The Periodic Bookbag

What I'm currently reading:

Acedia & Me; Kathleen Norris
Professionalizing Motherhood; Jill Savage
Kidnapped; Robert Louis Stevenson
How Your Child Learns and Succeeds; Cynthia Ulrich Tobias

I've put everything else on hold to read Norris: she describes something I feel beyond the seasonal depression I struggle against. A fascinating book about the inability to care.

Tobias is actually two of her works (The Way They Learn and Every Child Can Succeed) in one volume. As a homeschooling mom I'm looking forward to going back to this book.

This is where I am in my current personal reading. Mostly non-fiction; kind of in the self-help genre. Hhhmmmm. Why am I still so confused? Ah, there's no Bible Study in there. I'll have to find time to add that to still my soul.

Hearts at Home

So I registered for the Hearts at Home Conference today. I'm really looking forward to it. There's always good information and entertainment.



Last year my friends and I were able to stay at my friends parents' house. But this year that friend won't be going, so after several fruitless calls I was able to get a room in the area. Thank goodness. It always helps to anticipate something fun in the dead of winter.

Stop Searching Forever....

Since I was unwilling to cook on a cold winter evening, my dear husband picked up Chinese take-out for our supper. The paper in my fortune cookie read "Stop searching forever, happiness is just next to you."

As I sit beside my Beloved Bill, the smell of pipe smoke encircling us, I need not consider further. My "fortune" has come true. I am truly blessed. May you all have a wondrous night of blessings too.

Brief Update

So I'm still at home, teaching the kids. Bill works from home: we're very blessed. My eldest just turned 12; my baby is 4. She still won't speak in public, so speech therapy is one of her classes at home. It's hibernation time - just Mom's Group and Scouting to work into the schedule.

She's only 3!

Our daughter, who has PPD-NOS, would not speak. After early intervention services which didn't help, we were persuaded to put her in speech therapy in the local elementary school. After all, we paid for it, might as well get some benefit from it.

For weeks nothing happened. So I thought I would stop sitting with them. Maybe it's me. By this time, she was talking a mile a minute at home; but nowhere else. She had a breakthrough that day and came home like a decorated hero - stickers everywhere!

But it didn't happen again. Her IEP team wants to put her in the Early Childhood Class next year. As veteran homeschoolers we balk at this. We compromised by trying the class for the last nine days of school. My biggest problem is being tied to someone else's schedule. I'm told there is a bus for my convenience. SHE'S ONLY THREE! Why would I put her on a bus? Her security is more important than my CONVENIENCE.

Now how do we turn it off?

Our daughter turned three still not talking. This concerned us, so we took her to a developmental pediatrician. He told us she had PDD and she started speech therapy immediately. We also began iron and omega 3 supplements. Her vocabulary bloomed!...at home. She wouldn't speak in her therapy sessions. We had a happy girl, adding 3-5 new words to her repertoire DAILY, but had to go back to the Dr. to discuss selective mutism.

Turned out the problem was me. I had always sat through her sessions, but one day I dropped her off and left the building. I nearly cried - she is my baby after all. The therapist, on the other hand, was delighted. Caroline talked! To everyone! That child came home loaded with so many stickers her shirt dragged down in the front!

Now we can't get her to stop talking. Or singing. Or humming. We always know where she is, at least. We worried, we primed the pump, now how do we turn it off?

Not a nerd at all

My husband is a true Renaissance man but I have definite strengths.