Math talk...

[MomOTwins]

OK, I had an interesting conversation with Andrew on the way to the bus this morning. He was walking down the driveway and said "Mom, what is "Night House, Bright House" times "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom"?

I thought for a minute and then said "It makes lots of great reading".

He smiled and said, "Hmmm...."Night House, Bright House" plus "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" plus "Goodnight Moon" plus "Tar Beach" equals more good reading, right?"

For a boy who routinely howls when he has math homework, maybe he is starting to think about math in a new way! We'll see if it works tonight when he brings home another worksheet to wrestle over.... :rolleyes:

[For those of you not in the know, these are both really fun books to read out loud with your kids, "Night House..." is a rhyming story about mice that run through a huge house at bedtime making rhymes about all the things they play with, and the drawings are very bright and cheerful. Great book for interaction, as we make our boys find all the things the mice are talking about, and we also try rhyming things that we see in our house. "Chicka Chicka..." is a cool alphabet book where the lower-case letters come alive, talk to each other, and get into trouble. Of course, the upper-case letters, the parents, help them get out of trouble. This is a great read-aloud book 'cause the kids can identify the letters and it is really easy to get them to act out the things that happen.]

[GinaMarie]

That is neat the way he put it together. :) Those are good books. My kids loved Goodnight moon. :) Another one was Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs.
Gina Marie

[MomOTwins]

Gina Marie, we have to avoid Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs as the boys decided it would be fun to act out the book!!! :eek: :eek: The thought of having fried eggs flying around my house, followed by lamb chops, mashed potatoes, and peas was just a little too much for me!:rolleyes:

[GinaMarie]

:eek: ;) lol yeah I could imagine that would be quite a mess. lol Thankfully NONE of my boys have that idea.. as they dont have the urge to do ANYTHING around this house to help me :rolleyes: :mad: . lol I would love to see sponges flying across dirty dishes and garbage cans being emptied. lol

Courdoroy was another cute book. The one about the teddy bear looking for a home. :)

I used to collect all the Berenstein Bear books. :)

GM

[tgrimes]

MomO -
Are both your boys autistic?

[JungleWoman]

Those are fun books!! We had 3 or 4 copies of Goodnight Moon and they all are toast now. A good one around here was "If you give a moose a muffin"

Such a great book! And so sweet what your guy is putting together!! I never thought to ask what titles of books were when you multiplied them. Genius! :)

[MomOTwins]

Tgrimes,

Both boys are in the spectrum. Andrew is HFA (in a 4th grade self-contained classroom) and Patrick has been diagnosed with "other medical condition" (known to his parents as Asperger's syndrome traits) but he is mainstreamed in a regular 5th grade room. Patrick's symptoms - fixation on items of interest (currently the weather and disasterous effects related to bad weather :eek: ), delayed fine motor control (especially handwriting but NOT keyboarding), and poor organizational skills.

We figure with two obvious science geeks as parents, both of us fascinated by the written word (Mom is a writer/editor for a living), and DH being a railfan extraordinaire (5 coauthored books to his credit), these guys got the wildest parts of both of us! :rolleyes:

Kim

[tgrimes]

Yikes - I guess the only thing more difficult is twin redheads, huh?:)
Does Patrick know about that fissure in (I think missouri) I saw something on history channel about it and the geological chaos of it all would probably interest him. The last time it wreaked havoc was in the 1800s, but it could happen again. Anyway, one of those things along the lines of 'unexpected disaster' that probably interests him.
Funny you say "right now it's..." like he's gonna drop it... I know exactly what you mean! When my son was into titanic he had to know every detail... and had over a hundred drawings. It seemed as if it would turn out to be a lifelong passion or something... and then he dropped it for something else, and doesn't remember half the details that at the time were on a NEED to know basis. I guess I do the same thing with news stories sometimes.

[MomOTwins]

Hey, they are redheads!!! :eek:

You are thinking of New Madrid, MO! Yep, we know all about that story, along with endless details about Mount Vesuvius, Mount Etna, etc. etc. etc. He was in 7th heaven when we were out in Seattle on vacation a couple of years ago - Mount St. Helens was smoking and he got to see the other stable (non-active) volcanoes (Mt. Hood and several others). We have pix of him standing at the ranger station at Mt. St. Helens doing the "tourist point"! :rolleyes:

We have had the natural disasters fixation for a couple of years. It has grown into something that makes me CRAZY --- the glance out the window at a single tiny cloud in the sky and the announcement that a thunderstorm is coming, the cloudy day that may actually have a tornado brewing, the light snowfall that might just be a blizzard. You get the idea, every minor weather event is the cause for "Mr. Worst Case Scenario" to pull out his meteorologist predictions.

Oh well, I guess it could be worse, he could be fixated on Nintendo, Pokemon cards, or headbanging rock and roll!

[tgrimes]

Oh yeah that's it, New Madrid. I thought the most interesting thing was the sand blows, and how the people there were confused about what was really happening and just figured god was destroying their community to punish them.
Patrick would probably like a weater station - you can get a barometer and humidity gauge pretty reasonable, then he can track changes. I got ours on ebay for Theo last year, because I didn't see any at the store, but then a couple of weeks ago I saw a triple gauge set in plastic for like $15 at either Target or Lowes.
Do you write fiction or non? Just going to guess... magazine articles?

[MomOTwins]

I'm a non-fiction writer, been freelancing for over 10 years now.:eek: I specialize in writing for the medical and pharmaceutical communities. With a background in drug development, most of my writing focuses on clinical trial study reports and manuscripts for scientific journals. My clients range from physicians who can't put a sentence together without help to big companies who contract out their writing projects. I have some clients that I just do editing for - usually folks where English is their second or third language.

There are a couple things I DON'T do - writing advertising stuff/material for sales representatives (YECH), and I don't write for the non-medical audience. Some medical writers specialize in writing for what we call the "lay audience", articles for HMO newsletters, magazines, local newspapers. I find that I have a harder time making my writing understandable for this audience (maybe it is the topics that I write about), I can better judge what a clinician needs explained vs. what they'll know without more detail.

[tgrimes]

That sounds interesting. I would love to do something like that - but would be constantly in trouble with my unsolicited input!
This surprises me that any of this is contracted out too, I would think at least the pharmaceuticals hire staff writers for this, and the physicians have transcription service.
Does your husband write in addition to another career or he works at home too?

[MomOTwins]

The folks that I work with in the pharmaceutical industry and medicine are a pretty strange group, but my job does not involve transcription (sometimes I wish that it did). The companies send me huge printouts of data from the clincal studies (or summaries of their findings), which I have to analyze and then draft a journal article or report based on this mass of data. I do the graphic design work if we need graphs or figures, but contract out any real artistic stuff (drawings of surgical procedure techniques, for example) to a medical illustrator.

Some pharmaceutical companies do have writing staff, but with the highs and lows in need for writers, many will hire contractors to cover busy times or big projects. I've been working for a couple of firms for several years, getting called in when they have a time crunch or lots of new projects to get out the door and no in-house writers. I also get called in by people who know my specialty areas or who rely on my expertise in getting certain kinds of reports done, as some groups are real novices in preparing documents for FDA submissions.

I wish my husband only had one job! Besides being a railfan who writes about and photographs trains (in his spare time), he is a professional geologist involved in oversight of hazardous waste clean-up projects. We ALSO started a small home-based business a few years ago, using his talents as a modeler (model railroads, of course) and as a geologist. He makes latex castings of rocks for model railroad scenery; these things were typically made using plaster or folks glued real rocks onto their train layouts. His stuff is easy to install and very light weight (think about those flexible rubber Halloween masks). If you want to see some, check out www.cripplebush.net, his website.

[tgrimes]

Sounds like you have a really interesting family. I think your boys have 'chosen' parents who will be able to guide them in bringing their special interests into their lives and their careers the way you and your husband have been able to. :)