Knitting with Nana

Today Amelie and I knitted with our Nana, whom we have not seen for 2 years. Nana is visiting us from Chicago, staying at my mom's house, along with long-lost Auntie Ardes. We spent the afternoon poking wool into wonderful needlefelted mushrooms, fish, fairies and lizards. Nana and I co-knitted a chicken body, which we will stuff tomorrow. I learned to purl and do ribbing :) Amazing. I am opening to a whole new world in fiber and handwork which I had no idea existed. To round out my new found passions in life I need also, eventually, to take up guitar and become an amazing dancer (Chris will have to be convinced so we can take lessons).

Well, today was good, we spent much of it out of the house, but we started our morning with a candle and a verse, followed by a main lesson of alliteration, copywork, and illustration of "Naughty needles knit nine new neckties" into the last page of her Language Arts Good Book (main lesson book). She then read the writing from the entire book to me and then worked independently on a made-up storybook she's been working on called "The Building Bear" about a very handsome bear who builds a boat whichhe sails away on. We sang Hebrew songs and recited the 2, 10 and 3 times tables on the way to Grammy's house, then knitted and practiced recorder while there. Noah spent much of his time preparing bits of wool for Ardes's goldfish, but then was allowed to pick up a needle under strict supervision: he created a fairy, fish and lizard. When we got home we cooked dinner of golden beets, tomatoes and cucumbers from the garden, sweet potatoes from the local farmer, hard-boiled guinea eggs and fresh baked bread with hummus and carrots. We finished up Alice in Wonderland! Ami REALLY liked that story, with all it's craziness. We had a very good day with lots of positivity, parental patience and good behavior example setting!

My goal for tomorrow:
More of the same. Exercise cool calm and collected control of myself when feeling that urge of frustration coming forth, deeply breathe and demonstrate to my children in every way, proper behavior. No exasperated sighing. No tension. Remember always the amazing creatures of heaven the children are and allow them to help open me up to living always in their open-hearted ways. We will spend more time tomorrow with Nana and gang when we head to a peanut plant, where we will learn all about peanuts, growing, harvesting, roasting, etc, and the kids will climb an enormous "peanut mountain." Then for ice cream and pick up feed for the goats.

Shalom.....