Elisabeth Rose 1 Year Old

484864_473876542689528_1240994137_nElisabeth turned 1 year old two weeks ago.

I have a whole lot I can write about from this past month. But for today, I just want to write about Elisabeth.

 Elisabeth Rose is our 6th child. She has been in our family for 1 whole year and we already can’t imagine life without her. 

I’ve found that I am so much more laid back and less worried with 6 children than I was when we had only 2. I’ve learned quite a bit about patience over the years.

We celebrated Elisabeth’s birthday with a small party over at my Mema’s house.  We enjoyed a delicious chocolate cake. This was Elisabeth’s first taste of chocolate.

She seemed to like it, once she realized she was supposed to eat it. 

And of course, most of the fun is taking pictures of her messy face. She had cake all in her curly hair.

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Elisabeth is a little young for me to really describe her personality. I think she is a bit between Ruth and Hannah’s personalities. Ruth is quiet and precise. Hannah is jumpy and excitable. I think Elisabeth will be somewhere between those two. 

I think she may have a stubborn streak in her personality. (I wonder where she gets that from.)

She refuses to walk. She stands up by herself. She’ll even stand up and clap. But whenever we try to get her to take her first steps she drops to the floor and crawls.

She does walk holding onto her walking toy. And she’ll walk holding on to one hand. I know she could walk by herself if she wanted to but she hasn’t figured out the value in learning that skill yet. 

She has curly hair, that we all love. If she were one of our boys, those curly locks would have gotten chopped off by now. I think once her hair grows out her hair will be wavy like mine. Right now it’s a little on the unruly side. But unruly hair is cute on babies.

She has six teeth. Four on top and two on bottom. Two of her teeth came in the same week as her birthday. 

That automatically leads into the subject of weaning. I’m not in any hurry to wean her. I’m not a die-hard breastfeeder but I prefer my babies to wean themselves. Its so much less emotional stress when the process isn’t rushed. Although she has been warned that every time she bites me could be her last. She doesn’t bite me very often now. I can tell when it is just an accidental bite versus an on-purpose bite.

312206_473878232689359_2004387060_nWhat other major milestone should I mention?

She can say a few words. “Ada” means just about anything. “Ba ba” is “bye bye”. “At” is “hat”.  And “Ama” is “Amen”. Her favorite word is, “Uh Oh!” 

I’m trying to get her to say “drink” but right now she prefers to bang her mouth against me whenever she is thirsty. I’m afraid she views me as her personal vending machine. So when am I planning to wean this girl again? Hmm…

 She got quite a few fun toys for her birthday. She loves to play with them all. Whenever she plays with a push toy she “vrooms” like a car sound. I’m guessing she learned that from her brothers. 

I have learned so much from this little girl. She is a true blessing in our family’s life. 

There are still challenges. Especially at church when I want the children to be quiet. Elisabeth seems to be bent and determined to be the loudest and steal everyone’s books while she is at it. So even though this is my sixth child, I’m still learning.

How about you? What are some things you have learned from your children when they were little? If you don’t have children, what have you learned from your little nieces, nephews, or cousins? Please share with me in the comments.

I took a break from blogging last month in order to organize my home and schedule. I still plan to do less on social media. But I think I can now resume blogging at least once a week. 

There are some changes I hope to make in the next few weeks to my blog. All good changes. I even have a manifesto I am currently working on and it looks like I’ll be able to finish it soon. I’ll be writing more about that in a future post.

Thanks for following me! 

~~ Anastacia “Stacie” Maness ~~

 

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A Poet That Knows It

This was our last week of Co-op classes for this school year. I really enjoyed teaching creative writing this semester. This week I taught the children about Poetry using the talents of my friend, Anne Peterson.

I wrote a review of her recently published book “Real Love: Guaranteed to Last” about a month or two ago. You can read my review here.

Currently Anne is working on a book of poems for children and  was gracious to share them with our class.

Today, I have Hannah, my 8 year old here helping me out by answering some questions about our Creative Writing class. She will give some of her thoughts on Mrs. Patterson’s Poetry. She also wants to share a poem she wrote in our Creative Writing class.

A picture of Hannah and myself trying to both fit in a picture on my phone after karate class.

A picture of Hannah and Mommy. We were laughing because we were having trouble fitting in the image viewer on my phone.

Which poem did you like the best in our Creative Writing class this week?

“I liked the one about the baby at the laundromat. Or the one about the fire where she says, ‘You’re God. I’m not.'”

What did you like about those poems?

“Um… The whole thing.”

What do you like about poetry?

“It’s fun. It’s good practice for writing.

It’s easy. I like doing it.”

So what did you think about our Creative Writing class at Co-op?

“It was fun. I want to take it again.”

I would say that means our class was a success. 🙂 I am very grateful to all my friends that helped me out by sharing their talents with my students.

Hannah has written a poem and drawn a picture about it.

 

Basketball Acrostic by Hannah

Basketball Acrostic by Hannah

Basketball

Basketball is fun

A lot of friends

Shouting cheers

Kids play together

Everyone likes to watch

The teamwork

Bouncing the ball

Around the gym

Leaping for the net

Look at them play

~~Hannah Maness

A basketball drawing by Hannah.

A basketball drawing by Hannah

Are you a poet? Do you have a favorite poem? Have you ever written a poem? You can tell us about it in the comments.

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When You Need Comfort the Most

The other day I had a blog idea in my mind and I was planning to write about today. I thought since I didn’t know what the Five Minute Friday‘s word would be today I’d write what was going on in my head and only link up if there word happened to go along with it.

Well, guess what… It did.

As soon as I saw today’s word I decided I was going to go ahead and write those thoughts down in Five Minutes today.

So here are my 5 minute thoughts on the word: Comfort

GOJonathan hug

Nobody likes pain. Life is not always comfortable though. It’s during those times that we hurt that we can feel comfort the most. If you fall down and skin your knee that is the time you want your mother’s hug the most. It’s amazing how just a simple thing can make a child feel all better.

It’s the same when we read our Bibles or hear a really gut wrenching sermon. Our lives may be messed up in an area. It hurts to hear we’ve been messing up. But that’s when we can feel our Savior’s love for us all the more. The comfort that He can give a fallen child is far above all the pain we endure having the medicine applied.

After the medicine is applied to our swollen knee all we need is a parent’s hug. After we allow God to apply the medicine of His word on our hearts, that’s when we can feel his arms wrapped around us.

Stop

Have you ever had a time where you felt comforted after you were hurt? Please share with me in the comments below.

If you are following me via email, I recently found out that there wasn’t a simple link to click on to leave comments.  But now there is you can click on the word “comments” and it will take you to the post.  Let me know if there is anything else that could use tweaking in my email updates by just simply replying to any email. Thanks for following my posts!
Five Minute Friday
 

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What is Haiku?

Hannah and her new basketball.

Hannah and her new basketball.

“What is Haiku?”

Well, I’m glad you asked!

Actually, I have had quite a few people ask me that very question since I decided to teach about it in my latest Creative Writing class at our Homeschool Co-op.

Merriam-Webster defines Haiku as  “noun: a verse form of Japanese origin having three lines containing five, seven, and five syllables respectively; also : a poem written in this form.

Basically to write Haiku you think of what you want to say and say it in 3 lines of 5 syllables, 7 syllables, and 5 syllables.

For example, here is one I’m just coming up with right now.

To write a Hai-ku
You must count each syll-a-ble
And ex-press your thoughts.

 Helping me teach Haiku this week was my friend and fellow Tribe Writer, Sylvia Jones.

Sylvia posts a Haiku on her blog The Haiku Corner every Sunday.

I am always amazed at how much emotion Sylvia can get across in such few words. I am excited to hear that Sylvia is currently working on partnering with some artists in her area to sell her Haiku online. She is also planning to eventually compile her Haiku into a book along with some of her photography.

In my classes after reading some of the examples of Haiku from Sylvia’s blog, we tried our hands at writing our own Haiku.

ahaiku

A haiku by one of my younger students about her brother’s new chairs.

Here are some we came up with:
This first haiku is by Shannon from my older class.

A pen and black ink,
writing expressions smoothly,
while the day goes on.

Shannon has a real knack for Haiku. She even gave me some pointers.

Here is one I wrote in class that just about everyone can relate too.

Computer glaring
Waiting for it to finish
I pick up a pen.

 

My younger class did really well too.
I helped the younger students keep count of their syllables on my fingers.

Haiku about basketball written by Hannah.

Haiku about basketball written by Hannah.

This is one my 8 year old, Hannah, wrote:

Basketball is fun
I am wishing I could play
I have a new one.

Haiku is pretty addicting. Once you get started, you find yourself counting on your fingers wondering if what your thinking about will fit into Haiku.

 

Now it’s your turn.

A challenge for you
Will you write me a Haiku?
Please share in comments.

Alright there’s your challenge, I’m curious what y’all will come up with.

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A Brave Experiment

It’s that time again! I’m joining the Five Minute Friday link up again. This time I’ve been asked by my friends the Cash Cow Couple to try adding a new challenge to my 5 minutes. What if I wrote without any pause or backtracking at all in my writing?

Normally I have brain freeze while I’m trying to write. It is also hard to not back track while typing. So I’m going to try this time to meet the challenge.  I have absolutely no idea where this may lead as I will be completely free writing.

Here’s the rules from Lisa Jo’s site:

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. And then absolutely, no ifs, ands or buts about it, you need to visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them in their comments. Seriously. That is, like, the rule. And the fun. And the heart of this community..

 
Alright, I’m a little scared to start but today’s word is…

Brave.

Brave Jonathan

Timer is set… 

GO!

It is very fitting that today’s word is Brave. I have actually been having a lot of conversations this week with different people about fear. Okay… It’s hard to not erase).  I have had to face some fears this week in that I submitted three articles as possible book contributions. 

I was afraid… What if they don’t like it? What if I’m the only one not accepted. I wanted to hide and sometimes even wanted to quit trying. But then I was brave. There was nothing to lose and I submitted the articles anyway. 

Now I had a verse that I wanted to blog about and it just happened to be about fear as well. It tells how that if we do what God says then we have nothing to fear. We won’t have to be afraid of evil things that might happen to us. I like how comforting that is. God is here for us and will protect us every step of the way. There isn’t any reason to not be brave when we remember that.

I thought about how my own fears get in the way of doing what I know would be good things.

Stop

Hmm… I tried harder this time. I am either a slow typist or not doing very well at not stopping. And it’s almost impossible to not delete typos. How long is five minutes of writing suppose to be? I might try that again.

Do you mind waiting 5 more minutes while I experiment? Okay, I know it’s a bit cheating but I’m going to try again but this time I’m going to try not to stop at all for the 5 minutes. That may mean I type “Brave, Brave, Brave” over and over during the hesitating moments and there will be a lot of mispellings but here we go.

This is hard!

Timer Set…

GO!

Okay, writing for 5 minutes and not hitting the back botton is realy hard. Here is an example of beign brave. I am sharing every typo and mispelling while writing for five grueling minutes. Even though it is hard and I won’t stop I’m doing it anyway. That is being brave. I could easily give excuses to not write today. I’m on vacation. I could say. But I’m not backspacing and I’m not quitting for five minutes. My spelling is atrocious but I’m bravely moving onward anyway. Oops. I backed spaced fo fix the word anyway. That’s okay. I won’t do it again. I just want ot know what it loos kike to write witout stopping at all for Five minutes. How many words shoutld that be if I’m just wriing and not correcting. This is looking really ugly now. Everyone might laugh. You mihgt wonder how I could possibly write with that many terrible spelling. Wow! She can’t type at all. No wonder her words are so short when she types on here. But I don’t care. This is an experiment. My firends will understand that this wis what it will look like if I didn’t ocrreccct or edit at all. For a very very very long five minutes. Thies is a very brave moment for me. I am wondering if the time is up. Normally the time is up much faster than this. Normally it goes off as I’m typing my thoughts and I wonder if I’ll ever get a complete thought out there. Now I’m wondering will 4 minutes ever end.. Yes that was suppose to say 5. I am doing an aamazing job not overhtingk.

STOP

Ha ha! Okay, see what I mean?  LOL It wasn’t much longer than my first try where I hesitated and corrected things. 

I’m not exactly sure what that means. 

Alright, what do you think? Do you like my free write without corrections? Or the more thought out hesitating one where I tried to keep my free flowing thoughts somewhat neatly arranged? Let me know in the comments. Your answers could affect my future Five Minute Friday posts for better or worse. 😉

Now are you brave enough to try Five Minute Friday? Let me know if you participate and I’ll check out your post. Thanks!

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Creative Writing: Science Fiction

This week in my creative writing classes I featured a couple of stories shared with my class by a dear friend of mine, Laura McCoy.

Laura and I met through an online writing community called Tribe Writers. She enjoys writing Science Fiction pieces. I wanted to cover different forms of writing with my students so I asked Laura if she would help me out by providing a couple of stories for the kids.

photo (1)The children loved her stories which sparked their imagination and creativity.

One of the interesting aspects of writing Science Fiction is that a writer needs to have an understanding of science to make the story believable.

To help my students understand a little more about the Science behind the stories I read to them, I showed them some videos from the Canadian Space Agency. The videos were taken on their Space Station where they show students how different things work in space.

They show how they prepare food, eat, exercise, cry, and sleep in space. Those are just a few of the short videos we watched.

The older class did a writing exercise. I set a timer and we each wrote for about 2 minutes. When the timer went off we passed our papers to the person next to us, who then adds another couple of minutes worth of writing to it. By the end we each got the paper back we had started.

Here is the page I got back. There were 3 of us in the older class that contributed to this story. I’ll put “…” where one person’s writing stops and another started.

The space cadet floats into the room. He can’t decide if he is hungry or tired. His stomach doesn’t quite feel right. He decides to start with some food.

He…gets some space food and decides to start getting ready to eat and as he puts it in his mouth someone bumps into him and the food starts floating. He grabs it up and starts eating it up and he tries to keep a positive attitude and when he was done eating…

He floated over to the other space cadet and asked him why he bumped him so rudely. The space cadet told him that he was sorry and it really was an accident. So they forgave each other. And it was just in time too, because just then, they rose above the earth. One of the space cadets ran to go get his camera. The space cadet that stayed shook his head.

“That crazy kid!” he said. “He won’t stop taking pictures!”

 

photo (3) I thought we did pretty well for not having brainstormed much before beginning.

I had my younger class draw pictures of what they imagined it would be like to go to outer space. One student drew a rocket ship. My daughter drew the outer space basketball game played on Mars. And my 3 yr old son visited our class and drew his idea of outer space.

Laura’s stories were fun and educational. She provided some discussion questions at the end. My younger class determined that they wouldn’t want to live in Space but they might like to visit some day. 

Two of Laura’s favorite classic Science Fiction authors are Robert Heinlein and Frank Herbert.

photo (2)Do you like Science Fiction? What are some of your favorite Science Fiction stories or authors?

Please leave a comment and let Laura know what types of Science Fiction you like.

Laura is currently working on writing Science Fiction pieces. You can find out more about Laura and her German Shepherd Edel at http://germanedel.blogspot.com. You can also follow Laura on Twitter @lmccy. If you follow her let her know you found her through my blog. 

 

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Five Minute Friday: Friend

I bet you were wondering if I was going to join in at Lisa Jo’s for another Five Minute Friday today. I know I had two other posts this week but there isn’t much that will stop me from taking at least 5 minutes on Fridays to write.

Here’s the rules from Lisa Jo’s sight:

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. Please visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them in their comments.

Today’s prompt is “Friend“.

My timer is set.

And GO!

All the bride's maids in our wedding were my best friends.

My Best Friends

When I was a child, I met my first friend in Kindergarten. We didn’t become best friends until Second Grade. I don’t even remember how we started playing together. We would play on the playground and started visiting at each other’s houses. She was very popular and seemed so outgoing. I was shy. A lot of the kids in our grade at school wanted to be her friend but not mine. That was very hard. Especially as we would play on the playground and the kids would start arguing with us over my needing to share my friend. I would cry. My friend would take my hand and we would run away.

As we got older our friendship changed. We both found new friends. Then we would meet again and it was like we had never been apart. We could carry on a conversation as if we hadn’t missed a beat.

Stop

Ha! I need to get faster with my thoughts. I did delete the last half a sentence because it didn’t make sense to leave the sentence hanging. 🙂

I was about to talk about how we lost track of each other but then met again in college and then we were in each other’s weddings.

I don’t talk with her much anymore. But I think the friendships we have in our childhood prepare us for how we will be in adulthood. Now my husband is my best friend that I can talk with whenever I want. He knows more about me and my life than any of my friends in school ever did.

He actually encourages me to write. That’s how I found Five Minute Fridays. Through my writing friendships I have found in the past few months. And now I have Five Minute Friday friends. 🙂

Okay. I’ll stop now. I think I might have tacked on a couple of extra minutes worth to the end there. LOL It took me Five minutes just to get the thoughts flowing.

Did you have a childhood friend growing up? Are you still friends? Who do you consider your best friend now?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the word “Friend”. Please share with me in the comments. Let me know if you are writing in Five Minute Friday and I’ll check out your post.

 
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What is the Purpose to Life?

 

Have you ever wished you could go back in time to ask questions of someone wise?

I am guest posting today on Teresa Parker’s blog.  There I take you back in time to interview King Solomon.

King Solomon was one of the richest and wisest kings. He had everything he could possibly want. During his reign he went on a quest to find out what purpose there was in life.

Take a look at what I found out from King Solomon by clicking here.

Gift of Purpose

 

Teresa wrote a book about the Gift of Purpose. It is a wonderful reminder about this gift God has freely given us.

Check out my guest post

And be sure to sign up to receive her free book while you’re at it.

You won’t be disappointed!

 

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The Cat Who Writes

017-300x225
In my latest homeschool co-op creative writing class, I taught my students about perspective. Who better to help me teach perspective than Pooh Hodges, The Cat Who Writes.

When I first introduced Pooh’s blog to my children, Hannah, my 8 year old was a bit skeptical that a cat could write. I explained that he dictates to Mrs. Hodges and that she types for him but Hannah wanted proof. I told Hannah she could ask Pooh how he does it.

Pooh not only answered Hannah’s letter, he featured it on his blog.  You can just click on the words “Hannah’s Letter” to read that post.

Pooh dictates to his typist Pamela Hodges who has her own blog at “i paint. i write.”  In fact that Bold Blue Toilet seat you may have noticed in the side bar of my post is a link to her site as well. When your done checking out Pooh’s blog, you should really check her’s out as well.

I brought our pet fish, Peachy, to co-op and Peachy’s presence really opened up both classes to some great discussions. I had the older class write on their own what they thought Peachy was thinking. The younger class I had tell me what they thought he was thinking. Then we had Peachy write a letter to Pooh. Peachy was in a strange environment and was a bit nervous of his surroundings as you can see in his letter. 2013-04-22 11.12.30

“Dear Pooh,

What’s going on here? I am scared in this strange place.

I am hungry. Thankfully my people brought food for me.

If you were to visit our class, please don’t eat me.

I want to be friends. Will you send me a letter too?

Have you ever eaten a fish? You wouldn’t eat me, right?

Thank you for sharing your story with us.

Love,

Peachy”

I hadn’t shared this letter with Pooh yet. You may want to follow his blog to see if he decides to write Peachy back.

Now I want to hear from you. 

Do you understand your pet? Do you find yourself putting words in your pet’s mouth? If you don’t have a pet do you find yourself talking for any other animals?

Please share. I’m curious how many of my friends do that too.

Check out both Pooh’s blog the cat who writes and Pamela’s blog i paint. i write..

And you can find out more about why I have a blue toilet seat on my blog by clicking on this picture.  the blue toilet seat

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Don’t Jump!

It’s Friday! Which means… Another Five Minute Friday link up at Lisa Jo’s blog!

I love Five Minute Fridays because I don’t have to do a lot of thinking. Lisa Jo gives us a word prompt and bloggers from all over the world set their timers and write for 5 minutes. No overthinking. No editing. Just free write, link up, and visit your neighbor on the link up page.

Today’s word prompt is “Jump“.

HannahJump

Alright my timer is set.

(I wonder if it counts if I were to pause the timer every time my children interrupt. Hmm…)

Okay. I passed the baby off again. Maybe I can actually start now.

GO!

Sometimes it’s good to jump. But there are time… PAUSE…Grrr… My 8 year old just came in asking me questions. I thought I explained the “just 5 minutes” to all of them just now. *sigh*

Okay trying this again.

Resetting my timer because too much went by answering her question and asking her for another 5 minutes.

GO!

Sometimes it is good to jump. But there are times when you shouldn’t jump. Sometimes when the going gets tough we just need to stick it out and not jump ship. There have been many times in my life where I think that everything is too much. There must be an easier way. During those times I’ve wanted to hide. That’s the times when it’s important to remember that those problems are only for a season. Don’t jump!

If you jump too soon you may land in a worse situation than you started out in. It reminds me of jumping out of a frying pan and into the fire. You don’t want that. If you stick it out, the fire will eventually be turned off. Maybe even a little water will be added to cool your feet. But whatever you do don’t quit. Don’t jump!

STOP

kidstractor2

That 5 minutes passed rather quickly. It’s a good thing because my 5 year old just came in the room wanting my attention.

So how about you? Can you think of a time it’s better to stay put and stick it out rather than jump ship and run away? Please share with us in the comments.

Let me know if you are linking up for Five Minute Friday. Oh and please share your link name. I want to visit your post as well. Thanks!
Five Minute Friday

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