Let Me Tell You About Quiche

Last week, I made my first quiche. I didn't take a picture. I really should have. But it went over with the kids so well that we made it again this week. I took lots of pictures this week. I just couldn't wait to share it with you. 

We decided on this recipe because we wanted to find something our kids could help make. As homeschooling parents, we assume the responsibility of teaching our students to be self reliant. We need to teach them to cook. They need ample time in the kitchen, using tools that might make us uncomfortable to see them using, starting when they're fairly young. At least, that's my policy. Honestly, we've been pretty short on the time the kids spend in the kitchen lately because of the general level of craziness. 

Not only was it a great source of kitchen experience, but it was delicious. The kids all devoured it. It even satisfies the Cub's persistent desire for scrambled eggs. However, there are no vegetables in this particular quiche, so we serve it with steamed broccoli. 

Ham and Swiss Quiche

Makes about 4 Servings

Total time about 1 hour
Time to cook: 45 minutes

Prep time about 15 minutes

Ingredients

• 1 package roll-out pie crusts (two crusts per box. we make two quiches. You could make your own crust, of course)
• 4 large eggs
• 1 cup half and half
• 1-2 cups diced cooked ham (you can buy it already diced, by thick-sliced ham from the deli, or dice up some leftovers)
• 1 1/2 cups grated swiss cheese
• 2 tablespoons grated parmesan cheese
• 1 tablespoon dijon mustard
• 1/8 teaspoon pepper
• 1/8 teaspoon salt

Instructions

This recipe is super simple. As I mentioned, I picked this one so I could involve the kids in the preparation. There are many other quiche recipes. You can put almost anything (within reason) in a quiche. So far, this is the only one we've tried. I can vouch for this recipe being kid-prep friendly and kid-approved for level of deliciousness. 

1. Preheat your oven to 350. 
2. Take the pie crusts out of the box and let warm to room temperature. Put one in the fridge for later if you're only making one quiche. (The crusts are rolled up and wrapped in plastic, so I set them outside, briefly, on my covered patio to warm)
3. Beat eggs and half and half until combined, then add salt, pepper and mustard. Mix well. (On our first attempt, I didn't supervise the mustard mixing quite well enough. One of my quiches wound up with surprisingly mustardy parts.)
4. Roll out your room-temperature (or close) pie crust and press it into a greased pie tin.
5. Layer ham cubes and swiss cheese into the crust, pour egg mix in, then sprinkle parmesan cheese over the top. 
6. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes: until crust is golden brown and eggs are fully set. (Remember that eggs are still wet on the inside even when they're fully cooked, but you should see no mucous-consistency yellow stuff when you cut into the quiche.)

 Found this recipe here: ham and swiss quiche 

Am I Allowed To Say I Suck At Math?

This month, I will have my 28th birthday. This month, I am studying math I learned in high school because I haven't used it in a decade or more and I need to take a math placement exam for college. This month, I have spent a lot of high quality time with my kids and I have fallen more in love with Papa via his patience for me as I reveal that I have completely forgotten how to solve high school math problems. This month, I am trying to enjoy summer break.

My ex husband (the girls call him daddy) now lives about a five-minute drive from my house. He's in his first year of a biomedical engineering degree. I'll be excited for him if that works out to its most positive end. I don't feel comfortable saying anything else about that right now. But having him living here has been another typical adventure in parenting: awesome for my kids... stressful and frustrating for me. Isn't it all like that?

Daddy is pulling a crazy summer schedule with a full-time block of classes as well as an internship starting in July. He sees the girls on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. For now, it's working out well enough, but once his internship starts, he's going to be cramming his visits in between that and nap time/his classes and they'll get much less time with him.

I've struggled with his presence in my life because he still makes me feel a little insecure. At the end of the day, I'm always happy to have the life I have, but when I visit him, I question my decisions a little. For example: I would love to have a nice road bike. How nice for him that he was able to save up his discretionary spending to buy himself one while I've had to save up discretionary spending to buy bikes for our kids. In the end, I realize that in order to have the things he has, I would have had to be much more selfish. That is not to say that he is selfish, but that I have more external obligations and would have to be quite selfish to ignore them.

Anyway, whinging aside, I come home and remember that I live in a house I own. I have a fun and interesting vegetable garden and four lovely chickens that I helped fight for the city's right to have. I have four amazing kids who I, exclusively, have always been there for. I have a wonderful partner in parenting who supports and loves me and keeps me interested in life and lots of other things. I have chosen to foster life projects, skills, and progress he has not. Our paths have been different, but I'd rather have my vibrant life full of joy and struggle than a bicycle.

This month, I read How to Raise a Wild Child by Scott D. Sampson (Dr. Scott the paleontologist from Dinosaur Train, now vice president of research and collections and chief curator at our museum of nature and science). I was interested to see what he would have to say because I felt like I had some idea who he was. I don't know him personally, but I know he isn't some shrink with a theory he's tested in a sterile lab. He isn't a parent from a previous generation who wants to tell me how to raise my kids despite how things have changed. He's a parent right now, with a modern life and a modern job and real concerns about our modern world. Papa suggested we read this one.

I wouldn't say it has changed me as a parent. I would describe it as an empowerment... a motivation. We all need to get out more and encourage our kids (and ourselves) to fall in love with nature wherever we can find it.

In addition to visiting our "big back yard" (an incredible local open space) increasingly a lot, we've had many interesting upgrades and activities in our life since I last wrote, in February. In near accurate order:

• Grandma Julie visited. 
• I started doing yoga. 
• I got a didjeridoo. 
• Cub got training pants. 
• We built a chicken coop. 
• Daddy moved back to Colorado. 
• All three girls participated in their first gymnastic expo. 
• We got our chicken permit. 
• We built a water-fun table for cub and the girls. 
• We got chickens. 
• Our good friend sent us The Book with No Pictures, which all parents should own. 
• Papa and I went to the symphony with one of my friends. 

• We visited our super-cool, homesteading (I feel like there should be a scale for just how "homestead" you are, like the crunchy mom scale) mountain-living friends. 
• We attended the opening of the new, outdoor portion of the local children's museum. 
• M learned to ride her bike! 
• My ignition broke again and my car had to be towed and fixed. 
• I just got my car back today. 
• The girls all made some cool pillows, which was their first use of my sewing machine. 
  

Terrible Twos?

I don't want to write this blog entry. I finished up with my homework for today, and I realized I haven't written since last year. What I want is to crawl in bed and hide. What I should do is go for a jog, despite the snow on the ground and the 20 degree air.

I've been stressed beyond reason all semester. In January I wrote a draft that started with a statement about trying to be healthier this year. Now, it's the end of February and I've not had a soda in almost two months and I got a fitbit, which is helping me make sure I'm active enough ever day. I also saw a sleep specialist and had several blood tests done. Good news, I don't have a thyroid problem or any of a number of other things. The sleep specialist (who happens to also be a psychologist) says I probably don't have depression or any abnormal anxiety. I'm only a little low on vitamin D (it's a struggle not to be in the winter, I think). But that leaves me wondering why I'm so tired.

I'm keeping a sleep journal, and just keeping it makes me sleep better. But sometimes I still want to take a nap at about 3:30 or 4. Wait... that's about half an hour to an hour after my two-year-old gets up from nap.

You, like me, may have realized that this means I can't take a nap at 3:30 or 4, because I need to be available to him. You may also have wondered (as have I) whether these two things are, in fact, related. Do I crash because he's up and at it again for round two? I don't know. It has been a very long time since he wasn't on the starting blocks with recharged batteries at 3:00. The closest thing I have to a reasonably scientific comparison is that I don't crash at 3:30 or 4 on days when I am in class. As glad as I am of that, because my sleepiness doesn't affect my note-taking, I'm also frustrated because it does affect my parenting.

Today, Cubby and I played dump trucks with his stealthily stolen, clean cat litter on the front room carpet (because it is easier to control the mess on carpet than on hard wood). I wish I had taken pictures, but I felt like I couldn't walk away even for a second or the litter would be instantly moved somewhere much less manageable. To be clear, he would have played dump trucks with the cat litter whether I approved or not. In fact, he started all on his own, out of sight around a corner, by opening the litter container and taking fist fulls to fill his truck bed.

Does anyone else feel like their two-year-old suddenly stopped listening to them? Does anyone remember a period during which their toddler did and redid all the wrong things despite being disciplined? Time outs and talks be damned, Cubby's going to climb on the dog-food container and steal things off of the bar and the roll-top desk. Again and again, he will use tweezers to ream out my concealer stick when I'm not looking, even though it upsets me and earns him a toddler-sized lecture or a time out. I can't seem to get him to stop running to the bathroom to fill random toys with water.

I want to be reasonable. I want to let him explore. Curiosity should not be our enemy, but our inspiration. But I feel like I'm meeting a brick wall the 5th time I tell him to stop trying to steal the same thing from the bar in 10 minutes. A baby gate in the kitchen door, a locked bedroom door, a child lock on the bathroom cabinet, and I still feel like screaming about something at some point almost every day.

So does he. He rebels against my commands and reason. He shouts, "no!", drops to his butt and refuses to move, and smacks at me when I try to physically relocate him. He can't always be talked out of it, either. No matter the extent of my efforts, he does an incredible job just not paying attention when he so chooses.

Obviously, I've already raised my fair share of children through this age. Either I look back on my past with my daughters with rose-tinted glasses, or they weren't nearly this much trouble. I concede it really could be either. At least if it's the former, I have forgetting all about it to look forward to.

All of this considered, I go to bed each night thinking how amazing and beautiful all of my kids are, including my boisterous, brilliant, blithe little boy. Still... please let this be a phase.

3.85, 5, 2, and 2015 (catching up)

My littlest little is faithfully using his potty (as long as he's not inhibited by clothes). My two oldest have started earning money by doing chores. My middle child is learning to read. Tonight, the littlest cub, my two-year-old, is super excited about the water in the toilet tank. He's grabbing our fingers and dragging us each, in turn, to the bathroom to show us. At the same time, the rest of the children in the house are excitedly playing with key chain animals that squeal in various ways. I got those things as stocking stuffers. I knew better, but didn't listen to my internal monologue. It's been a busy life, lately.

A semester came and went. My grades were pretty good. Sure, I got a B in lab, but I wasn't exactly impressed with my professor. To be fair, he had never taught Gen Bio at all, and it was his first go at this Gen Bio lab business. I really think he'll fair much better next semester, and the school has given him a chance to teach the class as well as the lab this time.

It wasn't easy, and I don't want to make it seem like it was. I skipped out on this blog mostly because I was so stressed out about my grades and having a lot of trouble finding time and privacy to do my homework. I figure if don't feel like you're under pressure, you're probably not learning anything new or challenging. 

M's birthday happened. It kills me that she's five. She still hasn't learned to read. I taught her sisters at four, but M is considerably less interested. I guess she's got better things to do. She's also a lot more free-spirited and flighty than I remember her sisters being. I definitely don't want to kill her happiness, but I grit my teeth when she smiles at me while I'm trying to talk to her about her tantrums.

Anyhow, I'm teaching her to read this year. She's making great improvements in the way of remembering her letter-recognition and learning phonics already. We're also seeing some considerable strides in her writing. All of this centers around her rapidly improving attitude, which I'm thrilled to see. 

Of course, there was Halloween. And, of course, we had an Elsa, though no adult I know can comprehend why children all seem to prefer Elsa. We also had a Yoda, a Bat Girl and a Victorian Princess. I loved M's costume so much. E said, "coo coo" at every house, to much adoration. At the time, it was his way of saying, "thank you". He has since upgraded to something like, "Tek oo". 

Thanksgiving happened in a strange sort of way. We all took turns getting sick, which resulted in very last minute cancellation of our traditional road trip to St. Louis. (To those of you we missed seeing on that holiday, you dodged a bullet. Please remember we had you and your children's best interests in mind when we cancelled.) So, instead, we had our first Thanksgiving at home with my mom, sister and niece. It was actually quite nice. However, the kids and I haven't seen some of my in-laws since summer vacation, which is unfortunate.

Christmas came and went. There was a fake tree, because of time and budget restrictions, but there were something like five different kinds of homemade cookies, several flavors of glass candy (from my sister) and two different fruit pies I made from scratch. And that fake tree was adorably dwarfed by the pile of presents for the five children who woke up here Christmas morning.

Cub turned two (which is also freaking me out) but we haven't had his party yet. We were hoping to improve his birthday experience by 1.) distinguishing it from Christmas with at least one whole week of buffer and 2.) financially recovering from Christmas before trying to throw him a party. I want him to have a real party with a theme and all like everyone else gets, and his birthday falling on the 26th makes that awfully difficult. 

He suddenly wants us to read him every book from the bookshelf, several times a day. He sleeps in a toddler bed, faces forward in his carseat, and mostly takes showers with us instead of baths. Cub loves all things that go: firetrucks, dump trucks, backhoes, helicopters, rockets, robots, airplanes, and trains. His current favorite things to talk about (and request youtube videos of) are rockets and astronauts. He even says "Atronot". He got a rocket for Christmas (A note to Tutu, who got it for him: he sleeps with the detachable lander portion) and has a small toy Ernie doll he like to put in the rocket. Now, he's pretty sure that Ernie is an astronaut and asks me if the NASA astronauts in the youtube videos are Ernie. 

New Years was lovely. We finally got to see a good friend we hadn't seen in six months. He wound up staying the night because, upon his opening the front door to leave at 2am, we were greeted with the disharmony of police sirens from who knows where and realized... driving home might not have been the best idea. 

We had our traditional milk in champagne glasses, cracked holiday crackers, wore paper crowns, popped poppers and let the twins try to stay up until the new year. They made it to 11:45. To pass the time, we played a bit of D&D, because that's how we roll. 

I finished up the 2014 memory jar, but we haven't reviewed it just yet. I think I don't want to let it go. 

**I really wanted to add about 20 more photos to this, but it was getting ridiculous.**

Deaf Superheroes

I know, I'm doing a completely terrible job keeping up with the blog lately. You probably wouldn't want to imagine some of the factors that have contributed to that. Mostly it all just means I'm supremely busy.  I've been writing a lot for my comp class as well as writing every few weeks for ASL. I have so much reading to do as well. I just don't want to type up a blog as often as I used to.
So, I'm going to share one of the essays I wrote for my ASL class, because I thought it was particularly interesting. 

Deaf Superheroes

I originally thought I was going to write this report about deaf comedians, but when I started doing research on deaf entertainment, I found out that Marvel (one of the two major comic publishers in the US) is running a story arch in which Hawkeye is deaf and must communicate using ASL. Everywhere I looked, “deaf entertainment” searches were filled with Hawkeye.

Marvel is the origin of Guardians of the Galaxy, which was a summer blockbuster. They also created Spiderman, Iron Man, Captain America, and the X Men. In 1999, Marvel also created a Native American, female superhero called Echo (later known as Ronin, when she joins the Avengers) who is deaf.

Her story is interesting. It begins with tragedy: when she is still young, her father is killed and the man responsible for his death raises her. She grows up never knowing the truth. She is sent to expensive schools for people with learning disabilities, but when she recreates a piano piece, she sent to a school for prodigies.

Her super power is “photographic reflexes” or the ability to copy the movements of others. Through this, she becomes an incredible pianist, martial artist, acrobat, ballerina, and jet pilot. While her attention to visual detail gives her great advantages, it also has realistic drawbacks. She is helpless in the dark, and does not respond to vocal commands from people she can’t lip-read. That can be particularly frustrating in the superhero world of full-coverage facemasks. Wikipedia says, “When she initially meets the Avengers, Captain America has to repeat all of Iron Mans’ questions for her.”

It must be tough to commit to such a storyline, but I’m glad they are. I may have to see about getting my hands on some of these comics.

It seems like last week’s essays seemed to focus a lot on the negative aspects of being part of a minority culture. Actually, a lot of articles I came across in my search for topic ideas were similarly aligned. A woman sues because she is forcibly reassigned to a different jury when the court finds out she’s deaf, because they don’t want to pay for an interpreter. A deaf man is murdered in Indiana and the local police face setbacks in solving the case because everyone this man associated with is also deaf and interpreters are a limited resource.

It’s nice to see a spot of sunshine amid the storm clouds. It’s such an incredible thing, as a kid, to have a superhero you can relate to. Four Deaf people created Signs and Voices, a British comic book starring four Deaf superheroes. They say, “This project will help our readers relate to and learn about social integration, and raise the aspirations of deaf young people.” I completely agree.

A common theme in superhero comics is a difficult fight against adversity. Iron Man is a billionaire with inoperable shrapnel in his chest. Superman is an alien, trying to fit in with humans by pretending to be Clark Kent. Batman’s parents were the only family he had until they were killed.  I think we could use a few more superhero histories that more people can relate to and be inspired by.

Hawkeye has been temporarily, moderately hearing impaired before. The new arch seems to involve severe to profound hearing loss. I wonder how long it will last?

Thoughts on Grades

I'm taking a sociology class this semester. This is really not my game. Rarely do I come across an article or book that isn't far too scholarly or heavy for me to enjoy. It kills me how these people write. For example:

I would like to suggest to you that the competition for grades, which you have already experienced for 12 years and will experience for at least four more, is a very dehumanizing and damaging system that has its roots deep in the injustices of our society. - Bell, Inge, Bernard McGrane, John Gunderson. This Book is Not Required: An Emotional Survival Manual for Students. Pine Forge Press, 2004. Print

When first I read that, I nearly laughed out loud. I thought, "That seems awfully dramatic. It's just a letter. These people really take this too seriously!" But... do they?

They go on to explain their point of view:

Throughout our school years, society teaches us to believe that grades display our intelligence. Because of this our motivation, learning, and personal growth are placed second to attaining the ultimate goal - the grade. Society first teachs us about societal norms and codes, yet it is in the school system where we are ultimately taught to imitate. We are programmed to imitate what the teacher wants. If we don't, we get a bad grade. This idea of imitation is so strong because it is reinforced through schooling for a minimum of 12 years. Imitation is the main cause for our stifled and structured society. Imitation, competition, and fear of grades hinder our discovery. - Bell, Inge, Bernard McGrane, John Gunderson. This Book is Not Required: An Emotional Survival Manual for Students. Pine Forge Press, 2004. Print

Okay. If grades are one leg of the tripod that is stifling our discovery and our entire society, maybe they aren't taking it too seriously. Still, I wasn't sure I could make the connection between letter grades and ruining society. Can you?

Do you remember getting gold stars for little achievements? I gave my kids skittles for using the potty. When I was in 3rd grade, we had a sticker chart that showed who had mastered their multiplication tables. As a little kid, letter grades don't really make any sense to you, but your authority figures want to reward you for doing the correct thing in hopes that it will motivate you to continue in that direction.

When you're a little older, the letters start to make their way into your life. You strive for an A in your math class (or maybe you just struggle to get a letter good enough to pass) instead of setting a goal to understand each new mathematical rule before moving on to the next. In this way, letter grades might be motivating kids to cheat, but more commonly letter grades are encouraging students to just get by.

Some students will turn school into a competition to have the most stars or the best grades. That's how we get valedictorians. Some students will find a tutor to help them get their grade just high enough to stay on the football team. Some students will still fall in love with learning, because you can't stop them.

Those who do will still try to build a solid foundation by understanding each new bit of information before stacking something else on top of it. They will study and try to comprehend instead of just memorizing, because they want to really know this stuff and not just be able to regurgitate it for the test. But we aren't inspiring these kids with letter grades and we aren't inspiring other kids to become like this.

We might be losing our critical thinkers, our scientists and mathematicians. We're not investing in bringing out the best in future adults but in getting the correct, immediate response out of children and teenagers. And you may ask, "Then, how are we supposed to provide incentive for our kids?" But I think the real question is, "What should we provide incentive for?"

Encourage your kids to learn, not to be right. Just be excited about teaching and learning. Instead of labeling your child with a letter or percentage score thus comparing them to their peers, be patient with them when they struggle and be excited for them when, suddenly, the light bulb blinks on. Enjoy those moments, because they are beautiful. Struggling is a part of learning. Everyone struggles with something. Help each other instead of flaunting one child's success over another's difficulties.

That's what I think.

These Homeschool Days

This year I'm a student, too

It's 7:40. I wake up and take a shower (on a good day), or turn off my alarm and lay in bed until 8.

It's 8:00. I leave my room and wake M, the four-year-old who is still required to stay in bed until 8. The required elements for breakfast (which always centers around cold cereal, because we're not so good at mornings) are already available on the table. The twins (S and C) are already up and have eaten their breakfast. They have only recently gained the freedom to run their own mornings and usually get up on their own sometime between 7 and 8.

It's 10:30. I have to make lunch. Most of our lunches take about half an hour to make. We have chicken nuggets, taquitos, grilled sandwiches, oatmeal, PB&Js and other things. With our lunch, we always have a serving or two of fruit. 

It's 11:00. The kids eat lunch. M hates fish sticks and will sit and not eat them for hours if you let her. We decided we should try to replace fish sticks on our menu because no amount of, "eat it anyway" seems to help. 

It's 1:00. M and the Cub need a nap. M is four and will probably start outgrowing her nap soon. But for now, if she doesn't get a good nap, she's an emotional wreck by dinner time. The twins don't nap. The Cub is almost always happy to get back in his crib for a bit, but usually wakes up a bit early.

It's 3:00. I wake M and Cub is probably already up. Lately, he's been waking up from nap on his own at about 2:45. 

It's 4:00. The kids are allowed to watch TV and/or play video games until dinner is ready. This allows us two hours to engage in food preparation without worrying too much about them. 

It's 4:30. Papa should be home by now. He works as a mobile tech for the school district. His arrival time at home is varied based on what he has scheduled that day. 

It's 5:30. I make dinner if I haven't already made something in the crock pot. We try to keep our non-crock-pot dinners down to about 30 minutes, like lunch. I don't like to spend a lot of time busy in the kitchen. In fact, when I bake, I prefer to do it at the dining table, surrounded by children (believe it or not).

It's 6:00. More often than not, we're at the table having a family dinner. Sometimes we're early. Sometimes we're late. Whatever time it happens to be, we value this time. We get a lot of strange learning in during the 45ish minutes we spend eating together. I'm often surprised at the questions that come up when we're all tethered to the table without our technology.

It's 8:00. The kids get ready for bed. They won't go to bed for another hour, but there are three big kids trying to use the same bathroom and we don't want them to be in a hurry. If there is time left over after they're ready and before "lights out", we get lots of reading done.

It's 9:00. It's bed time for all of the kids. C and S have reading lights clipped to their beds and are allowed to lay quietly in bed and read for as long as they want. M just goes to sleep. The Cub often talks for 5 or 10 minutes before sleeping through the night. 

I go to bed at around 11:00.

In between all of those things, we learn. I don't have a schedule by which we do lessons. The twins have restricted access to a lap top every day, for one hour each. They've been using that time to practice math on Khan Academy. They play outside a lot. We bake together. We garden. What we do depends heavily on what they want to learn and how bored they are. As you can imagine, we do a lot more structured learning in the winter months, when they're complaining about the weather and, "there's nothing to do!"

On Mondays and Wednesdays I leave at about 2:30 and drive for about half an hour for my biology class. Mondays I get to come home when it's over at 4:45. Wednesdays, however, I also have my biology lab, which keeps me on campus until 8:50. 

Tuesdays I have a sign language class from 6:00 to 8:50. So, Tuesday and Wednesday I sometimes miss bedtime. I hate that, but I love that I'm finally working toward my own personal goals and becoming more of a role model for my kids. I'm also really enjoying my classes. 

I have two online classes that also add to my work load. I'm just finishing out my first week of classes, so I'm still trying to work out how it's all going to fit together now. So far, 13 credit hours doesn't seem so bad. I enjoy everything I'm learning and biology looks like it will be pretty easy for me. However, I am aware that week 1 alone isn't the best sample group.

So here's to the women who work or go to school and still make time to show love for their children. You are heroes.

This post is part of the "NOT back-to-homeschool" blog hop through iHomeschool Network