and this is the idiotic article to which they are responding:
"There I said it: Leave Teaching To The Professionals"

(edit: why can't I remember simple html without looking it up? Sigh)

Granted, this person doesn't have my eternal respect for a) politeness and b) understanding, but still. She went all out on "what was wrong with him" (btw, her kid? Major issues. 'Nuff said) and "if he was ever going to get better" and then ended up on "poor you, since you can't go anywhere."

I can't?

Dh works at home, and ds is 11. Though he can't navigate park day even with me there very easily, at home, he is quite competent. He does not cook when we are not at home, he knows the emergency things to do, we have neighbors nearby, etc.

She FREAKED when I told her he stayed at home by himself. First I had to assure her that a) it is legal and b) that it doesn't happen that often but that c) we were fine with it. Her kids? The "normal" ones? She admitted they would be scared to death if she left them.

Uh huh.

Get your freak on somewhere else lady. Normal is as normal does. No, ds will never work for a company in a cubicle, but luckily we don't value that kind of "normalcy" in our house.

If I were the immature type, I might say something about comparative intelligence here. Luckily, I am not.

;-P

As I told him, if you poop all over everyone, eventually they are going to just stay away from you. I don't think that's what he wants.

And yet at times I feel I am nearly there.

I liked the quote from Dumbledore, but it gives me little pleasure tonight, as there was nothing accidental about it.

"Alas, accidental rudeness does occur alarmingly often."

(I shouldn't put quotes around since I don't remember exactly, and do not feel like looking it up)

We are going to work on art for the next week or so, making presents in various media. The kids did finish art projects in clay, so that was good.

Giving this a try:

ok they are a bit time delayed (mine, for example, is over 30K), but here are the kids' widgets:

nuts, seems the kids don't have them. ds is at 2,375 and he lamely hasn't written in days. Dd's is 1,570 and she is nearly to her goal of 2K. I'm proud of both, but dd has been the best at listening and keeping up with nano consistently.

OTOH, ds did actually study a script and start trying to write one. Since script frenzy ended on June 30, he's a bit delayed ;-)

7256078 is what they are reporting for today (well, technically tomorrow, it's 12:37 am Saturday now). Hopefully that is just un-updated. We are not taking things lying down around here, are we folks?

*bump* setting this up top till the 30th

Monkey says: "What's that smell?"

"He did it!"

Evolution

Ds still has 1K to go, but he'll get it, considering he wrote 1K yesterday...

Ow.

Press on, press on... 6K to go...

Awwww... ok, not her.

But this picture was taken by ds. And aren't dog's butts hysterical to waste pictures on? Ok, it was digital, but still...

I'm not sure if this is the right picture, but the boy also took a sample from his armpit. Isn't staph in an 11 yo who doesn't wash's armpit hysterical?

(no, really, it's not)

Here are the trees:
exit tree

and close up of entry tree bark:

Me: 10,046
dd: 864 / 2000 (goal)
ds: 1,332 / 5,000 (goal)

I'm a day ahead in word count, both kids have fallen behind a bit, not having written every day, but we'll get back there. They are astounding me with the quickness at which they learn fiction techniques... when ds came down mid-discussion about POV and author intrusion, and not writing in omniscient POV because it's not in vogue, and actually takes less skill than limited 3rd person, he interrupted me to say:

"that would create no suspense, if you wrote in omniscient POV"

Smart cookies, both of 'em. :-) As I said to them, if J.K. Rowling had told us at the beginning that Tom Riddle was Voldemort, Ginny Weasley would never have opened the diary and that whole book would never have happened, and Dumbledore wouldn't have gotten his confirmation of horcruxes as early as he did...

oops, spoiler alert, if you haven't read HP & the HBP... or HP and the COS

Dialogue is something of a challenge when you are six. I'm very proud of her, I am teaching her dialogue and how to "research" (which in her case is ask mommy) it and try to have your dialogue sound like real people speaking, minus all the "ums" etc. In dialogue we don't say the other person's name over and over, but the trick to figuring out who is saying what is via action. Combining the two can be tricky, but just as people don't say "hi how are you NAME. NAME, what would you like to do, NAME?" they also don't bounce around endlessly. So no talking heads, no running around without talking to one another--this stuff can be confusing!

They are both doing well. More on that later.