Ketchup

My husband likes to grow things on our deck.   He’s done herbs every year and tomatoes for a few years as well.  Last year the children got interested in plants in part because of my husband, but also because of something their Aunt A had sent in the mail.   So this year, my husband decided to get them involved.

He got additional planters and put in a drip system.  The children selected their plants and then we say back and watched them grow.  

The growing has been the most fun and interesting to the children.   We’ll go out to the deck and check on the status of the various plants, pick what’s ripe and then, usually, eat them once inside.  My daughter will go out with one of the three of us to ask what the status is of her plants or of dad’s tomato plants.

This morning she went outside all by herself and came in with a green pepper—her first green pepper from her pepper plant she selected.   She had been talking to us about the size and had waited until it was the “right” size to pick apparently.   And today was the day.

She brought it into the bedroom and named it…wait for it…”Cutie”.   Which is what she names everything.  I am not exaggerating on this point, I assure you.   I told her she had to come up with a name that didn’t involve “cutie” in it.   Meaning it couldn’t be, “cutie pepper”.   She tried, “cute pepper”, insisting that didn’t have the word, “cutie” in it, but I told her no go.

She went away for about a minute before coming back to the bedroom at which point she asked if I wanted any ketchup?  No, I was fine, I told her and then she explained she had named the pepper, ‘Ketchup’.

She called it Ketchup as she bit into it five minutes later.    She called it Ketchup as dad cut it into pieces five minutes after that.   She offered me a piece of Ketchup, which I accepted.   And then she came to find me to show me the last piece of Ketchup before she ate it.

It might have been a confusing name, but it was so much better than another ‘Cutie’.

The Big Boy Update:  My son got up from the dinner table and said with appropriate hand gestures, “Hey guys, I always have a shotgun when I’m in the house.”  He was smiling.   I was confused because we don’t have a shotgun in our house and he knows it.   I was more confused when he told me his father told him that advice.   And then I realized what he was talking about—Fortnite, the game.   I agreed with him that for close range spread damage a shotgun was good to have in a house while you’re looking for supplies.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter asked me if I could read the next chapter of, “The Phantom Told Booth”.  I explained what a tollbooth was and that it was that word instead of ’told booth’.   My daughter said, “I’ll just keep calling it ’told booth’”.

What I Learned

My daughter came home from school today with a full backpack of work she’d completed over the last quarter with a few complications she’d worked on since the beginning of the year.   In the stack was one final work she did today, summarizing her year in Kindergarten:

She typed the entire page, unassisted with spelling from her teacher.   Translation was provided for us by her Braillest, who’s last day of work before retirement was also today.  

The Big Boy Update:  My son’s was on the way to tumbling with his sitter this evening when I got a text that my son has said, “my brain can’t handle anymore phrases or big words.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter wanted a piece of the Himalayan pink rock salt I had gotten at the store last week.   I gave her a small piece which she sucked on while bouncing on the purple yoga ball.   With all the bouncing around, it fell out of her mouth.  I helped her find it and got it washed off.   The second time it fell out she proclaimed exasperatedly, “my salt fell out.  I can’t find it.   This is a really, really bad day.”

Crowns

I went to the dentist (Walter, who is also my next door neighbor) two days ago and then again today.  I have some crowns that need replacing and some new crowns.   I was at his office for several hours the other day getting things prepped for the new crowns.

To numb my mouth the numbing medication had epinephrine added included in the syringe.  The epinephrine helps the medication stay in the area for longer so you don’t have to be numbed more than once.   But it also gets into your system while you lie there in the chair.

I felt strange.   When I got up I felt half drunk and almost stumbled getting to the bathroom.   Apparently it affects people differently.   When I left with several new temporary crowns in place, I sat in the car for a while just to make sure I was safe to drive.

Then, as is common with my mouth, I broke one of the temporary crowns later that day.   I didn’t want to be a bother, but when Walter messaged me the next day asking how things were going, I told him.   He said he wasn’t surprised, that particular tooth was very thin on the crown and if I’d come back in this morning he’d use a different type of material for the temporary crown.

I go back in two weeks for the new crowns, which are zirconia and apparently won’t break, even if you hit them with a hammer, so Walter says.    I have no plans of hitting my mouth with a hammer, so I think we’re safe there.

The Big Boy Update:  My husband took my son to see The Incredibles 2.  My son is always, always resistant to see any movie unless he’s seen it before.   Once he’s watched a movie though he loves it, talks about it and wants to see it again.   My son was really into the movie, especially the parts with Jack Jack.   He yelled out and clapped at one point he was so excited.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter likes to sing lot.   Sometimes my son will ask her to stop.   This might be in the car when she’s loud and we’re all trying to talk.   It might be at home when my son is working on school work.   My son will ask her multiple times to stop, asking politely and then more insistently and then angrily.    Tonight the roles were reversed.   My son was jumping around and singing in the living room and my daughter couldn’t hear what she was watching on her iPad.   I told her that’s what it’s like when she does the same thing to her brother—which she does regularly.   I don’t think she liked the comparison.

Long Pants Preference

My daughter told me the other week she couldn’t find any long pants in her shorts drawer.  I adjust the children’s clothing in their dressers based on the change in season and this was shortly after I’d removed most of her pants, replacing them with shorts.   I do this for her so she has less items of clothing to sort through to find what she wants to wear.   I do this for my son, because he will continue to wear his known, preferred clothing even when the temperature makes it uncomfortable for him to do so.

With my daughter, who has always liked shorts, I was flummoxed at why she would want to wear pants when the weather had had days in a row in the eighties and even nineties.  Thinking back, I recalled her wearing pants a lot, even after telling me she liked the new shorts I’d gotten her at the used clothing store.

I thought maybe it was similar to her brother, a simple preference because her pants were knowns to her.   And yet she was wearing a lot of the new short-sleeved shirts I’d bought.    So I asked her.   She dodged the question at first but then told me it was because she had scratches on her legs.  

She did and does have scratches on her legs.   She has bruises too.   Sometimes she even has bits of eczema.   Her legs are in a constant state of infirmary.   She’s never shown any signs of being self-conscious about anything before.   A lot of worrying about how we look is based on knowing what we look like and comparing ourselves to how others look.   And she can’t do that.

But other children might have asked her why her legs are scratched up—and she doesn’t have much of an answer other than, “I can’t see so I run into things all the time”.   Which is exactly what happens.   I don’t think (if this is what happened) the question was asked in a teasing way.   Her kindergarten class is a little too young for that.   But something about it bothered her.  

She’s ending the school year choosing to wear pants every day.   When I suggest shorts she’s fine with them, but she selects pants every morning.   Two more days of kindergarten and she’ll be a first grader.   I think I’m much more excited about that than she is.

The Big Boy Update:  My son and I went to Biscuitville today for breakfast.   We go every so often together and have eggs, bacon, pancakes and of course biscuits.   He asked me if Biscuitville was my favorite restaurant.   I told him it was certainly one of them but that I didn’t think I could say any single restaurant was my favorite because I like so many different places and types of food.   He said, “my favorite restaurant is eating food.   I like at least one thing at every restaurant.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has been having fun with puffy stickers with her friends on her cab ride.   I have a big assortment from well before the children were born I didn’t think I’d ever find a use for.  Random sticker sheets that would be useful if I was an avid scrapbooker—which I’m definitely not.   I don’t know what they do with the stickers in the car, but Beverly, their driver, says they don’t make a mess and it keeps them occupied so I keep sending them.   Today my daughter came home, handed me the now empty bag the stickers had been in that morning.   She took off her shoes and socks and then reached inside the collar of her shirt and started pulling sticker after sticker off her chest to put on the table.   There were so many I started laughing, asking her if that was her, “spare sticker storage”.   She and I laughed together as she found twenty-odd stickers.  Did she possibly get the idea because her chest is where they put the EKG leads which are stuck on her every time she has an EUA?

He Does It Better

My husband mentioned tonight how my daughter’s hair still looked good after two days without being washed—and how he did her hair.   Also, when I was going to blog about how he’s better at doing her hair than I am.   So here it is.  

The thing is, he does do it better.   I tried product after product on my daughter’s fine, delicate, fly-away hair in the hopes I’d come up with a magic formula to make her hair both manageable and silky smooth.   I have yet to find the formula for that though.  

What my husband does is some combination of product spraying, drying a certain way, followed by a final spray of product and then a wee bit more drying.   Every time he does this her hair looks good for days.  

I think I should sign him up for hair drying duty going forward.   Although he also admits he’s miserable at putting her hair into an elastic band.   He doesn’t frequently have to do this, even though her hair is put up most days to prevent food from getting in it and to keep it out of her work as she leans over to see whatever it is she’s working on.

On the occasions when he’s taken her to Detroit, it’s always interesting to see what state her hair is in when they arrive home.   My daughter doesn’t seem to care though.

The Big Boy Update:   I asked my daughter if I could hug her tonight as she was rolling around on the floor, wrapping herself in a blanket.   She was watching (listening) to her brother play Fortnite and protested when I hugged her too long, saying I loved her while she was saying I was crushing her.   Her brother, mid-game, informed us, “you can’t love someone too much.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I’ve been looking at options to have the computer speak what my daughter is typing.   Voiceover, which she’s used on the iPad for navigation, works well on the Mac.   I turned it on tonight and found out she already knew the location of the ASDF keys as well as the shift and space bar.   I showed her how to locate and spell her name, with each key pressed speaking out what she’d typed.   She had a good bit of fun with the numbers, although she was surprised there was no ’10’ key.   She’ll have to learn to touch type in the next few years.   Soon enough she’s going to be sending emails to people based on her track record with picking up technology.

Smaller is Better

I’ve been wanting to upgrade my Mac for a while.   Or I suppose what I’ve been wanting to do is downsize.   For some time now there have been MacBook options that are significantly smaller than the one I got several years ago (and then got round two of after a rather unfortunate water bottle incident in Detroit).

And although I wanted smaller, I didn’t want to lose the capability to connect to my external Thunderbolt monitor.   It’s big, it has lots of screen real estate and it worked via this specialized Thunderbolt connector cable designed to work with my old MacBook.   And that was a problem.

Apple decided to get away from the external monitor business and that left me with a monitor that connected easily to the old MacBook but not at all to new MacBooks.   I wasn’t the only person disenchanted with this decision by Apple, but for a long while there was no easy solution save for getting a new laptop and a new monitor.

I liked the Thunderbolt monitor with the simple little all-in-one cable because it connected networking, external display, power and sound to the monitor.   And it was nice.   Partial solutions came out but nothing elegant and usually without the support for external sound.

Today, as I was at lose ends, I went back to Apple for probably what was now the fifth time to see if there was a solution.   And hey, there was.   There was a new connector dongle from USBC to Thunderbolt which would solve most of the prior connectivity issues.   In addition, there were also a few other little things in play that made upgrading a workable solution.   So I bought a new MacBook.

I got home, unboxed the new laptop and turned it on.  It asked if I’d like to restore from that nice Time Machine backup it saw on our network.   Why yes, I did, thank you so much for asking.    An hour-and-a-half later and aside from the smaller dimensions and slightly extra cordage coming from the laptop, I have a new, smaller, more powerful solution.   And it still looks and sounds just like I would expect it to on my Thunderbolt monitor.

New technology makes me happy.   New technology that works seamlessly and well makes me even happier.   Which means I’m pretty dang happy as I write this blog post tonight.

The Big Boy Update:  Today I tried to get my son interested in going to one of those entertainment places where there are go carts, a mini golf course and lots of video games with our sitter, only he had no interest.   He talked Blake into the trampoline place again.   And then he tired Blake out again.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  We’re going to set up my old MacBook for my daughter.   She will start using a standard keyboard to do typing next year.   I don’t look at the keyboard and I know where the keys are.   A blind person can learn the same way, only using audio feedback.   There are programs to help with this.   I’ll see if I can get her interested this summer in learning by installing them on the old laptop.

Sudden Death

My husband played in the club championship today.   There is a history with him and another player, Austin.   They’re the two best amateur players at our club and every year it ends up with the two of them down to the last hole on who the champion will be.

Three years ago my husband lost to Austin in sudden death after being tied after two days and rounds of golf.   Two years ago the same thing happened—exactly.   Last year my husband was going to win, he said.  It was his plan.   And he did win, but Austin had some additional challenges because his clubs were lost by an airline and didn’t arrive until the second round of golf.  

So my husband won, but it wasn’t Austin’s best golf last year.  This year it was tight up until the last hole and again, they tied on the eighteenth hole after two rounds.  So back to sudden death again.  

I had come to watch him finish and met some new friends with the spectators watching Austin and my husband finish.   There were at least twenty golf carts following them around through their sudden death play.    It was exciting, to be sure, because they played not one hole, but five holes, unable to break the tie until the fifth hole, when Austin won with one less stroke.

I’m not a golfer but apparently it’s fun to watch good players play.   I had a great time talking and meeting some of the other people who had played in the tournament.   My husband is an excellent loser and Austin is a gracious winner.   They’re both friends.  

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Ice Age Conversation:  Blake had taken the children to a park yesterday.   As they got back in the car Blake remarked, “it’s really hot.”  My son exclaimed, “I wish it was an ice age!”  My daughter, trying to be helpful said, “you could go to Antartica?”   My son didn’t miss a beat, firing back, “not in these clothes, baby.”

Last Week of School

My daughter’s last week of school as a kindergartner is this coming week.   She’s been doing well in school and is looking forward to starting first grade in what won’t exactly be, “the fall” because she’s in year-round school.  

She’s only out for the month of July.   Her winter break during the Chrismas/New Year’s season is the same amount of time as her entire summer break.   Which is strange to me, because I grew up with three months of summer, glorious summer.  

My son is in traditional calendar school, so he has the long summers but my daughter won’t ever miss it, since she never really had it.    I don’t know that I like it myself.   It’s nice to have that big block of time in the summer to go to the pool, play outside, avoid playing outside due to the heat and visit family.  

I wonder if they’ll be envious of their sibling’s school schedule as they grow older, and if so, in which direction?

The Big Boy Update:  My son left his back pack and lunch box at Parkour camp yesterday.   He’s going back tomorrow for tumbling class and will bring it home them.   I’m afraid of what it will be like, unrefrigerated, after two days.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter helped our sitter make cup cakes today.   They succeeded in using more cooking tools than we’d ever seen used before.   I think I could have done it with a fourth of the items that needed to be washed.

Manny?

I don’t know if that’s a real term or if I made it up.   If it’s a real term, know that I haven’t looked it up and if it’s derogatory in any way, I didn’t know.   With that being said…we have a nanny of sorts for the summer.   It’s our neighbor’s son, Blake.   He’s great.   The children love him.   He’s fun and has all sorts of ideas for them to do this summer.

But is he a nanny?  Or would he be a Manny?   They got home from the pool yesterday and my daughter said when Blake came into the room, “Blake is the best sitter in the whole world!”

The Big Boy Update:  My son has decibel-limiting headphones specifically made for children.   And yet my son still has the ability to not be able to hear you when you’re yelling for him if his headphones are on.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter’s new eyedrops (dubbed, “the blue drops” due to the blue cap) sting.   She wants a tissue to dab her eyes after the blue drops.   She’s not complaining about the drops though.  

High Pressure

My daughter had an EUA (Evaluation Under Anesthesia) today which involved multiple doctors looking at her eyes based on their personal specialties.   The main reasons were to get an accurate pressure reading because she has a very averse reaction to the pressure hand-held device and to get a mapping of her retina and the layers behind it.  

Both of these things could be done in-office, but she can’t see the blue dot consistently for the OCT and refuses to cooperate with the pressure reading device.   All in all, it was a good thing we had the EUA scheduled, because my daughter has had some loss of vision recently.   Her teachers have noticed it to the point that I got a phone call to let us know of their observations.  

The change with her is subtle, and since she can see so little to start, any more lost is sometimes hard to define, especially since she’s getting better and better at other compensation skills.   Also, she lies. She will tell you she sees something that isn’t remotely possible.   But she’ll say so with such an air of confidence that it’s deceptive.   In addition, she won’t tell us if her vision has changed.   At all.   She flat out refuses to talk about it and if pressed, says things are the same or that they’re better.

The EUA today showed her right eye completely covered over in internal scar tissue again.   It keeps growing back and it’s maddening to me because how are we to know if the eye can see when there is no way to see out?   Realistically though, the right eye isn’t functioning much at all, but I wish she had the opportunity to see out if the rods and cones did regenerate.

The left eye’s retina is attached and looks good.   The one surprise was her pressure—it was high.   This is so unexpected that I had to ask my husband to tell me what he said again because I didn’t believe it.   Here is a child with eyes that couldn’t produce fluid, so they kept dropping in pressure to the point they had to be artificially returned to pressure with Healon fluid.

Then late last year it looked like her pressure was maintaining, meaning her ciliary bodies had healed and were producing fluid again.   This was a good thing.    But now, instead of being normal pressure at fifteen or so, her pressure was forty.   But why?   Dr. Grace is going to send the images to Dr. Trese in Detroit and discuss next steps.

For now we have a third drop to add to each day to help reduce pressure.   It’s always the unexpected when it comes to my daughter’s eyes.

The Big Boy Update:  After parkour camp today my son wanted the window rolled down in the car.   He fell asleep almost immediately.   He hasn’t done that in a long time.   Blake, our sitter who was picking him up, brought him in slung over his shoulder.   He put him on the bed and he my son didn’t even move.   He must have had a tiring day at camp.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   After coming out of anesthesia my daughter is usually inconsolable for a bit.   There’s nothing you can do to help her.   If she falls back asleep it helps a lot, but sometimes she doesn’t.   Today she was very lucid and clear in her speech.   And she was mad.   And nothing was what she wanted.   And she didn’t LIKE THAT!  My husband said if he hadn’t been laughing a bit at how angry she was the nurses might have been concerned.   It was cute from an angry standpoint.   And it passed shortly.    Oh, and this was funny too: when it was time to take my daughter back to surgery the nurse came to get her.   My daughter was watching a show on her iPad.   She held up a hand and said, “not yet.  I’ll tell you when.”

Shut the Door!

My son was putting on his shoes before coming to the car this afternoon.   He’d opened the door to the garage and left it open when he realized he didn’t have his shoes on and had to go back to get them.   I yelled to him, “shut the door!” what with it approaching one hundred degrees.

When my son got into the car and we drove off I explained why I was always on the children coming in and out of our house to, “shut the door!”   How right now the house was having a hard time holding temperature on the second floor and the amount of hot air that came in while the door was open added more work for the air conditioning units and costs more energy we were trying to be mindful of.  

I said a lot more by way of explanation but in the end I said to him, “do you know what Gramps always said to me when I was young?   I told him for all my childhood, Gramps would yell out to us, “shut the door!” when we came in or left the house and forgot.   He didn’t like wasting energy either.

Tonight after a dinner with my parents who had been visiting from the mountains, my husband and mother were standing in the doorway and I said to them, “either go in or come out but shut the door, please!”   My husband on one side of the door shut it to a crack and pretended to continue the conversation with my mother who was just outside.    We all started laughing.

It was at that point that I told my father about the conversation I’d had with my son a few hours before on the same subject.   My father said he didn’t remember yelling at me to shut the door and mused that it was interesting how sometimes you don’t remember doing something but the person who it was done to (me being yelled at, for example) remembers it far more vividly.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is in Superhero Parkour camp this week.   When I picked him up I was informed by Zak, the instructor, that my son wasn’t answering to his name anymore, that if I was going to have to call him ‘Black Panther’.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  As my parents were leaving after dinner tonight to head back to the mountains, my mother told my daughter, “next time I’m going to hide you in my car and take you with me.”  My daughter asked with a sense of wonder, “really?”  My mother admitted, “no, you parents wouldn’t let me” to which my daughter quietly said, “well, you could ask?”

End of Year Songs

The Children’s (current) Favorite Songs: 
Every year at the end of school it seems to be tradition for a class list of songs to commemorate the year.   It’s been called the “Class CD” for a while now, and sometimes we get CD’s back from those who coordinate it, but CD’s are a cumbersome medium when you don’t have a CD player in your car or on your computer and you have to figure out how to get the songs off the CD into a format you can play them.  

For my son’s class this year we had a playlist on iTunes that came out for those with Apple Music as well as two CDs which my husband has yet to rip on his computer (which does have a CD player).   My daughter’s class has been asked for songs, but they’re going to play them in the classroom, I don’t think we’ll get a list back.

The class song lists have been fun though.   For the first few years we’d play the music in the car and my son or daughter would call out who’s favorite song it was.  At their Montessori school it’s always been one song.   This year my son’s song was The Spectre by Alan Walker.  There is just Spectre and then there’s The Spectre.   Both children like both songs, but my son selected the one with words instead of the instrumental, more upbeat wordless version.

My daughter has been asked for three songs which they’re planning on playing in her class tomorrow.   She had no difficulty in selecting the first one: Material Girl by Madonna.   We have a music station based on this song in the car it’s been so popular.  Her second song was, The Middle by Zedd.  Her last song is IDGAF by Dua Lipa.   And since this song’s ‘F’ stands for a word kindergartners shouldn’t probably be listening to in class, I put (clean version) on the sheet I’m sending in.   Most of the versions of the song have the whole word omitted and my daughter doesn’t have any clue what the song is really about, but I told her there was a good chance they might not play that one tomorrow.   She was okay with that.

Water and Stone

I just left my children’s room after a near epic battle of “they want something just to get their way” versus “you’re not going to win, I’m the parent”.   The battle was over a sip of water in a cup, which after poor behavior and unkind words from both of them, wasn’t going to happen.

They got more “dehydrated” they told me as the wailing, moaning, pleading, insulting and threatening didn’t work.   In the end, I distracted them by bringing my husband into the room so I could sneak into their bathroom and turn off the water to the sink from under the counter.

That was the “water” part of this post.  The “stone” part is about my father-in-law who is visiting and has a kidney stone.   They are very painful and he’s having it addressed in a day or two but for now, it’s hard to see him suffering.

Oh, and I had two teeth fall out today.   I have a double crown on two implants.  Double in that it’s a fused crown.   Today, after several years of spotless service, it just popped off.   I texted my neighbor (who is also my dentist) and he’s going to cement it back in tomorrow.   The cement he used before was the temporary cement, which stuck so well we left it.   Several years with temporary cement isn’t half bad.  

The Big Boy Update:  My son had his first day of parkour camp today.  He came home with every single bit of his food eaten.   I’m sending in more tomorrow.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter closed her finger in a drawer two nights ago.   As I was giving her an ice pack she said, “I don’t even like that finger anymore!”

Exploding Dinosaurs

I’m not sure that was the name, but it was something like that.   Father’s Day started out with my husband playing a round of golf with his business partner early in the morning.   He returned home mid-day to two happy children.   One of them (the younger, blind one) had lots of things prepared for him to read and open.  

She’d been working on things for him for weeks now—typing them up, drawing on things, taking this toy and that bauble and putting them into box from the recycle bin under the desk on which her braille machine, the craft paper, scissors, tape, stapler and sharpies reside.  This is a popular desk from a materials standpoint for all the children who come to play at the house.   She, however, is the only one who uses the braille machine.   But she uses it well, and fast.   She’s nearly prolific at this point.

Dad opened his box of items and hung the piece of artwork my son had made him and then we had a lazy afternoon.   Rayan came over later in the afternoon and I was called up to help in the bonus room while my husband made his own Father’s Day dinner (at his request) of pasta with meat sauce.  

My son and Rayan had (much to my daughter’s dismay) pulled out the desk on which the keyboard sat.   They had turned the keyboard around and added a nice black mark to the paint on the wall from putting the desk chair behind the desk, now facing the rearranged keyboard.   The coffee table was across the room about parallel to the desk and the guitar from my brother-in-law was amped up at the entry to the bathroom.  

It made no sense to me.   What was all this for?   It turned out they were making a band and they needed me to be a band member.   I was given a single maraca (the other one being lost) while my daughter was given one handbell.   Rayan was on keyboard and my son was guitar.   Rayan was the most key member of the group as he could play both the Harry Potter theme and the Transformers theme on the keyboard.  

My son explained that my daughter and I needed to come over and sit on the floor on the other side of the now moved coffee table.   Why?   Because, “the audience is over there”.    And that’s when it all made sense.   Everything had been rearranged so that the band was facing the single sofa in the room.    Only we didn’t have an audience.   My daughter got her purple yoga ball and placed it on the sofa, saying it was our audience.

What was our band name?   My son wanted to use our last names, only that didn’t fit with our star keyboard player.   My son asked about Rayan’s last name but after hearing all six syllables of it he decided we would instead be the Exploding Dinosaurs (or something like that, don’t hold me to it).

We had a dress rehearsal and then, just as our concert for the purple ball was about to begin, we were called down to dinner and Rayan was called home by his sister.   My son said to not put the room back but after they were in the bath and it was clear there wouldn’t be time to do more band work for the night I did some rearranging of my own.   I permanently moved the guitar to the corner beside the keyboard and put the bin of musical instruments underneath the desk.

After the children were in bed I found my husband in the bonus room and noticed sheets of white paper in different spots on the floor.   My son had come back up with papers listing each of the band member’s names on it and put it in their places.   And I felt suddenly very bad for putting the room back to rights.  

I had just left the children’s bedroom so I went back in and told my son I’d seen what he’d done and I thought maybe tomorrow when Nana and Papa were in town or Tuesday when both they and my parents were in, we could have our band play?  He said he’d like that but he wasn’t sure if Rayan would be available.   I said dad could be the keyboard part.   Oh no, that wouldn’t do—because dad doesn’t know the Harry Potter theme or the Transformer’s theme.   Unless, my son mused, dad could have Rayan teach him the songs.

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Tent Want:  There was a huge tent at The North Face that my children saw the other night after dinner with Nana and Papa.   They wanted this tent very badly.   It’s more ideal for temperatures say at Everest base camp than it is places we’d likely ever camp.   But it looked cool.   And they wanted to know if Nana and Papa were thinking about getting it.   They weren’t.

Report Cards and End of Year Testing

We’re looking into having my son tested to see how he learns so that his teachers can help him more easily next year.   When I talked on the phone to one of the testing locations the lady I spoke with said she would need multiple things, all of which we can do easily, with one exception: report cards.   

Montessori schools don’t give report cards.   There are progress reports we get three times each year which are an in-depth description of where the child is in each area of their work, but it doesn’t list things at all in the way a traditional report card does.  Montessori philosophy is that each child learns at a different pace across the curriculum, which doesn’t lend well to grading-type report cards.   She said that was fine, that she could work with what we have.   

My daughter does get report cards and as of her last one, she’s exceeding in math and meeting all expectations in every other area.   There is also end of year testing done as well, even in kindergarten.  We asked her about the testing but she either didn’t want to talk about it or didn’t see it as anything other than another day at school. 

Her teacher did tell me today that she passed everything.   She had to read braille sentences and answer the questions by typing the answers in braille.   There are levels of the test, with the further along you can go, the higher your test result.   She’s at a mid-first grade level at the end of her kindergarten year, which is an accomplishment considering she couldn’t even read braille letters at the beginning of the school year.   

The Big Boy Update:  My daughter told me this evening, “Greyson can eat a thousand school busses a day.   Or at least that’s what he told me.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was working on a book for her father for father’s day tomorrow.   She was at her brailler, typing away, when she asked, “how do you spell ‘illustrated’?”  She was writing who the illustrator was for her book.

Take a Picture

My daughter wants pictures taken of everything.   I’ve mentioned her obsessive screen capturing while on the iPad before (the last time I deleted them she had taken over 2000 in a matter of weeks).   She also wants us to take pictures of things with our phones.  Of all kinds of things.

She brought in an apple slice a week ago, saying it was a very nice apple slice and could I take a picture of it.   Her old toothbrush that we had to throw away she wanted a last picture of for memory’s sake.   Tonight she asked me to get my phone for a picture of the most perfect piece of ice.

She’ll get my phone if I don’t have it with me and then ask for the picture to be taken.   But here’s the thing: she doesn’t want to see the pictures after they’ve been taken.   I don’t know if she can’t see them well or if she just likes knowing the point in time has been preserved, but it’s only the picture taking that’s the important part to her.

The Big Boy Update:  My husband was in a golf tournament yesterday and today.   My son had overheard my in-laws and me talking that he wasn’t having his best round.   When dad called at the end of the night my son asked him, “dad, how bad did you do?”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter didn’t want to go out on the play set after the addition we had done yesterday.   I wasn’t sure why until she refused to go out, stating there were monsters there. My husband and I went out with her and as soon as we showed her the first new swing she forgot all her fears and didn’t want to come in as it was getting dark.   I don’t know where the idea of monsters came from, she either didn’t want to say or didn’t know.

Double Swings

I looked out into my back yard today and watched a very nice man named Rob work on our “playground”.   The children started calling the play set a, “playground” when they were very small.   Since that time it’s been used more than any play set in the general area of houses.   In part it’s because of our location with children in different directions.   But there’s a part of it that’s because of the set itself I think.

My husband and my best friend’s husband got to talking early on about what to get, with Matt being of the opinion their Woodplay set was the way to go.   Woodplay is one of the more expensive brands, but will outlive the child’s childhood and then some.   It’s heavy-duty as well as being adult-rated (a selling point for me because I love to swing).

So Woodplay is the way we went and ever since, we’ve had children playing on it.   The adult-rated and heavy-duty is no joke.   One of our neighbors got a set from Costco and after a complicated set-up process in which he hadn’t gotten around to staking it into the ground, it blew over and partially down the hill during one rather windy storm.   The Woodplay set would only blow over in a tornado.   I don’t think a hurricane would even miff it.

We’ve added things to it over time, mostly swing options I switch out from time to time but there was the steering wheel (that did nothing), the rock climbing wall up to the fort and the spy glass.   We made the base into a sand box and figured out how to turn the slide into a waterslide into a baby pool.

I wanted to do something else but we didn’t have a lot of options short of adding whole sections of play fort to an already small yard at a large cost.   But we could add another swing A-frame.   This would double the number of swing options from three to six which would accommodate twice the children and I wouldn’t be swapping out swings as often.   We would have to move the ladder and slide to the next side over, but that would work out well for the yard dimensions.   We decided to remove the rock climbing wall as it was rarely used now that the children were older.

So today the nice man named Rob worked all day long on adding the new A-frame, rearranging the various pieces of the existing structure, tightening all the bolts, power washing and then re-staining the whole set.   He was here the whole day and thankfully got done too late for children to be disappointed they couldn’t play on it because the stain needed another day to dry (lest their clothes be indelibly stained cedar-color).

Tomorrow I’m out there swinging on the set, making sure there are no squeaky bolts…or maybe I just want to have fun swinging.

The Big Boy Update:  My son spent most of the day playing on his Nintendo Switch, which he earned after months of getting stamps for various things.   He got to one tough spot that I couldn’t get him through either because a narrow bridge over lava with cannon being fired at you is tricky.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is finally done with residual itchiness from her dual bladder infection, but now she has fierce heat rash or eczema.   She doesn’t seem to be overly upset by it.

Breaker

It was the last day of school at my son’s Montessori school today.  My daughter has until the end of the month before she’s tracked out for summer, which I think she’s looking forward to.   To celebrate the end of school at my son’s school, dismissal is at noon followed by an all-school gathering at a local park.  

There is pizza and Italian ice and the P.E. teacher set up all sorts of activities in the open spaces under the branches of the old, king trees the park has all around.   My son ran off to join his friends as soon as we got to the parking lot.  He was distressed almost that he couldn’t get out of the car sooner while we drove around looking for a parking space in the overflowing lots.   But he made it eventually and for the remainder of the afternoon we saw very little of him as he went from one group to another.

He did come back to find us from time to time, mostly to ask for us to get in the long line to get him some Italian ice, which we did multiple times and socialized with the other parents waiting with us.  Some families were leaving that had been at the school with us since my children were toddlers and we wished them well in their future endeavors.   The topic of summer activities was probably the most common with us exchanging camp and other ideas to keep our children occupied over the summer break.

On the way to the park my husband and I congratulated my son on now being a, “second year”.   In Montessori school he will be in the same classroom for three years, this year being a, “first year” otherwise know as, “first grade”.   My son was excited earlier this week about being a rising second year so I thought he would be pleased when I told him he was now officially a second year.   Instead he told me, “I’m not a second year, I’m a breaker.”

I thought he had broken something in the back seat, and asked him what had happened?  He replied, “I’m not a second year yet, I’m on summer break—I’m a breaker”.

The Big Boy Update:  My son had a difficult time interacting socially with his peers a year ago.   It was painful to watch him on the playground, trying to engage with the other children and not knowing how.   He would mostly bark instructions to people and would be largely ignored.   This year is entirely different.  He’s calmly confident about his friends and the students in his class.   He readily joined in games and was at ease with everything that happened, including winning or losing as a team.   It was nice to watch him play with his friends.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to be on summer break.   She knows she’ll be leaving her current classroom and teacher, but I don’t think it’s set in yet.   She loves her class, I hope she’ll have the same positive experience in first grade that she’s had in kindergarten.

Rev Your Engine

My husband and I wee going to a school event this evening when we found ourselves at a stop light beside a fast, exotic sports car.  We were sitting in our Tesla.Model S and got to talking about our experiences with other cars.

Did we have cars want to “race” us?  The Tesla Model S (or Model X for that matter) doesnt look like a particularly fast car.  It was designed to be as efficient as possible, which makes the body style streamlined, but in my opinion more like a standard sedan as opposed to a sports car.  In fact, our Model S is the fastest production car made and can easily beat even the fastest sports cars 0-60 or in a quarter mile.  But it doesn’t look that way if you don’t know much about the cars.

So do we have people want to race us?   In my experience, not really.  I’ve had some people look at me and then drive off quickly after the light turns green, but I’m not much for racing so I’ve never followed them.  

One thing we can’t do in our cars is rev the engine...because there is no engine.  Nothing is idling, and there's no sound.  When the light turns green you just accelerate and you’re gone.  I don’t miss having an engine, or the smelly gas you have to fuel it with.

The Big Boy Update:  After leaving for dinner, my sitter messaged me saying, “um, how do people get pregnant?”  I messaged him back, “good luck with that”.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter's taxi driver has two additional children on her route starting this week.  She is asking if my daughter can be ready an extra fifteen minutes early.  We're already tight on time with her in the morning but this morning she was great and got ready in time.  We'll see if her enthusiasm to move quickly continues for another three weeks.

Perspective

I’m reading, The Phantom Tollbooth to my children at night.   Today son got to see the dress rehearsal of a play of the same book by the older students were doing at.   He was pretty excited to tell me he knew what happened in the story as we left to go home.  

I asked him if he could keep what happened to himself and not tell his sister, so she could enjoy the story as it unfolded each night when we read.  He said he understood and he wouldn’t tell.   I also told  him that sometimes when you like a story enough, you want to read it more than once.   And that I enjoyed reading the book even though I knew what was going to happen.   I asked him if he thought he would still enjoy hearing the book at night.

He said he would and we talked about how the book had more details than the students could do in the play.  On the ride home he talked about all the things that would happen in upcoming chapters.   Tonight’s chapters wasn’t one in the play but it was interesting to think about and I answered a lot of questions from both my daughter and son.

The chapter is on perspective and they meet a boy who’s feet are three feet off the ground.   His family grows downward so they always have the same visual perspective their whole life.   It reminded me of being little and having my perspective change.

It’s not a clear memory,  but I know there was a time I couldn’t see what was on top of the counter.   Time passed and I must have not paid attention to that particular observation for a long while but one day I remembered when I realized I could see the tops of the counters now and how convenient that was because I hadn’t always been able to do so.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is out of school in two days.   He’s looking forward to the summer and doesn’t seem bothered or excited about school being out.   He will be in the same class with the same friends and teacher for two more years so it’s just a longer break to him.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter’s hair, including bangs, is very slowly getting longer.  Her hair grows with glacier-like slowness.   Her bangs are now long enough to be held back with a headband.   The good news is, my daughter likes wearing headbands—sometimes even to bed.  

Ramblin’ Rose

My cousin, Rebecca, and I did a sprint triathlon today.    She decided at the beginning of the year she wanted to do a triathlon and asked me if I’d be up for doing one with her.   Six months later and today we did just that.  

The particular series of triathlons is called, Ramblin’ Rose and is women only.   Prior to the race start they asked by show of hands how if this was your first triathlon and I would guess at least fifty percent of the attendees put their hands up.  

It was a friendly crowd, a warm pool, well marked course and overall well-run event.  The best part was the company though.   My cousin and I have always been close, but distance makes it hard to spend much time together.   We decided to stick together for the entire race because neither of us was in a particular hurry.   We had no interest in actually, “racing” just completing the event.

We got into the pool one behind the other which meant we got out of the pool within thirty seconds of each other.   The approximate nine miles of biking we stayed within talking distance most of the way, aside from the one hill she and I were looking forward to being beyond, because it was long and relatively steep.  

That’s the one time we got separated for a bit.   She was right behind me and then, when I got past the worst of the hill, I couldn’t see her from around the corner.   I pedaled slowly for a while and she did catch up with me, saying her chain had come off right at the onset of the hill.   Fortunately there was someone there to help her get it back on, but now she had no speed built up and had to pedal up in low gear from the bottom.  

We transitioned from bike to run and after a short bit where our legs didn’t like the change in motion from biking to running, we realized we were fine.  We finished by crossing the finish line together.

It was a lot of fun and a beautiful day.    Thanks for the invite, Rebecca!

The Big Boy Update:  My son told me he wanted me to see something today.   He said he wanted dad to see it too.   We sat on the couch and watched a five minute video he liked a lot on his iPad.   I’m not sure why it was that particular thing he wanted us to see, but I think he liked us watching it with him together.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  In the grocery store parking lot today I returned the cart while my daughter got into her seat.   I came back and she asked me, with complete calm, what would happen if I had gotten hit by a car as I returned the cart, was killed and she was stuck in the car.    She wasn’t alarmed, she was more interested in what would unfold should something bad happen.   I talked about how people would come to help and if I was injured they would call 911 for help.   I explained there were always people who would help.   She said it would be very sad if I died because I was a great mom.   She said then dad would have to be the only parent for her and her brother.   She thought about it and said it would be also sad if dad were to die instead of me.   She said if dad died then maybe we would have to eat sandwiches or pretzels or something since I don’t cook.   I sort of giggled at this one but explained that I can cook and like to cook but when dad and I got married he liked to cook more and really enjoys cooking.    The whole conversation was all very, “what if” kind of thing with no hint of any anxiety.   My favorite part was when she asked me, “so you know how to cook french fries too?!”

Exercise:  Sprint Triathlon with my cousin, Rebecca this morning.   Lots of fun, great day and great company.

I’ll Tri

I’m doing a triathlon tomorrow with my cousin, Rebecca.   The very first triathlon I ever did was with her daughter some years ago.   It wasn’t quite as long as this, but it was similar.   We’re swimming 250 meters, biking somewhere between eight and nine miles and then running two miles.  

My cousin has been training in all three events.   I’ve done the running portion, but that’s not saying much as the running is the thing I typically do when I exercise.   I’m a little anxious about this tomorrow because I probably should have done more training.   We’ll find out if I make it tomorrow I suppose.

My husband inflated my bike tires and Rebecca and I biked around the neighborhood here for two miles.   I remembered how to ride a bike, which is a positive sign.   I decided to not use the clip in shoes because from the olympic triathlon I did before, the things are sheer evil.  

In fact, it’s not the shoes that are evil, more my inability to prepare to clip out at the right time—ever. How I made it through the race without scraping my legs badly in a fall, I don’t know.  

We just went to our next door neighbor’s graduation pool party.  My children had a good time and I gorged myself on Moe’s, cookies and ice cream from the ice cream truck.   I am so full now I’m going to stumble to bed after writing this and go to sleep I hope.

The Big Boy Update:  My son and daughter were the only two young children at the graduation party tonight.   Everyone else was in high school.   My son spent the entire time with the high schoolers.  I was afraid he was annoying them or trying to pick up the girls or impress the boys.   When I asked them about it Blake told me, “no, we love him.   He’s like a little meme.  He’s hilarious.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter did not want to get out of the pool today.  I think she may have spent upwards of five hours in the pool during the day and at the graduation party this evening.   When I asked her if she wanted to go home with me or stay with dad as the sunlight was fading, “of course I want to stay.”

Expectations

I’m reading the book, The Phantom Tollbooth to my children at night before they go to bed.   I wasn’t sure if they would both be interested, but they’ve gotten into the book and my daughter is even interested on having me sit with her brother on her bed to do the reading.   This is atypical, which is interesting for her because she’s usually such a sharing, social person.

She is on the bottom bunk of the bunk and her brother sleeps on the top.   Her bed is a full-sized mattress and her brother has a twin-sized one above.   It would make sense to do story reading with them while sitting on her bed, but she rarely will agree to let that happen so we sit on the floor or I read from the chair and have them lie in their beds.

But since they’re both interested and she wants to see the pictures, she likes us reading on her bed.  They’ve liked the book so much they’re not even interrupting to ask questions.   At the end of each chapter I stop reading for the night but what has been happening so far is the chapter leaves off at a bit of a cliffhanger—the market stalls have all been knocked over or Milo and Tock have been sent to jail for six million years.   I’ve given them a preview or perhaps a teaser of what’s coming up in the next chapter such as telling them that. “the return of Rhyme and Reason” is in fact two princesses by those names.

At the beginning of the book once Milo has gone through the tollbooth he stops at “Expectations” and there is a discussion about what it means to have expectations.   My husband, when getting them ready for bed the other night took advantage of this and told them as they were brushing their teeth that they had three choices.   They could:
- meet his expectations,
- Exceed his expectations, or
- Not meet his expectations.

It is from this that my daughter started trying to, “exceed his expectations” that I wrote about the other night.   I didn’t realize where it came from until after my husband had read my blog post and told me his discussion with the children.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is at a campout at his school tonight.   It’s more of a camp in as they’re sleeping on the floor of their classroom, but that mattered not to him.   He was pretty excited this morning, carrying his sleeping bag and other items to school for the day and night.   Tomorrow we’ll hear all about it, I’m sure.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter wants to see the pictures in The Phantom Tollbooth book, which is one of the only books she’s been interested in seeing pictures for recently.   It’s a shame though, because the pictures are drawn in black pen and are very dense and hard to figure out in some cases, even for those of us with good vision.   But she’s happy having me tell her what’s in the pictures and looking at what must be black fuzzy images to her eyes.

Nine Out of Nine

My husband made dinner tonight using some of the things from the produce box we’re getting from the family at school who has their own farm.   He’s combining the fresh produce with some of the dietary changes we’re putting in place for my son.   Which is working maybe—we’re not sure yet.

One of the things we’re putting into the children’s diet is more fat.   Fat helps with brain function and commonly fat is connected to protein like in bacon, which we’ve been eating a good bit of.   My children can go through a staggering amount of bacon in five minutes.   I didn’t get a single slice this morning because I moved too slowly.

The nutritionist suggested we stop using canola oil in some cases (we weren’t using a lot) and instead, use the fat left over from frying the bacon.   Or as in my husband’s case, baking the bacon.   And here’s the thing: bacon grease tastes great.  

Tonight my husband boiled a cabbage head with some pepper and bacon fat.   My son and daughter liked it, with my son giving it, “nine out of nine”.   I finished off what was left in the pot after everyone had their fill.

The Big Boy Update:  I got my son a gyroscope that came in the mail today.   He as well as all the children who came over after school were interested in how it worked and the different tricks they could do while it was spinning.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has been doing better and better with the time crunch she has in the morning.   She leaves before anyone else and has the most to do with the styling of the girls hair and cleaning of her glasses after breakfast.   But she’s getting ready quickly and not dawdling when she’s eating breakfast—most days.

Bad Memories

I had another steroid injection in my spine today.   The doctor’s office I’m working with is conveniently just three miles from where we live, which is about as close as you can get, considering there’s a large state park across from our neighborhood you have to get around first.   There were insurance complications which caused the appointment to be rescheduled and the only other time they had close to my original appointment was in their office the next town over.

I knew where the office was because when we discussed my prior care at my first visit I had mentioned the doctors I’d been seen by during the time of my spinal fusions over ten years ago.   It turns out this practice had acquired (absorbed?) that one and my doctor was familiar with my old one.   My prior doctor had left the state about five years ago and now the practice name was changed, but the office location remained the same.

I don’t have the best memories of that office.   It wasn’t that they weren’t helping me—they were.  It wasn’t that the staff and doctors weren’t nice—they also were.   It was just at a time when I was in a lot of pain, was on a lot of medication, felt trapped in a job that required extensive travel I didn’t know how I could sustain with a management structure that had ever-rising expectations.    The pain part is what I remember most though because I couldn’t get away from it.   It was oppressive.   It was severe.   And everything they tried to help didn’t seem to make much difference.

I didn’t realize though how much I wasn’t going to want to go into that particular old office until I got there today.   When I was driving up I had a feeling of unease.   When I was walking into the building I wanted to turn around and go home.   When I got in, the chairs looked the same, the magazine racks were in the same location and the fish tank looked exactly the same.   And I wanted to leave.

Once I was checked in they called me back and put me into a tiny cubicle that coincidentally I had had a bad experience in years before.   I remember the conversation well: I was wanting to get off all the numerous medications I was on because I was getting married and wanted to have children.   I was treated, it seemed to me, like I was an addict.   I was told to bring in all my medications the following week and we could talk then in more detail about a plan.  

I didn’t want more medication, I wanted less.   I wanted none.   But I had to work with them because I needed to be safely titrated off each medication in an appropriate order.   Which we did, I got married and then had children, all successfully.  

Today the staff were helpful and friendly.  My new doctor is quite nice and I like working with him and I had a long conversation with one nurse who has had lengthy battles with spinal injury and pain. Everything today was very positive, but it didn’t feel that way when I walked in the door.  

The Big Boy Update:  My son wants to know if he can have a bike with gears.   We looked at him on the one he had today and I think he’s about ready for an upgrade anyway.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter wants to know if, “I exceeded your expectations” about a lot of things.   Not all the time (sometimes she’s cranky and defiant) but when she’s in a good mood she definitely likes to please people.

Brain Injury

This post is about a dream I had last night.   I have dreams and sometimes I remember them, but they’re usually not so vivid or frightening.   I woke up, startled by the dream about the time my husband was coming up to bed for the night.   I was groggy but managed to tell him the story, which is why I think I can remember the dream now, otherwise it might have faded from memory as I fell back asleep.

I was working in Hawaii, which is a good way for a dream to start if you ask me.   I drove up and went into the building I worked in but realized I didn’t remember how I got to work.   So I made a call.   I called my high school boyfriend to ask him to help me figure out what was going on.   Bill (who I haven’t seen in decades) told me I was very confused and that I should probably call my husband to see if he could help me.

I decided I’d better go back home, so I went to the parking lot, walked around the back of the blue Tesla Model X, which I remembered was a loaner as mine was being serviced, and as I got to the driver’s side door, a piece of trim came off in my hand.   I looked at it as I walked slowly to the back of the car to find massive damage to the rear end.

Something clicked in my head: I must have been in a car accident.  I had blanks in my recent memory probably because I’d suffered a brain injury.   I was confused and called a boyfriend from thirty years prior instead of my husband.    This wasn’t good.   I should probably call the police or go to the hospital…  Only I wasn’t thinking straight so I got in the car and started driving.

After a while I decided I’d better pull over and call for help because I wasn’t sure I was altogether safe driving.   I pulled up on a busy street area and got out of the car so I could see what the cross street was for when I called for help.

A man walked up to the car, said, “nice car” then quickly jumped in and drove away.  My purse, keys and cell phone were sitting in the passenger seat.  I was in even more trouble now.

As I stood there on the street I had no idea what to do.   Pay phones are few and far between these days and I didn’t have a way to pay to call my husband even if I found one.   And I needed help…or at least I thought I did.   And ugh, cancelling the credit cards and getting a copy of everything in my wallet was going to be a complete hassle.   I just wanted to sit down but there wasn’t anything to sit on.

I think this is when my husband came in the bedroom and I woke up.  I’m rather glad he did.

The Big Boy Update:  Okay, this is the happiest thing I’ve heard in a good while.   Tonight when my children were getting out of the tub, I was drying off my son.   He leaned in and said to me, “I like myself.”   I smiled at him and gave him a big hug.   He then said, “I’ve been changing.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   My daughter brings home things she works on in school regularly.   Yesterday she brought home a sheet of paper folded in half with a message inside in green crayon, “Dear Reese, I know that you are blind.  I love you.   Mayra”   My daughter’s braillest had typed up the message over the writing so my daughter could read it.   My daughter liked the card I think.

Killer

I can’t remember the reason why or how it got started but in sixth grade I was called, ‘Killer’.   I know I selected the name and I know I felt strongly about it being the right nickname for me.   I’m fairly certain it was more that I wanted to be seen as powerful and intimidating, not that I was.  

I wasn’t the coolest kid in school, nor was I in the popular crowd.   I’m fairly certain the nickname was more of a posturing thing than it was anything else.   My best friend, Veda, picked the name, ‘Vulture’.   She would perch on top of the desks from time to time, acting out vulture-like behavior.

I don’t remember who called us by our names, but I think it was most people because my sixth grade yearbook has a lot of the inscriptions to ‘Killer’.    I also know our teacher (who’s name I have forgotten) also humored us and from time to time called us by our alternate names as well.  

Killer seems like such an odd name to pick for me, now, as an adult.   But it was what I identified with back in sixth grade for a good part of the school year.

The Big Boy Update:  My son ate eggs and a large amount of bacon for breakfast this morning.   He had a lunch that was not entirely foreign, but had some changes to it that would hopefully help him to focus more easily during the school day.   He liked all the food and seemed to have a fairly good day. Tomorrow he’s most excited about the pepperoni stick in his lunch box.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter had the best time swinging on the swing in her cousin’s back yard on Saturday at Olivia’s graduation party.   She spent the majority of the party there.   At bedtime later that night she was complaining about her fingers hurting her.   I knew she’d worn the skin some from the swinging, but I didn’t realize how much so until the next day when she showed me her hands and I saw she had five large blisters.   Thankfully she didn’t see the needle when I told her I was going to pop them.   She wanted to feel it and had I let her, she would have panicked.   After I popped the first one (and it didn’t hurt) she kept showing me other blisters.  She loves motion.   I wish we had a large tree with a branch suitable for swinging.   There’s nothing like a swing hung from a high branch in an old tree.

They’re So Well-Behaved

My children and I went to Five Below today because my son wanted to get some things to find out, “what’s inside”.   He’s been watching this YouTube channel of a father and son who take everyday items and then break them apart to see what they’re made of.   The show is quite interesting, with the father and son picking some things that are popular now, like drones, and finding out what they’re made of.   Some of the breaking apart is fairly fun if you’re a seven-year-old boy, because they use saws or other, “more force than necessary” tools to get to the insides.  

This morning my son had found a fidget spinner and with a screwdriver had it apart in a few minutes. He told his sister, “I took this fidget spinner apart and now I know how it works.”   She was duly impressed.   Then my son asked me if we could go to Five Below so he could spend some of his stamps to get—wait for it—more fidget spinners…so he could break them apart too.

So after lunch while my husband was out working my daughter, son and I went to Five Below as well as the nearly closed for good, Toys-R-Us store beside it.   And they found fidget spinners.  As well as some other fun things.   We did math to determine how many stamps they had spent and then headed to Jason’s Deli for lunch.

The three of us were eating our soups and talking about what we planned on doing the rest of the afternoon when an older lady came over and said, “I just wanted to let you know you all are so very well-behaved.”   She said her daughter many years ago had also had glasses like my daughter.    We talked for a few minutes more and then she returned to her table.

I told my children how proud I was of them for being on their best behavior at lunch—without even being reminded or asked.

The Big Boy Update:  My son came downstairs both last night and tonight shortly after bedtime.   This is during the time he hasn’t fallen asleep yet but is trying to get to sleep.   He told me last night, “my biggest fear is zombies.”  He told me it was because of the Walking Dead pinball machine in the basement.   I told him zombies weren’t real, they were only stories made up by people.   He was fairly satisfied by that answer, but then he told me he was also afraid of killer clowns, and a friend of his had told him those were real.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has a, “secret drawer”.   I decided to take advantage of this little-used drawer in her dresser yesterday by putting some of her headbands in it as well as her upstairs eye drops.   My daughter likes to keep random things (don’t all children?) and as I cleaned out the drawer to make way for the incoming items I found a dried-up shrimp tail among the random things she had kept for reasons known only to a child.

TOO LOUD

We went to my niece’s graduation party today.   She lives about an hour-and-a-half from our house.   We planned on leaving so we could stop for lunch at Biscuitville—which my children and I love—and then get there in time for the party’s start.

We decided to take the new Model S as it has more range and we hadn’t taken it on a family road trip yet.   This was a good, short day trip to try it out on.   With the additional range we didn’t need to charge at all there and back.   Fortunately, there is a new supercharger station at the exit from the highway where they live, which is about as convenient as it gets, if we did have to charge the car.

On the way there my children were in good moods.   They were having fun with each other and they were being loud.   My daughter was almost screaming, and my husband and I kept telling her to be more quiet.    We lost our temper with her several times because she was so very loud it was painful.  We were speaking in whispers as examples, but both children were at a much higher volume level than they normally were.  

We arrived to the party, saw family, met Olivia’s friends and had a lovely time.   My daughter was enamored with a swing hung from a high branch in the back yard.   She spent probably half of the party on the swing.

We left and as we got back in the car we ran into the volume issue—again.   Both children had far too much energy and were playing some wrestling game in the back seat.   My daughter’s pitch and volume was just too much.    We told her many times, again, to be quiet.   Thankfully the children were happily playing together, and continued to do so the entire way home.

My husband and I wondered though if it wasn’t completely her—if it was the car.   The new Model S doesn’t have the third row to bounce the sound around in.   It also has a full glass roof, which doesn’t absorb sound like a material roof would.    We’re going to do some more tests (with shorter rides) to figure out if it’s a children or car thing.

Also, congratulations to Olivia on graduating high school!

The Big Boy Update:  I picked my son up from school on Wednesday and had some french fries in the car.   They were from earlier in the day and I told him they might not taste that good at this point. As he started in on his second on he said, “they taste as good as your hugs.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  The song, “Phantoms Can’t Hang” by Deadmau5 came on the other day.   This is a song with no words, but my daughter had a mental image about it.   She told me, “in my head it looks like a green blob with an emerald…sort of light green.”

Laura Croft Run:  My best friend and I were running this morning when we both saw the same thing. We were going up a hill and the low angle of the sun had elongated my shadow.   I had my cell phone in my left hip pocket and her cell phone in my right hip pocket and my hair in a long braid.   We both said, “Laura Croft!” at the same time.   I don’t have her dimensions or treasure hunting skills, but I did manage to run five miles.

Substituting

I substituted in my son’s class the last two days.   It was a fun experience.   As a parent you always want to know what’s going on in your child’s school world, but it’s typically hard to get a true view into what their school life is like as someone who isn’t in the classroom with them.   I’ve substituted at our Montessori school for years, but it’s typically not in one of my children’s classrooms as it can be more of a disruption than a help if your child can’t settle into their normal routine while you’re there.

This situation was a little unusual as one third of the class was away on their end of year trip to Washington, D.C. with their teachers so the other substitute and I had only two-thirds of the class.   I’ve known and substituted with Amanda before, who also had a child in the class.   We know the general routine and expectations the teachers have for their students.  

I helped the students with all kinds of work: math, money, grammar, compound words, report writing, science and classroom routines.    The students were as much of a help to me as I was to them.   They’re very helpful and always were glad to show me where something was or what the expectation or procedure was for something.  

I sat at a table for much of each day as the students did the bulk of their work during, “work cycle” as the Montessori terminology goes.   I was rather in popular demand, with students asking if they could sit with me next when one of the current three students finished that particular work.   All of the students were different but each worked hard.   There was a lot of teamwork and help—one of the key components of Montessori education.  

We did Massage Train, read a group story about the first female solider in the revolutionary war, had thoughtful group conversations during circle time and also some fun.    At the end of the day today the other substitute teacher had left and we all worked as a class team doing “jobs” so that we could finish the book before dismissal.  

Montessori children from the age of eighteen months practice practical life work.   The students contribute to the classroom’s order and cleanliness.   These students in the span of fifteen minutes had all the tables cleaned, chairs put up, rugs folded, floors swept, dishes loaded and dishwasher started, linens packed up to be taken home by a student to be washed, countertops and windows cleaned.   And they were good at their jobs too—as first and second graders.

We finished the story and I was genuine when I told them all I would miss them and hoped they had an enjoyable summer.

The Big Boy Update:  we’re looking into my son’s diet to see if certain foods or types of foods make it more challenging for him to focus and concentrate.   Today and yesterday he was doing well at all tasks in school and then suddenly today after snack he couldn’t focus or do anything until half-way through lunch.   After some additional food he calmed back down.   Is there a connection or was it that it was Friday and it had been a long week at school?  We’re going to try some options to find out.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is independent.   She walks out the door in the morning when we tell her her taxi has arrived.   She doesn’t say goodbye and she’s not in the least bit upset about it. She walks in the door after school, glad to be home, but calm about that too.   She’s very confident, which is hard to comprehend sometimes given that she has so little sight.