Hurricane Hannah, Homeschool and Health

One of my kids' vocabulary words this week was alliteration.  thus the title.  =)

On the hurricane front, we're getting rained on, but nothing serious.  Dan (my brother) is in southern VA on the coast, and I suspect he's seeing more action than we are up here.  My only hope?  I'm praying for a dry basement.  Although, considering that we have not really fixed anything yet, Einstein's definition of insanity comes to mind.  "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result."  Yes... well... 

We started homeschooling this week!  With only four kids home now.   The last time we had four kids living at home was the turn of the century.  (Doesn't that sound ancient?  Like we should have been riding in horse-drawn buggies and wearing long skirts!)   

This year Josh is taking Latin online, Greek Mythology online, astronomy, Geometry/pre-calc, English, and is hoping to get a job.  (He applied at Parkway Automotive and will probably have a job as soon as he turns 16.)  

Bethany is taking astronomy, pre-calc, English online, French, History of the Ancient World, and Physical Science from BYU (university class).  Hopefully also ASL from Jennifer H.  

Peter and Naomi have all the usual classes, including French with BBC's Muzzy (wonderful!) and Song School Latin (very fun!).  

And this year we are trying to actually do P.E.  For anyone who knows me, yes... this is a stretch.  But the kids are begging for active stuff.  So we'll give it a try.  We're going swimming once a week (Peter is taking swimming lessons, which he needs, and the others will do open swim during his lessons), we will try to hit the open gym, and I'm looking into a kids' track team in the area.  

Which brings me to the Health bit.  Naomi's EEG was normal, which does not mean she doesn't have epilepsy, it just means she didn't have a seizure during the test.  (Which I already knew.  I watched the test.)  It does mean she is at a pretty low risk for developing other types of seizures.  Some kids who have absance (or petit mal) seizures develop other types of seizures as they get older.  Apparently the kids who go on to have have types are more likely to have seizures triggered during the EEG.  So that's good news.  And she is clearly outgrowing the absance seizures.  So hopefully it will all just fade away.  

One interesting bit (don't remember if I posted this or not... sorry if I did) is that 25% of all kids who are autistic also have epilepsy.  When I first heard that, I thought "No way.  I know a bunch of autistic people, and almost no one with epilepsy."  But then I started counting, and guess what?  Exactly 25% of the people I know who are on the autism spectrum, also have epilepsy.  Weird, huh?  I thought it was.

Peter has been sick this week.  Coughing, coughing, coughing so much that it's hard for him to do much else.  Sleeping and just laying on the couch a lot.  And for the last two days having a low grade fever that gets up to 103/104 in the afternoons.  He's also passing another kidney stone. Poor kid.  And last night he threw up.  I think from the kidney stone.  All in all, he's not feeling well.

And I'm struggling to keep my blood sugar in the normal range.  I apparently haven't been doing so well, and on Wednesday I spent a good chunk of the day in a confused state of semi consciousness, wandering around trying to make my brain work and wondering what was going on.  I didn't see the obvious solution:  Eat!  After Mike talked to me on the phone he called back and told Peter to bring me a Vitamin Water.  I couldn't figure out what to do with it, but Peter helped me out. 

So I'm making a huge effort to get the wildly keeling ship back to a steady forward motion.  I'm eating something small (crackers and cheese, a bit of meat and an apple slice, etc) every hour on the hour.  Isn't it amazing how much better our bodies work when they have fuel?  aahhh... the wonderful feeling of being able to complete a thought.... and still have energy left over to communicate the thought!  =) 

Happy Birthday to my sister, Polly!  

Rebecca  =)