America's Most Overrated Product:

the Bachelor's Degree.

Among high-school students who graduated in the bottom 40 percent of their classes, and whose first institutions were four-year colleges, two-thirds had not earned diplomas eight and a half years later... Yet four-year colleges admit and take money from hundreds of thousands of such students each year!

...[E]ven those who do manage to graduate too rarely end up in careers that require a college education. So it's not surprising that when you hop into a cab or walk into a restaurant, you're likely to meet workers who spent years and their family's life savings on college, only to end up with a job they could have done as a high-school dropout.

I tend to agree. I didn't need my degree for any job that I held after college, although it would have helped me advance in a few of them. Luckily, I went to the University of Kansas back when it was still a great deal, so I didn't have a lot of debt, but I could have been working all those years.

Homeschool Convention

I actually secured a babysitter for five hours and the in-laws for the rest of the time and drug my husband to the local homeschool convention. We heard some lectures in the morning, tooled around the vendor hall in the afternoon and made it home by 3:00.

I wish we hadn't have been so rushed. Thinking back, there were a few things I would have bought, given a little time to reflect. But we still did pretty good.

What I bought:

Math is not going particularly well, at least partially due to my lack of mad math skillz. So we picked up Math-U-See and we'll see how that goes. This visual learner loves the manipulatives and the DVD that shows parents how to teach it. I also bought the skip counting CD.

Everyone complains about Math-U-See being expensive, but so far, I don't see it. I paid $85 for the alpha level and a set of manipulatives. I paid nearly $50 for Horizons K and didn't get any manipulatives or a DVD to show me how to teach it. Also, I wasn't thrilled with the Horizions teacher's guide. It said stuff like "Teach dimes." Gee, thanks. I gathered from the dimes on the workbook page that we would be "teaching dimes." I had hoped for a few suggestions on HOW to teach dimes if your kid doesn't instantly get it (which mine didn't). Not a math person here, remember. Not full of clever ideas for how to "teach dimes."

A good sign: As soon as I showed Mia the blocks, she pounced on them and played with them for an hour.

Well, babe is in arms again. More later.

And Then, My Hard Drive Died

keeping my off the computer for nearly two weeks. And I lost all the pictures from newbie's early infanthood :( except the few that I had e-mailed to others.

I actually am on the computer frequently, but I usually have a babe in arms, making blogging a near impossibility.