Really Not That Bad

My husband and I have talked about it several times since COVID-19 hit the United States and we began to shelter at home, along with much of the rest of the world.   For us, it's not that bad.   We're incredibly fortunate that we are able to manage through this time and be able to feed our family as well as maintain reasonable normalcy at home for our children.   Our work as real estate agents has declined some, but not so much as you might think.   On the whole, though, this has been a nice respite for us.

My husband and I are social people, but we're also loners.   We like staying at home, don't go out to dinner or bars or movies or other events much in normal times.   "Homebodies" would be a good term to describe us.   We're always at home a lot and we're around each other a good bit.   We get along well, which is a great goodness considering how much we've been together over the last several months.

We have had things change, such as the children don't have their friends over, running around our house, making joyful messes.   For us as adults, this is a nice change.   We had Movie Night many Friday nights, which also has stopped.   And while we miss our friends, it's another event we're fine not having for now.  

Now that we're into summer, every day is a vacation day, although we have expectations on the children to do summer school work, daily reading and household chores—all of which are met with incredulity that we should expect them to do anything at all other than be summer bums.   We're holding firm though and they're getting used to it.

Mornings are nice and have been nice as a chance.  There is no hustle and bustle as we get up early to rush and get the children to school.   It's been and continues to be a much more relaxed lifestyle.   I haven't had a morning alarm set for a good while now.    The children get their own breakfasts lately, which is huge.   It's independence for them and makes mornings much more enjoyable for my husband and me.

As much as I want the COVID-19 danger and restrictions to go away and the pandemic to be behind us, I'm enjoying this time with our family at home.  It's a more laidback lifestyle.   My husband and I have been enjoying it in our own way.   It's a dangerous time and there is nothing more we'd love than to have this all over and things back to normal, but for now, we're making the most of it together as a family.

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Lack of Friends Update:  My children have been doing very well at home during COVID-19.  They're playing with each other a lot and don't get into that many fights.   There is a lot of annoying each other but they've gotten closer as siblings.   They miss their friends though.   They social distance play with two children who are live diagonal to us.   Our lots touch at one point in the back and it's a quick hop across the neighbor's yard to get to each other.   Having these two friends is making all the difference in the world for them socially.   I'm incredibly glad they have Rayan and Keira as friends during this extended time at home.

Sleep Tight

It's a phrase I've heard all my life, "sleep tight."  But what does it really mean, wrapped up in blankets snugly?   For me I suppose, it has a different meaning that's tied entirely to my persnicketyness with bedding.

I'm one of those, "princess and the pea" types when it comes to the bed.   I like it clean, soft and stretched "tight" over the mattress.   There is something that happens with a lot of bedding these days.   It must be related to the thicker and thicker mattresses are now sold now.   The taller the mattress, the taller the side of the fitted sheet has to be to make it to the bottom to tuck under and hold the sheet in place.  

We have a decently tall mattress, but it's not as tall as some and manufacturers are making sheets so they fit all mattresses.   Putting a clean fitted sheet on the bed, making sure it's tucked under tightly so you can, "bounce a dime off it" works for the first night.   After that creep starts to happen as the sides of the sheet come upwards a bit at a time, leaving wrinkles bunched up on the top of the mattress.

We have a thing we do to sheets to sew in the four corners so that they stay tight across the width and length of the mattress as well as preventing the sheet from being pulled upwards.   It's an easy stitch to do, even with my meager sewing skills.   With the stitch in place, I can sleep tight every night.

When we got my son's new sheets to go on the full mattress his sister had been sleeping on in the bottom bunk recently, I noticed the fitted sheet was almost twice as deep as the mattress.   I told my son to let me know if the sheet was bunching up and we'd fix it for him.

I noticed my son had gone back to sleeping on the top bunk lately and when asked, he said it was because the sheet he was lying on was messy.   Boys.  Children.   If he'd only told me...  No matter, today my husband and I sewed his sheet so tight he'll almost float over the mattress pad.   I had him do some jumping tests to confirm we'd gotten it tight enough.    Next time, I told him, just tell me when something is bothering you.   I'm here to help.  

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Top Sheet Introduction:  My children are eight and nine and up until the last month or so, neither has slept with a top sheet.    We've tried it on occasion, but it wasn't really worth it.   After two or even one day the sheet was bunched down at the bottom of the bed.   They were fine with just a comforter or even their favorite blanket or quilt.  I told them they've grown up now and they can sleep with their bed like adults do.   My mother-in-law calls it sleeping in an envelope.   They love to do things their grandparents tell them about and so far, the bunching has been less than I expected.   They both seem to like the new setup of their beds too.

Return of the Noise

I just got a message from my mother-in-law saying, "it's too quiet here."  She and my father-in-law just got home after returning my children to us from a three-day visit with them.   I told her we had plenty of noise here if she wanted to come back for some more.   She replied, "no thanks."

My children love all four of their grandparents.   Each grandparent does different things with them which works out nicely because my parents and my in-laws are in town here for different parts of the year, swapping out when winter and then spring arrives as they each go to their cold-weather homes.   We cherish all the time the children have with them for several reasons. 

Firstly, there is nothing quite like grandparents.   I remember spending time with mine when I was a child. It might have been for a short few hours or it could have been a whole week, for some reason grandparents are just magical things to children.   They know so much and are fun in a different sort of way than parents are. 

Second, grandparents spoil their grandchildren.  My children love that part.   And I don't mean spoil in a bad way, this is the good kind of spoiling.  The kind where you as the grandchild are number one when you're with your grandparents.   They do special things with you and show you all sorts of things that are different in a fun way than you see at home normally.   My children's grandparents are just like that and the children love all the time they spend with them. 

And thirdly, we love it because we get a break as parents.   This weekend was dreamy.   I got so much done in the house while the children and dog were away.   Yesterday I kept thinking I had to hurry up and finish because the children would surely be back soon and then I remembered I had another whole day until they'd be home and I didn't have to hurry at all.   It was a feeling I don't get very often, especially with COVID-19 when the children, my husband and I have been at home for multiple months running.

The children are back home now and I even was able to extract a hug from them when I was able to catch up with the two of them (they had run outside the moment they got home.)  Good news?  They didn't miss us one whit.  The dog, on the other hand, said hello to me for a good five minutes.   Man's best friend was never truer. 

The Big Boy Update:  In going through the bins in the craft room this weekend I found a few things from Christmas that had gotten put aside for when they tired of some of the things they had gotten.  One thing I found was a pair of camouflage, fluffy flip flop slippers.   When my son got dressed for bed tonight I showed them to him.   He had forgotten all about them, as had I.   He's got them on now and may well wear them to bed. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter asked Nana to read her more of the Raggedy Ann stories this weekend.   She remembered Nana reading some of the stories the last time she was there.   This weekend they finished them all and now my daughter wants to hear the Raggedy Andy stories, Nana says.   I looked it up and there is an audiobook in the queue for when my daughter finishes her current audiobook.   I talked to her about it tonight when she was getting dressed for bed and I think she's going to try and finish her current audiobook tomorrow morning so she can find out what happens to Raggedy Andy.

Over Fifty

This isn't about my age, although yes, I'm in my fifties now.   It's half-way through the year and I'm still acclimating to the new decade—but I'm getting there.

This story is about drawers.   I have this "craft room" that is not completely accurately named because there are lots more things in it than crafts, but it's where the crafting and art materials reside which is where it got its name from.    The problem with the room is it is out of organization.   That reads odd, perhaps, "it needs to be reorganized" would be a better phrase.

If you walked into the room you wouldn't think so, because everything is neatly put away.   The reason for the redo is things have changed over time and lots of stuffing of things here and there have been done and then I ran out of room but I still managed to acquire more stuff.   And so for quite some time now I've said I needed to revamp the room.   It's been such a daunting task that I've put it off.

I've started and made progress, but it's just too much.   I have loads and loads of those little drawer-based plastic bins.   I've been collecting both things and bins for half my life which has added up to a lot of bins and stuff.

What I need to do is go through everything, determine what needs to go, what needs to be combined with a similar thing in another area, what would fit better in this thing versus that thing and what things need to be close to the work desk in the room versus could be put in the attic.   There is new stuff that's piled in large plastic bins that are just dumped in and I can't find things.   I hate it when I can't find things.

Today I picked up the process of going through all the old so that I could free up room and find things more easily.   I still haven't put any of the bins full of stuff up, but at the end of the day, I had over fifty drawers empty and ready for tomorrow's work of putting everything else away.  

That sounds like a lot of drawers, I know.  Most of the drawers are in three or six-drawer small containers so the overall storage space isn't large, but it's huge in organizational change.   I was tired at the end of the day when I left the room but as I left and turned out the light, I turned around and smiled.  I'm looking forward to working in the room tomorrow.  For a long time, it's been a sense of dread and a feeling I'd never get it done.

The Big Boy Update:  It turns out there is something that's a higher value to my son than video games and screen time, which has sort of shocked my husband and me.   He loves audiobooks.   He and his sister are spending a lot of time together acting out things in the books they're listening to.   They roleplay the characters and storyline when they're not listening.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My ankle socks accidentally got sorted into my daughter's laundry a while back and since she mostly grabs things by feel, I noticed she was wearing them a few days later.   They're a bit too big on her but she loves them because they're very soft she says.   My daughter is still quite small, but it's interesting to have your child wearing something of yours for the first time.   I'm letting her wear the socks now.  She says they're her favorite.

Ouch!

If I could have written this title with three syllables, I would have.  I was outside this morning and my dog was highly excited.   I saw behind some vehicles parked across the street that Milo, our neighbor's dog was outside and understood what the reason was.   Our dog loves playing with Milo.

I let Matisse off-leash and was talking with my neighbor for a few minutes when a car came down the street and I went out in the road to make sure the car passed safely what with our two excited dogs running around in their yard.

It was then that I realized the street was hot, and I mean hot on my bare feet.   I stepped quickly to get back to my yard and did so in the traditional clumsy way I lead most of my life and tore my toe on the macadam.   I took the dog in, not mentioning to my neighbor that I realized I'd injured myself on the way because I'd looked down and saw blood pouring out of my big toe.

I quickly came in, walking without putting pressure on the toe and found my husband getting dressed in the bathroom.   There was a large flap roughly torn back from my toe.   He rushed in with a bandaid while I cleaned it and applied some bactine and polysporin,   I wrapped it tightly in the bandage, hoping to lay the flap back down and encourage primary healing by keeping it in place.

It hurts now.  Badly.   It's one of those wounds that are completely unaccepting of any pressure or touch with even the most light of brushes making the constant aching in my foot spike to intense pain.   I don't injure myself often, unlike my daughter, who is always bumping and scraping herself.  I don't know how she does it.

Two Rude Children:  My children are at Nana and Papa's house for the weekend, but they almost didn't go this afternoon due to behavior.   Just before leaving, their friends came to the door and they wanted to run outside and play.   We would have been fine with the mess they'd left inside and the rash decisions they were making if they hadn't been insulting and rude in the process.  I followed my daughter outside to bring her glasses since she'd taken hers off and needed a pair to wair for safety.   She didn't want to come pick a pair of glasses from me and my son didn't want to take responsibility for letting the dog out.   My daughter called me stupid, loudly, and my son called me an idiot.   They could have been respectful and again, things would have been fine, but they ended up having to come back inside and clean up, followed by making a sincere apology to me for their language.   They were very sincere because their weekend fun was about to be cancelled, said their father.   That was a lot of leverage.   They screamed and bellowed and protested at first but we ignored them.   I told my daughter I loved her too much to argue with her when she was unrelenting in demanding why she had to clean up her room because she didn't make the mess.  It's your room, I told her.   You have to clean it up, even if you let your brother make the whole mess (which I don't think he did). He was busy cleaning his room up anyway and wasn't available to help.     They left happy, thank goodness.  No one wanted to cancel their weekend's fun.

Bigger, Messier, Incomplete

The one closet cleanout has turned into a larger project than it might have otherwise been if my husband and I worked on it alone.   The children became very interested in everything that came out of the small closet.  

We made a good start but ended the day with things all over the floor in our bonus room.   The children were too interested in playing with so many things they haven't seen in a good while.   We will continue tomorrow, hopefully marking things to be given away to younger children.   It has been nice to see them engaged with toys, puzzles, and little things collected over the years.

After several hours, the children wanted to go outside and my husband and I were ready to take as break as well.    Tomorrow, hopefully, we'll finish the job so we can move on to the next messy area that needs attention in our house.

The Big Boy Update:  My son found, for about the fifth time over his life, a game I had long before he was born called, "Weapons and Warriors."  There haven't been enough pieces to play the game in probably twenty years.   This matters not to my son who only wants to lay out the armies and castles to play imaginatively.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter's favorite toy today was a large box.   She wanted me to empty it out (onto the floor) so she could play in it.   Boxes are still fun to my children, even as eight- and nine-year-olds.

In Closet Preparation

My son wanted to clean out the bonus room closet sometime back.   It's been a bit of preparation work to get where we wanted to store things together across rooms and closets.    It was a big job, but now that my children have things ready in their rooms, we're going to go through the massive mess that is the bonus room closet tomorrow.

I can't stay awake.   This happens sometimes.    I'll have to finish this story about what happened as we went through one hugely wrecked closet.  I'm off to sleep for the night.

Excitement Abounds:  Morgan is back and was able to help us out watching the children while the adults needed to be out of the house.  The children kept a reasonable distance and most of the time we were gone, we saw them ni.  My daughter was so excited about it/

Clouds

Okay, so you're blind.   I know this is a bit of a shock, but run with me for a few minutes and picture this in your mind's eye as though you really were blind.  

You can't understand what something is like that's far, far away.   People explain things to you but just like a picture is worth a thousand words to a sighted person, a tactile representation is worth equally much to a blind child.  

I've been going through the work we recently picked up from earlier in the school year.   Here is my daughter's booklet her braillist made for the unit on weather.   Think about what you could understand about the concepts from the words associated with the tactile elements.   When you're done, presto blammo, you're sighted again.  Whew, scary, no?   Glad it was only temporary.

Thanks, as always, to Mrs. B. for making these cool, custom items for my daughter.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has been sleeping in both the top and bottom bunks.  He is still missing his sister and goes to visit her frequently, but he's adjusting and told me he likes to have the option to sleep either location.   Midday today I went to find him to let him know Rayan had come to the door and wanted to know if he wanted to play.   My son was in the top bunk and did the worst job covering up that he had gotten his iPad.    I let it slide until later given that he jumped at the opportunity to go out in the very hot weather to play with his friend,  

The TIny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter had been telling us for two days that one of her hips was higher than the other and one leg was longer.   She also said there was something wrong with her ankles.   Then, she said she wanted to go to the chiropractor.   This morning she said that yes, she wanted to go still and when we arrived we conveyed the basic information above to the doctor and he checked her out.   Her pelvis was rotated in such a way that one hip was higher up than the other and it seemed like one leg was longer.   She asked him to check her ankles because they had been bothering her too.   They were fine, he said, what she could easily be experiencing was an extra strain on the ankles because of her pelvis being misaligned.    Did we need to come back?   Likely no, but he was there if we needed him.   She's fine now.   It was such a strange thing—her saying suddenly that one leg was longer—and it was in a way because of how her pelvis was torqued.  

Speakerphone

This should be an easy thing, getting my daughter into speakerphone mode for when she wants to talk to Mimi, Aunt A, or Nana.   It shouldn't be that complicated.   Only it was.   Let me set it up from the start:

My daughter had a GPS tracking watch that had a phone feature on it but it was very limited and sounded awful.   We changed her over to an older Apple Watch because of the GPS tracking capabilities and she would have a fully functional phone along with all the accessibility features that come with it.

My daughter can make calls on the watch or phone but for now, she's using Siri to ask for a contact such as Mimi or Nana.   Siri will make the call for her.   The problem was she could get all the way to this point but be unable to get the phone on speakerphone so she could swing in the back yard and hear the person on the phone she's had sat down beside it.  

There are likely a lot of solutions here but we were trying to get a certain direction of technology going with my daughter.   We want to introduce Voiceover a step at a time.  With Voiceover she can do anything without needting to see the buttons on the phone.   She knew how to turn Voiceover on the phone but there was still some confusion on what to do to get Speaker Phone going because my daughter would bring the phone to me after getting on a call and ask me to put on speakerphone.

I told my husband I was figuring this out.   I turned on voiceover on my phone and then tried to call him.   We got some information but not a solution so I tried to turn voiceover off but it instead went into "You have ten seconds to cancel before we initiate emergency SOS call".    !!! !!! !!!  We tried and tried to get it to stop the countdown and finally cleared it out at one second to go.  

Voiceover is tricky because it is mostly telling you what you're touching on the screen, not taking some action like you do when you can SEE what's on the screen already.   The touching is the seeing part.   You have to know different taps or gestures in order to then do something with what you just tapped on.   My problem was I hadn't enabled the quick toggle off of Voiceover like I had on my iPad.   And I almost called 911 accidentally as a result.  

Voiceover is incredibly powerful.   Imagine this: you're sitting at your or tablet or phone.   You get into your email, create a new email to some friends, write it, attach a URL to a web page you've been reading.    Send the email.  Go check Facebook, watch a YouTube video, and respond to a text from your mother about coming to visit this weekend.   I bet it's not too difficult to imagine doing all those things.   But now imagine it again.  Only this time, the screen on your device is completely black.   It shows nothing.   You can tap on things to hunt around and find what you're looking for, but you have to do all the above tasks without anything other than verbal feedback from your device.

That's what Voiceover is and it is incredibly powerful.   It's what my daughter will use every day.   We wanted to just figure out speakerphone though.    I had been getting inconsistent information but when my husband and I started calling each other back and forth on our phones with Voiceover on, we finally figured it out.  

It's smarter than we are.   We expected to dial the call and then find the speakerphone option once the call connected.   Here's what it was doing for us.  Press Dial and hold the phone to your ear until the call connects.   You hear it ringing and the person answering.   Pull the phone away from your ear to do something, in this case get into speakerphone, only now the keypad is showing.   Why?   We worked on that for a bit until we realized the phone turned on and off speakerphone every time you took the phone away from your ear.  

I went outside to tell my daughter and she told me she'd already figured that out earlier today.    She'd even made up a song about it and sang it to my mother on her call earlier.

We Have Two Dogs:   This would be a larger billed topic only we don't have two dogs at the same time.   We have one dog who is shaggy and looks like a general non-specific breed of fluffy white dog.   When I take her to the groomers something happens.  Instead of picking up my shaggy dog, this sleek terrier-looking snow-colored dog gets into my car instead.   Both dogs are similar in size and behavior but the motions of the short-haired terrier are so very terrier-like while the shaggy dog doesn't seem to fit a breed specifically in her mannerisms.   Odd.

The Big Boy Update:  My son figured out that thing you can do when your shirt is bothering you but you don't have a place to put it.   You take the front of the shirt up and over your head and behind.  your neck.   Now your chest is uncovered while the shirt is bunched up on the arms and around the back of the neck.   My son thinks he looks cool like this.   He practices Power Ranger moves like this.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter asked at Dinner, "Are we Jewish?  Can I be Jewish when I grow up?"  This happens at least once each year.   There are eight days of presents, right?   We only have one Christmas.   They have the dreidel game and potato latkes.   They have this cool candle they light and sing a song she can't understand but loves the sound of.   Our next-door neighbors, who have taught my children all they know about Hanukkah, are moving to another home in the area.   We're sad but glad they'll still be close.  

Energetic But Enjoyable

It is Father's Day here.   My parents are in the mountains or they would have joined us.   My in-laws came and we celebrated enough for four grandparents at least.  There were lots of presents.  My children were very energetic about the whole present situation.  They had both been working for over a week on their projects (which were multi-fold) and were vying for the attention of their grandfather as well as father.   

I had had conversations with the children in advance about what they wanted to do on order of delivering craft-made items.   I also talked to my husband and in-laws about what to expect from the children as they were very keyed up.   Things went fairly well, actually quite well considering how excited they were and how there was easily a chance for either one to think it should be their turn or that the other's project was seen as, "better" or any number of other scenarios.   It went well.   All of it.  

My son had created a collection of stained glass-type items out of tracing paper onto which collections of video game things his father loved were printed.   Then, he had the idea to cut one of the pieces up along lines he'd made with tactile tape so that it was also a puzzle.   My daughter had the idea to put felt on the foamboard sheet so the pieces could be velcroed and then rearranged. 

My husband got the puzzle together after realizing the icons between the pieces could be connected, even though the colors between sections didn't match.   My father-in-law had a bit of a harder time because he wasn't familiar with some of the game-themed icons.   Here's the completed puzzle that will go on my husband's window over his computer.   This was before we cut it up along the lines. 

My daughter then unveiled her creation.   She and I spent hours, and I do mean HOURS on this thing.   She was very involved, including making decisions on placement of things, how certain things worked, and general layout.   Plus ideas.   She had so many ideas.   Here's a video overview of the three-hole golf course she made for her father and also for Papa to play on:

Here's an overview picture of it.   It was a lot of fun to do.   I would spend a lot more time talking about all the fun things we did to create these gifts for their father and grandfather but my computer had issues with images I didn't catch on to for a half-hour and now Blogger has up and changed format on me and I'm trying to figure out where all the new stuff is to do the old stuff I always did.   Suffice it to say, I'm tired.   

The Big Boy Update:  My son had to tell Nana about a Power Ranger's thing tonight.   He interrupted her while she was serving cupcakes.   I pulled him aside and said I wanted her to hear him, and I knew it was important to him so if he waited, she would be able to listen and actually hear him.   He said, "un huh" nodded and put his iPad down...for ten whole seconds...and then went back to tell her again.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter learned a lot about golf by making this little course.   I told her today that I thought I could teach her how to play herself and she wouldn't lose the ball (tiny little foam balls in yellow, orange, or white in the vials with the blue caps).   She listened to me and was able to play the whole course, not losing the ball once.   She may have finagled the little ball a time or time because she managed to get an eagle on one of the par-four holes.  

Hunchback of Father’s Day

I don't usually go on about holidays or celebrations.   Most of the time I mention it to some degree but don't dwell on it.  I talk a bit about it and then move on.   That is exactly what I'm not doing with this Father's Day holiday this weekend.   My children have huge plans.   And they need help with all of it, "please, Momma?"

So of course, I help.  Each child has more than one thing for their father, but the main item, the main thing they're going to bring into the room with a huge smile on their face, knowing it's going to wow every adult in the room, that main thing is on foam board.  They have a large, sturdy sheet on which all manner of things can be presented.

The children have designed their "presents' in such a way they their father will have to do things on the foamboards using some of the pieces.  It might be part of a puzzle or a game or a maze.  Who knows what they've come up with underneath those foam boards?  Look at me making it all sound mysterious.  

That's not my goal, but I do have to wait for tomorrow before I can show it here.   I've put a lot of 'Mom hours' in on these two little things.   Both of them have parts that are so good, I suspect my husband will want to even keep them for a while.

Days of leaning over and around a work table while standing and constantly moving have made me feel like The Hunchback of Father's Day right now.   I'm ready to deliver Father's Day presents and eat the steak my husband wants to prepare himself for us and his parents who will be coming over with masks on.  We'll all be safe as can be.

The Big Boy Tiny Girl It's Finally Finished Status:  Father's Day presents have finally been completed.   Both children started out small but then their ideas grew.   They added things and then they changed their plans and then, well, there were a lot of modifications to plans, I suppose is the best way to put it.

Another Kind of Helicopters

The Big Boy Update:  My son didn't care about us seeing him naked until some time relatively.   It got worse and worse until, in the end, he was worried people might be thinking about possibly glancing at him as he changed clothes. He was so annoying at the end of this period because he was always assuming people were looking at him, even though they weren't looking in his way many times.

My husband and I started to tease him in recent months that his penis was out and he forgot to protect it and we had caught a glimpse. Then, just a month or two later, my son went full circle, intentionally getting undressed in front of us and calling attention to his nudity with dancing and words to that effect.

My husband and I have tried additional levels of reverse psychology, saying oh no, his penis is visible and what are we going to do, we're seeing all of his penis all the time.    He's beat us there too, dancing even more and attempting to do the "penis helicopter" I told him about.

I'm not sure, but I think I liked the embarassed stage more.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has been incredibly patient with me today as I completed things on her father's day present she can't do.   We have more to do, but we'll finish by tomorrow.

Brown to Blonde

I had the dog groomed yesterday and it reminded me of how much she's changed in color since we got her at eight-weeks-old.   She has baths from time to time here, but there's nothing like the lightness of her short-cut, clean fur.  

Here's what she looked like the day we got her:



It took over a year for her to stop growing the darker colored puppy fur but now that she's full-grown, she's at her final color.    I couldn't get her in a natural pose tonight for this picture.  Dogs don't know how to smile and say 'cheese' for the camera.   She thought she was in trouble because I was holding the phone up towards her.   Still, you can see the whitish blonde hair she now has.  Even the ears gave lost all but the final remaining bits of grey hair.











Interestingly enough, her skin color is very dark in many areas of her body but it doesn't seem to affect the color of her visible fur though.

The Big Boy Update:  I asked my son how he slept in his new bed last night.  "Like a baby" he replied as he sat down to eat his breakfast.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter worked on her Father's Day present more today.   We figured out a few things that needed an engineering solution.   She wanted to use a glue gun to solve everything.   We did find solutions and I think she was very happy some of them involved the gule gun,

New Room, New Attitude

Last night was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad night for my son.  Around about midnight, he woke up and was lonely, so he went to his sister's room.   He's not adjusted to their recent separation as entirely as his sister has.   He came in, woke her up, and asked if he could sleep in her bed.   She said sure.  Things were fine for a very few short minutes, and then it all went to hell.

She came down, waking me up, saying he had taken her glasses, wouldn't give them back, and then once she'd gotten them, he'd bit her (this is a new thing with him and belies some underlying emotional issues we think.)  I asked why he was in her bed in the first place, and she explained how he had come in and then shortly after getting in the bed proceeded to take up almost all the room.  My son does this—he sprawls.

I gave her some suggestions, hoping he or she would elect to go to another room, but no, it only got worse, so I had to go upstairs.  My son has been raging angry at the slightest provocation—provocation he decides is such, even if it's calm words of authority.   I sent him back to his room based on his tone, and he started screaming.   His father came upstairs at that point, and we turned on the lights to his room, which infuriated him.   He yelled at us, calling us all manner of names, including some swear words (which he never does.)  We wanted to know why he was so upset and just wanted him to calm down.

His blame machine was kicked into high gear. It worked against him badly because we had to stop the verbal abuse he was throwing at all members of his family (the dog excluded) about how it was all our fault. He had done nothing and/or it was an accident or he didn't remember or one time we had done such and such to him, and therefore he was in the right, or we owed him money or screen time based on how poorly we were treating him.

For the most part, we remained calm throughout his tirade, but we didn't back down.   He was required to apologize to us and his sister, who got upset for him mid-way through and turned to his side, trying to help him in any way she could.   Eventually, after a long time, he calmed down enough to apologize to our satisfaction, and we left the room.   I tried to leave things on a good note, but I wasn't sure if I'd gotten through.

My husband and I talked about it afterward—something was up.   He was getting continuously corrected, and even though he deserved all of the corrections.   Some were him not paying attention and overrunning screen time.   Some were intentional disregard of our requests.   He wasn't responding the first time to anything, ignoring us, yelling, being incredibly rude, and trying to pick fights with his sister and us any time he could manage it.   He was fighting back against what?  Not being understood?   The last time this happened, that's what Dhruti said was going on.   So, instead of being more firm with him today, we went in the opposite direction.

I got up early to take the dog to be groomed (hooray, finally), and when I returned, I went to his room, opened the door, and quietly started cleaning up the mess.   When he realized I was in the room, instead of yelling at me, he said, "Mom, I love you."   That was about as atypical as you can get for him.   I climbed into bed with him and hugged him for a long while, something he would in no way entertain the night before and talked to him about my ideas for the day.

We needed to work on his Father's Day gift, and I had some ideas to expand on what we'd talked about before.   He thought that sounded like a good plan.   Also, I told him I thought we should go to Target and get him new bedding and maybe something for his father by way of a gift.   He was interested but not excited.

The night before, one of his complaints was that no bed was comfortable (save his sister's).  He's wanted the bottom bunk for several years, and this was a chance for him to move to it and get some bedding he liked in the process that wasn't purple and pink and his sister's.   So we had a plan for the day that involved him and me spending some quality time together, and him getting his room (well, bed) redone.   Sounded good, right?

Then, he lost his mind.  He didn't want to do any of that!  It was horrible I would make him do any of it, including possibly getting his hair cut, something he had asked me to do personally for him he was so unhappy about the length of his hair.   I was so mean as a mother.   I held firm and told him we would just drive around if he didn't want to do anything, but he was getting in the car.

When he begrudgingly got in the car, things started to improve as I suspected they would, and by the time we were at Target, he was in a good mood again.   We spent a long time looking at all sorts of things in our masks.   He finally decided that yes, he did want to get new bedding, but it wasn't what I thought he was going to pick out.   He didn't want any character or theme-based bedding.  He wanted blue and white bold stripes.   He picked out two super fuzzy pillows with the feature of being hard to hold. They're so soft they slip through your arms.

I suggested we get him a towel and bath mat to match, thinking this might be a good motivator for him to start showering in his room.   He loved it all and ended the trip by spending the last of his "spend" allowance money on some Pokemon cards.

We left, got him drive-through lunch, and picked up the dog from the groomers.  When we got home, I had a plan, and thankfully my husband and daughter were playing Katan, and my son became immediately interested in what they were doing.   I told my son I was going to work on his room to update it as a surprise in a bit.   Would he be okay with that?  Surprisingly, he was.  Typically, any change and my son goes slightly mad (read furious) but in this case he was ready for it.

I did more than just change the sheets and comforter out on his sister's old bed.  She had the lower bunk which was had a full-sized mattress.   His top bunk was a twin.   The new bed was going to be bigger for him and wasn't constrained with railings all around.   There was a lot of "growing up" I did to the room.   I removed the stuffed animals from the top bunk and remade it, leaving only his top favorite animals nestled in the corner.

For the bottom bunk, everything was pulled that was his sisters, the bed was crisply made in blue and white and the two huge fluffy pillows were added against the back wall.   There was more that needed doing though.   I put away a lot of the toys my son really didn't like in the room like the wooden kitchen set with loads and loads of plastic food and cooking implements all over the place.   I cleared out some drawers his sister had used, taking those things to her room and removed the mass of things from under the bed they had shoved there over time.

My son had a second dresser now that his sister had moved out so I moved things there that had been otherwise cramped and freed up some space in the closet for books by taking all the braille books over to my daughter's closet.  I tidied up the bathroom, put up the matching blue towels and bath mat, and then called him in.

I held my breath.   Would he like it or get upset that I'd "grown-up" his room because he was acting so very grown-up himself.   This was strategery on my part for the day.   I wanted to improve his self-image and generally have a positive day with him.

He loved it.   He was so excited.   He had his father hold the slippery fuzzy pillow and marveled at all the little changes that made the room different.   He remembered the towels and took his father to the bathroom to look at the updates there.   There was his very own towel right there at the shower's edge.   He could take a shower and get his own towel and he didn't have to take a bath downstairs anymore if he didn't want to.

My son was so excited he ran to find his sister so he could show her.   I had been worried about this part.   Siblings always have the, "it's not fair" response to anything.   I had been showing my daughter the little things (I was calling them, "upgrades") that I'd done to her room during the afternoon as well.  I had organized all her braille books, all the way back to Kindergarten, including the tactile picture ones Mrs. Aagaard had made for her.    She was very happy about that as well as some of the other things I did to organize her room.

I decided to give her some new responsibilities that I thought she would like.   I brought up the nighttime steroid eye drop and put it in her nightstand drawer alongside the cuticle clippers she had wanted for herself recently.   Then I showed her the big one:  her iPhone and Apple Watch were sitting on her nightstand in their chargers.   She didn't get it at first.    Then I explained she was now responsible for putting the watch on and taking it off to charge at night.   And also...she could have control of her phone, something we haven't let her do before now.

She was very happy and I think that privilege.   It isn't much of a change although it sounds like it might be.   She only uses the phone to call a very select few family members.  She can't use it otherwise.   Having her manage where it is and if it's charged is almost easier for us.   But it's a big step in her mind.

Back to my son's room: I had told him he could pull off the wall stickers on the wall under the top bunk that my daughter had put there.   I told him maybe don't mention that right now to his sister but he either didn't hear me or was just so excited he told her anyway.   And she didn't care one bit.   She is so happy in her own room she isn't looking back at all.

My son is a lot happier about the situation after today, I hope.   We've got more to work on than new sheets and pillows will solve, but it was a good day for my son.   I like seeing him genuinely happy.



The Big Boy Update:  A bit after we'd done the grand tour of my son's updated room, I was in there finishing things up.   My son came in and said, "Mom, who's room is this?"  I said, "It's your room" and smiled my biggest smile.  He smiled back with a thoughtful look and said, "It doesn't feel like it."   I asked him if it felt different and he agreed that's what it was.  Was it a good feeling different?  Yes, he agreed, it was a very good feeling.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has been wanting to collect the advertisement mail for some reason.   There have been newspaper inserts and those packets of 4x6 inch glossy card stock ads or coupons.   She doesn't want to get rid of them, so I just move them to the side of her desk.   This afternoon she was on the phone with Mimi and had taken her braillewriter into her bedroom.   I heard her typing away and came in to say hello to my mother.    I looked down and she was typing on those small card stock add mailings.   I was thinking about how smart it was for her to reuse them because she couldn't see what was on them and it was a great source of paper for her.   About that time she said, "Momma, where did you get this glossy card stock?  It's really good."   So I told her what it was and we all agreed we'd just found a free source of paper for her.   I told her later if she wanted to stump me, she could type on those sheets because I couldn't possibly read the dots amongst all the imagery on the page.   She smiled mischievously at that.

Part of Your World

When was it that my daughter and son watched The Little Mermaid?  I think it's been two weeks or so by now.   Ever since that time, my daughter has had an earworm for the song, "Part of Your World."  Not just the song though, just the chorus.  

She sings a lot.   And I mean a lot, but typically it's more than one song and commonly is just something she's making up in words and tune.  This song though has stuck and it's not budging.   Her brother has had about enough of it, getting frustrated and yelling at her to "STOP SINGING!"  This doesn't phase her.   We're working on helping the children understand that if you only get more annoyed or mad, you're letting the other person know they have something over you—and they'll keep on doing the annoying behavior.

My daughter ignores his requests, pleas and shouts to stop nowadays and keeps singing.   That would be okay by me except every time she launches into the song it gets stuck in my head too.   Just those five or six lines.   I've asked her to teach me more of the song, hoping that in so doing she'll sing more of the song herself.   She's played it enough on Alexa by now that she has the whole song memorized.  So far though, that tactic hasn't worked.

The Big Boy Update:  My son and husband have been getting on each other's nerves lately.  My husband is very, I repeat very, laid back.  When he yells, you know he's been pushed too far.   My son seems to think he doesn't have to listen and can overrun screentime without penalty.   Today he could have earned some screen time but he wasn't willing to do what his father said, pretending not to hear anything he said.   That didn't go over well either.   We always back each other up as parents.   He stayed in his room for most of the day, playing with toys and listening to the audiobooks his sister bought.   The start of summer has been a rocky one for him.   For once, interestingly enough, I'm the good guy.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has extravagant plans for her father for Father's Day.  She has already completed one of her projects but has a lot more lined up in her mind.   The biggest project I can't show here until after Father's Day on account of my husband reads these posts from time to time and I would never be forgiven if I gave away the secret too soon.    She and I worked for almost five hours on this project today.   We had a lot of fun, she has really insightful ideas that I never would have thought of.   I'm looking forward to Father's Day.

Big Job Ahead

I have a big job ahead of me.  Well, possibly several.  Today marked the first weekday of my children's summer vacation proper and we've told them they would be responsible for an hour's worth of schoolwork each day.  Plus reading.  Or maybe it was an hour of reading could count as their schoolwork, instead?  I'm not completely sure and my husband and I need to get our acts together and make some firm decisions about what we're requiring them to do during the summer.

My daughter isn't here today but is instead visiting with Nana and Papa and from the pictures and texts we've been receiving, she's having a grand old time.  My husband has been working on a computer project that's taken hours of work for each of the last several days and so he and I let today slide with my son.   And that meant there were a lot of screens happening on my son's end.

I just lost my temper at my son.   Rather badly, I might add.   My husband always backs me up but sometimes he doesn't like the intensity of my anger.  In this case, I'd had it.  My son had been yelling at his father, ignoring screen time stop times by overrunning them, saying he needed to finish the quest or he didn't realize or oops, he forgot and was back on the iPad or watching videos on Alexa—even during lunch when we were trying to talk to him.   I realize the neverending news and interest flashes that come up on Alexa can be tempting to any of us, but my son lacks the ability to manage his impulse to look at the screen.  We just turned Alexa around at lunch and then had a nice time.

So tomorrow we are going to hopefully have some kind of structure.   We need to get to talking about it tonight hopefully or in the morning with the children, ideally, so they can be part of the plan.  It's always better when they have input and buy-in because they are more likely to want to comply.

I have another project I need to work on with the children (for Father's Day, shhh, don't tell their father) as well as a long-standing computer assignment I've made for myself that will be interesting if I ever get started, but not unlike many things in life, I've been putting off.

Keeping busy this summer is one of our biggest challenges what with the lack of friends to play with or summer camps to attend.   We'll see how well we fare.   Thankfully there are many companies and people posting ideas to keep children busy.   The Internet can be a very helpful place.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is in purgatory right now.   He is reading an hour's worth of book from his current book—which he can easily finish—and then possibly his next book that we think he will hate until he actually starts reading, just like everything else with him.   After losing my temper at him and going into Military Mom mode he's calmed down.   I expect him to listen the first time and not the third or fourth going forward.   It's going to be tough for him for a bit, but I don't mind the challenge.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has been learning French today, has had her hair put up in a beautiful bun by Nana, and has made both a cake and cupcakes, some of which she'll be bringing home with her today.  Just like every time the children go to visit Nana and Papa, she's not going to want to come home.

Family Outing

We went out yesterday.   The whole family got in the car, we went to a store and then we got lunch at a restaurant.   It was almost surreal.

It's been so long it seems since there was normalcy in our lives.  We've been at home with COVID-19 for multiple months.  My husband and I have been out and do go out regularly to the grocery store or pharmacy.   I've been to doctor's offices for things that couldn't be handled via telemedicine, but in general, that's about it.

My children have been in the car only a few times each, most notably last weekend when we got in the car altogether to go to Nana and Papa's house for dinner.  Other than that, they both have said they don't remember what it's like to be in a car.

My son and husband are susceptible to carsickness if the situation is right.   My son can talk himself into being carsick when he doesn't like where we're going or is in a bad mood.   In this case, it might have been that the motion was less familiar since he hadn't experienced it in such a long while.

My daughter was even bothered by the motion—something that's never happened to her before.   She said, "can you be less torquinnie please?"   That's a phonetic spelling of what she said that sounded like it had the word 'torque' as a base.  My husband had been turning a littie more quickly than she liked.

Where did we go?   My daughter wanted to get another one of those big, plastic blue pools typically sold at Wal*Mart.   We've had several with them eventually being stepped on and bent so much tha duct tape wouldn't keep the leaks under control.  Our most recent two pools, one large and the other small and from my in-laws, were compromised mightily by the children using them repeatedly as sleds down the back yard and into the woods.

My husband cut the large one up so it could be recycled—something that sounds easy but is actually harder than you might think.   We still have the little blue one and maybe we can repair it.  Drive by visits yesterday to two Wal*Mart stores, oddly within five miles of each other, showed unsurprisingly that none were left in stock.

We went to Red Robin for lunch then, with our masks on until we got seated outside on the patio.   There were very few people in the restaurant the entire time we were there during peak lunch time.  After lunch, the children both had said they wanted to do some shopping to spend some of their saved money since they hadn't been out in a long time.

While Red Robin was empty, Wal*Mart was packed with the parking lot completely full so we went back to the first one that was closer to our house and had seemed more empty than full.   We donned our masks and walked the aisles.   We were there for a decent bit of time, mostly looking around but getting a few things we needed and something each of them wanted.  We headed back to the car and used hand sanitizer and then went home.   I don't know when we'll go out again, things aren't over and numbers are rising some lately of COVID-19 cases.  It was nice going out as a family again.

The Big Boy Update:   I got my son some much-needed shoes, even though he complained that's not what he wanted to look for.   I convinced him to get some sandals that were like what Uncle Jonathan always wore.  My son wasn't interested in them at all until I told him he would be like Uncle Jonathan—then he was in.   We sent a picture to Uncle Jonathan who complimented him on his new pair of, "slides".   I'd never heard that term before but it makes sense since you slide your feet into them.   Uncle Jonathan wanted to know how the heck my son had grown six inches since he'd seen him last.  It does seem like my son is taller lately.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was in the toy aisle trying to convince her father she wanted a toy that was really a toy for toddlers.   To her, it seemed like fun but her father didn't want to get it because he thought it would have very short playability with her.   I agreed silently when I saw it.   I had come from another aisle with a large bean bag seat I'd found on the top of a shelf.  It had a soft lilac-colored exterior.   My daughter loves flopping on things and the feel of the little styrofoam beads inside the chair was just the kind of thing she'd love.   She abandoned the toy and now we have the first piece of new furniture in her new room.

It’s Saturday

Actually, it's not.   I fell asleep and forgot to write a blog post before I did.  I had a migraine headache—something I thankfully don't get often.   Mt husband made dinner and then he and the children went to the pool for a second time (we had also been first thing in the morning) and I lay back down because my headache was only partially gone.

So not it's Sunday and I'm writing back to back posts.   I'll finish this meager post and see what I have to say for tomorrow, er, I mean today, after I finish this.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has been enjoying a surfeit of screen time now that school is out.   It's not going to last the whole summer or even a part thereof, but we're letting him binge for now; he worked very hard at his schoolwork for all the long weeks we had school at home.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles: When I got up this morning (well, yesterday morning) I realized we had twenty-five minutes before our early pool reservation.  I went upstairs and told my daughter, who was still in bed but awake and listening to an audiobook.  She jumped out of bed, got breakfast, put in her drops, and was ready with her bathing suit on with ten minutes to spare, wanting to get in the car and chiding us for not being ready yet.   Right now she lives for the pool.

New Glasses

My daughter has been having trouble with her glasses for a while now.   She has very thick lenses because of her prescription and from time to time one of the lenses would pop out.   This isn't good because replacing the lenses is expensive.   I originally got her two pairs so if we lost one, we'd be okay.

When we realized the frames were being stretched due to the size of the lenses and repeated regluing, I found the plastic frames online and bought two more pairs.  That worked for a while but then the lenses started going again.   Then I had an idea:  I'd let her wear the second pair of new frames but I wouldn't put her lenses in them.   Would she notice a difference?

She can barely see anything.   I was mostly certain her lenses were doing nothing at all by way of helping her see things.   So I just gave her plain plastic glasses.   And she couldn't tell.   The new glasses were lighter and comfortable and she liked them.   And that's when I realized this changes everything with glasses for her.

We can get her any glasses we find, including sunglasses which were not possible in her prescription and the fitovers didn't fit over well at her small size.  To do a test, I went to the dollar store and got several options.   I knew she liked things with style she could feel so I got some with crystals and some with interesting shapes that looked small enough to fit her head tightly.

My husband had the second part of the solution.  She has always had a strap around the back of her head at the base of her skull going from the end of each eyeglass arm.  This prevented them from coming off and she wore them night and day.  He found children's eyeglass ear hooks.   It's a small rubber attachment that slides onto the end of each arm and nestles up against the back of the ear.   It's soft and comfortable and keeps the glasses on.

At seven dollars for a pack of ten pairs of ear hooks and five dollars for five pairs of glasses and sunglasses for my daughter we've suddenly given her an entirely new way of both wearing glasses including sunglasses.  The glasses I got were reader glasses and have some magnification, but I don't think they help much.   The ear hooks she loves.

She can swap glasses and sunglasses easily now and change pairs based on her stylish whim, something she's never been able to do before.   And—and this is the really important part—she will be wearing glasses all the time to protect her eyes.   That's what her glasses have been doing for the majority of the time she's had them.   Yes, they helped her see somewhat, but they protected her more than anything.

I wish we needed to buy expensive lenses and prescription glasses because they helped her see, but since they don't help, it's nice to be able to have fun with glasses at least.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is at Nana and Papa's house.  He was supposed to come home mid-day but we've gotten calls twice that he wants to stay for longer.   I found out on the second call he'd also had a shower and was clean.   I love that they all love to spend time together.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter wanted to go to the pool today after music therapy.   She had a call from Nana and upon hanging up told me Nana wanted us to go to the pool.   She told me in such a way that it was a mandate from Nana.   Interestingly enough just before her phone rang she had been telling me I had to take her to the pool.   I was in the middle of cleaning the house that had gotten out of hand over the last week of school.   I told her if she could help me get the laundry done maybe we could go, but I needed help as I had several hours more work to do.   She didn't want to help.   Then she began her passive-aggressive campaign by talking out loud to herself making sure I was in earshot.  Read this in a sad, disconsolate voice with sighs between each sentence:

"It’s my dreams. I’m not meant to be on land. I just want to go to the only water where I can swim down and touch the bottom. It’s the only source of water that I’m allowed to use...because I’m not sixteen.  If I was sixteen I’d go right now to the dang pool.  But I’m not.   I have years to go.   Exactly eight years.  <cue singing>  I want to be at the pool. I want to see the waters again. I wish I was a fish. I wish I had other friends of different species who spoke the language of the sea. I wish I had some hope."

Goodbye Second Grade

My daughter's last day of school was today.   Her teacher has been there for the children in many ways through the distanced learning, caring, talking to them on their class calls, answering questions, and doing everything a teacher does, only with the challenge of having to do it through a screen.

My daughter and her teacher got off to a rocky start at the beginning of the school year.   My daughter was having meltdowns every day, multiple times some days that were bad.   Her teacher was doing what she could to help, but it was disruptive to the class and there was only so much she could do.  

We didn't realize until later after we had addressed my daughter's depression and anxiety.  Only then, when we had a teacher conference, did we realize how hard it had been on her teacher.   Her teacher never said that, but after hearing what she'd been doing I can only imagine it had to be hard, especially seeing a child in distress in her class who was also being angry towards her classmates and acting out in other ways.

The school year got better but my daughter never fully got over how she was sent to the quiet space in their classroom (where there was a bean bag and stuffed animals to hold) as well as the firm words her teacher had to use with her when she was hateful towards her friends, pushing everyone away.   There was a time she was sent to another teacher's classroom as a last-ditch effort, to see if that would have some traction with my daughter.   In the end, we needed to address her internal turmoil about her blindness before she improved.

This last week her teacher said many things to the students.   Every daily video you could tell she was growing sad that it was her last days with the students in her class.  Today, she asked for a special thing from parents who were okay with it:  she would bring by a bag with things for each student from her.

We were last on the list because we're the furthest away but we waited for her with my daughter in her favorite tree in the front yard.   When she arrived she had her mask on but my daughter went up to her and hugged her.  Then her teacher got down on the concrete with her and told her about all the things in the bag.

She had framed a page with a cloud bubble of words on it from her friends.   We did this for all of my daughter's friends: one adjective to describe them.   She had had her braillest make braille words for every one of the printed ones and had put them all in the right places on the page on top of the glass so she could read it.

There was a stress ball from her husband (which my daughter loved) and a water bottle she had carefully written my daughter's name on.  Plus, there was a special book that was her favorite.   She got each student this book but had then asked Mrs. B. to be sure we had a copy we could get to her in braille.   Just before she arrived I got an email from Mrs. B. with the book not only in a format I could print ourselves but also in a second format I could put onto the Orbit refreshable braille display that would use zero paper and be more environmentally friendly.

My daughter sat on the ground and was incredibly kind in her words.   Her teacher brushed some hair behind my daughter's ear several times and I could just see how much she really cared about her and how this was the last day, the last student and then they were all gone.  

I didn't rush them, letting them talk about what was happening and what they were going to do this summer.   I stood back on the porch and listened to her teacher tell her she was so excited when she got her Flat Mrs. Baker project in from my daughter that she sent it to the principal and vice-principal.

In the end, it was time to go.   We waved goodbye and then school was officially over.  We are going to miss our teachers, seeing them on the computer screen each week.   But I know everyone, students including, are going to be glad to be back at school.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has an unexpected adventure today: he's at Nana and Papa's house for an overnight visit.   My in-laws came masked to take him away and are remaining safe, but masks or not, my son was very excited to be going to spend the night with his grandparents tonight.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter's teacher asked her if she wanted to be back in school or if she liked school at home.   I'd never asked her that question before.   She said she wanted to be back at school because school was boring at home.   She also said she missed her friends.   We know they do.   We all miss our friends these days which will hopefully be over soon.

Goodbye Parade

My son is done with school.  We ended his school year with a drive-by parade for the students in the school through the campus parking lot.   Teachers lined both sides of the way, waving pom-poms, sporting posters with well-wishes, and some even in costume.

It was a sad day in a way because we have one long-standing teacher retiring that's been there since before we started.   I remember substituting with her and learning how to facilitate conflict resolution with children from her, a skill I still need work on today as it tends to grow in complexity as the children get older.

We had my son's final parent-teacher conference today with the teacher he's had for three years and assistant teacher for four years.  He is ready for Upper Elementary next year as a fourth-grader, but beware, there will be more expectations for him in his new teacher's class.   This is a good thing.

We spent most of the time remembering back over the three years and talking about how much my son has grown.   He came in unable to read or concentrate and left as a class leader with strong reading and writing skills.

His math skills are excellent, although he tends to want to do mental math and not show his work.   This is true of his sister as well.   We've spoken with her teachers over the past week or two and are hearing similar things.

There has been a lot of surveying and discussions surrounding distanced learning and how the teachers could do things better.   In my opinion, they all did a great job.   We would have been at a complete loss without them.   They all rose to the challenge and gave us what we needed, inexperienced and unskilled teachers that we were, so that we could help our children learn alone, in a room without their teacher or peers.   It was no small task.

The Big Boy Update:  My son was mad at his father today.  He decided he wasn't going to listen to his father, period, at all, until he got what he wanted.   I explained to my son what leverage was.   He said he had leverage over his father.   I told him we were more experienced at this than he was and on top of that, we had bigger leverage (I gave examples).   I told him this never went well for him when he did this and that admitting you were wrong wasn't a bad thing.   He told me, "yeah, but this time is the time I'm going to win."   I gave up at that point.   Any guesses as to ultimately who isn't going to win?

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Summer starts for my daughter tomorrow.   She's very excited about being done with school, perhaps more so than my son.   She has reluctantly completed all her work for the week, getting up and doing it early so I wasn't there to give any feedback or advice.   I'll check it later to see if she did a thorough job, she might have cut corners.

From a Place of Innocence

My daughter had her last Google Meet with her second-grade class today.  She wasn't too concerned about it, because the same class she's in this year was the same for Kindergarten and first grade and those students will continue on with her until fifth grade.   There were some sad goodbyes earlier for friends who were moving and going to other schools but for now, it's just a longer "track out" for her than the normal breaks between quarters.

Well, it's been a much longer break from seeing her friends due to COVID-19, but she's seen them on calls and hasn't felt like they were gone.   Today, there was a surprise guest on their last call of the year.   My daughter guessed it was their third-grade teacher who was coming on to introduce herself to her students for next year.

When it was my daughter's turn to introduce herself to her teacher, she said a few things and then her current teacher asked her to tell about the big calendar project she'll be working on this summer.   She explained she was adding birthdays and anniversaries.   She said she had a list of holidays too, including even National Pizza Day.   And then, just when she sounded done, she added, "I even have Black Day, too!"

She was proud of this, and for a minute I was too.   She has been shielded from the negative side of things that have been happening.  We have spoken about some of the positive things about equality and the need to treat people as equals.   I had this strange thought in the back of my head though that she wasn't talking about what I thought she might mean, mostly because I remembered what holidays she'd picked and while there's a month in February, there's no one specific day named Black...oh...wait...

I leaned into the call and said, "she means 'Black Friday'".   The two teachers and I chuckled over this because it's one syllable difference and to my daughter, it's just a name with the concept of retail madness having no bearing on her at this age.   My daughter's words came from a place of innocence, and with that in mind, it was rather cute."

The Big Boy Update:  My son has not been shielded as much as his sister because he can read top news on the Alexa Show in the kitchen.   We've had to do more explaining to him.   One thing he said was that he's had a best friend that was colored, ever since he was one.   I asked him, "and have you ever thought about that as meaning anything?  Does it matter what color Rayan is?"  My son immediately replied, "no."   I told him that was the whole point.   I told him that not everyone felt that way.   I spoke about Martin Luther and how that wasn't that long ago in years and how there was slavery before that.   We've come a long way, but we needed more people thinking like he did so we could achieve true equality.   He listened,  he understood I think.   Then, just like things are with children, he wanted to know if he could watch Power Rangers now?

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My mother is now playing board games with my daughter on the phone.   My daughter started this just the other day.   My mother was told to create a four by ten grid on a piece of paper.   She then told her where there were treasures, traps, and other things on the board.   Not all places were used, which my mother thought might have been parts not included in the board map.   Then they started to play.   My daughter had the whole game planned out.   My mother let her know where they landed.   They haven't finished the game yet.  I wonder who will win?  Will my daughter remember an additional rule that will somehow cause her to win?  I wonder...

A Centimeter of Hate

It's the last week of school and things are going haywire here.   My daughter is rebelling at anything and everything, saying she doesn't have to do it and/or the other students are doing something different.   There are too many meetings, and my favorite two sayings, "It's not fair!"  followed by, "Well, sadly for me..."

It is a light week for the children but they have work they must do.   My daughter has a memory book to work on—something she thinks is wholly unfair and unreasonable for the teachers to ask her to do.   We tried to explain it was her, writing to the future, older version of herself.   Writing real answers would be special to you later when you read it.

I went downstairs to listen to my son's final presentation for the year over a Zoom call with my daughter peeking around the corner, listening some from time to time.   When his report was over I found out my daughter hated her teacher.  Hated her.   What in the world, I asked?

Here's the math worksheet for the day, distilled down to text that can be represented in braille (which is under the print version for us).  Look at the line of colons—that's where my daughter got mad.

How was she going to measure that line when she had no idea how long a centimeter was?   She thought it was about the same length as a foot, but she wasn't sure.  She remained angry at her teacher as well as me while I worked on a tactile ruler to demonstrate it to her.   I told her to hold until I got this finished:



And just like you'd explain to a child via a video or drawing, I showed my child how rulers are used by starting at the top left and going right.   She counted up to six inches.   Then I had her turn the ruler 180 degrees and told her those were centimeters with a higher line after each five.   She figured out fifteen centimeters is a little less than six inches.

She asked if she could keep the ruler.   I told her absolutely but to know I made the measurements quickly and we might have to restick in the future.

The Big Boy Update:  My son presented all about Norway to his class and teachers today.  On the Zoom meeting, he had the country over his shoulder and was able to point to it a time or two in the presentation.   He did very well today presenting on Norway.   My son is almost a fourth-grader.   Boggles the mind, time, and all.   Ask any parent and they'll tell you the same thing.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter started another audiobook yesterday.   She turns into raging monster child when you interrupt her audiobook, just like her brother does when we interrupt him from screens.  I'm glad she's listening to stories.   We're trying to pick higher rated ones. ,

Okay, Let’s Go

I've talked about our dog, Matisse, a good bit.  She's about the most loveable dog you could ask for and just what we needed as a pet for my daughter.   She's incredibly sweet, somewhat skittish, and has captured the hearts of my entire family, grandparents included.

But she's not the brightest dog I've ever owned...by far.   I looked at my husband with my most scornful stare when he suggested a year ago that Matisse wasn't brilliant.   Now, I've embraced the fact, happy that as a result, we have a compliant dog who doesn't try to outsmart us, doesn't tear up things, or attempt to get food off tables and counters.  

We put a bell at the front door so she could ring it when she wanted to go out.   It took a surprisingly long time for her to get this concept. However, once she figured it out, she hasn't had a problem ringing the bell regularly, sometimes just after coming in in the rain or other times when she hadn't had enough time outside, in her opinion.

She's fully house trained, and I can't remember the last time she had an accident, save for a bit of excitement when Nana or Mimi arrives, causing a slight loss of bladder control.  Who can blame her, though, we all get excited when the grandparents visit.

One thing I've worried about is her communicating with us in the bedroom at night or early in the morning if she needs to go outside.   On occasion when I've been awake in the middle of the night, and it looks like she might need to go, I'll let her out, only to have her stand around on the front porch or meander in the yard without doing anything productive.

In the mornings I know she needs to go, the question is, can she wait until I get up after seven or eight even on the weekends, or does she need to go when I roll over and look at the clock in the six o'clock hour?  What time did we last let her out the night before, I'll think?  Sometimes it's been close to twelve hours.

Not that long ago, she did something several times.   She got on the bed, stood close to me, and stared me in the face.   She didn't move, she just would look at me.  When she did this, I would get up and let her out, and she did indeed have to go these times.   I thought we were close to a new communication breakthrough.

This morning she stepped up her game by standing on top of my chest and then, when she realized I was awake, lying down on my chest and looking at me.    I used all the phrases I always do when talking to her about going outside.   I asked, "do you want to go outside?"  Then I said, "okay, let's go."   My prior dogs would indicate yes with excitement and motion towards the door.   Matisse waits until she's sure.   This in and of itself is a good thing, because she'll give up if you don't want to take her out and is why I try to determine if she needs to go versus wants to go outside.

This morning I made a motion to roll over and off the side of the bed, only I couldn't because she was on top of me.   I tried this five, maybe six times in the hopes she would realize I was stuck underneath her weight.   On the sixth time, she finally got it and stood up, backing off me.  And yes, she did need to go reasonably badly, it seems.

If this is a new way to communicate about needing to go out, I'm glad.   We'll see if she tries it again soon.   We had a bell in the room at one point but removed it when we realized she just wanted to go in and out of the room multiple times per hour.   Its sort of a nice way to wake up, rather like a cat will sit on your chest.  She has a lot of cat characteristics, only she's thirty-five pounds.

What's That Tub Time Conversation:  This might be an overshare, so if you're a bit squeamish about boy and girl bits and how they like to talk abou them, come back tomorrow.   This was so funny I had to write it up, just as they said it when they were in the tub two nights ago.  The water had drained and my daughter was lying on her back with her feet planted on the tub and her knees pointing upwards.  My son, upon looking at her said, "you have a really big butt crack!"  She said she did not, sounding unsulted so he said, "here, let me show you" and tried to spread her legs apart.   My husband interjected that they should never let anyone touch them in their private parts without their permission and the standard bit about only parents, grandparents, and doctors should ever touch them there at all.  My daughter said, "oh, I don't mind," while my son peered over her knees and followed up by saying, "hey, what's that thing?  It sort of looks like a little penis."   My daughter grabbed herself and said, "You mean this?  Oh, I love that thing!"

My Room, Your Room

I decided it couldn't hurt to do a potentially temporary, or possibly permanent move out of my daughter into the room we've called "Nana and Papa's Room" because that's where Nana and Papa would stay when they came to visit.   But now they live in the area (don't get me started about how great that is) and we don't necessarily need the room for guests, as we have another room we can put people up in.

We were hoping to have the child that moved out move to the other guest room because the bathroom had a second entrance from the bonus room, but my daughter really wanted to be in the back bedroom (I think because of the super-soft comforter I put on the bed in large part, strangely.)

I decided yesterday to move some of her things in, just the basics: clothes she's currently wearing, toothbrush, toothpaste, and flossers.   That was about it.   She's not moving her entire bed into the room (she has a huge amount of accouterments she likes to sleep with) and she plans on sleeping with her brother at least two nights per week, but for now, it's her room.

Today, we tried to get the terminology correct, calling it her room and his room instead of their room and Nana and Papa's room.  Tonight, we decided to hang her shirts, something we've never done before but I got an idea might be a good step for her which would also let her feel her shirts more easily without messing them up in the drawer like she does when looking for a particular shirt.

She helped hang the shirts after a quick lesson on how to hang them that she surprisingly got very quickly.  I moved in the Alexa Amazon Dot from the craft room and my husband changed the names of the devices so they could drop in on each other, with the room names being "Reese's Room" and "Greyson's Room"—something they were both excited about.

So far, so good.  My daughter shows no signs of wanting to go back.   I thought it would have been my son who would want to move out first, but suddenly, and without any preamble, she was just ready.

The Big Boy Update:  My son and daughter were mad at us today because they lost audiobook privileges.  They tried with me but got no traction as I said I hadn't taken it away and they'd have to speak with their father to find out if they had done enough to earn the right to listen back.  My son said to his sister, "let's go vanquish dad...I mean ask dad."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My son wanted to sleep last night with his sister in her new room.   As she was sitting on the big bed she magnanimously said to him, "you are always welcome in this bed."   Then she thought better of it and said, "unless you're not."  As I left the room to leave them to go to sleep, my daughter asked, "Oh, and mom, can we have fifteen minutes of chitter before we have to be quiet?"   Chitter?  I chuckled, not knowing where that term came from and said since it was Friday night, sure.