If you need us we'll be in Mesopotamia

Neanderthals, Cro-Magnon, human migration to the continents. The stone age, the Fertile Crescent, the first farmers, the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Nile and Egypt. Calvin can't seem to get enough of any of it. Nearly every book he picks up, every picture he draws, and every chance he gets "can we have tea and read some more about history?"

It's a beautiful thing.

So what are we doing? We're loosely following Intellego's World History volume I unit study, and The Story of the World, and have found Archaeology for Kids to be a good go-with. We've watched and re-watched all of the Legacy videos. A favorite new story book around here is Mik's Mammoth, with its rhyming language and beautiful watercolor illustrations (love), and the Middle East and Asia Geo Puzzles have come in rather handy. I knew I'd love those things.

still awake

Calvin had to stay up late on Sunday night so he could have a sleep deprivation study done on Monday morning. When I say late I mean that we didn't go to bed—any of us—until almost 1am, and when I say sleep deprivation I mean that we all got up four hours later. We probably should have done it in shifts (Jon and I), but there's something about having company to make those moments less exhausting that kept us both hanging on.

The rough thing about staying up late—really late—with a five year old isn't so much the being tired and the longing for your pillow, it's the having to entertain for five hours more than usual on top of being tired. We stretched the time with books, then Legos, and then popped popcorn and watched The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. He was pretty bleary eyed when we finally tucked him into bed, and when I woke him up four hours later, he said "oh, is it morning already?" and I knew exactly what he meant.

After getting up at 5am we got home from the test at 9:30 and it felt like lunch time. We ate a second breakfast (how often does that get to happen?), we both practiced the piano, and then we relaxed with books for a while before putting on another Legacy video (this is where Netflix is really quite handy).

Then at lunch time it felt like dinner time. I think we were both beyond naps so we took Iris out for a walk to liven things up a bit. Back at home we changed into warm, comfy clothes, steeped tea, and planted ourselves in the sunshine on the den floor with some history books and art supplies per Calvin's request.  We spent some time with a new book, Archaeology for Kids, but mainly we just drew and colored.

Then at dinner time it felt like bed time, and after a day like that it really was, so we ate, we read, and we fell into bed.

Did I mention that he spent the whole day dressed as Pooh?

This is the reason I have never been sorry that I gave in and bought the Pooh costume way back when.

And this is the reason the window seat is always covered.

And this is the reason I am happy with what I do.

Family tree and history

I was in search of videos on the Aztecs when I came across Legacy, a BBC television series about the great ancient civilizations hosted by Michael Wood. Bingo. Of course, it wasn't only about the Aztecs, and of course we wanted to see the whole thing, and thus in about fifty minutes the entire course of our current study changed. It was silly of me to think that starting at the very beginning of time in order to learn about American and United States history wouldn't also require learning about world history along the way, so we will be continuing from the nomadic hunter time period, about twenty thousand years after human migration into America, but instead of looking only at the nations of the Americas we will be looking everywhere. Simultaneous, holistic history. Plus there really is nothing more fascinating than ancient civilizations and the stories, myths, and inventions that came from them.

Looking at some of the resources I happened to have on hand, most recommended that we first learn about archeology and the study of history. Of course we've already been doing that, and Calvin's pretty comfortable with the concept of archeology, but we hadn't really talked yet about the fallibility of history, so we started today with the family tree. How does making a family highlight the fallible nature of history? Inadvertantly so. This was actually a really cool project that kind of grew and shaped itself over the day.

Calvin was all about making the tree. I figured we'd just cut some construction paper and glue together a tree starting with him and ending with his grandparents, but as he was gluing together said tree I was practicing the piano, and before I knew it the tree had grown to include five generations. We sat down and started naming the different people on the tree, but I couldn't go past Jon's grandparents on his side, and it became clear that a phone call would be necessary to finish the project. Calvin wanted to make the call himself, so we worked together to create interview sheets for each of the grandparents, and he used those to make the calls and get the information he needed. See how things take on a shape of their own?

And here's where it got especially interesting. My parents answered the interview questions from memory (because I'm the keeper of my family's genealogical records, but thought the phone call would be fun anyhow), while Jon's parents answered the questions from a written record they had on hand. Comparing Calvin's sheets following the phone interviews (my parent's was missing information) made clear the limitations of an oral tradition—sharing information kept in memory only—and we talked about the fallibility of information passed on from before the advent of common writing. In addition, after the phone interviews I pulled out my boxes of genealogy and unearthed birth and marriage certificates that we used to fill in the blanks on my parent's sheets, and to correct any information that had been related or recorded incorrectly—another point of comparison. It was a fascinating step in the project, and we spent an extra hour exploring the historic documents—both official, like certificates, and personal, like letters or articles—and antique pictures of which I am the keeper.

He finished his project by filling out the tree with names, birth dates and places, and family common names (i.e. he calls my mom "Gram", I called her mom "Grammie", and my mom called her mom's mom "Grandma", and so on)—a cconstruction paper study of our history which he aptly titled "tree of life".

And our study ever changing study of history is on its way again.

This post linked to Ordinary Life Magic's Saturday's Artist (one of my favorite mama blogs)

MRI

This morning found us trying something entirely new on the experience front—we were up early, sans breakfast, and traipsing over to Mott Children's Hospital so Calvin could have an MRI. Kids Calvin's age are usually given an MRI under general anesthesia, and it was that and not the procedure itself that had us skipping breakfast and spending umpteen hours at the hospital. The brand new Mott hospital is bright and clean and entertaining—a perpetual marble machine, a toy MRI machine on the anesthesia ward—but with the same great doctors, nurses, and staff they've always had. In fact, our fantastic pediatric anesthesiologist was rather taken with Calvin. She believed that he was mature enough to handle the MRI without the general anesthesia and was willing to give it a go. It worked.

No general anesthesia meant that we walked out of the hospital about ten minutes after the MRI was finished and went straight out for celebration pancakes. And it meant he wasn't groggy and had lots of energy, so we came home and played with dogs, and snow, and Legos, and umbrellas. And it meant that Jon and I were really, really, relieved. Time to breath easy again. And that all adds up to a great, great day.

It's a new dryer invention...he's drying Blanket

Iris (all spots, grace, and energy)

Ollie (cow ears)

Dressing the snowman!

And I call this "quiet moment with journal and dog"

life as we know it

Sometimes life seems so normal, so mundane, that I can't imagine anyone would want to see me write about it. Other times life is going by at such a dizzying pace that I can't find the time to sit down and write at all. The past few days have been a combination of both. And actually, if I'm honest, the real problem has been that I haven't taken any pictures. What? It's true. And a blog post without pictures just seems rather blah. Rather like a list of particulars.

Calvin and I have been scrapbooking a lot together lately—we're putting together a book of our Florida trip and reliving the memories together has been a lot of fun. We've all but closed up our exploration of the Maya and have moved on to the Aztecs. Calvin is plowing through the Math-U-See—he's reached the section on money and we've discussed getting him started with an allowance now that he can keep track of it, so that will be a new milestone to mark. There's been piano, and Lego play, and reading (about Walt Disney), and journaling, and lots and lots of fun with Iris.

Iris is really still our biggest happening. Adding a new dog to a home can be challenging, especially when there are already established pets present, but the transition with Iris has been delightfully smooth. She seems happy and comfortable—she's eating and playing (we might finally have a dog who will pay fetch with us!)—and her manners were already good when she arrived. For those things we need to work on she responds very quickly to praise and the occasional treat. It took only two nights for her to learn our "exile" command (the word we've used for years to banish the dogs from the kitchen when we cook or eat), she sits, she stays, she lays down, and she's getting the hang of leash walking. Still, we'll be enrolling in obedience classes in the next month or so to give her some practice time with Calvin (and Calvin some practice time with her).

We have tickets to see Sweet Honey in the Rock this week, and more books to sort at the library. One odd and rather time-consuming errand. Piano. Legos. We haven't played games in a while, so definitely some of those. We actually have snow on the ground and I'm hoping it will stick around for a while. I'd like a few chilly nights for building fires and snuggling in. This is life as we know it.