All is well here in the Starr family household ... no complaints at the moment! Gabe is doing fine in his homeschool program. With a little coaching he has made 100s on his last spelling test and math test! I do get a little irritated sometimes following someone else's curriculum because I'm not sure it matters whether he knows what a linking verb is, or a helping verb or an addend. It also bothers me when I judge that the 100s he made don't mean that he is retaining the material. He's a smart kid and completely ABLE to play the school game, like I was (though of course, much less WILLING)! But succeeding at the game doesn't mean he's getting any more from it than the smiley face at the top of the page. Philosophically I tend to agree more with the un-schooling approach, although I fear deviating from the mainstream to that extreme. Besides that, I'm afraid that left to pursue only his own interests he might sink so deeply into comic book and superhero mythology that he would never learn anything real, or true.
Little Max is thriving. He is a big smiler! I think I mentioned in a post a long time ago that he didn't seem to smile as much as Gabe did at that point in development. Well, I take it back now. He is a big smiler! Being smiled back at is important to him. If he reads unhappiness in my face, he becomes unhappy too. Max is five months old now. He loves to interact with all the adults out here. He watches Gabe with fascination but backs away from him a little since Gabe is too boisterous and tends to get in his face. Interestingly, my dad theorizes that Max is left-handed. I'm not convinced. Time will tell.
Gabe and Joe are now on a soccer team together! They have had one practice, and the first game was supposed to be today but was rained out. It will be interesting to see how that goes, since Gabe does not have a competitive team spirit and doesn't seem to get it when it comes to sports. If he tries, I know he can be good at it!
I guess the only big story for the last couple of weeks is the raccoon that got into the chicken coop. Last Saturday morning Mom and Dad discovered the remains of 3 (or 2 1/2, as Dan put it, since one was apparently not complete) dead chickens in our coop. A fourth was missing. A predator had obviously broken into the coop, although we weren't sure what kind of animal it was. We had suspicions that it might be a raccoon since there were raccoon tracks all around the pond, easily visible in the mud since the pond was neither all the way full or all the way empty. I had shown Gabe the tracks and explained how raccoon tracks are common around water since they like to wash all their food.
Last Saturday night, despite my somewhat half-hearted protest, Dad set traps around the chicken pen, and Sunday morning snagged a raccoon. He shot it, and before they could bury it a huddle of giant buzzards came and picked the carcass dry. I felt sad for the raccoon -- the life of a mammal seems more important than that of a chicken. But at the same time I didn't want to lose any more of them. I guess these are the harsh realities of life out in the country. I feel new to this! (Maybe we all are, since it apparently took Dad 15 shots before he was satisfied that he had killed the raccoon.)
It's hard to tell whether we have any more raccoons. In the past week the pond has filled up with rain, so there is no more mud surrounding it to evidence any tracks. I guess the traces of our raccoon have washed away.
The last two pictures posted here are of the boys riding around in the little carts Dad picked up ... They also have one more playmate this week since Clari's sister Elizabeth, her husband Christian and son Ian are staying next door for awhile!
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