So the other day, #2 was doing a math worksheet for fun (yeah, for fun! I wonder where he gets it)! He asked me, “Hey Daddy, what’s 6 minus 5?” I asked him,

“If you had six candies, and then I took five of them away, how many would you have left?”

“Six?”

“No, six is what you had in the beginning, before I took five away! Go get six coins from my coin cup”

…

“OK, so now you have six coins, and I take away one, two, three,…”

“Oh, it’s one!”

The next day, in the car after school, I hear #2 from the back,

“What’s 8 minus 6?”

“Why don’t you figure it out?”

A little time goes by, and then I hear him say,

“I need six more pencils.”

“Why, how many do you have?”

“Two.”

We got back over a week ago now, so I wanted to just jot down a number of curious oddities I learned there.

Unlike the pedestrian alligator lizards we see around here in San Diego, Puerto Rican lizards can jump surprising distances, over a foot from plant to plant, or from ground to wall.  We also saw a number of very large iguanas (maybe 4 ft nose to tail), but apparently those are non-indigenous abandoned pets — like pythons in the everglades and mythical New York City sewer gators.  Also, the snails are larger, with flatter, cinnamon roll-like shells, rock-hard compared to the paper-thin-shelled garden snails we get around here.

Although there are other species of “coqui” frogs, only Puerto Rican coquis actually sing “coqui” every evening.

There is no longer any U.S. Navy presence in P.R.!  Despite everything I had heard about P.R. from all the navy brats I know that lived there at one time or another, now all that is left is the Army’s Ft. Buchanan.

Puerto Ricans don’t drink Bacardi.  They prefer DonQ.  (Pronounced “DonKoo”, not “DonKew”)  Apparently Bacardi has more Cuban than Puerto Rican roots.  And DonQ is preferred for having less flavor (I guess like vodka).

Who knew? They still make cars without central locking (I don’t mean Puerto Rico, but due to the driving habits of Puerto Ricans, it seems the rental agencies stock the truly cheapest cars possible).  I don’t mind rolling down windows (they stayed up to keep in the max A/C all the time anyways), I don’t mind not having remote locking.  But can you remember the stone-age ritual of getting in the car and leaning over to unlock the passenger door, and twisting around to unlock the back door?  Or having to make the walk of security to double-check all the doors got locked when everyone gets out?  What a pain!  (However, the Toyota Yaris did have not only a CD player, but an MP3 player — which did not at all make up for the fact that it was lacking an engine)

Speaking of cars, Puerto Rican roadways are oddly half-metricized.  Speeds are posted in MPH, and distances to exits and cities are in miles, but instead of mile-markers, they have KM markers.  And gas is sold not by the gallon but by the liter.  And at every gas station I saw, from Fajardo to Areceibo, the prices were augmented with a tiny little “7/10″ of a cent.  I can only imagine that the industry that manufactures those numbers for gas station marquees sells “Continental” packages with extra 9’s, and “Puerto Rican” packages with extra 7’s.  And can you imagine the uproar when Puerto Rican gas must have topped $1/liter a few years back?  How many gas stations didn’t have enough digits for their signs?

A while back, Mrs. Rad rightly complained that my blog doesn’t have any family stuff anymore, just theological fighting.  Since then, even that has mostly migrated to the Outhouse — I suppose one could thus say that this blog’s gone to the crapper! So for a while I am going to try to refocus this blog on little family anecdotes — the kind of little tidbits that just fall through the cracks otherwise.  (I’m not making any promises though, that’ll get you killed!)

Saturday morning I made a quick trip to the store with #3, who was up early (earlier than the other boys, anyway).  I remarked to him how cheerful he was, especially in comparison to how grumpy he was at bedtime the night before.  ”Do you remember how grumpy you were last night?” I asked.  ”Yes, I was this grumpy,” he replied, holding his hand about nose-high.

We have this children’s book in Spanish called “Perros! Perros!”  One of the objectives of this book must be to teach kids how to roll their r’s.  #2’s gotten pretty good at it, but he’s gone a bit overboard.  Lately, instead of calling me “Dadda”, the d in the middle gets trilled, like “Darra”.  (He’s also very proud that he learned to snap, and he’s this close to whistling.)

On Sunday night, after some initial squirreliness, I had to sit right on top of #1 to make him pay attention in church, instead of playing the “don’t cross this line” game with #2.  And pay attention he did!  His verdict afterwards was “A good pastor, with even a very simple text, can make quite a good sermon!”  Judge for yourself!  (Or should I say Judges 10:1-5; 12:8-15 for yourself?)

T-bird tells me that my blog has too much theological fighting, and not enough family news.  So here’s where we’re at:

#3 is huge.  At 42 inches and 38 pounds, he’s off the 3-year-old chizzart!  He’s almost as big as 5-year-old #2 (who’s not exactly a midget).  And he loves to sing.  Joy To the World (two whole verses), Speed Racer (instrumental), Hungry Like the Wolf, anything he hears, he sings.  Also, in emulation of his older brothers, he is excited about learning letters.  He can recognize his or his brothers’ names, and has even been known to try to scribble his own (although his ‘S’ has about 10 bends in it!)

The biggest news for #1 is that two weeks ago, he got glasses (bifocals!).  He’s excited about his glasses because (a) he can see, and (b) he’s now like some of his best friends at school — which he also loves.  He is also making good progress on the piano, playing pieces that really sound like music!  (#3 is starting to sing some of them, from hearing them practiced so often!)

I have saved #2 for last, because he’s got the biggest news at the moment (I think).  As the title suggests, “I’m calling it”.  No, he’s not dead, but after snuggling up with him and The Cat in the Hat Comes Back last weekend, I have decided that #2 now knows how to read.  He might not be able to figure out every word, but he has crossed the threshold from painfully sounding out individual words, to stringing words together in a sentence comfortably enough to understand what he’s reading.  I told him how exclamation points mean he has to make it sound exciting, and it’s funny to see how he notices an exclamation point coming up, and will back up to the beginning of the sentence and raise his voice and read it all again.  And all this from T’s extra-curricular teaching (the same method that was so successful with #1’s homeschooling).  In no time, I’m sure he’ll be a bona fide bookworm like #1.

These past (final) three days of Christmas vacation (for me from work, and the boys from school), I’ve walked up and down the mountain near our house with #1 — an enterprise which takes about an hour and a half.  The first time, we just chatted about erosion and why the sun is in the south.  Yesterday and today, however, I brought my shorter catechism for some competitive Q&A.  #1 is only up to Q28, so we went head-to-head on those.  The first day, #1 beat me 21-18 — with a criterion of absolute perfection.  The second day (today), we decided to adopt a more lenient “three-letter” criterion, which would allow insignificant errors such as “in” vs. “by”, “continues” vs “continueth”, a missing “and”, etc.  With that leniency, and lessons learned from yesterday, we both improved, and I beat him 26-25.  Combined, #1 edged me out with a 2-day total of 46-45.   Sometimes it feels good to lose.

What is a covenant?

An agreement between two or more persons.

What covenant did Daddy make with the family?

The Covenant of Disneyland.

What was the family bound to do in the Covenant of Disneyland?

To memorize and recite catechism questions perfectly.

How many questions were #1, Mommy, and Daddy bound to memorize?

48.

How many questions was #2 bound to memorize?

16.

How many questions was #3 bound to memorize?

3.

By when must the catechism questions be perfectly recited?

By the end of the year.

What did Daddy promise in the Covenant of Disneyland?

To reward the family with a trip to Disneyland if they recited their catechism perfectly.

What did Daddy threaten in the Covenant of Disneyland?

To punish the family by withholding a trip to Disneyland if they did not memorize their catechism.

Did each act for himself alone in the Covenant of Disneyland?

No; if one fails, the whole family fails.

Did the family keep the Covenant of Disneyland?

Yes!

When is the family going to Disneyland?

Not exactly sure, hopefully by early February…

…two Tales about Jesus, that is.

For those involved in homeschooling (especially of the “classical” variety), antique educational materials have a certain cachet — a certain stamp of authority. It is with such an expectation that I approached Charles Dickens’ The Life of Our Lord: Written for His Children During the Years 1846 to 1849. I was shocked to find nothing inside but liberal moralism. As evidence, I pick two extraordinary quotes from the plethora available. On page 2, Dickens has the angels announcing to the shepherds:

There is a child born to-day in the city of Bethlehem near here, who will grow up to be so good that God will love Him as His own Son.

What? I thought Jesus was co-eternally the Son of the Father! On the last page of the book, Dickens defines Christianity thusly (his own capitalization):

Remember! — It is Christianity TO DO GOOD always… If we do this, and remember the life and lessons of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and try to act up to them, we may confidently hope that God will forgive us our sins and mistakes, and enable us to live and die in peace.

So the ground of or forgiveness is the sincerity of our effort?

Some might argue that little kids can’t handle and don’t need doctrinal details. To that I would say; as I read this book to my kids (at least the first few chapters before I gave up), every page or so I had to stop and add qualifications or corrections. Those additional words I used were understood by my kids, so I’m sure they would have been understood by Dickens’ kids, and he obviously had the artistic skill to write them better than I could say them.

And so it was with the taste of Dickens in my mouth that I was awaiting The Jesus Storybook Bible: Every Story Whispers His Name by Sally Lloyd-Jones (no relation) which Aunt Barb had said she was sending the boys for Christmas — eagerly awaiting, because Barb knows books. Instead of trying to express how much better this book is by talking about it, it would be much simpler to just give a big, juicy quote from the first story:

Now, some people think the Bible is a book of rules, telling you what you should and shouldn’t do. The Bible certainly does have some rules in it. They show you how life works best. But the Bible isn’t mainly about you and what you should be doing. It’s about God and what he has done.

Other people think the Bible is a book of heroes, showing you people you should copy. The Bible does have some heroes in it, but (as you’ll soon find out) most of the people in the Bible aren’t heroes at all. They make some big mistakes (sometimes on purpose). They get afraid and run away. At times they are downright mean.

No, the Bible isn’t a book of rules, or a book of heroes. The Bible is most of all a Story. It’s an adventure story about a young Hero who comes from a far country to win back his lost treasure. It’s a love story about a brave Prince who leaves his palace, his throne — everything — to rescue the one he loves. It’s like the most wonderful of fairy tales that has come to true in real life!

You see, the best thing about this Story is — it’s true.

There are lots of stories in the Bible, but all the stories are telling one Big Story. The Story of how God loves his children and comes to rescue them.

It takes the whole Bible to tell this Story. And at the center of the Story, there is a baby. He is like the missing piece in a puzzle — the piece that makes all the other pieces fit together, and suddenly you can see a beautiful picture.

And this is no ordinary baby. This is the Child upon whom everything would depend. This is the Child who would one day — but wait. Our story starts where all good stories start. Right at the very beginning…

See, now you want to buy a copy and read it to your kids!

For your enjoyment, this is what happens when a dinosaur eats too much turkey (too many turkeys?)…

Because Southern California is on fire, and my work was in an evacuated area, I was able to stay home an extra three days this week. Since all activities (church, soccer) were also canceled, and we couldn’t really go anywhere (our neighborhood seemed like almost the only area of the city that wasn’t in danger this time, but still it was too smoky to let the kids run around outside), we spent the whole time cooped up indoors. And when Daddy’s home, school necessarily takes a turn for the mathematical!

For #1, who is the only one really doing homeschool, I decided it was time to start working on multiplication tables. He had sufficiently mastered the art of 4-digit addition/subtraction, carrying/borrowing that he usually makes only a couple of mistakes per daily worksheet of 20. (By the way, if anybody else out there is homeschooling, and wants addition/subtraction problems, just let me know, and I can hook you up with an infinite supply from a Perl script I wrote to randomly generate them, laid out in plain text so that they can easily be opened in WordPad and printed 20 per page.)

So we started on the tables. Fortunately, he already understood conceptually what multiplication is (repeated addition). Also, he is very good at addition in his head, so he can count “by” any number up to the product he needs, if he can’t just remember it right out. So I busted out the set of (Fisher Price) multiplication flash cards that have been waiting around. They’re two-sided, easy problems vs. hard problems. The easy ones are all 0x, 1x, 2x, and the first three 3x, which he basically didn’t even need to learn.

So then we switched to the backside. As we went through, I gave him as many rules as I could:

• times 10 is just slap a zero on the back
• count by fives when multiplying by 5, evens will always get you a ten, odds in between
• 9 times n is (n-1) in the tens digit, and the ones digit is whatever it takes to add up to nine
• times 2 means double it
• times 4 means double it and double again
• times 8 means double three times

So that left only x3 (which is easy enough to add), x6, and x7 without a shortcut — and those products could usually use whatever shortcut rule was available from the other number.

So as we worked through the flashcards, the method became this: any card that he answered right off (within a second or two, without having to mentally calculate) went into a done pile. Others went to the back of the stack to be flashed again. Quickly the done pile grew full of products with easy rules (10x, 9x) and ones he has well-memorized (and I try to point out how much bigger that done pile is). Then begins the cycling through the redos. After about three days of practice (probably actually a total of about three hours of drilling), his solid foundation of mental addition has gotten him about a dozen products away from a full multiplication table.

So that’s #1, but the other boys showed some numerical aptitude while I was home as well. #2 was jealous to “do school” like his big brother, so he spent a long time in my lap with his pre-school workbook, and did a great job counting objects, writing his answers (digits 1-6), even filling in squares of a bar graph. He’s had a lot of practice counting (especially lately with “Sorry!”), and is completely reliable up to the teens.

And #3 is getting in on the fun too! Not even 2 years old yet, and he has heard his brothers count so much that he can parrot them in one long counting-word which runs all the way to fifteen (skipping ten) before cycling into random teens. He likes to “play” whatever the rest of us are playing, by grabbing a game piece, tapping it on the board, and saying “one t’free four five six seven eight nine leven twelve firteen fourteen fit-teen twelve sixteen leven…”