Awards

First, let me just say that if you see your blog listed here, consider yourself tagged. I can't go to all 25 blogs individually and comment about these awards, and I think most of these go to my regular readers anyway. :) Second, blogger has been messing with my linking lately, so if you notice broken or wrong links, please do let me know so I can correct them.

Eva, over at Handmade Beginnings recently awarded me with the Honest Scrap award. I am supposed to tell my readers 10 things about myself and then pass the award on to 10 more bloggers who I enjoy keeping up with. Thank you, Eva!

Here goes:

1. Most important thing about me: I am a Christ-follower, who believes that the Bible is the true and accurate Word of God.

2. My dream is to go into full-time ministry in Asia.

3. In college, I pursued my elementary teaching credential. It was during that process (student teaching) that I realized that I wanted to homeschool my children.

4. I have a special place in my heart for those struggling with infertility. I spent the better part of the last two years as a gestational surrogate, and carried and gave birth to fraternal twins in Dec. 2008 for a couple dealing with infertility from my Bible study.

5. It may not seem like it from my blog, but I am terrible at organizing.

6. I like blogging. In fact, I have started at least 5 different blogs, but this one is the most active.

7. I am actually kind of terrified of large dogs. Unfortunately, I've passed this on to Miss O. :(

8. I can speak conversational Mandarin Chinese--pretty nifty, huh? :)

9. Kind of crazy--I've only attended public school for about 7 months of my life. I am the product of private, Christian education.

10. I used to want four kids, two close together, then a gap, and then two more close together. Now that I have my first two, 15 months apart, I don't think I can handle anymore! ;)

And, Sheena, over at Turning Ordinary into Extraordinary and Nicole over at Tired, Need Sleep both gave me the One Lovely Blog Award. Thank you both! :) The rules for this award are that I am supposed to pass it on to 15 more blogs that I have newly discovered and am enjoying.

Coming up with 25 different blogs to pass these awards on to is quite a task, but I am up to the challenge, so here goes!

I'll pass the Honest Scrap Award on to:

1. Boy, Oh, Boy
2. Catholic Christian Homeschooling

3. Crunchy and Green

4. Christian Unschooling

5. Miller Moments

6. The Adventures of Bear

7. Three Queens and a King

8. The Home Teacher

9. Our Homeschool Fun

10. Bubbles, Balloons, and Blessings

The One Lovely Blog Award goes to:

1. Spinner's End Nursery School

2. Sowing Precious Seeds

3. Passport Academy

4. Our Nifty Notebook

5. Fun With Mama

6. Live, Learn, Love

7. A Hundred Happy Things

8. A Bit of This and A Bit of That

9. 1,2,3...Come Homeschool With Me

10.Homeschooling--A Life

11. Too Many Hats

12. One Inch World

13. Satori Smiles

14. Spell Out Loud

15. Fun With the Kiddos

Weekly Workboxes--A New Weekly Feature

Big news here! I'm going to start a new weekly post about workboxes! The workboxes have been working wonderfully for us, and I want to take some time each week and share with my readers exactly what we are working on, and what our workboxes are filled with. In lieu of Tot School (since we have gradually moved away from self-directed learning to a more structured approach), I will be posting a weekly feature with loads of pictures and a list of exactly what was in our workboxes one day a week!

If this is something you would be interested in participating in, please leave a comment so that I know whether it is of interest to my readers. If others would like to make a similar post on their blogs, I will turn my weekly workbox post into a linky for others to share their weekly workboxes as well. If there is no interest in linking up, that's okay too! :) I've searched the web for other workbox linkies and have found a few, but I didn't find one that is just for what I am suggesting here. If you know of one and would like to suggest it please feel free to leave a comment. Oh, and if you have a cute idea for a name for the workbox posts, please suggest it! I'm terrible at thinking up cute names! :)

On to my first weekly workbox post:

Little Bean is doing K4 work:

Here are Little Bean's workboxes for today:

Box 1: Handwriting Without Tears (HWT)--Constructing Mat Man
Box 2: 100 Lessons, Lesson 4 and Bob Book, Set 1 Mac

Box 3: Rush Hour

Box 4: Right Start Math, Recognizing quantities 1-5 without counting

Box 5: Capital Letter Cards and Wood Pieces from HWT (he will do this box together with me and Miss O):

Box 6: McRuffy Science, K, Lesson 3 Arranging by Size

Box 7: Train Book and Puzzles:

Miss O is 3 and doing Preschool/Pre K work:

Here is Miss O's shelf:

Box 1: HWT Wood Pieces, Miss O and Little Bean will construct Mat Man together

Box 2: Foam number puzzles, # 7 and 10

Box 3: Get Ready for the Code, the letter B:

Box 4: Fill and spill

Box 5: HWT K, Capital letter cards, this goes along with Little Bean's Box 5

Box 6: Color sort on rods

Box 7: Letter stamps

Juvenile Xanthogranuloma

You've probably noticed the orange spots beneath Little Bean's eyes and spread across his cheeks. If you haven't, this pic is one of the clearest pictures I have of the spots (it also happens to be one of my all time favorite pictures of him!). :)

When Little Bean was about two, he started to develop very small orange spots around and under his eyes and on his eyelids. Our doctor didn't know what they were, so she referred us to a specialist--a pediatric dermatologist. It took a few months to get in to see the derm, and in that time, the marks were growing fairly rapidly. Of course, we were all concerned that it was something serious, and were anxious to see the derm in person. The derm felt that a biopsy was needed to make a diagnosis, so at two and a half, Little Bean was put under and a punch biopsy was done on the largest portion of the marks. This picture doesn't really show, but on the larger of the marks is a flesh colored, indented circle where the biopsy was done. It was supposed to be only a tiny line scar, but unfortunately, Bean pulled the stitches out in his sleep, and so now it is a much bigger, circular scar.

It was determined that Little Bean has Juvenile Xanthogranuloma, which is basically juvenile acne. It can affect children on any part of the body, usually the arms, legs or stomach, and rarely (like in Bean's case), the face. It does not hurt or itch, it is not contagious, it is not harmful to him in any way, and it is only semi-permanent. It can take up to 10 years to disappear, but the doctor did say that there is no way to predict how long he will have it, and how much it will grow. It is untreatable.

Little Bean doesn't remember his life without his "magic dot", so to him, when he looks in the mirror, "that orange thing" is just a part of his face. I'm so thankful that so far he hasn't been hurt by the questions of others, and that he can accept his looks and be happy about them despite the curious, and often hurtful questions of others. However, as he grows and becomes more self aware, I do wonder if there is anything I can do or say to prevent others from constantly pointing out his "magic dot" or to help Bean feel comfortable answering questions about it.

There are three situations where it normally gets pointed out, and I have pretty much figured out how to respond to the first two at least. Here are the scenarios that we often (I'll say at least weekly) encounter:

1) Another child points it out--"What's that orange stuff on your face?"

2) Another adult points it out--"Oh, honey! What happened to your face?! Did you fall and get hurt?"

3) Those who are already familiar with what it is (family and friends) point it out in his presence by asking me questions like, "Is it growing?", "When will it go away?", "Do you have to be careful about it in the sun?" etc, etc.

At first it made me really uncomfortable to talk about it in front of him, and I never knew what to say without going into a long story, but then I realized that he takes his cues from me. If I am comfortable with his face, so is he. So how I respond, I realized, is SO important. Since I realized this, my response is always something along the lines of, "Oh, that's Bean's birthmark. (even though it isn't a birthmark, that is just the most understandable way to explain what it is). He calls it his magic dot. It's magic because every time I see it I just want to give him a big kiss!" and then I proceed to smother him in "well-placed" kisses. The magic dot thing actually came from Bean. One day he came up to me and asked, "Mom, do I have a dot on my face"? I thought he was asking if he had "eye goo" or something because it was morning, but I couldn't see any, so I asked him where he saw it. He went over to the mirror and pointed out his biopsy scar, which is indeed dot shaped. I reminded him of the story of him going to the doctors and how they took a piece of skin and then sewed him back up. He responded with the question, "Is it my magic dot"? I thought that was a great way to describe it, so ever since then that is what we have called it.

I always wonder why people feel free to comment on this in front of Little Bean. We would never comment on an adult's appearance in their presence, so I don't see why people think it is appropriate to comment on a child's appearance. I also wonder how I can teach Little Bean to respond to these questions on his own and how I can protect him from feeling hurt or self-conscious when other's make these comments and ask questions.

Any advice? Anyone been through something like this?

Look At Them Go!

Total proud mom moment here. The kids are almost finished with their swimming lessons, and both have learned so much! I can tell that they will both still need lessons again next year, but they have progressed quite a bit over the last few weeks, and both are swimming!

Here's Little Bean working on his kickers:

Both kids learning how to make their way across the pool by scooting with their arms along the side:
Here Miss O is jumping in and then turning around and swimming to the side:

Miss O happily waiting for her turn while the teacher works with Little Bean:

Little Bean FINALLY figured out his arms in the last two days. What an accomplishment!

Here's Miss O swimming to the side:

And floating:

Having swim 4 days a week has been really taxing on our schedule, but in the end, it was worth it to see the pride on their faces as they learn these important life skills. I wish we had access to a pool outside of swim lessons so that they could practice their new "moves" once swim lessons are over.

Little Bean's First Lego Creation

Little Bean made his first tiny Lego car the other day. He was so pleased with himself, and I was pleasantly surprised by his attention to detail. You'll notice this is a luxury style sedan comeplete with windshield, steering wheel, front and rear passenger seats, plenty of buttons for the driver to push as well as front and rear cup holders! ;)

Poking Fun

So, Miss O has been terrible about eating her fruits lately. I decided that maybe a little poking would make eating them more fun, so the other day we tried this: I gave each of the kids a tooth pick and a bowl of grapes. They had fun poking the grapes and popping them into their mouths. Miss O even decided her's was a lollipop and was licking it! :) Then she decided to put a grape on each end and eat it that way. Later, we tried it with blueberries, but I can picture it with other foods too (cheese, bananas, etc). This may not be appropriate for the younger ages due to the sharp toothpicks, but for my 3 and 4 year old, it was a lot of fun, and a great way to spice up meal time. Oh, and don't mind the shirtlessness of the kids; it's been hot around here!

Tot School--Special Edition

Tot School went a little differently than usual this week. Remember how I said a while back that I was setting up the workbox system for the kids for school in the fall? Well, it's finished, and the kids have been dying to try it out. We use our office/guest room for the school room, and the kids have been constantly in there looking to see if anything is in the boxes. One night, I decided to fill the boxes just to kind of see how long it would take me to plan every night, and in the morning, both kids were begging to "do school". So, I thought, why not? If anything, it'll get them used to the system for the fall.

We did school activities twice this week using the workbox system, and it's been going pretty well. Ironically, the "fun" boxes have been the only ones the kids complained about. I guess I'm not that good at picking fun activities! I'm trying really hard though! ;) They actually look forward to the ones filled with curriculum stuff instead!?!

Here are some pictures of the boxes filled for the next time we do a school session. Blogger is being a bit stubborn tonight, so the pics aren't exactly in the order I would like them, but you get the idea.

Here's a close up of Bean's shelf with the top three boxes pulled out to see what is inside. I got the numbers from Sue's site, and made the "work with mom" tags myself, using clipart from Word:

Here is a shot of Bean's whole shelf. We are only doing 7 boxes on this day. The tag on #1 is a circle time tag, meaning the three of us will work together on this one:
Here's Miss O's shelf:

And Miss O's shelf and desk. The desks came from an online furniture retailer called Hertz. I looked into getting a kid's table instead, but it was actually much cheaper to do it this way (plus, the desks will grow with them, as the legs extend):

And here's Bean's desk and shelf. The shelves and boxes came from Target. The white rectangle you see on the desk is his "game board". It's where the numbers on the boxes go when he finishes a box. When all the numbers are on the board, he knows he is done with school (all of this is in Sue's book, so be sure to head over there and purchase it if this interests you at all):