Digi cats

Tonight's art pics are from L's digital art collection. She's getting very good! She makes so many of these, but she's into doing animation with them, so it takes a whole load of frames to make a 2-minute animated film!

This week has been a little rough, as I’ve finally been hit with Dej’s cold virus. Head colds are just the worst, and I’m very crabby and bitter about having it. I also want to know why I get almost everything my children come down with and Mark gets almost none of it.

Petey continues to be in love with his new outdoor domain, spending much of the day outside, though he has to come in for frequent cuddles. He is able to hear the feeding routine from outside, so he comes scrambling in to eat. I have to come up with something to put on or over the cat door, though, so it’s obvious to the cats that the door is locked. I close it at around 9 (or rather set it for indoor entry only until everyone is inside), and we’ve seen Petey several times trying to bang his head into the door, seemingly confused as to why he can’t get it to work. Poor little guy. I’ll have to come up with a system for that.

Jasper and Lila continue to go out for short periods at a time. They tend to hang fairly close to the cat door and frighten easily, so they can quickly fling themselves back into the safety of their house whenever they need to.

Charlie and Basil have noticed the door and shown a little curiosity, but they’ve been easy to distract from it so far. I’m still not totally sure that their giant bodies will actually be able to fit through the small door, but I’m not about to try it to see! Charlie has decided to pursue his new hobby as a full-time lifestyle. He’s discovered the joy of unrolling the toilet paper roll in the bathrooms. Once it’s all in a big pile on the bathroom floor, he proceeds then to wrestle with it, rip it, bite it, and sometimes eats pieces of it! Just about the time Lila outgrew this activity, Charlie picked it up. He’s very cute when he does it, though. He seems quite proud of himself.

I will be introducing Oliver to the cat door over the next couple of days, though I’m thinking he won’t have much interest in it. I’ll still give it a try. Petey is a very social little guy and would enjoy having his friends out there to play with. He and Ollie have always been pretty close. As I’ve mentioned before, Oliver is the diplomat of the cat world. He is absolutely perfect and sweet! He has such a sweet way about him that he can change the whole tone of a room.

L kicked off math this semester with a different book. We’ve been using Singapore Math, which we like and will continue to use. I ran across a book that looked valuable enough that I decided to have her go through it before we return to her “regular” math. Math Doesn’t Suck, by Danica McKellar (who will always be Winnie to me), is SUCH a good book on so many levels. For one, it is one of few math resources available written by a woman, and it is targeted at approximately middle-school girls. Reframing the way math is looked at, as well as taught, with the female brain in mind is simply revolutionary. The book is very good, and McKellar explains difficult math concepts in a straightforward, interesting, and non-intimidating way. She also makes it clear throughout the book that math IS very useful throughout life—not just a class to get through and forget.

The book is not written for homeschoolers, but is as applicable to us as it would be to a traditionally-schooled child. I highly recommend this book for anyone with a daughter in or around the middle school years. I wish I had something like this when I was younger. It would have saved me years of math trauma. I didn’t really learn to love and appreciate math until somewhere around my grad school years but was required to take tons of it throughout college, as a computer science geek. We are looking forward to getting her other books on pre-algebra and algebra!