Media Review: Time 4 Learning

Media Review: Time 4 Learning

www.time4learning.com

Last year marked my first “official” year homeschooling. Over the course of the year, we experimented with a variety of schooling options. I believe in life learning and am comfortable with a relaxed, very informal approach to homeschooling. However, I also discovered that I still have a strong part of me that feels the need for some type of formal “school” each day for my now 6 year old son. We primarily tried worksheets and found those boring, repetitive, and often pointless. We had periodic power struggles about whether he needed to do them or not and I found myself seeking another way to meet my need for a bit of school in every day, but not something oppressive or non-enjoyable.

Enter Time 4 Learning. I took the opportunity for a free trial membership for both of my sons. I discovered that my 3 year old was a little too young still to benefit from it and continued the trial with my soon to be 6 year old only. We discovered that Time 4 Learning fit neatly into the rhythm of our daily lives.

Though, the lessons are easily self-guided/directed even for a Kindergarten aged child, I did discover my son enjoys the program more and seems to benefit more when I sit with him on my lap while he works on it. At the beginning of our trial membership he complained that some of the lessons were boring and I discovered that those were the ones below his level, with me sitting there with him I am able to let him know it is okay to skip ahead or to just take the quiz instead of the complete lesson. After I started this approach, his enjoyment level went up and I don’t get any complaints!

At the Kindergarten level, there are lessons available in Language Arts, Math, and Science. I peeked ahead into the First Grade level and they really are a remarkably complete program/curriculum.

The lessons are self-guided and have a variety of themes—park, under the sea, kitchen/restaurant, etc. I liked the practical content included—for example to learn about measuring and measurement instruments, the child goes (virtually) to a chef’s kitchen and figures out how many cinnamon rolls can fit into different sized pans. For some areas there are supplementary stories or worksheets included. Each series of lessons about a specific topic is followed by a 10 question quiz and then the complete “chapter” of lessons is followed by a 20 question test. The tests are also self-guided and my son shows a high level of comprehension in taking them (higher than I expected, I confess!).

After completing “lesson time” for the day (the duration of which can be altered by the parent, but starts automatically at a minimum of 15 minutes), the child has the opportunity to visit the “playground” (again for a pre-defined amount of time—the default is 15 minutes). I found we spend 30-45 minutes on lessons with Time 4 Learning a day and that feels comfortable to both of us. My son can usually complete 3 or 4 different lessons and quiz during that amount of time.

We’ve spent about 6 weeks with the program now and I’ve noticed an increase in both his math and reading comprehension skills in everyday life—I think this is because we have more fun working together on the Time 4 Learning lessons than we ever did with worksheets!

We had minimal trouble with the audio on some of the language arts segments being difficult to distinguish between letter sounds.

Our only ongoing complaint for both of us is that the lessons do not let you click ahead until the instructions have finished playing—since the instructions are often very repetitive it gets frustrating to have to listen to them multiple times instead of being able to click ahead. On the tests and quizzes, you do have the capacity to click ahead.

Though I do not need to keep formal logs yet, I appreciate that the program offers a “portfolio” with a variety of reports in it for record keeping purposes. This can come in very handy!

We generally do Time 4 Learning in the morning, before the rest of day gets under way. This helps me get my personal need for “formal” school met and tidily out of the way. It makes more sense to me to have him work on a program like this instead of doing worksheets—it is similar content, but the interactive style makes it much more interesting for both of us.

Disclosure notice: The opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own (and my son’s). I was compensated for writing the review.

My Baby is Three!

I can hardly believe it, but my little Z is three today! I am having a book giveaway on the CfM blog in honor of this occasion.

Here he was three years ago today:


Here he is now (all pix taken by L actually!):

Speaking of birthdays, here is the birthday cake my friend made for my 30th birthday this year (it is based on one of my scrabble tile pendants with a catch-your-own-baby image created by my talented husband).

The Big Book of Birth

This week I greatly enjoyed reading The Big Book of Birth. It is by Erica Lyon of Realbirth, who I first heard of when I read her awesome quotes in Pushed. Anyway, this was a basic "guide to birth" type of book, so I didn't necessarily learn anything new from it, but I hope that lots of pregnant women pick this one up to read instead of What to Expect. The emphasis of this book was on giving birth, not on pregnancy. The author's writing style was great--very engaging and *real* seeming. It is written in a sassy, lively, conversational sort of style that really made the book very readable and good. There were a variety of birth stories shared (broken up into the "right" chapters, which made it a little hard to follow them sometimes). I did feel sad reading some of them because the mothers didn't seem to *get* in hindsight what had really happened--i.e. "the doctor said the baby was 10 pounds and so a cesarean would make sense" and then baby is born and is 8.5 pounds and there was no further "analysis" about the cesarean being unwarranted.

I have a lot of quotes marked to share on my birthy blogs. Here's a quick one though: "You do not have to be a particularly strong or brave or relaxed woman to get through labor. You just need to be a woman." And then one from one of the birth stories: [in response to someone telling her that she got an epidural because it made the birth so much more peaceful] "I asked myself, Is birth meant to be peaceful? the feeling that I got after my birth was of pure triumph. I felt strong and able..."

I also zoomed through some "dessert"--Janet Evanovich's Twelve Sharp. Funny. Enjoyed it. Felt like a treat.

And on an unrelated note, I've mentioned before that we have cool big rocks on our land (behind our house). Today was a nice day and we went out to visit them!

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Tree of Happiness

The irrepressible, creative, and always-inspiring mamaroots nominated my blog for a Tree of Happiness Award :)

In turn, I'd like to nominate:

Enjoy Birth--love the positive view of birthing babies expressed there!

Passion for Birth--I usually learn something new or creative by visiting Teri's blog.

Woman-to-Woman CBE--because Kathy is such a talented researcher and prolific, interesting writer!

Here are some things that make me happy:

1. Books! Love 'em. Can't get enough of them.

2. My friends--I feel so lucky to have such a beautiful real-life network.

3. LLL--I love being able to help mothers and babies in my community.

4. Blogging about birth.

5. My kids--they make me laugh so hard every day!

Christmas books

Finished reading two of my Christmas gifts:

Womanspirit: A Guide to Women's Wisdom--this is another example of an older book with gifts to offer. It was pretty good and I collected several ideas from it to use for future blessingways. It also had several good guided visualization exercises.

Zen Parenting: The Art of Learning What You Already Know--This is snarky of me, but I guess I DO already know it all, because I didn't really learn anything new from this book. I did like this daily Zen practice they suggested:

*Stay.
*Stay with the moment.
*Stay with your attention on your inner awareness.
*Pay attention. Remember, emotions pass. Bodily needs pass.
*What stays is the essence of you and the pure spirit of your child.

Time to get off the computer, because I have piles of more important things to be doing!

Last Child in the Woods

On New Year's Eve, I finished reading Last Child in the Woods. This was the first book for the new book club I'm participating in (Yay! I've always wanted to be in a book club.) The book is about "nature deficit disorder"--basically, that people, especially kids, don't spend enough time outdoors and in nature. It made me think that, even though I live in the country and in the woods, I should go outside more and appreciate being there, as opposed to just heading for the car and town. I also noticed that I think I spent more time outside as a child than my children do now. We had a nice routine going where we spent about two hours outside together every afternoon and then we developed a terrible mosquito problem that changed our routine and drove us to spend more time indoors. Then, even when the weather cooled down again and the mosquitoes died, we were out of the habit of our daily outside time.

Here are some quotes I copied down for our book club discussion:

"What if, instead of sailing to the Galapagos Islands and getting his hands dirty and his feet wet, Charles Darwin had spent his days cooped up in some office cubicle staring at a computer screen? What if a tree fell in the forest and no one knew its biological name? Did it exist?" [I think, yes :)]

"'Reality is the final authority; reality is what’s going on out there, not what’s in your mind or on your computer screen,' says Paul Dayton."

I found this quote refreshing because I read so much Zennish stuff that says reality is a construct and "you create your own reality" and "there is no reality." LOL!

Page 198 quotes from Robert Kennedy Jr.:

"'We’re part of nature, and ultimately we’re predatory animals and we have a role in nature...and if we separate ourselves from that, we’re separating ourselves from our history, from the things that tie use together. We don’t want to live in a world where there are not recreational fishermen, where we’ve lost touch with the seasons, the tides, the things that connect us—-to ten thousand generations of human beings that were here before there were laptops and ultimately connect us to God.' We shouldn’t be worshipping nature as God, he said, but nature is the way that God communicates to us most forcefully. 'God communicates to us through each other and through organized religion, through wise people and the great books, through music and art,' but nowhere 'with such texture and forcefulness in detail and grace and joy, as through creation...And when we destroy large resources, or when we cut off our access by putting railroads along river banks, by polluting so that people can’t fish, or by making so many rules that people can’t get out on the water, it’s the moral equivalent of tearing the last pages out of the last Bible on Earth[emphasis mine]...Our children ought to be out there on the water...This is what connects us, this is what connects humanity, this is what we have in common. It’s not the Internet, it’s the oceans."

From page 285 quoting one of his sons at age four: "Are God and Mother Nature married, or just good friends?" (I LOVE this!)

The Mommy Wars

This week I finished reading The Mommy Wars, which I had checked out of the library. I don't have much time to write about it, but it was surprisingly good and I wanted to share some quotes/thoughts. I almost didn't check it out because I was worried that it would be excessively harsh or inflammatory and I don't need to bring things like that into my life. However, it seemed truly supportive of women/mothers. It was a collection of essays by various authors (alternating between those who have chosen to be mostly at home and those who have chosen to be mostly pursuing careers) and it quickly became clear that the most real "mommy war" that most of us experience is the one inside of our own heads. There seems to be no ideal/perfect solution. I also noticed that many of the women (including the editor of the collection) had cobbled together some sort of "balance" between working-outside-of-the-home and working inside it--there were lots of part-timers, lots of WAHMs, lots of writer-in-the-spare-minutes, etc. Since I've done the same, I particularly identified with those tales of struggle to discover the right balance for your family.

The first quote I wanted to share is one re: being asked "what do you do?" at a cocktail party: "I find it odd that I'd generate far more interest if I said I raised dogs or horse or chinchillas, but saying, in effect, 'I raise human beings' is a huge yawn."

"It might, in fact, be boring if child care were simply a series of pink-collar tasks--bathe, dress, feed, repeat. But observing and participating in a little Homo Sapien's development is fascinating to me. Furthermore, being a mother isn't just a 'job' any more than being a wife or a daughter; it's a relationship."

Then in another writer's essay (the above was from one of the SAHM, the below is from one of the WOHM):

"I remember reading once that all manner of selfishness is excused under the banner of focusing on one's family, and it strikes me now as penetratingly true. How many of us don't do for others because we're supposedly saving it for our families? and how valuable is staying at home if you're not teaching your children how much other people (and their feelings) matter?"

In another book I have, The Paradox of Natural Mothering, she refers to this as a type of narcissism and I see the point. I've explaining to people before that yes, of course--ultimately--"family first" but that doesn't mean "everything else last." I occasionally struggle with this when answering a helping call--basically, my kids do NOT come first at that moment, nor should they. I've even told them that--"I'm sorry, but you wanting juice is not important right now, the mother who is crying on the phone is more important." I do not think this is a terrible lesson to learn! ;-) Of course, in an ultimate-reality sort of situation, my kids DO come first. 100%. But, in a regular day-to-day situation, sometimes what other people need from me is more important and does come first.

I also wanted to share some quotes from an essay by a woman who does not yet have children, but is planning to, with regard to talking to mothers who shut down her opinions/thoughts with the, "what could you know? You don't have children" brush-off. (Which, I personally, have definitely been guilty of thinking on more than one occasion!! And, actually did so while reading this essay!): "I want to be able to say that all the judgment and aggression and competitiveness I witness among working and stay-at-home mothers surprises me and absolutely must change. But that wouldn't be honest. I've been party to this one-upping and henpecking and know-it-all-ness my entire life. It's as if becoming a mother puts us back into a sorority or junior high school, into some petri dish of experience where what other females think and say and feel and do counts more than anything."

"The one thing my stay-at-home and working-mom friends share in the country of motherhood is a superiority gene, some may call it a gift of vision, that convinces them that women who don't have children are, despite their educations and accomplishments, dumb as doorknobs. I've sat through many a heated conversation...during which I've been silly enough to offer an opinion only to be shut down more condescendingly and viciously by wise Goddess Mothers than I ever have been shut down by any man."

(FWIW, I would not call this a "superiority gene" or "gift of vision," but a "voice of experience"...I think most of us have been in the position of ourselves being the "just doesn't get it" woman without kids! And, after you have kids of your own, you suddenly realize why "those mothers" were condescending to you!)

In another essay, with regard to balance, that eternal question:

"Let me save you some money: In a life with children, balance does not exist. Once you're a parent, you can figure you'll be out of whack for the rest of your life...Children are not born to provide balance. children are made to stir us up, to teach us how angry we can get, how scared we can be, how utterly happy, happier than we'd ever imagined was possible, how deeply we can love. Children turn us upside down and inside out; they send us to the depths and heights of ourselves; but they do not balance us. We can't balance them either, and that's a good thing, too. They're finding out how to live in the world, and the most we can do is make them as safe as possible and have a good time with them."

Ten Things I Love About Having (Little) Kids

This post is prompted by three things. One--listening to my best friend's 3 month old baby laugh at the skating rink yesterday. Two--snuggling with Z this morning while he was still asleep and smelling his hair. Three--being at "coffee night" with my friends last night and having the nice older women at the next table tell us to "enjoy it, they grow so fast. Stop hurrying and being so busy or you'll miss it all." And, as they left saying, "Keep enjoying your beautiful fertility!"

So, this morning I laid in bed smelling Z's hair and I thought of 10 things I love about having little children:

1. The sound of a baby's laugh--especially the early/first laughs. There is no more pure joy to be found in the entire world.

2. Breastfeeding--particularly those times at the end of a long, chaotic, busy, stressful day when I lie down with my baby and feel both of our bodies relax and become suffused with a sense of peacefulness and rightness and, "this is what life is all about." As Louise Erdrich said, "Perhaps we owe some of our most moving literature to men who didn't understand that they wanted to be women nursing babies." :)

3. Smelling their heads, particularly when they are asleep and nestled against me with head under my chin, my nose and lips resting in their hair. Perfect happiness.

4. The things they say! I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried and I'm glad I keep a little book of notes. L LOVES me to re-read the funny things he said when he was about Z's age. He still cracks me up all the time, but it is especially funny when they're less verbal and still figuring out how to talk.

5. Still being able to fix just about anything just by being there and giving hugs.

6. Watching them when they start learning how to play imaginatively--Z (2.5) is at this point now, where he sets up scenes and has stories going on. I loved toys so much as a kid and so loved playing with my sister with all of our little people and Care Bears and so forth that it is really fun to see my own kids creating their own imaginary worlds now. I had so much time to play as a kid and I think it was really good for me.

7. Watching how their drawing skills develop/unfold. L (5) is amazing to watch in this respect.

8. The learning to talk stage--where it is just an explosion of new words every day.

9. Their unselfconscious ease in being naked.

10. Having one who is "older" (5) now and enjoying how companionable our relationship has become and how helpful he is.

Oh, and they're awfully cute too!

In their Halloween costumes preparing to battle each other (I love having boys!)

Trees Make the Best Mobiles

This week I finished reading a little book from the library called Trees Make the Best Mobiles. The book is primarily geared towards first time parents of infants and didn't cover a lot of new ground for me, but there were a couple of good reminders in it about present, mindful parenting.

Regarding time with our children: "They offer us a chance, not only to quell past demons, but to leave behind the pressures of the day. With them, we can be our best selves: alert, vibrant, and generous--and fully alive in the present tense."

And, with regard to children learning your behaviors: "Make sure that what your child is absorbing isn't your ragged, frustrated, or furious self, but your best self. And when it's not, let him know that you know, and that you'll try harder next time."

Unfortunately, I think I often do show my "ragged" self and am NOT necessarily my best, alert and vibrant self. When I think about it, I feel like I was my best and most vibrant self when I worked for the Ronald McD House. Part of me genuinely feels that my personality is not well-suited for stay-at-home-mothering and that my mind/personality is better matched to being really deeply invested in a purposeful job/career outside the home. However, my HEART will not allow me to invest that deepness outside of my family while my kids are little and so clearly need to be with me. I am compelled to be with them and care for them myself and that seems irreconcilable with outside employment for me. The push-pull is big though and sometimes my sense of loss over work that I loved and in which I was my best and most vibrant self is really strong. The best balance I can manage is do birth work in my "spare" time--my passion for that and my purpose in that, brings back my feeling of being my "best and most vibrant self." I actually feel more deeply connected--mission and purpose and passion wise--to birth work than I did at RMHC, but I have to squeeze it into some very small cracks in my life at this point in time. I have long struggled with what I feel like is a conflict between parenting and "personing." I'll keep working on it, because I do want my boys to see my vibrant self! (and, I think, part of them seeing my vibrant, full self, is my giving myself permission to pursue some outside-of-mothering stuff like teaching birth classes and also giving myself permission to get into the moment with mothering and let the other stuff fall away, while I invest in truly being there with them instead of thinking about my "to-do list" or my other goals).

A relevant quote:

"Each time you say, 'I need another minute to finish this...,' you squander a moment with your child, never to be reclaimed."

I confess, though this is another good reminder, it annoyed me. There is a little too much "romanticizing" of parenting implicit within it. I thought of all the times when I've said "I just need another minute to..." Hmmm. Go to the BATHROOM! Finish fixing breakfast, put the baby to sleep, help someone else go to the bathroom, talk to my husband--the love of my life... I guess each could be seen as "squandering" and I have an inner monitor in my head that lets me know that! But, get real, sometimes you really DO need another minute to "finish this" and there is no reason to get all blamey about it! (I also confess that my defensiveness here is also about the times I do say "just a minute" when it really ISN'T that important and I could drop what I'm doing to meet their needs--but is it always actual needs, or sometimes just a nonstop desire for parental entertainment?)

And along those lines, another quote:

"Keep in mind, too, that life isn't all entertainment--even when you're only three...Allowing them to become bored means letting them draw on their own resources. It means trusting them to make their own fun. A child who can reach inside herself for amusement or consolation is a child who is truly plugged in."

And a final reminder:

"What we all crave is to be seen, really seen, and through that seeing, know ourselves. We spend much of our life--in work, love, friendship, and sometimes even in therapy--trying to achieve this."

So, look when they call "watch me!"

Yesterday, I also finished reading a tiny little book called The Best of Oprah's What I Know for Sure (this was one of my little daily, post-yoga inspirational reads). I liked this quote immensely:

"The world can only value mothering to the extent that women everywhere stand and declare that it must be so."

The Mother's Guide to Self-Renewal

My mother-in-law bought me The Mother's Guide to Self-Renewal for Christmas and I've been gradually working through it for the last couple of months. I finished it at the end of July, but haven't had time to post about it really until now. When I got this book, I made a commitment to myself that I was really going to DO the book, instead of just reading it, tossing it aside, and gobbling down the next one on my stack. So, I did. It took me about 4 months or so to work through it. It is actually laid out in a 12-month format. The subtitle is "How to Reclaim, Rejuvenate, and Re-Balance Your Life," which is just what I felt like I needed! As a funny little side note, when I first started reading the book, I had a lovely little leather bound fancy notebook to do the journaling/reflective exercises in. I discovered I was never doing them--it never felt like the right time. Then, I bought a Pirates of the Caribbean notebook at Wal-Mart featuring a large photo of Orlando Bloom on the cover and lo and behold, I started doing the journaling exercises in it and finished the book right up! I had to laugh at myself--Hark! I have found thee, my muse, and thy name is Orlando Bloom (especially in rakish, unbuttoned-pirate-shirt attire!)

The author of this book also has a blog that I enjoy reading.

Working through this book coupled with then working through another book I hope to post about soon (The Life Organizer), did actually help me to make some hard decisions about the various roles in my life. I have this long standing tendency to read really great self-help books, nodding along in agreement the whole time and thinking, "this book changed my life!", but then, as I noted earlier, immediately hopping along to the next book without necessarily integrating the wisdom, ideas, or approach of the prior "life changing" book. So...I decided in January after reading Practically Perfect in Every Way (a book I STILL have not yet managed to blog about even though I finished in in JANUARY, because I have a lot to say about it--I took pages and pages of notes for a blog post, but have never transcribed them...), to read less self-help books, but also to use more of what I read in them when I read them. I have lots of reflections on this subject, but they are languishing with good old Orlando at the moment, waiting for me to type them all up!

On a separate note, my best friend welcomed her family's sixth child into the family last weekend! It sounds like it was a beautiful unassisted birth and I'm so happy for their beautiful family! The weekend he was born, I was sorting through some folders of papers and came across a poem I'd copied from Mothering magazine that brought a tear to my eye. It is called "Take Pictures" and is a poignant look at how fast it all goes. Here is a link to it on the Mothering site, conveniently. The end gets me in my heart every time I read it,

"Holding tight to my neck, my son
trusts - he knows no other way - my touch lightly
dries his tears. I am his queen, his goddess, handily
his slave. Blink, it's a photo again, a trick of the eye,

a frozen captive of time, paper, light and silver: my son
is a grown man: he drinks from his own hand. Reader, I
urge you, spin slowly, take pictures, remember to laugh."(emphasis mine).

Anyway, reading this poem felt like a tribute of sorts to the birth of this fresh, new little guy. I think I'm going to post it somewhere where I can see it regularly.

Libraries

I spent many years of my life loving the library and making good use of all it had to offer. When I was in graduate school, I lost touch with the joy of the library and only set foot in the University library TWICE (funny that that is possible, but such is the miracle of the internet and University computer access to all kinds of journal article online, instead of dusty stack-searching for them). While an undergrad, I practically lived at the library--either the college one or the public one, I spent a lot of time in both. Not necessarily checking out books or doing research, but as my "base" between classes, to study, write papers etc. After graduate school, I rediscovered the joy of reading for pleasure. I had library cards at the two cities we lived in prior to where we live now. I went to the library at least once a week and had a fabulous time. Then, we moved back to our hometown, and since we're out of the city limits a library card costs $20. I didn't get one. I've lived here for three years now and have only set foot in the library a handful of times, mostly to give them updated LLL posters for their windows. I haven't consciously missed it, because I get so many books from book sales, yard sales, friends, Bookins, and Amazon (who needs the library, I began to feel!)

Then, I went to a special children's program at the library about an hour away from us a couple of weeks ago, and was suddenly struck by how fabulous libraries are and how much I love them. It didn't hurt that this little library had some rockin' cool books for sale for only 25 cents each! (Excuse me while I swoon, but they had multiple copies of the brand new Our Bodies, Ourselves Guide to Pregnancy and Childbirth. Hardback, library bound copies. A QUARTER! I almost collapsed with joy).

So, this week, I decided that I should shell out the $20 for a library card at my local public library. I actually planned to do so only so my kids could check out books, videos, and participate in the summer reading program (side note: I asked L if he'd like to do the summer reading program and I told him that they had prizes for it. He, like most kids, love prizes and surprises, but he gave me a really funny look and said, "Why would I need to win prizes for reading books?! That doesn't make any sense." Aww. That's my guy. Reading books is its own reward! ;-) However, as soon as I stepped into the stacks I was in LOVE again. OMG. Libraries are fabulous. I found two books on my Amazon wish list as well as an interesting book-on-CD to listen to while I fold laundry. I've been twice this week alone and see many more trips in my future. The kids love it too and I feel guilty that I've been depriving them for so long (especially because I KNOW how much I loved the library when I was a kid. I literally had read every single book in the teenager section of the libraries in both towns near me. Every single one. I used to check out 20 "young adult" books at a time and read two each day. That was my mom's limit for me, because otherwise I'd be all weird-acting from having been buried in a book all day long).

Okay, so I already finished reading one of the books I checked out (not one that was on my wish list, but one that caught my eye). It was The Busy Mom's Guide to Simple Living. It was extremely religious. More so than I anticipated from my initial glance at it. While I didn't really get much out of it specifically, I did start to ponder all of the simple living/homesteading things I've lost touch with in recent months as the busy-ness of life has started to get away from me.

Journal Articles

I have no time to blog this week, so this is a quickie just to report that my essay in Midwifery Today came out this month. This was just a short, semi-funny piece about "the mess" from my glorious homebirth ;-) It was fun.

My article about the birth-breastfeeding continuum was also published in the International Journal of Childbirth Education (ICEA's pub) this month. This was a serious article with references and an abstract and all that good stuff. I ended up being pretty proud of it.

L had a little poem published in HMN's The Wise Mom in their new "Holistic Kids" section this month too:

The valley is so beautiful.
The things are so bright.

The family is so great.
And everything's all right.

This week I also enjoyed reading this month's International Doula from DONA and my first issue of my new subscription to Hip Mama. I've long wanted to subscribe to Hip Mama, but never have until now. Interesting pieces that are little bit outside of my own personal somewhat insulated and privileged sphere of motherhood.

Also, my beloved Brain, Child arrived and I gobbled it up without an ounce of self-control, as usual. I swear, if I was going to be marooned on a desert island with only one thing to read I would say this magazine. Except, I read it WAY too fast, so it wouldn't last me nearly long enough and I'd "starve" of reading materials before actual starvation even had a slight chance to set it. So, I'd have to, reluctantly, choose something else. Like a big huge Complete Works of Shakespeare or something. Though, if I was going to die on the island, wouldn't it be better to go out happy with Brain, Child by my side instead of slogging through Shakespeare, who has never floated my boat, despite my best efforts? (I took a whole freakin' CLASS in Shakespeare in college and yet have never fully made it through ANY of his works...) Okay, digression over. Proceed!

Earlier this month I enjoyed some thought provoking articles about life and death in UU World magazine.

Only finished one book and haven't had time to write about it yet. This is all I can do for today!

Holistic Moms Network

I wanted to post two quick things about HMN. One is that I was briefly interviewed for an article about alternative Mother's Day celebrations by the Washington Times. That was fun :) For the record, HMN National has written a letter to the editor clarifying that HMN is neither a "new age" or "pagan" organization!

Secondly, I wanted to note how much I LOVE the new HMN cookbook "Growing Healthy Families." I've purchased a large number of copies to give as gifts all the through the year. I had about five recipes published in the cookbook which was also fun and then my sweet little babies are both pictured on the back cover. I love it! This definitely brought the cookbook up high on my gift giving list--grandmas, etc. Not only will they get some great new recipes, but they can also gaze upon the cuteness of their descendants on the back ;-) My only complaint is that it is so pretty, I don't want to get it messed up with flour and stuff while cooking from it! It really is a high quality cookbook with a really nice, high quality cover and nice paper, etc.

My little cutie pies are the top three flower petals (starting with the profile of Z in the far left petal, followed by L twice as a baby) and then the third petal to the right on the bottom of L as a 3 year old (and, yes, I only have two kids, but they are so adorable they got four pictures ;-)