Camian Academy

I think I am verification thingy challenged. You know those “enter what you see below” random string of letters/numbers that are supposed to prove you are not a spammer. Nearly every time I do one I get a letter or number wrong and have to start over with a whole new random string of letters/numbers. Those things annoy me.

I am always amazed at the amount of food Fritz eats and how easily he eats it.  When Ani was 14 months old she barely ate solids at all (a couple bits now and then and some days nothing at all).  We thought Cameron was a big eater but he had nothing on Fritz.

Fritz has 6 teeth, four on top and two on bottom, now. And yet he can eat whatever he wants without any trouble. For dinner last night he ate two chicken nuggets. I’m still not sure how he does that with so few teeth. So far today, in addition to nursing, he’s had three pancakes and three pierogies. The other day he ate half of a Hot Pocket. On Saturday we went to Silver Diner and he ate more than half of a grilled cheese kids meal.

Speaking of Fritz eating grilled cheese, now that he’s over a year old we’ve been trying out a couple of the foods he used to react to each week. We have gone through everything except cashews, peanuts, shellfish, and grapes and he has had no problem with anything so far. It’s definitely making life much easier for us! He still has issues with carrots and bananas, but only when he eats them himself, not when I eat them.

I recently read this article about why having a homebirth is bad and giving birth in the hospital is good (warning: if you support homebirth, this article may make you turn funny colors). The whole article was annoying, but the part that really rubbed me the wrong way is the paragraph that says homebirth isn’t about the baby. See, apparently these crazy moms are giving birth at home in order to prove a point and make a political statement.

Have a drug free birth? Mom’s trying to look better than everyone else. Have a homebirth? Mom’s trying to prove a point at the peril of her unborn child. Co-sleep? Mom is risking baby’s life to have them stay close to her. Don’t vaccinate? Mom can’t handle hearing the baby cry. Breastfeed past a year? Mom gets some twisted pleasure from it. Homeschool? Mom can’t let her kids grow up and is stunting their social growth.

That’s how it always is, isn’t it? If you make a choice outside of the mainstream then you must be trying to prove a point. It’s always all about the mom and what the mom wants. I run into that sentiment often. It couldn’t possibly be that the choices I make for my family are based on research, prayer, and deep pondering. I know many of our choices are not the same as others would make and that’s okay. What’s right for us isn’t necessarily right for you. Just don’t assume that because your choice is the typical one that my choice is wrong.

Cameron doesn’t eat all that much in a day. He barely eats lunch and dinner. But I just can’t feed him enough for breakfast. He loves to eat breakfast, which is funny since his father hates most breakfast foods.

Yesterday Cameron had two eggs, two slices of bread, two yogurts, and cereal for breakfast. Today he had three eggs, a slice of bread, a bagel, a yogurt, and cereal. Both days he claimed to still be hungry after eating all of that!

Yesterday was Ani’s first Girl Scout meeting. She had a great time. All the girls are homeschooled (and if there’s anyone else with homeschooled girls that want to be Girl Scouts in the Springfield-Lorton-Alexandria area let me know! we’d love to have more girls!). One of the girls lives less than 2 miles from us and another has the same full first name as Ani (Anastasia), just pronounced differently, and they were born only 10 days apart. Ani can’t wait for the next meeting in two weeks!

As I explained in yesterday’s post, Ani was the spotlight in primary on Sunday. As the primary president was reading her information, she got tripped up on what Ani had put for where she was born. An had written, simply, a hospital. I got a good laugh out of that. It makes total sense that she would write that. Later the primary president told me she figured there had to be a reason Ani wrote it because Ani’s too sweet to be a smart aleck. It’s something she might expect from an older child.

For Ani, being born in a hospital is a big deal. She’s the only one of my three who was. Cameron was born in a freestanding birthing center and Fritz was born at home. She knows all her future brothers and sisters will likely be born at home, too. In Ani’s view being born in a hospital is unusual and so worth writing down for her place of birth.

In primary each Sunday one or two kids is the “spotlight” child of the week. All the kids stand up and an adult says things like “this person has brown hair,” “this person has blue eyes,” “this person’s favorite colors are pink and blue, both light.” If it describes them they stay standing, if not they sit down. Those three are what it took to pinpoint Ani as the spotlight on Sunday.

Once the child who is the spotlight is known, he or she goes to the front and the adult finishes telling the other children about that child. The mini bio includes things like where they were born, their favorite subject in school, what they want to be when they grow up, and the all-important favorite TV show. Then the child gets a piece of candy as a prize for being the spotlight child.

It is common for the favorite things section to have changed between the time the child filled out the form and when they were the spotlight, particularly among the younger kids. When Ani filled it out she said her favorite TV show was Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! (a title I must say I like saying). She said that was not correct anymore and her favorite show is now Boy Meets World.

Well, all I can say is thank goodness Ani was the spotlight on Sunday because as we watched all the commercials that evening we happened to kind of get caught watching Pimp My Ride on MTV. It’s rather fascinating what they do to those cars (a snowcone make in the trunk?!?!). Ani has always liked fancy cars. She once saw a car with doors that lifted up and out instead of straight out and was utterly fascinated and wanted to know if we could put that type of doors on our car (she was 5 at the time). Pimp My Ride was right up her alley. She has requested that I start DVRing it so she can watch it. So thank goodness she was already the spotlight. I can just imagine her saying “No, that’s not my favorite show. My favorite show is Pimp My Ride.” Pimp just isn’t a word that should be said in church.

Today the kids in our area have gone back to school. We do school year round and take breaks whenever the mood strikes us so we’ve been having school all summer (which, might I add, confuses the heck out of people in real life for some reason). Just for the fun of it I have given the kids the day off from school today. And I have this urge to go somewhere very public during school hours.