Mental Tic Tac Toe

My daughter and son love to do things on the Amazon Alexa.   Recently they’ve figured out how to play television shows on it thanks to a tip I got from my sister-in-law about Hulu connectivity.   We’ve had to take the Alexa Show away at night in preparation for the next morning.  Alexa lives in the kitchen at the bar where they eat breakfast and they’ll start playing something and get distracted, running them late.

The earlier alarm time has been helpful for everyone.   For two days now we’ve had extra time in the morning and the children have asked if they can watch Miles From Tomorrowland before it’s time to go.  Because they’re getting ready on time—early even—so we’ve brought the Alexa back out as a reward for good planning on their part in the morning   My son sits in the chair with his jacket on and his backpack on his back—and he hasn’t put up angry complaints when we need to leave at eight o’clock.   Hopefully this trend will contuse.

Watching shows is relatively new with Alexa because until recently we had an Alexa that was audio only.   During all the time we’ve had Alexa they’ve learned different things they can do.  Games, asking questions, having stories told to them, playing music and even playing games with music.  For a long time, I’d go through the weekly emails from Amazon that listed new things you can do (like having Alexa talk to you like Pikachu) and tell them about them.   But at this point, my children are figuring out new things on their own based on suggestions she’s offering on the screen.

We were in the car the other day and my daughter asked if we could play Tic Tac Toe.   She found out about this from Alexa.   There are so many things you can do that are perfectly suited to a blind child.  But Tic Tac Toe wasn’t one I was expecting.

My daughter has excellent memory, but she also has a way to picture things in her mind and keep track of them in a way that might be more difficult to an adult.   She’s good at mental Tic Tac Toe.   She knows the game will end in a tie if both players play well, but she definitely has the advantage when it comes her opponents making mistakes.

The Big Boy Update:  Mt son asked me in the car today if there was a song called Frere Jacques.  I told him there was and that Nana liked to sing it to him in French.   He was asking a question he knew the answer to though to see if I knew the song too.   We started to sing it together and then he said, “our school song is to this tune.”  And do you know what?  It is.   So we sang some of the original song and then some of his school song as we headed to drop off.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has called me twice now on her ride home from school.   She has a GPS watch we use to keep track of her location as she’s in a taxi and her ride is fairly long.   She can do only a few things with the watch, but calling people is one of them.   The icons are quite hard for her to see and she commonly calls the wrong person so we have only a few people she can call.   The first time she called today was to let me know the dog was in the front yard.   How did she know?  She had just gotten off the phone with dad and he told her so.   The second call was to sing me a song.   It was actually quite beautiful.   She made up the tune and lyrics and at the beginning I thought it was something she’d learned at school until she started saying specific things about me as her mother.   She ended by saying, “and I love you even when you go Pancake Splat.”   The children are loving that name for when I get upset.  So far no pancake splat has happened though.  Thankfully.

I Don’t Even Know...

…sometimes where to begin.   Today was one of those days with my son.  Not so much with him but with a conference we had with his teachers.   We’re trying lots of things but nothing seems to be working.  We had another discussion with Dhruti after school.   My son knows nothing about any of what was discussed today.   We’re still figuring it out as parents.   We may know more soon.   I wish I knew how to help him.   We all do.  Everyone is trying everything they can think of to help.

The Big Boy Update:  My son came down tonight after I got home from dog training class.  He had been asleep when I got home but had had a nightmare.   I was just starting to wash the dog when he came in.   He helped me get her toweled off and then asked me if I could go up with him and read to him.  He wanted me to read a comic book to him.   He can read it just as fast as I can now and spent most of the time correcting me, showing me how the intonation should have been done and what the voices of the different characters sounded like.   Then he gave me a big hug and went to bed.   He even let me give him a kiss goodnight on the head.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter had dental work today.   Only she didn’t.   She had residual memory of prior dental work and once she got in the chair sort of lost it.   The valium didn’t help and she never made it to the nitrous oxide.   They said they would do a special kind of treatment on the tooth and just watch it and if it didn’t get worse they’d just leave it until the tooth fell out.   My question is why didn’t we do that in the first place?

Pancake Splat

We had a family meeting tonight.  We had two things to talk about and to get the children’s input.  The first was morning routine and how it seemed like we were being rushed in the mornings.   Did the children want more time in the mornings?  If they did, we could get up earlier, but that might mean we needed to go to bed earlier.

My daughter was all for getting up a full extra hour early (her initial suggestion).  She falls asleep early so this would be no great hardship to her, but the rest of us didn’t want to take that option.   We decided on setting our alarms a half-hour earlier with a follow-up alarm fifteen minutes later.   My son, who has already been having a hard time getting up because he’s staying up late reading at night agreed he might need to read less and go to sleep earlier.  We shall see how that actually goes with him.

We’ll see how to goes with my husband and me too.   We appreciate the time we have after the children are asleep and we’re both asleep soundly in the mornings.   The children both pointed this out.   The earlier wake up time may be more difficult on us than it will be on them.

The next thing we had to talk about was non-negotiable behavior as part of our family contract.   It was at this point that I completely lost my temper at my son.   I’d been nearly a model parent for a week, working with some of the things I’d been discussing with his Integrative Therapist.   My son was doing everything in his power to be rude, disrespectful, mean and above all not listening.  He was manic.   I tried lots of options we’d talked about but in the end I gave him a taste of his own medicine.

The thing was, we needed to talk about something he had done at school—used threatening words that were very strong about me after he was late getting ready and didn’t have his lunch box because I sent him out the door and wouldn’t let him take it due to his poor planning.  He was the one this conversation was primarily about.

After I blew up I calmly asked if I had threatened anyone or said hateful things to anyone when I was angry just then?  They said no.   Did dad or I ever do that?  They said no.   We explained how adults could be sent to jail for making threats to harm someone and we wanted to help them be successful children today and for the rest of their lives.  

My son and I had a nice conversation afterwards and he hugged me and read a note I’d written to him last week when I found out what he had said from his teachers.   He admitted he was angry and that he didn’t really mean that.   I said I understood getting mad and being angry but that he had to find different ways to express his feelings.   But regardless, I would love him always, no matter what.

Then, as we were getting ready for bed, I suggested we come up with some way to describe what had just happened when.I got mad.   Some way for us to say, “watch out, if you keep going down this path mom may well blow up.”  I was hoping that by naming the thing they would want to avoid it just hearing it might happen again not unlike reminding a child if he doesn’t get dressed he might have to go to school again without any clothes on.   (They typically don’t want to do that more than once.)

My son and daughter decided we should call it, “pancake splat” like when you flip a pancake over and it goes splat on the second side.   I didn’t get how that was connected with getting mad, but I said sure.   I also said I didn’t know if I could say that without laughing.   My son said that was part of the point that maybe it would help diffuse the situation some (he actually said those words).

I don’t want to do it again.   My throat was sore from yelling.  Maybe it was a good lesson tonight though.

The Big Boy Update:  My son wanted to take something of mine to school today for sharing time.   It was delicate and he left it in his backpack or dropped it or something.   It came home in pieces.   He was pretty upset about it.   I don’t say anything other than asking how it happened.  He said he could tell I was sad.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter lay on the floor in a ball with a blanket over her throughout the family meeting tonight.   She does this because she doesn’t need to see (or can’t) and she can listen better that way.   But she falls asleep like that too.   We had to end the meeting when we realized she was nodding off.

Ringing The Bell

The dog doesn’t go to the bathroom in the house anymore.   It was simple.  I was just doing it wrong. She stopped going in the house almost overnight once I changed how I was handling taking her out.   She’s fast now too, not sniffing around all over the place.  She’s had a few incidents, but it’s been our fault more so than hers.

The thing I’ve been wanting her to do is let us know when she has to go out.  We started crating her more of the time when we weren’t specifically playing with her or feeding her or if she hadn’t been out in a bit.   She wasn’t overly upset about being in the crate, she’s a puppy and they sleep a lot.   But I still wanted her to be able to go over to the door and communicate in some way that she needed to go out.

I didn’t mind if she wanted to go out to spend time outside (and I think she’d prefer to live out there, honestly).   But she doesn’t bark much.   I got these bells like you’d see on a counter.   An old-fashioned “service bell” she could ring by just stepping on or tapping it.  Only she wasn’t doing that either.

We’d ring the bell before taking her out and try to get her to ring the bell but she wasn’t connecting the bell ringing with the door opening and her getting to go out.   She picked up on so many things so quickly that this one thing surprised me.

Then two nights ago I decided to just put the bell in front of her and train bell for treats.   It took about ten minutes.   She was whacking the bell with her paw and getting treats and thought this new game was lots of fun.   I walked away and she stopped though.   Today we did it again and this time after I walked away she kept ringing the bell.   I’d come back and treat her again.   She did this for a while, watching me return every time to treat her.

Later tonight she went over to the door, rang the bell and I came over, gave her a treat and took her out.   She did that twice and both times got to go out.   Tomorrow I’ll see if she remembers the connection.  

The nice thing about the house training though is we can keep her out of the kennel a lot more.  If she can let us know when she wants to go out with the bell, I think we’ll have the whole house training thing down.  

The Big Boy Update:  My son’s “freestyle” dance during his school’s Winterfest was caught on a friend’s phone.  He sent the video to us and my husband posted it online to show his Fortnite friends. One lady said, “I don’t know anything about your family, I’m not sure I’ll be able to tell which one your son is.”  My husband said not to worry, she’d know.   When my son started breaking into the Fortnite dance moves she just started laughing, saying she should have known.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  After six weeks out of school, my daughter started back today.   She wondered who she’d be sitting with at her four-person table in her class.   She came home and the first thing she told me when I asked how her day was was who her new table mates were.   She’s excited to be sitting with different friends this quarter.

Boat Knots and Such

We’ve been in school this weekend.   Friends of ours have been visiting.  They’re staying with us but visiting with other friends while in town.  During the time they’ve spent with us we’ve been doing various things, including mostly a relaxing weekend, but we’ve also been in sailing school.

There will be four adults on the sail boat come July when we go on a ten-day tour of the islands surrounding St. Thomas, our departure port.   We’re responsible for a forty-four foot catamaran boat we’ll be renting and the job of maneuvering and sailing is non-trivial.

We started out by learning boar terminology for directions surrounding the boat.   Saying, “at nine o’clock" isn’t boat-ish enough.   There is a lot of tradition in sailing and boating in general, including saying, “Arr!” with a number of things.

We all studied up and my children paid careful attention (when they weren’t goofing around).   We have a good bit more to learn.   I think my husband and I may need to go to YouTube school before July to get a good handle on things because we’ll be fifty percent of the adult crew on board.

The Big Boy Update:  My son, whom I thought wasn’t paying attention to the boating directions on Friday, turned out to have paid more attention than me as he told Richard all the directions (with a little assistance) tonight.   He’s going to be a good sailor.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is the best knot tier in the whole family, but she fell asleep on the floor for the second night running and missed out on the boating lesson again.   We’ll catch her up before the trip though.

The Man With The Mustache

This is, in part, a story I’ve heard retold so many times I’m having to go on memories of memories of a memory at this point.  The other day, my mother just happened to tell the story again.  Her version is different than my memory, but that’s what happens when lots of time passes.   Either way, the essence of the story is the same in both of our recounting.

When I was young my parents had two telephones: one in their bedroom and one in the kitchen.  This was back in a time when you always answered the phone when it rang.   There were no telemarketers, automated appointment reminders and no voice mail.  It even pre-dated the answering machine age, so when the phone rang, you jumped up to get the call, because it was someone you knew who wanted to talk to you.

I suppose there were a good bit of wrong numbers at that time too.  The two phones my parents had were rotary dial.  Dialing a phone number was prone to error because we had to actually remember phone numbers and do the whole dialing out every time.  It was easy to get a digit wrong or mis-read what was written down on a piece of paper.

The phone in the kitchen had a very long cord on it.  I remember once my mother was taking a call from Southern Bell about their service and happened to mention the long cord.  The customer service representative on the other end said she didn’t have down that my parents had an extra long cord (the one from the phone to the receiver) and if we had one, we should be paying a monthly fee.   My mother thought quickly and said that it probably wasn’t long, the coil was just very stretched out.

For this story though, we were all sitting at the dinner table.  It was dark outside so it must have been winter with an earlier sunset time.   The phone rang and I jumped up, eager to take the call and see who it was.   The person on the other line was an adult male that I didn’t recognize.   At that time I didn’t know to say, “may I ask who’s calling” so when he asked to speak to my mother I told him to hold on.

I walked over to the door, utilizing all of that long phone cord and told my mother the call was for her.   My mother asked me, “who is it?”   I replied, “It’s a man with a mustache.”

Both of my parents broke up laughing as my mother go up to take the call.  I remember her laughing as she repeated what I’d said to the caller.  I was a little bit embarrassed by the whole thing but when I realized they were laughing in a good-natured way, I felt clever, saying something unexpected.  I don’t know what it was about the voice but it sounded like he had a mustache to me.   The other day when mother was telling the story she said I had been right, the man did have a mustache.   Of all the details I remember from that story, whether the man actually had a mustache or not, I don’t remember.

The Big Boy Update:  We had Bring Your Parents to School day on Friday.  He was showing us all the different things he’d been doing at school.   We looked up and realized we only had ten more minutes before the morning’s visit was over.   When we told him he said, “time flies when you’re learning.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  We went to an African American festival today with Mrs. Aagaard, my daughter’s retired braillest.  She knows just what to do to introduce my daughter in a way to people that in no way says she’s blind, and yet conveys the message clearly.   She asks if my daughter can touch things.  People are very happy to help.   Today my daughter touched a civil war uniform, felt what an officer’s hat was like from the time and got to see how long and heavy the guns were that the soldiers used.   There was a lot for her to feel and experience.  One booth was about a women’s boarding school (or perhaps “charm school” is more appropriate).   She felt what a place setting was like for a formal meal, asking why there were three forks and three wine glasses.   Then she had her hair put up in a traditional African head wrapping.

Boats and Ropes

Our friends came to visit tonight.   They’ll be visiting all weekend on and off, staying with us but also  catching up with other friends in town.  We got some Chinese food and had boisterous conversation while we ate, discussing various things as including plans for our sailing trip in July.  My daughter was wanting the, “raise your hand if you want to talk” method of conversation to be implemented but it fell flat as multiple threads were happening simultaneously amongst food, wine and desserts.

After dinner Richard transformed our living room into a boat and had everyone sit inside the defined perimeter.  Children who strayed out were warned with, “man overboard!”  We learned boat directions including: dead ahead, dead astern, off the port beam, broad on the starboard bow, broad on the port quarter.

The children had had about enough of sitting still (which they hadn’t done much of even during the lesson) and were left to their own devices.   My son enlisted Andrew in some playing of Super Smash Brothers, or Fortnite, or Mario Kart.   I’m not really sure but I do know they were trying to find Andrew some time later and he was hiding.   He had come back down to the living room, where the rest of us were busily reviewing the different ways to tie a bowline knot from various orientations and was hiding under a blanket.  

I wasn’t sure if Andrew wanted to be found or not so we let him stay hidden for a while before we let my daughter play hot and cold to locate him after she explained she couldn’t see him because she was blind, but she was looking and could we please help.  Once found he played with her and the dog and then returned to play video games with my son after my daughter went to sleep.

I’m hoping there isn’t a quiz on the boat terminology tomorrow because I don’t have them memorized in my head yet.  

The Big Boy Update:  My son’s school’s Winterfest was today.   He sang four songs with his class and did one group dance.  There was one song that had an instrumental interlude where all the children did freestyle dancing.  He did his Fortnite dances in his bowtie and jacket.   Some of the parents commented later about how good he was.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter love spending time with Mimi.   She’s been doing things every day with her.   Mimi gives her undivided attention and there is nothing in the world more that she loves.   Mimi has a lot of love to give.

Done and Named

I’ve had paperwork and electronic work and braille-work and school work and children work all hanging over my figurative head since before the start of December.   Every time I’d get close to getting caught up other things would come along (like a vacation in St. Thomas and other much, more mundane things) and I’d get behind again.   I had emails I was so late on I almost responding before they became irrelevant.   I had text messages days behind and I was just tired.

Did I have time to do it all?  Yeah, I have to admit I probably did.   My mother always told me you shouldn’t make excuses for things just because you prioritized something over another thing.   The dog, who is quite the joy, takes time.   She’s fun but she’s at an age where I’m trying to take advantage of as much brain width as I can to get her trained with consistent expectations for our house and family.  

My latest experience with a dog, for the past fifteen years, has been one that was trained and needed much less maintenance.   She didn’t need a fenced in yard, went outside, came in and didn’t wander.   She liked attention, but not so much.   And she was trained.  

But having a dog that wants to work, enjoys playing with the children and actually likes being played with has been a happy thing for everyone.   My children literally manhandle the dog and she doesn’t growl or try to bite them—even when she has a high-value bone in her mouth.   It’s rather fascinating to watch.

Back to paper-e-life-work.   I’m almost completely caught up.   There is almost nothing in the queue I’ve left for days that’s been weighing down on me, bothering me because I haven’t gotten to it yet.   I even got around to naming the dog.

I’ve had the AKC paperwork since November 6th when we picked up the puppy and haven’t gone through the registration process today.   I had everything done until I got to the point where I had to register the name and I realized I had to make a decision.  We’d named the dog Matisse.   We all call her that.  We’re not shortening the name or calling her anything else (although my daughter does like to call her, “Matissie-poo”).   But to register a dog with the AKC you need a unique name.

I was most-way into the registration process and I wasn’t stopping to get a family consensus, so I just made a call.   We had considered the name, “Snowy” and almost went with that in the car before we settled on Matisse so I stuck that in as a second name and then added, “Foxwin” on for the third name after my children, who’s middle names are Fox and Winter.  

Unique name confirmed.   Dog registered.   Work done.   Well, most of it.   I have more that’s come in and a project I need to get on top of with a deadline, but I’m back on top of things.   It’s a good feeling.   Tonight I’m going to tell the children what our dog’s full name is.   I hope they like it.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is in a winter festival with his class and school tomorrow.  He wants to wear his suit and tie from Uncle Bob and Uncle Brian’s wedding to look nice and he’s asked for a haircut this afternoon as well.   He’s been enjoying the singing and dancing he’s been practicing with his class and knows we’ll be watching in the audience tomorrow.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   My daughter asked if she could go on an exploration trip to the grocery store with her father.   They’re there now looking at (well, touching and talking about) all sorts of things in the store.

My Left Eye

My left eye is dry.   I keep blinking and it’s not getting any better.   I think it’s because I’m tired and I’ve been staring at a spreadsheet of medical bills.  I’m trying to close out our 2018 non-reimbursed medical expenses list and my left eye has  rebelled and said it’s had enough of numbers for the night.   So I’m writing a short post.  I’m ready for bed.

The Big Boy Update:  My son wants an iPhone.  We talked about several reasons it didn’t make sense to have one at this age.   First, it was expensive, second he didn’t have many people to call  because none of his friends have a phone and third, you have to be able to keep it on you and not lose it.   The argument that his pockets weren’t big enough to fit an iPhone interestingly enough seemed to be the most compelling reason to him as to why he didn’t really need a phone.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My husband was reading some vacation questions to the children tonight.  One was, “would you rather take a ride in a hot air balloon or a helicopter?”  My daughter answered immediately with hot air balloon.   Her reasoning?  “Because hot air balloons are always beautiful like red, orange and yellow."

Evoking Martin Luther King

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Angry at Each Other Update:

My son and I came home after school to find his sister and her friend playing, “family” in the children’s bedroom.   My son is not one to want to play “family”.   In fact, I don’t ever remember him wanting to play “family” once.   But there’s a first time for everything.

I was letting the dog out when I heard a commotion from inside.   Well, yelling and screaming.   I came back in to a daughter in tears and an angry son.   It would appear my son wanted to play with them but the girls didn’t want him to play.   They said the game was only for two people.  

My son knows the rule that you can’t exclude someone from a game in our house but the girls weren’t having any of it.   They explained (in angry tones) that this particular family, the one they were playing in this specific game, had no brothers or fathers or uncles or grandfathers so my son couldn’t well play in that case.  I’m not sure if my son would have been okay playing a sister or mother or aunt, but that didn’t matter to him; it was all about the exclusion.

He cited Martin Luther King, explaining how you can’t exclude someone just because they were different than other people.   He told the girls how Martin Luther had taken a bullet because he believed so strongly in this.   And, well, they just couldn’t keep him out of the game!

The girls said he was being bossy and that fine, they would go to another room and play.   I told them they had exactly four minutes to work out a peaceful solution or Madison was going home and the game would be over.

Madison went home.   My son got sent to one room and my daughter to another.   They complained and asked when they could come out.  When I went up ten minutes later I told them each, through the doors, they could come out when they could make a meaningful apology to the other child.  

My daughter kept crying but my son came to where she was and gave the most sincere and touching apology, explaining calmly how it hurt his feelings that they didn’t want to let him play with them.   He wanted to give her a hug, but she was so upset and crying still she said she couldn’t breathe.   And then he got concerned about her not breathing so he gave her advice on how to calm down and take deep, steady breaths.   He was really sweet.

My Favorite Vent

It was cold here this morning: eighteen degrees with a “feels like” of nine degrees.   I woke up fractionally to think about having to layer up to take the dog out to go to the bathroom and was reminded of something from my childhood.

My parents kept the house at a reasonable temperature year-round, but my father was always mindful of the thermostat.   It wasn’t uncommon for him to call out from the hallway, “who touched the thermostat!”  So sometimes in the mornings during the winter months I’d wake up and not want to get out of my warm bed.

But mornings happen and I did need to get up and get ready for school.   I would slink out of bed and onto the floor and lie over the blowing heat vent to get warm before getting dressed.  Commonly I’d stay on the vent warming up until my mother came in and told me I’d better get moving.

This morning my daughter came downstairs and went to the dog cage in our bedroom against the windows on the side of our bedroom.  I told her I needed to take the dog out myself because I was doing something different with house training so don’t open the cage yet.   She told me, “that’s okay, I’m just going to be here on my favorite vent.”  I looked over to see her balled up on top of the heat vent just in front of the dog’s cage.

The Big Boy Update:  My son had limited screen time this long weekend because he didn’t earn that much during school last week.   He was good at holding himself accountable when he used time and marking it off on the refrigerator tally sheet.   He earned extra time for reading though and read more than I’ve ever seen him read before with a book I didn’t think he was ready to read.   He would take full hours to read at a time.   He went from not reading last year to this.   It’s quite the change.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter’s braillesr told her if you try new things you might not like them today, but that’s okay, you may like them when you’re older.   And when you do like them, that means your tongue is growing up.   It must have made an impression on my daughter because she recently tried something she hadn’t liked in the past and said to me, “mom, my tongue is growing up!"

When I Grow Up

My son has been staying up after bedtime in his room reading.   He’s been reading different things, some fiction and some non-fiction.   The book that’s been the most interesting to him is one I found in the attic when my husband and I were cleaning up that I thought would be a good present from Santa, called The Visual Dictionary.

It’s a large volume with pictures, broken down and sliced through labeled diagrams of all sorts of things.   I got it years ago when I was in a book store because I was fascinated by it myself.   I spent a little time paging through it and then shelved it.  I had hoped it would interest my son, and it has, only in a few ways I didn’t expect.

He found the page on weapons or something last week and wanted to talk about them when we were on the ride to school.   I figured he’d moved on from the weapons page to other things when I saw him carrying the big book up the stairs to his top bunk bed before I turned out their light and left for the night.

I had just gotten in bed and was comfortably ready to spend time on my iPad and relax at the end if the day when my son opened the door to the bedroom and asked me to come upstairs.   He said he wanted to show me something.   When I asked what he told me he’d figured out what he wanted to be when he grew up.

So I went upstairs.   He had the reading light on in his bed and the visual dictionary open.   And you guessed it, he had it opened to the weapons page.   He pointed to the word at the top of the page and said, “I want to be this.”

“Ah,” I said.  “You want to be a hunter?”  Yes.  He was pretty sure he wanted to be one.   Only could I tell him what some of the things pictured were used for?   The one I thought would bother or scare him was the bear trap.   When I described how it worked and how it was a fairly cruel way to capture a creature he just nodded.   I was worried he’d have nightmares about it but so far so good.

Children change their minds on what they want to be when they grow up many times before they actually do.   I wonder how long the hunter phase will last?   Tonight he’s up in his room on the chess board making up alternate ways to play chess.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has a favorite math problem.   He’ll tell you what is it.   He’s been sort of obsessed with it for two weeks now.   Tonight at dinner with my parents he made his favorite math problem (72 ÷ 3 = 24) into a word problem for my parents to solve.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is going to go on a short train ride with my parents to a neighboring town as an expedition one day.   She knew it was on Sunday (because parking for the car is free) but was sad to find out it wasn’t today, but two weeks from now.   She’s excited about the thirty minute train ride there and back and the hot dogs they’re going to eat when they get there.   My mother said they’d try to find a day sooner to do it since she’s looking forward to it so.

Come Here

We weren’t sure how the dog was going to work out. We hoped it would be a good thing for my daughter, but at first she had a hard time interacting with her.  She would want the dog or carry her around, which the dog tolerates exceedingly well, but as a puppy, sometimes that would turn into her mouthing her with her teeth.  My daughter would squeal at this and run away, which was interpreted as play by the dog.  Torn pants from puppy teeth ensued and my daughter was exclaiming how she hated the dog.  Followed by wanting to be with her an hour later.

They, or she, have grown in their ability to understand each other.  My daughter helps out with the dog all the time and enjoys interacting with her.   This afternoon I heard her say, as she opened the cage to let the dog out, “come here, Matisse, I want some love.”   And of course the dog did what dogs do and gave her some.

The Big Boy Update: My son was given the option of earning some screen time this weekend for reading.  One hour of reading for one hour of screen time.   He took home a hard chapter book for the long weekend and this afternoon in the middle of other children over in our yard, he sat in his room and read.   He’s starting to really like reading.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter was a little upset the other day because she thought she only had one nipple.  After a more thorough search she found the other one.

Hanging Up

My daughter went out with Mimi and Gramps (my parents) today.   They went to lunch first and then to the local train station to gather information on a trip they’re planning to take next week with my daughter to a nearby town.   My daughter is looking forward to the train trip.  

The other thing they had planned to do is go ti an antiques store.  My father loves antique stores and he and my mother have been stopping in to look at what’s inside for my entire live.   At first thought this might seem to be a boring part of the trip for her, but she sees the world differently.  Or doesn’t see it the same way as we do.  

There would be lots of things for my mother to tell her about and feel.  My daughter and I had had a conversation recently about how sometimes phrases didn’t make sense.  I told her the history of why when we terminate a phone call we call it, “hanging up”.

I told her to ask Mimi to see if they had any old telephones that you actually hung up when they were at the store.   She wanted know what else they might have there when I dropped her off at my parent’s house this morning.   I explained that there would be lots of things that were very old and that that’s what, ‘antique’ meant.

She asked me, “does that mean dead people?"

The Big Boy Update:  My son and I were listening to some music in the car the other day.  He said, “I don’t know why, but this song reminds me of the color blue.”   Then he followed up with, “this is our favorite kind of music, it’s electric."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter loves spending time with Mimi.  Today I got a phone call from her with a question: did I like cherry jello with bananas?  She was asking because she and Mimi had made some and did we want any brought home?   She called back later to say there had been a problem—Gramps had eaten one of the bananas.   But it was okay, she said, “I’ll let Greyson have mine because I already had some."

Vegetable Soup

My mother came over to the house today to make our traditional vegetable soup that’s also got ham in it.   She made it easy because she’d already gotten all the ingredients for us.  My daughter and son love her soup and eat it heartily any time we have it.   As a result of the enthusiasm my family has alway had for the soup, we typically make enough to fill the largest pot we own, and we have a very large pot—specifically to house the vegetable soup when it’s made.

My daughter was excited because today she was going to help make the soup.   The last batch, which my mother made to welcome us home from our trip to St. Thomas, was eaten more by my daughter than anyone else.   She had seven bowls one day.  I put my things down and got out the pressure cooker and the large pot as the caught me up on what they’d done so far.

I got home from a committee meeting this morning to find my daughter on a stool at the sink peeling potatoes.  My mother was chopping celery and the remainder of the ingredients were sitting on the island.   I started opening cans and pouring them into the pot.

We use the pressure cooker to speed up the soup making process.   Instead of letting things simmer for hours until ready to eat, we can have the soup done from start to finish in just over an hour.   We’ve been making this soup with various modifications and improvements since I was a child, but the process is largely the same.

But something wasn’t working well with the pressure cooker.   We’d get to the "at pressure” mark but when we’d check on the items in the pot once we’d opened it, they weren’t cooked.   We thought we’d mis-timed things, which was possible because we’d moved from the pressure cooker I grew up with (very outdated and potentially hazardous) to a newer model with more features.

We had to recook the second batch twice and by that point I was taking the top of the unit apart to see what might be going on.   That’s when I noticed the little pop-up plastic piece was missing.   It was a small hole, but that hole was letting air escape from inside the pot which caused it to never get to pressure.

This was a conundrum as it was a specific piece of plastic that fit under and into the hole.   So I got duct tape and taped over the hole.   The next batch we cooked worked exactly like it should.

And once the soup was done my mother, daughter and I had very large bowls with garlic bread for lunch.   My daughter fell asleep on the couch afterwards she was so full and happy.

The Big Boy Update:  I was out this evening running some errands.   When I got home my son, whom I hadn’t seen all day, said, “Thanks for making the soup, mom."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter said as she was going to bed tonight, “tomorrow I want to eat seven bowls of soup for breakfast."

I Feel Nothing

We’re doing our best with the children and their teeth.   They brush, floss and swish twice a day (unless my son is late this morning and we let him go with clothes on but without his teeth brushed).  We have a dentist recommended special toothpaste that requires a prescription for to help my daughter who has two teeth that don’t have the full enamel covering on them.   We don’t let them have gummy candy very much because it sticks to their teeth for a longer time and we have them drink water, not juice.

We do let them have dessert though.   And candy sometimes.   And probably a lot of other things that could be detrimental to the health of their teeth.   But on the whole we’re trying to do what we can to instill good dental hygiene habits for their lives.

And yet they’ve gotten some cavities.  I don’t know if children when I was young were also getting cavities but because they were baby teeth no one bothered to do much about them.   But today, pediatric dentists are recommending all sorts of things for teeth that are falling out in a few years.

I don’t know that I’m all for putting fillings in children’s baby teeth, but in the case of my daughter, who had two teeth that weren’t formed normally, a filling or crown made some sense—especially because the tooth was bothering her.

My husband has decided to go ahead with the fillings for my son because there is some correlation with the baby tooth because if the damage goes to the root, it can impact the development of the permanent tooth.  

Today on the way back to school I called and talked to my son, who was in the car with his father.  When we asked him about his numbed  lips and mouth and how it felt, he said, “I feel nothing”.   He had an interesting time trying to eat a hot dog for lunch I hear.

The Big Boy Update:  I told my son he could go upstairs and start reading in his bed while I finished helping his sister with her wet hair tonight.   I reminded him of our newly adopted house rules, saying, “we listen and follow directions from adults the first time and all the time.”  A bit later he was nowhere to be found.  After ten minutes of searching he appeared coming down the hall towards his room, excited he had been in a special hiding place all this time.   He lost the privilege of reading in his bed tonight as a result.   He’s currently upstairs complaining about not being tired and how reading helps him go to sleep.   I told him he made a poor choice and he would have to figure out how to go to sleep another way tonight.   He’s very unhappy.  I hope it’s a good lesson for him.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter wanted to get a cat toy for Morgan’s cats.  She’s been spending time at her house as Morgan babysat her this past week.   She and her father went to get the toy yesterday afternoon.  In thanks, she and Morgan made another batch of cookies for us.   This is the third batch of cookies they’ve made in a week.   Each kind has been different, but they’ve all been good.   I think today’s cookies have Kit Kat bars in them.

Standoffish?

I went over to see my best friend this afternoon on her day off.   We’re something of best friends through time right now because it seems we rarely get a chance to actually see each other.   But we take what we can get.  

Her family is considering getting a dog—something her children have been hounding her about for several years now.   She was the major holdout but she’s been warming up to the idea.   They kept our dog for two days over Christmas and all loved her.   And interestingly enough, the one who loved her the most was my best friend.   She is now the number one proponent of getting a dog for the family.

She wants, and three out of four children want, a Wheaten Terrier.   Sometimes it’s a matter of what you know is what you like and seeing as they haven’t investigated other breeds outside of the experiences they’ve had at friend’s houses who have dogs, they’re inclined to Wheaten Terrier as a breed because it’s what they’ve been closest to.

That’s not to say the breed wouldn’t be the perfect fit for their family, but I don’t presume what’s right for our family is right for theirs.  

At any rate, I walked over with the dog and when I arrived Matisse was very happy indeed to see my best friend.   My best friend was overjoyed.   She’s like that.  She has that much emotion and love in her heart.

Once we got done with the dog greeting formalities, we sat down on the couch and started talking about…you guessed it, dogs.   She gave me an update on their consideration of a puppy, the talks they’d had with the breeder, how her husband felt, she felt and what her children were thinking about the whole idea of getting a family dog.

Gender came up and the differences between them—specifically the gender differences in Wheaten Terriers.   The advice we’d been given from two different breeders is that male dogs prefer to be in your lap and more direct contact for longer than the females.   As we talked about this we noticed how the dog had gone to the front door and was lying up against it, right beside and almost around my shoes.

Did she need to go outside?  No, she was fine.   Was she wanting to go home?  No, she’d liked that spot before.   Was she being standoffish and just didn’t want to be in the nice warm living room where my best friend had her fire blasting out the nicest hot air?  Was it gender-based?

We weren’t sure.   Or at least we weren’t sure why until I left.   I sat down at the front door to put my shoes on.  My best friend sat down and started petting the dog, who hadn’t moved since claiming the spot at the door.   My best friend laughed and said, “I know why she’s here; feel this spot where the doors meet.”

There was a distinct cool airflow coming in from a location where the weather stripping needed to be replaced.   The dog had wedged around my shoes so she could put her body up against the coldest part of the door, which coincidentally was just as far away as she could get from the overly hot living room and fireplace.

The Big Boy Update:  My son had a long day and he wasn’t happy about it.   Then he was okay about it.   Then he was nice about it.   And then he was angry about it again.  He went from school to neural feedback to pick up his sister and father and then to dinner.   He didn’t get home until 6:45PM.   He told us it was an awful long time to be away from home.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter got a mermaid tail blanket from Santa.   It’s like any other fuzzy fleece blanket, only it’s in the shape of a mermaid’s tail.   She loves it.   It went to St. Thomas and back in her backpack and she sleeps in it every night.   Shortly after Christmas her brother wanted to see what it was like and had just wriggled into it when she realized what he was doing.   She yelled at him saying, “Get out of my mermaid!  You’ve touched every single present I have!"

It’s Okay to Say

I grew up playing video games.   I played them shortly after the point I got my TRS 80 Color Computer in 1980 and stayed up Christmas night programming the computer to change the background color.  Games were basic and cryptic back then but got more and more complex as I grew older.   I met friends playing games.  I spent time with gamers.   I was a “gamer” long before there was such a thing as casual gaming such as playing Angry Birds on your phone while you watch television.

I played hardcore FPS (First Person Shooter) games and held LAN parties at my house.   With a group of friends we held weekend-long gaming competitions with up to 120 players, bringing their heavy PCs and CRT monitors.   Gatherings that were such a power drain on the location that we had to find hotels that could sustain the power requirements, built our own power box to separate the load across groups of computers and brought loads of power cables and extension cords to handle the space.   And that’s only on the power side.   We had equal challenges getting the network signals coordinated because back then there wasn’t internet or WiFi available to communicate across.   We had to bring it all.

Later I got into MMO (Massive Multiplayer Online) games.   This was before social networking and before every game is interconnected with everyone else who’s playing it.   I met my husband during this time.  We played a game for years every day—for hours—with a group of friends, some of whom we never met and some we’re still very close to and see regularly in town.

I was a consultant, working for or with IBM during a lot of my working career and during all that time I was a gamer.   But for the most part, I never mentioned it.   It wasn’t necessarily the most noble of hobbies to have.   Gaming, while being seen as cool among the nerd and geek crowd, wasn’t the most impressive thing to say you did in your spare time when working with banking managers in New Zealand when they asked what you, as the high-price consultant they’d hired, did when you weren’t writing code and teaching classes.

Gaming has changed though.   It’s more mainstream in some ways and with the advent of social media and smart phones/tablets, everyone seems to be playing something, even if only casually.   And yet I’ve still never felt comfortable throwing out that I still love playing video games—and so does my husband.   He’s more competitive than I am and I don’t play the type of challenging, large group multiplayer games he does, but we still both play.

Except now the game has changed, so to speak, with the absolute world-wide phenomenon of Fortnite,  Everyone seems to be playing it, or if they’re not, they know someone who is.   And I speak about it all the time.   It’s okay to say.   I’ll say, “I’d better get home, my husband probably wants to get the children to bed so he can play Fortnite.”  

The Big Boy Update:  My son isn’t interested in taking the dog out.   But he has been helping clean up any messes she might make.   On the whole, I think I like that he’s picked that option to help with.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter’s new phrase is, “you’ve got to be kidding me”.   She says it in this tone that makes you think she’s rolling her eyes, even though she doesn’t know how.

Night Reading

My son has been given the privilege of reading at night after lights out time.  This is a new thing based on him not being ready for bed or sleepy.   Some nights it would seem he would be awake in his bed for a good while before falling asleep.   We tried multiple things, including pushing his bedtime a half-hour later, but we’ve still been trying to find a good solution.

Staying up late isn’t a problem as long as he gets up in time to get ready for school.   That was the only part we were unsure about with this night reading.   But hey, he’s wanting to read, right?  He wants to stay up late and do the thing we wanted him to do for a long while that he had no interest in doing.

So it’s a win, as long as it isn’t a lose.   And so far, it’s working out.   Tonight he’s up in his bed, engrossed in the Guinness Book of World Records 2019 edition he got for Christmas—not particularly light reading, but fascinating to him.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has the loudest, “show off” voice of any child I know.   When friends, family or adults come over and he wants to impress, he uses this overly loud voice coupled with an almost fervent need to be heard, interrupting both physically and verbally so he can be heard.   He wants to be liked.   We’re working to help him in good ways to show it.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter came down tonight and told me what I had been expecting to hear last week but didn’t because she’d fallen asleep before her brother came to bed every night: his reading light is too bright.   This is from the child who has very little vision at all.   The light, through her eyelids, is so bright it’s hurting her eyes.   I have the highest doubts that’s true given that the light is only visible to her as a reflection off the ceiling.   The night light that shines up on the ceiling she has a hard time seeing.   She’s not in control of things though.   And she likes to be in control.   I asked her to come up with ways she might be able to solve the problem and she decided to pull the comforter over her eyes so she didn’t see the light.   Problem solved.   She was asleep two minutes later.

House Rules

We’re trying to change the way things are done within our family.  I think this is an ever changing iterative process based on how parenting has gone for us up to this point.   I suppose it’s a bit like life: adapting to changes as changes come your way.  But with my own life it seems I was able to learn how to change and grow at about the same pace as I grew into myself.   With these children things, I just can’t keep up.

Maybe yours developed at a slower pace but the two we got have hyper drives.   Or so it seems.   The latest thing we’re doing is creating some House Rules.   My husband and I had prepared for this in advance and tonight we talked about rules at dinner.   Rules that everyone in the family would follow.  

The children helped define the rules (with guidance).   But they had some good ideas.   We tried to keep it simple so there weren’t so many things to think about.   For instance, “We treat others the way we would like to be treated”.   This encompasses a lot, but is said in a few words.  We also decided on, “We always use polite and kind words.”

Tomorrow we need to talk about the contract we’ll each have and the reward and consequence for each thing on the contract.   Each of our contracts will be different.   My son’s for instance, will include completing all daily work assignments at school as one of his three items.

Tomorrow we’re going to try and finish our contracts up.   We’ll see what the children have as suggestions for what should be on my and my husband’s contracts.

The Big Boy Update:  My son watched, for the second time, the first Harry Potter movie last night.   He and my husband are watching the second one now.   He was a little scared when he watched it the first time a few years ago.   He’s really enjoying the movies now.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter helped me make two more dog tug toys last night for friends of ours that have dogs.   We cut sections of three inches by three yards of felt in three colors, braid them together and add some knots in the middle.   Our dog loves hers.  Zivy, whom we gave one to to today apparently likes hers from the picture Morgan sent of her pulling on it.  

Movie Night

Tonight is Movie Night.   We have friends come over.   An unknown number of friends as the invitation is open to a varied group of friends.   We don’t always host Movie Night, sometimes other friends do, but we like to.  

We had some other children that came for a while but their family moved on the road (they travel full time).   There was another child but she’s a teen and much less interested in playing with my children as he is getting on a group chat with his friends.

My children used to be interested in movies but my daughter can’t see the television at all and my son is positively averse to watching anything he hasn’t already seen before.   And even then, he’s not interested in watching a movie most nights anyways.

My husband makes popcorn in the popcorn machine I wasn’t keen on getting but am now an avid fan of.   The movie(s) the group watches (I usually stay upstairs with my children) is sometimes new, sometimes old and sometimes the choice of the person having a birthday that week.

People bring dinner or eat before they come.   We order food or my husband makes something.   It’s a come when you want, leave when you’re ready kind of thing that’s been a staple of our Friday night’s since we built our house.

We’ve had as few as one and as many as fifteen come.  Tonight I don’t know how many will be here, but my children are happy it’s Friday and Movie Night again.

The Big Boy Update:  My son had a very good day at school his teacher told me as he was getting in the car.   She said she thought he could even get an extra “freedom” as a result of how hard he worked.   He was invited to go with the third-years today (third graders).   It was a bit thing for him.   He was pretty excited to talk to me about it in the car.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has been with Morgan, her favorite sitter who’s hime from college, all day.   I think they have to be coming home soon because my best friend accidentally called my phone and before I realized it was a mistake I heard her say in the background, “Morgan is coming”.

The Pooping Tree

We have a magic tree at our house.   I’ve named it, “The Pooping Tree”.   Whenever you take the dog out the front door and walk her into the liirope, she walks under the tree and poops.   Not without fail, sometimes she doesn’t have to go on account of she went recently in the house (an occurrence that’s happening less and less).   But for the most part that tree, or maybe the invasive ground covering around and under it, seems to do the trick.

There is more magic that happens too—the poop disappears.   You can see where the dog goes, but when she walks away, even if you’re just on the other end of the leash, a mere few feet away, when you hunker down under the branches, you can’t find it.   It drops down under the blades of grass or blends in with the mulch.   But no matter, by the next morning it’s frozen or dried up and not a danger to being stepped on, smashed into your shoe and unknowingly tracked into the house—at least so far it has.

When we were planning out the landscaping with the landscaping company we worked with while building our house I said I wanted a Japanese Maple prominent in the front yard.   It’s always been a lovely tree in front of the dining room.   Today it's a lovely tree that keeps the dog poop magically off the lawn and underfoot.



The Big Boy Update:  My son got to pick what time he went to sleep last night.  He could stay up and read and turn the light out when he was tired.   This morning he had to get up with a new alarm set in his room and manage his entire morning routine.   He could do things in any order he wanted.   I was a little concerned when I heard him yell, “only nine minutes to go” followed by him running pell mell into the bathroom (still in his pajamas) to brush his teeth.   He had done everything else in advance though and we drove out of the garage exactly at eight o’clock.   He even made his own breakfast.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was excited Morgan, their sitter for multiple years that went off to college, was coming to spend time with her.   They did many things while she was out, including making chocolate chip cookies.   She brought some home and the rest of her family promptly ate them.

Belted

My husband wears a belt every day.   I have a friend who has a whole collection of belts and coordinates outfits with them on a daily basis.   I’m not much of a belt person though.   I remember a time when I did wear belts a good bit but in recent years I haven’t worn a belt really at all.

Back during a different fashion time in my life I always tucked my shirts in, wore pants that were high on the waist and didn’t fit so tight to the legs that they nearly squeezed the life out of your calves.  Fashions changed, waistlines dropped and tucking in shirts went out of fashion.   Or at least that’s one of the fashion things that seemed to change.   Fashion these days is so varied you can wear almost anything and be seen as, “fashionable” to your friends provided what your wearing is flattering on you.   Or different.   Or outrageous.  

At any rate, I stopped wearing belts.   My pants never were in danger of falling down and I’m a minimalist when it comes to fashion so the fewer items I need to adorn myself with to get out the door and feel good about how I look, the better.

Then today I put on one of my favorite pair of pants and boots I recently got that go well with them.   I asked Alexa what the weather was like for the day and then looked at the shelves of sweater options I had.   There was a form-fitting grey turtleneck sweater I hadn’t thought to pair with the pants.  But it didn’t look right when I put it on, hanging down too low.

Should I tuck it in?   I hadn’t tucked a sweater in in ages but it didn’t look that bad.   Only I needed a belt.   Did I have a black belt though?   I knew I had one rather rugged-looking brown belt from memory and I thought I might have had dressy black and brown belts from my consulting days, but I’d have to check in the "Drawer of Closet Miscellany".

The things in the drawer are both varied and aged and I always go back in time when I go through it.  I pushed things aside, including the red, fleece gloves I got in 1991 in Stuttgart, Germany with a boyfriend who had come to visit me while I was doing some work for IBM.   I moved the zip-up leather vest I got for some rather risqué halloween costume I’d come up with fifteen years ago and then I saw them: three coiled up belts.  

I put on the black belt, did a “hole check” to see if I was the size today I was years ago based on which hole the belt fit best in.   And then I took my son to school.   I saw a friend a short while later and asked if I looked okay.   He said it looked nice on me.  Something about, “the belt accented my slim waist”.  

And.I did like the outfit all day long—with one exception—there is so much more to do when you go to the bathroom.  

The Big Boy Update:  My son has been given a new privilege, but with a catch.   He has a night lamp on his bed now with the explanation that as an eight-year-old, he knows when his body is tired and ready to sleep.   He also has two alarms on the Alexa in their bedroom to wake him up.   In the mornings he can coordinate himself more, but if he doesn’t get dressed, or have breakfast or put his lunchbox in his backpack, well, that’s what he gets going to school (which he knows is a requirement).   We’ll see if letting him have the control over his schedule will help.   It seems counter-intuitive since we have to remind him of everything, but his therapist and teachers think this is a good step for him.   They also know he may arrive to school in pajamas or without a jacket.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter got in trouble tonight for behavior.   I sent her to her room and told her she was done for the day and she could go to bed.   It was only about forty minutes before bedtime at the time.   She was wanting to have me read a book to her she’d been talking about.   About ten minutes later I got some pajamas, her eye drops and antibiotic and went upstairs to find her in bed, asleep with their baby music maker on.

Chinese Lantern Festival

My daughter’s retired braillest met us tonight at the Chinese Lantern Festival.   I was wondering if my daughter would be able to see anything at all even though her teacher said there were a lot of lights to be seen and they were very bright at night.

As we came around the corner to the amphitheater just as the last light of the day was fading I understood what her teacher had meant—there were a lot of lights, lighting up the area all around the lake and stage area.  I had thought there would be a lamp lighting ceremony and didn’t realize most of the evening was a display you could walk through.  

We spent close to two hours there and my daughter could see some of the colors although it was marked how very little she could really see, considering how large and bright the displays are.   All the “lanterns” are made with patterned silk over steel frames.   Some of the displays were two stories tall.

My daughter liked the pumpkin carriage.   Her teacher helped her climb into it and feel around the spherical interior:



The Big Boy Update:  At the Chinese Lantern Festival my son enjoyed everything, particularly the large dragon that spanned the length of three school busses over the water.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter’s favorite thing at the lantern festival was a large drum you could beat that caused lights to dance and change colors on the mushroom-shaped lanterns above it.

Uncanny Memory?

My brain is full.   Or at least that what it feels like as I go through my days realizing I’m not remembering things.  Some of the not remembering I realize is a lifetime of conditioning.   I put things in certain places so I don’t have to remember where I put those things.   The thing, say my keys, is always in it’s “place” and is one less thing I need to remember.  Other things I don’t make a specific effort to remember so later, when it turned out I did in fact need to know what percentage of national spending is made by the middle and lower classes, it turns out I don’t know anymore.

Some things are age-related I’m sure though.   My son, who’s brain is filled with only eight years of memories seems to have an uncanny ability to remember things.  There was a game he played on the iPad with me for a while.   There were pictures of shields with each shield having both a name and two separately “powers”.   He couldn’t read at the time so the only way he knew what the shield did was from listening to the descriptions.   There had to be fifty of the shields and he knew from the picture what each shield’s name was and the name of each power.

He’s demonstrated good recall in other things too, but it struck me tonight that he’s got a little more of an exact memory than I realized.   We’re reading The Magic Treehouse books at night.   These are chapter books that I heard the children might like as bedtime stories.   When I got the first set of four in the mail, my son told me he’d been reading them at school.

He’s ten or so books ahead of us but doesn’t seem to overly mind hearing the stories again at night.   I just finished reading Night of the Ninjas tonight.  My son had read this book some time back at school.   We read some together several days ago and then last night he wanted me to read the rest of the book to him before bed.   His sister had fallen asleep early so I told him I would read it to him, but he had to be okay hearing it again (and not complaining) when I read the last few chapters to his sister tonight.

Last night I finished the book with my son while his sister slept.   This was now his second reading through, although a few months after his first reading.   Tonight, after the children were in their beds and I was in the reading chair across the room facing them, I started to read.  My son couldn’t see the book but he started calling out sentence words and endings, saying the words aloud at the same time as I was reading them.   This is annoying if you’re a listener, so we asked him to stop, but he’d finished at least five unpredictable sentences by that point.   Was he guessing the words or did he remember them?  The books aren’t long, but I read for a half-hour to them and that’s a lot of words to keep in your head.

A bit after he’d stopped co-reading with me I misread two lines.   I read the first line in the boy’s voice and realized at the end of the sentence it was the girl speaking.   So I read the next line like it was the girl talking to maintain the continuity of the conversation.   It was something like, “We need to hurry.” and “We’ll never make it.”—not anything that clearly indicated one or the other child had spoken either sentence.

My son suddenly said, “that’s not right.”  He told me, "Annie said, 'We need to hurry.' and Jack said, 'We’ll never make it.’”  It was a little uncanny that he remembered the words that specifically.   I told him he was correct and kept reading.  If his sister hadn’t been in the room I would have asked him to read with me again just to see how much he really did remember.

The Big Boy Update:  My parents were over for dinner tonight.   As we were getting our plates to sit down to dinner I heard my son say to my father, “were you the first one in your class to be able to count to one hundred?"

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My mother mentioned how my son was a member of the Clean Plate Club at dinner tonight when she saw he’d finished his meal.   It struck me that we hadn’t sung the “Clean Plate Club” song in probably two years so I launched into the brief, repetitive song my children used to love.   My daughter, who knows the word ‘plate’ sang it as, “clean clate club” clearly every time.  We sang the song again when the next person finished their plate and, yes, that’s how she was singing it.   By the third rendition my husband asked her what she was singing and she insisted she was saying, ‘plate’.   She demonstrated by singing, “clean plate club” very clearly.   And for the next two iterations of the song she sang it as though she’d never gotten the word wrong.   I wonder if she was singing from memory of how she did several years ago and didn’t even think about the sounds as they happened until it was brought to her attention?

Brl

The letters ‘brl’ in braille mean ‘braille’.   I’m still learning braille, albeit at a slowed pace over the past few months.   I’ve been using the braille I’ve learned fairly regularly to both read and write things a good bit.

For instance, I got my daughter’s teachers gift cards for holiday gifts.   I got them cards and wrote a thank you to them for all they do for my daughter and the students.  The completed envelopes had their names on them, but my daughter didn’t know which card went to which teacher (and she has a lot).   So I typed up on some braille label paper their names and put the stickers on each envelope.   My daughter was very excited about handing them each their cards when she went to school before the break.

This weekend I wanted to go to the dog store to get several things.   I asked my daughter if she wanted to go with me and help me pick out some things.   I told her we had to make a list.   We decided to write the list up in braille so she could help me remember everything we needed to get.   She was totally on the job in the store, letting me know what was next on the list.

She’s in Y-Guides this year.  One of the things each of the girls needs to do is memorize the father’s name, daughter’s name and the name they each picked for their tribe name.  That’s twelve girls, twelve fathers and twenty-four additional tribe names.   So I typed them up in braille and she’s been reviewing them before each meeting.

We’ve written stories together in braille and then there was Battleship and Chutes and Ladders my husband got for her and modified so everything was tactile and written in braille.   I got her a t-shirt with a saying in braille, printed in regular print, which is meant for all the sighted people out there to read and ask her, “what does your t-shirt say?”  I brailled the saying for her when the t-shirt came in and asked her if she knew all the contractions.  She didn’t know them all but she told me she figured it out because of the other words.

I’m still reviewing my daughters large volume of homework from before the holiday break for practice.   I’m about to start the next unit of my online course.   I was feeling rather lost with all the contractions and, beyond that, the collection of rules for when you can and can’t, should and shouldn’t use them.   It must be common at this point to feel a little lost as the supplemental material after my last unit had an entire document about just that—feeling lost in a sea of contractions.   It apparently gets easier going forward.

The Big Boy Update:  I played my son and Connor in the latest Mario Kart on the Nintendo Switch on Friday.   He’s been playing for a while and I’d never played with the switch controller before but I’m a veteran of the very first Mario Kart ever and many subsequent versions.   We played multiple games and I beat him in some.   Although he beat me in total points in the end.   A bit of practice and I think I could take him though.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is starting to interact with the dog in a way that works for them both.   She’s not grabbing her and carrying her around everywhere (we had to stop that).   She’s not running and screaming and then getting upset when the dog thinks she’s playing and wants to jump on her and nip.   And she can calmly approach her and pet her normally much of the time.   Matisse likes her a lot.   My daughter fell asleep on the chair in the living room last night and the dog wanted to get on the chair and be with her.   My daughter wasn’t in the mood for it but I think as time goes on she’ll want to have the dog right by her side.

Nothing

My daughter has been singing, "Do You Want To Build a Snowman” from Frozen the past few days.  She’s about the right age and she has that little tinkly voice.   I wrote about this song before, way back, not long after my daughter lost the bulk of her vision.  

My daughter saw Frozen when she could still see.  We had gotten the album and I was playing it in the car for the children.   "Do You Want To Build a Snowman” came on and when the interlude came in the middle of the song my daughter knew the movie had a scene with a boat and a storm.  She wanted to know what happened and I explained how there was a terrible storm and the boat had sunk and the parents had died.

So for the past few days as my daughter sang the song, she’d get to the middle part and tell me this was where the storm with the boat part.   And I got to thinking.   It’s been over three years since my daughter lost her sight.   She was just shy of four-years-old at the time.   What did she remember of the movie?

I asked her if she remembered seeing the movie Frozen.  She said no.  How did she know about the boat?   She’d known for a long time about the boat.   Then I asked her what she remembered seeing.  She said, “nothing”.   I asked her twice, the second time a little differently but her answer was quick and clear and didn’t sound like she was avoiding a subject she didn’t want to talk about.   She doesnt’ remember seeing anything at all.

Later, after dinner I brought it up again when my husband was around in a casual, “let’s catch dad up on what we talked about” kind-of-way and her answer was the same, “I remember seeing nothing”.

I didn’t expect that.   I wonder what her memory of colors is, for instance?   We think she can still see a little because she can do a few things with the iPad, but we don’t know what what she sees looks like at all.  Maybe I’ll ask some additional questions to see if I can get more information on what she can see now.  It’s hard to find out though.   If she was a fully sighted person who lost their vision when they were an adult, they could describe what their remaining vision was like.  She has no framework for what things should look like and with all memory of prior vision gone, she’s not going to be able to explain what she can see.

The Big Boy Update:  Tonight I was hugging my son before bed.   I told him he smelled good.   He asked me what he smelled like.   I told him he smelled like Greyson.   He said, “I usually smell like poop or bacon or eggs or pancakes.”   I couldn’t stop laughing.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is either a shark or a bunny.   She is kind and sweet and lovable just like a bunny.   Unless she’s threatened or smells blood.  Then she’s a shark.

Childhoods Are Blurry

I remember many things from my childhood.   I remember my parents always being kind to me.   They were always understanding and I don’t really have lots of negative memories from when I was young.   There were a few times my father lost his temper at me, every time of which I deserved.  Today I don’t remember what the topics were other than poor grades on a report card, but there would be an argument of some sort, my mother (who is one of the kindest people I’ve ever known) would be unhappy but not overly mad.   My father would talk to me in an angry, disappointed tone about what I’d done or not done while my mother would agree and support him.  I usually got defensive or lied or pushed back against them and at some point when I’d pushed things too far, my father would grab me by the arm and whap me once on the backside while he yelled at me explaining that was quite enough.

That was a big message.  My father never did that unless I’d really been asking for it.   The spank, which hurt my pride, never my body, wasn't wasted on me on me.  Afterwards I always felt contrite about my behavior—after I’d gotten done crying and having my mother console me.

Other than that, I don’t remember my parents really yelling at me.   Actually, I think they did, but it wasn’t often and it was usually for cause.   Which is one of the reasons I’m so upset at how things are going in our family.   My husband is also one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.   He rarely loses his temper, but I see him getting frustrated with the children and he’s yelled at them too.   Maybe it’s because they pushed him that far as well, but I fear he’s gotten some of his quick-tempered behavior as a result of how I deal with the children—because as much as I don’t like it, that’s what I’m like.

My husband and aren’t cruel and I don’t think we’d be considered abusive by any stretch of the imagination.  I just think there has to be a better way.    We’re working now on ways to address certain behaviors from the children.   I’ve got a much lower tolerance level with them right now.  I’ve gotten very angry at them several times since we’ve returned from vacation when I posted my very down, “I might be giving up” post.   When I have, I’ve been very clear certain things won’t be tolerated.   I think I’ve gotten through to them, even if it was through yelling.  This almost seems counter-intuitive, but the interesting thing is, the reduction in tolerance/flexibility/understanding has made an impact for the positive already.   The children know I’m serious.   They know I’m done putting up with pushback—of any kind.   They’ve seen me get very, very angry when they’ve pushed me and they’ve understood exactly what they’re doing that’s resulting in me getting vocally firm with them.   And we're getting results.

Maybe my husband and I have been inconsistent, something we try not to do, but maybe we’re not doing a good job.  Maybe we’ve been unintentionally letting them get away with small things like not getting shoes on the first, second or third time we’ve asked them to because we know children are distracted and getting shoes on isn’t a high priority for then because they aren’t in a hurry to get to wherever it is on time.   That’s one example, but it’s a good one.   It’s not a zero tolerance household, but it’s a much lower tolerance one right now.   My hope is we can get better behaviors from them because they know there isn’t much give in things when we state our expectations.  Because I don’t want to be that parent who yells at their children all the time.

That’s not at all what I was going to write about when I wrote the title at the top of this post, so let me get myself back on track and talk about my childhood and some memories I have.

At our house now, when the children get up in the morning they come to our room.   The dog’s pen is in there and their iPads are on a charging station in there and we’re in there as well so it’s the logical place to go.   Typically they’ll come in and start talking to whichever parent is woken up by their arrival.  That parent is usually me.   My husband stays up later and is tired in the mornings.   I commonly have to remind the children several times to keep their voices low because their father is sleeping.   They seem to have no volume control at all.

There are questions and discussions about breakfast and the dog and who is going to take her out (my very capable blind daughter loves that job).   As I was talking to the children two mornings ago I was reminded of what it was like at my parent’s house when I was a child.  I remembered my father, also a good sleeper and how I would come into my parents room and talk to the parent who woke up and answered me.   I have memories of my father in my parent’s bed, sprawled out, face down, dead asleep.

Mornings in my house involved my mother waking me up and then getting me breakfast at the cutting board in the kitchen.   They had a little pull-out cutting board at the edge of the counter by the kitchen door.  They also had a yellow tall chair with a foot stool that hinged out from underneath it that was just the right height to pull up to that cutting board.   My mother would get me breakfast, pull out the cutting board, pull up the chair, put the food down and then would go back to get ready for work.

Things are fuzzy though because my childhood spanned across many years.   I know my father would sleep later than my mother.   I don’t know if this was because he needed less time to get ready for work or if his work started later.   Back then there wasn’t flex time or working from home.   He travelled around the state some of the time but a lot of the time he headed into an office downtown.   My mother would drive me to school and then go to work from there.   There was carpooling with some of the neighbors who also went to the same school she’d bring along as well.

I remember my father sleeping soundly while my mother and I got ready in the adjacent bathroom.  My mother would put on makeup and I would try to get the tangles out of my hair (when she made me).  I remember watching my mother put on her makeup, but at a mirror that’s there today, after they redid the bathroom.   That’s one of the fuzzy parts.   I remember her at a counter that wasn’t there at the time but my memory has been modified because I can barely remember the bathroom in its original configuration.

I do remember my father speaking very little in the mornings because he wasn’t a morning person.   Now, my father is up early, working in his office on his computer, but back then he slept in whenever he could.   On the weekends I remember getting up and watching weekend cartoons while they slept in to what was probably only nine o’clock, but back then it seemed like they were sleeping very late.

I remember a lot of things from my childhood, but so many of them are blurred even as I play back things in my mind now, because of how things changed over the years in our house.   I’m forty-eight years old and my parents have lived in the same house since before I was born.   A lot has happened in that time: changes in furniture, redecoration of different areas of the house, the finishing off of the basement and addition of a bathroom on that lower level.   But the memories seem fluid and without conflict in my mind.

Back to the yelling though.  Or not yelling, or how my parents parented me as a child.   I have happy memories of my entire childhood.  I know that from all the things I do remember, blurred as the memories are.   I want to have a happy family.   Or maybe the better word would be, ‘harmonious’.   I want my children to think back on their youth and remember it positively, not one where they were always getting into trouble.   I don’t want them to tell their children, “your grandmother yelled at me all the time, I don’t ever want to do that to you.”

This was a zig-zagging post.  That’s how my mind works sometimes, jumping from one thought to a connected second though and then to another, related thought and then back to the initiating thought.  I like thinking back on my childhood though, remembering all the things that made me into the person I am today.   I hope my children will have positive memories of their childhoods too.

The Big Boy Update:  Aunt Margaret came with me to pick up my son from school today.  He knew she and Uncle Jonathan were coming over to spend time with his sister today but we had told him we weren’t sure if they would still be at our house when he got home from school.   When he got in the car to come home and realized Margaret was in the car, he bounded forward to give her a big hug.   He’s my sweet boy.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Today Aunt Margaret and Uncle Jonathan came over to the house to play games, read to, and just spend time with my daughter.   She was excited to have two of her favorite adults come play exclusively with her.   They played Chutes and Ladders and Fortnite Monopoly with her.   She was so happy to have them there, spending a day just with her.   She got a little bossy though and didn’t want to give Margaret a break for a glass of water.   She would be playing with them still if they were still here.   I told Margaret and Jonathan they were hired and I’d see them at nine in the morning.   My daughter would love nothing more.

Going Blonde

My dog is going blonde.   It's sort of strange to know it’s coming, to watch it unfold.   When I called the breeder to inquire about a Soft Coated Wheaton Terrier I asked if she had any of the darker colored ones available.   Without laughing at me she said they all started out dark but all turned some variation of “wheat” colored all the way to almost white.

I looked online and sure enough, aside from the faces, the mature dogs were all light colored.   So I’ve known this was coming.   Here’s a picture of my daughter with Matisse on the day we picked her up at eight weeks:



I haven’t seen a hair shed yet, but she’s growing at a fierce rate.   She’s not quite four-months-old now and is already lightening up.   Here’s a picture of her back from tonight:



See that line of lightness down the center of her back?   That’s the hair I parted to show the roots.  Normally her hair is a wild and crazy mess; it took time and several distractionary toys to get her hair to lie down and behave,

That’s hair growth that’s coming in with dramatically less pigment.   Close up, with flash, it looks like this:



I’m looking across the room at two pillows of sheep’s fur and it looks like our dog is going to look like a sheep in a few months color-wise.

The Big Boy Update:  My son went back to school for the first day today.   He, “had a very good day and got all his work items completed”.   But the teacher also wants to have a conference next week.   I’m not sure what that means.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   My daughter does not want to get her head wet because of the ear infection.   And yet she needed a bath.   When I finally got her in, she was happy.  She stayed in longer and played some games involving ice cubes, which she kept needing refills of.

It’s Only a Matter of Time

I’m not reading last night’s blog post.   Too painful to write and I am trying to figure things out here.   I think it’s largely a matter of time.   The title of this post uses the word ‘only’ but I think ‘largely’ or ‘mostly’ work perhaps better.   I think a lot of the parenting issues I’m frustrated with are related to  time issues.

Here’s an example:  My daughter and son, it turns out, have middle ear infections.  This is typically called, “swimmer’s ear” and my children got it while we were on vacation.   The fix is ear drops in each ear, four times a day.  My daughter doesn’t want to do the drops.   She doesn’t want to put her head on the sofa/pillow/bed/anything so we can put the drops in the first ear, because it would hurt the second ear to put her head down.

As an understanding parent I sympathize with her.   I try to come up with a way we can put her head down comfortably, where it wouldn’t hurt the other ear.   The suggested options don’t meet with approval, only crying and complaining.   Then she’s upset because she doesn’t want to have to keep the drops in for forty seconds, that being forty seconds entirely too long.   I explain how the medication needs to stay in to do it’s work and the longer it stays in the better it can help.    This meets with statements that she can only manage one second or ten seconds (this is before she’s even done the drops before and has no idea what they’re like.)

Now my husband comes over.   We’re concerned about a fearful child who’s already in pain from an ear infection—but it isn’t going to end.   And I know this.   So I explain if she wants to do it less than forty seconds she can have her ear infection feel only somewhat better.   How many seconds did she want to do and I’d see if I could let her know how much won’t be healed by the medication?

She is alarmed by this, tries some options on number of seconds and was I sure?   At this point I’m getting tetchy.   Why?  Because of time.   Because I still hadn’t unpacked everything.   There was Christmas to put up from before we left, one child to get ready for the first day of school in the morning and a puppy in training.  I had come home from getting the drops so we could get them in straight away so I could run back out to get the next two errands done before I had to run out again to puppy training class I had forgotten was tonight.   Also, I haven’t had a shower since we got home.

So time.   Or more to the point, the limitedness of time.   The limited amount of time I’m willing to dedicate to any specific task.   When the time allocated is overrun by huge allotments, I get tetchy.   I think I hold it in a bit for a while, but then it’s just clear I’m done wasting time on this particular endeavor and things are going to have to march right now towards completion.

So in the case of the ear drops, I ran out of time patience.   My husband had come over by now, doubling the overall task time utilization and we had gone over the, “you have to pick a spot now, or we’re going to pick a spot for you” because she was overwrought over picking a place to put her head down to endure four drops for forty seconds.   My husband explained that we didn’t want her ears to feel bad but if she wasn’t able to do the drops so she could start to feel better, he would pick a spot and hold her head for her so we could get the drops in.

So where did we go wrong?   In not dedicating enough time to her so she could feel comfortable with the situation (if she ever was?)  In being uncaring, unfeeling parents who lost their tempers at a child who was in pain and scared of drops?   That our children have been unintentionally taught to expect to discuss/cry/negotiate a situation and not take their parent’s explanation and commands without question?  Or something else entirely that’s not one or a combination of the above?

I don’t know.   I don’t know time is the enemy.   I feel like it it many days.   I’m more quick to lose my temper or be short with the children if I’m rushing to get many things done.   But there’s the hidden one too, which is having time, but not dedicating enough of it to the children.   I chose to have the children, I should be there for as much time as is needed to do the job well.  Or so I feel like I should be.   Time does feel like the enemy many days.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has his first day of school back tomorrow.   We needed to get his pencils updated for the start of school.   We had to get new ones for the missing ones and replacement ones for those colored pencils that were too short.   He knew the rules for how short and which colors of Prismacolor pencils he had to have.   We got them all picked out and then I had to write his initials in sharpie on the side of the pencil.   I didn’t have the same penmanship as his teachers, but he said he liked the way I wrote them anyway.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter and her friends did some drawing with stencils and sharpies today.   She got so much sharpie on a few of her fingers that she used to hold the stencil in place and feel where the sharpie was that no amount of acetone, bleach or adhesive remover would de-purple them.