The Bottom of the Grand Canyon

I was talking to a friend today and he was asking questions about what my daughter remembers seeing and what her understanding is of sight in general.   She was fully sighted until close to four years of age so I'd think she remembers seeing and has an understanding of what sighted people can see.   Over time we get evidence by way of comments from her that she may remember very little of seeing at all.

Yesterday we were all eating dinner and the word 'canyon' came up in relation to my son's schoolwork.   When my daughter wanted to know what that meant we described how a canyon was between mountains and sometimes canyons can be very, very large, and are carved through the landscape over incredibly long periods of time, like the Grand Canyon.

We explained how very deep it was and my husband said there was an interesting way to get to the bottom of the canyon by riding a donkey down from the top.   My daughter said, "it's so deep you can't see the bottom?"  

She was assuming far away meant it wasn't visible.   When we explained that we could see things far away I think she was both confused and also somewhat sad.   She's still accepting being blind.   When her father said, "even though it's far away, it's still something you can see," my daughter said in a petulant voice, "well how would I know, I'm blind!"

That's anger.  I wanted to ask lots of questions at that point like did she think we could see the moon in the sky even though it was very far away, or the Sun when we traveled to see the solar eclipse.   I wanted to quiz her, but I don't.   We get the information we get when it comes organically.   Pulling information out of her never works and only upsets her.

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Hidden Weapon Game:  My son and daughter played a game this morning with lots of weapons from the weapon bin.  We call it that and that sounds dangerous but it mostly contains foam light sabers, nerf guns and other plastic and soft things that technically are categorized as weapons.   Before school this morning they each hid various weapons in different rooms for the other one to find.   School started before the game ended.   I'm typing with hidden weapons under my seat and two katanas in the drawer in front of me.

Stress or Less?

Are my children under extra strain or stress with the COVID-19 Coronavirus situation.  Are they more distressed because they have to deal with us, their parents, as their teachers?   Is being alone, isolated from friends and family, causing them to be sad or lonely?  In short, how are my children faring with all that's happening surrounding the pandemic?

From worrying about getting sick, I don't think either of our children is one bit worried.   We discussed early on with both children that there was a good chance we would get it, but that it would be like a bad cold like we had a few years back.  They have both been sick with fevers, vomiting, aches, and lack of energy.   Both children handle being sick very well and the thought of getting coronavirus doesn't seem to bother them at all.

They know it is important for us to protect those who might have a much more severe response to COVID-19, including death.   They're taking social distancing seriously and all other measures like washing their hands (even though they're staying at home.).  On the stress from COVID-19 side of things, I'd say they are likely low stress.

School is another factor.   My son, I would have said was high stress a few weeks ago.   We're into, what is this, week six now?   Can it possibly have been six weeks?   I must be miscounting.  My son is doing so well in school.  He is largely able to work most of the day himself with a few check-ins.     I think he's low-stress as well.   I don't know how the work he's doing at home compares to what he would have done at school, but he's doing a good bit of work, completing all the items to be turned in.

My daughter is a big question with school thought.  I've talked about how she's a learning machine, which is true.   She devours work, but she also sees me fretting about getting everything ready for her.   She is so sweet, but she does need a lot of help.   I don't ever want to hobble her or "disable" her by doing things for her that she could do or learn to do herself.   That means we're asking an awful lot of her these days.  

She is rising to the challenge.  To pretty much every challenge.   I wonder if it's at a price sometimes.   She has been talking about how her stomach hurts her a lot.   It's not intestinal cramps, this is discomfort in her stomach.   Is it anxiety?  Does she have an ulcer?  Highly doubtful on the ulcer, but it's a thought.  When we give her over the counter medicine it feels better.   I'm going to talk to her psychiatrist tomorrow at our telemedicine call.   Maybe he has some suggestions.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is off right now doing his P.E. challenge of the week.   He's making an obstacle course with chalk on the driveway and sidewalk.  At different intervals you stop and do different exercises like jumping jacks or Frankensteins (I had to ask about that one).  We're going to each take a turn trying out his fitness obstacle course when he's done.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter had her first meeting online with her O&M teacher.   She talked to him about how she had done his assignment navigating from our house to the neighborhood entrance and back.  He was impressed she knew all the street names in our neighborhood.   I'm not sure why, but we've talked about the street names many times and have done walks over the years.   It just seemed like a given that she'd know how to get around the streets of our neighborhood.

Red Dragon

I loved the Hanibal Lecter movies.  I remember being awed by the powerful story and acting in The Silence of the Lambs.  I've seen it several more times over the years and it is equally good every time.   I didn't think anything would be able to match in intensity, horror, and fright that The Silence of the Lambs.   Then, m 2002, Red Dragon was released.

Ray Fines and Anthony Hopkins's performances were spot on.   It wasn't a sequel or a prequel per se, It was close enough and yet different enough to be judged on its own merits.   I loved it just as much as the first Hanibal Lecter movie, I think.

One of the main characters was completely blind.   She had lost her sight when she was quite young.   I've thought about a line she says in the movie so many times since my daughter lost her sight.   She says she saw a cougar when she was young before she lost her sight and that she's always tried to hold on to what that cougar looked like, although by now it's probably more like a donkey.

I wonder what my daughter will remember when it comes to the things she saw before she lost her vision.  Today, that same scene came back to me from Red Dragon as I did something I saw there, over a quarter-century ago that I thought would help my daughter today.

Reba has offered to serve some pie.   She gets a toothpick and places it in the center of the pie.   Then she uses the knife to cut slices, based on the toothpick as a reference point.   I thought it was a clever adaptation when I saw it but I had no need to ever try it until this morning when my daughter wanted to cut up the banana bread she and Shane had made in a round cake pan.

It worked perfectly.

The Big Boy Update:  My son worked very hard today to write a beautifully penned letter and envelope to his Spanish teacher.   In one of those stories no one wants to have happen, Phillippe found out he has lung cancer in an advanced state.   He has been receiving aggressive treatments for several months and my son's prior Spanish teacher has stepped back in to teach the students.   My son wrote his entire letter in Spanish, including telling Phillippe that he has a wart on his foot we cut out today (we did).

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter's first-grade teacher joined their class call today as a surprise.   Their first-grade teacher was universally beloved by the students.  Their class was special to her, because it was her last year of teaching before moving into the corporate sector to teach there.  It was very sweet to hear how excited the students were to see and catch up with their teacher from last year.

The Best Bok Choi

It was time to go to the grocery store and restock our food supplies.   Typically we have most things on the shared shopping list we've maintained online for a number of years but it never hurts to check with the other one to make sure there are no last-minute additions to the list.

My husband was out playing golf at the time, which when you first hear about someone out doing something social in the current medical pandemic state, just sounds wrong.   Golf though has no problem maintaining social distancing and more simply because it's a sport played in wide, open spaces.

But back to the shopping.   I got a text back that I should pick up some vegetables for meals.   When I got to the produce area I started looking around.  I used to be able to cook.  I can still cook, but I rarely do because my husband loves cooking.  He doesn't seem to ever want a day off.  It's relaxing and he enjoys coming up with new things.   He's pretty good at new things and we let him know which ones we think he should make again.

While I was looking for the zucchini and squash I noticed several things I'd not seen before.   There was Chinese celery which looks the same in length but is much, much thinner.  I tasted it when I got home and it tastes great, I ate several stalks while I put the groceries up. Next, I found snow peas and put a pile in a bag. And then, because I was on an Asian food ingredient theme, I got some baby bok choi that were flowering at the top.

When my husband got home from golf I told him I'd gotten hi some different vegetables.  Was he up for the challenge?   Tonight I attended an online board meeting for two hours.  When I came out I found my husband had met the challenge.   He had made sesame chicken, ginger snow peas and had cooked the little bok choi up whole, using a recipe titled, "The Best Bok Choi."  Everything was great.   My daughter and I loved the bok choi.   My son loved the chicken.   I could have eaten a whole extra plate of snow peas.   The only thing bad about the meal was the excess of dishes it took to make the dishes.   On the balance, I think it was definitely worth the cleanup though.

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Color Argument:  My children were very angry the other day.   I heard them come in from the back yard stomping and yelling and doing what children do when they can't solve a problem on their own: they go to an adult.   This was one of those absolutely ridiculous arguments from an adult perspective.   There were two of something theyhad.   Each child had received one of these things for Christmas and had no problem about the color at the time.   It is now four months after Christmas and suddenly after months of use, there is a color injustice.   The children were upset because my son was saying the orange one was his and the green one had been given to my daughget becaus she loves green.   This was true: my daughter loved only green for most of the time she was sighted with the love carrying over into her blind years.   She had gotten over green it would seem now as she said in angrg wail, "but it's green!  I can never handle green!"

Thank You…Maybe

A week or so ago my son came down around ten o'clock after having a nightmare with the net result being I sent him back upstairs a while later with his hair cut and a pact not to say anything with the hopes we'd amaze and befuddle dad.   The next day we didn't say anything, but neither did my husband.   It was such an unthinkable thing that my son's hair would magically shorten overnight that even though my husband thought it looked shorter, he never suspected his hair had actually been cut.

That was my first hair cutting.   I've trimmed the ends off my daughter's and my long hair, which isn't complicated at all.  I've also trimmed her bangs a few times, which is also a straight line cut.   Those aren't "haircuts" which really mean, "head of hair cut" in the long-form.

Cutting an actual hairstyle is an entirely other thing and it wasn't something I was dying to try out.   My son's hair is wavy and was getting really messy and he just wanted it shorter.   The wavy aspect of his hair makes it a lot more tolerant to variations in cuts, meaning I could probably do a mediocre job and no one would even know it.  I had been paying attention to how hair was cut for decades, I thought I could do it.

My son's hair looked fine, but I wasn't expecting this morning to hear my husband say, "okay, I'm ready, come in here and cut my hair."  He, too, had been paying attention to what the stylists did when they cut his hair.   He had the trimmer, I had the scissors and the thinning shears.   We had the knowledge and the tools to maybe, possibly, if we were careful and went slowly, not screw his hair up too badly.

My daughter was in the bedroom talking to us while we worked together to make safe choices on how and where to remove hair on my husband's head.   My daughter would call out, "you're not going to make daddy bald, are you?"   I assured her he would not be bald when we were done.   I said I'd let her feel the hair we'd cut off when we were done.   She did not want to feel that, thank you very much, because it was gross.   Eww.  

My daughter did eventually feel the ball of hair I had swept up before throwing it away.   She felt her father's head all over after the haircut had been done.   I only wished we'd thought to have her feel his head before.

Hair cut complete, my husband had to get ready to go show a property to a client.   Real estate continues here but it is done under very careful conditions.  My husband wasn't sure if the hair cut looked passable, good, or hacked.   As he was leaving the house he said to me, "thank you...maybe".   I think he's fine.   Worse case is it's a renewable resource.

The Big Boy Update:  My son came around the corner the other morning with a concerned look on his face.   The dog had gone stuffed animal shopping again and had a new victim from the children's room.   My son said, "Matisse has the...the...the insectivore!"   After asking a few descriptive questions I said to him, "I think you mean the grasshopper."   To his credit, he was less worried about getting the name right than he was about saving the stuffed creature from a slobbery distruction.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I was grumbling, whining, moaning about or winging on about a technical problem I coudn't figure out today on the computer.   As some point my daughter had apparently had enough and said,  "sorry I'm interrupting your pity party, but do you think you could help me with the marble run now?"

School’s Out!

I don't know if the exclamation mark at the end of this post title is one of excitement or exasperation. I think from different perspectives different emotions apply.   On the balance though, I'm glad school has been canceled for the remainder of the school year.    I should clarify that the county public school system which my daughter attends school from, has canceled schools for the remainder of the year.   My son's private, Montessori school has yet to make a final decision but given other mandates from the governor and decisions from other private schools, we are likely to hear a decision by Monday from his school as well.

Why am I glad about this?  In part, I'm not.   I would really, really like to have my weekdays back.  It has been nice to participate in the education of our children, though.   That's one of the benefits.   It's participating without responsibility.   Our children's teachers are trying to get the same level and quality of education via remote learning as they would have delivered in the classroom.   There is some wide variation in how well this is being executed.

I'm not following trends or news on the schooling at home, but I have been asked to participate in several questionnaires which, from the questions being asked, leave me to believe not everyone is having the same level of success as we are at home with school.   There are a lot of factors and we've got the best of all possible scenarios.

Firstly,  our teachers are dedicated and driven to provide us with everything we need to continue school at home.   Secondly, we have all the resources we need to  complete the work.   This is a combination of digital and physical resources.   Some families may not have access to a computer or an internet connection at home.   Others might not have materials to do art projects at home or a printer to print worksheets, for example.   And lastly, we have the time to dedicate weekdays to further our children's education.

We've been told school can be completed in two hours per day.  Or at least one teacher said that at one point.   I think it was my daughter's main teacher.   I think if she only did the minimum required that had to be turned in and didn't attend any online meetings with the classroom teacher, her daily meetings with her braillest and the weekly meeting with her VI teacher, we might be able to get everything done in two hours.  But there is reading for a half-hour each day.   And typing practice.   And getting a little writing practice in like typing (not brailling) an email back to someone who's contacted her.   If we did the absolute minimum, I think we could be done in two hours.

What would we do with my daughter for the rest of the day then?   She is happiest when she's being productive, doing something interesting, or learning.   So for her, school is a good thing.   My son is doing well overall in school, but he benefits from completing the work.   It's good for his mind.

Where was I?  I've gotten interrupted writing this post about seven times and I am giving up getting back on track.   The thing is, school at home is good.  Aside from it taking lots of time.   The schools have a challenge in that they need to grade and assess the students.   There are "End of Grade" tests that my son, as a third-grader, is required to take and pass.   That seems to be all out the window this year.  

In the questionnaires I've responded to, there seems to be a lot of questions about the school system or teachers not being connected with the students.  It leads me to believe there are families who are not getting the same level of engagement from their schools.  One question that keeps coming up is if I think my child will be ready to move to the next grade.   In our case I think we will be doing just as well if not better than we would have if our children had been at school, because we're doing everything we can at home, more in some cases because our school day is more efficient without all the interruptions and group transitions found in a classroom setting.   The amount of time it takes my daughter's class to line up, go to the bathroom, get back in line, get to the cafeteria and then repeat in reverse order after lunch is an example.

We'll find out next year how well we did at home.  For now, I'll repeat again how grateful we are for the teachers and administrators at my son and my daughter's schools for helping us keep learning going during COVID-19.

The Big Boy Update (from my son):  My dad took away screens at the end of the day so I couldn't watch a movie.  So I went into a closet and stayed there until nine o'clock because I was upset and my dad said there were no second chances.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter doesn't like her desk.   She thinks her brother had more space than she does.   Her desk and his desks are very different in space and layout.   Tomorrow she wants to go through her desk getting rid of things she doesn't want and rearrange the things she wants to keep.

I Want My Lawyer!

I had stepped into the craft room this morning to take a call and with the noise-canceling feature of the AirPods, I heard not a sound coming from the house until I'd hung up and removed the earbuds.   What I heard then caused me to suppress an outburst of laughter for I heard my daughter screaming at the top of her lungs, "I WANT MY LAWYER!"

She didn't say it once, she said it again and again.   She was mad at Shane, who had asked her to do something with a balloon and a bag that, apparently, was a cruel thing to do because (as my daughter explained), "I am blind!"

Shane was asking her to use a balloon placed inside a grocery bag and then tied closed.  The activity was entirely created by my daughter's adaptive P.E. teacher and sent to us in a video.   My daughter had listened to the video and was interested, but then suddenly was fearful of balloons because they popped.   This is a child who loves balloons and recently had an entire closet filled with them so she and Madison could have a party in the secret hideout.

My daughter was distraught.   Shane and I knew this was anxiety and having to deal with her blindness.   I let her calm down, let her pick some alternate items she could bounce up and down on her hand (even though the balloon with the bag was by far the easiest), and finally let her have some lunch.   She's still not happy at Shane, even though I told her if she wanted to be angry at anyone it should be me.

Ms. Mary Jane, the adaptive P.E. teacher had sent the activity to her, including a video, because she thought it would be fun and she could be successful while building skills at the same time.   I responded to Mary Jane and told her thanks and sent a video of my daughter getting super double bounced on the trampoline.   Mary Jane wrote back and said she was so grateful to hear back and loved the video.  

The balloon bouncing is very hard or can be, I have to admit.   When we bounce something we see it go up and match the trajectory for where it will come down.   This is almost impossible to do when you can't see anything.   The crinkling bag made a big difference, but my daughter couldn't get the hang of barely tapping the balloon and coupled with her frustration caused the balloon to fly off and only increase her anxiety, anger, and feelings of not being capable.

We ended on less than a positive note with me sending Shane home early with my daughter saying she never wanted to see her again.   I sent my daughter to her room (as a reward) and let her listen to her audiobook until her next teacher meeting which is in a half-hour.   I need her in a good mood for that.   Hopefully, the break will help.  

School: mostly fun with bits of awful for my daughter.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is working so incredibly well lately during school hours.   Yesterday he took extra time organizing the Prismacolor pencils.   He'd worn some down to less than two inches and they were getting hard to hold.   I brought out all the Prismacolor pencil sets we'd gotten for him for school over the past four years and he pulled together a new set from the remnants of the old ones.   He did a lovely job putting them in a pleasing color order.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is using some of her money to buy audiobooks now.   She can go through an audiobook in just two days when she gets really into a story.

Blindness Basics Course

I was going through my inbox this evening, trying to get enough completed so I could start writing this blog post because I  have a surprise online birthday party to attend, which I'm pretty excited about.  I can't wait to see how we all yell out, "surprise!"  We'll figure out how to do toasts and say speeches and, well, I'm looking forward to it.   So with all this going on, the last thing I needed to do was sign up for an online course, but I did, and I'll tell you why.

I've been taking braille courses from Hadley for over three years now.  I've talked about Hadley to many, many people as their courses and the teachers I've been working with have made a significant difference in the relationship my daughter and I have.   This is an aside, but recently I was asked if I'd be interested in sharing my daughter and my story and how Hadley has benefited us as a family.   If you know me, you know I couldn't say yes fast enough, especially when I found out the testimonial would be used in donor-facing materials.

That's coming out soon, and I'm excited to see it but what I found in my inbox tonight was the periodic newsletter from Hadley that talked about a blindness basics course.   The goal of this short, self-paced online course is to educate people on how to interface with blind and visually impaired people.   The course is free and registration takes about one minute.   All Hadley courses are free.

Do I know all the blindness etiquette?   What myths about blind and visually impaired people did I not know?   I had to sign up.   If you're interested in the course, you can sign up too here: Hadley Blindness Basics Course.   There's even a certificate if you pass the quiz at the end, which I am totally putting on my refrigerator.

The Big Boy Update:   We have started building a section of a marble run on our wall that we will video and submit to KiwiCo to be added into their mega marble run compilation.   My son has worked for several hours coming up with creative things he can do with a marble on a 4'x3' wall section.   I'll share the video when we get our submission finished.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Sometimes it's better when you can't see.   This afternoon my daughter thought she felt a bug on her shoulder.  Shane looked and flipped this thing off her onto the driveway. the main body segment is an inch long.   We didn't know what it was but decided to not mention the how ferocious this thing looked.   The dog came over to investigate it and I don't know if she got bit but she ran off and rubbed her nose in the grass until I got some cold water and washed her off.

I’ll Be Caught Up Tomorrow

Things are definitely busy around here.   Every day I think I'll get caught up with things and can start in on <fill in next thing I've been trying to get to>.   I mean surely I'll get the hang of this schooling from home thing down and it'll just start being easy soon.   I'm not even coming up with the lessons.   My daughter just takes the work and does it.   What could possibly take so much of my time?

It's death by a thousand little stabs from a toothpick.   Nothing is hard, it's all easy.   It's just a lot of little things with, "Mama" thrown in at least four times every five minutes.   To give you an example, I've had to get up three times since I started writing this blog post.   I'm only on the second paragraph and I'm a fairly fast typist, but I am needed.  

Sometimes my daughter will call me for a frivolous reason, but many times she really needs help.   In the case of the three calls in two paragraphs, the tool she's using online keeps crashing.   She can restart it but then she calls out to me, "Mama, let's go."   What's happening is the screen she's on has the words, "Let's Go" in a box you have to move the mouse over to and click.   There is no way to tab or arrow key navigate to the location.   You just have to be able to see to do this one.

This morning my daughter was having, "Game Day" with Ms. B., her Braillist.   They are playing Monopoly, with my daughter doing all the math and managing properties and everything else necessary for two people to play when the other person is watching through a camera.

She came down the hall to find me and asked if I could help her find one of the dice.   Could she have found it on her own?   She could have eventually, but you know dice, they can roll.   It had dropped on carpet silently.   She was rolling carefully in a contained space but a die had gotten away from her.   This is one of the fifty interruptions in my day that are reasonable and necessary.  

This post sounds like me whining, which isn't my intent.   It sounds like I'm saying my daughter is challenging to deal with.   Well, she can be because she's a child and children excel at being challenging when they set their mind to it.   But in general, she's a sweet child that loves to help.   Her mental state of mind is much better and she's happy.   She just needs more help because the world has a whole lot that is easier with sight.

Maybe I'll get up tomorrow and be caught up at the end of the day.   Yeah, that's the ticket.  

The Big Boy Update:  I was responsible for my son's school today as well as my daughter's while my husband was taking an online course in the basement until one o'clock.   My husband is right, he has the easier job.   I was so proud of my son.   I had to ask how things were going twice and was shooed away by him so he could work alone.   He did come in and tell me he was very upset because the homophones work was so hard he'd given up and asked Alexa and she didn't even know the answers to some of them.  He was right, I had to resort to the internet to figure out some of them with him.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter came over and sat in my lap as she hugged me goodnight.   With her head on my shoulder and mine on hers she said, "Mom, we could be the lady with two heads statue."  

Just Like Gramps

My son is in the middle of a complete LEGO rehaul in our house right now.   He's been working on it for close to two weeks now.   Initially, I thought he was going to go through the junk bin on top of the LEGO storage area and be done with it.   He's going down a LEGO rabbit hole it almost seems like at this point.

The LEGOs at our house are sorted into drawers by color and some specialty drawers for Minifigures, wheels large parts, etc.  My son initially decided to redress all the Minifigures with their original outfit and gear.    This is a large project in and of itself because the LEGO's we have include not only my son's but mine and my husband's going several decades back.  

There was a plan in his mind and what that plan needed to be executed was more space.   My son has expanded his organization into the craft room, which is a longish room originally planned to be our attic.   My son has managed to put all the bin drawers lengthwise down the room, on top of the desk, in the chairs and spread all over the floor.  

As I opened the door to the craft room to let him know it was dinner time, I saw the exploded, mid-organization of his LEGO project and it immediately reminded me of my childhood and my father.

My father is not a hoarder.  He doesn't keep things just to keep things.   He's not really a pack rat either.   He's a collector who, over the course of his life, has collected many things.  The trouble my father would run into after periods of time was lack of space.   His basement workshop would get piled up with collections of interesting things.   Some of the things might be valuable but odds were more than the things were uncommon or rare.   My father is the epitome of an eclectic collector.

Back to the bit where things got full though.  Periodically, my father would do one of those deep cleanings.   He would go through what was seemingly everything.   He would move things here and there but in the process, it seemed like he made an even bigger mess of the basement.  

It was always nice seeing the finished product when my father was finished.   I'm looking forward to seeing the LEGOs in their most organized shape ever when my son completes his project.

The Big Boy Update:  My husband is playing a driving game on the XBox and picked 'ZOOM' for the license place of his car.   My son decided to play the game too after watching his father play. Without either one of them even mentioning anything about car names, my son decided to name his car 'ZOOM JR'.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter isn't slouching on spelling work while she's doing schooling at home.   Any word we hear her read in her work or mention in conversation that might be challenging, we try to have her guess at the spelling.   She's learning letter patterns and she knows it's okay to get the spelling wrong.   The other day she had cylindrical and embarrassment as two of her words.  I told her that as an adult, those were words I wasn't completely sure I was spelling correctly, so we used Alexa to verify

We’re All Online

You know that bit about how too much screen time isn't necessarily a good thing?   The rules have changed it would seem, which I think is okay in a way because it's helping us keep connected.  We're all online in so many ways.  Let me enumerate:

• I was online from 8:45-1:00 in an online continuing education class to maintain my real estate license
• Prior to 8:45, I was online confirming emails and anything else I need to do so I could begin class at 9:00
• During breaks, I sent text messages, checked email and grabbed more coffee
• After class, I worked with Shane on both an iPad and Mac to get my daughter logged into her school portal and Google Drive
• My daughter and I then jumped into a Google meet with her braillest for over an hour where the two of them played a game of Monopoly, completely managed by my daughter with a little organizational help from me. 
• While Monopoly was going on I was scanning my daughter's daily work into a PDF which I uploaded to Google Drive and then sent to her teachers after game time with Mrs. B. was over. 
• I then came to the basement printing Nana's newest story on the Embosser for my daughter's reading tomorrow. 
• I remotely connected to my mother's computer while on a call with her to figure out a few things that had been going on on her machine.   Aside: three cheers for remote desktop technology it is truly a lifesaver. 
• Now that everything is printed (embossed) and tech support is completed, I'm writing this blog post.  
• When I press submit here, I'm going upstairs where I will relax by watching something on my iPad. 

My children have things they have to do every day including Google Meets, Zoom meetings, and video tutorials or teacher lessons.   After school, there are Facetime or skype calls to family members. Then, when school is finally done, sometimes we let my son watch a show to relax.   My daughter listens to audiobooks, which in a way are her screens.  

My husband and son get the prize for the day.  I came upstairs and saw them both reading actual books.   My daughter gets second place prize for reading Nana's short stories.   It's our digital life.   We're alone, but we're doing an awful lot to be together even so.

The Big Boy Update:  When my husband read the story about my son and the game ad last night he took it in a wholly different way than it was intended.   He thought it meant that my son was showing aggressive tendencies and wanted to shove the girl on the bed.   It was far from that, he's too young to understand anything other than he definitely doesn't want to kiss a girl.   I'm only rarely allowed to give him a kiss.  Usually he wipes them off and gets angry at me.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter played Monopoly for over an hour with Ms. B. today.   There is a lot to coordinate in the game if you're sighted.  If you're blind it's doubly hard.   She did an admirable job of being the banker and managing both her and Ms. B.'s piece movement.   She managed all the money coming in and out for purchasing properties, handled making change and always got the answer right (with a little encouragement from Ms. B. and me for harder problems.). At the end of day one she is looking to have a stronger position on the board.   Ms. B. unfortuately ended up in jail multiple times.   They pick up the game later this week.   We'll see how things pan out when more properries have been bought. 

The Burden of Typing

As technology advances, we assimilate the new and in a very short while we sometimes can't imagine how we ever did without it.   My son and I are listening to the complete works of Sherlock Holmes, or rather I am and my son is popping in from time to time to listen to a mystery.  He loves them, even if they are potentially way over his head in language, colloquialisms, mature situations or other facets of the story that are beyond the ken of a nine-year-old.

I find myself stopping the story to answer questions he has that mostly are along the lines of technology such as what a telegraph is and why it takes so long to get from one place to another.  The stories are good though and I enjoy listening to them with my son and having a chance to explain how things were different back then. 

There have been two technologies recently that I didn't appreciate initially.   I didn't think they would be useful or I thought they would be absolutely annoying.   I was wrong though on both counts.   I am dependent and addicted to the way they make my life easier. 

The first is autopilot in the Tesla cars.   It's not that useful yet, or at least the version I have in my car isn't, but what it does is very useful.   Autopilot keeps you in the lane, follows the road topology and keeps you appropriately distanced from the car in front of you at a designated speed.  It doesn't stop for stop signs or lights, it can't do turns for you and it is in no way close to self-driving.  But it helps.   I've written about this before but when I get in a rental car or another car I realize I have to pay attention 100% of the time.   I'm afraid to look down to see the next step in the navigation directions or to look back and figure out what dropped or where my daughter is reaching out to hand me something.  Autopilot is just enough help—the right amount of help—and I don't want to ever go without it again.  

My other technology addiction is autocorrect.   I love autocorrect.   I know if I'm not lookng at the phone while I'm typing a message there is a good chance I'm making typos, but autocorrect knows what common misspellings are made due to key proximity and it understands context.   Yeah, it messes up, but it gets things right with such high regularity that you don't realize how much autocorrect is helping until you don't have it. 

I've been working in one product recently that has zero autocorrect functionality.   I knew I was a bad speller and not such a great typist but I had no idea how bad I was.   I get the little red squiggle underlines, but I have to take action after action after action.   Can't it just change 'teh' to 'the' for me because I typo that all the time?  

I love autocorrect.   I know I've written about it before but I've gained another level of love for it after having to work without it. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son was watching me play an app the other day.   It was a completely fine app for him to see but interestingly enough when an ad came up, it was for a game called Episodes, an interactive story game.   The ad showed two college coed girls who were trying to make a decision about what to do for the evening.   The question posed in the ad was, "Would you kiss her or push her down on the bed?"   I didn't say anything and just closed the ad screen when it was over.   My son looked at me and said, "I would have pushed her down on the bed."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter spent I think at least an hour doing a video call with her cousin, Sydney.   She was carrying around (very carefully) my husband's iPad.   She couldn't see Sydney, but she knew what to do to show Sydney things and stay in frame.   The distance has not dulled these two little ladies' friendship.

The Game and Lounge Room

I have had on my list of things we need to get done around the house one particular thing for several weeks now.   It started when my daughter and Madison moved their secret hideout to a little room off my children's bedroom.  The room was marked as unfinished storage space on our plans, but when we discovered it was tall enough to put a full-sized door into it, we made the storage space an extension of the children's room.

As far as living space goes, most of the room doesn't count due to the angled ceiling given that the room is at the corner of the house.  None of this matters to my children, though, as they are short, and the lower ceiling doesn't bother them.

When the Secret Hideout was (finally) moved to this room I've always called the playroom, I told them they had made a good choice because it was a bigger space and they should keep the room there for a while because of the superior qualities of the room, etc.  Basically, it was where their fun mess could be contained better.

The Secret Hideout got out of hand—way out of hand.  The amount of stuff they brought in there was impressive.   We had them clean a little bit of it up before quarantine started, but it was hardly a dent. For weeks I've said we were going to work on the room.  On Friday, I told the entire family we were cleaning up the playroom today.   No one wanted to do it, including me.

At 3:00 P.M. we gathered in the children's bedroom and started work.   We cleaned off the tops of their dressers in the process, another huge dumping ground for them both.   I had to get very firm with my daughter several times, which was interesting because she was the one most responsible for the mess in the room.

It took the four of us two hours to get things cleaned, including multiple bags of stuffed animals to the attic.  To encourage the children to let go of items we said things were going to be stored in the attic, they would be available later,  for storage,  not to get rid of today.   This worked and they both were fine freeing up space for other things.  

You couldn't walk at all or see the floor in the room.   There were mattresses on the floor and the Christmas fort building set was used to partition the room into more, little rooms.   It was then junked up with anything and everything.  It took a while.

Early on in the cleaning process, my daughter said to us, "I think this room should be called, 'The Game and Lounge Room.'"  I  help but laugh at the name.   It's a great name for the room.  I couldn't have come up with a better name if I'd tried.

The Big Boy Update:  My son could have done screens yesterday after school but when he found out Blake wanted to spend time with him, he walked straight out of our house and over next door (without me conirming when Blake would be ready).  Blake was making some mini chess pies so my son stuck around and talked with Blake and his parents until Blake was free.    Apparently he was very polite and respectful while also being a lot of fun.   In this time of lockdown, I'm so glad we have this one family we're staying together with.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  With the newly named Game and Lounge Room now clean, my daughter can set out a larger game such as Monopoly and play it with her teacher, Ms. B.  She wanted to get the entire game set up tonight, giving each of them the correct amount of starting money.  She picked out their pieces, saying she was sure Ms. B. would want to be the cat.   I took a picture of the now clean room with her game ready and waiting for a computer with Ms. B's face  on the other side of the table next week.

 

Mask or Gloves?

If you had the choice of wearing either a mask or gloves on a necessary and non-trivial trip to the grocery store, pharmacy, doctor, etc., which would you choose?  Ideally, wearing both would be the best situation, but say you had to pick.  Which one would you go with?

I think I'd go with gloves,   For several reasons.  First off, it's a huge reminder and deterrent to touching your face.  We're discovering how much we touch our faces and even when actively trying to avoid it, we can touch our faces without even noticing it.  

Yes, a mask would be best if you were close to someone and they sneezed or coughed in your direction.  If you're appropriately social distancing you can significantly reduce that threat.  Which is why I would pick gloves over a mask.

The main reason, the one that to me makes it far better to go with gloves is something I'm going to call Time Distancing.  Here's an example of Time Distancing:

- COVID 19 positive individual comes into the pharmacy
- COVID 19 positive individual shops for over the counter cold medicines  
- COVID 19 positive individual gets some gum and candy and then checks out at the counter
- COVID 19 positive individual uses the PIN pad to pay with a credit card
- Two hours later I walk into the store.   I get some ibuprofen because we're out,
- I stop and get more cinnamon gum because I've been obsessed with cinnamon gum lately
- I go to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription (the reason I came out in the first place)
- I place my things on the counter and I use the PIN pad to confirm my phone number for the prescription.

Two hours of "Time Distancing" have occurred between when the COVID-19 positive individual entered the store and touched a good number of things.   Transference of the virus could happen on any one of those surfaces to me on my unprotected hands.  I might assiduously plan on not touching my face, but I might slip up and scratch my cheek.   I might completely plan to thoroughly wash my hands with soap and water when I get home—but before I've made it home I've transferred the virus to my door handle, steering wheel, and seat belt.

Time distancing is invisible and I think more dangerous because you can't know when you're coming close to things others have touched.   Which is why I wear gloves.   This doesn't work though unless you do it just so.  The first thing is you have to have gloves you can throw away like latex or notrile.

Get out of your car, put the gloves on.  Go in to the store and do all your shopping or go to the doctor's office, whatever the case may be.   Don't touch your face.  Don't touch too much of the rest of you in the process.   Hell, pay with Apple or Samsung Pay so you can have a contactless transaction.

And then, when you leave the store, take off the gloves and put them in the trash before you go to your car.  That's the key.   If you leave the gloves on you're bringing the virus with you, only this time on the gloves instead of your hands.

And of course wash your hands thoroughly when you get home, sanitize your purchases and anything else necessary to keep you safe.   Wear a mask and gloves.  Better still, stay home.  It's not completely possible for us all to stay home all of the time,   The advice we give to our children is equally applicable to us: do your best.

Vehicular Social Distancing: My children wanted to get one of the exercise elastic bands the other day.   They were doing something with it outside which involved a lot of yelling so I thought I might need to investigate.  They had attached the long wagon handle to the back of my daughter's electric Tesla Model S Radio Flyer that Santa brought her a few years ago thanks to some referrals.  Her "little car" was driving at full speed with the wagon connected via the long exercise rope.   My son told me what they were thinking as he explained, "and then we can social distance the car and the wagon,"

From Long Ago, and Yet The Same

I was putting the Andy Goldsworthy books back on the display shelf in the great room today and I stopped to look at the other books I'd deemed important enough to keep there.   I stopped to look at a small volume titled "Baby's Health".  I remember when my Mother-in-law had given it to us.

The guideline at the bottom is still true, research is showing.   I opened up further to find the original owner of this book was born in 1917.   A drawing of his footprint was taken as well as a lock of hair that has been meticulously pinned down.

The provenance of the little book grows more interesting as I look further.   One thing I did notice though as I looked at the last remaining page of advice for children who have made it to the age of our children.   It appears to be sound advice still, even one hundred years later.

The Big Boy Update and The TIny Girl Chronicles:  School is going.  It doesn't seem like anyone's thing is hard or time-consuming.   It's the totality of the work that gets you.   The children seem to be completely oblivious to the fact that my husband and I are mostly winging this.   Or is the phrase, "flying by the seat of our pants" more appropriate?  Perhaps so.

Art in Nature

My son was tasked to create a piece of art for the week in the style of Andy Goldsworthy.   When I read that was his assignment I was pretty excited, which doesn't happen all that often when it comes to me and art.

I did that thing parent's do when they're more excited about something than their child is—I hovered around him saying how cool it was that he already knew Andy Goldsworthy's work from looking at my books and what did he think he might want to do and had he thought about maybe something in the back yard and, oh! it could be with stones from the creek or sticks or leaves or..."

That's when I got the "mom, not right now." response coupled with the look of annoyance.  I had to back off and move in more slowly.   I did and my son did become interested, looking through my books again with particular interest on the one with the giant snowballs.

Today was the day to stop thinking abstractly and start doing something for your project.  He was a little overwhelmed, looking at the huge installations in nature Andy Goldsworthy had done.   I had to show him again how some of the works were just leaves arranged in a pattern.  His father showed him an example from her daughter that was small in scope and time investment.

My son and husband went outside and I got this picture of what is very reminiscent of Andy Goldworthy to me.   Now that the piece has been completed and photographed, nature takes over and come what may to the work itself.  Here's what my son made:



The Big Boy Update:  My son is on day three of The Great LEGO Redressing event.   We'rthede not sure how long it's going to take but in the end, all LEGO Minifigures should be appropriately clothed in the items they originally came with.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is spelling some crazy hard words these days.   We're picking the words for her to spell at the end of the day from her reading during the day.   She knows the words and has read them, this gives her a chance to think through the spelling.   She's getting close on a lot of these hard words and not upset she can't spell them because she knows it's to learn, not test.   Today she had cylindrical, actually, embarrassment, survive, president, combined.

I’m Tired

It's the end of the school day.  I have one student.   I've been busy since 6:30 when my children got up this morning.   We've been working on school work all day.  And by we, I mean I have been working with my one student.   She is an eager learner and does her work with enthusiasm for the most part and is a joy to work with.  

Now that the day is over, I have to get everything printed (embossed) and prepared for tomorrow.  Mind you, I'm not creating any work, save for a magic square diagram I created for her to do as a fun puzzle break.   Everything she's learning is created and given to me.  It might be material from a web site in the form of videos she listens to, the typing program she loves to work in, printed materials her braillest prepares for us or other content pre-printed by her VI teacher before we went into full-blown lockdown.

We're working with applications in web sites, apps on the iPad, her Orbit refreshable braille display, her braille writer, the draftsman on which she can draw tactile pictures and the embosser that prints things in braille for her.  She gets and creates content from those sources.   I'm mostly the circus conductor, directing her focus to the right thing at the right time.

On the back end, I then take all her work and submit it to her teachers.   My daughter is the exception.  This is something she will contend with her entire life.  So much of the work and work options for her are designed for sighted children.   We are fortunate to have a superb team of teachers making sure everything is available and doable for her, which is no small effort.  From my perspective, I'm sort of bridging the middle ground as I get information designed for the rest of her class and then working with the tactile/braille versions of the same materials so she can do the work.

And it's tiring.  It's not one thing, its everything.   I know our teachers do this day in and day out but its still a lot of work.  I'm almost sorry I gave up drinking because a glass of wine sounds mighty nice when five o'clock rolls around.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  In order to do math work with clocks and time, we needed to create a tactile clock.   My daughter and I made this today.  I'm rather proud of what we were able to turn a paper plate, two straws, a brad, and some stickers into:


The Big Boy Update:  My son wanted to organize his LEGOs again today—right in the middle of our schoolroom.   He had a fit but reluctantly agreed the lovely eight-foot table in the craft room, where he could leave his work out for a whole week instead of repeatedly putting it away and bringing it back out, was a good idea.  He is happily sorting and organizing his LEGOs now, listening to music on Alexa.   Why is it children never think adults have good ideas?

Electronic Tears

After school today I went to the basement, carrying my laptop under my arm, to prepare for tomorrow's lessons for my daughter.   I connected my computer to the external monitor and pulled up Duxbury, the software package that chews up text and spits out braille with beautiful accuracy.   This tool is no small player in the world of VI, something I am only now beginning to understand.   It is making from a software perspective materials ready to send to the embosser, the printer that prints braille characters instead of in toner.

I pulled up file after file, expertly prepared by my daughter's braillest, Ms. B., so that all I needed to do was select 'File --> Emboss' as opposed to the more traditional, 'File --> Print'.   Once done, a very loud sound emanates from the mechanical room where the embosser is located, as rapid printing of dots begins to happen.  

It was at this point that tears welled up in my eyes.   We are incredibly fortunate to have the technology my daughter needs to learn at the rapid rate she prefers to keep her happy and engaged.  

First, my parents got my daughter a braillewriter to use at home that not only worked well but could read and speak the braill characters as she typed them.   We learned about Voiceover, an option on Apple products, that speaks everything and anything she does so she can navigate and use apps like a sighted person can.  We decided to get a refreshable braille display so that my daughter can electronically read books, eliminating the need to print large books for her.

All of those things have been transformative in their own way.  Each one has enabled my daughter to learn independently and be successful—and feel empowered as opposed to dependent on someone with sight.   The embosser and Duxbury software to accompany it has taken things to a whole new level.  It has created opportunities where we had no option.   And the timing was ideal, perfect even.

We are incredibly fortunate, I am very aware of the incredible gift of technology we have in our home, while we going nowhere, where we will remain for some time now.   It has been a joy working with my daughter, trying to keep up with my daughter, and seeing her learn.

I'll be glad when the children are back at school, but for now, things are going well so far at home, thanks in large part to the exciting technology options we have at home.

The Big Boy Update:  My son's art teacher's assignment this week is to create a piece of art in the style of Andy Goldsworthy, who happens to be one of my favorite artists ever.  I have several of his books that my son has looked through with great interest in the past.   He is thinking about what to do for his project today.  I'm interested in what he'll decide to do.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  At the end of the school day today my daughter sat down at my computer to practice her typing.   She said to Shane, who has been helping her during the school day, and me, "If I type swear words, it will say them."  She giggled and then proceeded to spell several swear words correctly.   We gave her a little advice on her spelling of the word 'dam' but otherwise didn't make much of it since she didn't say the swear words herself.   Loophole exploited!

Complaint Registered

Last night after the children were snug in their beds I got to work dispersing Easter things around the house.   I had been holed up in the craft room for a good portion of the day preparing easter eggs and baskets.   I had underestimated the amount of time it would take to go through the bag of plastic Easter eggs (of which we have a good collection) and match halves, put candy or trinket in and the snap them shut.

We have all different kinds of eggs from multiple years.  Just when you think you had the right yellow to math, it would turn out to be another one of the side you were holding already.   I got it done though, as well as a small hunt the children could do for each other using some all pink and blue eggs my mother-in-law had gotten last year.

Once everything was packed up, I could put the easter baskets at their seats, hide the eggs and then go to bed, knowing that the children would be occupied in the morning and we would have a chance to sleep late.   I needed to do one more thing though for my daughter, and that involved printing a letter to her from the Easter Bunny.   And here's why:

There are eggs hidden, maybe?  Possibly?  Definitely?  If so, where?  How many?   Think about all those questions you'd have if you came downstairs to your seat on Easter morning and found a basket meaning the Easter Bunny had arrived.   We don't always have an immediate egg hunt, last year, for instance, the Easter Bunny came to my in-law's house.   Eggs are small and can be anywhere.   Do you touch every surface, looking around the floor in all the corners, bookshelves, the list goes on of surfaces where Easter eggs could be hidden.

It boggles my mind how little she can perceive because she has to experience it through touch–and the hands are tiny in comparison to what the eyes can see with a single glance around a room.   So I had the Easter Bunny write my daughter an email that I printed and put on her basket:

Dear Reese,
I know you get up early so I emailed your mother and asked her to print this for you for when you wake up.

I have hidden thirty eggs for you and thirty eggs for Greyson. They are hidden in the basement and on the main floor, but not in your parent's room. Let's let them sleep in. You will know which eggs are yours because they have a small velcro dot on them like this: <I stuck one of the dots here> 

Keep a lookout for two big fuzzy eggs that are hidden together. They are both same so you can choose either one.

Since your grandparents couldn't be with you this Easter, I've left you and your brother an egg so big it needs its own handle and is filled with goodies!

Your friend, The Easter Bunny
P.S. Happy Hunting

With this information, my daughter could get up first and didn't even need her brother to start looking for eggs now that she knew there were some and which ones were hers.    And my plan worked perfectly.  

There was only one problem.   My husband registered a complaint.   He said the Easter Bunny had brought too much candy.   Way too much candy.   And chocolate.   My son even agreed with him.  Someone must have been hungry when they went to the store.   And then forgotten they had already bought things several weeks before.   We might run out of toilet paper but we are for sure not going to run out of candy.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is a gentleman when it comes to doing things with his sister that he knows she can't easily do.   He doesn't make her feel less than capable, he just works as a helpful team member with her.   Today while I was still half asleep I heard them running all over the house and him calling out to her to say when he'd found more easter eggs.   Then he helped by letting her know what she'd gotten when she opened something that was in a box.  He's a good guy.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter loves Easter.   She said it's her favorite holiday.   She said it's always been her favorite holiday.   I think she had a good day today.   She ate enough candy so I think I can say with true accuracy, she is very sweet.

Primal

My daughter doesn't know (or remember) what faces look like.   She understands things happen on our face such as smiling, furrowing your brow, blinking, frowning, and probably many more if you were to ask her about she could explain what it means.   But she doesn't have actual experience with facial expressions other than what her face does automatically.  She also knows nothing about non-verbal queues, or perhaps "silent queues" would be a better phrase since she apparently heard Claire laughing at her a while back when she thought she was being teased. 

Getting my daughter to do a natural smile for pictures is something we're still working on.   She'd like to smile normally, she just hasn't gotten it yet.  Other than that though, we don't talk about facial expressions in much detail.  She hears lots of descriptions in books, movies, socially that describe things our faces do, but she doesn't have experience seeing what it looks like from a third-person perspective.  

Because my daughter has very little understanding of when and how facial expressions are used to express information as a way to communicate with people.  She makes all the standard expressions that come naturally, such as her laughing face is one to delight, even if her eyes are partially rolled back into her head and to someone not accustomed to her might look odd.  

Sometimes though, pure emotion comes out in her face in a way that is wholly unlike something a sighted person would do.   A few weeks ago she started rolling her bottom lip down when we would say something she didn't like but realized she had little choice about.   The first few times she did this it was strange, even to me, her mother.   Now I recognize it for what it is: a tell into her inner thoughts. 

Rolling down her lower lip has evolved into a new expression, one that looks like a primal expression of disgust comingled with rage.  The times at which she does this new expression fit fairly well with that description.   She is angry about something and doesn't want to express it in words.   She's mad about it and absolutely is not happy but she knows there isn't an option otherwise.   It's not an expression I would ever expect to see on a child, but to her, it's her type of non-verbal communication. 

The Big Boy Update:  We did the Escape Room my son created for us after dinner tonight.   It merits its own blog post it was so interesting, creative and well thought out so I'll hold on it for tomorrow or the next day, especially since he has additional, "DLC" or Downloadable Content as the saying goes in the world of video games.   The additional content will be in our bedroom.  He left us teasers in the bathroom for the adventures to come.  We successfully completed part one tonight.  My daughter helped us find clues and solve puzzles and was definitely an asset to the team.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter decided to skip dinner tonight.  She was so excited about the Easter Bunny arriving tomorrow she didn't think she could eat.   She and I had a conversation about 'eager' versus 'anxious' and she said she was definitely eager about the impending arrival of the Easter Bunny.   She did me a solid this morning also, saying, "Mom, I get the Alexa seat tomorrow, do you know why?"  I asked if she and her brother had decided so but she said, "because the Easter Bunny always leaves my Easter Basket at that seat."   "Ah...good thing you remembered," I told her.  

Nothing That Means Something

My daughter has been spending a lot of time with Shane, our sitter from next door who, after returning home early from a gap year trip in a very rural region of New Zealand with zero cases of COVID-19 anywhere near, had to isolate herself for two weeks because she flew through LAX.  

The two weeks are up and Shane and my daughter are doing all kinds of things together.   One of the things they did over the course of three days after school made Tie Dye clothes.  They went through my daughter's drawers and found two old, white shirts that would be vastly improved with some color added which would in so doing, hide the stains.   They selected some new socks I had just gotten and found somewhere a new t-shirt including tag we must have gotten for some other purpose.

They prepared and colored one day, rinsed the next and did some nice drying in the tree branches with hangers that looked cute.   They brought them in and said it was time to wash the newly colored items and later that day when the items were dry, my daughter had new, special clothes she designed herself.   She was really happy about them

The thing is...she can't see them.   She has to have someone else tell her what her shirt or socks look like.   She will never see them and doesn't even have a good idea of how they might look as her memory of sight is pretty much gone.  Why does she care?  

Today I gave her some new, bulky crayons that were made from chopped up crayons.   Each one had four or five colors in it.  I gave them to her because making a mark with crayon on paper leaves a trail you can feel.   It's great for marking things like which answer is correct or following your way through a tactile maze.

These crayons were extra broad at the tip and left a very nice mark when used.   My daughter asked Shane, again and again, today, "what color is it writing now?" while she was using one of her new crayons to mark up some worksheets for school.   Why does she care?

I don't know why she cares, but I'm glad she does.   Having interests in things is far, far better than shutting it out and being resentful because you can't experience the thing.  

Tonight, my daughter wanted to read me a book.  She picked, "I am a Rainbow" by Dolly Parton.  In this case, the book associates colors with emotions and situations in which we might feel those emotions.   But still, she picked a book about colors.   She loves a thing she will never experience.   But I'm glad she does.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has turned our bathroom and closet into an escape room.   He's not quite done yet so hopefully tomorrow we'll be able to escape.   He's got some clever things going with codes, mirrors and backward letters.   Notes stuck on cabinets and doors.   I'm looking forward to trying to escape.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was skyping Chelsea for music therapy today.   I was upstairs working when I got a text saying, "somehow she has turned the tables on me and is making me identify instruments by sound."  I came downstairs to find my daughter standing inside the pop-up tent which she'd put in the middle of the room.   She had the basket of instruments inside and would make sounds with one and ask Chelsea what the instrument was.   On my way down, Chelsea had texted me, "she just said, 'for once you got it right.'"

Going to Friend’s House

My daughter's braillest, Ms. B., sent an email during the first days after schools had closed from COVID-19 with a suggestion for my daughter.   She told her they could play, "Going to Friend's House" via email.   She started the game by telling a story about Jessica Jaguar and all the J letter things they ate and did.

My daughter was excited to reply but balked when I told her she should type it all out on her braillewriter after she said she wanted me to type the email for her.  She said, "but mom, we don't type it, it's a game we play while we wait for the cab to arrive."   Ah, now I understood why she would want me to respond for her—it was more of a mental game than one of writing.

Here's the first Going to Friend's House my daughter sent back to Ms. B.:

We are going to Penguin’s House.
The penguin’s name is Paddy Patil.
For breakfast, we will have cold pumpkin juice and puffin cereal.
Inbetween breakfast and lunch we’ll play with Penguin’s puppy.
The puppy’s name is Pete the Pouncer.
For lunch, we are going to have Pizza with Perrier water. (mom’s suggestion)
In between lunch and dinner, we will go and watch a parade and we will play ping pong and pinball.
We will play pass the parcel. We got presents when we played pass the parcel.
We got pop candy, pretzels, and pencils
For dinner we are going to have pasta with Parmesan cheese.
For our drink, we will have [Alexa, what drinks start with P?] pink lemonade
For dessert, we will have pear popsicles.
We are going to have a sleepover with pillows and presents and a big party.
And for our special treat, we had popcorn!
The End.

If you've met my daughter for any period of time you know she is verbose.  She had a good time coming up with ideas.   I helped a bit, but mostly this was all her unless she asked me (or Alexa).
I sent that email on April 1st.   Yesterday, eight days later, my daughter can type and respond to the next round herself with this:

Dear Ms. B
We are going to Sally sloths house
For Dear Ms. Sample, I miss you. What is going on? I love you! I can even write this, !@#$%^&*()_++= What are you doing all these waeeks? I miss you soooooooo! Much, love Reesebreakfast we will have sticky buns and samosa’s! We will swing and sing! For lunch we will have salad and sunflower seeds. Next we will swim and go to a surprize party and we will skip rope. For dinner we will have soup and spaghetti and sarsaparilla soda. For dessert we will have spice drops. We will sing songs all sleep. The end

She typed that, with corrections in about ten minutes.  I think she benefitted from autocorrect in a few places.   She turns on Voiceover on my Mac when she starts typing.   It speaks to her everything she types and does, including autocorrect suggestions.   The story though was all her with the exception of my idea of sarsaparilla, which thankfully autocorrect saved me on since I have not the slightest clue how to spell correctly.

Back to my daughter.   In seven days she's learned how to touch type.   She can't cheat it like a sighted child can because she can't see the keys.   She orients herself on the keyboard by feeling for the little raised mark on the F and J keys.   Check your keyboard, they all have them.   Today, one day later, she sent this email to her VI teacher, Ms. Sample telling her about the number shift characters she's been learning about.

Dear Ms. Sample, I miss you. What is going on? I love you! I can even write this, !@#$%^&*()_++= What are you doing all these waeeks? I miss you soooooooo! Much, love Reese

If she keeps continuing learning typing at this pace I'm going to just let her take over the blog.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is doing an admirable job of working at home.   We have a modified school schedule which starts at nine o'clock and ends at three o'clock.   The work my son's teachers have sent home has been similar, but not exactly the same.  My son works well in the prepared environment that is his classroom.   He hates noise when he's working.   He's accustomed to an almost silent Montessori classroom during their, "work cycle" work periods.  My daughter is rarely silent.  

The Tiny Gitl Chronicles: My daughter had a guest teacher today, Shane from next door.   She got to show Shane how her school works and what she does with math, reading, completing work using the braillewriter.   I even gave her a fun piece of work where she used braille characters to draw a large picture of a dragon.  

Military Mom

Last night I engaged what I am now going to call, "Military Mom."  The day had gone very well with both children until it was time to wrap things up, get ready for bed, go to bed and go to sleep.  They each had their own period of completely losing their minds.   They're nonsensical and irrational.  They can only be moved forward with some level of verbal or physical force because they aren't capable of it alone.

My daughter will go limp and you have to physically take her to the pajamas.   My son won't get off the couch, insisting on hiding under the blanket and the only thing he seems to respond to (we've tried it all) is a raised, firm tone.  Not yelling, just loud and firm to indicate you're serious and there is no other choice.

Things turn around, for instance, last night by the time my son was completely normalized, his sister was wailing about brushing her teeth.   He was chiding his sister, completely forgetting he had been equally problematic only minutes before.

Off to bed they go, lights out, door shut.   My husband and I come downstairs and start to clean up the kitchen only to have the children appear two minutes later.   We explained this is what we do when they go to sleep—more work.  They weren't tired?  Certainly, they could stay up and help with the dishes.   My son declined and went back to bed.   My daughter was a helpful dish dryer for ten minutes and then also decided staying up to do work wasn't fun.

Things happened upstairs in their room that caused my daughter to repeatedly have Alexa announce all over the house something almost incoherent but definitely involving the word hate.  My husband and I ignored it, he went to the basement and I started to draw a bath.  Three minutes later my daughter arrived in our bathroom doing that scream crying, saying her brother had bitten her.   She couldn't show me where exactly, but it was bad, she said.

I told her to go upstairs and when I arrived in their room I was going to put a stop to this nighttime behavior.  We've asked them time and time again why a very nice night has to suddenly turn into a bad one.   Why do they do it?  Everything is happy and then they turn the day into one big ball of anger and contention.

The first thing my son did was complain, "mom, you're naked!"  Everything after this point in the post imagine me yelling, because that's what I did.   I explained to my son that yes, I was naked.  I had worked all day as a member of the family and now their teacher and my day was finally over.   I didn't get to watch movies after 3:00, I had to prepare materials for the next day's school and do other things to keep this household going.   After they went up to sleep, the work still wasn't over for their father and me because we had to clean the kitchen and finish up everything we couldn't do during the rest of the day.   It was my time to relax.  I was about to get in the tub but no, they had to have a fight and bring me upstairs.   This was my time to finally relax but instead, I have to deal with bickering children who like to interrupt the remainder of the house by screaming repeatedly over Alexa.

I should have told you before you read that paragraph, you should imagine the above with lots of swear words intermingled.   I was mad.   My stance on swear words is much the same as it is for alcohol.   Adults drink around children and children know they aren't allowed to drink until they're older.   We don't hide drinking from children, hell, I've never heard of a single parent who does.   But for some reason saying swear words in front of children is a no-no.   Those of you who know me know I swear.  It's a bad habit I should curtail or at least cut back on, but for last night's conversation, I didn't hold back

I asked my son if he was in milirary school if he knew how many pushups he would have to do if he bit someone?  I counted up by hundreds until I got to a thousand, explaining he couldn't eat, drink or sleep until he completed them.  I elaborated on how his muscles would burn, but he wouldn't be allowed to stop.   I told my children I was tired of their disrespecting our time at night and that in the future, when we left their bedroom we had better not hear a single sound.   No words, no sounds.  Nothing.   I yelled at them, "Do you understand me?  Respond with, 'yes ma'am, I understand you.'"

My daughter had been crying but she responded appropriately with the exact words.   Then I asked my son, who decided backtalk was a better route than compliance.   I told him to get out of the bed and leave the house.   He was going to learn respect.   He declined.   I went up the steps to his bunk when I hear his father's voice from the floor below, commanding him to follow his mother's orders.   Go dad, save just at the right moment!

My son went downstairs and was sent outside.   I went back to the bathroom, intending to leave him there until I'd had a nice bath.  My husband stood at the door and opened it several times, telling him he had to do some pushups (which they don't really know how to do).  My son was defiant to him.   My husband asked him in a bellowing voice who he had to answer to in this house.   My darling and misguided son at this point replied, "Mom."  He said, "AND?"  My son wasn't happy with his latest aggravator so he remained silent.   This went on for a bit until he said he had to listen to, and obey, both parents.

He tried to do a pushup and complained his back was hurting him.  Too bad, we replied.  I was back at this point, now clad in a towel.  After a bit more backtalk to his father and a few attempts of running away by taking a jog around the house, I saw him come back to the porch.   I asked him in a loud enough voice for the neighbors to hear, "Who makes the rules in this house?"  Bless him, he replied, "Um, you do Mom, of course."  I would have laughed at this but I couldn't so I said, "AND?" and he said, "and Dad."

Then we got to the pushups.  I told him he could do modified pushups and watched as he feigned agony of pain and torture over the five pushups.   I let him in and said to go straight upstairs.   Then, because he wasn't broken yet apparently, he decided to backtalk to his father.   It was something spiteful and mean, I can't remember exactly what now, but I grabbed his arm and thrust him back outside, saying clearly he had learned nothing and now he had ten pushups to do.   I was going to have a bath and I'd be back, "later."  He wailed.

I left and the damn door opened less than a minute later so I grabbed the towel and returned to the foryer.  He said he had done the pushups.   I sent him back outside saying the hell he had and now I had caught him lyting because his father had been watching (he coudn't have seen from where he was but I'm not above lying when it comes to discipline, heck, the whole militarty school and thousand pushups for a biting offense was sheer fiction on my part already.   I watched him do ten more meager pushups, complaining all the while about his back and me saying that was just too bad, he had asked for this with his behavior.

This time when he came in he went upstairs, slammed the door quite loudly and screamed at the top of his lungs several times.   Then, all was blissfully quiet until morning.   I told my husband Military Mom was now a fixture in this house, available to be summoned any time in the future when behavior dictated.   My husband was right behind me.   We will see how things go in the morning.

The Big Boy Update:  This morning I told my son to get dressed because I was taking him to the chiropractor on account of him complaining about his back the night before.   He said, "Mom, I was making that up, I just didn't want to do the pushups."  Two points for honesty, but I wasn't letting him off so easily and said, "you said your back hurt, get dressed, we're goimg."  He asked me if I was goimg to go military on him again today and do so in public (he didn't want to be embarrassed, a useful tool for the future.). I told him if his behavior was respectful and he listen and followed our requests, he should have nothing to fear.   He has been very respectful to me today.   I intend to have that trend contine.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles;  My daughter has followed all work assignments and requests without complaint today as well.   I don't have a problem if they are fearful of repurcussions due to behavior.  I'm only disappointed in us, as parents, for letting the situation get so far as to require Military Mom to be sn entity at all.

The School Bell Ringeth

Every morning on the weekday's school starts promptly at nine o'clock.  There are clocks all over the house in this era of technology.   When I was young there was an analog clock in the kitchen on the stove, my parents had one in their bedroom that sported an alarm to let them know when it was time to get up.  There was a wall-mounted beautiful, antique grandfather-stye clock my father got years before at I'm sure an auction or flea market that had to be wound daily. And I had one in my room of the flip number style.

Do you remember those flip clocks?  There was a piece of metal with each of the numbers 1-12 for the hour and 1-59 for the minutes.  Every minute, one of the metal plates would click over with a very satisfying sound.   It had an alarm that was either an incredibly painful and annoying sounding low-pitched beep or you could have it turn on the radio.  I, and everyone else I knew, chose the radio option.

That was about it in terms of timekeeping at my house.   There were some other, antique clocks but they weren't always working so they were classified as stuff in my mind and not clocks.   There was a beautiful little cuckoo clock in the hall between my and my parents' room, but he wasn't wound regularly and mostly was a source of tweeting sounds from time to time as opposed to a reliable timekeeper.

We didn't have school at home when I was young, we just got in the car at a certain point, or on the bus, or eventually, I was the driver when it was time to go to school.   These days we hsve clocks everywhere.   If it's an appliance, it's sure to also have the time as a bonus feature.   Televisions, coffee makers, microwaces, the oven just below the microwave, clocks in every bedroom, Alexa everywhere, Google Dot, and watches.

Now, with what I'm calling, "Stay At Home School" instead of the traditional, "Home School" on account of we're all staying and sheltering at home due to COVID 19.   Our Stay At Home School starts promprly at 9:00.   There are loads of ways we could mark the start of the school day, but a neutral third party is our best reminder.  It works well, no one argues about the validity of the time, it just is time,   Time to start school.

How do we all know?   Becausae Kevo, our Roomba, starts his rounds at nine o'clock.   When he leaves his base and starts working, the rest of us know it's time for us to do the same.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has been trying to get away with things for his school work.  I annoyed my husband enough today that he said he might have me take over.   What my son is doing is telling his father he's allowed to do certain works certain ways.  In some cases, this means less work for alarger assignment.  In other ways its just my son cutting corners.   The only way I know about this is because all the students do it to us as substitutes.   I've learned how things should be done and I've also learned how to ask questions in a certain way in order to get the truth: "is that what Ms. Patel would say if you asked her what you should be doing?" or, "if I smeil this work to Ms. Patel, do you are you going to be proud of what you've done?"  His teacher is also a stickler for accuracy and completeness.   If you wrote something incorrectly in a sentence and you can't fit the correction in the existing space, you write the entire sentence over.   She corrects everything, not letting the children get away with bad grammar, punctuation, capitalization or spelling.   It's made a big difference in my son's work as a result.   He expects corrections (he doesn't like them) and he understands it is not optional to correct them.   He's gotten away with a lot over the past week with my husband just because he's new and doesn't know the expectations.   Today, when my husband asked my son the right questions, my son admitted he had taken the easy way out and he did an entire assignment over.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter got very excited the other day.   She ran towards the front of the house yelling, "I hear the ice cream truck!"   We had to explain that there was no way the ice cream truck was in operation during this time in our nation.   She was very disappointed, asking, "are you sure:"  She is going to be the happiest child in the neighborhood when the ice cream truck finally returns.

I Love You The Most

When I was a child my father's mother would come to visit from time to time.  I always loved that she would come and stay for a week or possibly longer.   We would pick her up at the Greyhound bus station and my mother would put the only suitcase I ever saw her with, in the back of our car.  

I did loads of things with my grandmother.   She was one of the kindest people I've ever known.  She never got mad at me once, and I did a lot that was worthy of any caregiver's anger.   She kept me occupied while my parents were at work and still had time to do all the darning, cooking and weeding.   She was a master of all three.

She and I had a saying we shared until the day she died.   It started when I was quite young and by the time I was in college it seemed more like something a child would say, but I never would have stopped.

One of us upon parting would say, "I love you."  The other would reply, "I love you more."  And then the originator would say back, "I love you the most."

My daughter has a similar thing she does with her braillest which involves a certain number of hand squeezes.   I am not supposed to know the secret and if I did, I certainly wouldn't share it with you folks—what kind of secret would it be then?  What I can say though is it involves a similar upping the ante on who loves the other one more.

Today, after making a grilled cheese sandwich for me with the help of her father, my daughter was dashing upstairs.   I told her thank you and said, "I love you."   She responded as she got to the top of the stairs, "I love you more."   So I called up to her, now in the bonus room, "I love you the most!"  She yelled back in a voice with finality in the tone, "No you don't!"

The Big Boy Update:  There are no screens today during the school week and for some reason my son wanted to come to see what his sister and I were working on during his breaks.   Instead of just looking at us he pulled out a drawer of LEGOs.  By the end of the day, they were all over the floor as he decided to reunite every Minifigure with the proper clothing and gear.   It may take a week to finish.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My husband asked me if I wanted a grilled cheese sandwich when he was making lunch today.   I said thanks but no and kept working.   A bit later I came downstairs and asked if he was still cooking and or if he'd cleaned up.   I had just missed him putting everything away.   Not five minutes later I saw him and my daughter making a grilled cheese sandwich.   My daughter had heard me ask and had wanted to make one for me.   She was quite insistent.  She helped in the whole process and even learned how to cut a full sandwich on the diagonal with the big knife.   She delivered it to me on a plate and said she wanted me to be happy.   I told her she had made me very happy.

Microwave Mastery

My daughter picks up things very quickly if you can show her what to do.  For instance, she knows the dog's leash is in a spot by the front door.  She gets the leash, puts it on the dog, walks the dog outside and looks around until she finds the runner line and then hooks up the dog in the morning.  
She can do lots of things that might seem difficult to do blind, but to her, they're not intimidating or challenging.   My sighted son doesn't put the dog out nearly as well or quickly as my daughter does.

My daughter can also do a thing if she can feel enough information to be able to do so.  I had bought two different types of fruit cups for my daughter.   I was telling her where they would be in the refrigerator (she likes them cold).   The containers were the same even though they were different products from separate companies.   I was about to go get the tactile stickers when my daughter said, "Wait, Mom, I can tell the difference, there is writing on this kind."  And sure enough, Delmonte was stamped into the side of one.

We want to enable my daughter so she can do things without asking for help as much.   Empowering a child to do something all by themselves is powerful.  Somethings have been easy with her while others we've put off until later when she's older.

One thing she's never done is to work the microwave.   For starters, it's up high.  She has to get a step stool to reach into it.  Another reason is there are no buttons for her to feel.   The design of this particular model is a flat black shiny plastic with a keypad and other functions listed in white.   There is only a single smooth surface.  It also doesn't talk and give you feedback on what you touched,  All of this combined makes it nigh impossible for my daughter to successfully use our microwave.

Until today.   My husband said to me if we could put braille numbers over the printed ones, she could easily work the microwave.   It was one of those lightbulb ideas.   We had large sticker sheets we could add braille to and then affix it over the keypad.

We only needed to map thirteen things: numbers 0-9, Start, Pause/Cancel, and Quick Minute.  I made a copy of the keypad using some tracing paper and then set to work making a braille sticker overlay.

When my daughter came to the kitchen for a snack I told her about it.   She already knew how the numbers were set up in a three-by-three grid—she'd been playing tic tac toe with the same number layout for at least a year now.   I told her where the other buttons were in relation to the numbers and gave her a lesson in the process of microwaving something as well as a lot of safety considerations she should be aware of.

She wants to warm up pancakes all by herself in the morning tomorrow, so we practiced on a few so she could get the hang of things.   She didn't have a learning curve here, she just knew.   She had mapped the thirteen keys in her mind before ever stepping on the stool to try it out.  This is really going to open doors for her food-wise.  

What a great idea my husband had.   I wish we'd thought of it some time back, maybe I could have fifteen more minutes of sleep on school days!

The Big Boy Update:  My som likes the volume very loud when he's watching something on the television in the living room.   It mostly continues to rise because he wants to hear over the ruckus.  Today, I walked into the living room and almost didn't notice my son sitting on the sofa in a very quiet room.   He and his father decided to try out the headphones plug on the Roku remote.   It was easy and no volume battles.   Win/win.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  After warming pancakes all by herself today, my daughter wanted to see how long it took to get a cup of water warm.   It was a good test to get an idea about other things, like soup.   I left the room a few minutes later and as I walked away I heard the door to the microwave open and my daughter say, "Nope, still just warm."