Romulus and Remus Come Alive

Today, as I was reading Famous Men of Rome (Haaren and Poland), St. Nick announced that he knew this story. It's in our book of myths! I got it and we found the page of the Romulus and Remus story. Then St. Nick abandoned his Legos and got paper and a pencil to draw a picture. A Cute, starkly cubist* picture of an animal with two people riding it, and a very angular (almost Aztec?) sun and clouds.

He then dictated a poem that I wrote down. Here it is:

The Wolf and the Babies
by St. Nick

This is the wolf,
This is the sun,
These are the babies on his back
When the clouds
Run in their run.

His favorite part of the Romulus and Remus story, however, was not the wolf. Rather, it was when the boys grow up and return to cut off Amulius's head.

*It's interesting to me how St. Nick seldom tries to draw things realistically. His drawings are very angular, but with contrasts of curves, and even when he's drawing something "real" like his brother, the drawing will be very much an impression - self-consciously so. Funny since we've not studied art at all yet. I know I was always trying to capture the thing as realistically as possible at his age (and still now, on the rare occasion I try). I don't know what this says about him as a person, if anything, but I like it.

The House of the Spider Robot Book I: Shrinking Attitude

Shrinking Attitude: Getting Away From the Evil Spider Robot
By St. Nick, age 7 (transcribed by Mom)

It all starts with one mom and one dad and one sister and two boys. But one time when they were driving in the car, they smashed into another car. But the car transformed into a Giant Evil Spider!

But until it's done transforming, it shakes the car and the robot is really strong. Everybody falls out but the robot catches them with his laser. He takes them back to his science place and turns them into spiders. Now it's up to one person to rescue them and to turn them back into humans.

The one person who can defeat the Evil Spider is ...

The Super Hero ...

Mud Pie!!

The Super Hero Baby Mud Pie has super powers. She can spray super poop diapers at the Evil Spider. And she has super stinky powers and the spider will get stinky and have to take a bath. She can rescue anybody.

But one thing - the spider hid the people in the snow outside.

The Evil Spider wants to get rid of the Super Hero Mud Pie. He set some traps for her. He's in his lab trying to get rid of the people that were in the car and the car is now an Evil Minion that he can use to get rid of the Super Hero Mud Pie. She has to battle it before she can get to the lab to rescue the people he has in his evil clutches.

She goes into the lab and the Evil Car Minion is asleep.

But Mud Pie has her partner, Super Hero Fish! His super powers are: he has a Lego-gun-train and super smiley face and super long hair so he can curl up with the spider, and his body can stretch over 100 feet. But Super Hero Fish is really sick so he has to stay home. He got infected by the Evil Spider with some sick material stuff.

So Super Hero Mud Pie is on her own.

Come back soon for the next installment in our exciting saga, House of the Spider Robot!

Another December Birthday Boy!

Yesterday was St. Nick's birthday - seven years old!!! We'd had quite the snow storm overnight, and St. Nick was so happy we wouldn't make it to church ... He'd been dreading his class singing to him all week. But, we are not so deterred by five or so inches of snow. We went anyway! But we let the birthday boy sit with us, where he happily doodled throughout the whole service.

We raced home to get everything in the oven for the party - Grandma and Grandpa couldn't stay past 1pm (Grandpa's work), so I didn't have much time. I'd also neglected to decorate the cake! I'd say my rushed attempt at building Candyland in cake form (thanks to Taste of Home for that idea!) went pretty well.



It sure tasted good to most of us (Dr. D doesn't like candy, so he picked it off. Strange man, he is).

The little Candyland man drowning in Chocolate was a special tribute to Grandma, who in turn got that slice for her own. Grandma sure likes her chocolate!



And there had to be gifts. What's birthday without days and days and days of, "Mom, give me a hint! Please!!!" "Ok, it starts with the letter 's'" St. Nick wrote down 's'. "Next letter 'u'" St. Nick wrote that down. Then he wrote down the rest of the letters: RPRISE. "AW, MOM! That's not a HINT!"



Ha! What a delight to see his joy when he Finally got to rip into those packages. The Lego dinosaur is almost completely assembled, by the way. If St. Nick hadn't have his last Camp Roger class today, I'm sure it would be done already. Amazing!

Note to Self: Watch the Outgoing Mail

I just found an envelope on the table - I hadn't put it there, so where did it come from? Sealed, unlabled, but something was inside. I opened it and there was an order form from one of our many toy catalogs. St. Nick hadn't written on the form, but had filled in the return address.

From: "MISHUGIN"
Address: "1324"
City: "GRRAND REPISSG"
State: "USA"

I'm still laughing! Especially the Grr.

Mom, Take a Picture of My Mouth, Reading!

Well, OK!

Hard Hearts

Tonight Dr. D read some of the Beeke book (Building on the Rock vol. 4), a story about a boy with a hard heart who didn't believe what he was taught and ran away and so on. St. Nick was very disinterested in this story - he took an active interest in being disinterested, actually.

I had been reading to Little Fish, so I asked St. Nick for a summary - he said he didn't remember, so Daddy told about it. And while he was telling me about the story, St. Nick began to ask questions and soon he was crying! He didn't like the boy having a hard heart and running away!

Well, I cuddled him and asked him about his feelings and he started getting angry, saying it was Daddy's fault for reading these mean stories. His tears slowed as he moved his emotions onto someone else. Instead of being defensive or upset, I talked about this, and suggested maybe he felt that the boy with the hard heart was him. Waterworks started again. He did feel that, and felt afraid of being alone and I think just generally afraid of what would happen if his heart stayed hard.

This became such a good moment to talk and pray and have hugs and kisses. This is the focus of homeschooling, I think. To soften that heart for all of us.

First Lessons in Economics

Late last week my oldest lost his second tooth. It was quite the Event, complete with tears and blood and several hours of wiggly-tooth anxiety. St. Nick does everything at 110%, including losing baby teeth.

Hopes for the Tooth Fairy sustained him through it, and his hopes were not disappointed. But with a second tooth, like with a second child, it got the same excitement but it got a little less attention.

The Tooth Fairy made a special trip to the bookstore for the first fall-out and she had to enlist a few dozen of her fairy friends to help her tuck the monster-sized book about Noah’s Ark underneath Nick’s pillow. This time, no special trips. TF tucked a $1 bill under that pillow and added in an edible treat.

St. Nick was just as thrilled. He’s been holding his dollar ever since, scouring toy catalogues (which we have in plenty this time of year) for something to buy. The only problem being, his prize won’t even cover shipping costs, let alone the price of the least expensive item in the book (a set of plastic boats for $9.95).

And here I thought TF was being extravagant. A whole dollar? When I was a child, I got a quarter and a pack of gum. I couldn’t buy much more than a candy bar with a quarter, and I thought TF was horribly cheap; I’d rather have kept my tooth and made it into some strange native jewelry. But now, with a dollar, St. Nick is in the same situation. When did a dollar become worth so little? And why does my son have to learn that money, outside its potential to purchase, means nothing?

He’s not cynical about it yet. A dollar is still the coolest thing he’s ever owned. But it grieves me that once it’s spent, he’ll have nothing but a trinket or a candy bar. Maybe he should just keep the money.

En Garde!

St. Nick's first fencing class was last night, and I would give him an A+ (if I were into grading [as if. My killer instinct came forward. Get 'im! I wanted my boy to WIN!]). Actually, the better assessment, the class and instructors would get an A+.

This is the first activity of the sort St. Nick has done, and I was nervous he'd be nervous. He gets that way - at Sunday School (we still have to hear about the dreaded Angel Costume from the Christmas play. "Mommy, I am NOT wearing an Angel Costume Ever Again!"), at preschool last year when he'd sing all the songs at home, but none of them with the class. But he surprised me. He marched right in and said to the crowd of kids and adults, "I'm ready for fencing because I had a good supper!" And then the kids took to the floor while the moms and dads sat along the walls. (I'm a mom! I love this!)

At first, when he practiced his stance with his left hand forward instead of his right, I thought we were doomed. He doesn't know about dominant hands yet. I haven't taught him left/right yet. They'll find out what an awful homeschooler I am and will ... but then he got the foil in his hand and held it like a natural.

His inborn lack of coordination played in his favor. While the little boy across from him swiped and jabbed, St. Nick hopped forward, his foil straight ahead. Again and again he hopped forward until his opponent was forced over his line. And so St. Nick won his very first fencing non-match!

(Update: St. Nick just got back from lunch at his friend's house, and they asked what sort of equipment he used - if he wore special clothes. His reply, "I wear my swimming pants and a monkey mask!" Oh, the joy of having a smartypants!)