The Bear utterly charmed a librarian today by asking if there were any biographies “of John Adams–not John QUINCY Adams, the second one, but John Adams.” The Bear likes John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. I think he likes their portraits more than the others or something.

I’d like to note that I don’t get bitter about the whole infertility thing very often. I don’t at all mind people who have perfect obstetrical histories and fabulous families. But I do get bitter when there’s some idiot who should have been sterilized at birth hauling around four horrid little brats she can’t control, wailing things like “You always EMBARRASS me when we go out! Why do you have to do this? Stop disobeying me! Stop it now!”

First, it makes me wish that corporal punishment was allowed for PARENTS. It wasn’t the brats who needed the spanking–it was the mother. Second, it makes me want to snarl, “Once you figured out you’re a terrible parent with the first one, why did you have three more?” And then it makes me want to say, “You’re embarrassing yourself, and they’re beasts because you’ve taught them to be, you disgusting excuse for humanity.”

Every parent has bad day. But no decent parent EVER behaves like that in public (argh, the ineffectual WHINING was worse than the kids’ screaming) and neither do their kids for more than five seconds because the parent either puts a stop to it or removes the child from the public situation. NO EXCUSES, NO EXCEPTIONS.

What a horrible, horrible woman. I cracked up when the Bear wrinkled his nose and quietly asked why the children were being so awful and why the mother wasn’t DOING anything about it.

Anyhow, we picked up more Frances books, along with a big stack of others. The Bear loves Frances, but he doesn’t like Henry and Mudge in the least. Funny guy.

He and the neighbor’s kids were over tonight. While Changling, the baby who’s going to have to have surgery tomorrow (so I was stuffing him like crazy tonight so that he wouldn’t be too hungry), was rolling around upstairs with the dog and having a Battle of the Wills with me over whether or not he was going to get more yummy stuff if he didn’t give me the sign for “more,” the two other monsters were in the basement.

The Bear got a talking globe several years ago, and they enjoy playing with that off and on. Today, I had to settle an argument about whether we were near the Pacific Ocean, and the boys decided that the country name “Mongolia” sounds like an insult. So the rest of the night, it was “You’re Mongolia!” “No, YOU’RE Mongolia!” amid peals of laughter. Werewolf, the neighbor’s kid, was born late and the Bear was born early, so in terms of gestational age, they’re only a bit more than eight months apart. (The Bear, of course, is already half an inch shorter.) “Mongolia” is better than the previous insult du jour which was, I believe, “booty-booty-poopy-pants.”

I would like to point out that my child did not *originate* that, no matter how much enthusiasm he showed for it and no matter how much effort it took on my part to quash it. No, my little angel tried on “weeny-whiny penis” instead, but with that one, I acted FAST, thankyouverymuch, and it did not leave the room it started in.

*sighs*

Of course, there’s still burp-face and fart-booty and other charming things. All and all, I prefer Mongolia. Maybe they’ll like the sound of Uzbekistan even better.

The man is particularly good.

I have a bad habit of doing that since most doctors don’t seem to know what the hell they’re doing and I’ve been much more effective in diagnosing and treating my problems, historically, than doctors have.

Anyhow, I found out that since DH works for a company based in VA, our insurance isn’t required to cover fertility treatments the way MD-based companies’ insurance are.

Goody.

We have no money for treatment right now. I’m sick of the rollercoaster, so I’m taking action on my own.

I’m doing two supplements: Vitex (chasteberry) and progesterone timed to my cycle.

See, it’s pretty obvious that I have a luteal phase defect. This means (for me) that my body revs up, I *seem* to ovulate beautifully, the egg seems to fertilize fine…and then fizzle. Either nothing happens at all (most of the time) or I get an early miscarriage. And because the medical establishment has a misogynistic, paternalistic attitude, I WASN’T told this could be a possibility with my first threatened miscarriage and WASN’T emergency tested for progesterone levels and WASN’T given progesterone then and so lost a perfectly healthy baby.

Yeah. Thank you EVER so much, modern medicine.

Anyhow, Vitex is the one “good for women’s stuff” (summon crystals and chanting) herb that’s actually been shown to WORK in a specific, comprehensible way. It lowers prolactin and encourages progesterone. It’s been shown to dramatically reduce PMS symptoms (caused by too much estrogen) over a period of 3 months and to tada! raise fertility in previously infertile women with luteal phase defects, though it does nothing for women with other fertility problems except lower their PMS and breast tenderness. All of these things are quite expected from its main actions. I have some symptoms of elevated prolactin, so this seems a good bet. No negative effects have been recorded, though it’s not recommended in pregnancy (for obvious reasons).

Progesterone causes the endometrium to thicken to allow for proper implantation, and it sustains pregnancy until the baby’s placenta can take over. Too low progesterone can prevent implantation from ever occurring, while insufficient length and amount of progesterone after a successful implantation pregnancy brings on menses, which will abort the baby. This, obviously, it bad. There are two ways to use progesterone for treating luteal phase defects:

First, you can use it after ovulation to raise the chances of a successful implantation and then, if you have a positive hCG blood test soon after, you continue it to support the pregnancy–if negative, stop it to bring on menses, rinse and repeat. (Supplementing with progesterone AFTER a positive pregnancy test is a pretty dumb idea if you tend to have super-early miscarriages. Much better is to assume pregnancy until proven otherwise.)

Second, you can use it to suppress menstruation and ovulation for several months to build up a nice, thick endometrium and to cause you to hyperovulate once you go off it. Then, once you’ve ovulated again, back on it you go. This is trickier because some women will immediately resume menstruation while others will immediately ovulate after going off it, and you don’t want to not restart the progesterone if you have ovulated.

(This is what happened, accidentally, with the Bear–the anovulation and suppressed menstruation were caused by severe illness, not progesterone, however. You should have seen the doctor’s eyes pop when I told her my last period was 5 or 6 months ago when I went in for my first prenatal appt.)

I’m trying the first half of the first approach and, if that doesn’t work, I’m going for the second. In the meantime, I feel better than I have since high school. With the progesterone, I can sleep on a regular schedule. I can sleep a mere 7-8.5 hours and feel RESTED. I don’t lose two weeks every month to feeling restless, out of sorts, confused, and disorganized. I’m not having anxiety problems. Basically, I feel GOOD. Even if this does work and I do get pregnant (long shot here, I fear), I’m sticking with this after the baby is born. This is going to be a permanent part of my life because I am, well, FUNCTIONAL now. I’m not constantly showering myself with recriminations because I can’t get anything done in a day. I can’t believe how much I can DO now that I’m not exhausted, disorganized, and anxious all the time. And sleep–who knew that you could sleep and wake up feeling AWAKE? Oh, and my chest doesn’t hurt so much that I want DH to stay in the next county, either, and I’m not swelling up nearly so much as I normally do.

Oh, hey, and NO acne! I almost can’t believe it’s my face here.

I love everything about being a woman except the freaking inside bits. Why can’t they just WORK right, darn it?

It hurt.

My dishwasher is broken. No water is going in. Why? Not a clue. I reached in to double check that this was true and encountered the heating coil. YOUCH! Not smart. THe finger turned from flesh-colored to cooked-chicken white in an instant. The good (bad?) thing is that the burn was severe enough that it doesn’t really hurt at the moment. All the nerve endings are now cooked meat.

Now I need to call my Daddy for ideas on how to fix that damned thing before Christmas.

In case you missed it, there was a NYT article here.

Take this with a grain of salt:

“Dr. Cohen cites research showing that children with I.Q.’s of 60 to 70 can read at fourth-grade level, sometimes higher; those with I.Q.’s below that can read at first-grade level.”

Typical is this:

50-59 1st to 3rd grade reading level

60-69 2nd to 4th grade reading level

70-79 3rd to 7th grade level

Some studies have shown that those with mental retardation will perform lower than expected versus their mental age–others have shown that they’ll perform higher. Because the lower kids process SO much more slowly, the apparent ROI for teaching phonics appears to be very low, and so many special ed programs choose to go with a “whole language” program. *This is a mistake.* It is important to give disabled kids plenty of sight words and to even teach words that are phonetic as sight words, as well, in order to get them up and reading at an earlier age. But for continued progress, phonics is incredibly powerful. With proper intervention, those with IQs of 70-79 can read at an 8th or 9th grade level, while those in the 60s can read at up to a sixth grade level, and occasionally higher. Just because they are intellectually less capable doesn’t mean that their experience freezes. They can continue to learn–and improve–for the rest of their lives. And it’s so much more critical for them that it’s a terrible shame that it isn’t standard to split the days of those who are handicapped enough that they’re affected in their work life between work and school after the age of 21. The difference between a 4th grade and a 6th grade reading level is profound in terms of what it makes someone capable of–which, given time, they can do. An eight-year-old is only eight for one year. A person with an IQ of 40 has that IQ for many years and so can surpass the eight-year-old in ability with time.

(This isn’t really about the top range of mental retardation. Plenty of those with mild retardation are “only retarded at school” and go on to have well-paying careers in trade. They need no further support after graduation.)

More interesting data on MR.

I read this blog entry recently. The writers completely accurate that great achievement is the result of great talent (which almost always manifests itself early in some way, even if it isn’t realized until much later–if realized at all) AND appropriate work. Gladwell’s confusion is in believing that a great future mathematician will be doing algebra by five or a great composer playing piano excellently and composing at eight. If a child happens to be born with a great mathematical talent into a family that emphasizes and supports mathematics, then yes, the child might be doing algebra at five. But if the child was born to a collier’s son, then no, there wouldn’t be early advanced math. Instead, the child might show a deep grasp of how math works in the everyday world–much less flashy but just as significant. Additionally, I’d like to note that it takes a while for any real artist to produce work equal to that of even a mediocre adult in the field because of the fine motor skills required. Even very precocious motor skills are dependent upon “growing up” in a way that many mental-only skills aren’t. He also completely fails to grasp the disillusionment of many of the very intelligent that often leads to chronic under achievement in a standard school environment. If Kant had been giving John Stuart Mill’s education as a child, he could have easily outmatched Mill, as he was considerably more mentally capable. But he wasn’t given those opportunities. Without opportunity, ability struggles to manifest.

This is a point I’d like to emphasize over and over again:

“It is a damaging myth to believe that all children have the same capacity to master a given skill or domain because it would also suggest that if a student doesn’t succeed to the level of his classmates, he is just not trying hard enough.”

But to me, the most important lesson for EVERYONE to take away is this one, mentioned in passing:

“commitment to mastery (practice could contribute here, but also the brain’s reward and motivation centers, temperament, executive function)”

Practice is only worth something if you’re using it as a vehicle for growth. Really. The ability to self-analyze your own behavior and adapt accordingly is far, far more important that merely the hours practiced–and possessing this ability also has an intrinsic reward of giving you constant improvement, which encourages you to practice more.

This is why I improve so much faster than most people when I have a dance lesson on less practice. I’m not just “practicing.” I have carefully analyzed and integrated as much of what the instructor has said and done as I possibly can, and I systematically apply it to what I’m doing. I dance thoughtfully. When I stop improving after a particular lesson, I stop practicing to learn and merely practice to maintain until I have more to work on. Part of this is, of course, natural ability–but almost none of the natural ability in this case is physical, as I’ve always had tremendously awful fine AND gross motor skills. (There were plenty of sports tests–put a basketball through the basket, get a volleyball over the net–that I failed entirely.) In this case, it’s cerebral, understanding what is being asked of my body mentally and then making my muscles do it. If I just practiced, even 20 hours a week, I’d get nowhere. It’s the mindfulness that equals progress, and a constant analysis allows me to see and understand more than my analysis used to. Because of my approach, I’m usually the last person in a class to “get” what’s being taught–but when I do, I’m almost always the best dancer doing it because I’ve been working on so many more elements at once.

Conversely, this is also why I sucked in violin. I had no idea what to practice except to take a piece and saw through it over and over again. No change in approach = no improvement. I was never given anything TO practice or taught what practicing was, and I didn’t possess the self-reflection then to realize how much the approach was NOT working and to fix it.

One of the main things I want to teach the Bear in homeschooling him is the entire process of learning–including self-analysis, seeking feedback, strategic approaches, etc.

The Bear was really struggling with his reading assignment today. He’d been doing so well, and he wasn’t dorking around too much (though he keeps getting excited and off task about the subject!), so I was starting to get depressed until I looked the book up. It’s mid-fourth grade level! No wonder the kid had a hard time. But he did it!

He’s breezing through second-grade level books now and strolling through third grade, so it’s time to move more heavily to third grade as the default. We have five days’ more worth of reading of books that we already own–maybe a bit more. Then it’s back to the library with us!

I have tried to make his reading a good mixture of easy books (which build speed and fluency) and harder books (which raise reading level). I think I can very safely say that he’s at a solid third grade reading level now, with slightly lower than average WPM still. WPM is building, but not as fast as I’d like. We’ll still do easier books (first and second grade) for fluency and speed.

If he can be at a fifth-grade reading level by the start of school next year, I’ll be over the moon. Fourth grade with a good strong 100 WPM and I’d still be pretty darned happy. That will mean that he can read most of his assignments himself. The importance of THAT, of course, is independence. Anything the Bear can do independently, he likes a whole lot better. I’d still be in the room listening to him and talking to him about what he’s reading, but he’d have the real control of the information, which means that he’d read so much better.

The Magic Bullet is a as-seen-on-TV blender. It was one of my in-laws’ gifts to the family over Thanksgiving–and it’s already been used and greatly enjoyed by all three members of the family. *g*

It does, of course, take longer than the “10 seconds” advertised on TV (even from chopped up fruits to a smoothie, for instance), but we’ve already used it, and it’s quite wonderful for us.

The problem for me is that I just don’t like many fruits. For the Bear, it’s that he only likes a few fruits. For DH…well, DH likes many things, especially fruits, but he like variety, too. All of us love smoothies, though. DH has particularly been craving them like crazy for the past couple of months.

Frozen berries and lots of other fruits were on sale this week, so we just loaded up like crazy tonight, and I made our first blends.

Verdict? YUM!

RDA for fruits for the Bear is 1-1.5 C and for me and DH is 2 C. (With my caloric intake, 1.5 C is probably fine, while DH needs around 3 C to maintain the same percentages.) One Magic Bullet-sized cup is 1.5 - 2 C, depending on how much fruit versus ice, yoghurt, ice cream, etc., is put in. So the Bear is covered completely with one cup and I pretty much am, and DH has a nice snack. The best part is that the Bear think it’s a dessert and I really actually LIKE it, which is pretty amazing.

One of the best parts is that the fruits that we put in it will be quite varied, which means a good nutritional balance.

He saved up more than $25 and then spent every cent of it on this and this.

Remember that he can spend the money on *anything.* *g* I have a quirky kid, all right. And before you start thinking that he’s destined to be a doctor, well, the reason he loves anatomy so much is because, in his own words,”It’s SO GROSS!”

Thanksgiving was fun. I’ll talk about it later.

EDIT: The Bear read the post and pointed out that I had neglected to mention that it is not only gross but yucky, too.

This is therefore duly noted.