Slumgullion

Miss Boo: I like Uncle Markie.  Cause he's kinda funny.

Buddy: Yeah, I like Uncle Markie.  He always talks at me.

This is my children's reaction to their uncle coming to stay with us for a while, due to the dearth of housing in the Nevada boom town where we live.  (Not to be confused with Boomtown, which I think is slang for Port au Prince, Hati.)  We're looking forward to expanding our household for a bit, at least until Uncle Markie finds an apartment that doesn't cost a million dollars.

Anyhoo, slumgullion is a stew made of many different things.  Like this post.  Get it?  Get it?

I've been putting off posting because I can't find my camera charger, and cell phone pictures aren't always the best quality, but I figured maybe you wouldn't mind just getting a text-heavy post about what we've been doing lately.

1. Expanding the household-- Uncle Markie's moving into one of the bedrooms, baby's crib is moving in with me and the Husband in our absurdly giant master bedroom.  (The baby winds up snuggled between me and the Husband every single night anyway, it'll just make for a shorter walk to the crib.)

2. Bracing for snow and cold weather--it's supposed to hit in earnest by the end of the week.  So we're making sure we're stocked up on milk, have a full tank of gas, and plenty of makings for soup and hot bread.  We don't have any livestock to get bedded down at the moment, except for Patrick, who just sneaks up onto the couch whenever it's cold.

3. Making pumpkin bread--kinda goes with number 2.  And shooing the deer out of the front yard.  A little buck brings his small harem there for breakfast every morning.

4. Doing lots of math--It became apparent that the kindergarten math curriculum I bought for Miss Boo was too easy.  (I mean, really, dot-to-dots for a week straight?)  So the Husband told me to go ahead and buy a first grade book.  I had to put my foot down, the day it arrived, after doing four lessons in a row, and insist that she let me go do some housework--we would do more math tomorrow, for Pete's sake!

5. Doing lots of reading--Miss Boo is reading so well that I feel sort of silly finishing our "learn to read" book, but...I mean, what else am I supposed to do?  Buddy is working his way through beginning phonics and learning MAT SAT ME SEE and so forth.

6. Doing lots of pretending--the couch is regularly a boat, spaceship, castle, or train.  Or house, dragon, cow, fort...

7. Doing lots of talking--The Littlest Sasquatch has developed several favorite words (none of which are "Mama"): CAR, and GO, and CHOO CHOO, and CHOOCH (which is presumably short for choo-choo), and EESH, which is tres.  (We count a lot with Dora.)  And TEW.  (Mama counts a lot in discipline situations.  It's gotten so whenever I say "One!", Sasquatch yells "TEW!")

I've also been doing a lot of reading, while waiting for the novel to be at rest long enough for me to edit, and I have a couple of nice books to recommend:

The first is Grace-Based Parenting.  This is a nice antidote to the ten million parenting books that come with checklists, quizzes, and scripts.  (Seriously!  Scripts!  Like that's not going to convince your kid that you are being phony at all!)  It reminds you, basically, to parent your children the way God parents us.  It's not permissive, but it challenges the perspective I see in too many parenting books that 1) parenting is adversarial--you and your kid are always on different sides; 2) it's okay to be manipulative with kids, because, hey, they're not really humans with intellect and feelings and 3) parents don't sin, so in any given situation the goal is to make your kid do what you want them to, and you really don't have to examine your own motives for, say, not letting them wear a t-shirt with a skull on it.  Patently absurd when you put it that way, isn't it?

The other book(s) I recommend, especially as we move into the holidays and people start getting nervous and binge-y or restrict-y about diet/food/whatever, are books about the Health at Every Size movement.  If you have never heard that someone can be healthy, vibrant, happy, and attractive WITHOUT LOSING AN OUNCE OF WEIGHT EVER AGAIN, and if you don't understand that it is NOT YOUR JOB TO CONSTANTLY MONITOR WHAT YOU EAT, then I beg of you to choose one of these books to start with and read your way through them.  Here they are:

Health at Every Size, by Linda Bacon.  This was my lightbulb book, and the one I still go back to when the "well, maybe I should go on a diet" beast rears its head.  In simple terms it explains both why "lose weight" isn't helpful or possible, and what people can do to be healthy even without getting smaller.

Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family, by Ellyn Satter.  An excellent book for both learning the "eating competence" model--the revolutionary idea that indeed, you can tell when you're hungry and full and that children can be trusted to eat enough to sustain themselves, without parents micromanaging it--and practically, how to plan meals, cook, and what a whole, well-rounded meal looks like.  Satter is so refreshingly practical (the first recipe in the book is tuna-noodle casserole) that this is another book that I go back to again and again.  The Lemon Chicken recipe is delicious, as well.

The Obesity Myth, by Paul Campos.  Hard science on why the "war on obesity" in the United States is stupid and harmful.  That's right, it's not just stupid like reality shows about people singing, it's harmful, like reality shows where people get married in the last episode.

There are many more books on the same topic, and several websites I could point you to*, but the idea that your body is perfectly capable of telling you what, when, and how much to eat--without you measuring, counting, restricting, or limiting--is so revolutionary to most people that I'm stopping with three.  Please read the books--at least get them from the library.  It will help you not only in your relationship to food, exercise, and your body, but it will raise your consciousness enough that you can step outside our society's weird obsession with people being small and realize that it really is weird.  I mean, what's more important--the number on the tag of my pants, or the fact that I'm healthy, strong, and able to do what I want to do?

The final thing these books do is give you some scientific ammunition against a doctor who makes the blanket recommendation "lose weight".  Yes, there are some conditions where that might be desirable...if we knew how to force your body to do that.  But most conditions that heavy people are told to lose weight over--arthritis, high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes--are NOT CAUSED OR AGGRAVATED BY WEIGHT.  (Yes, I just shouted that.  Yes, even diabetes.  Don't click that link unless you're okay with some high-level cussing, and with more links to click to get to the studies.)  Don't believe me?  Well, go read the books before you flame me in the comments.  Because there ARE lifestyle modifications that can help those conditions, but "lose weight" isn't one of them.

Last, a homeschooling book for you.  If you're just starting out with homeschooling young kids, I encourage you to check out the laid-back wisdom of Ruth Beechick's The Three R's.  It's the simplest, easiest way to start that I've found.  If you need something with a grander sweep, or want to know how homeschooling will look all the way up until high school, I recommend checking out both Educating the Wholehearted Child and The Well-Trained Mind.  Wholehearted Child is a bit heavy on the cutesy name for things ("Family Learning Center" vs. "office") and WTM is a bit heavy on "we're SMAAAAAART" (like kids are supposed to learn Latin AND Spanish AND an elective foreign language), they give you a valuable perspective on what the journey might look like long-term.

So, what are you all doing today?

Cheers,

Breanna

*(Websites:  Google "Health At Every Size", "Shapely Prose"--if you can get past swearing, "Junkfood Science", "Body Love Wellness".  Try to keep reading past your "but but but everyone SAYS you should lose weight!" reaction.  Hugs.)