I was immersed in Mrs. Piggle Wiggle when it was announced that the hot water was open, and all other pursuits were abandoned to rush our evening baths. As I directed Noemie into the tub, she informed me that she intended that I should give her baths until the day I died. I wasn't so sure how I should feel about that. But I didn't have time to dwell on the matter; the hot-water-hour had begun.
For several days, we'd been wondering about a funny hot spot in the floor tiles in front of the garage. My parents bought a new water heater to see if that might solve the problem somehow. The problem remained and we continued to scratch our heads and, eventually to call our family plumber. He explained that the little toasty patch of flooring was in fact the heat from gallons and gallons of scalding water continuoulsy issuing forth from a broken water-pipe under the concrete slab of the house. Ah. And then my dad, seeing to shutting off the hot water valve, discovered that it was not turning at all. He tinkered with the valve and wouldn't you know it, the stem twisted apart and that darn valve started shooting like a geyser! Well, I didn't see it myself but that's how I imagine it went because my dad started bellowing and by the time I ran in, he was coming back in from the side patio, drying himself off. And that is how, the day before my mom's Thanksgiving feast for 35, we found ourselves without any water at all! Our family plumber (who's known my mom since they were neighbors in Cuba) moved his Wednesday morning appointments to tend to our emergency. Hooray for friends! The water valve was replaced but the water-pipe is a different matter. An expensive, complicated matter. A matter that will be difficult to resolve with four young'uns poking around. So for now we just turn the hot water on for one hour a day, in which time we run the dishwasher and 7 showers. And so I had to tear myself from Mrs. Piggle Wiggle.
I am reading Mrs. Piggle Wiggle because of an interesting problem that has developed. That is, Dominic and Noemie have become voracious readers. And I don't mean that lightly. Their literary apetite is ravenous! Dominic is 7 years old. Last week he sat down with The Boxcar Children....150 or so pages, written in the 1920s, a 3/4 grade reading level.... Done in a few hours. I think it took me longer to preview it! Dominic talked so much of the book for the next two days, that Noemie finally decided to pick it up herself. The next day she handed it to me proudly and said it was the best book she'd ever read. Five years old. Ahhh! Here's the problem: per educator and homeschool advocate, Dr. Ruth Beechick, grammar and spelling (in particular) are almost entirely useless "subjects" and are naturally (and painlessly) absorbed simply by reading. Following her methodology, I've chosen to eschew a formal English curriculum and just have the kids read. This, however, means that the kids HAVE to read well written books. No Junie B Jones or Horrible Harrys. As much as I dislike Magic Treehouse, Dominic did get hooked on them from church kids and I permitted him to check those out while I gathered some inventory. But after reading Bulla's Sword In the Tree, he isn't so impressed with the Magic Treehouse anymore. I ask librarians for help and they look at me cluelessly. First, I don't think they really believe me when I say that Noemie reads chapter books. And then when I say that Magic Treehouse isn't good enough quality literature, their jaws drop like they can't fathom the possibility that children's fiction can have sentence construction variety, or that their authors can refrain from beginning sentences with conjunctions, or finishing them with prepositional phrases. The librarians around here have been pretty useless. Have they never heard of George MacDonald? Edward Eager? Maud Hart Lovelace? So I have to resort to book lists from random websites, and previewing their recommendations myself. I can discern quickly if a book will be grammatically acceptable, but assessing the values of an author are much more difficult. And that's where all this reading has come in. One book I previewed was sad and somber, concentrating too much on death. Many of the more modern books assume that sibling rivalry and rebellion is a natural course of behavior. (My kids may fight from time to time, but the rifts are momentary and in the end, they are eachothers' best friends, like the Boxcar Children, Narnia's Pevensies, and The Littles. It matters to me that their books reinforce this.) Is marriage portrayed as intrinsically dysfunctional? Are parents generally portrayed as dupes? I stay up late at night trying to skim these books as quickly as possible and it seems to me the kids read them even quicker. I need to find some older librarian friends, the kind that used to know the books on their shelves.
We had a moment of awesomeness in our homeschool today. We've been studying Ancient Israel in school so, for fun, I played Louis Armstrong's version of Go Down, Moses, lip-synching theatrically. My kids, who'd never heard the song before, broke out into their own melodramatic lip-synch of the echoing choir parts without missing a beat. Their instincts are genius. And ridiculous. I love it!
Water-pipes, and children's lit aside, we have managed to survive 2 months at my parent's house. Or should I say, my parents have survived. As we head into the holidays, there will be a lot of things to distract us from missing Danny so much. There's the Kid's Christmas program at church this Sunday, where Dominic has a solo as a wise man, and the Cantata the following week, where I'll be singing in a few ensembles. There is the forthcoming Christmas tree, and the Christmas cards and gift shopping. There are ancient Phoenicians and Minoans on the homeschool horizon. There's my dad's birthday, and retirement, Noche Buena, old friends from out of town.... and then the promise of spending three weeks near Danny in Georgia where will be able to see him on the weekends and a night or two during the week. All is well!
No comments:
Post a Comment