Middle-School Teacher Appreciation Monday

I'm declaring today "Middle-School Teacher Appreciation Monday" on my blog.  I was inspired to do this by two events.

1. In G4 (6th grade) today, I was demonstrating a skill I call "quick homework correction."  This involves holding all non-essential questions and trying to make time through the exercises, without stopping every question to clarify whether it's okay to say "the soldiers' swords" instead of "the swords of the soldiers."  (I have a very ... concrete ... 6th grade class).  On a good day, we can get through sentence translation without having to write more than 2 sentences on the board.  So midway through this, I notice a hand in the air.  (I only get about half as many hands in the air when we're trying to move quickly).  And I don't name my students, but it's the guy who looks like Lewis on Meet the Robinsons.  "Can I go get a tissue?  I ... uh ... sneezed."  Gesturing to the front of his polo shirt, where rests the evidence that he did indeed sneeze.  And I find myself in the position of explaining to the kids that you don't need to ask permission to get a tissue ... I mean, what is this, anyway?  They're in 6th grade at an academically intensive private school.  They should be able to figure out how to handle a sneeze without teacher help!

Remember Daniel's Latin teacher meme?  I would think my kids do see me as Snape, except for the fact that I can't keep a straight face in front of them.  And there were kids in that class, I swear, who didn't understand why I was laughing.

2.  On the way home I heard a blurb on the radio that the world's oldest survivor of Auschwitz had died at age 108.  Antoni Dobrowolski, a Polish teacher, defied the Nazis by organizing underground middle-school classes during World War II.  The Nazis wanted to keep the Poles as a slave state and anything other than primary education was illegal.  This man literally risked his life to teach children about their language and heritage.  So I encourage those of you who value middle-school education and those engaged in it to take a moment of silence in honor of this courageous man's life.

Pretty in Pink, Then and Now

When she was this little, I used to be afraid of what was 10 or 15 years down the road...

... or sometimes, even two or three.  I'm not sure why, now.

"turn around and you're two, turn around and you're four, turn around, and you're a young girl going out of my door."

Randomday: Hello Kitty Meets the Zombies

When only one kid in your family attends the public schools, she has some experiences you might not have thought of giving your other kids.  They aren't necessarily bad experiences, just different.  For example, at Tertia's school, the dance teacher likes to do a presentation of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" every October.  This is Tertia's second "Thriller" performance and she's getting pretty good at it. 

Unfortunately I was unable to attend the assembly yesterday because I was in the midst of parent-teacher conferences at Cedar Tree.  But I read the memo about the costume and it said to wear black/white costumes.  She was all set to wear pink because it was also "spirit day", but I talked her into picking a black or white top.  Specifically, she really likes the Hello Kitty boombox shirt, which is just her style.  Last year she came home with a little bit of green makeup on her face (for the zombie effect). But this year there was no makeup, and I'm just as glad.  Tertia doesn't like zombies: she says they are "creepy," but she knows they aren't real.

In the "Thriller" dance routine there is a particular dance move that I understand is called a "booty bounce."  I was a bit shocked at this the first time Tertia demonstrated it, but I told her it's fine in dance but not to talk about it at other times.

There's a joke going around in the Down syndrome community about the aptitude of our kids for dance: they have "Get-Down syndrome."  And it's true.  Tertia has a real gift for dance moves.  She is also the only member of our family who can dance the Macarena.

P.S. In the contest of Hello Kitty vs. the zombies, Hello Kitty will totally win.

Finished Shawl! Deep Water Dreamer

I finished blocking my 9th shawl in 2012.  I'm calling it Deep Water Dreamer after an Eric Bogle song that came to mind as I was unpinning it.   I'd started it back in August, actually at Family Camp.  It's the half-circle variation of the "Camping" Pi shawl in honor of Elizabeth Zimmerman's 100th birthday.  I was thinking of calling it Indian Summer since that's the time of year I finally finished it, but then I thought of the color of the yarn and cold deep water that you might see if you went camping this time of year.

I experimented with draping it over various foliage, but you can't really see the lace pattern as well as I'd like. 

It shows up better in the blocking picture.  The yarn was variegated in spots that matched rather nicely with the changes in the pattern.  I didn't actually plan it that way, but it looks rather nice.  This used up about 600 yards of my handspun Wensleydale and has a radius of 25".  I'm ready to knit some non-lace projects now.

Here's the detail of the little waves and how fussy it was to block.

Quarta's Turn

In an attempt at fairness in the distribution of cute baby pictures, here's the newborn picture with the three older kids and Quarta.  It was another rough couple of days at the hospital; I was still completely immobilized from the vertigo and the emergency C-section and did not pose for any photos. 

The girls have shared a room all their lives; and of course they could sleep anywhere if they wanted to.  In recent years Quarta has grown taller than Tertia, but Tertia still wears at least one size larger. 

Quarta has three parallel scars on her forehead: the first was when Tertia "pushed her into a bookcase" (she was about three), the second from a backyard mud-battle with older kids when she ran into a tree, and the third from when she ran into a parked truck.  It was at one of the E.R. visits resulting from these injuries that she acquired Blue Bunny:

Recently she has started displaying her crafty gene, which she probably gets from me, and made this outfit for Blue Bunny.

Softened Memories

This month I've made the commitment to blog daily in the "31 for 21" challenge.  Not all of my posts have been about Down syndrome, because I see it as just one aspect of a life that's full of many things.  But in looking through some older family photos, I've found too many sweet ones not to share.  Here's the picture of the boys at the hospital the day Tertia was born.  I've always been in awe at how thoroughly and snugly the nurses can swaddle a newborn.  We were kind of at loose ends that day, but the boys were excited to be big brothers (they each got buttons to wear!) and probably didn't understand why Mom and Dad were so frazzled.  Little Tertia was adorable despite a certain "squashedness" of her head that made her look a bit like General Burkhalter from Hogan's Heroes.  She and I had a very close bond starting that day, when I felt a little like it might be the two of us against the world.

I had already sewed a baby sling to wear her in.  We went everywhere and she hung out like a little kangaroo baby.  Here she is at the Portland Rose Garden... the one with real roses, not the sporting arena.  Emotionally what was the hardest for me was knowing that my beautiful baby girl was less than perfect in the world's eyes, and having her close to me was one small way of protecting her when I wasn't sure about how people would react to her.  Having this kind of close physical contact with her was good for her security and development, and good for creating a special mother-child bond.  None of my other children would hold still long enough... but I basically carried her for 9 months inside and 2 years outside.  Many of those days were hard ones; I was worried about things I'm not worried about any longer.  But if I had my little baby joy-bird close by, it was hard to be depressed for long.

So maybe you can understand why I found it funny, quirky, and profoundly sweet that she bought me fabric softener as a Christmas present last winter.  Now she's a big girl in middle school and could pick out her own presents and pay for them at the Dollar Tree.  She chose the soft blue bottle with a mommy and baby on it, and if you can't read the fine print at the very bottom, it says, "Soft as a Mother's love."

Mothers aren't supposed to have favorites, but this comes close to being my favorite Christmas present ever!

Political Tuesdays - Red Meat

Source: google.com via Katherine on Pinterest

Debate evenings are the one time I regret not having Twitter.  Politics, the favorite blood sport of ancient Rome, has finally come of age with social networking, with the thumbs-down vote travelling across continents at the speed of electrons.  I personally have always had a slightly slower reaction time... I prefer to be one of the morning-after analysts rather than the Twitter and Facebook mob in the Flavian amphitheater.  At least in theory, the pay is better.

Joe Biden apparently finds nothing more hilarious than the prospect of a nuclear Iran.  Minutes after it became obvious that his strategy in the vice presidential debate last week was mockery, I started seeing Proverbs 29:9 ( "When a wise man has an argument with a fool, the fool only rages and laughs, and there is no quiet") floating across Facebook.  It was in various translations and has kept popping up ever since.  The thing is, Biden's performance was red meat to the liberal Democrats that form the core of Obama's support in this election.  Biden was not passive, as Obama was the week before.  But the majority of the country, particularly middle-aged, middle-class women like me, found Biden's demeanor dismissive and rude.  And it has cost the Obama campaign in the past week, even more than Obama's first lackluster debate performance.  Ironic for someone who claims it's the other guy waging "war on women."

So will the Obama campaign find just the right combination of passive-aggressive this debate?  Is there a good combination of passive-aggressive?  Does anyone really watch these debates anyway, or is it just another way for political junkies to while away the agonizing wait until election day?

The title for today's post came to me as I was shopping for dinner tonight.  I wanted to buy ground turkey to make soft tacos, but Safeway was offering it at almost $4 a pound, compared to $2.70 a pound for ground beef.  What's the deal with almost $12 for a family pack of ground turkey?  It used to be $.99 a pound, the cheap, healthy alternative to ground beef.  You'd think we were living in a mismanaged economy or something.  So we had the red meat instead.  Ready for the political season.