Some Days You Can’t Win

My son was having a hard time today.   He was being rude and unkind to his cousins and sister.   I caught the end of it when I got into the hot tub.   My son was upset, I think, because his sister was getting more attention than he was.   It’s hard to understand but somehow he’s feeling not included or left out of something.   The thing is, he’s been wanting to play on his Switch.  But maybe that’s been part of the problem.   I don’t know.

I’ve been good; I’ve kept my temper for days now.   That sound’s terrible, that it’s an accomplishment not losing my temper at my children.   It’s one of those things I’m working on.  I’m trying to be a better parent.  

My son refused to watch a movie with the family if he couldn’t play his Switch.   He was “forced” to watch the movie.   It was movie picked specifically for him, that everyone thought he’d like.  Now that he’s calm and watching, he’s actually liking the movie—aside from the bits where he’s scared.

Some days I can’t win though.  I was working on building my son’s self esteem up today, talking to him, listening to him and doing things with him.   And then I lose it all when I lost my temper at him tonight.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is excited tomorrow is 2019.   He’s about equally sad 2018 will be over tonight.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter told Uncle Brian and me tonight at Dinner, “don’t say words starting with ‘M’because I miss Matisse so much.

I Don’t Want to Talk About It

I try to make what I write here reasonably positive.   Sometimes things aren’t positive because a given situation isn’t a happy or positive one in and of itself, but I hope I don’t use this blog ever as a place to just complain.  A lot of the time I get to write about fun or funny things that happen in our lives.   And yet if you’ve been reading along, you know sometimes it’s sad or difficult things that happen with my children or us.   It’s not all fun, but for the most part I like writing down memories here in the hopes someday my children or I can read these entries again and remember the good times we had.

But I’m not always happy.   Today, or rather just now, I’m pretty sad.   We had a great day.   We split up with my brother- and sister-in-law and their two college-aged children, my husband and me going to St. John’s island for the day.   The remainder of the family, including my children, did other things on St. Thomas.

We had a really great day.   We went to two beaches, snorkeled, saw some marine life, did some shopping, looked at some sights, had great Mexican food and came home.   The company was great, the location was beautiful and the weather was ideal.

So what’s the problem?   The problem is just that: I had a great day.   I didn’t have to think a single time about what I needed to do to for a visually impaired person.   I didn’t have to help a blind child who desperately wants to be entertained and mentally engaged have a meaningful day.  I wasn’t on call both mentally and physically all the time.

And I feel terrible that I feel badly for having a good day.   I dearly love my little girl.   But life is hard with a blind child.   Life is very different when you can’t see.   There are no family movie nights.   You can’t go and, “see” things.   This entire trip has had things planed to either include her or exclude her because she wouldn’t our couldn’t enjoy them.   We all want her to have a good experience here (and I think she’s had a great time) but it permeates everything.

After we got back I went downstairs to take a shower and unpack.   My husband came in and realized I was upset.   I said I needed to write a blog post but that I’d be okay.   He doesn’t know why I’m upset right now, mostly because I needed to write it out here first.   As he left to go back upstairs he said. “I’m sorry you’re said.”  I told him it would be okay.   He then said, “well, I’m sorry you had to marry me.”  And I laughed.   He can always make me laugh.  I told him, “It’s not you, you make me happy.”  And he does.  He’s a pretty amazing guy; he is a far more capable parent than I am on even my best days.

Some days I write things and I’m excited for people to read what I wrote.   But today, I just want to be sad.   To write to my future self and children.  To say that it isn’t always happy; it's hard sometimes.   I don’t want to talk about it though.   I said what I needed to say right here.   It’s a good medium for me, this blogging thing.

The Big Boy Update:  When I got in tonight I wanted to hug my children.   My son wasn’t having any of it.   He tried to get away from it, saying, “no hug or kiss!”  He relented and gave me an air hug.   Then, a bit later, he came downstairs to get something.   I asked him for a hug again and this time he gave me a really nice hug.   He even let me kiss him.  Sweet boy.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   In the midst of writing this, my daughter rounded the corner into the room and said, “adorable!”  There was no particular thing the exclamation was attached to, she just said it.   She asked me what I was doing and I said I was writing my blog post for the day.   She said lightheartedly, “you’re funny, mom” and left.

Pot of Gold

Remember Hans Lollic?   It turns out that’s where the pot of gold is.



The Big Boy Update:  Uncle Bob made soup yesterday.   When my son heard it was time to eat lunch and there was soup made by Uncle Bob, he said, "I’m excited about Uncle Bob’s soup because I know he worked hard on it, and I’m going to try it because I don’t want him to feel bad if other people don’t eat it."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   I missed the conversation but apparently my daughter was talking to Uncle Bob, rating the family members at the house with her.   She said, “Uncle Brian is number one.”   Uncle Bob, apparently, didn’t make the cut.  As I’m writing this, Uncle Brian is looking over my shoulder.   He told me I ranked in at number six.

Rain and Shine

Today we were planning on going to the beach close to where we’re staying.   Some of us (my husband, children and me) had gone yesterday to this very idyllic, calm, friendly beach.   There was virtually no surf, the sand was almost shell-free, making it easy to walk on.   The incline into the water was shallow, while getting up to your chest in a reasonable swimming distance and there was no dangerous sea life like sea urchins or jelly fish to be found.

We were looking forward to going back today but the weather changed on us.   It’s windy enough that the umbrella and stand blew over on the pool deck but intermittent enough that periods of sunshine and calmness would happen from time to time.   It would rain—heavily—for a bit, get sunny again and then drizzle for another short span not that much later.

We decided to go anyway, packing into the car, to arrive and find the beach mildly occupied.   Uncle Bob and I stood under a small group of trees, talking, while others went into the water, causing the rain to be inconsequential to them,

The sun came in and out for a while but we didn’t stay long, as it looked like another round of heavy rain was imminent.  We’re back now, all showered and ready for a meal out tonight at a restored farmhouse.  

The Big Boy Update:  My son is having a hard time.   I can’t figure it out, he’s intentionally causing trouble, ignoring adults to their faces and then acting like he didn’t hear what you said.   It’s like he’s craving attention and is willing to take negative attention.   But he’s got lots of attention here with family and every time he’s been offered an alternative, like swimming with Nana in the pool.   I know he’s upset and doesn’t like himself though because of the things he says.   He keeps trying to sleep in the corner of his room on couch cushions instead of the sofa bed.   He’s a good guy, but he’s acting badly—and we’re just not sure of the overall “why”.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter asked this morning, “what is coffee?   Is it just hot brown water?"

Very Artistic

Let’s see, what’s been happening here…we’ve been worried about the water supply here after finding out the house was on a cistern system.   There was a question about how much water was really available for use with the house with a recommendation from the owners to not overuse water.   It turned out we were fine on water supply, but for a day we didn’t know how careful and conservative we have to be.

Most of the family went to St. John today.   My husband and I decided it would be a better experience for our children (my daughter in particular) to stay here and spend the day at the beach, which turned out to be a good decision.  Both children had a good time.   My son and husband did some snorkeling and my daughter and I spent time in the sun, sand and very, very mild surf.

We came home and got in the pool and hot tub after washing off the sand.   Some time later all the family who’d gone to St. John came back.   I took my daughter downstairs to get showered and dressed.    After she was out of the shower I followed her out into the outer room to get her eye drops, only to look out to see my brother-in-law, Bob,  and mother-in-law outside with some conversation about the cistern ongoing.   I, in classic me style, didn’t have any clothes on.   One of my brother-in-law’s saw me before I turned around and headed back into the bedroom.

Later we talked about it, laughing at the whole situation.   My brother-in-law said it was very artistic when he turned around and saw me standing there, talking to my daughter, partially covered in a towel.   I told him I was going to take, “very artistic” as the compliment of the day.


The Big Boy Update:  Someone in our house used the ‘f-word’ yesterday.   My son, with terrible timing, said, “you’re not suppose to say the f-word around kids”.   This is interesting in and of itself because the person in his household who has the biggest problem with the f-word, saying it on a regular basis, is his mother, also the author of this blog.   He hasn’t corrected me for some reason.   Perhaps it’s because he feels I’m hopeless.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   My daughter loved the beach today.   She and her brother made friends with another boy in first grade and did lots of things in the sand   Then she spent the longest time in the water on a boogie board.   She asked me if she could paddle out further.   I told her sure, she was in a safe spot in the calm, serene bay.

Snowday Tales

Some words from my daughter tonight:

The Big Boy Update:  My son wanted to eat a ring pop from his stocking this morning.   He somehow got it all over his face, making him look like a vampire.   It got better looking when he got in the pool.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   My daughter got her entire head braided in St. Thomas today.   It looks very cute.   She selected red, white and purple for the beads at the ends of the braids.   It took over an hour to get done, but it will last for several days.   She’s excited she doesn’t need a headband and won’t have to have her hair brushed for days.

Cars and Bumpers

We’ve been hanging out at the house here in St. Thomas today.   Yesterday was a flurry of activity when we arrived what with no food on Christmas Eve and the concern stores would be closed on Christmas Day.   We were all hungry and some of the adults were “thirsty” for beer and spirits.  

The grocery store was open and packed.  Both with food and people.   Some prices were high, very high, for comparable items at home.   Other things, like rum, were much lower priced than what we’d find typically.   So we stocked up.   Since arriving yesterday there have been multiple, additional, supplementary trips to the store.   The stocking up continues.

We have family members that like to cook, which suits me, so meals have been all at the house so far.  It’s mostly chaos here, which is how things usually go with family, but it’s a good chaos, a fun time with everyone.   My mother-in-law brought stockings for everyone and we put some things in each stocking.  Bits of candy, small presents for the children and a few little things from the recent travels my in-laws took recently.

My daughter has been in the pool as much as possible today.   She and her brother played some version of Fortnite in the pool.   The hot tub was a, “sea” and the pool was an “ocean”.  My sister-in-law looked at all the activities we could do for the week and I believe some things have been booked. I think we’re doing a, “three hour tour” involving kayaking and hiking.   There were some forays from the villa we’re staying at to try and get to the beach.   We’re guessing we’re about ten floors up, but so far we haven’t figured out how to get to the beach.  

There was a car issue.   My husband reserved a car for us with two car seats for the children but when we arrived there were no cars left.   There were no cars left.   They called around to the other rental companies and we did a more extensive search today and there just aren’t any cars.   So we’re twelve people and cars that will carry eight, ten if we wedge in but no car seats.   So we’ve got some figuring  out to do on that front.

My daughter’s vision is bad.   Is it worse?   Has it gotten worse?   She’s using her, “bumpers” meaning holding her hands out in front of her to find obstacles before she runs into them.   She’s using them all the time.   It’s like she’s almost completely blind, but we’re not sure.   When I asked her today if her vision was worse she said, “no, Mom, it’s the same.   I just haven’t mapped the upstairs yet.”   So that’s interesting.   Does that mean she’s had a reduction in vision for a good while now, but we’re not seeing it because she knows her environment so well at home?  Her teachers at school, the VI specialists, all have said she’s shown a marked drop in vision in the last six months.   I don’t know if we can get any back, her pressure is consistently very high and we’re not making any progress with the pressure drops.

The villa we’re staying in has a lot of outdoor access to the various parts of the home.   Today we were out on the pool deck in the sun and in a short span it was raining hard.   Everyone came in, grabbing towels to dry off.   I was ready to change into dry clothes but the only way to get to our rooms was to leave the main floor, walk around the side of the building, go down a turning flight of stairs and enter into the lower suite where we’ve got two rooms with our children.   So I had to wait.   But storms pass quickly here and the temperature barely dropped over the twenty minutes of downpour.

Meatballs and pasta is currently being made which means everyone is hovering around the kitchen area what with the good smells emanating from the area.   I’m heading that way as well, once I press the Publish button here.

The Big Boy Update:  My mother suggested melatonin of a certain brand she’s taking for sleep.   I’ve given it to my son several times now and each time he’s fallen asleep very quickly after taking it.   I’m hoping it will help him on school nights when he’s too keyed up to calm down.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My son and Uncle Jonathan went to see Spider Man last week.   Uncle Jonathan said something funny happened towards the end of the movie.   My son had drank a full-sized beverage and had to go to the bathroom.   Jonathan looked over to find him doing what he called, “Weiner punching” himself repeatedly, trying to hold it until the movie was over.

Christmas and a Wedding

We traveled to St. Thomas today.   It was up early, travel, travel, travel, some issues that were’t insurmountable and eventually made it to the lovely home my in-laws rented for our extended family for the week.   Because it was a long day and because I’m tired, here’s a post in my daughter’s words about her experience being in Uncle Bob and Uncle Brian’s wedding:




We’re here.   This is my daughter in the pool this morning.   She’s been wanting to get in since seven o’clock this morning.

 

I’m posting this a day late now that I’ve gotten to reliable WiFi which means it’s Christmas Day.   So happy Christmas to everyone.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has settled into vacation with his family.   He loves his grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.   We’re all here but Aunt A and we miss her.   My son wanted me to tell her, “Merry Christmas, I love you so so so so so so so so so so so so so so much.”   (I lost count of the number of “so’s” but it was a lot.)

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter’s vision is bad.   It may be zero at this point from how she’s moving around in the house here, but she does know what’s around based on what people are telling her.  This morning she walked out on the patio (seen in the picture above) and said, “Good morning Hans Lollik.”   She was saying hello to the island in the distance she’s heard us talk about.

The Angry Toaster Oven

This morning was “Christmas” for us here.   We were celebrating two days early because we’re leaving to visit with family tomorrow morning.   There were a lot of questions from the children about what would happen with Santa, what with us not being here for Christmas and all.   I’m not overly keen on Santa as a big deal because I’d rather Christmas be about family and giving as opposed to getting lots of things from an unknown person who doesn’t even live on our continent, but that’s how it goes, and the children do get excited, especially when their friends all talk about Santa.

We had it covered though.   I went simple saying this happened all the time and Santa had to have a way to help with families who were away for Christmas.   My husband went with a more in-depth explanation.   Either way though, this morning arrived and there was a present for each of them under the tree from Santa.   Four grandparents were here and we had a nice, albeit frenzied, morning.

One thing that’s nice about having Christmas not on Christmas is things are open.   I wanted to get up and go get some coffee.   As I was rolling over in bed my husband said to me, “I think that toaster oven of yours has had a long life.”   This was code for, “I want to get a new toaster oven.”   He had found one that was also an air fryer and a convection oven and did twelve other nifty things in a small space on top of the counter.   So I said, “are you saying you want to get me a toaster oven for Christmas?”

He said that was exactly what he was thinking.   I explained about the need for coffee and we found the model he wanted available at a store down the road.   So I got in the car, picked up that latte I was wanting, got the antibiotics for my daughter at the pharmacy and then went to Bed Bath and Beyond, all in my Christmas pajamas.

I was thinking about my ex-husband’s mother who one year, upon getting a toaster oven from her husband, was offended because she thought the underlying message was that she needed to do more cooking.   Not so here.  No offense taken.   Mostly because my husband loves to cook and also because he was right, that twenty-year-old toaster oven had seen better days.  

I got to the store, got the last one of the model barely in the cart, swearing at the oversized box that would barely wedge into the cart space.   I checked out, remembered a coupon at the last minute, running back to the car in my pajamas, which was fine, because additional money off and all.  

Then things went wrong.   When I got to the car I couldn’t get the box out of the cart.   I pulled and the rib hurt.   I was parked on an incline and I couldn’t get the box in further or out at all.   I did some colorful swearing as the box wedged my finger against the cart, resulting in a cardboard “paper tear” followed by a blood blister, escaping with a bruised but thankfully not broken finger.

I dragged the cart to the curb and tried to get the wheels on some mulch to get a better purchase on the box.   It moved but then slid back down further.   I thought I could get it out at this point, but I didn’t think I could carry the box to the car without it dropping due to the bulky size or possibly the cart careening back into the car.  While I looked over the situation I did some more swearing.  

And then a man came over and offered to help.  At this point I though of stories where a kindly man helps a woman in need, only to shove her into the car and drive off with her to his den of torture.  I was so annoyed with the box that I was willing to take my chances and accepted his offer of help.

He got the box out and into the car while I held onto the cart and then he said, “nice pajamas” as he carried the cart back up towards the entrance to the store.

The toaster oven is now settled in to it’s new home on our counter.   We’ve used it three times so far to warm or cook food.   My finger and bruised ego will heal.   On the whole, a good Christmas present, I’d say.

The Big Boy Update:  My son got some video games from Santa.   We learned a lesson last year that if he’s got games he can play, he will leave us all sitting around the tree to go and play them, uncaring about any other gifts he might have.   So this year the games were downloadable—and the downloads wouldn’t happen until Christmas was over.

The Tiny Girl Chronicle:  My daughter got some very nice gifts this year.   It’s harder to shop for her because of her vision impairment.   My husband spent two days modifying Chutes and Ladders for her.   We’re taking it on our trip with us.   She loves it.

Early Christmas

Tomorrow is the 23rd of December, or I suppose more accurately, today is the 23rd of December.   My blog post for the 22nd has gotten late enough that it’s past midnight as I sit here in the basement typing.

We’re having Christmas early due to travel on the 25th.   My in-laws and parents are coming in the morning and we’re going to pretend it’s Christmas Day just like it would be normally on the 25th.   The children were worried about Santa.   We explained this happened to people from time to time and Santa was a fairly helpful and flexible guy.  

We’ll see what the children think about their presents from Santa tomorrow.   From us, there was a puppy some weeks ago, so they’re not expecting much.   From Santa they typically get one present.   My son is so easy.   He’s always been.   This year there will be two small pieces of cardboard that represent two games he wants on his Nintendo Switch.   He’ll be thrilled.

My daughter is questionable though.   I discovered this in her bag from school this morning:

She was wanting an airplane she could sit in and fly a week or two ago.   Now it looks like she wants a trampoline.   Either way, I’m afraid she’s going to be disappointed.   Hopefully the things we got her and the other presents under the tree for her will make up for the lack of a fully functional, child-sized airplane.   She’s a pretty understanding little girl.  

The Big Boy Update:  My son and Whitaker were making dominoes courses today, lining up the dominoes and then starting the chain reaction to knock them all down.   They had an idea part-way through though and got some tape.   We now have one hundred dominoes taped end to end going across the living room and into the foyer.   They can’t be knocked down, but they can’t stand up for that matter either.   We’ll see what they do with them tomorrow.   They were very proud of getting a full hundred taped together—a feat that required more than one roll of tape.  Whitaker was more into the towers.   He’s got a steady hand; here’s one of the towers he built before my son got interested in joining him.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Aunt Margaret took my daughter to get a pedicure today.   They were trying to figure out the names of the nail polish colors and Margaret said she had to get her reading glasses out.   My daughter said with a sense of surprise and wonder, “you wear glasses?”  Margaret explained how she wore contacts some and glasses some of the time too.   My daughter reached out and touched Margaret’s face, feeling her glasses.   When Margaret told me the story I realized we don’t talk about who else also wears glasses but maybe we should.   Maybe it would make my daughter feel like she’s not alone with vision issues.

Late, Not Cold

It's not cold at all.  It’s unseasinably warm today.  We went to a white elephant party at ling-time friends's this evening.  I got an adult coloring book for cat lovers called #CATBUTT.   It’s hard to beat that for a white elephant gift.

My children are going be excited about tomorrow: My son is going to get to go to a movie with Uncle Jonathan and my daughter is going to get a pedicure with Aunt Margaret.  But tonight I’m tired and ready to sleep.   We're on the way home from the party and I’m getting this post done as my husband drives, it’s late.

The Big Boy Update:  My son did a full hour of reading again today for screen time.  I told him we needed to pick some books for the trip because he was going to have to do some reading on the trip too.  He was find with that.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter had her last day of school today before her longest break of the entire year, longer than summer by a full week.   What are we going to do with her all that time?  Thankfully Mimi is in town.

Trepak

My daughter and I were on the way to school this morning.   I had put on a Trans-Siberian Orchestra song that was a compilation of multiple Christmas songs.   My daughter said, “I know that song.   Can we play the whole song?”   I said sure and she told me to search for "The Nutcracker suite tree-pack”.   I figured she had heard something wrong at school so I had her spell it and she said, “t-r-e-p-a-k”.   I still thought she didn’t know what she was talking about but I pressed the button anyway and said, “Play the nutcracker suite trepak”.  And sure enough, the song came up, spelled exactly like she had said.  

I had known the song since I was a child, but for some reason not by that name “Trepak” or a Russian Dance.   I told my daughter she was definitely smarter than me.

This is what the notifications on my iPad looked like this evening and is a good indication of what it’s like to have a puppy in the house that wants or needs to go out a lot:

The Big Boy Update:  My son is getting screen time today in exchange for reading.   This is my child who a year ago was having a very hard time reading.   Now he wants to read everything.   He had to read for an hour today, but I think ended up reading for more than that, in order to have screen time.   He finished the take home reading assignment for the holidays on the first day of break.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was suppose to be asleep tonight while my son read in the closet with the light on.   She has her last day of school tomorrow while he can sleep late.   When I came up a half-hour later after hearing voices, I found her with a pillow and blanket bed made beside him in the closet.   When I asked her why she was in the closet and not asleep she said, “he was reading to me and I couldn’t hear in the bedroom.”

Home Alone

I had a lot of things I think I would have written this blog post about tonight if I’d gotten to it at an earlier point in the evening.   As it is, I’m just getting to the first paragraph here, my husband has walked into the room and I’ve given him the finger up, “shhhsh” warning that I’m writing a blog post and interrupting me would be unwise.   Well, not unwise so much as would annoy me.

My husband said, “but you sent that email hours ago”.   I wasn’t sure what email he was talking about, but hours ago I’d told him to leave me alone so I could write a blog post and then I got distracted by many, many other things that needed my attention.   One of the things was my son who is out on holiday break as of lunch today.  He was in no way tired so we decided to let him watch Home Alone after his sister went to sleep.

It is relevant to the story here to say there are movies people assume I've seen.   Movies, “everybody’s seen”.   Just because a movie has a high pop-culture ranking, doesn’t necessarily mean I’ve seen it.   I have large gaps in that area—with Home Alone being one of the movies I’ve never seen.

I know what happens in the movie, have seen countless clips and people have talked about the movies for decades.   But I’ve never seen it.   Tonight I’m late writing this post because I kept getting sucked in to the move as I walked past or answered questions from my son.

I didn’t remember how old the boy was that’s left home alone in the movie.   It turns out he’s eight, fitting as my son is eight.   My son loved the movie, laughed, giggled, was impressed, and even cried at the end when his mother finally got home.   He didn’t want me to see that he was crying, so I pretended to be looking elsewhere while he wiped his eyes.

The Big Boy Update:  After watching Home Alone tonight, I warned my son to never, ever do any of those things in real life.   I don’t think he would, but just in case…

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  We had my daughter’s IEP annual meeting to update her “Individualized Education Plan” for the coming year.   We have a great team working with her.   Everyone was very complimentary of her.  She’s smart and driven and wants to do things for herself.   She is excelling in all areas of school, being above grade level in both reading and math, as well as learning all the additional skills such as braille and abacus work she uses when working on reading and math.

The Feather Dinner

My daughter and husband made dinner from scratch today.   They were doing it, all at my daughter’s direction, for a Y Guides feather badge my daughter was working towards.   They made Panera-style tomato basil soup using a recipe my husband found online.   They spent a lot of time making the bread.    My daughter tore up the basil leaves and prepared the croutons (bought) for the table.

She set the table for the six of us (my parents joined us) and created a drink all her own that we all liked: orange juice, lemonade and one-and-a-half cans of plain seltzer in a pitcher.   For dessert she picked mini Klondike bars.  

As we ate we asked about how they had made the meal, starting from the beginning when they went to the store together.   But it went back further: my husband had brailled the shopping list on a sheet of paper for my daughter.   As they went down the aisles she told him what was next to get.

Then, today, she read the recipe sheets, also brailled by my husband, to make each item.   She did a lot of work to make this happen, but so did my husband.    Thanks to you both for a special dinner and evening with our family.

The Big Boy Update:  My son ate lunch in the office today.   He said it was fun, but he was covering up the fact that he was sent for threatening students in his class.   He threatened them because they were saying he was annoying.   He was annoying because he was either bored or lonely or had some hyperactivity thing going, I’m not sure, but it started a chain reaction.   The fallout continued when he got home.   He’s learning about consequences for his words and actions.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  At dinner tonight my daughter was the center of attention.   She likes it when this happens.  And she deserved it, she had worked very hard to make a memorable family dinner with her father.   It was hard for her brother to get a word in though, although I tried to keep him involved in the conversation somewhat.

Ragamuffin Santa Photos

There is a picture taking, sit on Santa’s lap tonight at our clubhouse.  My husband, being the defacto event coordinator for the neighborhood, headed over early to get everything set up with the other parents helping with the event.   He was going to be gone from four-thirty until I suppose everything is cleaned up.   He told me as he was getting ready to leave that there were still slots available this year at each of the picture block windows.   He also told me there would be dinner there for the children—nuggets—and I could bring the children over and not have to rustle up some dinner for them myself.

Sold!  I told the children we were going over just before six o’clock.   My daughter wanted to talk to Santa, my son only wanted to go and eat nuggets.   And that’s pretty much what happened.   My son must have eaten twenty nuggets and my daughter calmly waited in line to see Santa.   Well, my daughter really wanted to eat candy canes, lollipops (from the lollipop tree) and Hershey’s kisses.   Santa was second on her priority list.

The ragamuffin part was mostly what our family looked like.   I had on my pajamas top with a sweat shirt over it and some camo pants.   My children were in their casual, somewhat mismatched school clothes and the Polynesian sauce was mostly wiped off their faces by the time we got to the Santa’s lap portion of the evening.

Other families were in holiday outfits.   Dresses for the girls and one little guy had a bow tie on.   I hadn’t washed my hair in four days and had thrown it into a ponytail.   Makeup?  Perish the thought.   My children’s hair was in disarray with my son’s hair standing up in a spot or two and my daughter’s looking like it hadn't been brushed in days (which is sort of how it always looks, even after it’s just been brushed).

But we made it and Santa was consulted by them both for presents.   My son wasn’t sure what he wanted and was a little bit, “above” the whole Santa thing.   My daughter asked questions and was shown Santa’s key that he used to get into people’s houses if they didn’t have a chimney.

I think they both enjoyed it, particularly the nuggets and candy canes.   We’ll see if the cameraman was able to capture something magical and my family looks like we actually prepared for the evening and the photos.

After we got home I talked to my husband on the phone.   He said Santa had realized part-way through that my daughter couldn’t see.   He spent time letting her touch the different parts of his outfit and showing her the strip of sleigh bells he had attached to his belt.   He told my husband she was very sweet and he enjoyed talking to her very much.

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Violence Event:  They were in the tub tonight.   All was happy.   Very happy.   They were splashing way too much and had multiple warnings on water getting out of the tub.   When I came in and saw the mess I told them they were done with the bath and they had to clean up.   My son announced he was staying in the tub forever, not coming out to clean up at any point in the future…until he died.   Then he got angry and elbowed his sister twice, very hard, in the back.   I lost my temper, grabbed him and swatted his shoulder, which he reacted to like I thought he would.   I asked him if he liked being hit and did it hurt?   He was upset.   I said violence wasn’t ever okay in this house.  (Saying that right after I’d been a bad example myself, I still have a lot to work on as a parent.)  His sister shoved into him and whacked at him to get away from her and then he slapped her again, twice, hard, in the back.   She screamed and hit him back.   I jerked him out of the tub and walked him upstairs, naked and wet a full hour-and-a-half before bedtime, telling him he was done for the day and he wasn’t coming out of the room until morning.

His sister, crying downstairs, got brought up second, after I’d taken a picture of her reddening back, and was also summarily dropped into their bedroom with no clothes.   I showed my son the picture, saying this was abuse and was the type of thing police were interested in seeing if there ever was a real problem in our household.   I reiterated the no violence statement and then walked out with two very upset children (good).   I called my husband and told him what had happened.   Then, I got them pajamas.  I came back into the room to tell them their father had asked that I bring them clothes for bed (he hadn’t, but he was absentee “good cop”).

When I came in the room I met with two normalized, happy children, dressed in clothes for tomorrow, talking with each other.   My daughter asked me to bring the swish up, her drops and her antibiotic pill.   They were getting the laser tag set on their arms and have been happily playing together for thirty minutes now.

I don’t know if I handled it poorly or well.   It seemed to work though.  Or maybe it backfired.  I’m not sure.  I guess I’ll find out in time.

Tempers Rising

It’s been one of those evenings.   My husband and I have both lost our tempers at the children in not very pretty ways.  Oh, and the dog too.   My husband is currently standing outside saying she’s going to stay outside, “until something comes out of her”.

The dog is growing quickly and has to go to the bathroom a lot, but she also seems in no hurry to do so.   She’s distracted by her seemingly boundless love for the outdoors and so when she goes out, she takes her time, sits down, enjoys the view and isn’t in a real hurry to do anything.   If she has an urgent need she goes right away, but even then, she doesn’t want to come in.   She doesn’t have, “accidents” in the house—they’re deliberate.   She realizes after coming in that she’s got to go and doesn’t mind doing so in the house.   She’s a puppy though and she’s working the system, trying to get her own way.   It’ll work itself out.

The children, on the other hand, are pushing very hard in every direction.   My daughter’s constant answer of, “no!” to options for things or statements of expectations we have for her.   My son is negotiating everything, especially when it isn’t a choice, like, “you must sit in your seat at the restaurant” or, “you have to brush your teeth”.

My husband snapped at both children when we got in from dinner.  I had very strongly corrected my son in the restaurant, quietly but firmly, after giving him the warning that I would do so in front of everyone there, if he insisted on continuing the way he was going.   It’s not okay to pretend to shoot people in the face with an rifle as you walk by them.   He was going to sit in his seat and not bound back and forth at the edge of the table in the way of the service staff and he most definitely wasn’t pretending to jab me in the ribs with his elbow when he didn’t get his way.

This all begs the question, “what have we done wrong?”  I think parents think this a lot when their children aren’t the perfect little angels we hope they’ll be.   Have we allowed things to get to a point by poorly managing discipline and expectations or is this a developmental point and we’ll have two successful children as adults because they’re independent and strong-willed?

The children at least we can rationalize with, explain and have future expectations clearly understood.   The dog, well, that one’s going to take work.   We’re going to have to change our behaviors as owners to get that one fixed I’m pretty sure.  

The Big Boy Update:  We were talking about what to order the other day and thought we might be putting too many things in our order.   When asked, my son said, “Mom, I’m never full.   You know me.  I could eat that whole building."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter spent the night with Nana and Papa last night.   At dinner tonight we asked her about how it went.   She told us about the night and then said, “for breakfast we had banana bread—which was way too healthy."

Laser Tag and Donuts

Tonight is my son’s eighth birthday party.   We sort of encouraged him in a direction mostly because his parents were way behind on scheduling a birthday party for him.   I casually suggested a sleep over, which he was immediately excited about as we’ve never had them for parties before.   He wanted to invite his whole class, but settled on the three boys closest to our house, the three boys he plays with all the time.

He thought about it and said to me, “could their sisters come over at the beginning for a while?”   I told him that sounded like a good idea.   The girls could come over for dinner and cake and then the boys would stay for the night.

Cake?  No, he didn’t want cake, he wanted donuts instead.   Done.  Easy.   Today my husband and son went to Dunkin’ Donuts and picked out a selection for tonight.   The dinner my son wanted initially involved six or seven different restaurants.   He wanted to get food each child loved the most for their own custom meal.   He settled on P.F. Chang’s though because everyone liked that.

My husband ordered the food on his phone and went to pick it up after a quick stop at the grocery store for things to make breakfast with in the morning.  I hadn’t thought about breakfast but my husband had.   My son said pancakes, waffles, scrambled eggs and bacon would be nice.   My husband loves to cook and said he’d make all of that in the morning.

There was a hiccup with the dinner though.   My husband walkie talkie’d me on my watch and said he was stuck at traffic at the mall.   Traffic in the mall’s parking areas was barely moving.   Neither of us had thought about it being a prime Christmas shopping day and the mall was packed.   He eventually found a parking spot and made it home just as the six children were arriving and their parents were leaving.

Claire, one of the sisters, told me it was a good night for the party because the other parents had dinner plans out and two of the girls were having a sleepover themselves.  Dinner and donuts took an hour and then, just as the other girls were leaving, my in-laws came to get my daughter, who was going to have the first sleepover ever at their new house.

I was marginally useful today with my broken rib and spasming back.   My husband said it was okay, he would take care of it all.   My son told me I should go lay down.   I did a bit of laying down and got a decent bit of things done, including washing the dog which was far overdue.

The house isn’t quiet now, even though there are half the children there were earlier.   The boys are playing laser tag.   I’m hiding in the bedroom but I can still hear their yelling from the next floor.   We’ll see what time they get to sleep tonight.

The Big Boy Update: On the way to school the other day my son asked me, “how many toes does Magneto have?”   We decided he must have eleven: ten on his feet and one in his name.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  We had a dog trainer come to work with the children today and give them some guidance on how to interact with the dog.   She gave my daughter some good advice on what to do and not do and how certain things are interpreted differently by a dog.   For instance, the only time dogs hug is when they’re fighting so hugging a dog when they don’t expect it can be the wrong message.   My daughter listened to her and has been trying to change her behavior since the trainer left.

Not Even Sure...

…what I’m going to write about tonight.  Soma days are like this.  Things happened, lots of things, but what’s on my mind?  Right now I’m tired and in pain so this will likely be short.  I’ve been out to dinner with three couples and then we went to an Escape Room.   It’s always fun when we get together, always good company, always fun conversations.

Or, maybe I’ll write about the missing piece candy from earlier today.   I went to spit it out, dropped it and couldn’t find it so I gave up.   Twelve hours later I just discovered it—in the fur on the top of my dog’s head.  She didn’t seem to mind it was there.

Or, maybe that’s all I’m going to write about today because we have my son’s birthday party tomorrow—a sleepover—and a dog trainer coming in the morning and my husband and I both haven’t the energy to get the house back in shape after the last several days.   Yeah, maybe I think I’ll just go to sleep now.

The Big Boy Update:  The sitter told me my son, well after bed, was making a commotion in his room.   She went up to find him half-dressed.  When she asked him what he was doing (he was putting on khaki pants) he said he was getting ready for tomorrow.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I can’t wait to tell my daughter tomorrow that one of the clues needed to open a lock in the Escape Room we did tonight was in Braille, hidden in the pictures on the wall of the room.   We got that clue easy as we didn’t have to find the key to know what the letters were.

Everything’s a Mess

If I’m going to do this blog post properly, it will be long, but I don’t know if I have it in me tonight.  I’ll start by saying we’re ending with the house a complete mess tonight.  Cookie trays are on the counter with no covers.  Dirty dishes are out, backpacks haven’t been unpacked.   Lunches aren’t made.   Things are in total disarray and the dog has strewn her toys all over the place alongside dirty clothes and shoes.

My husband singlehandedly coordinated our neighborhood holiday party which was tonight.   I coordinated the luminary neighborhood event, which was tonight.  Both events went well, with the holiday party being a lovely event.   My husband turns out to be excellent at planning, coordinating catering, decorating and socializing with everyone.   I continue to be impressed.

The luminary event ran itself for the most part, making my job easy.   Supplies were ordered, emails were sent out, people picked up supplies from our porch and left or sent payment and luminaries were lit tonight before the holiday party.   Easy.

But back to the house and why it’s a mess.  It’s in part because today was a heck of a busy day.   The other part is my day yesterday was a bad one.   Let me explain…

Schools were delayed three hours yesterday due to melting snow, below freezing temperatures and black ice.   I ran out of the house, nearly late to a nine o’clock appointment, arrived, opened the car door and promptly slipped on a patch of black ice I hadn’t even seen and did a fancy pratfall onto the macadam.

A visit to the chiropractor and I found out I hadn’t messed things up too badly, which is good for me because I’m typically a klutz of high level skills.   I won’t enumerate the additional things that went wrong yesterday, but it didn’t get better after the black ice incident.

It ended, after the children went to bed, with me carrying downstairs presents with wool socks on the wooden steps.   Three steps from the bottom and I slipped.   I tried to catch myself but my feet, when landing on the floor only slid quickly forward, causing me to slam my right back ribcage directly into the edge of the step.

There was a crack.   I felt it.   I hoped it was alignment kind of thing where a bone “pops” but I wasn’t sure.   I took an NSAID and hoped for the best.   I was awake in a lot of pain at six o’clock and figured I’d go ahead and go into the chiropractors office to have him eliminate alignment or adjust me.   One x-ray later and we didn’t have answers.   He didn’t see a fracture on the x-ray, but it could be a hairline fracture that was hidden by my diaphragm.

Alignment-wise I was fine, pain-wise I was not.   Stabbing sharp pain that made it difficult to get up and down, breathe, hurt to laugh, etc.   But that didn’t mean it was a break.   I was going to wait a day and go to the orthopedic clinic on Friday but things just got more painful as the day went on so I went into the walk-in clinic.

Two more x-rays and the doctor said she didn’t see indications of a significant break, but the location, T10 rib, was hard to see due to positioning in the body.   She thought based on my symptoms and specific pain areas it was probablly a hairline fracture.   Either in the rib main body or at the connection point of the rib, called a “transverse process fracture”.

The good news is it will heal on its own with no intervention.   The bad news is I’m useless, or at least feel like I am with a day as busy as today was.   So the house is a mess, my husband is over at the clubhouse, probablly cleaning up for the next few hours and I’m going to try to get to sleep after taking another NSAID the doctor recommended.

The Big Boy Update:   At the neighborhood party tonight my son was the most outgoing, boisterous, energetic, friendly and happy friend to the other boys there.   His energy level didn’t drop, even when we got home.   I hope he’s asleep tonight.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter fell asleep on the floor in front of the fireplace shortly after arriving at the clubhouse tonight.   We couldn’t wake her and she went to sleep right after getting home and in warm pajamas.

The Old Password

I had a password for my Apple ID that was six characters long.   It was easy to remember and could be typed in quickly.   I’d had that password from the first time I got an Apple iPhone model 3GS, which was the second iPhone Apple ever came out with. 

From time to time things would happen either on iTunes or in getting a new phone and Apple would suggest I change my password to something much longer with a capital and numeric.   Only I didn’t want to change my password—I liked it the way it was.  

Apple got more insistent over time, suggesting I really should change my password.   They were so certain I needed to do this that I couldn’t do some things unless I agreed on a password change.   But I’m stubborn.  I decided I didn’t want to do those things badly enough and I think in a way it caused me to hunker down, ready for a fight to keep the insecure, out-of-date password the way it was.

I’m not sure why I was fighting the change so hard.   At this point my iPhone uses facial recognition for the password and my iPad and Mac use my fingerprint.  It is rare that I ever have to enter my password.  So I gave in.   

This goes back to Uncle Bob and Uncle Brian getting married and deciding to store all my photos in iCloud.   So far I haven’t had to enter the password once, even though I’ve done a lot of things that have needed it.   Apple ended the fight pretty much by making knowing the password something I rarely have to do.   I don’t even remember what it is come to think of it.  I wonder how long it’ll be before I have to look it up?

The Big Boy Update:  I came home from puppy training class to have my son tell me I had a present. When I asked what it was he told me I had four wishes.   I said I was pretty excited about that but that I was running off to a cookie swap at a neighbor’s house.   He asked me if I wanted to use one of the wishes before going.   I thought about it and said I wished I would come home with lots of delicious cookies.   And it turns out I did.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter excitedly told me she had a present for me this afternoon.   I had to close my eyes and come into the dining room.   When I arrived she told me to look at the three small bins of dog treats and chewable.   She proudly took off the lid on the first one and told me she’d organized all the bones.   How did she know that’s just the kind of present I love, I asked her?

Jingle Bells

Both my mother and Aunt Margaret had the same idea on the same day—bell the dog so that my daughter could find her more easily.   Brilliant!  Why hadn’t the idea dawned on me at least one of the first three hundred times my daughter asked, “where is the dog?” over the first two weeks we had her?   Unknown, but sometimes I’m dense.   Regardless of my inability to see an elegant and common solution to the problem of canine location, “belling” the dog was a simple matter. 

I have loads of jewelry stuff in my craft room.   I went up, got a jingly bell, a jump ring, my jewelry pliers and hooked a bell on the dog’s collar in a matter of minutes.  Problem solved.   But it was only temporary.   

A few days later the dog went silent again.   The bell was gone but the jump ring was still there.   Jingle bell failure, clearly.   I got a second bell and did the same thing.   This time, when the bell failed a few days later, we found it on the floor.   The loop at the top of the bell had been weak and had pulled open, slipping off the jump ring. 

I could fix that though, I didn’t need the point of failure of the weak loop at the top, I could hook a large jump ring through two openings of the ball-shaped bell.   That worked for two more days and then the bell broke completely in half from the strain of a bouncy dog jingling it all day long.  

It was time for jingle bell mark two, a second, smaller bell with a formed eye hole in the top of the bell.   No reasonable dog-based strain was going to either break off the loop or crack the bell in half.  I got two bells and two large jump rings and hooked them onto the leash ring on the collar.   And two days later I found out I’d created another problem.

The large half-inch jump rings I’d been using were similar in size to the main hook on the dog’s collar where we attached the leash.   My daughter had figured out how to open the leash clasped attach it to the dog’s collar so she could take her outside.  But she’d been missing the collar ring and getting the bell’s jump rings instead.  I used a strong jump ring, but it wasn’t designed to hold back a dog running at full pelt across the yard.   This time when the bell came off the leash disconnected too.   That was a fun fifteen minutes of catching a partially trained dog who doesn’t want to come inside when you’re late to an appointment.   

So tonight I fixed the problem for good.   I ditched the large jump rings in favor for smaller ones that my daughter won’t be able to connect the leash to and switched to split rings instead.   A split ring is what your keychain has.  You have to split it open, wedge the key in and then spin it around and around until you get it to the end of the loop and then, pop, the key’s hooked on and the ring has snapped back closed.   

At least I hope it’s fixed.   It’s convenient to hear the dog’s “jingle bells” as she moves around the house.   She rarely barks and isn’t always in a hurry to find you.   But if she moves, we can figure out where she is.  My daughter, with her hearing, can find her before the rest of us can.

What else has happened here, let’s see, oh, my husband is coordinating another neighborhood event at our clubhouse this Thursday.   It’s a holiday party we typically have on a weeknight for a few hours that includes children as well as adults.  He realized he didn’t have decorations for the clubhouse and our neighbor who helped with her own businesses decorations has changed jobs and wasn’t an option.   So I suggested our decorations.   

We’re going out of town for Christmas and I don’t want to come home to a holiday-festive house when the holidays are over.   My secret plan was to put up bits of decorations here and there every day so that just before we left not much remained out.   Having the neighborhood holiday party as an excuse to get several boxes of decorations up and out this week was a good excuse.

One of the decorations we’ll have there is the lollipop tree my father gave the children some years ago.   Every year I look for plain lollipops, the kind that’s flat, circular and only one color.   It looks more traditional and the clear wrappers show off the candy on the tree.   The only place I can find them now (Amazon of course) is through a vendor that sells five pound bags of them.   The price is low but there are far more lollipops than the little tree can hold.   

So we’re toting the tree over to the clubhouse and putting the excess lollipops in a basket for the children.   It’s an alternative to candy canes and is a bit less messy as you don’t have to hold the candy itself to eat it.   It’s a lovely little wooden tree, I’m looking forward to having it out for the neighborhood to see. 

And I cut my finger.   Thumb, actually.   Using a knife when I should have been using my safety cutter to slice through a zip tie.   I held the tissues tightly together for over an hour and then put a tight bandaid on my thumb in hopes that primary wound closure would reduce healing time.   It’s much less painful now than it initially was.   Tomorrow I’ll actually get a good look at the wound.   I didn’t get a good look at it tonight.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has done a lot of digital today, which is what he wanted to do on his birthday.   He now can’t get to sleep because he didn’t burn enough energy for the day.   Last night he had a similar problem.   I brought down a “spot the differences” book I’d gotten for him and told him he could sit by the tree if he wanted to work on the book until he felt tired.   He and his sister were sleeping on the couches in the living room as school was cancelled again today.   He sat down by the tree and I brought over the moon, a glowing ball of light I’d gotten as a night light.   We turned it to bright and he worked by “moonlight” beside the tree until he was ready to sleep.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter thought until today that I was reading braille like she does, using my fingers.   I told her I wouldn’t be able to read like she did, ever.  That adults who didn’t learn to read with their fingers when they were young aren’t ever able to read like someone can who learns when they’re a child.  I told my daughter she had the most sensitive fingers of anyone I knew.   She said, “mom, you’re making it sound like it’s my super power.”   I told her I thought it was. 

Appropriated Jacket

It’s been not too terribly cold but snowy and rainy and sleety here.   I’m not sure if, “sleety” is a word, but since autocorrect didn’t try and change it three times into a similar but different word, I’m going with it.

Two nights ago we had some snow in the few hours before dawn.   We discovered our dog was mad for the cold weather and snow and that all the children close to our house like to come into our house, pile their wet clothes in front of our fireplace and play inside until they were ready to go back out into the damp mess.

I say “mess” because it wasn’t a very fun snow for more than a few hours.   The warm weather coupled with the intermittent rain and sleet made things look more like snow than they really were.   This morning patches were melted and all the vegetation had grown so heavy with waterlogged snow they’d shed their white coverings in large chunks.

But children are attracted to anything cold and white, especially when it calls for cancellation of schools, so they went back out to play.   My husband took all the children on a hike in the woods with strict warnings against getting anywhere near, or even thinking about the creek as an option for any of their body parts to touch.

Our dog, officially a cold-weather lover with no need to warm her paws or dry her fur, followed along happily bounding in and out of the crunchy, chunky snow while new snowfall fell.   Temperatures stayed a few degrees above freezing, making the weather look nice but not feel too cold.

I was in and out of the house a good bit over the extended weekend’s weather.   I’ve been wearing a jacket I appropriated and claimed as mine.   I got it from our front coat closet.   It’s light in weight but warm in function.   It has a hood and it’s a bit larger than my size which accommodates anything wintery and bulky I might be wearing.

We don’t know who the jacket belonged to.   We tried to find the owner, but by the time we’d discovered we had an extra jacket in our coat closet it was the summer months and we had no way of knowing when the jacket was left.  We left the jacket in place, hoping someone would come over and discover this was the house they’d left that jacket in ten months ago and boy what a nice surprise to find it had been here all along.   But no one claimed it.

Before my brother-in-law’s wedding we made space in the coat closet for guests that might bring a jacket.   It was then that I decided to try the jacket on and decided I liked it enough to have bought it myself had I been looking for one.

So it’s mine now.   Unless it’s yours.   If it is, you can have it back.   You’ve got good taste.

The Big Boy Update:   Tomorrow my son will be eight.   School is cancelled due to weather.   He’s pretty happy about it.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter and I played a game she got for her birthday.   There is a vertical map and each player sits on one side of the map, not able to see what’s on the opponent’s side.   Your piece is magnetically connected to the piece on the opposite side of the map.   You have to work together to navigate through a maze—which is different on both sides.   This is all good and fun if you can see.   So we modified the board.   We made a tactile version  so she could feel all the paths in the maze and used stickers to mark the treasure spots.   She could play the game easily once she could feel what was happening.   She loved moving the pieces around the board, knowing the piece on the other side was moving too.

Snowball

Snow was predicted here last night and into today.   It was a confusing prediction with snow happening heavily at temperatures a bit above freezing followed by rain, then snow, then rain, and temperatures never really dropping below thirty-two.  Given the temperature and the rain involvement, I didn’t expect accumulation and yet there were estimates of three to six inches.   I’m synthesizing this information across multiple weather apps/services which were significantly differing in each area of their predictions.

But snow did happen and when we woke up around dawn we had four inches-ish of snow.   The children were excited.   The dog, well, I wasn’t so sure about.   Was she going to refuse entirely to step into the fluffy white stuff or would she bound into it gleefully and refuse to come inside?

It turned out to be the latter, with the dog not wanting to come inside at all today.   I think she’d still be out there now if we hadn’t insisted she come in.   The snow early morning, before the rain started, was of a sticky sort and stuck to the dog’s fur in little clumps.   Then, just like what happens when you roll a small snowball around in the snow to make a big snow ball, the clumps on the dog’s legs and under her belly got larger and larger.

She came to the door with a strange gait and when I picked her up, thinking I’d shake off the snow, I realized she had so much snow attached to her fur she couldn’t walk straight.   She’d almost turned herself into a canine snowball.  It took five minutes in the tub with the hand sprayer to get the snow to melt and release from her fur.

With the dog now half wet, I took her in front of the fireplace, thinking she’d be cold and hopeful she’d stay there and warm up.   But she wasn’t cold.   She ate some food and then, with her fur still damp from the snowball removal, she wanted to go back outside with the children who had now had their first round of hot chocolate and were ready to attack the white coverage in the yard again.

By now there was some rain happening and the texture of the snow had changed, leaving the dog’s fur free from clumping with snow.   She followed the children around, dove into the snow, jumped off the brick wall into the powder and didn’t want to come inside.

Eventually when all the children came in and the rain was heavier, making the snow less fun to play in, the dog came in and then had a nice nap on the bathroom floor—because it’s the coolest place in the house.   We almost named her Snowy but decided on Matisse instead.   I’m wondering if we made the right choice after seeing how much she loves snow today.

The Big Boy Update: The power was off for about four hours today.  My son fell asleep in his sleeping bag on the floor in the living room.  When he woke up he said, “this is all so boring, having no internet and no power.:

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter took a bath yesterday.  It started with us washing she dog and ended some hours later with her finally getting out.   It was over two hours, maybe three.   Her brother joined her in the end when he heard she’d added Mr. Bubbles to the bath.  My husband came in in time to save the bathroom floor from bubble overage and took this picture:

The Mystery of the Bath Bombs

I saw a video online on making bath bombs and thought it might be something fun to try with my daughter.   The ingredients were simple: citric acid, baking soda, Witch Hazel, food coloring and some essential oil for scent.   The materials were inexpensive and Amazon (of course) had them as well as some moulds to make the job easier.  I ordered the items and two days later my daughter and I   tried the project out.

It was easy.   We mixed the ingredients, put them in the moulds and a few minutes later we had bath bombs drying on a cookie sheet.   It was so easy I suggested it to a friend of mine as a project she could have people do at an essential oil party she was having.   She ordered the exact same supplies, brand and all and I brought my moulds to her house to use.   And it was a disaster.

She had three parties in total and we tried everything we could to get the mixture to make bombs that would work in the moulds.   Something was strange and I’ll jump ahead right now and say I still don’t know what the difference was.   Same materials with the one exception of using the powdered variety of food coloring of the same brand.  

We tried more liquid, less liquid, lubricating the moulds, not using food coloring and anything else we could think of but the bombs either wouldn’t hold shape, would strangely expand slowly or would stick firmly in the moulds.   Ultimately I told her I was sorry for suggesting a project I had said was easy but turned out to be a failure.  

Then today, another friend came over to make bath bombs at my house.   She had also ordered the same exact products.   I had warned her I wasn’t sure how things would work out, but I was willing to give it a try if she was.   She came over and I explained the difficulties we’d had the last time and how I thought it might be how much liquid we were adding but I wasn’t sure because we’d varied that to no avail the last time.  

But everything worked.   It worked every time.   We’d press the mixture into the moulds and it would pop right out, no waiting required.   We must have made thirty bath bombs.   We did have some that were a little too wet or too dry, but on the whole, things worked just like they’d shown on the video online.  

I don’t like a mystery like this.   The scientist part of me likes to isolate variables and determine the problem.  Humidity?  I don’t know.   Was it the powdered food coloring?  I thought we’d tried without color at one point though.    I have supplies still so I’m going to see if I can figure it out.   My children like bath bombs so maybe they’ll help me figure the mystery out.

The Big Boy Update:  My son lost his mind today.  Said he was going to die.   Said he wanted to leave our family.   It went on and on.   Eventually he wrote the six holiday and thank you cards though.  It took him four times as long, but he got in some serious whining work during the whole ordeal.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter keeps falling asleep at night early.   We’re wondering if it’s the low dose antibiotic she’s on that specifically targets the bladder for her repeat bladder infections.   She wakes up just fine in the morning though and is well-rested.

Conditioned Behaviors

I’ve written over 2500 posts on this blog.   Excepting when I’m out of town or there are extenuating circumstances, I go downstairs at the end of every day, usually when the children are in bed, and write something or other about the day or whatever I’ve been thinking about lately.   Sometimes I have something funny to put up that one or the other child said and sometimes I try and remember what they did of note that day to document their lives, a few sentences at a time.

So yesterday, while my husband was upstairs reading the children a story, I went to the basement and wrote a blog post.   After I pressed the Publish button I realized I’d already written a post earlier in the day.  

I tried to figure out if I cared—if I was caring that I’d done double duty for the day—or if I was fine having a particularly productive day of writing for a Thursday.   Did I want to forward date the post to today and have a day free of writing today.   In the end I decided that come about this time today, towards the end of the day, I’d be ready to write another post.  

It was work, writing these posts at the beginning.   Now it’s more cathartic, dumping my thoughts into an external repository so I can free up storage in my mental filing structure and fill it with whatever happens tomorrow.

The Big Boy Update:  Two days in a row my son has come home with his daily work plan showing not only that he completed all his assigned work, but that he did extra as well.   He’s proud of how well he’s done.  I’m hoping he can keep it up.   He has the intelligence to do the work—it’s all well within his skill level, but he needs to want to do the work and then stay on task.   Wanting to do the work is something we all struggle with.   Not everything we all do is fun and preferred, but we do it.   Staying on task is the part that’s mentally hard for him.   But it sounds like he’s trying very hard these last two days.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter and I went on a walk with the dog this evening.   We didn’t go far because the dog has now gotten accustomed to the leash but wants to pull—and I can’t let her do that.   She’s not the leader of the walk, she doesn’t get to decide where, how or when we go places so it was a particularly frustrating walk for her.   We didn’t move forward until she was calm and not pulling.   My daughter didn’t mind much because we were looking at the Christmas decorations at our neighbors houses.   She kissed a lot of the inflatables in neighboring yards.   She likes kissing things.   She has a very gentle kiss.   It’s a way for her to connect with something physically since she can barely see things, even the bright Christmas lights in the dark.

Peace Lunch

Last night my son and I talked about what he was taking to school today.   On Friday’s they have a fund raiser for this or that (there have been multiple) and the children can elect to have a slice of pizza for two dollars, two slices for four dollars or three slices for six dollars.   My son likes pizza and has typically joined in on the Friday fund raisers.

We talked about this particular one and how it wasn’t Hungry Howie’s pizza and how that was a shame because that was his favorite pizza.   He said he probablly should take two snacks because he had gotten hungry on the days prior at school.   He selected his snacks, put them in his backpack and that was that.

Today he went off to school and after lunch I got a call from his fill-in teacher, to discuss how he was doing in class because he’s had an issue getting work done this week.  In summary there, we basically had a serious discussion with my son, explaining we had run out of options and he had to get his work done or he would be doing work after school, until bedtime if necessary, because he had the responsibility to get the work done.   Let’s call it a mild threat.   Let’s say we were holding him accountable and not letting him get away with any, “I can’t focus” reasons.

He was bribed in a way because he wanted to watch a video after school.  And that simple offer worked.   His teacher called and said he’d worked all morning, hard, getting everything done easily—which he has full capability to do—and she was going to have to find extra work for him to do this afternoon.   So good news there; we’re hoping we can continue that trend, but more on that front as it unfolds.

Then she told me how he didn’t have a lunch.  Wait, hold on, oh…crap, it’s Thursday, not Friday when the pizza fundraiser was.   My son and I had both gotten the days confused.   Not to worry though, she said, they had had Peace Lunch (or maybe it’s Piece Lunch) in which every student in the class shares a little bit of their lunch.   She said the children love to do this when it happens and my son had eaten everything he’d been given—including three cheese sticks, which incidentally he won’t eat when I put them in his lunch box.

So good day all around and a happy Peace Lunch for my son.   He was more than pleased to show us his completed work plan when he got home and to sit in front of the television and watch the 50 Fortnite Fails YouTube video with his father and laugh at all the crazy antics.

The Big Boy Update:  Before bed tonight my son looked at their bunk beds and said, “mom, did you get this hunk-a-junk from China?”   I told him no, we had gotten it from the furniture store down the road.   He said he wasn’t sure because he saw Chinese writing on it somewhere.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has a love hate relationship with the puppy.   She plays with her, kisses her, hugs her and then cries when the puppy wants to play back with her little sharp teeth, just wanting to play tug of war with anything handy.   Fortunately we have a lot of dog toys around and my daughter is learning how to drag the dog all around with a toy in the dog's mouth, growling back at her and laughing.

Back to Braille

Let’s get back to braille.   I haven’t talked about it a while.  Have I been working on my braille studies?  Yes, but there have been hiccups.   Am I fluent?  Heck no, I have a long way to go; let me explain…

The Contracted Braille class is twenty-five units long.  I’ve just managed to submit my assignment at the end of unit seven.   There is a lot more to learn and I had to back off on the class for a while because I was having a hard time processing efficiently the braille I had already learned.   I could translate it, but not really “read” it.   I could go through with a pencil and put each letter or symbol above the braille character, referring to my reference sheets frequently to get things correct.   But it wasn’t really reading.

There was another factor in play that I rather hate telling you: I failed an assignment.   I’ll show you what I mean below.   Translating braille to print is pretty easy.   We can use cues from the context of the word or sentence to figure out what’s being said.   Translating print to braille—correctly, with no mistakes—is a whole other matter.   And my teacher is strict.

I forgot several capitalization indicators, reversed some ‘r’ and ‘w’ symbols and left off the number indicator before two numbers.   I got a lot—almost all—of the assignment correct, but a few mistakes and I’m below 80% and, well, fail.   Or in the case of this course, with is voluntary and has no actual final grade, I just have to start over and try again.

But it bothered me.   Braille is hard with it gets filled with contractions.   Fortunately, and with great timing, my daughter is about the same level in her study as I am in mine.   And my daughter does a lot of work at school.   I read hundreds of pages of her work, vocabulary work, math sheets, instructions, stories, poems—anything they could send home that she worked on, I read.   And it got easier.

I can read braille now without translating character for character.   I can go through a stack of braille pages fairly quickly, or at least I can at the level we’re at with the contractions we’ve learned so far.

Today I submitted the final assignment for unit seven for my course.   Here’s what it looks like and why ten simple sentences can be tricky and a few mistakes can be easy to make:



That was the assignment.   Here’s my marked up version of the sentences with each area in yellow a contraction and other notation to remember additional braille characters needed to identify things like numbers and capitals:



And here’s the final braille, which still looks like a whole lot of dots to me unless I take the time to start at the beginning and don’t lose my place.  Losing your place in a page of braille is no fun,



I reviewed the work several times.   I wonder how many mistakes I made that I passed over and didn’t see.   I’ll find out in a few days.

The Big Boy Update:  My son had a rough day at school yesterday, well and this week.  His teacher is calling in a half-hour to talk to us.   She’s stepping in for several weeks as his primary teacher’s father died and she’s out of town.   His teacher is the one he had (and loved) from last year.   We’ll update her and see if she has any ideas.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter’s taxi driver this morning told us she would have to pick my daughter up a full fifty minutes earlier than she normally did because of a change in passengers.   My husband thinks he’s going to drive her in on Mondays if the schedule doesn’t change.   An hour and forty-five minutes is too long in a cab in the morning.

Maybe I’ll Be an Editor

First off, let me start this post by saying my brother-in-law cost me $24 dollars this year.   Ooo, “brother-in-law” is actually exactly what I mean: as of Saturday, I have a new brother-in-law now that Uncle Brian married my brother-in-law, Bob.  So cool.

Anyways, about that twenty-four dollars… Brian was looking to find some pictures to put up as a slide show for the Friday night pre-wedding party and called us for advice.   He knew he had pictures stored in iCloud, but didn’t see how to get to them.   We compared settings on his phone and mine and I said I wasn’t sure I could help by direct comparison because I’d never turned on iCloud photo storage, thinking I had so many pictures on my laptop that enabling it would bump my storage up to a costly monthly fee.

But I toggled the switch to find out and it turned out that for only two more dollars each month I could have all my pictures stored remotely and have them accessible from my Mac, iPhone and iPad any time I wanted them.   This was a bit of an issue I’d had over time that PhotoStream wasn’t really helping with.   So I clicked the “Agree” or “go ahead and charge me” or whatever it said, button and my devices started dumping pictures to the cloud.

I had been doing workarounds to get pictures to and fro from one device to the other as needed for some time now, but now that everything is cloud-based, when I opened my laptop up tonight to post a naked picture of me here in this blog (don’t skip ahead, it’s coming) the photo was right there in Photos, no transfer necessary.  So thanks, Uncle Brian, that twenty-four dollars is going to be money well-spent in time saved and certainly will make me happy from an organizational standpoint.

Let’s get to the point of this post though, which is my son stealing my phone yesterday morning.   He was suppose to be getting dressed before breakfast.   He was not suppose to be stealing my phone while I tried to get some of the morning pain to abate in a hot bath (which is what I do every morning because it helps).   And he definitely wasn’t suppose to be taking pictures of me while I was in said tub.

I told him, “don’t take pictures of me, modesty!”  “Modesty” is a word my son uses all the time now because he doesn’t want to be seen naked.   Or at least doesn’t until he gets into the bath and then he forgets all about being naked and romps around with his sister in and out of the bath.

So he had my phone and he was doing something.   He got called away to breakfast and handed my phone over, saying, “here, this is the picture I took.”   And it was good.   Modesty, check.  Lighting, check.   Composition, check.   And extra points for black and white.   I told him I was impressed, he took a good picture.

As he left the bathroom he casually said, “when I grow up maybe I’ll be an editor.”   Here’s the shot he took:

The Big Boy Update:  My son got in trouble tonight before bed.   Then he compounded the trouble with backtalk and defiance.   My husband had had enough when he threatened to leave the family, opening the back door to go outside in the near freezing temperature so my husband went out with him, telling him he could sleep on the couch on the porch overnight.   My son cried and complained but he was locked out (for all of two minutes).   When my husband opened the door to talk to him I heard my son, finally relenting, say, “can I at least have a blanket?”

The Tiny Girl Conversation:  My daughter came home today and calmly asked if she could talk to dad in the bedroom.   They were in there for quite some time, quietly talking.   I don’t know what they talked about but apparently I’ll find out soon enough.   Secret planning, I wonder what it’s all about.

Nine Years:  Today was my nine year anniversary with my husband.   We had a day pretty much like we normally do.   We don’t swap gifts or cards.   I like being married to him every day.   I called as I was coming home from dog training class after dinner tonight and asked if there was anything left to eat (I think they were eating leftovers).   He told me there wasn’t anything left, then he said, “I didn’t leave you any dinner, that’s your anniversary present.”   It was so him and so funny I couldn’t help but laugh.   And completely okay by me—I’d find something to eat once I got home and the children were in bed.   He’s a good guy, hell, he puts up with me, maybe he’s a saint.