"Mom, I'm really worried."

So says Isabel. She's worried because if "Garack Obama" wins the Presidency, then John McCain will be sad. One of those moments when my child inspires me to be more forgiving than I would be if left to my own devices.

We've been talking a lot about the election this week - what the President does, what a government is, how elections work. We've compared governing a country and "governing" a family (ahem, Mommy would win if we held an election for President of our family) and created mock platforms for pretend elections. We've been tracking CNN's Poll of Polls map and seeing how the votes are predicted to fall. We explored the two-party system (no sense introducing unnecessary confusion, so I refrained from talking about how nice it would be to have more than two major parties...) and the basic differences between liberal and conservative political philosophies, in terms of taxes and government programs. War is not something with which the children are familiar and I plan to keep it that way for a good, long while, so for now that's it.

In our discussion of differing philosophies I emphasized the importance of tolerance and understanding and teamwork. Isabel, no real surprise, appears to be a liberal. It is possible that the Obama sign in our yard, Obama sticker on our car, Obama pin on my purse and recent political discussions have influenced her. I expect that when she hits a rebellious phase she'll declare herself a conservative and hole up in her bedroom with a pinup of Dick Cheney.

We hit two homeschool co-ops this week, one on Monday and one of Wednesday. The one Monday was really more of a simple get-together playtime. Wednesday was an art and music program, which both kids loved. Isabel liked the singing and even Aidan got in on it, doing some of the motions. Aidan also threw a dozen animal crackers in the garbage before I realized that he was not, in fact, eating them that quickly. At these co-ops, I get a huge kick out of watching the big kids interact with the little kids. They are consistently kind, gentle and patient with the littles. I've often heard it said that a benefit of homeschooling is that the children learn to interact with people of all ages, not only with same-age peers. I definitely see this to be true in our homeschool association. Even when the teenagers are being, well, teenagerey, they're still genuinely good kids who have awesome relationships with their parents and a real respect for the people around them.

Monday was also Irish dancing. The kids had a Halloween party in class. Aidan wants to Irish dance. When he turns 3, we'll have to get him in. He puts his hands behind his back and prances around. It's very cute.

Tonight we went on a tour of a local apple farm with the Girl Scouts. Isabel had a great time. She didn't look at us once the whole time - she was having too much fun with her friends to see what Mom and Dad and Aidan were up to. Since the tour was only an hour and it's 20 minutes from home, we stuck around while they had Scout-y fun. Bought apples and candy. Aidan LOVES apples. Loves them. I bought a bushel and reserved one, washed it in the bathroom, and gave it to him to eat. He ran around with it for 20 minutes and then tripped tragically, the apple rolling from his hands and across the filthy farm floor. He watched it go with huge, mournful eyes and immediately began to wail. When I tossed it out (too dirty to wash off!), he marched his self right back into the store and to the apple table, where he pointed at the apples and signed "more". Still crying. In case anyone is wondering, a single apple costs 23 cents. And if you buy your child that single apple, he will have approximately two bites before he decides he's "Ah Dah" (all done) with a casual shrug, as though he doesn't understand why you bothered buying it in the first place.

More reading and writing and math here. Isabel wants to do "hard math" now. Funny, because she doesn't seem to want to learn the "easy math".

Now, a couple photos:

Aidan doing the motions to a song.


I have some cute photos of Isabel singing and doing the motions as well, but they also prominently show the other kids. I'm not sure if that's okay or not, posting full face shots of other peoples' kids online. Oh well.

One last one of Aidan, when it was time to leave.