Olivia, however, will be going to public school, per her request. I, of course, prefer Montessori above all, but it's too expensive. I applied for her to go to a tuition-free classical-education-based charter school, but she will be put on a waiting list, and I can only hope she can get in next year, because the public school in our district is shit, and even if we move into NWA soon, she will end up in the stuck-up Bentonville public school system. Bentonville PS is ranked very highly, but we don't want her there, either.
BUT, I will likely have to continue teaching her how to read. After determining that Olivia exhibited many signs of dyslexia, I had her tested and then enrolled in weekly sessions with a specially-trained instructor and daily learning games and parent-child lessons that I did with her. It was very expensive, though, and she didn't cooperate very well, so I'm figuring it out myself. I'm not counting on special instruction for her to address her needs, so I fully expect to be helping her until she learns to read well on her own.
Here are some neat facts about dyslexia:
*Thirty to forty percent of self-made millionaires are dyslexic, whereas only 10% of the general population is dyslexic. This study found that forty percent of the participants were dyslexic and that dyslexic people often make excellent entrepreneurs.
*Dyslexia ranges on a spectrum from mild to severe.
*It often runs in families.
"Some of the most brilliant minds of our time have been known to have dyslexia: Albert Einstein, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill, Benjamin Franklin, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and John Lennon, to mention only a few." (Source: "50 Interesting Facts...")
*Dyslexics are often very intelligent and are commonly creative and inventive. It's common for them to possess a high vocabulary and to have been an early talker (or a delayed talker). (Liv was an early, advanced talker, as many who are reading this already know.)
I've got to fill out the first few credits on William's high school transcript. I'll update on that sometime in the fall.
Elizabeth is still taking speech and occupational therapy twice a week. She's doing better, slowly but surely.
I'll be going back to everyone journaling. I didn't have the boys do that last year or the start of this year. For that matter, I barely journaled myself, and that is so unlike me! I love journaling.
I wasn't excited about doing many science experiments and projects last year. Nor did we do a lot of together-reading as I normally do.
Last year was boring. It was heavy on textbooks and workbooks. But it's all ok. I've regained my spark. :-)
That's all I'll say now. I'd like to share pics from May and June.
How neat is this?! It's a turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) and a black vulture (Coragyps atratus) beside each other, having feasted together. I thought this was so cool.
I usually strap in Elizabeth, but William chose to strap her in this day. He usually isn't big on doing things for his siblings, so I thought this was really sweet and had to get a picture of it.
This bird flew into our house! Here it's in the boys' closet. William managed to get the bird out of the house, but not before it flew over their top bunk bed and pooped on it! So I had to wash a blanket or a sheet...something, I can't remember what.
Below is the dinosaur pillow I sewed for Elizabeth. William had initially not picked out any fabric from Hobby Lobby to make a pillow, but after I made Elizabeth's, he wanted to try sewing. He used some of the leftover dinosaur fabric and made one himself. Then he went through a short phase of being addicted to sewing. He sewed up several little bean bags, filled with pinto beans. He ended up later giving this pillow, that he didn't want for himself, to his cousin Laney for her second birthday.
Trusten turned nine years old this year! These are his gifts from us, his Aunt Meg, and his Gamma Pat. Others also gave him gifts. This does not show his gift that he got the next day, I think on his actual birthday, which was a refurbished laptop so that he can play Minecraft while NOT using my laptop.
Yes, yes, YES! My sweet baby girl STILL likes to go look out the window sometimes. :-)
I absolutely loved watching this fawn roam around the yard. It was so funny. It went to the edge of the yard, near the creek bed, and something spooked it, so it jumped. It frolicked along the yard, then would stop to sniff the ground or nibble some clover.
Meanwhile the mother stayed in the road the entire time, munching on leaves across the road. She'd periodically look over to see what her silly offspring was doing.
See this goofy yearling? He provided me some real quality entertainment from the comfort of my bedroom. Look below; it looks as if Mother is yelling at her/him.
I love these natural maraschino cherries with no disgusting dyes and other crap. I saved the juice back until we got enough jars to use the juice to make flavored gelatin. I use beef gelatin. I added fresh blueberries. The kids loved it! It had been a long while since I'd made flavored gelatin for them.
Nathan bought me a dozen red roses for our anniversary and some delicious chocolate bars, as well as this beautiful Spanish lavender (Lavandula stoechas) plant, which I've since repotted and placed outside.
I took this from inside the house, sitting on the couch. The way the sun and shadows hit the sycamore tree, I saw shape of a face. Can you see it? The short voluminous hair, the nose, the closed mouth, slightly curled up in a smile?
William really wanted to save this baby blue jay. He saved it from Sylvester right as we arrived home from town, but it wouldn't eat anything, and he didn't know what to do. There is not an animal rehab center where we live, and the law states to let nature take its course. Of course, William would have chosen to save it himself if he could have gotten it to eat. He gave it a few hours and then put it in a tree somewhere and left it. The nest was likely high up in the sycamore, so it wasn't located somewhere that William could access.
Olivia's Play-Doh creations
I really wish to know the species of this moth, but I can't figure it out. It seems like a sort of silk moth a bit, except they tend to be large, which this was not. Does anyone know???
I think this is a chipping sparrow (Spizella passerina) standing up tall as it watches me from afar. I'm not positive. There are wrens that look similar, too. I zoomed in a long way on this bird, which is holding something in its mouth.
So much fun in the pool!
The road was out! The distance between the gravel in the foreground and the paved bridge farther out is quite a bit. So many places were washed out during the flooding in December. We didn't get our highway fixed until June!
She's cold!
I took quite a bit of video footage of this cave from quite a distance away. I loved how the reflection of the sun on the moving water moved across the bottom of the rocks above. Then there were birds swooping in and out to feed the chicks in their nest.
After sewing a pillow with dinosaur fabric that I had leftover from making Elizabeth's pillow, William decided he loved sewing, so we went back to Hobby Lobby, and he picked out some fabric he liked (green fleece) and cut the fabric, sewed, stuffed, and finished sewing his pillow, all on his own.
He was very pleased with his finished product and now uses it as his pillow at night.
Olivia made herself a person. She named the person the name of her main imaginary friend, Indta.
Trusten sewing his fabric
Stuffing the pillow. I closed his up for him, afterward, while he watched.
The kids chased and caught lightning bugs while Nathan and I talked on the front porch. William rode his bike.
Nathan and William
William turned 13 this year! William picked out some sort of raspberry layered bar cake in the Fresh Market deli for his birthday. No, he didn't eat it all in one sitting. I think he ate it over two days. The little kids wanted cupcakes, and Nathan and I got some sort of chocolate silk pie. I took a break from fixing a dessert!
Clearly these pictures are out of order, but this is William unwrapping his new flashlight.
His card from us and money
I painted a butterfly on Liv's face. It's supposed to be pink with blue spots. It doesn't look very pink in this picture. I used paint that Nathan's mom bought for her.
I love these four kids!
I made homemade fried mushrooms. Delicious! This was the first time I'd ever done so. It sure beats eating questionable chemicals in bad heated oils.
I fixed the mushrooms as a side item to the sweet and sour chicken and rice I fixed that night. That was a big hit. I used the sweet and sour sauce recipe I've used before and cooked the chicken in a little bit of it and other seasonings. Then we added extra sauce, poured over the rice and chicken.
When I make salmon spirals, I usually make it for lunch or when Nathan is not going to be home for dinner. The oldest three love them, and I like them quite a bit, too. I've got my own special recipe.
This is sweet Ninabess before her dental surgery. I was so very sad because none of my kids have had cavities, ever, except one small cavity for William when he was nine. The other three recently had a check-up and cleaning done, and still none of them have any cavities. I was so heartbroken when I found decay in Elizabeth's mouth. I've brushed her teeth just as I did all the others. As a matter of fact, I'm still brushing hers, and all the others have brushed their own by now. I feel really guilty, because the last time I'd checked, she looked fine, then probably two months later, there was decay.
The only thing I can think of that happened is that right after I weaned her in January, she was sad each night after I brushed her teeth and tried sending her to bed. She wanted to nurse. She started saying she was hungry, so for about a month I would give her a mandarin orange each night, but I should have clued in and started automatically giving her one before brushing her teeth. Instead, I kept hoping she'd stop wanting the orange, so she'd eat it each night after I brushed her teeth, and then I didn't brush them again. I just gave her a drink of water and told her to swish and swallow. Since most of the decayed spots were between her teeth, I imagine the pulp of the orange still held sugar and was stuck between her teeth.
How stupid I was! This will go down permanently as one of my mothering regrets. :-( Since kids her age apparently often go back soon with more decay, and they have to undergo anesthesia, she got all crowns, which was major overkill. I wish I'd have been warned ahead of time. Eight crowns! Two of those got root canals. I felt sick. Now her pretty smile shows stainless steel teeth in the back. :-( Above is the last picture of her smiling without them.
This was Ninabess after she had been given a sedative, and I was just hanging out with her.
This is my poor baby before she woke up from the anesthesia. I felt so bad for her. I was worried all along, before the date and through it all, until I knew my sweet baby was ok.
:-(
Olivia decided she'd try to paint a butterfly on Elizabeth's face. This is how that turned out. It's honestly a challenge, or at least I thought it was when I painted Olivia's face. I'd never painted a face before. So I guess Liv did a fairly good job on her sister's face, even though it doesn't resemble a butterfly much.
Fox squirrel in our yard with a nut! I love watching animals. :-)
