My DH has avoidant attachment thanks to neglect as a baby, and he *hides* from people by going into a shell of distraction using tv or some such. I wish he's hide with something quieter. But I hope to help him work on overcoming it now that we finally figured out the problem. I asked him to read "Giving the Love That Heals" by Harville Hendrix.

Thank you, cafelattee! I'm bookmarking this site for reading later. Right now it's time to bake cupcakes for yard full of little boys. :D

I concur. Antonia, you sound as if you are running on empty. Do you have a good friend who can help you gain perspective and who can appreciate you and refresh you? I so sympathize! You as a mother have to give, and give. It's essential to pause frequently to refill your own tank. And just putting one foot in front of the other is no little feat. (Aha! A pun!) Seriously, it is how the world goes 'round. I saw an interview with a great British movie director once and he said something I found a profound insight. "It's easy to be a hero in a crisis! Anyone can do that. It's being reliable through the little things day after day that is hard." Your children and your husband will rise up and call you blessed for your gifts to them through this hard time. And we think you're pretty great, too. :grouphug:

When I read your title, I was thinking you meant high school, but from the comments I see you mean home school. I think classical education is a mentor-led education. Where we draw children into a love of the good, the true, and the beautiful. And a rigorous math and Latin program. ;) Go read the latest edition of "The Classical Educator" over at the Memoria Press site. SWB has an article there, as well as Cheryl Lowe on how to teach Latin and Martin Cothran on how classical education differs from current public school theory. Oops, I see they don't post current issues on their site, only past ones. Well hurry and sign up for their catalog/newsletter/magazine/whatever-you-call-it. http://www.memoriapress.com/newsletter/ Grammar, poetry, athletics, music, Latin, math, and history (ours is deeper and slower than SWB's recommendation, just because I like it that way). I try to add some writing, spelling, and science in there too. We never did as much narration and dictation as SWB recommends, and I'm sorry we didn't. The goal is a healthy mind (oriented to love the good, the true, and the beautiful) in a healthy body, with nobility of character. This last is more a function of my role as parent than the educator role. It's monitoring, correcting, listening, teaching, and loving.

Schola optima studium librorum. The best school is the study of books. And for fun: A scholar is just a library's way of making another library. - Daniel Dennett in Darwin's Dangerous Idea

Perfectly well put, Tami. One of the keys to shedding an overabundance of self-consciousness is to put your focus on helping someone else feel more comfortable. Once you realize that we're basically all in the same boat, however we express ourselves, as extraverted or intraverted, all of us share a nervousness and wish to be liked for ourselves. The fakey-bake ones (LOL) just as much as the obviously floundering ones. They just work harder at hiding it. ;) I'm considered very sociable and outgoing by others, but my secret is that I know The Big Secret: we're all vulnerable and worried and scared. So, stick out your hand, look for projects to try that bring you together with like-minded ladies, and keep trying. As Tammy said, not everything will work, so don't expect the first attempt to be the last. It's a process. And others will be so grateful to you for starting the ball rolling. Because they have A Big Secret. :D

Summer has interrupted our read-aloud routine. I am unhappy. Reading aloud is my favorite thing. I need to just ignore the moans and groans and rally the troops (both of them) and force them to listen to something good. They secretly love it too.

Magic Cabin toys (Magiccabin.com) has wonderful toys that encourage imagination and old-fashioned fun. Outdoor toys http://www.magiccabin.com/productcollections.asp?viewresult=viewall&group_code=333556&sales_channel=1004&section_id=1&join_key=556&body_sc=&gc=333556 Tire swing wooden swords & shields (my boys *loved* these - very sturdy & well-made) http://www.magiccabin.com/magiccabin/product.do?section_id=0&sc=1004&bc=1004&pgc=379&cmvalue=MCD|CROSSSELL|PRODUCT|35 rope ladder & pulley pop-up tent balancing board mini trampolene water slide Those were some of the best years; the motto of Magin Cabin is "Childhood's purest treasures" and they are. :001_smile:

:thumbup: Very nice, very nice. I'm going to remember at least . . . well no, I'm going to forget all of these, but I enjoyed reading them.

You're a good egg, Pam. :cheers2:

Woke up waaay early and got a jump start on chores. Wait, does that count as being for me? Dunno, but it sure makes me feel good. :D I love hanging the clothes out to dry on a cool morning like we're enjoying the last couple of days. It's magic. Reading Peter Kreeft this morning too, and he says how those beautiful precious moments of joy also bring us sadness, because we want to fully enjoy them, to taste everything about them, but time is a river that pulls us onward toward death, and everything passes away. It gives a melancholy glow to all beauty. Philosophy in the morning . . . I love it. :D

Taking notes for my resources notebook. Thanks to all who posted.

We have a trap set on our kitchen counter all summer. I've found a cone made of the slick material I originally bought as a non-stick liner for my baking pans works wonderfully well. A little apple cider vinegar at the bottom. I'm going to try the trick of taping the cone to the top of the glass to prevent any tiny gaps. My friend alerted me to a better success rate at smacking them if your hands are wet first. Sure enough, wet hands meant a better kill rate. :D

I don't suppose the employee who chose the SpongeBob book was really thinking about much other than that it was popular. He or she didn't have a philosophy of children's education or literature. But I do. And I see people like this as having a responsibility to children to *think* about more than popular, more than how to make a buck. Maybe that's what the businessmen in charge of the bookstore are thinking of. But it's wrong. Wrong to push cr*p instead of good books when you have the chance. Our culture will push the cr*p enough without extra help from story-time readers. It just makes me want to climb atop my soapbox and hold forth about the need for beautiful words and images to feed small souls and minds. Or maybe I'll stay in my little WTM corner of the world where I'm preaching to the choir.

Old-school chest freezer here. My grandmother taught me how to defrost mine. It should be done when the ice gets an inch thick at the top. The less you open it, the less frost there will be, since it is from outside air condensing on the sides it collects near the top. Our freezers have always been in the garage, so this is how Grandma said to do it: To defrost, set up a nice clean table nearby with something to protect the surface if it isn't plastic. Have big kettles of water boiling on the stove, and a hair dryer and plastic spatulas ready. Now unplug the freezer, empty the freezer onto the table, and start pouring water over the ice on the sides. It will melt off quickly, so you want to be pouring in a very controlled way, not splashing and sloshing. Use a teakettle or such so you can control the flow. Use your spatula to help loosen the ice and knock it off into the bottom. If you run out of water, use the hair dryer. Now you either hook the drain spout to a garden hose and drain that way, or (what we do) tip the whole shebang over and pour it out onto the garage floor. Now you wash out the interior very quickly with a sponge and sponge clean. Mop up the water from the bottom. That's it. Turn on the power, and return the food to the freezer. I use plastic laundry baskets to organize the food. Meats go bottom left, baking supplies go bottom right. Vegetables and dairy goes top left, and breads and juices go top right. So loading and unloading is pretty simple, if very heavy. ;) Total time not including gathering supplies, about half an hour. I need someone to help tipping the empty freezer. My 12 year old serves the purpose very well. I love mine. I don't do freezer cooking due to picky eaters, but I save much moola by stocking up on loss leaders and sales on expensive items.

A lot of the cost is personal choice. I've read lots of recipes for natural cleaners that call for essential oils. Why? So that the cleaners smell like flowers, or oranges, or some such. Not for me, thank you very much. I don't waste money on teeny bottles of smell unless it's from a fancy-schmancy perfumer like Jean Patou and I get to dab it behind my ears. :D My natural cleaner of choice is vinegar. Pour it in a spray bottle and off you go! For cleaning vinyl floors or scrubbing kitchen grease/oil, it's a capful of ammonia in a big dishpan of hot water. Yes, it stinks, but only for a minute, then the scent is gone, and I'm left with a kitchen that doesn't smell of anything at all. Baking soda doesn't cost much in place of toothpaste. It's an acquired taste, but I don't mind it. My laundry detergent is washing soda, borax, and salt. Can't get cheaper than that. My carpet spot cleaner is rubbing alcohol. Again, cheap. I use cheap shampoo, so I can't comment on cost for natural replacements. I have friends who are happy with baking soda and apple cider vinegar. So I conclude that people who spend more on 'natural' cleaners are doing so because they choose to. It's certainly not necessary.

Bleh. It seems as if ninety percent of the items in the local big-box children's dept are cartoon tie-ins. We're living in a golden age of children's literature, and most of what is on the shelves is trash.

Oh, Carol, I loved Motherwear too. Those were the best by far. :001_smile:

Do you know Jacqueline Mitchard? She's a novelist, and a mother of several children. I knew her as the author of a column in the Milwaukee Journal when we lived there. One of her columns was about how when she and her DH attended preparation for birth classes, an icebreaker question was "What characteristic would you most like for your child to have?" and most answered something very noble and generic. Mitchard said she reduced the whole room to a shocked silence when she said, "Beauty." Most things you can feel, as a mother, that you can have an impact on as your baby grows. A good character, good health habits, intellectual skill (if not the raw material :tongue_smilie:). But one thing can't be changed much: your looks. And good looks have an undeniable positive effect on how the rest of your life goes. Good looking people are happier, have more friends, enjoy life more on many different metrics, and even earn higher salaries. (I don't know that there's any research that says they are more virtuous, but as a mother, I think I have quite a say in how that training program goes.) It's a gift. What you do with it is up to you, but Mitchard's point was that she couldn't *do* anything about it, so she could at least hope for it to occur naturally. Symmetry, youth, and good health are the golden triad of beauty, male and female. They represent good reproductive health, and every society in the world ever studied values those three things. No culture values an asymmetric face, which is correlated highly with genetic mutations. No culture values old people as marriage partners, unless they bring very high status. Good health is a universal goal. And after reading John Malloy's "Dress For Success" you'll never underestimate the power of our public presentation to make a good first impression. On a first meeting, no one can know if you're nice or mean, weak-willed or courageous, flighty or intellectual. Our interior self is not available without a longer acquaintance, and I think it's silly for people to bemoan snap judgements. We all make them, because we must. What is problematic is when those snap judgements are not amenable to change. As a previous poster said, we grow to love those whom we admire, and they seem more beautiful to our eyes, while "Handsome is as handsome does."

Fixed costs determine whether living on half is possible or not. Buy a house that takes 1/3 of your take-home pay and you're not going to save half.

forty-two, you are crackin' me up over here. :lol: Love it. Go LLL!!!

Or just check her book out of the library and use that as your springboard. I was rarely on the computer when I began and only checked my e-mail once every few days. I only read the testimonials. Those were powerful for me.

I only ever used a baby and a t-shirt. The baby covers my tummy, and the t-shirt covers my booKs. Well, that's after baby has figured out how to latch on properly. Until then, I was pretty much n*de from the waist up much of the day & night. :D IME, nursing covers are a lot more obvious than simply lifting and latching. They practically scream "booKs in use!" Whereas we minimalists look as if we're holding a baby unless you are scrutinizing the scene, and know what to look for. ;) There, there, you asked for advice from people who use covers and therefore *want* to use them. So I'm hijacking, I suppose. My bad. Feel free to ignore my ramblings. :lol:

I exhausted myself in scrubbing it all to get it clean, then wanted to relax for a while. So while I was relaxing, the house got messy again. It was all-or-nothing for me. I read everything I could get my hands on (um, can you identify one of my problems? :D) about how to get clean and stay clean. Two sources of info and help stand out head and shoulders above the rest for me: Deniece Schofield and Marla Cilley (Flylady). Deniece's books about household organization were more than the usual de-cluttering advice (as good as that is). It was about making my home's storage spaces more useful and logical, so that I could enjoy them. It made putting things away easier to do on a consistent basis. If putting away the silverware & kitchen tools upon unloading the dishwasher means that you have at least 10 minutes of hard work pushing and straining to fit it all in, then you are going to put off unloading the dishwasher, eh? Good organization makes putting away the dishes easy & quick. So you can then begin to make it a habit -- and succeed. That's where Marla Cilley excels. People who are all-or-nothing will dismiss her method because they don't like all the e-mails. H*ll, if that is the only thing standing between you and a peaceful, tidy home, don't you think it's worth doing some button-pushing every day to delete unneeded e-mails? And they ignore the point of those e-mails, which is to slowly transfer the reminder from external (e-mail) to internal. Remind you of how we try to train our children? Hmmmm? So, here's how to do it: De-clutter every day, a little at a time. Organize your storage spaces using the wonderful Deniece Schofield's advice. Begin to put in place morning routines and evening routines, checking your calendar and the weather forecast every day. Once those routines are in place, begin adding more routines, such as a mid-day tidy of your kitchen or a weekly vacuum of the family room. Give yourself a set amount of time to work on one area of one room each day, if possible. One hour per day is not unreasonable if you need to work yourself out of a deep, messy hole. Use outside help if you can afford to, as a motivation and time-saving boost to your deep-cleaning efforts: starting with a clean carpet makes a habit of frequent vacuuming emotionally easier to sustain. My friends and I have helped one another with big chores like window-washing or weeding the flower beds. It goes so quickly and is energizing to work with a friend rather than alone. (I'm convinced we're biologically meant to work this way.) So that's my big fat advice column. Take what works, and leave the rest. :tongue_smilie:

Nice article! I enjoy acting as a mentor to other homeschoolers. I have used the insights of the people on this board as my own mentor. They answered questions I didn't even know I had. :001_smile: I was just going through my bulging file of good forum posts I've printed out over the years. They are truly inspiring and helpful. I haven't encountered very many other people in real life who are interested in delving deeply into theory. It's more 'what is a good spelling program?' or 'who is Charlotte Mason anyway?' I can answer those questions, but I long to move people further into the why of homeschooling, especially classical homeschooling. Most people just don't work on those deeper levels. They live a lot higher up. :glare: I'm spoiled from spending so much time here with y'all over the years. :D