracked or anything. I'll just need to be careful and gentle for the next few days. Yay for a husband who loves to stay home with the kids! He was great - took most of last week off so I could sit/lie around doing nothing while he took care of the offspring. Good stuff.

On to the kereru (native woodpigeon). These were quite common to see in our neck of the woods when I was growing up, but then almost vanished about 10 or so years ago. Well, they're back, and this pair were spotted in the gum tree in our neighbours house. I love them. They make cool "whoo whoo whoo" sounds with their wings as they fly, they try to land on branches that are ridiculously inadequate and fall off, and they're altogether lovely.

I hope they stay and the gum tree doesn't get cut down this year (or ever). There's a couple of neighbours who hate it with a passion as it shades their sections quite thoroughly even in summer, drops gum leaves every where and threatens to 'self-lop' one of its great branches into their section. I can understand all that - gum trees aren't really great in suburbia (they also don't like other stuff growing near them and inhhibit healthy growth of other plants), but they provide great nesting sites for these beauties. And they suck up huge volumes of water each day. My section has kinda soggy bits all through winter so I'm happy for the gum tree to be taking what it needs.

On to our third, unrelated topic for today. Puppets.

I handed Miss4 a book of 100 things to make with paints and paper and suggested she have a look through for something to do today. She decided to make a 'dancing dollie'. She drew and coloured the picture of the dancer, and showed me where to cut the holes for her fingers. Then she cut out around the dancer and voila - a dancing puppet.

I unearthed a discarded wine cask box from our craft supplies stash and improvised a wee theater using the craft knife, and she was quite taken with it for about 20 minutes this morning.

It's fun introducing her to new ideas - she's seen puppets before, and played with our wee finger puppets that you can see in the photos - but we've never taken the leap to staging a puppet performance ourselves. I'll raise it as an idea tomorrow. The usual pattern is that she'll be uninterested in something when I first mention it, but after it rolls around her mind for a while (and this could be a long while) it may pop back up, seemingly out of nowhere, as a full-fledged interest.

I'd also like to get hold of a prism in the next week or so. We're reading the Magic School Bus Color Day Relay chapter book, and there's an explanation of white light being fractured by a prism, but reading about it, hearing about it and even seeing it on YouTube (I haven't looked, but I'm confident its there) doesn't compare to actually holding the thing yourself and seeing it happen in real life.

e-day - disposing of electronic waste

2008-10-02T18:37:00.003+13:00

Are you in NZ? Do you have old computer or mobile phone bits lying around? (who doesn't...) This Saturday is the day to get them out of your house without them going to the landfill. eDay organisers claim that up to 95% of the collected waste gets recycled in some form or other (only 5% going to the landfill).

Computer waste is a big deal - those little chips and cell-phone bits contain lots of heavy metals and sometimes radioactive waste. Not only are these toxic to waterways, they are really expensive and wasteful to mine for in the first place - much better to keep them cycling through usefully.

From the eDay website...

eDay is a community initiative designed to raise awareness of the hazardous nature of electronic waste (e-waste), while offering an easy way for households to dispose of old computers and mobile phones in an environmentally sustainable manner.
eDay was created in response to a growing concern about the volume of e-waste being dumped in landfills around the country with a potentially toxic effect on the environment.

The event was launched in Wellington in 2006 with an extremely successful pilot sponsored by Dell. Fifty-four tonnes of unused computer hardware were collected in one day. In 2007, eDay was extended to 12 locations throughout New Zealand where a total of 6,900 cars dropped off 415 tonnes of e-waste. This included more than 26,000 computer items including monitors, CPUs and printers.

Click here to find out where your local drop-off point is

The Unschooling Handbook

2008-09-30T15:46:00.003+13:00

While at the library last week I picked up a copy of "The Unschooling Handbook - how to use the whole world as your child's classroom" by Mary Griffiths.

If I wasn't already largely convinced of the practical common-sense nature of 'unschooling', this book would have done the trick. It answers all the common questions a parent might ask when thinking about this approach to their kids' education - including "what about maths?" (and science and reading and writing) and "how do you know if they're learning anything?"

I particularly liked the personal reflections from over a dozen homeschooling parents and kids that she has included. I found myself nodding while reading most of them (not all - if would be a strange world indeed if we agreed with everything everyone says :) ).

All in all, recommended if you even just want to know what on earth 'unschooling' means when it comes to the nitty gritty of what people do all day. Readable, chatty, informative and not remotely intimidating (doesn't use any "eduspeak" that I noticed).

Usborne Young Puzzle Books

2008-09-27T18:57:00.004+12:00

We borrowed the Puzzle Balloon Race from the library yesterday. This is the first time I've seen this series of books and they are right on target for where Miss4 is at. It's great to find something that she can read, and the puzzles are interesting but not too hard for her, but there are some that she can't do, so it stretches her too.

Not sure how long the interest will last once she's done all the figuring out there is to be done - so perhaps better as a library loan than a purchase, but I am very happy that we found them in the library. One thing she has never been great at is actually looking and finding stuff - not a strong visual learner at all - so it's great to have a combination of puzzles. Some are looking at the pictures and find certain things, but some are remembering what was read out earlier in the story, some maths puzzles (if each blast of hot air raises you 50feet, and you need to be 400ft higher than you are now, how many blasts of hot air do you need - we were flabbergasted when Miss4 replied correctly), some maze puzzles etc.

All in all, highly recommended for kids who can read, and like to do puzzly things but just aren't up to the Where's Wally or Animalia type books yet.