Signs of Life : The Brownie Chronicles

I've seen the phrase "the new normal" passed around here and there and believe it's a good fit for what we are going through as March 2020 comes to a close.  The Brown Family is ready to begin week 4 of social distancing, as we started a week before most.  I don't believe this will be over in a few more weeks.  I don't even believe it will be over in a few months.  I think we will see a new normal emerging and will never be the same as we were pre-COVID-19. I'm not a scientist nor statistician.  I have actually avoided reading too much about the virus in order to maintain my own mental health.  I have read, watched, and listened to what I need in order to protect my family and community.  I've traveled down a rabbit hole and read way more than I've wanted to a few times.  Two of the best sources of information for me have been " Science Mike's " streamcast from 11 days ago (So remember when you watch that numbers/data has changed ...

This blog post is written directly to my friends, family, and anyone who has commented on my blog or YouTube account this year. I'm not ignoring you!   *smiling and cringing in apology*   Well, I haven't been ignoring you, but I have been putting off replying to many of you.  Whether I've gotten emails, facebook messages, or texts, I've just had a tough time replying in a timely manner.  This has been a challenging summer to say the least, but I would say my busy-ness started months before that. I have several friends from my boys' classes with whom I've been talking about playdates for months, but they just aren't happening.  When I finally do get together with someone, it's because they were persistent in contacting me.  For you I'm grateful!  It's ironic, because in the past, I was told on several occasions that I was the friend always reaching out.  Years ago, I even remember having friends with kids about the same age as my ...

Back in January, I sent this email out to a select few of my homeschool friends regarding my oldest son: I have a question and decided to ask you few ladies. My son has struggled for years with penmanship. He writes very neatly and very well  in his  handwriting  book . If he writes on his own, on a blank sheet of paper, he just can't do it.  If he writes anything, it's a mess. He can't express his thoughts on paper because he struggles so much to remember how to physically form each letter.  I've tried keeping a penmanship alphabet in front of him, but he will look up for almost every letter.    I've been putting off dealing with this for the past two years. I have said, "He'll snap out of it." "One day it'll all click for him."  But he's close to 10 years old now and he's feeling "stupid" (his own words) because he "can't write." Today, I sat him down to try to find out the problem and he sa...

In Part 2 of this series, I was excited to share some of what I learned about technology and using ASL eBooks.  Well, if you like the good, old fashioned paper book, have no fear!  Drs. Jean Andrews and Damara Paris from Lamar University , shared their team's research findings from the Alabama Emergent Literacy Study.  They focused on the " Adapted Little Books ." Below is only a small portion of their presentation.  There is so much information that goes beyond my knowledge, so I will direct this blog to parents of deaf emergent readers. As a homeschool mom, I'm very familiar with "little books."  We personally used Sonlight's own Fun Tales  with my three hearing kids. ( example )  You may be familiar with Bob Books .  The Alabama study used these 20 Little Books .  These "little books" are usually 6-7 pages, use high frequency words, have a close picture-word match,  and use short phrases to tell a whole story.  It ...

Using Technology for Literacy of ASL & English Bilingual Deaf Children That's another handful of words!  Basically, if you're teaching your deaf (or hearing) ASL/English bilingual child to read, there are some amazing tools out there to enrich that experience. At the conference , several different people presented on the topic of technology and ASL ebooks. VL2 Storybook Apps Check out their " About " page, too. Click here to get the book in the App Sto "VL2" stands for " Visual Language, Visual Learning " a Science of Learning center funded by the National Science Foundation and hosted by Gallaudet University.  The work they are doing is SUPER exciting for parents like me! Right now, there is only the Baobab book, but two more books are in the works.  Each book, priced at a bargain $6.99, is packed with a rich literary experience for your bilingual child.  As the website says, "Every child loves and deserves a great story....

This weekend, I was fortunate to attend the (get ready, this is a handful) " ASL & English Bilingual Consortium for Early Childhood Education " Summit IV Conference. Building Bilingual Partnerships: Home, School, and Community I say I was fortunate because I attended as a lay person.  The conference is aimed at teachers, researchers, and administrators working in the field of Deaf Education.  I'm a parent of Deaf and hard-of-hearing kids. I also happen to be an educator since I've homeschooled my hearing kids for over 8 years.  I am somewhat knowledgeable regarding ASL/English bilingualism since my professional field is teaching ASL and interpreting.  However....I was surrounded by people who knew worlds and worlds more than I about educating Deaf, bilingual kids!  They have challenges like I never imagined.  These educators and administrators are fighting a long battle that shows only slow, incremental progress.  (The battle being that agai...

My older three kids plus their cousin, D! Have I mentioned how much we love Austin?  Well, we do!  We adore this house.  Of all 3 homes we've owned, this is by far my favorite!  While I did really enjoy our location and pool in Highland Village, this house is arranged better and is easier to maintain.  In our 15 years of marriage and ownership of 3 homes, we've learned that extensive landscaping is beautiful, but also costly and a ton of work!  We have a few pretty shrubs and plants in the front yard.  There are two trees in the back, but otherwise, it's just a grassy backyard, which means easy maintenance.  Of course, we have the fabulous team at The Austin Lawn Service taking care of our mowing and trimming, so the amount of work we have to do in the yard is minimal. We had hoped for a one-story home, but with the layout of this house, we don't mind two stories at all.  The stairs lead to an open "balcony" hallway that looks down to ...

It's hard to believe I posted this entry in November of last year, but I did!  I went looking for this old entry and figured I posted it back in February or something.  I was shocked that it was from November! I had posted: "Because of the season of life I'm in (nearing 40, newly-expanded family, major life-changing move, and weight gain that ticks me off greatly), I've been experiencing days feeling very low.  I've blogged before about how I don't like using the word "depressed" lightly, so I don't think I'll use it here.  But I've been feeling dark, low, melancholy, aimless, and tired." Since November, those feelings didn't go away.  Oh, they might subside for a time, but would rear their ugly heads at any random time.  In addition to those feelings, I was experiencing an overwhelming feeling of failure.   These feelings would manifest themselves by my simply giving up and doing nothing.  I felt so overwhelmed by everythin...

The Brownie Clan has gone through a lot of changes over the past 12 months.  Downsizing, moving, adding to our family through adoption, radically changing our daily schedule, etc.  A few posts back , I alluded to our moving when our lease is up.  Well, we're making one more "big" move and it's to Austin! Austin is about 215 miles south of where we are now, so we're not moving to the other side of the US, but it's still going to be a big move for us.  Next week, we're going to visit the Texas School for the Deaf and will have both boys tested by an audiologist there.   There are several reasons why we are choosing to make Austin our home, but the driving factor is Travis' (and possibly Tian's) education.  The boys have made amazing strides with their language development, but I can't spend as much time working one-on-one (or even one-on-two) with the boys as I would like.  I still have a 6th, 4th and 3rd grader to teach, so that leaves down-t...

I know that in light of what I normally blog about here, these next couple of entries may seem totally random; but as a mom of young girls, this blog post has everything to do with parenting.  It may also tell you a thing or two about my worldview. When the first book, Twilight was released at the end of 2005, I had absolutely no desire to read it.  I didn't even know much about it until the movie came out three years ago.  When the movie came out on DVD, Ken and I rented and watched it.  I remember feeling like it was highly romantic, yet cheesy movie and was quite astonished that many of the young girls my kids knew, even girls as young as 10 years old, were reading the books and watching the movie. At that time, I made my judgement based on the first movie and what I heard about the books and decided I didn't want my girls reading anything that encouraged rebellious, dangerous love.  In the first movie, Bella pursues Edward even after warnings from trust...

My blogging time has recently been overtaken by a more dense school schedule, my working outside the home part time for the first time in years, and by editing video for our YouTube page . The most recent video shows Ken and Travis looking at mostly names and a few words.  I could blog about the boys' language development, but the videos speak for themselves, so check out out page if you haven't already. So, how are we all doing almost seven months after the littles were added to our family?  The boys have attached well.  So well, I have to keep reminding myself to continue to be purposeful in attachment activities and behaviors on my part.  The boys are almost inseparable. They are each other's best friend, playmate and brother.  It's been a sweet joy to witness. The older three Brownies continue to adore and help care for their ne...

Although they make rare appearances here, we DO have three older kids.  However you want to say it: birth kids, original 3, biological children, fruit of our loins, made in America.  Some of those are politically incorrect and one is just gross, but they are all terms that could be/have been used to describe the oldest three Brownies. Could you just die?  December 2006 Five years later, they would NEVER agree to do this pose! They love their brother, but would no longer be willing to smooch him on the cheek and have it saved as a framable photo forever.  Ah, the sweet, younger years. The three oldest kids have had quite a 2011!  They moved from a kids' dream house and neighborhood into an apartment half the size of the house. They went from having their own room to sharing a room.  They left the street that held some of their dearest friends.  They happily, and without a second thought, gave up a spri...

Last night, as we were finishing up dinner, I noticed Ken and Travis visiting about some of the China photos they were viewing. This map, along with another map showing us flying east to China, was one of the photos they were looking at.  I started recording the video when Ken was explaining who flew TO China, then who all flew back to the USA. In the first segment of the video, Travis is mimicking everything Ken signs which, in this case, is each of our names.  Hearing kids do this same type of mimicking when they learn to converse. (At this point, Travis knows all of our names and can identify each of us by name.  He can also identify a number of other people by name or title.) After scrolling through a few more photos, then returning to the map again, Travis points at the map and happily states, "Travis!" Travis was on this flight!  Ken corrects him.  I love the look on his face....

Several weeks ago, my friend Adrienne was perusing the internet and saw a call for nominations for a distinctive mom to win tickets to go see Motherhood the Musical and be named "Mother of Distinction."  She kindly thought of me and sent in a nomination.  I later learned a committee was formed to decide the winner and about 12 nominations were sent in. Earlier this week, she got a message saying that I had been chosen to receive the award!  I felt quite unworthy receiving such an award, but then I considered the title.  Mother of Distinction . I like that.  I was chosen because our family is certainly distinct.  Some would say weird, different, unique...distinct.  The fact that I'm the mom and wife in my family of distinction makes me a mother of distinction. Ken works very hard so that I can stay home and teach the kids here.  It was Ken who sparked the events that shifted our family and changed our lives forever...and for the better. ...

We've been homeschooling for seven years now.  In those seven years, I've heard the battle-cry of upset homeschooling parents dealing with people who make derogatory comments about homeschooling.  I've considered our family fortunate, because other than the very rare "What about socialization?" question, the kids really haven't faced ignorance....until the past few months.  (I do remember a mom blaming homeschooling on the fact that my then-5-year-old-wouldn't-even-BE-in-public-school-yet daughter asked for a second gift bag at a birthday party. "Well, she's not in school, so she's not learned those social rules yet."  Umm...blame my bad parenting, but not homeschooling.) Since moving to our new place, the kids have had the opportunity to endure a lot of ignorant comments. Among those are comments about homeschoolers.  (I will blog later about the other bigoted, offensive things my kids have heard lately.)  Maybe our past neighbors thou...

Jill's letter is eloquent and beautifully-written.  It's not only a problem in Utah, but all over the nation.   To Whom It May Concern: To be a leader, one must have courage, passion, and vision. It is beyond doubt that USDB’s current superintendent has courage; he fears nothing and no one. It is also true that he is possessed of the passion and vision to promote the listening and spoken language skills for Deaf and hard of hearing children (and I use the capitol ‘D’ here to emphasize the specific and separate cultural and linguistic community of Deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing individuals). Yes, he fulfills the three necessary attributes of the leader – but in this case, he does so under only one specific methodology. Unfortunately, he has been chosen the leader of a school with the vision of a dual track. His leadership is therefore ineffective in its current application. Without dedicated support for ALL programs, schools, and classes, the office of the superintendent...

This year poses an entirely new series of challenges I've not yet faced in my 7 years of homeschooling.  I have older kids that will need more serious study time.  It makes me tear up to think that Hannah is entering sixth grade!  I so remember sixth grade.  What an awkward year.  Fifth grade, I first realized the hierarchy of cliques among school kids.  Sixth grade was fun.  (My teacher was Mrs. Brown. I had no idea I, too, would become a Mrs. Brown!)  I was in a small Christian school where my mom was teaching.  There were eight kids in our class: four boys and four girls.  I met a friend that year that ended up being one of my best friends ever.  We had so much fun that year and in years to come, even though she moved out of town and I moved to a public school.  But I digress.... Hannah is a sixth-grader!  Okay, I'm in full-on tears now.  My other two school-aged kids are entering 4th and 3rd grade.  (I love...