Of all the kids, Lisel is the most like me. This causes her to be both uniquely endearing and uniquely annoying to me. In my totally pregnant, super hot, so achy I can hardly move, the "annoying" side has definitely been dominating lately.

Most of my childhood insecurities, I see in her. But instead of causing me to have compassion and reach out to her in a way that I know is meaningful to her, I'm annoyed and pull back. I know that it's not right to withhold affection from my child in this way. I'm not excusing my actions at all. I'm just wanting to record what life is right now. I don't like the way I'm parenting, especially Lisel.

But in the last week I've been given a really insightful blessing with her. It started out as a "we need money desperately" type thing. At least two years ago, I had submitted Bennet and Lisel's name to the local university for a "Preschool Problem Solving" study (psychology stuff, you know) that paid pretty nicely. Bennet didn't get in, and Lisel wasn't old enough at the time. But a few weeks ago, they called back, asking about whether Lisel was now in the correct age range, and twenty bazillion other questions to determine her eligibility for the current "Preschool Problem Solving" study. She was accepted.

The study involved two meetings -- one at our house, one at their office. Both were long -- about 2 hours each. During them, Lisel was given a ton of different IQ-type tests -- most of which I would consider falling within the math-skills sets. Meanwhile I filled out form after form after form on things everything from how our household works, what my level of satisfaction with life is, how I parent, and health of everyone in our family, etc.

But in the background, while I filled out forms, I could hear and see the tests that Lisel was doing.

I was amazed. I learned so much about my daughter during this time. (For the record, this was also a paid study -- we earned a $75 Wally World card).

So, more as a way of documenting it than because you'll read it, here are some of the things I noticed.

• Lisel won't guess at something she doesn't know. The tester demonstrated counting backwards - -3, 2, 1. Then asked her to try counting backwards from ten. She refused to even try. This wasn't rare. In general, she knew the correct answer or she wasn't interested in guessing.
• Yet Lisel has really amazing math skills (at least, I was surprised). She could accurately solve simple division story problems: Emma and Anna made ten cookies, if they each eat the same number, how many did they each get? She nailed it. Now mind you, the most math I have ever taught her has involved counting -- and she can only count to twelve. This is a way more advanced skill that she has somehow picked up from life.
• She's fast. Every segment of our testing was done early. This is another trait that she got from me. I was also super smart in school, and the first one done with any exam. In our house now, this "book smart" characteristic is kind of downplayed and unappreciated because Chester is so "handyman smart". He, and most of the other kids, can figure out how anything works, and can fix anything. Lisel and I are left poking our nose into books and knowing things that feel relatively useless. It was nice for her to get validated as "smart". I need to pay more attention to this with her.
  
• When she's tired, she quits. This is sort of in line with the first one. And it makes me realize that she has just a bit of a passive-agressive tendancy. The last test in each session was timed. In two of the three sessions (last week, this week before snack and this week after snack), she quit part way through the timed test (before time was up or she was finished), because she was tired of doing it. She wouldn't be persuaded otherwise.
• Her favorite animals are currently monkey and owl. I was shocked. Last week they were unicorns, and before than kitties, butterflies and rabbits -- all fairly girly. Then today they're monkey and owl. I asked her about this later, and here's how the logic goes: Bennet changed his favorite color from red to blue. So she decided to change her favorite color too. (It had been purple). Bennet wouldn't let her have blue, since that was his, so she chose brown, since her and my eyes are brown (everyone else in the family has blue eyes). Monkeys and owls are brown, so they became her new favorite animal. Several times today after the testing, she played "owl", running around flapping her arms and whoooo-ing. The tester's said they've never had someone pick "owl" as the animal they liked. I wouldn't have guessed either.
• Lisel has a much stronger tie to rules than I would have guessed, and good delayed gratification skills. In one part of the test, she was given a handful of M&Ms, on the table in front of her, under a clear glass. Also on the table was placed a bell. She was told that she had to stand perfectly still, not talking or anything, with her hands on the table, but not touch the bell or the glass with the M&Ms. She was also told that at the end of the time (which was four minutes), she would get to eat the candy. Then, during the four minutes, the tester had to try to distract her for a couple of minutes (not overtly, just doing things like moving around, dropping a pen, coughing, etc), then leave the room for the last 90 seconds (testing whether the kid would disobey in some way with the tester absent...). I was allowed to watch through a two-way window. I had read about this study (they published results of it a year or so ago, from a different test group), and was really curious what Lisel would do. To be honest, I thought she'd probably eat the candy, but leave the bell alone. But she did pretty much perfectly. She moved very minimally (in her mind, I'm sure she was perfectly still, but the tester said that she wiggled her fingers constantly), she didn't even show signs of being tempted to eat the candy or to touch or ring the bell. She didn't even squirm much beyond the first few seconds, and didn't talk at all. I was pretty surprised -- I'm not sure why, I would have done exactly the same at the age, and she is a lot like me, but I was surprised anyway.
  

All in all, the time was really special. She got a prize at the end -- she picked a purple notebook with a cupcake on the cover and a flowered pen to write with. She picked them because the cupcake was sparkly. She totally ate up the time with Mom, one on one. It made me realize again, that this sort of thing is really important to the kids. A while back we had tried taking our kids on "dates" every once in a while -- just an hour out with Mom or Dad alone. We tried to keep it simple -- like taking a walk down to the store to buy a cookie together, or going for a bike ride, but it was still too complicated to fit well in our life and only lasted a couple of weeks. But Lisel especially, and Bennet to some extent, still talk about these dates and ask when we'll start them again. Having this time with Lisel, and noticing the new appreciation that I have for her as a unique individual, motivates me to try to start this up again. How, I have no idea. It's not like there's any spare time around here.

(As if anyone is actually reading.....)

Do you have any ideas for 1) fitting a date with kids into a schedule, and 2) keeping scheduled dates with kids maintainably simple?

This is important, and I want to make it happen.

Amusing craigslist posts

I've become a bit of a craigslist junkie lately. I've been looking for a few specific items, and the good deals go fast, so I've been watching the local list closely. Most items are more expensive than I would expect at garage sales, but I feel like it pays off in not driving all over town just waiting to find the perfect deal.

As a side benefit, I find the ads rather amusing. Now, I've never had a great sense of humor, and everyone knows that a pregnant woman's sense of humor is weird, so I don't expect these to be funny to you. I just feel like posting some every once in a while. Perhaps because I have nothing more profound to say.

(In reality I have a lot going on in my mind, and it's just not organized enough to come out on the screen in a positive way yet. Perhaps in the next week or two there'll be some worthwhile content. Perhaps not.)

So, without further excuses, The award winning craigslist ad from yesterday (contact information removed). I would love to see this thing, I wish there had been a picture. I wonder the story behind it....
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I HAVE A BIG...

OLD...

VERY HEAVY...

CAST IRON...

POT BELLY STOVE...

THAT CAME FROM A UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD CABOOSE...

$700.00 OBO
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This just might win the cute toy award. I'd never pay that kind of money ($50) for a small metal toy, but that's another topic.

West Germany Tin Litho Duck Friction Toy, paint very good condition, bottom marked made in West Germany, 940 MAMA PAAK, it measures 3 1/2" tall and 4" long, thanks for looking


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This is a mystery to me. What is it? How do you use it?

copper clothes hanger for $3

Unplugged Cheese

I have wanted to, for a long time, join in the unplugged weekly projects. I just never seem to get on the ball within the week. But I love that site. Pretty much everything about it jives with me -- reducing "screen" time, no TV, hands-on activity with kids, what's not to love?

So tonight, I go to check out the weekly project, and notice that just the other day, We Chester and the kids did the perfect project to write up and join in. So, here's to what I hope is a future of joining in this carnival. It's totally cool.

We get our milk through a government program for low-income folks like us, called WIC. On WIC, we get a LOT of milk -- more than we could ever hope to drink, since we're not big milk-drinkers. So we often have to get creative to use up our milk before it goes bad. This month we were caught a bit off-guard and ended up with eleven gallons in a week. And we had colds, and were drinking even less milk than usual.

So, I pulled out my normal tricks, making a gallon into cottage cheese, a gallon into yogurt (some of that into yogurt cheese and then cheesecake), a half-gallon into cream-of-mushroom soup for the freezer..... But there's still a lot of milk left.

So Chester, in his brilliance, decides to attempt a more advanced milk-usage project: mozzarella cheese. Last Thursday, he and the kids got everything set up and gave it a try, using a modification of this recipe. (For the record, our milk is homogenized, and pasteurized, and didn't cause any problems. He also omitted the called-for lipase powder and calcium chloride, because he noticed that not all mozzarella recipes include them. We didn't have flaked salt, so he ground some salt in our coffee grinder to make it really fine. It worked great.)


Isn't it beautiful?

It ended up not stringy, though. According to this site, it's probably that the acidity was under-developed.

But it's sure yummy. It's more dry feeling than store-bought mozzarella, but tastes almost exactly like it (which I found impressive). We'll be making it again. And the nice part is that it used an entire gallon of milk to make those logs there (about 8 oz. of cheese, we think)!

The kids talked for days about how much fun it was to make cheese with Dad.

Principals of Scripture memory

Scripture memory is one of those things that makes me laugh at Christians. First of all, we all know we should do this, but we don't. And strangely enough, we don't consider ourselves to be sinning that we don't (what is that verse in James which says "to him who knows what to do and does not do it, to him it is sin...?). (Either that, or we don't care that we're entrenched in laziness and sin for our lack of spiritual disciplines, maybe that's more it....). Like all sins, it has consequences. I'm not sure what the consequences of not memorizing scripture are, but I do know what some of the rewards for memorization are: a sharper mind, a closer walk with God, a more fruitful life, discernment, a greater understanding of scripture, a proper perspective, to name a few of the more obvious ones.

So maybe the consequences of not memorizing scripture are the lack of these things.

So then, when we decide to memorize scripture, we go about it in such an awkward way. We have all these Christian catch-phrases - things like "Christianity is relationship, not religion". Or, "Christianity is God reaching out to us, not us earning our way to God". Or, "It's about who you know, not what you've done". These are all true and right. Though works have their place and are rewarded in heaven (and on earth, by the way), what distinguishes Christianity is that it's core is about grace -- we don't earn our Eternal Life. It's all grace.

Then we go to memorize scripture. First, We're probably motivated by guilt or by some pastor's motivational speech, not by our honest assessment of the rewards that we will get from this discipline. Things attempted from guilt rarely stick for long. Then second, we forget all the beauty of our Lord and go straight for memorizing commands. Now, yes, all scripture is God breathed and valuable. This of course includes the commands. But in all honesty, it's far more important to understand and love who God is, than to have a grasp on various commands. We aren't motivated by lists of commands. We can't keep them (this was established back in the "we can't earn salvation" bit). And we never will keep them on our own. No, we're motivated by relationship. We need to know a God and be so enthralled with who He is that we want in every way possible to please Him. Then we can delight in realizing that He's even told us exactly how to please Him. What a great God!

(As a digression, this is one of the most beautiful things that I see in most oldest children, they desperately want to please their parents. Almost everything they do, they look for approval and a "wow, that's really neat" from Mom or Dad. They love to spend time with us parents, and they want to grow up to be just like us. Would that be the case if they didn't really know us, but just thought we were a list of rules? Not on your life. Our relationship with God is the same way).

A. W. Tozer, among his many great quotes, says "I believe there is scarcely an error in doctrine or a failure in applying Christian ethics that cannot be traced finally to imperfect and ignoble thoughts about God...." (The Knowledge of the Holy by A. W. Tozer, Chapter 1. Someday I'll read that book).

I think that quote, besides being brilliant is so very right on the money. If we thought correctly about God, our doctrine would be right, and so would our application of that doctrine.

So, then, I propose that scripture memory should begin with meditating and memorizing those parts of scripture that are directly about who God is, and that lead us to right and noble thoughts of God. It makes sense to me. Does it make sense to you?

Toward this end, I'm beginning to compile sets of verses to memorize - a list for kids, and a list for me (or adults in general). When it gets going, these verses, and my meditations about them will, I hope, be part of my new blog. Because, well, it's fun to start blogs. And I want to make this a continued priority in my life (I've been sort of half-heartedly memorizing scripture about the character of God for a couple of months now, and it is definitely worthwhile).

This blog will continue, of course. I need a place to post funny things my family attempts.

Driving Lessons

Two years ago, when I started my first (now defunct) blog, I opened with a story on how we'd own nineteen vehicles in our (then) 5.5 years of marriage. At the time he'd just bought two-wheeled vehicle number nine, a Honda Nighthawk that I really liked. But I did wonder if nineteen vehicles in less than six years was normal...

Since then we've bought and sold at least a half dozen more. It's not really special any more. At one point there were more than ten motorized vehicles who lived here (and no, we're not dealers or anything. Just junk collectors).

The Nighthawk was sold and replaced with a smaller Nighthawk. The Moped was sold and replaced with a bigger moped. But it was sold to Chester's brother, who also lives here, so it stayed, until he sold it a couple of weeks ago (he replaced it with a Honda Rebel). The van was totaled and replaced with another van, The car was sold in an attempt to minimize, but then replaced with a pickup, which was then sold to another of Chester's brothers (who also lived here) and later replaced with another Honda Civic (this time a hybrid that was wrecked and Chester fixed up). And the saga goes on.

Today, though, we graduated into a new class of vehicle.



And the kids got their first driving lessons.


(If you're wondering why in the world we would buy a tractor, it's for mowing and tilling and the like at our newest house).

Painful Garage-Saling

I think I've done a rather effective job of brainwashing my kids in some areas: They all love to garage sale. Yesterday morning was a special treat -- one of the best church rummage sales I've ever seen.

Bennet brought his own money, and very quickly made the decision to use it to buy a skateboard.



After we had him cleaned up from "trying it out", they gave it to him free.

I earned a penny today

After supper tonight, Chester did the dishes (what a man), while I sat out front, pretending to weed the flower beds, and watching the kids play. After a while, Bennet grew tired of simply riding his bike, and came up to me.

"If you go tell Dad that I'm almost ready to play football with him, then I'll give you a penny on your birthday!"