Seven years on, this $3.99 investment has really paid off.

Seen here on the inside of a closet door.

So that the monsters can’t escape into the bedroom at night.

As my children grow up I am finding myself having to deal with some tough situations. Do children grow old before their time these days? When I was 10 years old my mother was still dressing me in frilly dresses and wouldn’t let me chew bubble gum. Last summer we were at the pool and there was a baby in the pool, chewing gum. A baby, too young to walk! I am not making this up.

So, we were driving along the other week when suddenly Baby Sister announced that I was going to be a grandmother. Luckily I had eaten that morning and had my wits about me so it did not take me long to remember that she is 5. Turned out she was talking about the future, when I am really old (because I am already old), and she will be living in San Francisco, but she will still love me and will send me postcards. And she will have a baby girl.

Phew. That’s OK then.

But the next thing out of her mouth? She wanted to be go to cheer camp and learn to be a cheerleader.

No harm in that, surely? I can indulge my little angel and sign her up for cheer camp right now! But … it’s just … I didn’t grow up with cheerleaders except as the ditzy sidekicks on American sitcoms, and in my mind cheerleading is on somewhere on a par with pageants. Harmless, but … OMG will they make her wear pancake makeup?

Then we were at the park and mysteriously all my friends had to leave for one fancy engagement or another (or because their toddlers had pooped their pants). And that’s when it all kicked off. First Baby Sister came running up to me, all breathless, to tell me she had a boyfriend, although she didn’t know his name because she couldn’t understand when he said it, she thought it was a funny name! I asked him and his name was Billy. So off she went to play on the big tire with Billy, and Billy’s Mom, complicit in the whole thing, pushing them while they twirled and laughed.

Next the T-Bot came running up chased by two girls who he insisted were called Annie and Oakley and I thought how sophisticated for 7 year olds to give false names. Except that later, as we were leaving, one of them came running up to us and thrust a piece of paper into his hand with her name and phone number and it did indeed say Oakley. Although come to think of it, it may also have been a false number. Sigh. Girls are so worldly wise these days.

So the next morning the T-Bot came to me with his little scrap of paper and asked to put it on the fridge for safe keeping. With an extra strong magnet. I obliged, probing casually, “do you think you might call her?”.

(Not wanting to be an interfering parent here but is seven too young to date?)

Well, Mommy” he said ” It’s just in case I do need to talk to her”. He thought a little more. “Maybe I could call her another day”.

“Yeah T-Bot” piped up Baby Sister “When you get a cellphone!”

The Future. Maybe more than I can handle.

(Scene: In the car coming back from somewhere …)

Baby Sister: Mommy, when I grow up I am going to be a superstar!

T-Bot: Hmmm….. Daddy, what’s your job?

The Daddy: I’m a software engineer.

T-Bot: And Mommy, do you have a job? What’s your job?

The Mommy: You know I have a store. And I look after you people. I have lots of jobs.

T-Bot: Oh… You know, if you don’t like your job you could become a policewoman. Or a pizza seller. Those are natural jobs. Your job is not a real job and neither is Daddy’s.

The Wictor: And the mail carrier!

The Mommy: Why isn’t a store owner real? Does everybody have to be a policewoman or a pizza seller?

Baby Sister: How about being a superstar? T-Bot, superstars sing in rock bands! How about that?

T-Bot: How about a bus driver?

The Mommy: Aren’t computer jobs real jobs?

T-Bot: OK, how about someone who works at Honda?

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And on that note, I would like to show you where The Daddy’s world and my world meet. This is the Era Browser, a whole new way of shopping on Century Finds. It was originally conceived as a showcase of what can be achieved using Microsoft’s recently released Silverlight plugin, but as it happens it’s also a pretty nifty way of browsing my store. Although this first edition won’t be replacing my traditional store just yet, I really see this kind of interface as the future of internet shopping.

So, if you are a geek at heart and/or don’t mind downloading another browser plugin, you can experience the real thing here. Otherwise, I have a few more screen shots over at the Century Finds Blog which should satisfy your curiosity.

You know, seeing as you asked

More photos, today. If you are a cynical, cold-hearted person, just look away.

We started out drawing on our hands because we were learning to spell words with “TH” in them. On the spur of the moment I decided to provide a visual aid by writing “thumb” on the T-Bot’s thumb. Then he wanted all the parts of his hand labeled, so I did.

Which is how he came to draw on my palm (yes, the childish podgy paw is actually mine).

I am not going to pretend that the T-Bot is the most normal of children. If he was a toaster you couldn’t plug him in out of the box and then he would probably burn your toast, just for fun, before flicking it 3 ft into the air.

But he does have a really sweet temperament.

I don’t think I am going to let this boy leave home until he is at least 26.

I think I have mentioned previously that spelling is not the T-Bot’s strong point. On Friday I decided to try  a technique from the book The Visual-Spatial Classroom. I bought this e-book last week in the hope that it might help us with some of our - um - let’s say sticking points in our learning adventure.

The photo above shows our work with the ea sound, or phonogram. I wanted to use a word that the T-Bot would be enthusiastic about, and after looking through his books he chose the word beast. I asked him to copy and illustrate the word, then I wrote it and he made it beastly. We did some visualization, with him studying the page and then shutting his eyes and trying to see it in his mind.

Next we did the same with the word peas. In typical T-Bot fashion, he had to draw 120 peas as his illustration, and in the shape of an elephant. Sigh. Did I ever say homeschooling this child was easy?

Now you are dying to know if the technique worked, arent you? Well, I was semi-hopeful. And I guess it was semi-successful. The next day I asked him to spell beast and he totally missed the ea sound, which was what he was supposed to be learning. However, he also did not throw out a random string of letters in a panic, as he has been known to do in the past. He actually closed his eyes and spelled out b-e-s-t. Not p-o-t. Not l-m-n-o-p.

So we - or the technique - need a little more work. I’m giving this one 3 Stars and a Watch This Space.

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In other news, are you desperate for ways to clean up your vintage china? I thought so! I posted all about it here. You’re welcome.

I didn’t want to like Kung Fu Panda.

I think it was Jack Black who put me off. Quite frankly, Jack Black does nothing for me. And this is one movie where you just can’t get away from him. Considering he is in the title role and all.

Still, The Daddy convinced me to view it tonight (the kids were watching for the 4th time) and I found myself laughing and then I found myself relaxing and … you know … believing. And then, instead of switching off halfway through, which was the original deal, the kids had to stay up late because I wanted to watch the end.

So, my verdict on Kung Fu Panda? You might find yourself liking it, even if you really really don’t want to.
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On that note, The T-Bot has prepared his lesson plan for tomorrow, and was even gracious enough to write it all out for me so that I wouldn’t forget. And then he patiently explained it to me, because, although it is laid out so simply that even a fool could understand it, goodness knows we mothers can be dim witted at times.
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“We need a punching bag, bits of wood so people can kick it apart, and lots of colored belts.

At 10:30 we do the punching class, at 11:30 I kick on wood with my karate class, at 12:08 we give colored belts to everybody. If they get a black one, it means they are a kung fu teacher.

Then we get to drink from the juice and water sprayers and use the claw swingers. ”

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Oh. That’s OK then. I can relax. School for tomorrow is sorted.

And if the recession does cause a crime wave as promised, we won’t need to buy a dog. We’ll all put on our colored belts and throw our claw swingers about.

Hope everybody had a great weekend. Things are extra busy around here, so very quickly, a few photos from the last few days:

The T-Bot. Just got his first loose tooth. Very exciting. It can be hard to live with all teeth firmly cemented in place when you have spent the last few years avidly reading this.

There is one burning question to be answered: “How will the tooth fairy find us?”

Gulp, I wasn’t expecting that one. I answered “The same way as Santa Claus” but I should have stopped to think that one out, because I don’t know how Santa finds us either.

Baby Sister is now eagerly anticipating her first Tooth Fairy visit also. The concept of years is still alien to her, so for her sake I hope she is an early shedder. It is difficult being a middle child, everyone else always gets all the attention.

In the meantime, for two glorious minutes on Saturday, she was the Star of the Show (one of 10 stars actually, but details, details…). She loves being on stage, in fact she loves it so much that she always forgets all her dance moves. But that’s OK. She compensates by ambling around the stage in a very endearing fashion.

And here is my Number Three. Also growing up. It is strange, but also a relief, to no longer have a baby in the house. This weekend he took a break from his usual Ewok impressions to become Obi Wan Kenobi.

Obviously he first had to eat his body weight in M&Ms (I don’t know where he finds them, but they sure do keep him quiet while Mommy is trying to work), have a screaming fit, and be rescued by The Daddy.

The Daddy, by the way, is awesome. He is magic, and I wish he could be around to look after my children all the time. He is like a male Mary Poppins, except he doesn’t clean, fly or sing. Also, he doesn’t wear a dress.

While other parents (Eryn being only one example) manage amazing projects with their children, right now I feel like my preparation time is at a premium, so I am going with whatever The T-Bot thinks up on the spur of the moment.

He never recovered from the sheer delight of the volcano we made during summer, and was determined to repeat the experience. So yesterday we did, only this time we made do with whatever materials came to hand, which meant an empty pepper container wrapped in paper and tape. Behold the cheapy volcano!

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Guess which clever person mistook the yellow food coloring for red?
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Still, all that froth had the desired effect on the dinosaurs: extinction.
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Here is another of the T-Bot’s projects from yesterday.

Toast.
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As in “We have to leave it for 19 days and see what happens” Toast .

What???? It’s a totally valid scientific experiment!  And thanks to IKEA, I didn’t even have to fork out for a petri dish.

We were standing in line at a checkout yesterday morning when the man in front, who had been studying us out of the corner of his eye for quite a while, suddenly turned to us and addressed the T-Bot:

“Hey,” he said, not unkindly. “Can you count?”

In the last few weeks we have fielded all manner of questions born out of curiosity but usually these are in the vein of “Why aren’t you in school?”, “What school do you go to?”, “School out today?”.  To actually be tested on our eddy-cayshun is a new experience.

“Yes,” answered the T-Bot, puzzled. “I can count”.

And just now, as I was uploading 152 photos from the camera to the computer, I found the proof:

We sometimes give our eldest our one and only and extremely indispensable camera, and just let him go to town. The results are usually variable, with one or two excellent shots, some quite good ones, and others that just leave us scratching our heads. He is probably not the next Cartier-Bresson, although may be taking inspiration from Man Ray.

There was the time he took photo after photo of our 1980s era recessed ceiling lights:

Which is probably on a par with the time he took 53 different photographs of his feet. Granted, from slightly different angles. I can’t find them now. Do you think I might have deleted them?

There are plenty of successes though. Hanging on our guest bedroom wall we have an abstract which is actually a T-Bot self portrait. Of the inside of his mouth. And this time we did get some, ermmm… interesting portraits:

But I also found exactly 32 photos of mess, which I am obviously not going to post here because then you will know just what a tip my house has become. If you want to get an idea of the scale of the problem, try here .

I can’t believe how homeschooling has changed our family for the better. I can’t believe that I just wrote that last sentence either, but it is true. We are all so much more relaxed and happy. Starting with timetables -  there is no more scrambling in the morning to be ready for the school bus and I don’t feel I have to be strict about bedtime either, worried about how tiredness could affect the T-Bot’s performance the next day.

But obviously that is not the whole story. Mainly we are no longer on tenterhooks. Will he be upset going to school? Will he come home with accusing notes from the teacher today, detailing how he refused to work, neglected to work, was sent to the principal’s office? Notes full of undertones about how he is lazy, unmotivated? Will he climb off the school bus with his little hands balled into fists, angry? Will he wail all the way home, unattended, until he finally reaches a safe place where someone will give him a hug? Or worse, arrive home his face shuttered, eyes blank?

That is all I will say about before. We are now firmly in after and everything is OK. Home schooling would not even have been a possibility for me if the T-Bot was not a joy to have around the house. After a few short weeks at home he is calm, serene. When I tell him it is time for school, he sighs.  “Oh maaaaan!, not spelling! You know I don’t like spelling!”. But he sits and he cooperates (mostly … he is after all, a six year old boy and a little quiet resistance should always be expected… ), as we sound our way through words, even though it seems like torture to him.

The T-Bot is having trouble mastering spelling. He has no such troubles with math, or reading or science. His bedtime reading right now is an adult book, “The Human Body” and he has chosen to study in depth the chapter on pregnancy and birth. Thankfully, conception is not included. Let’s leave those explanations until he is seven.

Today we discussed ultrasounds and I showed him the first ever photos I ever saw of him, 20 weeks before he was born. In First Grade the school part of homeschooling should take up about an hour a day but between the struggle with spelling and all the extra research we have been doing we usually overrun by hours.

I have had my moments of panic, and they take me by surprise because panic is not really my thing. The problem is not with the homeschooling as such, it is with the impact it has had on my time. Hours a day which would previously have been mine to spend working, doing housework and running errands are now no longer there for the taking. I struggle to keep downstairs tidy while upstairs almost every single toy my children own is on the floor. Every evening I clear a path to their beds with my foot. There are piles of laundry in every nook and cranny and some usually sitting waiting in the washing machine. We have three Apple remotes and all of them are lost. Every day The Wictor asks for his favorite show on Apple TV and I lose another 10 minutes looking searching fruitlessly for those remotes before giving up.

But then the family rallies around. Today The Daddy arrived home to find me angrily pulling clothes out of the washing machine and immediately left with Baby Sister on a mercy dash to the supermarket for licorice, ice cream and fruit cobbler. When they returned, Baby Sister gave me big hugs and then all three children went off quietly into the yard to play. They play together so well these days. They have become a team. Somehow the washing got finished, the dinner got cooked. Bathtime and Bedtime passed smoothly and I decided to give myself the evening off. So really, all’s right with the world.

And then the change in the T-Bot makes it all worthwhile. This afternoon I asked him if he was happy. Usually this question would be met with a shrug, but he gave me a big grin and said simply

“Yes. You are taking good care of me”.

Could a parent ask for more?