Out of nowhere

We've all been smacked upside the head with a "spring" cold. It came out of nowhere! And we're just laying low. Calvin and I stayed in our pajamas all day today. We skipped our homeschool gathering today—the first day of new classes, too. I even took the dogs out in my pajamas (just to the front yard), and Jon came home early to rest.

Calvin and I both practiced the piano. He drew a lot of maps (I love this), read a little, and played (make-believe) Piglet and Pooh. We played a couple of math games on the computer together, and a round of Upwords, but mostly we hunkered down with history books. We hung another timeline on the last free wall in the house—3,000 b.c.e. to 100 c.e.—and started filling it in with the happenings in Mesopotamia. We read about Gilgamesh and Enkidu, about Sargon, and a little about Hammurabi.

With Jon home early we drank tea, ate snacks, played more games, and ordered pizza. We watched Michael Wood on King Arthur (In Search of Myths and Heroes) over dinner. We started reading The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster, together before bed (as a side note, Juster is also the author of one of my favorite picture books, The Hello Goodbye Window).

With a little rest we're hoping to be as good as new on Monday.

Mesopotamian feast

Spring visited today. Temperatures reached almost seventy degrees and the sun was out for much of the day. Even after a winter as weak as the one we just had, a day like today still makes me long for the freshness of spring. Along with the warmer weather, another cold is visiting our house, complete with snuffles and the glassy-eyed stares of the slightly infirm. We've been fortunate on the illness front, though, so we won't begrudge the season a few snuffles and we're trudging right along.

A couple of days ago I read My Father's Dragon to Calvin. It's a short book, and only took about three days of bedtime reading to get through it, but he was so impatient for the next two books that he read them on his own yesterday, and read them again this morning. Today he declared a strong desire for a Boris the Dragon, and he's sure this is something I can produce with fabric and a sewing machine. Unfortunately my ability is limited to items of two dimensions only. A stuffed dragon may be beyond my skill.

We have swimming lessons on Wednesdays and I figured that the warm, moist pool would be good for snuffles, and since he wasn't coughing or sneezing, and the chlorine to boot, we kept to our obligation. Lunch with Gram and Grampa after, and a romp in the sunlit park. As my father pushed him in the what Calvin calls the "big comfortable swing", Calvin closed his eyes and actually rested. He swore, again and again, that he was busy dreaming of his dragon, but I think he was actually tired. Colds will do that.

A day like today just calls for outside play. Calvin turned our driveway into a map of Boris the Dragon's world, and our neighbors came over to meet Iris. The only thing less than perfect about today, then, was our dinner, and that was something I'd expected. As we explore the world around us we like to try ethnic recipes, and being in ancient Mesopotamia right now, it was there that we ate. Tough beef with about a million different kinds of onion (shallots, scallions, chives, garlic, leeks, and white cooking onions) in the slow cooker (since I don't have an ancient stone fire pit), turnips stewed in beef broth (it called for blood, but I couldn't find that) with more onions, and some couscous I threw in on the side.

We had a good time researching the menu, making a shopping list, collecting the ingredients, and cooking the meal, and it was fun, edible even, but not at all thrilling. Jon and I tried two ancient brew beers with dinner, but even those didn't help much. We had dates and apples for dessert, and we're glad we tried it out, but thankfully there aren't many leftovers.

Monday

Monday for us is a waking up slowly day, and a book day, and an art day. Sometimes it's a store day, or a vacuuming day, or a hike day. It's sort of a catch-up day and a do-whatever-you-feel-like day. After the excitement of yesterday, our today was enjoyably a very slow and lazy day.

The Enormous Egg

We started with books. Actually we spent a couple of hours on books before we graduated to some journal writing. At some point I got on the treadmill while Calvin researched Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. I did manage three loads of laundry, and we made it to the library to do some work in the sorting room before taking a brisk walk with Iris out in the rather frigid wind.

Tea and piano and more books, and then Calvin disappeared into his office, and as with all good creators I know better than to disturb him when he shuts himself in. We even delayed dinner, he was so busy, but I did get invited in to see the book he was working on—a book about Pooh and his friends. He plans to finish it tomorrow.

So even a lazy, quiet day can produce items of great beauty and significance.

We're linked up at OLM.

A day with

We've had a few stressful things thrown our way over the past few weeks, so having any down time is a real treat.

As of January first I have become the big cheese of the library used book sales, and while I know someone had to do the job, and I do have a few good ideas for the event, it is definitely an increase in responsibility and time. It helps immensely to have a little boy who is a) so helpful when we go in to work, and b) so keen on reading all the books he can get his hands on (which is a lot in the sale room) when he can't help. Yesterday my dad helped us shift shelf upon shelf of alphabetized books around the room until we had tweaked organization a bit. Today Calvin spent an hour helping me weed through books that have been around a little too long and need to go on "sale" (as if 1.00 for a hardcover wasn't already "on sale"). Thanks, family.

The cold in our house is still threatening a coup, so the rest of the day we spent with tea and books. Some math, some piano, and Calvin was suddenly bent on getting back into our study of early humans so we revisited our "A Day with..." books by Fiorenzo Facchini (Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Neanderthal Man, and Homo sapiens). We both love these books—each is full of facts, dates, and images of archeological finds with a short story interspersed to bring those things to life.

Having mapped the human migration out of Africa we are working our way into American history and I'm loosely tapping an Intellego Unit Study for that. I have the American History Volume I studies for both grades K-2 and 3-5 and I'm blending them a bit, picking and choosing the parts I like from each. I think I've said before that I could probably have done this on my own, but I'm finding that there is something to be said for having a basic guide to follow—less late night planning involved.

Today we told each other our own A day with stories about living as hunter gatherers. Calvin decided that Jon was out hunting with a spear and a torch while we were in charge of gathering water in a gourd and collecting berries and tubers. We were in charge of the fire as well. I think this is reflected well in the illustrations he made to go along.

The men are returning...see their torches?

There will be meat for dinner (it's hanging up there) and a woman with a gourd of water...

Now we are back in current times. Chicken soup for dinner again (we will get healthy, we will), and there is snow in the forecast. Actual, honest-to-goodness snow. I hope it comes.

To the center of the earth

Calvin came home with a handful of books from the sale on Saturday that he had selected himself, including A Journey to the Center of the Earth in Troll Illustrated Classic form. After a morning of errands, some more nerve wracking than others, we spent the afternoon resting and reading and taking in tea. Calvin devoured the book, then journaled about it. We also got back into math successfully, and re-watched Becoming Human. We're getting back to somewhere.