Ordinary Time

We have had some news about our newest son, K. The biggest piece of information is that he had surgery to correct his lip the second week of June. He was in the hospital for 5 days and is now back at the care center, eating and sleeping normally. A confusing aspect of the report is that is says his palate was also corrected. I suppose this is possible, but in all my research, I have only heard of the lip and palate being repaired separately. I am so glad that he came through the surgery without any problems. It means that we won't necessarily be looking at surgery immediately upon bringing him home. But, it also breaks my heart that we weren't there to hold him as he recovered. The other part of the update states that he is now crawling (very fast...he will fit right in with the other boys in the house) and is beginning to pull to a stand. He likes attention and smiles when people talk to him. This was all two months ago, so who knows what he is doing now. We are now a

Last week B. and A. were at church camp. We all drove them up last Sunday, then had dinner and came home. We had spent a lot of time telling TM what was happening and how they both would come home in a week. How much he believed us is up for grabs. It was a fairly miserable week for those of us left at home. TM had not one, not two, but three great, big, noisy fits, one of which lasted for an hour and twenty minutes. I'm sure the whole thing felt a little too familiar... parents taking a child (or in this case children) to an unfamiliar place with a lot of other children and then just leaving. From TM's point of view, he had no experience that told him they would return. Well, we survived the week, more or less in one piece, and J. went up Saturday morning to bring them home. About lunch time they arrived home and A. was the first one in the door. TM happened to be standing across the room when she walked in and luckily I happened to catch the whole scene. TM sees A.

The prize for signing-up for our library's summer reading game was headbands with alien heads on springs. (It's a space theme this summer, so not entirely random.) The littles had a lot of fun with them. Especially TM and D, who made-up a new game...

Our family has been involved in an history co-op for the past seven years. Each year we cover an era of history and the six mothers take turns teaching. (Although this year was wonderful in that a couple of the older children/young adults [one never quite knows what to call 14 year olds, especially if one doesn't believe in ther term "teenager"] took on quite a few of the classes.) Since we do the eras chronologically, this past year we have been covering Ancient Rome. The highlight of each year is the feast we have to celebrate the end of the school year. Everyone dresses in costumes of the period we had been studying and we try to fix food that is an approximation of what would have been served. (There was great rejoicing when the renaissance rolled around and we could serve chocolate and tomatoes.) Often the children provide the entertainment with some sort of readers' theater. This year we had the (very) abridged version of the Aenead, with Aeneas' crew made u