The holidays are upon us!

We aren't big holiday celebrators.  Honestly, we forget most of the time until someone reminds us!

This year however, we started off the Christmas season with a bang!  We went to a local-ish tiger sanctuary!  They had a really cool drive thru holiday décor thing, plus you could see the animals, ride a carousel, and my personal favorite: MAKE SMORES!

Yes, you read that right.  I went for the smores.

The rest stresses me out.

Anyway, it was cold, kiddo loved the carousel, and the smores were delicious.

But you aren't here for me to ramble.. you want pictures.  So, here are our adventures!

Look up top!  That is a tiger in there!!

I think tractor Santa and fishing Santa were my two favorites. By far!

We also got to see a lot of animals.  The white tiger could possibly be a liger, we were unsure.  And the orange tiger was intensely stalking the kids.  It was very creepy how intense he was.  Needless to say, I felt like I should move on and give him the respect he deserves.  So we did.

We did ride the carousel twice, but those pictures didn't turn out.

A beautiful accident, however, was some of my light pictures turned out like art pieces.  I am so amused by them!

And of course, all the stuff to do, and baby girl found the lightbulbs the most interesting.

All in all, a decent experience!  

Book Review: How Children Learn by John Holt

So I've finally finished How Children Learn by John Holt.  

I really wanted to love this book.  So many homeschoolers sing the praises of John Holt, like a homeschooling guru.  I had so much hope for this book.  

And I hated it.

Not the content so much.  It was kinda interesting to read his perspective on things.

But the format was so fucking annoying to me.  

And maybe it's my dyslexia rearing it's ugly head.  Maybe I found it difficult to read because of how he formats things like a diary.  Maybe I just don't care to read other people's journals...

Any of those things are an option.

But Honestly I found it so hard to get through the entire book that I was focused on the difficultness and really can't speak much to the actual book.  

I don't remember what I've read.  And to me that is a sign of a badly written book.  

I take that back.  I do remember that he stresses that children are natural learners who don't need abstract concepts to learn.  They need concrete reality.  And I agree with that.  

But that's what I took away from the book.  And while that is an awesome take away, I already knew that.  That was already something I believed. So really it was no help to me.

And I'm so sad about this.  I wanted to read this book and give it to my husband as a book to help him understand why I think homeschooling is the best option for us.  

But this was not the book for me.  

I encourage you to still check it out!  I mean, perhaps you can read these diary style entries and find them easier to follow.  

Lazy Sunday

One of the best parts of the weekend is the lazy Sunday, right after baby girl wakes from nap.

This particular Sunday she decided grapes and YouTube videos were in order.  She watched her favorite YouTube family and ate some yummy snacks.

She was so enthralled by the new video posted.

And of course, Bea was by her side!  Grapes, good videos, and Bea... life is complete for this one!

What's on her shelves right now!

This is an ongoing theme in our household.  What is on her shelves right now?

Recently we did a big cleaning of the house, putting away unused toys, getting everything moved upstairs and seeing what she truly wants to play with.

Our big themes right now, by her own choosing, is the alphabet and balls.  We've also set up 2 complete shelves for her with different materials on them.

This is the newest shelf we've just put together.  Originally this shelf was going to be used for her kitchen stuff, but we found that was not going to work right now.  

This is currently what is on those shelves.  Two books about animals, she is loving these!  And then her bell set and her shape hape toy.  These get a ton of use currently.  

This is her big shelf that I have written about before.  We have slimmed it down significantly.  We realized we were overwhelming her with options!  As you can see she still has the pile of stuffed animals/dollies and the big bear.  

 This is a breakdown of everything on that shelf.  From the big picture you can see her wooden rainbow and a rainbow stacker toy.  As well you can see in the bottom left corner her object permanence block.

These there is a small section for books.  I have no clue why I cut off the big book laying down.  That is a mythology book for her from her island.  The other books are board books she enjoys.

Also on that top shelf you can see her giraffe bead maze and two wooden cars she fell in love with.
Next to that is her grey bin, filled with balls.  She is a ball fanatic and loves throwing, bouncing, and catching them.

 Then you can see her alphabet work.  This is kind of a "let's see if this works!" adventure.  She is all about her alphabet, so we placed an alphabet book down with wooden alphabet blocks and her favorite Elmo moveable ABCs.  So far she's not seemed interested, but I'm going to leave it be for now.

Finally in the living room is her pikler triangle.  She still loves to climb and this is the safest way for her to do so.  Best money we spent.  

Not pictured is her mini trampoline.  We have gone back and forth on if we want this in our living room or not.  She enjoys it, but she doesn't always respect the space and the trampoline, wanting to use it for things it's not meant to be used for.  As of right now, we have put it back down here because she has so much energy that jumping helps her focus.  

Her shelves are a constant work in progress.  We are getting ready to start introduction of matching cards and nomenclature cards (probably right after the new year) and so once again her shelves will change to fit that work. It is always awesome to go back and see how her shelves have changed over time.  

But Grandma Tala says not to listen...

So one of the weirdest Moana controversies I've read about is the theory that Grandma Tala tells Moana to ignore her father and do whatever she wants.

I can't understand how anyone could feel that way.


The lyrics of the song that people say have the offensive idea in it is :

You are your father's daughter
Stubbornness and pride
Mind what he says but remember
you may hear a voice inside
and when that voice starts to whisper
to follow the farthest star
Moana that voice inside is who you are.


Think about that line!  How amazing to get that wisdom from your grandmother.

Listen to your parents, but someday you'll begin to hear your own voice. So follow that voice.

And yet people complain that she's telling Moana to not listen to her parents.


I kind of want to scream when I hear that!  It's like people just refuse to pay attention to what is actually being said so they can feed their own ideology.

hmmmm...

I hope some day my daughter stops listening me because she's found her voice inside.

I hope some day my daughter realizes that she has her own driving force for why she does what she does!

How awesome.  How exciting.

This is the goal.  To be able to say "what do you think you should do?" and giving her the gift of self regulation.

So people, please stop maligning Moana over your inability to understand the underlying morals that are being taught.

And Baby girl, please grow up to listen to your inner voice!

Creating my own

One of the things we plan to give baby girl is her language.

Yes, she will speak English, because we do.  But she will also speak her (birth) parents language as well.

The only problem is we've had to learn it and let's be honest, it's not easy.

But we power through.

As Montessorians, we hope to incorporate her language into all of our material.  The problem is that her language is not widely spoken.  And so we've had zero luck finding anything in her actual language.

Which means I've had to create it.

And holy cow, this is so much fun!  And so frustrating as well!

That said, currently we have color cards and number cards.  I am working on number sheets as well.  I am trying to make this as painless as possible, but sometimes you deal with a little pain to make sure your children have the best.

Now if I could only find manipulatives that don't leave out the entire Pacific Islands, that would be great.  I do not have the wood working skills to tackle that aspect of creating materials!

Surgery Recovery

Much like everything else, recovery from this surgery has been slow going.

This surgery was a life saver for me, no exaggeration, and for that I am forever grateful.

But with that surgery has come a lovely MRSA infection.

Then holes at the incision line.

And then extreme nausea with the antibiotics.

And holy heavens the amount of antibiotics I've been on.  At this point I've been on antibiotics 4 months.  My guts hate me so much right now.

The switching doctors to get this better taken care of.

While simultaneously making sure no one uses my story to bad mouth my surgeon, who is amazing and I would never want a fluke like my surgery to damage her reputation.

And all this adds up to a very unhappy me, trying not to puke on everyone, taking a million and one precautions to avoid transferring MRSA to my family, and sooooo much more..

Yet I am happy.

I am the happiest I've been in a long time.

Because it's finally over and I can function as a human being again.

Isn't that awesome?!

I'm never going to be 100% happy with anything that goes on at my incision site, there just isn't enough skin to make it look "good".  But that's okay.

I'm not sure I'll ever have feeling back there again, because the swelling has caused so much damage.  But that's okay too.

Recovery is slow, and I have had to process a lot of shit during the last 4 months.  But I'm alive.  I'm getting healthier and stronger every at.  I am finally happy.

I think that's a pretty good outcome for any surgery.

Rewilding

I am intrigued by a new to me concept, rewilding.

Rewilding (link) is described as:

"means restoring ancestral ways of living that create greater health and well-being for humans and the ecosystems that we belong to. Many things lead people to rewilding — concern over ecological collapse or economic uncertainty, health problems, a nagging sense of something missing in life, or a desire to “save the world” — but from those starting points we come together in a desire to rewild our homes, our communities, and ourselves. Rewilding learns from the examples of indigenous people past and present provided by anthropology, archaeology, and ethnobiology. It means returning to our senses, returning to ourselves, and coming home to the world we never stopped belonging to."

There s a lot of interesting ways people are rewilding themselves.  

We are just dipping our toes into the concept, but I find that by letting baby girl spend time in nature, every day, even if it's just a walk around our concrete jungle, her behavior and attitude are so much better.

We still spend a lot of time at the local parks, which some say is not wild enough, but for us it's perfect to start with.

Spending time outside is the number one thing to do to rewild yourself.  Turn off the TV and put the phone down and go play.  And honestly that is what it is, just a bunch of fun play! 

It's also stepping aside and letting her do it.  I struggle with this one a little bit.  I absolutely trust her in every way, but I also know she is smaller than a lot of other kids.  But I have to learn to let go to give her confidence.  That's my goal.  To give her the confidence she needs to rock life!

And of course sometimes she's going to get stuck and need her Papa.  This is the last picture I took of our day at the park because it was here that she turned around and asked me for help.  And then we just continued to play together as long as we could!

Rewilding is new to us, but hopefully it's something we learn to do with gusto!

Halloween

Tis the season is upon us for the night of spooky and scary fun and candy!

Baby girl went as Moana.

In all her Islander glory.

And she rocked it!

Her costume was a bit big on her, so what you can't see is how many safety pins are holding it together in the back!  But it worked!

And of course the hair.  Moana's hair was always perfect in the movie, so of course ew took a little time to make sure her hair was perfect and would stay that way all night.  

And once trick or treating is over it's all about changing into the comfy clothes to hand out candy and watch fun Halloween movies while nomming on some chili and hot apple cider.  This is how traditions are made.

I hope you all had a safe and productive Halloween.