The Lilting House Archive

Fun With Audiology: Making Ear Molds

Did you know that ears are one of the few body parts that never stop growing? I think noses might be the other. Besides hair and fingernails, obviously.

When you wear behind-the-ear hearing aids, the hearing aids last for years, but the ear molds—the little custom-made silicone or acrylic doohickeys that fits into your ear—need replacing every so often. As your ear grows, the ear mold ceases to fit, and first you get a feedback problem, and then eventually the mold just won't stay in the ear at all.

So you go to the audiologist's office, and she makes new impressions of your ears with a quick-hardening goo. You ship the impressions off to a lab, and in a couple of weeks you'll have your brand new ear molds.

If you are three years old, you may find this process somewhat entertaining, if mildly uncomfortable. If you are six years old and the uncomfortable part is happening to your brother, not to you, you will consider it a ripping good time. Beanie pronounced it "huge fun."

I get a large number of hits every day from hearing-aid-related searches, including variations of "toddler ear molds," so I thought it might be helpful if I posted a walk-through of the process. Besides, pictures are always fun.

First the audiologist checks your ears, making sure there isn't too much wax in there—that might mess up the shape of the impression. Then she carefully inserts a little foam stopper to make sure none of the impression goo goes too far up the ear canal.

Then she pops the two kinds of goo out of their little bubble wrappers, and she mixes them together into a pliable substance that can be squeezed out of a syringe but will harden within a few minutes. Beanie, supervising, thought this mixing process looked pretty nifty and is now wondering how to work "become an audiologist" into her plan to be a scuba-diver with ten children.

The audiologist scoops the goo into the syringe and carefully squeezes it into the ear, sort of like making an icing rose on a birthday cake. Now you have to sit and wait. You can't poke at the goo, much as you might wish to. Nor can you pull on the string that is connected to the little foam stopper inside your ear canal. Patience, grasshopper.

Meanwhile, the audiologist squirts the leftover goo out of the syringe. This, I am told, is THE BEST PART.

Let's do the other ear while we're waiting. It's okay to drool.

Finished! Time to pull out the impression. No need to be suspicious; it won't bite.

The impressions go into a box and are dispatched to the Lab, that mysterious place where ear molds are born.

Now comes the fun part! (The other fun part, says Beanie.) What color ear molds do you want? The sky's the limit. No, Bean, your brother isn't getting the sparkles.

What color did he get? You'll have to wait two weeks to find out.

Nobody Warned Me...

...that the thing about having another baby when you have a hard-of-hearing toddler is that at least once a month you will catch yourself trying to put the toddler's hearing aids into the baby's ear.

Whoops.

(Amy, consider yourself warned!)

Carnival of Homeschooling

This week's carnival is up at Alasandra's place. Enjoy!

Tweak Tweak

The nice thing about what I call "tidal homeschooling" is that it keeps the pressure off me. By now, I have learned that our family's life seldom maintains a consistent rhythm longer than, say, four to six weeks. I have learned to enjoy the ebb and flow, the seasonal change. When monkeys toss their fabled wrenches into our works, as those naughty little monkeys are wont to do, I know it's time to do a little tweaking.

Our "high tide" Charlotte Mason term chugged along nicely during February, but this month we went a bit off kilter. Scott's back went out; we sold our old house; there were lots of distractions. We stuck to our rhythm of morning read-alouds and narrations, but last week I noticed the kids were squabbling with each other a lot and our lesson time was turning grumpish. That is always, always, a cue for me to shift gears. (And mix metaphors. Good heavens, I am haphazard with the metaphors today. Metaphor soup!)

I've mentioned before that my introduction to the idea of homeschooling was through the writings of John Holt and Sandra Dodd. Sandra is the guru of radical unschooling, and though I don't agree with her take on everything, I have learned a great deal from her writings. Jane was a babe in arms when I began to ponder Sandra's ideas about children learning naturally, through life experience, apart from school; and truth be told, it was Sandra who sold me on the lifestyle, way back when I was lurking on the homeschooling boards at AOL.

Now you know that while I have a big streak of unschoolishness in me, I'm not an unschooler per se; the Charlotte Mason method, applied according to her principles, is not unschooling. But Charlotte, too, envisioned the kind of happy and eager childhood that you hear about in the writings of the unschoolers. And that's my main answer to the question, "Why do you homeschool your kids?" I say, "Because I think it's a way to give kids a great education and a joyful childhood."

During our low-tide times, which occupy the larger portion of the year, we are like unschoolers. We live and play; we take care of our home together, the children and I; we have adventures and read lots of great books.

During our high-tide times, we keep doing all of the above, but I'm the one picking out the books, and I have the kids narrate a lot of the reading back to me, and we work more deliberately on mastering skills that take practice, like piano and math and Latin.

After the big adventure of moving to California, quickly followed by the big adventure that is Christmas, all of us were ready for some structure, some predictability. Hence our current lineup of studies a la Miss Mason. And as I said, our "term" (the term amuses us, ba dum bum) got off to a terrific start. Last week, when the fun started to fizzle, I gave some thought to what might need tweaking.

The first question I always ask myself when I'm assessing our family rhythm is "What would we be doing if we weren't doing this?" If, for example, we weren't spending three mornings a week reading and narrating, how would we spend them? We already have activities the kids love which take us out of the house twice a week, sometimes more; plus I've tried to be good about making spontaneous outings to the zoo or the park, exploring this vast new land we've moved to. I find that an important ingredient for family harmony is having plenty of mellow time at home. I am not, therefore, inclined to add any more activities to the mix right now.

Home time, then. The kids want to do more painting. Check. I can make that happen. They want to do more baking, and Easter is around the corner...Check. Jane has a flat of herb seedlings going, and all of us are in the mood to do some gardening ("all of us" as in the entire Northern hemisphere), so: Check.

Thus far in my ponderings, I have found nothing that really requires a tweak. We can do all those things any afternoon of the week; I just need to remember to DO them. (Check.)

But the grumpishness of the last week or so, that's got to go. That's where the tweaking comes in. What jumped out at me when I gave some thought to the question was that it has everything to do with the challenge of keeping five small people happy at once. (Make that four small people and one medium-sized person; Jane is really getting to be such a big kid.)

I decided I was trying to do too much all together. After traveling in a pack (both literally and figuratively) for the past nine months, my kids are ready for some one-on-one time with me. This can be as simple as making sure Beanie gets to help me wash dishes, or Jane gets me for a few screens of Absurd Math, her favorite online pastime. Rose wants to stretch out on my bed and chatter; she is my most introverted child, and I think she soaks up a lot of observations during the big group activities and wants my ear in which to pour them later on.

This morning I gave Rose a stack of books and helped her set up camp on my bed. She beamed. While Jane read a picture book to Beanie, I spent some one-on-one with Rose. Then I grabbed Bean for some cozy couch time, and we rediscovered Eric Carle's Animals Animals together. Jane went off to her favorite corner of the craft room and read the books I'd given her; later she came back and narrated to me while I changed a few diapers, nursed the baby, unloaded the dishwasher. It was a good morning. The house is a mess but our moods are tweaky clean.   

This Is Not a Hint

Seriously. I'm not for a moment suggesting you should run right over to the Homeschool Blog Awards website and nominate The Lilting House in six or seven categories. Really! That is totally not what I am saying!

I'm just saying that nominations will be accepted now through April 7th. That's all I'm saying. Also, did I mention how pretty you look today?*

*I'm kidding! With the thinly disguised trolling for nominations, I mean, not about your looking pretty. If I could see you, I bet I would think you are lovely. The readers of Lilting House all have a certain je ne sais quoi,** don't you think? Anyway, I really am just kidding with the other stuff. I was honored to be the recipient of a Homeschool Blog Award last year, over at Here in the Bonny Glen, and I think it's nice to spread the honors around. And this year there are so many more new and fabulous homeschooling blogs to enjoy. It's hard to get anything done, what with all the excellent posts to be read. So go! Nominate your favorites! Have fun!

**Do you have any idea how hard it is to find the correct spelling of a foreign-language phrase you have no idea how to spell? In this particular instance, I recommend Googling as follows: "a certain" French. Voila!***

***Make that "Voilà!"

Read 'Em and Weep

When it comes to blog-reading, if there's anything I love more than a good laugh, it's a good cry. Don't you just love posts that make you cry? The tearjerkers, the heartwrenchers; the stories that inspire you, move you, leave you in awe of another person's courage or generosity of spirit?

I thought it might be fun to try something new here at The Lilting House. I would like to invite you to share the posts that have touched your heart during the past week. You can use the nifty Mr. Linky widget below to enter the URLs. It's fine to enter your own post; if you've written something lovely, please don't be too shy to share!

Here's how we'll work it: Where it says "Your name" in the widget below, enter the name of the post, followed by the blog title in parentheses. Like this:

A Promise Delayed (Cottage Blessings).

Then enter the post URL in the next box. Make sure you use the post's permalink, not the main blog address. Like this:

http://alice.typepad.com/cottage_blessings/2007/03/ a_promise_delay.html

Not just this: http://alice.typepad.com/

(For Blogger blogs, you can get to the permalink by clicking on the time stamp beneath the post.)

And if you have entered someone else's post, please leave us a comment letting us know whom to thank for passing along the beauty!

I'll enter a few to get the ball rolling...

Cool Science Experiments

I think I first heard about Robert Krampf's Science Experiment of the Week from Karen Edmisten, font of many great ideas. Now Robert has taken his nifty experiments to video. Fun and free. Check it out.

Works for Me Wednesday: My Personal Salad Bar

It's been almost two years since I had the brainstorm that dramatically improved my eating habits...for a while. A long while, a year at least. But somewhere along the line, I let the habit slip, and then I forgot all about it.

Time to start over. Here's the idea: I keep a plastic bin full of yummy salad fixings in my refrigerator.

Boom, one-stop shopping. It’s right there at eye level on the fridge shelf, where I can’t avoid seeing it. Big bag of prewashed spinach sitting on top. In the bin are all the little baggies and plastic containers that I was finding it such a burden to collect from various points in the pantry and refrigerator. Pine nuts, sunflower seeds, almonds, mandarin oranges, dried cranberries, real bleu cheese…mmm, just cutting-and-pasting this list from above makes me hungry. (They don’t all make it into every salad, of course, just a random selection. Otherwise there’d be no room for the veggies, which are, of course, the whole point.)

Also in the bin: sliced mushrooms, diced bell peppers, chopped carrots. OK, so it’s not a perfect system: I still have to prep the veggies. But (another duh moment) I’m doing it once or twice a week, at night after the kids are in bed. Then in the middle of my busy day, I can scoop a handful of diced peppers out of a baggie and throw it on my beeyootiful salad. I know, lots of people have thought of this before me. I don’t claim to be innovative. Except possibly in the matter of sticking it all in a bin together so all I have to do is pull the bin out of the fridge and mix-and-match until I’ve got a bowlful.

You can read more about the idea in my original post, but the gist is pretty simple. During the year I was sticking with it, I really did eat a nice big salad pretty much every day because that darn bin was staring me in the face every time I opened the fridge, with the blue cheese crumbles and toasted almonds right on top. Yum.

Rachael Ray makes a quick and easy vinaigrette out of orange marmalade, balsamic vinegar, and olive oil.  Delish, as she says. Or try raspberry preserves in place of the marmalade: oh my goodness is that tasty. I know what I'm having for lunch.

Visit Rocks in My Dryer for more WFWM posts.

Magazines for Children

Last night, Scott returned from bedtime prayers with a message for me, a tiny note cunningly concealed in an origami dodecahedron.

"Mom, please look at the Muse on the table, page 8."

I happened to be standing beside the table. Why lookie there! Open on the table, the May/June 2005 issue of Muse. The page 8 article is called "Counting Coots," about the American bird of the giggle-inducing name. Did you know the female coot can count? Neither did I, until last night.

This is a pretty common occurrence around here. The "please read this article" requests don't always come packaged in geometric shapes, but Jane is constantly quoting from Muse.

"Mom, do you know why babies smile when you smile at them?"

"Because they are delighted by my beautiful visage?"

"Very funny, Mom. No, it's because of something called 'mirror neurons,' and did you know that scientists think there's a connection between mirror neurons and autism?"

And so goes my education. You know that's why I homeschool, right?

Muse, which is put out by Carus, the publishers of Cricket and Spider, is by far Jane's favorite periodical. Engaging and meaty, the science-themed articles are something she can sink her teeth into. She reads her back issues to tatters. I could probably power a whole blog with the Muse-gleaned information Jane passes along to me.

Rose (age 8) is fond of Ranger Rick, and 6-year-old Beanie, like her sisters before her, thinks the world of Your Big Backyard. Both magazines are about wildlife, with gorgeous photography.

Speaking of gorgeous photos, the closeups of backyard birds in Birds & Blooms have dazzled us whenever an issue comes our way.

We used to subscribe to Highlights, but I think it fell victim to household budget cuts at some point. We still look for it at the doctor's office, though.

Also popular with my younguns is Magnifikid, a weekly missalette containing the readings and prayers for the Catholic Mass.

What are your kids' favorite magazines? Do you subscribe?

Oh What a Week

So we sold the house in Virginia. On the ides of March, which is pretty funny. And of course it's a bittersweet event; it is mighty nice to be out from under the thumb of that mortgage, but my daffodils are blooming on the hill, and I bet my tulips are poking up in the front border, and (sob) will she love them like I do? Will she rejoice over my columbines, my catmint, my sea thrift this spring?

It's time, methinks, to break out our well-worn copy of Miss Rumphius and remind ourselves that we don't plant flowers just for our own enjoyment. Happy spring, new homeowners, and I hope you enjoy my posies! Here's what you have to look forward to in April...

And in May...

And in July...

And in September...

All right, all right, I'll stop!