Life Skills:
Sewing is one of those very helpful life skills, especially for parents of theater kids, that my mom could have taught me, but she hated to sew herself so she never did. I've tried to learn a couple other times from friends, while they taught Parker, and it always frustrated me. I did some sewing in Girl Scouts when I was about Josie's age and ended up being a disaster. I was one of those kids who likes to be good at something immediately and without much effort. Getting good grades was that way for me and so was playing the clarinet, but sewing wasn't something I could just sit down and excel. Rob sews a bit and Parker remembers how to sew from when he was little. Recently, our sweet and patient neighbor offered to teach us all so I quickly took her up on it!
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Vicky watching Josie work on her stitches. |
Dema wasn't at all interested, but since the rest of us were going, he thought he'd go to Vicky's and pet her cat. He ended up loving sewing. He's got a lot of gangly self-conscious pre-teen energy so he wasn't the most graceful, but he really is eager to learn more!
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Vicky showing Dema how to deal with thread issues. |
Food:
I bought some green curry paste the other day from our local store,
World Harvest, and now I can't stop making different green curry based meals. This one has brown rice, tofu, sweet peas, and broccoli rabe. Parker and I could eat curry every day, but Josie grows tired of curries and prefers beans and rice so I've been making quite of lot of burrito/bean bowl type meals too.
Activist Snippet: The year Parker was born, 2000, I read a lot. I was fortunate enough to be able to stay home with my kids for the last 17 years, but it took some getting used to since I'd had at least one full-time job and often three part-time jobs since I was 15 years old. It was weird to be home and this was before smart phones so I read
a lot of books. I would nurse my newborn or lay down with him for naps and be "stuck" for hours so I had books handy everywhere around the house. It reminded me of my childhood, always having a huge stack of books bedside, reading several at a time. It was glorious! One of the authors I read in those early days of parenting, was
Karen Armstrong. I have always loved to learn about religions and I find her books fascinating. It hit me today as I walked past my bookshelf that I've kept all of Karen's books even with the massive purging of books/things in our lives to get down to a more minimalistic lifestyle. It also stuck me that my 12 year old, Dema, who is currently interested in the Ottoman Empire and religion, would/should read her book
Islam: A Short History. I think we might start reading it together since I last read it so many years ago. It is important to me for my kids to grow up understanding different beliefs. They had Muslim friends in their homeschooling group, Joy in Learning, and they learned about Islam a bit, but in this world of fear and misinformation, it is important to delve deeper.