Liam, Evan, and I had an absolutely fantastic (if exhausting) day yesterday. In the morning we went and helped the Chesapeake Bay Foundation plant bushes and water grasses along a streambed through a local golf course. There were at least 100 people there by midday, along at least a 1/2 mile stretch of the stream. The boys learned all about erosion, watersheds, healthy streams, rivers, bays, and oceans, and most importantly community service. New: here’s a picture the CBF organizer took of us:

After the CBF event we went over to Ted and Esther’s to build an absolutely enormous piece of play equipment for Lucas. Ted had acquired this thing off of Craig’s List, and had subsequently reconstructed fully a quarter of the structural pieces (due to plenty of rot and a little insect damage). Ted had every piece labeled and prepped, with the necessary tools all laid out and ready to go. It’s always nice to do things for friends, but it’s even nicer to do things for friends who are so organized.

I’m looking forward to a slower day today, but only because it feels so rewarding to slow down after having been so helpful!

Evan’s birthday has been a three-week extravaganza, beginning with the trip to Strasburg, followed by the flight to MN to visit Aunt Kelly, Uncle Patrick and his new cousin Sean, and culminating with his school celebration and the fourth annual Pumpkin Patch Birthday Bash! He has had such a good time and is so proud of being FIVE! Thank you to everyone who has been a part of it. Pictures will be posted soon!

Liam: “Mom, may I please have a clementine?”

Evan: “I like to call them pumpkins. Because they look like pumpkins.”

Liam (with a look of disdain) “But they are clementines.”

Evan (with his mischievous grin): “Mom, may I please have a pumpkin?”

Cara (with an equally mischievous grin): “Mommy, may I please have a pumpkintine?”

Yesterday was one of those early autumn days when you hate to be stuck inside. Good thing we weren’t! After I got Cara and Evan out the door with their school carpool, I got a shower while Liam practiced the piano. Then we got out of the house! Liam is doing a nature study at the park near our house, so we headed that way. I drove because of Lori and our stuff (and because we needed to leave straight from there), but Liam ran the whole way (his choice).

Liam has picked a spot in the woods at the side of the creek to conduct a nature study. He takes his digital camera and field journal and records his observations. We have been visiting about once a week and will continue throughout the year to see how things change through the seasons and weather. (He was shocked to see that with so little rain, the creek has actually stopped running.) We did some exploring and investigating before heading back.

After a quick stop at the grocery store to get lunch for a picnic (where Liam conducted the self-checkout), we picked Cara and Evan up from school (where they had spent most of their time outdoors, too). We headed over to Green Spring Gardens Park. We had a lovely picnic amidst the beautiful flowers, visited the greenhouse, and walked through the woods to the pond (where we saw frogs among the lily pads and experienced a flock of Canada geese take flight towards us). All the while, Liam was identifying the (conveniently labeled) plants for us and comparing leaf shapes. We ended up in the horticultural center where we found a display on monarch butterflies, including a live caterpillar munching on a plant. We read the books and did the puzzles that were out.

On the way to the car, Cara stopped to pick up a fallen leaf, and Liam and Evan grabbed some, too. Liam announced, “Look, Mom, it’s an Eastern Red Oak leaf!” “How can you tell?” I asked. He cocked an eyebrow at me and pointed to the sign at the base of the tree. I smiled. “How could you tell if it wasn’t labeled?” “From the shape of the leaf… if I could remember it.” So they each brought their leaves home with them. As soon as we got home, the boys raced to the crayons. They did leaf rubbings (their idea, not mine), and then traced the leaves and cut them out. Evan also drew a tree with relatively-accurately-shaped leaves (it’s now on the fridge).

Liam then decided to help himself to the pile of left-over fifth-grade math worksheets (that I recently discovered while unpacking a box from my teaching days). He can usually do these by himself, and does so of his own free choosing, for fun.

When I tucked everyone in last night, Liam said he wasn’t quite tired enough to go to sleep, so he was going to stay up and read some of the books he checked out from the library about Apollo 13 and space station Mir. I’m not sure how late he stayed up, but he’s still asleep at 9:30 this morning.

So, yes, I do have a curriculum and a plan and materials, etc. But only as a back-up for when we don’t have something better to do. Sometimes I wonder when that will be…

MSNV has a wonderfully wooded campus, and outdoor activities make up a large part of their curriculum. They have a gardening shed with all sorts of tools and job boxes for science/nature/practical life activities. The only logistical problem is that because it’s a Montessori school, and therefore the children choose their own work, some kids will be working inside while others want to do gardening. So this morning, Liam (and Lori) and I volunteered to oversee the side yard so that students could come and go as they pleased.

It was a gorgeous end-of-summer day (sunny, mid-70s), and the first ones to burst out of the classroom were all boys. They quickly grabbed shovels, rakes, hoes, and trowels from the shed and tromped off to the digging plots. Before long they had formed teams and decided to dig for buried treasure. Hacking away at the dirt, they exchanged conjectures about how much gold they would find. Then the girls began trickling outside. They ambled down to the shed and, one by one, chose buckets to collect rocks in. They were going to make a rock border along the walking path and herb garden. Without discussing it, they broke off into groups of two and three and scoured the underbrush for fist-sized rocks.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a stark illustration of the hunter/gatherer divide. Some people would like to pretend that there isn’t a difference between boys and girls, but there just is.

Lori is such a delight, and she’s getting more and more interactive each day. For about the first two months, babies are more or less on a seemingly endless loop of: sleep, eat, burp, poop, repeat. (Evan will recite this for you if you ask what babies do.) The periods of quiet wakefulness get longer and longer, though, and Lori will play happily on her gymini mat or in her bouncy seat for upwards of an hour sometimes. She’s been smiling since she was about six weeks old, and her laugh has grown from a slight gurgling sound to a full-blown belly-laugh. The kids are experts at eliciting her hilarious chuckle, and tonight Cara got her going like I’ve never seen before. Lori was almost snorting she was laughing so hard. If I’m lucky I’ll catch some video of it next time (and post it for all to see).

She’s getting better about riding in the car, which is good because with school and all the other activities we’re involved in, we’ve been in the car a lot. Liam and Evan take turns sitting next to her and putting her nuk in her mouth if she gets upset. They are very attentive big brothers. People keep asking how everyone has adjusted to “the new baby,” and I have to say, other than Cara being shy about the sudden increase in visitors at the house, the transition has been extremely smooth. The only problem I have with Evan is the same one I had with him when Cara was born: he loves Lori SO MUCH that he’s in her face (and therefore mine) from the moment he wakes up in the morning (which is usually before I do) until I shut his door at night. As another mother pointed out the other day, though, it’s certainly better than the alternative. Cross your fingers for me that everything stays even-keeled!

Despite the lingering hot, sunny weather outside, it is clear that summer is over. The definitive proof was that the pool sprung a leak and had to be dismantled (hopefully it can be patched and used again next year). And then school started! Check out the new album of pictures from the end of summer, including belt tests for both the boys, birthday parties galore, and Cara’s first day of school. So far, she’s enjoying it.

I’ve drafted at least a dozen blog posts in my head over the last few weeks, but never seem to find the time to type them up at the end of the day. I’ll have to write it into my schedule and get better about it. We’re also working on Liam’s section of the site, where you can follow his homeschooling journey. We’ve got a lot going on this month, so realistically, it won’t be up and running until the end of September. I’ve been doing a pretty good job of keeping the photos updated, though, so check back often to see pictures of our adventures!