Chalky Cleanup

We have the Nest Doorbell at our front door.   My husband likes technology so when Nest announced their facial recognition doorbell, he ordered it straight away.   I have to say, it’s pretty cool, as cool things go.   It records motion, recognizes faces and lets you know when people it knows are at the door.   It’s also made answering the door a thing of the past as my children love to run to the door to let their friends inside when they come to visit.

Yesterday we were out bowling when we got multiple notifications on our phones that children were at the front door.   My husband pulled up the camera feed and saw two neighbor children at the front door, but seeing as our children didn’t answer, they decided to play with the chalk that sits on the front porch instead.   And by playing with it, I mean they were drawing on the walls and throwing it.  

My husband talked to them through the doorbell (another feature) to tell them it was fine to play, but to please clean up the chalk.   At the sound of his voice, the boys scattered.   My husband sent a text to the neighbors and told them what had happened.   Let me say here that these boys are great children, but children are prone to be children and they were just having fun.

Later last night my husband went over to one of our neighbor’s houses to watch a movie and he showed them the video.   Both fathers asked for a copy of the video and said they were sending the boys over today to clean up the mess.    Today they did just that.   Both boys were so polite in apologizing.   They got soap and cleaned the porch probably much more than it needed to be cleaned.  

While they were cleaning the adults all talked and agreed we were all in this parenting thing together and fully supported each other in laying down laws and even punishments as needed.   We all want the same thing: respectful, maturing children.   But it takes time.  

I think the doorbell camera went over so well we won’t be the only ones on the street with the Nest Doorbell soon.   The other fathers loved it.

The Big Boy Update:  Before bed tonight I showed my son my Andy Goldsworthy art book, A Collaboration With Nature.   As an artist, he finds things in nature and then rearranges them into beautiful settings that couldn’t or wouldn’t otherwise appear.   It’s mostly a picture book, but it’s fascinating to me.   I had to promise my son we’d look through the rest of the book tomorrow as it was past bedtime and we had to stop tonight.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter loves cards.  We played Uno for an hour this afternoon after camp.   She wanted to change/make up/amend rules, but found out sometimes that didn’t always work to her advantage.   Having braille versions of the cards helped her be independent and play the game without help, albeit a bit more slowly as she had to read every card and couldn’t see her hand at a glance like sighted people do.