Author: Breezy Point Mom
•9:59 PM
August 25, 2009 10:25 p.m.

Baby Girl really takes delight in books. A commonplace sight in our family is to see her in the back seat of the car with a big grin, talking about something she just read in a book. She loves, with all her heart, to read, and especially to read aloud to all of us. She can often be heard reading while I am driving: books about The Littles; Magic Tree House books; and Boxcar Children books. Books, generally fiction ones, bring her seemingly limitless glee.



You see, this is Baby Girl's gift. Whereas Little Son is gifted in music, Baby Girl is gifted in language. This is a girl who could speak her first Korean word by age 4 months. On her first birthday, we observed a Korean custom in which a tray of objects was placed before her, each object signifying a possible destiny / calling / future career. Items like a dollar bill, a thread, etc. signified wealth, long life, etc. So she chose.... a pencil. Of course, we believe all is in the hands of Providence, but from that day on, we casually joked that she might become a writer.

As of now, she is six years old, a young six, not yet 6-1/2, and all she wants to do is write, read, and read aloud. And then write again! On the days when I don't work through a Calvert lesson with her (usually Mondays) I have taken Self-Reliant Man's advice and assigned her a book report. While I am working with her brother, I have her read a book and write a summary of it. For some kids, the idea of this might reduce them to tears. Not so for Baby Girl, because I am asking her to do the two things she loves best, read and write.

So you can get an idea of the type of writer we have in Baby Girl, I am re-typing here the report she wrote on Monday. She decided to write about the first Boxcar Children book, a book she had read a week earlier. I have typed it exactly as she wrote it, spelling included, although I did add in a couple of missing periods for clarity.

Edventures Mysterys

First there was four children who had no parents. so they had run away from there grandfather becuse they thougt he was mean. But when they came to the woods to sleep it started to look like it was going to rain. Jessie got up and went away from the others to find somewhere to sleepin and stay dry from the rain. sudenly in the woods there was a boxcar. she hurried Back to the others to tell the others about the Boxcar. they followed her trew the woods intil they came to an Old railroad track and on it sat an old Boxcar with vines all over it with a stump for a step. Henry helped Jessie open the Heavy door to the Boxcar. When they got in they made Pine needle Beds. And they lived very happily for a long time and when Henry went to find a Job He found a docther mowing the grass. And he got a job with the Docther and one day when Benny Jessie Violet and Henry were at the Docters house there grandfather came and took them to his own home where they mist the Boxcar. and that evening he said go Back to the Docthers house and when you come Back there will be a surprise for you. When they came Back the Boxcar was in a garden.

The End

How about that for Baby Girl's book report?
Author: Breezy Point Mom
•12:10 PM
We just finished a longer read aloud book: The Swiss Family Robinson. It did take some time to get used to the style of this book, as well as the language used. However, the children seemed to have no problem with their listening comprehension. They sometimes listened better to me than I did to myself. Self-Reliant Man also listened and appreciated the moments of humor in the book.

I must say that this book will never find its way into the annals of politically correct literature. It definitely had a pro Christian flavor, as the father of the marooned family was a preacher and carried his faith into their circumstances. But also -- goodness, there were so many shootings and killings of animals to serve the survival needs of the family; although I take no issue with this, it did get tedious and descriptive of the steps of reaping the rewards of the animals' corpses, well beyond what I wanted to know about.

In fact, I found the entire book tedious, and enjoyed it less than the rest of my family, I feel.

But I must add this comment. If someone were to ask me what was the most fruitful aspect of our homeschool and the education of our children, I would tell them without hesitation: READING ALOUD. We have never shied away from reading challenging literature with rich vocabulary and complex sentence structure, and we have seen dramatic results from this in our children: in their general speaking vocabulary, their own reading choices (Little Son has recently been enjoying George MacDonald books), and their writing style. Both children are writing so well that I know it is all about being read to. There is no doubt in my mind. So if you want to make a dramatic difference, read aloud, and not just fluff books but challenging, meaty literature above what you might normally think of. It will develop their brains more than anything else you do!

Next book in line: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
Author: Breezy Point Mom
•1:03 PM
We are most of the way through world history, and we just had a lesson on Christopher Columbus. So, after I finished reading the chapter to Little Son, I asked him a few comprehension questions. It went something like this..

ME: What were the names of Columbus' three ships?

LITTLE SON: The Nina, the Pinta, and the Pina Colada!

I am so glad Calvert School is preparing him so well...
Author: Breezy Point Mom
•10:19 PM
Here is an update on an old friend of ours who received a heart transplant this past weekend. He is doing pretty well. They weaned him off the ventilator on Sunday evening, and he was eating light snacks on Monday. He is in a lot of pain, however, because the nurses are trying to get him to cough and breath deeply and, well, you can just imagine how his chest must be feeling.

I did some research on heart transplants and discovered that there are, at any time, about 800,000 people in the world who are identified as needing a transplant, while only about 3,500 of these people succeed in receiving one. That is about 0.4%.

So many have been praying for Raymond, and so far he is truly beating the odds. We are so thankful!
Author: Breezy Point Mom
•10:12 PM
Anybody still up tonight? Please pray hard for our friend, Raymond, who is likely getting a heart transplant tonight. He is just 50 years old, and a father of one nine year old son. Thank you very much!

UPDATE: Raymond got his new heart last night and the last I heard he was doing well. The hospital needs to wean him off the ventilator next. Please keep praying. Thank you!!
Author: Breezy Point Mom
•9:51 PM
Wow, it was a "fun" morning. Just returned from my second ever esophagogastroduodenoscopy, or EGD for short. Try saying that ten times fast. Anyway, this experience was more "normal" than last time, as they put me completely under using propofol for about 15 or 20 minutes. All went well except now I have to wait a week for the results of the biopsies.

You see, I have an irreversible condition known as Barrett's Esophagus, the result of self-medicating for heartburn for upwards of 12 years or more. My dad used to tell me I should go get it checked out, and have the EGD done, but I was very creeped out by that idea and figured there wasn't anything a doctor could do for me that an over the counter heartburn medicine couldn't. So when Zantac, and Prilosec, and Tagamet all came out on the market as OTCs, I stocked up on them at the supermarket.

Well, now I have Barrett's, and that puts me in the high risk group for cancer of the esophagus. So now I am on the two year plan, which means that I get to have an EGD every two years for the rest of my life. I am on surveillance, so they can see if I am making any movement across the spectrum between Barrett's and the big C. The spectrum includes various stages of cellular dysplasia, or pre-cancerous cell changes. Statistically, every year I run a 0.5% chance of developing cancer. Thats 5% in ten years, 10% in twenty years, etc. You get the picture.

Moral of the story: don't ignore heartburn. Don't let it go for years and years. Get a doctor's opinion about it, and go get that EGD if you need to. It is important.
Author: Breezy Point Mom
•10:49 AM
Sometimes when I am in a social group situation, I am flabbergasted at how "out of it" I feel. The conversation is going a mile a minute and everyone present seems to know all the details about everyone else's lives. I figure that they must be talking all day long to one another on the telephone. But my phone isn't ringing. Hmmm. I feel so out of the loop sometimes.

Well, the truth is, I have been out of the loop.

Recently, I signed up to participate in a group bible study at the church I attend. That is, I signed up online. Afterwards, I was sent a link to an online group used for communication within this group. The link was for a Facebook group, only we haven't had an account on Facebook. So I signed up, under Self-Reliant Man's name, not mine. I really didn't know anything about Facebook yet.

The next thing I know, Facebook is suggesting that I add friends to my account. What more, it is suggesting to me people that I actually know. I figure Facebook searched through my email address book and matched them to account holders. So I naively started connecting to the friends. A little later, out of curiosity, I open up my Facebook homepage and voila, there is a continuous newsfeed of comments and photos from several of my Facebook friends. I see now that they are sharing little snippets of their lives as they go along through their days, sometimes several posts a day. I find this fascinating. Suddenly, I know more about their daily life than I have in months. Is this what everybody has been doing?

Some of these people, (and I am not referring to anybody I know who reads my blog), when I see them and ask how they are doing, they reply "busy". Maybe now I see why they have been so busy? So how do I handle all the knowledge I can now accumulate through Facebook?

When one of my 50 Facebook friends reports that they had a really bad day, that their child is sick, that their car engine died, that their uncle needs prayer, that something bad or sad happened, am I now responsible to respond to this? After all, we all go through multiple minor crises throughout our everyday lives, and for those friends we rarely see, most of them are long forgotten or glossed over by the time we catch up with each other in person (or by phone). I can see, however, that I will now feel guilty if I do not respond to the daily ups and downs that I read about. What if I just passively read through the posts and don't respond at all? Will they think that I don't care? Do they expect to hear from me if they report that their child did well on a test today, or that they got a flat tire? How do I respond to the incredible volume of information I now have access to?

(As an aside, right now for some reason, our family is on the prayer update email list for three churches. How do I pray for all the prayer requests for three churches? It is the same dilemma. Too much information.)

Not to mention that the temptation to check several times a day for new posts from friends can be very powerful. After all, it is like looking through a daily newspaper when all the news is about people you know. This can be very interesting. But again, too much information. I feel like I am teetering on the edge of a black hole, to be sucked in forever at any time. Can't I run away from it all and just have friends the old fashioned way, relying on telephones, email, and getting together from time to time? If I don't get into this, do I have to forever feel like I am out of the loop?

Socializing is forever changed. And right now, I just want to whine... "do I have to?"
Author: Breezy Point Mom
•3:41 PM
I just had to put this here. Great video.