Cricket, oh, Cricket

Oh our darling Cricket (you must be asking yourselves) where on the earth have you been? With what have you been entertaining yourself since last we saw you? We pine for your presence, especially us of the new following persuasion. Please, return to us and enlighten us with your snarkiness.

Okay, you  asked for it. We have had a busy few weeks around here. Topping the list is shopping for a homeschool curriculum. Blue is not doing all that well in school. She is coping, but she is certainly not thriving. Her creativity and sense of wonder are taking a fast ride down the toilet. I had hoped it would be different, and I can see that perhaps each year we would have a sometimes better/sometimes worse experience, but I just can't leave it to chance. So we are soon to be embarking on the Great Homeschool Experiment in which I teach art, Jason teaches chemistry, and my mother teaches piano. Rosetta Stone will be teaching Spanish to us all at the same time. I was thinking Latin American Spanish - anyone have thoughts about that? We live in Maine, so there are relatively few Spanish speakers. If anything, we find more French in our area, but I don't think that would be most useful in the long term.

I think our plan is a good one, and I think all of us are looking forward to starting. We will be doing art every day, piano once a week, chemistry once or twice per week, and if she likes it as much as I think she will, Rosetta stone the rest of her waking hours. She is very much a visual learner, and she loves any kind of computer/video games. And she likes knowing things her parents don't know. I played with the trial version over Christmas and it is big fun. In fact, the grownups (erm - grown up siblings) all got a little pushy about having a turn.

Do you think I'm a mean mom for making my kid do school over the summer? I think we'll have a decent payoff later when we can take vacations on a whim.

And okay - in crafting news - some pictures for you, because there are way too many words up there. Please indulge me. I know this is excessive - but she is seriously cute.

The pattern is from Lil Blue Boo. I hemmed and hawed about buying a pattern for something I could probably whip up without, but sometimes the payoff for spending money on a pattern is that the shirt actually gets made. And the results? Really cute. The cap sleeves were my own idea - puffed them just a little to make it more girlie. Ivy gave me the best compliment - she wore this shirt for three days straight. Score one for mom.