I told MFH the other night that it seemed like things were starting to crystallize a little; a couple of little things suddenly came clear for me. Well, once crystallization starts, it can take off very rapidly.

One of those little seed crystals was that I made a more substantial writing journal–MFH long ago settled on one particular style of notebook that he always carries around, but I used random frugally-acquired notebooks, or loose paper. But somehow the cover from an old altered book I had started a long time ago, and old paper left over from my grandmother’s teaching days, came together in some quick-and-dirty bookbinding, and now I have a book-shaped journal, with lots of pages, and room to paste things in. And I think that it is a style that I will stick with.

I was thinking back on my own schooling; I went to public school and my parents were thoroughly uninvolved in my academic education. I did very well, and I’ve been able to hold my own academically ever since. But I do have a point of comparison for a could-have-been….

In my junior and senior years of high school, two homeschooled sisters joined my graduating class, so they could receive regular diplomas. Somehow the school rules must have been set up to keep them from taking the highest spots in the class ranking, because they both got straight A’s yet didn’t place. They were clear-thinking and highly articulate, and thoroughly poised and confident. It was glaringly obvious to all that they had had an education far superior to ours. The older sister was a brainy, outspoken type and would have done well even without homeschooling, but the younger one seemed to have blossomed, intellectually and personally, far beyond what she could ever have done within our class.

So, as good as my own schooling was, it wasn’t half what it could have been. And as good as our highly-ranked suburban school is, I’m certain that our children will learn just as much, or more, from home.

Jesus, I’m a sucker
I wish I’d believed less of the lies
Did anything I thought I knew
Turn out to be true?
‘Cause baby boys and little toys are all that
I see anymore
And will somebody close the door
It’s cold outside
It’s cold outside

In fact, the average cost of raising a child to age 17 is over $150,000 per year.

That cost is the total estimated birth-to-age-eighteen cost, probably from the USDA’s Cost of Raising a Child calculations, not the actual annual cost, thank goodness.

The rest of the article is better. The author rightly mentions the greatest cost of having children, which is opportunity cost–all the things that you give up having and doing in order to care for your children. And opportunity costs are indeed substantial, these days. As I sometimes say to myself, “We’re doing twice as much as those people, on half as much money, and in less than half as much living space.” So I don’t entirely agree with the article’s brief mention of productivity in the context of parenthood; productivity depends entirely on what metrics you are using.

On the other hand, raising children has never been easy, all the way back to Eve. I once read somewhere that the increased pain she was cursed with in childbearing would be more accurately translated as an increase in hard work. In my book, I mentioned my idea that this increased work in childbearing extends long past childbirth itself, and includes all the toil of bringing up small children. I keep seeing various solutions to the “mother is going crazy trying to care for family and home” problem, and none of them really seem to get to the root of it. “The only way out is through,” as far as I know.

It is really starting to grieve me that we are spending our fourth Christmas in an apartment complex that doesn’t allow live Christmas trees, or even wreaths. So I put up a lot of Christmas lights this afternoon.

Last week, TLG gave the shepherd of our Nativity scene green hair with a whiteboard marker. Baby Jesus has appeared in various unlikely places, such as on the roof of the stable. While I was putting up the Christmas lights, OLC was playing with the other figures: “Oh no, the giant is putting up the lights!”

December 3: Object is an embossed Christmas card picture of Mary, but the reverse side, where I did a rubbing with a graphite pencil. Text points out Mary’s willingness to be the mother of the Messiah.

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We have been getting some snow today. I finished up a few projects recently: new endpin for my fiddle, drainboard for the kitchen, painted my old eyeglass frames dark purple. At least two of those three projects went seriously awry. The drainboard is steel from a file cabinet, already a little rusty, painted with old latex paint, and the paint is doing some crazy alligatoring where it has gotten wet. For the next one, I am going to use aluminum, I think.

For the endpin, I made two attempts to whittle one from raw ebony, and both ended up too small for the hole. Finally, I resorted to the screw tin, found a drywall screw, a wall anchor, and two black rubber feet that make a good groove to accept the tailgut when I put them front-to-front. It is unconventional, but works, and doesn’t look that bad. So now I can play my fiddle again, though I have to rebuild my skills and muscles for it almost from scratch. I didn’t do anything with the pegs, so it is still very challenging to tune the strings that don’t have fine-tuners. The teeniest adjustment moves the string a full step up or down in pitch.

Meanwhile, StrongBaby has almost completely lost the ability to be put down for a nap…except on the day we had our dentist appointments. He is getting three or four new teeth all at once, and has been experimenting with standing unsupported. TLG has been dropping his afternoon nap, sometimes goes to sleep early, and is full of mischief. He has been two years old for about a year, and now he’s two-and-a-half. OLC taught herself how to draw stick figure monsters, and is very interested in reading chapter books.

We looked at a house for rent in St. Paul, but decided against it. It would have been a very rough commute for MFH, and I couldn’t figure out a way to make the spaces of the house really work for us.

Today’s object is a scroll (small roll of paper, tied). On the card, I wrote a sentence or two about how the birth of Jesus was prophesied hundreds of years earlier, in the Jewish Scriptures.

There are other indications that a major transition is coming up for us; God has been saying a thing or two. Exciting and terrifying at the same time.

The revolution came
And the revolution died.
We believed all of the leaders
But the leaders just lied.
Sitting in a jail
With a bitter grudge to bear.
Released as a loner
With nothing left to share

(chorus:)
Make a tower tall
Make a tower high
Build it so big that it just
Rips through the sky.
Scramble up the language,
Try to communicate
We make our plans in vain,
We cannot elevate

We all just grit our teeth
While we watch the nightly news.
Another year, another
Hundred thousand lives to lose.
All this talk of peace
And the great new consciousness.
But the weight of expectation
Left our living rooms a mess.

(chorus)

When I was in my cell
And nobody came by
No one would have known
If I had died.
Now all I want to know,
Would someone shoot me straight?
‘Cause was there ever a chance?!?
Or were we meant to wait

To see the tower fall
See the crooked straight
See the huddled masses
Pass through the gate
Speaking all in common
The promises of peace.
The sound of weeping mothers
Everywhere has ceased.
(repeat)

We’ll do what we can for now….