Babysitting or sit on baby?

A young friend at church who loves babies (she herself is still a babe, being around 18 months) was completely enthralled with Annaliese. She didn't even want to tear herself away to do her favorite activity--craft. I jokily asked this little girl if she would like to babysit someday. She said yes and tried to sit on the baby. She looked quite perplexed when her mother plunked her in her lap and we mothers shared a hearty laugh.

I Love You the Purplest

Thanks to an anonymous reader who commented on my Baby Fears post, I got a tip on a great book, I Love You the Purplest. The timing couldn’t have been better for reading this to my boys.

It’s a story of two boys who take a twilight fishing trip with their wise mother. The brothers are quite the opposites yet share a competitive gene. Sounds like my boys. Sounds like most boys. Throughout the evening the brothers compete on who dug up the most worms, who is the best rower and who caught the most fish. Their mother, thanks to the thoughtful author, Barbara M. Joosse, answers them more wisely than I can summon on the fly. For the worm answer she says that one boy's worms are the liveliest and the other's worms are the juiciest. One rower took the deepest strokes while the other's strokes were the fastest. So on she goes to addess each brother's questions reassuring them of how much she values each one.

When it comes time for bed, the boys ask the ultimate question, “Mama, who do you love best?” Mama thinks for a moment then tell them that she loves one the bluest and one the reddest with poetic, beautiful descriptions for each. You must read it to see what I mean.

Accompanied with lovely watercolor illustrations, this is a wonderful book to show your children that you love them equally yet individually for who each is. It's time for me to stop renewing this book at the library and go buy my own copy.

California judge declares homschoolers must be credentialed teachers

I just learned that a California court declared last week that homeschooling is illegal if the parent is not a credentialed teacher. The judge made the ruling that now affects not just the family that happened to be in court, but the thousands of other families homeschooling in California. This decision affects the estimated 166,000 children being homeschooled in the state.

The ruling is being appealed. You can sign a petition to support the appeal at the Home School Legal Defense Website www.hslda.org. Also, you can read more about the case and the ramifications on their site.