I'm not sure what I've been doing lately

My kittens aren't sure what I've been doing either

Since Matt got home I've been sort of out of it. No blogging. Not even Facebook posting that much. The girls and I have gone on a couple of outings, most notably to the Pensacola Children's Museum where Coryn informed me the boys made her the captain of the pirate ship and one kid kept coming up and asking me if I was an Indian while carrying a wooden musket which isn't exactly politically correct, but they seemed to be enjoying themselves (I have no Native American blood, but my husband is 1/8th Blackfoot; every so often he tries to put his race down on forms as Native American because of this; most notably I saw him do this when filling out our marriage license paperwork but when he handed it to the clerk to enter into the computer the clerk didn't even look at the papers, just auto-checked Caucasian and Matt didn't correct him. No, this has absolutely nothing to do with anything else in this post. I just like telling that story. ).

I've been writing a lot on the sequel to my NaNoWriMo novel. I am also having Matt read my novel, which he is doing slowly but surely.  It's not his style, but he says it is good for "that kind of thing."

I read Because of Winn-Dixie to Coryn. A lot of that story involves an absentee mother and the little girl's reaction to not knowing her mother, and it kind of upset Coryn a little bit. She asked over and over again why the mother had left and then said, "You'll never leave because you love me so much. I won't leave either. I'm going to live with you even when I'm a grown up and so will Claire!" We'll have to talk about that later. . .no, I'm sure by the time she is 18 she'll be itching to get out the door, so I'll just wait.









We're going to read The Tale of Desperaux next. I have a thing for Kate DiCamillo books.


We are also trying out Alpha-Phonics to work on reading. It is very bland but the straight forward approach makes it less likely that Coryn is just memorizing a story and more likely she is using letter sounds to sound out. It is hard to teach early reading because to me it is so evident. I can't really remember not knowing how to read and sometimes I feel I'm running out of ways to explain concepts that to me don't really need to be explained.




We are also learning Spanish which she is catching on to very quickly. I had been just letting her watch some Little Pim DVDs and telling her words from my own memory of Spanish class (I took three semesters in Community College plus some classes in high school), but she seems to have a knack for it so I purchased a workbook a week or two ago. I'm copying pages rather than letting her write in it because I want to sell the book back when she has mastered it (or save it for Claire), plus it allows us to repeat lessons that involve cutting up or drawing on pages.



So what else. . .hmmm. . .

Oh, we are two episodes into this season of Psych and there is a new one tonight that is BIGFOOT THEMED! SQUEAL!

 I'm sure I'll think of more later, but that's enough for now.