Kitchen Chicken

Do you know the game where two people hold out as long as they can before some bad outcome fails, seeing who will, "chicken out" first?   I remember several movies portraying this game in the form of two cars driving directly towards each other, one with the hero in it and the other the arch enemy or villain.   My husband and I have several unspoken games of "chicken" that we play against each other in our house. 

The first is with the microwave.   Microwaves get messy over time, even if you use a cover over bowls of soup or other food being warmed.  My daughter is microwaving a lot these days, most notably mac&cheese that always seems to bubble over.   The walls get splattered with pasta sauce and other things of unknown makeup sit on the spinning tray, having gone through who knows how many microwave iterations, and yet they haven't burst into flames. 

Who will get disgusted by the microwave first, cave in and clean it?   I think I'm typically the one to do this job.  I say I only think so because it's easier to notice something that's dirty and a mess than that it was clean and has been clean for over a week.   I'd guess I was the one that did most of the cleaning with this game of chicken.

The other is the compost bin.  We have a small bin in the kitchen that fills up rather quickly.   We pack it down and add more in.   It starts to decompose.   Neither of us wants to touch it, although someone will put it on the island with the silent message that it really should be taken outside and dumped down the hill. 

Sometimes it sits on the island for a few days.   We even joke about it, telling the other person we don't want to take it down, and wasn't it their turn?  I would guess we're about 50/50 on this one, but again, I don't know.   I just know I lose the game of Kitchen Chicken a lot.   I suppose I don't mind because I like things clean.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is doing baby talk again.   He's regressing and we don't know why.   He has a therapy session next week and I think he needs it.   Hopefully, Dhruit can help. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter got in more trouble today for being defiant.   She was escorted to her room and stayed there all day save for meals.   Late afternoon there was a lemonade stand and we let her go there by herself, using her cane and watch.   She did a very good job of navigating.   We told her she should do more walking around the neighborhood.   

The Horrors

I know I wrote about this before, but it's a phrase I think about often enough that it's going to come around again.  Many years ago I did a stint of consulting in New Zealand.   There was a family there that I spent some time with as the husband was with my company and was local to the area and they wanted to make me feel welcomed.   They had two young children, younger than mine are now, and they had a nickname for them, "the horrors."

It was always said in a loving way and from the way they treated their children you never would have thought they meant the phrase in anything other than a facetious way, but every so often, when my children are being little hellions, likely taking after me, I remember the phrase and think of my friends and their very sweet children from Auckland so long ago. 

Today was not a good day from a social standpoint with the children.   COVID-19 has made this hard for them, and they're not alone in this, but goodness gracious is it too much to ask for kindness?  Have we not taught them that resorting to violence is a bad thing?   And when did they stop being respectful?   It was a banner day in bad behavior here. 

A lot of it stems from situations in which my son has the boys in the backyard from the two neighboring houses.   They want to play with my son, which is fine.   Unless my daughter doesn't have her two outdoor friends (there was only one, but the second one can now play again.)  If either child is bored while the other child has their friends outback, we have trouble. 

We broke up a situation after lunch and took them to get shoes.   Their shoes were so bad they were tearing off at the bottom and looked like they'd been taken out of someone's trash.   We discussed how to deal with each other's friends in a positive way and had them come up with ideas on what to do to handle things when tempers flared. 

We got home and not ten minutes later my daughter was screaming bloody murder in the backyard.  We had to break things up again to the point that by the time they'd settled down to listen, my son's friends—who didn't want to include my daughter who was trying to force her way into their game—had gone home. 

My daughter's friends remained, but we weren't letting them out unless they agreed to work together and include each other in their play.    Again, not three minutes later this time, my son came in furious and crying—and he rarely cries—saying they wouldn't let him play and said he couldn't go into Nora's yard. 

There were threats, there was physical violence.   Vengeance and revenge wanted to be taken (by both children) and my daughter has been grounded inside for the rest of the weekend.   She is devastated because she won't be able to play until next weekend.   My son is also in trouble, but not to the extent of his sister. 

The details are far too complicated to easily explain but trust me, it wasn't worth the trouble they got into. But to them, it was all serious.   They want to be included and liked, only they're both going about it in the worst way if that's their goal.   We're trying to teach them some life skills in making and keeping friends, but currently the anger and hurt is blinding them to behaving in a way that would make friends something that was easy instead of hard. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son didn't want to get new shoes.  He hated new shoes.  He wanted his old shoes.   Then he tried on the new shoes (it has been a long time) and he remembered how much he liked getting new shoes.   He won't take his shoes off now. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter got some new sneakers and then she found a pair of booties.   She knows I wear that type of footwear a lot from going through my closet.   She wanted them badly.  Since they were discounted dramatically, we said she could purchase them with her own money if she wanted them that badly.   She bought them and can't wait to wear them to school. 

Into the Dark, Finding the Light

My name is Courtney Blum.  I have two children, Greyson and Reese, ages ten and nine respectively.  My husband's name is Chris and we live in North Carolina.   

These are things I've never said here before.  For the most part, I've made this story about my children, our family, and my thoughts, and I didn't need names or locations.   If you found this blog and you knew who I was, then you already knew me.  If you stumbled upon the pages here and decided to read on, knowing who I was wouldn't have changed anything.   So I remained relatively anonymous, mostly for me, mostly because I've never really felt comfortable having an online presence.  Today, that's changed and it all started with a business card and a man at Starbucks.  

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far before COVID-19 had descended upon us. a man I knew from Starbucks gave me his business card.   He did podcasts, he told me, and if I knew anyone interested in doing a podcast to please pass his information along.   

I didn't know anyone interested in podcasts, but I thought maybe I could be a guest speaker for an episode and talk about what it was like having a blind child.   I could make it funny and interesting and poignant and compelling, I had hoped.  I like to tell stories, which is one reason I enjoy this blog so much because every day I get to tell a story.  So I gave him a call.

He told me he didn't have a podcast, he produced podcasts for businesses and individuals.  It was at this point that I realized I'd been very silly, thinking I could have just talked about my daughter on someone else's podcast.  What was I thinking, that he was the Oprah of podcasts or something?   But I didn't hang up just yet. 

He didn't know I had a child who was blind, and as you well know, once that can of worms is opened it spawns a whole load of questions and conversation.   So we talked.  About both my daughter and podcasts.   I remember I was waiting for my car to be cleaned and we must have talked for at least half an hour.  

That night I thought about it.   About having a podcast where I talked about what it was like to raise a blind child.   I thought about it so much I called him the next day.  I called him several more times until we had hammered out what this podcast I'd envisioned might look like.  We weren't sure if it would be compelling or not, that would be on me.   We didn't know if it would be interesting to people beyond my immediate family and friends, but I didn't mind that so much.   By this time, we were both invested enough in the idea to give it a try, at least for a few episodes, and see what happened.

The only person I told then and have told through this entire long journey was my husband.   Because I didn't know if it would ever come to fruition.  That was a long time ago.   I think it's close to two years now since that first phone call.  We worked on things and then had to shelf it for a while.  COVID-19 happened and we couldn't record in person anymore so we thought we'd wait it out, which clearly didn't work.   So we picked up doing distanced recording with each of us in front of our own mics.  

From the start, we thought we had an idea of what would work, only it turned out to not work at all, so we scrapped it.   It took us a while to get into our groove, which we now both like.   Things got easier and we recorded some more.   We both thought we wanted to have several episodes to release at once, to be followed up with regular episodes once we'd done our initial release. 

It's been stressful some of the time, telling the story of your life.   But it's also been rewarding as well.   So today, with tremendous gratitude to Scott Fitzgerald who is my partner in this podcast in so many ways, that podcast is a real thing.   Scott made me sound good.   He kept the good parts and left behind the bad.  He spent untold hours editing and re-editing as we changed our minds until we circled around to what worked.   He made this podcast what it is. Without him, this would have never happened. 

So without further ado, here are the first six episodes of

Into the Dark Finding the Light.

Note:  be sure to play them starting at episode one.   The podcast makes a lot more sense in order!

Additonal:

* You can listen for free on each of the streaming services listed on the webpage.  As of this writing, episodes are still propagating out to each service so if you don't see all six episodes yet on your preferred service, come back in a bit and check again.   

* You can also listen to the episodes from the main page itself.

Some Sort of Social Something

When I got to school today to pick up my son, he wasn't at the classroom.   I talked to his assistant teacher and she told me he was currently talking with the teacher outside.   Greyson loves his class and especially his teachers, so I was surprised when he got in the car and Michelle told me he was getting physical with another student. 

It wasn't much, but it counted.   My son went on in the back seat about how he has no friends, well, except for these three friends, and that there were only three people who were nice enough to like him as a friend.   The classroom and its students had become "a toxic environment"

Michelle and I talked to him for a while with her standing outside in conversation with just my son.   He had, she told me afterwards, gotten physical with another student.   The details of the actual incident were never conveyed to me.  He shoved or pushed or did something. 

The problems he's having are social in nature.  He's getting offended and then getting upset and not interacting positively with the other students.  He's likey imagining insults and then retaliating.   He's causing most of the problems with how he interacts with people'

She and I talked about it, along with my son, to see if the change in medication might have been a factor.  He's had screens taken away for a while now, so I don't know if that has any bearing on the situation.  He has a lot strong feelings about not being accepted and belonging to before, but this seems like it's something underlying thats's causing hin to have so much anger 

The Big Boy Update:  My son was up at eleven-thirty last night, not tired at all because he'd been listening to his audiobook in his room.   I took the Alexa away and he fell straight to sleep.   Without screens and Alexa he's been doing a lot of artwork.   

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  The first day of the Braille Challenge was over fairly quickly.   My daughter thought she did well so far.   Tomorrow is the second half of the challenge.  We'll find out later if her scores are high enough to advance her to the next level of competition. 

He'd Be Right

I've ordered this tiny little 3D printer for the children to use.   It connects to a phone or a tablet and the children can pick all sorts of fun things to print, including printing pieces of small people that snap together with different tops, bottoms, heads, headgear, and other options.   You can draw a picture and it prints a 3D representation of the drawing, which I thought would be good for my daughter, but the feature I'm most interested in is the picture mapping. 

You can take any picture and it will turn it into a hills and valleys map that provides a tactile representation of the person or things in the picture.   I thought this would be an interesting feature for my daughter, so I mentioned it to her on the way to pick up my son from school this afternoon. 

I set it up for her, though, saying I wasn't sure if that was something she'd be interested in seeing (feeling.)  I told her a story about a book I had started to read a while back.   It was about a man who had lost his sight around about the time my daughter did.   He had said one thing that surprised him was that people automatically assumed he'd want to feel their faces when he got to know them.   

He likened it to sighted people not needing to know other facts about a person that weren't readily visible. He wasn't interested in what a person's face looked like.   It didn't factor into his mental image of the person at all.   I told my daughter this story and then intentionally ask her anything about how she felt about it because I was interested to see if she volunteered anything.  

She replied almost immediately when I stopped talking, "he'd be right."   I asked her if that meant that people's faces weren't important to her.   I asked her what she meant.   She doesn't care about people's faces, she said. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son spent a lot of time in the bonus room after school creating a game with paper and his colored pencils.  My husband didn't want to interrupt his creativity so he let him stay up later than normal.  He still hasn't read the three books that will get him some screen time back.   I don't mind. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has some tight spaces between her teeth.   he has been trying to see how many flossers she can break before she gets all her teeth flossed.   I told her it was an admirable goal, but only if she wanted to use her allowance money to buy replacement flossers.   

When You Assume

There's that old phrase about when you assume.    Today I did some assuming.   A long time ago, in a land far, far away from the current pandemic environment, I decided to redo our living room.   The furniture we had in there was circa before not only my children were born, but before my husband and I were together. 

When we built our house we put the sofas we had in the living room and they were fine.  Some day, I told myself, I'd redo the room, but for now, we had a brand new house and the furniture would just have to do.   It fit well and it served us for many years, but it was time to do the room over.   

Through a concatenation of events, I was working with Susan, who knows what works and what doesn't work.   She steered me in the right direction, decisions were made and orders were placed.   Last year.  Way last year before lockdown.  

For a while, I forgot about the order, and then it looked like it might arrive by Christmas, although we missed that by a long shot.  Yesterday we moved the sofas out of the living room and today, chairs, a sofa and end tables arrived.   Another chair and the large, coffee table that sits in the middle of the room, is still to come.   

Susan came over with some lamps we could decide on.   She had lamp shades to go on them and we started trying things out, moving them around.   We had an idea of what we wanted, but nothing felt quite right.   In order to get a feel for what she was looking for, I went up to my daughter's room and got the two lamps on her nightstands.    

The lamps there went with the guest room furniture that is now her bedroom furniture.   They're not children-type lamps, they're heavy, tall metal lamps with larger lampshades.   When I brought them down, Susan said that was just what the end tables needed.  They were right.   They fit.   I said that was great, that we could just use them.   

Susan laughed and said, "I didn't know we could have gone shopping in. your house for lamps."   I told her I didn't know that was an option.  She asked if my daughter would mind and I said I didn't think so because she couldn't see the light from them and she probably didn't know much about them since they didn't factor into her world view much. 

When my daughter came home we told her to go feel around the living room and see what the new items were but to be sure she had clean hands since she'd been eating a snack.   My husband and I headed to the basement to get some work done. 

I swear, it was less than two minutes later that my daughter roared down from the top of the stairs, stomping as she descended the stairs, "HOW DARE YOU TAKE MY LAMPS!"

Uh oh.   

I did what any good parent does when their child is upset by something that will pass.   My daughter was laying on the chair, crying piteously, saying "Bob and Bill" were her best friends (it seems like all the inanimate objects she bonds with have these names.)  And I lied.  I lied to her and told her the lamps had been planned for the living room redo since before she moved into the bedroom and that I didn't realize she had such strong feelings for the lamps. 

Then I tried the next parental tactic: bribery.   I told her we could go to the store and she could pick out lamps for her room that she liked.   Bribery got me nowhere though.   So we went for the third tactic, and this one worked: distraction.   Her father went jumping on the trampoline with her and five minutes later, she was laughing.  

I wonder though, will the lamps come back to haunt me?   My daughter still is upset about the river rock we didn't let her tack home from Hawaii. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son still has stuffed animals all over the floor of his room.   He got the dog to get under a pile of them last night.   My husband sent me a picture and I didn't notice the dog's head sticking out from the center until I'd looked at the picture for a bit.  Tonight my son was rolling around on the floor with all the stuffed animals.   They seem to make him happy.  For years he wanted nothing to do with stuffed animals. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   On Thursday, my daughter competes competitively in the national braille challenge.   She has practiced with me administering the test for her.   She did fairly well, but if she wants to be nationally competitive, she's going to need to slow down, take her time and think.   She knows more answers than she got right, she was just in a hurry to get sone so she could have lunch or go out and play.  

Enraged

My son is upstairs losing his mind.   He is furious.  Enraged.  Angry.   Mad.   He had thought if he waited me out that I would just give in and return screens to him.  After school he tried in his nicest voice, telling me how he'd done drawing and listening to audio books and doing things in his room and there really wasn't anything more he could do and he was bored and I said...

That's the tricky part.  He was going with the bit where you said, "but you said..." and thinking that would work.   When I explained that I hadn't said that, and that that's not how things were going to work, he got mad.   He yelled at me and told me I had lied to him.   I was, "A LIAR!" he said.   He appealed to me, saying when I was at his bed the other night before bedtime and was talking to him about screens that...

I'm not entirely sure what all his arguments were because he was standing at the top of the stairs to the basement wearing his mask from school still and mumbling.   He did take off his mask eventually, but by then he was yelling and furious at me. 

The fact remained, I told him, that he had not read three books.   The "real" books, which meant chapter books.   He asked me if certain books counted.   I told him he could bring them to me and I'd let him know.   And no, a Choose Your Own Adventure book wouldn't count because you could finish that type of book in only a few pages.   I expected him to read three age- and grade-appropriate books.   

My son was deciding for himself which books would count.   He does that, decides what something is or will be to his distinct advantage.   I told him I didn't want him to waste his time so he'd better bring the books he was thinking of reading to me because if it didn't count, he might be upset at having to read an additional book. 

He screamed and yelled and was unhappy when he saw me recording the tantrum on my phone.   He was pretending I'd changed the rules on him when he'd had conversations with his father about the three book requirement.   He was trying to play the situation to his advantage.   Only it didn't work. 

I told him he also needed to understand that just because he read the three books, I wasn't guaranteeing he would get screens back.   He had to read three books before I would consider it.   That was the minimum to start.   After that, if his behavior merited it, I would consider letting him have some screen time.   

I've been trying to be clear about things.   But I'm also taking a very hard line this time.   He's gone overboard on some things related to screens that my husband and I aren't completely happy about.   This is the first step into getting screens back.  He will have to continue to show good judgement and behavior to maintain any access to screens going forward. 

My husband is home and he's talked to my son, who has apparently magically finished one book already.   This is what happens when he won't let me confirm what books will, "count" towards his three books.   He's going to continue to rage.  And I'm going to continue to hold his computer mouse, iPad, Switch the television remotes under my control until he proves he's actually done the work to earn some screen time back. 

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Pencil Stabbing Discovery:  This weekend after my husband and son left to go skiing I went upstairs and saw on the floor of the bonus room several sheets of paper with hundreds of pencil stabs through them.   I thought it was possibly my son doing the damage, getting out his anger at me for the removal of screen time.   My daughter happily told me that no, she and he had done it together. I couldn't get out of her a reason why, other than it had been fun.

Balance, Adorableness, and Delicacy

My son has to read three books before I will consider letting have screens back.   He has told his father he's thinking about, "waiting me out."   My husband told him he wasn't going to succeed because I wasn't going to give in.   But my son seems to want to wait instead of actually reading three books, something he could easily do.

He went skiing today with his father.   They went to my parents in the mountains without stopping to interact with anyone to be safe.  My parents have had both vaccines.   Then today they went on the mountain and did some skiing for the day.   Tonight they're home in time for school tomorrow. 

Yesterday before they left my son called me up to his room, saying, "Be prepared for balance, adorableness, and delicacy."   When I came in the room he had done this:

He had looked all over to find every stuffed animal in the house.   He'd even stolen some from his sister's room.   He told me you could see every single stuffed animal.    He was very happy about how he'd arranged them. 

Tonight when he got home, he went into his room and I looked down the hall to see him flinging the animals onto the floor, one by one.   He liked his creation, he just didn't want to sleep with it. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son can write.   He just doesn't want to.   I know he can write with ease because I found this on his desk:

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was in the tub tonight waiting for me to read to her.   I came in to find half a bottle of shaving cream in the tub with her and the razor in her hand.   She happily told me she had shaved her legs.   

The Things We Do For Children

I was never a doll person as a child.  I had a few when I was very young, of particular note the one that you fed and then the food came out into her diaper a short while later.   It seems like her name was Betsy Wets and something but that could be way off.   Barbies I didn't spend much time on at all.   What I do remember though was the hair.   Doll hair was dreadful.   Ir started out long but little hands with little scissors performing stylish haircuts made for a nearly bald doll not much time later.  There were only so many stylish haircuts you could do before you had no hair left. 

The other part about doll hair was the fallout.   I just didn't stay in well.   The brush would get filled with unbending, stringy hair that got all over the floor and was internally hard to pick up.   These days, doll hair is very good at staying put so that problem has gotten better.   The hair is denser and can be styled more easily.   Unfortunately, children aren't the most gentle with hair and with synthetic hair being more damage-prone, the long hair turns into a frizzy mess fairly quickly.  

I found a solution to this, and it does fix the problem of frizz and knottiness, but it takes a bit of time.   Which is why tonight, after my daughter had gone to bed, I wondered why I'd ever told my daughter hair reparations were even possible as I held down a nake doll and flat ironed her bright, golden blonde hair. 

The doll is waiting for my daughter at her breakfast table.   Still naked, but with calm, smooth hair, ready for some more styles and subsequent damage. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son and I like ice cream.  But lately, what we love even more is Cool Whip.   He and I would gladly have a bowl of cool whip over ice cream.   We're going through large tubs of it because it's so light and fluffy and, well, delicious. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is doing something I did for a long time as a child.  She's going around walking on top of her toes, having them curled under.   She's doing this even on the hardwood floors.  She says it feels comfortable.  

Necklace Removal

Six, eight, or maybe even more months ago my daughter gave me a plastic heart necklace.   it was to help me not to yell.   We talked about how it had magical powers and I have worn it, not taking it off at all, all this time.   It was a little elastic band and I assumed it would eventually break, but it held strong and tried mightily to do its job.

Since it's only us adults here, I was ready to take the necklace off some time ago.   I liked it for the first few months and enjoyed telling the story to people.   My daughter and I talked about it as well, one time even having her "refill" it with more power.   But the tine had long come to move on to other, non-jewelry methods of managing our heated family moments. 

This morning, in a what was frankly fit of rage, I took it off and said that was it, it wasn't working anymore.   My daughter was understandably angry with me.   She wouldn't talk to me on the way to drop off my son at school.   After he was gone though, I had a conversation with her, explaining how I wasn't sure if the necklace was truly magic, but what I did know was it reminded me to try and take a deep breath before I got angry.   And that while it had done its job at first, since I'd worn it for so long, it wasn't the same and I wasn't thinking about it because I always had it on. 

She was very hurt that I'd taken it off.   I said we had to find another way and that we all needed to find ways to be kinder to each other.   She was thinking of other necklaces or bracelets she could give me.  Instead, I asked if maybe we could come up with a word we could say to each other that would be a reminder to think twice and try to take a breath and see if things were really all that bad?

She thought we could do that and by the time we got to school, she was working on a new story and practicing by telling me all about it.   I did wear that necklace longer than I believe I've ever worn a necklace before without taking it off.   I told her I would always keep it.

The Big Boy Update:  My son hasn't asked for screens back.   We changed his medication around a bit the last two days for school because he was having some potential tolerance signs.  This evening when he came home, he was still affected by the long-acting version we give him in the morning.   It was interesting to see his focus be on other things.   He spent the evening on Friday night upstairs in the bonus room, drawing and listening to audiobooks.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter wants to be a storyteller.   Perhaps a writer too, but at minimum, someone who tells stories in an interesting way to children.   She told a story one time and then we talked about what she could do to make a few things better, as well as what she did that made the story interesting and exciting to hear.   She took the feedback and told another, similar story next and did all the extra things I'd mentioned.   Now if we could only find a group of young children she could tell these stories to.  

No Rain, Rain

Today was one of those days that started out great.  Everything was going well, and then it all went wrong.   One thing after another on my computer and the 3D printers just didn't want to work, broke or crashed.   Some days are like that.   So I took a nap.   Tomorrow is another day.

The rain finally stopped yesterday.   The yard didn't have standing water by the end of the day and the sun came out.   It wasn't warm, but it wasn't raining.   It was the first day both children were in school at the same time.  It didn't last long though.   

The temperature was dipping below freezing, or at least getting to freezing at some point for a few hours and it was going to start raining again—so the county canceled school and told everyone to go asynchronous for the day.   My son's school opened on a two-hour delay.   

It rained, I don't think it iced.  The temperature didn't get as cold as predicted.   The rain didn't stop though and as it approaches midnight, it's still raining.   We have the most hydrated plantlife around at this point.   But schools aren't canceling, so that's good.  I'll take it. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son has been nice to me, the parent who took away his screens for an indefinite time.   He made me an art creation, something like a koi fish he said is named "Me."   He did a lot of things today, none of which were screens.   He didn't ask.   He didn't complain.   Tomorrow the weekend starts.   I don't know what I'll decide about screens for the weekend yet, though. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter decided suddenly that she wanted to go to Build-a-Bear and get a bear with her own money.   They're expensive, but that's what she wanted.   She is now happily sleeping with Roarasarus, a red and yellow T-Rex with a beating heart, a soundbox full of noises when you press his hand and he also smells like cotton candy.   She has no regrets.

Distrust

My son loves video games.   Computer games, iPad games, Switch games, watching videos about playing games.   There is a lot of negativity about video games and screen times these days.   As a parent, it's important to make good decisions for our children when it comes to so many things: diet, behavior, expectations are only some of the many things you have to navigate and make choices you believe are good and beneficial for your child's future so they can grow up and be a successful adult and lead a productive life. 

Screen time is one of those areas and one we struggle with.   On the one hand, my son's parents spend lots of time in front of a screen.   Granted, we're not playing video games all day, but we have phones we use quite a lot and we sit in the basement in front of our computer monitors much of the day.  Why can we do it when he can't is an obvious and in a way, quite reasonable question. 

We have some complicating factors in that my husband and I met through video games.  We were both well into adulthood, but we spent hours and hours every day playing games.   We didn't have children so at nights and on weekends, we were online with our friends, playing games into the wee hours of the morning.   Every single day.  

We didn't get addicted, it was our pastime.   We stopped and did other things in our lives.   The level of connectivity was different at the time and social networking was a long way off from being invented.   But we were on screens, playing games.    That doesn't mean it's okay for our son to do the same at this young age, however.   We've seen a lot of interesting analytical thinking develop from the creative things he's doing in the building world that is Minecraft.   But there is a limit, especially when there are friends to play with and other things in an offline world to do.   And yet, there are complications with that as well here. 

First, we're in the middle of a pandemic.   My son has one friend he can play with.  One.   And the amount of time Rayan can play is about two hours per week, maybe three.   We'd love for him to have more interaction with other children, but for now, that's going to be limited to school hours only—from six feet away, during recess.  

The second complicating factor is my daughter, who is quite capable but doesn't have the same ability to entertain herself without assistance or interaction from an adult in the same way my son can.   She has many things she does, but her fingers get tired of reading, she doesn't want to listen to a movie, she's already blown through another audiobook and she's tired of playing games with herself.   She also is very social and would love nothing more than to be played with all day long. 

My son and daughter do play together, but they get on each other's nerves after a period of time.   So there's some play, but not all day long on the weekends.   And that means the larger part of our attention goes to our daughter.    My son actually doesn't want to interact with us—he wants to play video games for entertainment.   I was the same way starting around his age.   I had early models of home computers and I played any game I could get my hands on.   I know what my son feels like because I was like that myself growing up. 

But we do have a problem because when we tell him it's time to stop, he doesn't want to and he can get angry.   Yesterday he was told screens were over.   He and his sister played well for a good period of time and then they made their lunches.   After that, I heard them up in his room.   When I came in, I could tell he was hiding something under the covers.   They weren't playing, he was just on the bed and she was doing something else.   Sure enough, he'd gotten his iPad when he knew he shouldn't have. 

This was after I'd caught him watching a show on the Alexa Show when he knew screen time was over.   What was he watching?  He said it was educational, and it was, as it was a cartooned version of the story of prohibition.   What was he doing on the bed with his iPad he shouldn't have had?  Watching that same show.   It was history, I told him, but there was more history than he would be able to learn about in his lifetime and that didn't mean screens were allowed. 

I came back a bit later and his door was locked, which was odd, because he didn't have a lock pin on his door anymore, having lost the privilege some time back.   His sister had given him her pin and was in cahoots with him.   We sent her to her room to get ready for bed, only to realize he was hiding something. He had gotten her safety phone and had pulled up the same video on prohibition.   It must have been good stuff, that video.   He's fascinated by history and from what I overheard while cleaning the kitchen, it was presented well and at an age-appropriate level, but he still didn't have screen time left. 

My husband and I hid all his devices and unplugged his computer.   Today, when he came home, he wanted to get on the computer and went into a frightful rage when I explained how I had lost trust in him after the day before.   He threw a spectacular fit and I told him to go read three books.   He ran off and came down with three Dr. Seuss books he'd read five minutes later.   I told him three "real" books, with no pictures, and I could recommend some if he was interested.  

He's not happy with me.   I'm the gatekeeper, I told him tonight as he was in bed, playing the martyr, saying he was never doing screens again because it was going to take too long to read the books and even when he was done, he didn't want to do screens again.   That was fine, I told him, but not to expect to have any screens at all for some time, because I needed to know I could trust him again.   

We'll see how it goes.   He needs less screen time but at the same time, I'm not against screens.   We just need a good balance for him. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son was furious at me, saying how his father and I always supported and agreed with each other.  And he's right, we always do.  In this case, I told him it didn't matter what his father had told him (he was at the grocery store at the time) that I was not allowing him to have screens.   My husband told me when we were alone that it was a good idea.   I told him I was glad to play "bad cop" for as long as it took to get him to reset mentally on what he should expect with screen time.

The Tiny Gitl Chronicles:  When my son gets very upset and/or we get upset at him, she jumps in and tries to protect him.   She wanted to be friends and play with him so much last night that she gave him her precious door lock pin, that she's now lost because it was taken away from him.   Technically, it wasn't hers either as she lost hers some time back but she keeps going around the house and finding pins to move to her door.   I have a whole little container of them hidden after taking them away at this point. 

The Message Adventure

Sometimes a teaching opportunity arises when you least expect it.  I woke up on the weekend and looked out the window to find the words, "Happy Birthday Remy!" across the street in large, two-foot-high letters.   The signs were the kind you rent, letter by letter, to spell out a particular sentiment.  Maybe it's a retirement or a birthday or baby or wedding.   Companies have the letters with other shapes, such as balloons and party hats, to match the situation.   You sign up for the message to appear suddenly and then to be removed a few days later.   It's fun and reusable and our neighbor was having a birthday her parents wanted everyone around to know. 

I went up to my son's room and told him to please not say a single word to his sister about the sign.   I explained how what he could see in an instant and read through the second-floor window, would be something his sister would have to go and physically touch, letter by letter, to figure out.   He agreed to keep quiet so I went to get his sister. 

When I told her there was something interesting across the street she wanted to go right then.   I explained the bit about it being cold, wet, and her not being dressed.   She got dressed although declined a jacket—something she regretted three minutes later.   

I didn't tell her what the first one was at first and then I gave it away, saying it was a balloon.   I thought that might have given it away, but since she didn't know it was a message, she wasn't sure where things were going yet.   The letters were nice and blocky so after she got through H and A, I figured she'd have it for sure, but I think instead she was focusing on what the next letter was so hard that she wasn't looking back at the big picture. 

I noticed something: she wasn't thoroughly exploring the shape.   She wasn't tracing the shape completely around but skipping from place to place.   I don't know, but I think it made it harder to guess the letters.   She got them wrong multiple times until she realized what the words were.   Then she got to 'Remy' and was confused all over again.   Remy was never one of the children's sitters so my daughter didn't know her well. 

She got it though and then I let her feel the party hat and cake shapes.   There was a second row, I told her.   She went to the back and found them in reverse order.   She was very confused with the hashtag until I told her what it was.   It was one of those symbols she knows but doesn't know the shape for.   She was interested in finding out what it was shaped like for sighted people.   

Then she figured out that the next two shapes were 1 and 8 and said, "Remy's turning eighteen!"  She was very interested in the message adventure but by now was glad there was no more to discover.   I was glad to have a fun, unexpected way to give her something interesting to feel and figure out. 

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Lunch Making Expectation:  I told the children they could play until 7:45 and then they needed to stop and make their lunches for tomorrow.   This is new to my daughter, as she loved the cafeteria food for the first few years of school.   She's decided she's over it now, which means she gets to help make her lunch.   Since her brother has been making his lunch since he was in third grade, we told her she could make her lunch too.   She was fine doing so but asked for some help with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.   My son can make his own lunch, but commonly doesn't give himself enough food or a good balance of items.   My husband intervened and made sure they both would have a good lunch tomorrow. 

Four Feet of Snow

We rarely get snow here in the south where I live.   I can remember only a handful of times we ever got snow of over twelve inches in my now fifty-one years.   This year we missed a chance that would have been by my completely ignorant calculation, four feet of snow.   

It's been raining for five days, possibly six, now.   A lot of the rain has been on the heavy side.   Sometimes it's just sprinkling.   But regardless, the dog is not happy at me because I can't leave her outside for more than a brief stint when it calms down.   She might not get wet from the rain, but she sits down on the ground which is now beyond waterlogged. 

I talked to my daughter about it on the way to school today, saying if it had just been a little bit colder, we'd have had very high snow indeed.   We guessed how much snow it would have been and how that amount might measure up to her size.  What would the dog do to go outside?  How did people get to work.  What was the most snow ever anywhere, etc.   Lots of questions about the snow we didn't get. 

Typically any snow we might get will be over during the month of February.   Maybe we have another chance, but it'll have to get cold fast.   I don't know if there's any water left on our side of the country; it feels like we've already gotten it all.   Maybe there's a chance, but knowing how things go with snow around here, I'm guessing we'll have to wait for next year. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son has picked up a lot of terms related to the games he plays when he's using his screen time.  Recently something happened to him and he made a mistake, I can't remember what it was but it was just a little mistake, like forgetting to put his water bottle in his backpack for school.   He looked at me and said, "I'm glitched!" by means of explaining he'd made a mistake. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is back in school.   She had a good day and was happy to say some of the friends that were virtual-only last semester have decided to come back to school (or their parents decided).   She got to see her friends, some of whom she hasn't seen since March of last year.   They've changed the schedule around as well, so while she has a different teacher for math, she's not in school, on her Chromebook, listening to a class that's for both the virtual and in-person students.   She had true non-virtual classes today.   She was very happy about that. 

Nanable

My mother-in-law became a writer at the start of COVID-19 lockdown.  She and my father-in-law went to their Florida winter home and there was a lot less to do, so she started writing stories for the children.   The children loved them.  There was a storyline with Buster the dog and his adventures for my daughter and Jackson, the superhero child, and his friends for my son.   When we would see them, my mother-in-law would read her latest stories to them. 

Sometimes she would send stories up for us to either emboss for my daughter or print out for my son, but it was always a special thing when Nana would read them to the children herself.   She's created quite a collection of stories at this point, grouping them into what may become a published book in the future.  My sister-in-law suggested she even record them like an audiobook might be done.   She and my brother-in-law thought they were great. 

The only trouble was, how to do that while stuck in a house.   My husband worked with her so she could record on her tablet and the recordings would be stored in the cloud so he could access them.   Today, while I was working on something else, my husband came into the room and said, "Alexa, ask Plex to play Jackson chapter three".  The next thing I heard was Alexa announcing, "Jackson chapter three by Nanable" and then I heard Nana's voice. 

My husband said, "your daughter is upstairs in her room listening to chapter one right now."   He'd done something crazy cool and fun.   Nana had become her own Audible, her stories available over Alexa.   Go, dad.  

The Big Boy Update:  My son is listening to YouTube creators that are a little older and saying things he doesn't understand but is willing to repeat because he thinks it's funny.   We're trying to balance the line of not keeping him completely sheltered while also not condoning content that is confusing and inappropriate for his age.   Fortunately, he doesn't like headphones and listens to things on the computer beside us, so it's fairly easy to gauge. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I came upstairs after lunch today finishing up a long stint in the basement from early morning.  A package had arrived and was on the kitchen island.   I commented on its arrival and my daughter said, "Oh, that's been here forever.  Some people never look up."

Bored, Not Bored, Busy

That's how things are at the house here.   My daughter is bored.   She wants people to play with her, but there is no one.   My son is not bored, provided we let him do screens in various incarnations.   And my husband and I are busy, trying to get our things done in-between managing things as they come up with the children, the dog, the phone, the house, and other commitments we have. 

My husband is working on a technology project.   It is one of those "projects" that's turning into a "PROJECT" from an effort standpoint.  Every time he thinks he has configuration files working together, firmware updates firmly updated, and software settings set, he has to start the testing process all over again.   The testing takes time and he doesn't know if things have worked until the end, which can sometimes be hours.   In the meantime, he's doing research online to see if other people are experiencing the same specific issue with the combination of hardware and software he has going and if so, what they did to get everything happily working together.   Technology is complicated.

My son wants to play Minecraft lately, and today we let him have more hours of screens than we should ideally have let him.   It's a rainy, dreary day here for the nth day in a row.   Everything is soggy and cold outside, hovering at just enough above freezing that it's miserable out, even for the dog.  

My son, like my daughter, wants our attention.   He wants to show us what he's done or is doing and how amazingly cool it is.   When he goes on some of these servers, he can go into creative mode and do whatever he wants to do.   So while it's interesting, it's not really impressive other than he knows what to do to cheat the game into his favor—something those servers are there for.   Telling him you're not available when he asks if you are, and then launches into some explanation, even after you say you're busy and not right now, has gotten him in trouble more than once today.   He doesn't understand, "just a minute, I'm working on this."

My daughter is the one who is the most frustrated today.   Her main friend, Keira, is out of town for the long weekend.   Nora, next door, and Madison, the other aren't available either.   She put on her rain gear and went out in Nora's yard to yell her name for a bit in the rain, hoping Nora could come play, only to come back inside with no response. 

We did what we could with the children, but we also had to save some of our day for us.  Things will be easier when COVID-19 is under control.   For now, this is just what we have to do.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has his very own Minecraft server.   It's named and anyone in the world who knows its name can come in and work on the world at any time.   My son doesn't really understand how cool that is—that his father put up a server on our Threadripper machine.   My son likes it, but it's frustrating to him because he has to play the game for real and can't rely on cheats and automatically making himself nigh invincible with all the supplies he could ever need.   That's the way that server is staying though.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I asked my daughter if she wanted to make valentines for her friends on the street.   If she did, she could deliver them with her mask on tomorrow and I'd go with her to help.   It was an activity and something I thought would be fun with some things from the Dollar store.   She prepared twelve little bags wit candy and other treats.   She was sad she wasn't getting one of the candy necklaces herself because, 'there weren't any left over, Mom."   I told her to count how many bags she'd made (10).  I reminded her we had set out ten bags and sets of items from the start.   She had filled one of the bags for herself.   When she realized that she relaxed and had the biggest smile.  

Jabbed

Some days I have a lot to talk about.   I would say most days I have more to talk about than not.   Some of it isn't interesting to put down here, though.   I debate sometimes on if something is, "blog-worthy".   And then some days not a lot happened.  Today feels like one of those days. 

My back has been in terrible spasm for a while now.  I had a steroid injection in my spine about two weeks ago, which has helped in the past, but this time things only got worse.   I've been struggling with a ring of pain around my trunk that was ramping and causing me to have difficulty being functional—which is rather important when you have children who need and/or want you and your time. 

I saw my P.A. today and told him about the troubles I'd been having.   He got a needle and jabbed me with great kindness all over my back.   There were so many trigger points he went back and got a second round, putting the short and medium-term numbing everywhere we could find, in the hopes it would help the trigger points release and relieve me of some of the discomfort. 

He put me on a short round or oral steroids, something I haven't done in years, in the hopes we could get things to resolve and get me back to where I was prior.   He had said last month he thought I might have a bulging disk in my spine causing the trouble.   I have been anxious all month I might be on the way to surgery in the future.   Today, he said he didn't think I had anything to worry about.   I am hugely relieved because I really don't want to have another spine surgery if I don't have to.  

I came home and helped my daughter with some of her school work, got my son from school and then lay down to get a bit of rest (thanks again to my husband and children for understanding, as always.  I hate that I have to do so.)  

The Big Boy Update:  My son wanted to understand about my spine and how I was hurting when we were riding home from school.  He had all these ideas of what could be invented to help people with spine injuries and prevent them from happening in the future.  I loved his ideas, although they were naively impractical, they were good ideas nonetheless.   I told him if he could invent those things, he would help a lot of people.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has a new, large, plastic Paw Patrol toy.   She described it and we didn't think it existed but my husband saw it at Target today.   It was expensive but we would let my daughter buy it with her money if she wanted.   When I told her about it after hanging up she practically jumped out of her seat, saying, "YES!  Yes yes yes yes!  I will absolutely buy it!"  Suffice it to say, she is thrilled with this big plastic thing we're not sure where to put.   It is on the dining room table right now.  

Igpay AtinLay

 My daughter is very verbal.   She talks all day long.   In the car, she wants to play verbal games, have a conversation with you, tell you a story, anything that involves talking.   Sometimes I need a break and I ask her if we can listen to a song or audiobook.   She listens to audiobooks when she's alone, and just like all children, she likes the attention of her parents whenever she can get it. 

Tonight we were running late for bed and the children were overdue for a bath.   My husband was marshaling my son into the shower in his room while I headed to my daughter's room to oversee her shower.   We got to talking and for some reason, it occurred to me to speak to her in Pig Latin. 

It annoyed her because she didn't know what I was saying and after only a few sentences from me, she barked at me to stop talking to her in words I knew she couldn't understand.   I wasn't trying to trick her, typically people can pick up what you're saying in Pig Latin fairly quickly, even if they can't speak it themselves.  

I explained again, but this time more slowly, how it worked, how to rearrange the letters to make a Pig Latin word.   She listened while she washed her hair and then asked me to say certain words.   She was understanding it, but she had to think hard about each word and it still wasn't easy for her to understand me after she'd gotten out of the shower. 

I told her I had high confidence that by tomorrow night, she would be able to speak it without thinking and that with only a little practice, I knew she could master it, rattling off Pig Latin conversation just as easily as she spoke normally.  

She ended the night saying words and listening as I corrected her pronunciation, saying that all words ended with the 'aay' sound, even if it didn't sound that way in her mind when she'd rearranged the letters.   Knowing her, tomorrow morning when we get up, I'm betting she greets us in Pig Latin.   

The Big Boy Update:  My son doesn't like making his lunch and loaths to do it at the end of the night before bed.   I tried a different tactic today, saying if he wanted, I'd help him make his lunch when we got home and that way the task would be done and he wouldn't have to hurry at the end of the night.   We had a nice time, me cutting up a mango for him while he unpacked today's lunch bag and restocked everything else for tomorrow.   I don't want to help every day because it's his responsibility, but it was a good opportunity to try and change making lunch into a more positive daily job.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter worked very hard on the 2020 Braille Challenge materials as practice for the upcoming 2021 competition.   She did very well, making some mistakes that were due to hurrying and not thinking slowly.  But for the most part, she would have scored very highly.   I think she was encouraged because she's going to work on the 2019 practice materials this weekend so she'll be as best prepared as possible.   

Out With The Old, In With The Additional Effort New

I've upgraded machines over the years.   When I originally moved from a Windows PC platform in 2013 I got a Mac laptop.   I loved it.  I still love it.   I have an external monitor, keyboard, and touchpad.   I sit at the same chair I've had for over twenty years and work at the desk I've sat at for over ten years and everything seems the same despite the fact that I've changed platforms and machines several times. 

There was the laptop that had a bottle of water spilled into the carrying bag it was stored in during one trip to Detroit for my daughter to have eye surgery.   There was a later upgrade when I had needs for additional power and now, today, I have a machine sitting to my right that's the next iteration in the computer that will be home for all the work I do.  It will go places with me, including around the house as I help my daughter with her schoolwork, or decided to take a board meeting Zoom call while relaxing against the headboard of my bed.  (Taking board calls while on your bed in pajamas is definitely one of the benefits of COVID-19.)

I have my current Mac backed up.  Every day it copies the prior day's changes to anything on the entire system to the Time Machine backup storage I keep.   I know, from unfortunate experience with that waterlogged laptop, that I can tell the new laptop to restore from the current Time Machine backup.  If I choose to do this, in only a few short hours the new laptop will be almost indistinguishable from the old.  Only I've decided not to. 

It's been a lot of iterations of machines and it's time to start from scratch.   It's not the easy path, but I think it's the better route to take.   It's definitely not the easier path.   I have (I'm sure) far more things on the current laptop—the one on which I'm writing this post—that I'll discover over the next few days.  

It's good work and time well-spent in the long run; but it feels like lost time, doing things to get to the point I already was.  I'm looking forward to having it done though.   I'm hoping the number of swear words will remain low.   Apple does a good job of making things easy but that's only a small part of the work.   

So for now, I'm signing off so I can get to work on the long list of things on the "new laptop to do" list.    Before I go, though, I took a picture of the third thing I was asked after turning the new machine on.   The first was what language I wanted to proceed in.  The second was what country the laptop would be in and then there was this:  

Apple has the best accessibility integration of any company.   For the third question, I could have turned on Voiceover.  My daughter will use Voiceover to navigate anything and everything on her phone and computer in the future.  It's complex in implementation and Apple has spent significant dollars into making the support comprehensive.   Voiceover opens doors that would otherwise be closed to my daughter. 

The Big Boy Update:  I talked to my son about screen time on the way home from school.   He saw his pediatrician this week and was explaining to me that he suggested no more than two hours per day.   I was trying to explain to my son that if he wanted to have more than two hours on Saturday and Sunday, perhaps he shouldn't use all two hours today.   He is going to have to learn a lesson from experience though.  He knows, but he still couldn't help but blow all two hours before dinner tonight.   

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter did some of the practice tests for the upcoming National Braille Challenge today.   A half-hour is given for each section and I was expecting there to be more material than what I printed out.   This year is her last year in the Apprentice category, which means she's the oldest and knows the most information.  It was quite easy for her.  I called out spelling words that she had to spell correctly as well as list the correct contracted version of the word.   Then she did a proofreading section.   She finished both sections in a single half-hour.   She had a few errors and didn't like it, even though she did very well in total points.   We're going to do more tests in the next week.  I think she'll be ready and will have a very good chance of scoring well against the other competitors in her age range.  

Where Does the Busy Come From?

I have been trying to figure out something.   Is the time slipping away, running off, or even being kidnapped?  Or is busy interposing itself in all the times that would have been otherwise free?  I've mentioned it before, and it still boggles my mind that while we're at home with COVID-19 and doing fewer things than we've ever done before, we seem to be doing in fact, much more. 

I'm partially to blame because I take on projects.   I create projects for myself, deciding we need to clean or organize or work on this or that.   The 3D printing is a good example.   And yet I can't understand it still.  Our children are older, take more care of themselves, are more independent.   We should have more free time because diapers don't need to be changed among other things.   

I feel swamped some days.   I used to go to bed at nine o'clock after the children were in bed.   I didn't have that much to do and I was tired from all that toddlers can do to tire you out.   But now, when the children get to bed, I have hours more work to get done before I head to bed. 

What bothers me the most is that I keep telling my children I'm busy.   That I can't right now.   Some of that I know is okay because if I didn't, my daughter would want to have me as her constant playmate all day.   I will happily be replaced when she can play with friends again, but still,  I hate saying no.  

It's my struggle to find a balance.  My husband does a better job of this than I do.   I've been trying to follow his example lately. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has committed to practicing for the Braille Challenging.   I need to figure out what I need to do to help her do the practicing.  I'm able to read braille, bur she's going to have to do most of the work once I hand her one of the challenge study tests.   I told her it wasn't a hurting thing, it was a best thing.   She wants to do well.   

The Big Boy Update:  COVID-19 is hard on us all.  My son complained loudly the other day, "I'm one of the most bored people in the world."

I Don’t Need You Anymore

My husband and I have a different approach to many things.   Lately, my husband has been helping my daughter with her school work during the first days of remote learning since my daughter's very long break was over at the end of January.   This past week I was coming up, trying to take over, only to get taken away by something else.   When I did take over, I discovered some very interesting things. 

First, my daughter didn't remember how to mute and unmute herself.   This was odd, she knew the keyboard.  She knew where Ctrl and D were.   And yet she said it didn't work for her.   There were some problems such as we were trying to make it easier for her with a mouse perfectly positioned or the space bar but all the things we tried didn't always work.   By the time we figured that out, my daughter had lost confidence in her ability to unmute and mute. 

You don't want to be unmuted when you think you're muted.   Or be trying to answer the teacher's question only to have her say, "you're still muted" in front of the whole class.  So my daughter didn't want to do it.   By the time I got upstairs and worked with her for a few hours I was run ragged hopping up and down to mute and unmute.   It was a lot because the children contribute regularly to each class.   

I told my husband, in front of my daughter, that she could very well press the same unmute keys we were, she just wanted us to do it for her.   And I wasn't going to do it anymore.   I was baiting her.   She protested she didn't know where the keys were.   I told her I'd let her try and if she didn't get it, I would come over and show her where the keys were again.   

She did have a little issue with the external keyboard, but that took two examples to set her straight.   I said no, I wasn't going to help—and then she started to do what all her friends had been doing.   What she could have been doing all along.  

Today, I was in the room about to relieve my husband.   My daughter started doing some work after the class meeting was over.   She asked, "how do you spell..." and then "what was the name of..." and three or four more questions like that.   My husband and even I answered them.   And then I thought out loud to my husband, "what do the other children in the class do?  They don't have a parent sitting beside them spelling words for them.  What do they do?"

There was a discussion that included my daughter and the answer was: if you don't know the answer, do your best and then ask the teacher when class starts back.   If you have the ability to find the answer, then find it.   

She was asking us how to spell things and the name of things and other questions like that because she didn't want to go back and reread—which was what the students should have been doing to practice their reading.  We weren't helping her, we were hindering her and making her feel dependent on us in the process.  

My husband left and my daughter called out to me ten minutes later, "Mom, how do you ..." something or other.   I can't remember the question.   I answered, "I'll be there in a few minutes."   I watched her go back to the material, read for a few seconds and then say, "never mind, I don't need you anymore." 

Good.   That's what I want.   That's what she needs.   She will need as much independence and confidence as she can get.

The Big Boy Update:  I played Minecraft tonight with my son for a while.  This was part of his birthday present to me: me playing Minecraft with him so we could do something special together.   It was nice.   Although he did set me on fire twice.   

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter wants to die her hair blue.   Definitely blue.   I am to contact Sue and make an appointment.   Wash out over time.  But blue.   Most definitely blue.

Make It a Short Vlog

We've had a rough night here.   I let the children put off all their chores until the end of the day on Sunday at which time they were suddenly tired and couldn't do it.   We were awful, slave drivers.   Other words were said.   This came on the heels of my son being sent to his room at three o'clock for the remainder of the day for physically harming his sister in retaliation for her kicking him...because he sat on her. 

Things got worse and my magical necklace of non-yelling was powerless to stop me from letting them know just exactly how good they had it.   Their complaints all neatly countered and shot down.   Their feeling of injustice at asking to do <gasp> work, was not sympathized with.   And their growing complaints and statements of, "you can't make me do it" only worked to their disadvantage with more work added to their list as a consequence. 

This is draining as a parent.   You have to fight with your children because you know you can't let them win.   They have to be made to understand there are responsibilities in life and things are not just free.  I don't like it, but sometimes I have to take the hard-line with them.   I wish they'd learn, but I learn most times they don't learn, even from experience, unless it's a particularly memorable experience. 

I hope tonight was memorable.  My daughter is asleep, her father helped her through her rounds while I worked with my son and had a meaningful heart-to-heart with him.  Next time, they will hopefully work without complaint.   Because as long as they live here, they won't win. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son, in the throes of crying tonight, said he was going to try very, very hard to petition to always remain a child.   I asked him with tears in my eyes if he could take me with him.   He reached out his hand from under the blanket where he was hiding to hold mine, and said he would.   I was still with my son a bit later and told him I'd come up to make sure he finished his laundry and that I needed to go downstairs and write my blog (he was dawdling in a severe way and trying to engage me to play with him, knowing it was past bedtime.)  He told me, "Mom, you go write your vlog, but make it a short vlog and come back quickly."   I told him I only had a blog, that I would pass on a vlog and all the video it would entail.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I've gotten my daughter all kinds of zip ties and reusable plastic connectors.   She is so bored.   She was interested in zip ties when I showed them to her last week with some enthusiasm.  They're inexpensive and fun to connect together.   Maybe it will be her next obsession.  We try so hard to keep her entertained.  

32, 25, 49, 6

It's been a full day of 3D printing here.   And things related to 3D printing.   I print a lot of things that are pretty, fun, interesting, and that my daughter can use related to her blindness.   One of the things people sometimes ask me is, "What do you print that's useful?"  I think it's a reasonable question.   The models I like to showcase 3D printing technology to people are usually interesting, but not necessarily useful.  And while I do print out a lot of things that don't do anything other than look pretty, I also spend a lot of time printing out things I use. 

My daughter's pill every morning along with her eye drops are in a 3D printed container in the shape of a low poly skull.   I have a candy dish on my desk beside me that is both beautiful and functional (and frequently refilled as my son and I frequent it.)  I have a smattering of small containers I use to hold various little things and I would go so far as to say one of my favorite things is to print out containers that are just right for a thing I need to store. 

Today, I needed something to keep the Micro SD cards organized.   I went online and found several free options that people created and uploaded which people can print for free.   There are millions upon millions of free objects available for printing. 

I created a logo of a children's modeling site and printed one of them out for each of the students in my son's class, sort of like a 3D printed business card.   Today was all about helpful things I needed relating to the filament I print with. 

Filament typically comes in a 1Kg spool, but you can sometimes get samples, which come twist-tied in a bundle.   For shipment, that works well, but when it comes time to print, the bundle will tangle itself up or droop down into the print area without some filament management.   I looked around and found some small filament sample spools and have been using my filament to print filament spools.   Little spools that fit just that small sample amount. 

It's been a long day and I'm looking forward to going to bed, but I'm waiting for the printers to finish their last jobs of the day so I can turn them off for the night.   The number of minutes remaining one each printer before their jobs are done is 32, 25, 49, and 6.   A few minutes less now since I've started typing this post.  

I don't know if the printers are tired, I know I sure am.   They never seem to complain about being asked to work long hours. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son was playing with some things in his bedroom the other night when I came in before bed.   He looked up and told me, "Hey mom, do you know what I used to do for a living?  Pokemon card organization.   I would take them all and lay them out and put them in order by [insert organizational scheme description that I can't remember] and then I'd mix them all up and do it again."   This is exactly what he would do.  He was obsessed with Pokemon cards for a long time. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter came into the bedroom and was chatting with me late in the afternoon on Thursday.   She said, "Sometimes I wonder if my whole life is just a dream.   I can't imagine how long I've lived.   Alexa, how many is three-hundred-sixty-five times nine?"

The Lesson In The Rain

I've been preparing for a while now to do a presentation on 3D printing for my son's class.   It all started when I sent in a 3D printed vase for a gift to the head of school and grew in interest until we decided to have me come and present.   Then COVID-19 didn't decrease in incidence and the school went back to distanced learning for a while.  The presentation got put off but today, it happened. 

It wasn't a long talk, I had a half-hour to cram in everything I deemed important for the children to know.   And there was a lot to know, but I tried to strike a balance that would get them excited and wanting printers of their own.   With good printers targeted for children s just over $150, I didn't feel too guilty if I sent a child home asking for a 3D printer. 

I brought presents.   3D printed presents.   I told them about how the process of printing worked and then handed out something fun they could keep, that they could also look at up close to see how it was built.   In the meantime, the Prusa Mini, my smallest 3D printer, was printing a fox in the center of the room.  

I had loads of models I'd brought with me, both impressively large and delicately small that I held up to show and then left with them to look at during the day.   I also left the printer, with my son taking completed models off the build plate and then starting the next model for them to see in action. 

It was the most interesting presentation I'd done from one perspective though.   In all my years of teaching in corporate, academic, or social settings, I'd never been standing out in the rain while the audience stayed inside the building.  

That's right, good old Coronavirus.   They had a small tent over me, but the situation was just so odd.   I was standing in between two open doors to their classroom.   I found myself leaning into the classroom with a model, but stopping myself by holding on to the center steel column.   I slid models across the floor and kept my distance.   We all followed the rules.  

It was a lot of fun.   I told the teachers it was a great way to start my birthday. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son wrote me a card for my birthday that said he knew I'd wanted to do things with him lately and these were coupons of things we could do.   He had some good ideas, including playing a board game, doing a KiwiCo, playing Minecraft together (of course) and doing whatever I wanted to do.   I like the idea very much and it was a wonderful present, I told him. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter made a scavenger hunt for me to find things for my birthday.   Some of the things she got for me were things that were already mine in the craft room.   She said I hadn't done much in there, especially Origami, and she wanted to remind me of them.   She recorded me a story and gave me some candy.   I loved the story, and for some reason I loved the present of my existing books because it was a good reminder of things I love to do that I haven't done in a long time. 

The Saddest Sadist

My son and daughter have a love/hate relationship with each other.   Sometimes they're best friends and sometimes they're arch enemies.   Fairly typical sibling stuff.  My daughter would really like to have her brother be a good friend and a playmate, but he's less interested in spending time with her.   Most days, that is.  And then sometimes, like tonight, they're coming up with all kinds of games and working well together without any conflict. 

I just left the two of them upstairs with a long tug toy and the dog trying to drag them both across the room.   I'd love to have them play with her in this way more often, but they usually don't want to.   My daughter tries to help her brother more than he has an interest in helping her.   For instance, my son was in trouble the other night for not making his lunch.   She jumped in and started yelling up to him and telling me he likes certain things and could I tell her where those things were in the refrigerator so she could make his lunch for him. 

She also wanted to help him the other day and came down to ask me if I could play a song on the Alexa.   She didn't know how to ask for it but she said, "Mom, he said if I could ask you if you could look up 'Dawn of the Saddest' only it's not  spelled that way, it's spelled -ist at the end."   

Well, I started laughing, and I didn't want to tell my daughter what word she'd just spelled considering she and her brother thought it was a different spelling of 'saddest'.  And then I thought about it; they had no connotation or denotation of the word, so why not, I told her how the word was pronounced. 

The Big Boy Update:  As it turned out, the thing my son wanted me to look up wasn't all that bad.   It was music with some cartoonish background to go with the beat.   He had wanted his sister to hear the song.  There was more to it before I found the song, but since he had lost screens, I only let them listen to it with the screen turned off. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I asked my daughter, "do you know why your brother wanted me to look the song up?  She thoughtfully told me, "Oh, I don't know.  How are we women to know the ways of men?"   Where she heard that one, she didn't remember, but it definitely got me laughing again.

Guess How Much I Miss You

My daughter loves audiobooks, but today she made a different request.   I think in part she was avoiding doing the reading and summary work she had to do for her asynchronous school day.  Couple that with the fact that when she followed her father and me into her brother's closet as we were putting a table into a storage room beyond, she remembered all the children's books stored on the shelves there. 

What book did she want me to read to her?   This is a tough question to a child who can't tell what any of the books are about.  She can tell thickness and size, but that's about it.  Fiction?  Non-fiction?  Toddler book or a collection of stories to be read to children?  She had no idea.   She hedged nicely by saying, "I want you to pick."

I called out a few books and then happened upon a rather large book Titled, "Guess How Much I Miss You?"  I remembered this book.   It was large because there was a recording device in it.  Someone could record what each page of the book said and then the child could press play after changing the page and the book would read aloud in the adult's voice the next part of the story. 

My mother had recorded this particular book and had put a note to my children at the beginning.  Unfortunately, the battery had died after sitting on the shelf for so long.  I told my daughter I'd read the book to her now and we'd see if the recording was still there with a new battery later. 

I read her the book and described the pictures.   It's hard to read a story that is a single poem, divided up into a number of pages.   A sighted child will follow along with the pictures while you read the words.  I needed to describe what was happening to the bears in the book so my daughter would have a better mental picture of what was going on.   Adding extra descriptions doesn't help with the cadence of the poem, but I used different intonations in my voice and tried to make it work. 

While I read, she claimed up into the top bunk where my son used to sleep.   She curled up and I thought she was asleep when I got done with the second book, coincidentally about the town my parents live in and another gift from them.  She was quietly listening though.   

I'd forgotten what it was like to read stories to the children, rocking in the rocking chair my mother gave us for their room.   Sitting on the cushion she gave us that is more material than a cushion.   But it looks nice.   Maybe I'll add some stuffing to it and pick back up reading to them at night before bedtime.

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Playing Together Conflict:  My son wanted to play with his sister tonight.  He was upset because, "she never wants to play with me, she just wants to make the LEGO with dad."  I told him she felt a lot the same way about him when all he wanted to do was play Minecraft.   She did come up (he refused to play with me, saying it was a special game they had going) and I left to do some work in the basement.   My daughter came down crying in just a few minutes.  Her brother had moved the coffee table and then (innocently) told her to run around faster to try and find the various things he had placed on the floor (soft items like sofa cushions and pillows—he was thinking about her.)  When she had barked her shin on the coffee table, she yelled at him, and then he yelled back, she left and he told her to not come back, he didn't ever want to play with her again.   I told her he was upset.   He hadn't meant for her to get hurt, but when she yelled at him he reacted badly.   I talked to him later and that's exactly what had happened.   I had my son run around his laundry basket with his eyes closed as an example.   Sometimes we need to see the world the way she does (or in this case doesn't) to understand how we can best keep her safe. 

Awake and In Trouble

This morning my husband went upstairs to get my son up for school.  My daughter, as always, was already up and had made herself breakfast.  She was back in her room, thankfully letting us sleep until the alarms went off.  When my husband got to my son's room, it was empty.   He wasn't there.

Where he was, was asleep on the floor in the basement with an open Sprite can at his computer, popcorn strewed on the floor, and a YouTube video about Minecraft playing on his screen.   

He was in trouble.  "Big-time" as my mother would say.  I heard my husband storming up the stairs with a wailing yet sleepy child preceding him.   Screens were removed for the rest of the school week.   My son balked and made demands about how he wasn't going to school and he was going to do screens all day (or some other such nonsense) and my husband, who rarely loses his temper, said he lost screens for Saturday.   Did he want to go for Sunday?

We sent him off to school and didn't tell his teacher why he might be tired.   We decided to let him field this lesson himself.   He told me somberly in the car he was going to tell her (at my suggestion) that he hadn't slept well.  

I picked him up after school and he was in a chipper mood until I reminded him about the events of the morning.   I had talked to my husband in advance about his possibly getting some of the privileges back for the weekend.   We both agreed we were okay with that, but only if he changed his attitude.   I was playing "good guy" and told my son I thought he might be able to earn some time back, but only if he didn't pester his father—in any way—about screens until the weekend had arrived.  Then and only then we could see if his father had changed his mind. 

And tonight he complained about being bored only once.   He's spent a nice day with his friend outside and then with his sister inside.   They are screaming and playing upstairs as I write this. 

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Boat Rope Tiedown:  My son and daughter pulled out the ropes we used to practice knots before going on our boating adventure and the pommel Richard had made for them to practice on.   They were doing complex child bondage experiments gleefully after dinner.   When I came downstairs to write this my daughter was sitting quite still while he tied her feet and legs into knots.   

Interrupting Cow

My children used to love the knock-knock joke about the interrupting cow.   You, in response to hearing that "Interrupting Cow" was at the door, would respond, "Interrupting Cow—" and my son or daughter would yell out "MOOO!" as loud as they could before you could finish the line.

We seem to be a family of Interrupting Cows lately.   I'd like to think my husband and I don't interrupt that much, but I am fairly certain we do so more than we realize.   What we're working against is the children not only interrupting but doing so to interrupt with a comment, ask for something, or just ignore what you're talking about to interrupt and start an entirely different topic as though you weren't even talking. 

I've been talking to my daughter about it more than my son because she seems to have the worse case of it.   Tonight she did a good job of resetting, apologizing, and starting over with her hand raised when we brought it to her attention.  

Later, when I went up to bring her some things she'd left around the house and to see if she needed any help getting ready for bed, I mentioned how nicely she'd been doing lately as we all worked at being better at interrupting each other.   She said, "after all that you've told me, I'm sort of getting into it now."  I'm proud of her for trying to work on it. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son has gotten to the age where he will actually give me an answer to the question, "did anything interesting happen to you at school today?"  Or a variant of that question asking about this favorite day or was there any new work, or what game did he play at recess, etc.   For years he didn't have anything at all to say about his day.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter continues to want to "snuggle puppy" meaning climb on top of the dog and pin her down, hugging her.  The dog tolerates this, but sometimes she doesn't want to be held down and my daughter isn't getting off of her.  I've explained it's going to damage the trust relationship the dog has with her, and my daughter doesn't want that.   She loves the dog, but I wonder too if she needs to feel like something else is under her control, since so many things are out of her control.   Thankfully, the dog is extremely understanding when my daughter does this.