I Like Friday

My tooth/jaw was fine but it's flared up again and it's late and I don't have the energy to put forth the effort for a thorough blog post tonight so some quick things...

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter and mother had a phone date to talk when I picked her up today.  Due to some things changing around with our schedule, when my mother called, I was sitting in the basement at our house and my husband was on the way to pick her up so I sent her over to his phone to have her phone conversation with her on the ride home.   Apparently, they had a nice time catching up as they rode home on the nice, sunny Friday afternoon.  A very nice way to kick off the weekend. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son said he believed in moderation today on the ride home.  He was talking to his father over the phone and me in the driver's seat.  He said he wanted to have screens in balance with other things like playing with friends outside.  He was going to go out any time they knocked on the door. He was going to go knock on other doors of friends.  He also said it would work well if we could give him a reason to get off the computer that might help motivate him and "train his brain" to break from the current activity.  He said he wouldn't yell at us (which happens when he gets upset, even though that's not what he intends to do, high emotions take over sometimes.)  He was going to have a balance and as such, could we not subject any specific rules about times or hours he should or shouldn't be on the computer or other screens.   Tonight after asking and then reminding and then telling him to get off the computer by his father, I came in and said it had been a full additional thirty minutes, and whatever it was he 'had to finish' was well and truly beyond any level of reasonable expectation.   He jumped up, turned off the computer, and then proceeded to yell at us.   He had been on the computer for six hours straight, stopping five minutes to eat a hotdog.  He yelled at me, said I was mean and tried to mock me by imitating my gesticulations.   Said all sorts of things that now that he was off the computer, he felt sure were the case even though they hadn't been.   He was livid, wanted to leave, insisted he just wanted to go to sleep and we were keeping him from doing so (except he had just been on the computer with no signs of stopping).  All his reasons were defeated.   His behavior was the exact thing he said he was not going to do.  His disrespect of me had me now the gatekeeper of any computer time instead of his father.   Tomorrow, he will have to have a lot of that other half of the balance he talked about and a whole lot of respect if he expects to have any computer time.   The thing is, his ideas today were such good ones.  I hope he can execute on them better in the future, because I'd like to have him more in control of reasonable screen time himself. 

The Lemonade Stand

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Lemonade Stand Calculation:  After dinner tonight my son came to the table with a pencil and piece of paper with his sister trailing behind.  They had decided to create a family lemonade stand—a theoretical one.  How much money could we make if we had a lemonade stand?   It would be fun.   We would all be a part of the process of discovering if and how we could have a successful lemonade stand. 

He started explaining how they did this at school for the pizza they ordered for the class one day each week.   There was a grid and numbers would be entered.  It was a system, he assured us;    worked for a good while on explaining the things we'd need to know while my husband and I gave information that would help the calculations be reasonable and the exercise completable in less than five hours. 

We all contributed information and at the end they were happy that all the lemonade and limeade had been sold.  They had made some money too.   Then my husband had them calculate how many hours they had worked to get the lemonade sold.   Then he had them figure out how much money they made per hour.  It was something like $1.25.   

I thought they would be disappointed by that, but they were the opposite, they had a job of sorts and they had made money!  Seventeen dollars across two days.   That's a lot when you're ten and eleven I suppose.  

Gimbal

I got a gimbal in today.  I can't tell you how excited I am about this because it is going to enable me to do the kinds of amazing camera things you see in videos made by professionals.   I am so much of an amateur photographer and videographer that I am just beyond the turning the camera on and pushing the button stage.   Perhaps that's an exaggeration, but taking quality videos is very complex.  It is so much more complicated than I would have thought it could be. 

With a quality camera, certainly taking good videos would be easy, right?  As it turns out, that's not so at all.  You have to know how to set up the shot and most importantly, what settings you need to have for the camera in order to get the best image or video possible for the setup.   It's fiendishly complicated and it is not made any simpler by a fancy camera.  That only adds to the number of options you have to choose from. 

This is something my husband has excelled at learning since we started taking photographs and videos of the 3D printing.   One thing we've had difficulty doing is getting stable shots of things or shots that pan across the models in a smooth way.   This gimbal will give us a lot of digital control over how we move the camera and will move it not only smoothly while we clumsily move around, it will make the motions for us while we have the gimbal staying still.  

And this is a good thing.  Except it is another product with its own set of software we'll need to learn to integrate into the already complicated camera itself.   I have a feeling I'm going to be looking at a lot of YouTube videos to learn it in the coming weeks. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son counted up all his bills he'd been saving and rolled them up to store into a combination codex he created from one of the KiwiCo kits we got in the mail recently.   He had "fifteen" cents in the total of bills when he was proudly telling me about it.   The fifteen cents was some foreign money he'd been given that apparently has an exchange rate of about fifteen cents he'd asked Alexa about. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has been wearing something that will help her wake up in the middle of the night when she needs to go to the bathroom.   She will sleep through it sometimes and wake up as she's starting to wet the bed, resulting in panic on her part.   I don't blame her, I'd panic too.  She needed an extra boost to help her wake up and this little device has helped train her brain to wake up more.   Hopefully, she won't need it soon enough.

Agony

I had odd dental work today.  My dentist removed an implant, which was brutal with some extreme torque on my jaw before the old implant released.   Then, before he put the new implant in (with bone granules to improve its ability to mesh with my own bone) he did a sinus tap. 

What is a sinus tap, you ask?  I'm ever so glad you did.  It's where he takes a spike and a mallet and whacks up deep inside your jaw where the distance from your sinus is very, very thin.  He whacks until the bone inside your head cracks so he can screw the new implant in such that it can impeed into the sinus area by just a millimeter or so so there is more room for the implant to connect bone-wise over time. 

Let me tell you friends, 'tap' is not the word.  'I was fine until I got home later and the blood clot dislodged, leaving some exposed jaw bone in a position to get air on it.   This is similar to what you may have heard of as dry sockets for wisdom teeth removal.   

I thought I could take pain, but this was sheer agony.  For about an hour I was holding my head, which was throbbing in the most awful of ways.  I was icing my face, putting ice against my open wound area, and trying not to fall over when the pain happened again and again.   

I was moaning and rolling around on the bed, unable to get away from the pain.  Finally, I closed my mouth and didn't open it.   The phone was ringing but no way was I answering it or talking to anyone else who wanted needed anything from me.  I just lay there and hoped it would pass. 

Keeping my mouth closed helped.   Trying not to talk was tough though.  You know me. 

The tissues should have covered the exposed bone by tomorrow and hopefully, I can talk again. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son threw an epic tantrum about screens and being bored tonight.  Insults, stamping and stomping around and nothing got him screens.  When he accepted that fact he turned back into a normalized child again.  Amazing how that works. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  We found out the only qualifier for nationals at the regional competition for the Braille Challenge this year is our daughter.   She is so excited, more so than she is letting on.  We're pretty darned excited too.  

Being Someone

Today was an odd day.  I was just another person watching 3D printing videos and buying filament.  Then we embark on this Filament Stories endeavor and now things have changed.  I had an hour-long video call with one of the content creators I've been watching for years.  He wanted to get to know me so he could have me as a guest on his channel.   We had a good time getting to know each other and he gave me some ideas of things he'd been thinking of doing but thought it might make more sense for me to do. 

He also asked for my advice on the current climate of social media and content creation.   We're going to have a second call next week because there are some things we might work on together.  It was a very casual call with someone whom I never would have thought I would be collaborating with on anything, ever. 

Then, this evening at ten, I was given a special tour of a large Chinese filament manufacturer.  The owner had an interpreter available to help as he doesn't speak English.  That surprised me because he and I have been messaging back and forth since last year.   He responds quickly, perhaps he has an auto-translation feature but for all I could tell, he was fluent in English from the way he messaged me. 

This large company wants to know if we could collaborate.  This is a company I've worked with as they came into the US market and have helped them get a positive foothold with the videos we've done.   He is creative and doing things no one else is doing.  He is very generous with helping me and I try to be equally generous in helping them.   

It was an odd day.   I'm still not sure how to act sometimes, but since the best thing I know how to do is be me, that's what I do.  

The Flavor Gummy Story:  I got a bag of what I would call gourmet gummy bears today whilst getting some black-out material for our time-lapse rack since the prior material is too small.  There were twelve flavors and the colors didn't give away what they were.  I told them if they got the flavor correct, I would give them another.  And then I realized I didn't know what flavor was what, so we decided to figure it out.  This is what my son did to lay them out.   We all tried some and I tried not to think about little hands handling the gummies more than once.  We could only figure out eleven flavors.   We don't know if we missed one that was colored similarly or if we just didn't get any of that one.

Banned Worries

We are at the mercy of things larger than we are and out of our control and we're putting ourselves into that position more and more as technology and our dependence on electronic media grows.   Today, a friend of ours woke up at 4AM to find his TikTok account banned.  He had 3.7 million followers and has been creating content in the 3D printing space the entire time.   

His videos are family-friendly, he doesn't swear or use bad language of any kind.  He is supportive of everyone, never says inflammatory things, is non-confrontational, and doesn't pick fights or respond when people say unkind things about him.  He is a positive person who wants to inspire adults, children, and families interested in 3D printing.   He's a very kind person and I'm glad I've had a chance to get to know him.

He doesn't know why his account was banned as there is no information as to what the reason was.  He doesn't know if it was a particular video and if so, typically a video is removed for not adhering to community guidelines in that case.  We've had that happen to us twice, both times by the algorithm going through the videos and thinking there was something that shouldn't be there.  Both times we appealed and the video was restored.   

Ben said that with an audience his size, he invariably had people report him for various things but that the reports were always declined.  So he's left not knowing why his account was banned and little recourse to try and get the decision reversed.   The reason I'm writing about this is that it has been alarming to those of us who have been working alongside Ben, creating similar content in the same space, making family-friendly videos that aren't inappropriate, and being supportive of all people.    Could the same thing happen to us?

We don't know.  We all hope Ben gets his account back, in the meantime, there is little we can do other than to let people know he has started over, from scratch, with his personal account and to warn them that the impersonator accounts (he was not verified, so he also can't appeal these fake accounts) are not him.   I hate it for him. 

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Biting Trampoline Update:  On the trampoline today there were three large boys, my son a six-year-old, and a two-year-old.   That's two too many.  I yelled out to drop it to four.  I yelled out a few minutes later to drop it to FOUR!   When that didn't cause action in a few minutes I stormed outside and yelled at them all that if they could not respect the well-known rule of four on the trampoline at one time, everyone was going home.  I got some, "I'm sorry" responses.  This was in part anger due to my ten and eleven-year-old children getting in a fight and biting each other.  Biting?  Really?   My daughter cried and went outside to make sure they didn't go home but my son came in and was screaming at me.  He was utterly embarrassed.   I had a very intense conversation with him about our potential liability if the very small little boy got hurt (or anyone for that matter).  My son didn't care.  He went on about how they all hated me and I said I would rather be hated if it took the rules being respected.   My son said we should write them down.  I reminded him that it was on the trampoline laminated beside the entrance.  He told me to just go into the bedroom and leave him alone.  So I did, and I locked the door. he said a lot of other mean things.  I called my husband to tell him what had happened and my son told him when he came home how sorry he was for what he said.  He came to find me later and hugged me and told me he was sorry.   I hugged him and told him I loved him very much.  

Strawberry Patch

I don't even know what to write at this hour it's so late so I'll make it quick.  I didn't feel great today.  Not ill, just not ready to do whatever it is I needed to do for the day.  There is an issue with my Apple credit card that is a long story involving many interactions with their help.  It's not an issue on my side, or rather our side now as it has implications with our family sharing and so my husband ended up talking with the upper-level support when I was done with my phone for a good while.  They are flummoxed as to what is happening and how it got into such a state.  They are escalating it even higher up to see if the developers can figure out what happened so it won't happen to other people.   

I can make changes and nothing is in jeopardy, things are just not as they are supposed to be and we're not sure what Apple did to get things in such a state.   By the time I was done handling that, I was just ready to quit for the day so I took a nap.  Little did I realize it was seven at night already.  I love how it's light later these days. 

Oh, wait, my brain is working now.   We did something fun today which is why I was so surprised it was as late as it was when I got off the call.  We went and picked strawberries.   We had a nice drive over until the children got into a ferocious argument over who didn't want to go where for lunch, ending up in us going nowhere (as a bluff) until they got their heads on straight again.  After lunch, we went to the strawberry patch which was just a few miles from our house and I never knew it was there until today. 

There were so many strawberries you could fill a basket in ten minutes.  My son was "allergic" to them so he said and hasn't liked eating them for several years now but seeing all those fresh berries made him change his mind.  He and I went up and down the aisles, looking for the largest available.  My daughter and husband went down a few other rows and in only a short while we had two full baskets. 

Everyone had a really nice time.  I brought a small stool, but I hardly needed it because it was more of a walk down the row and grab what you wanted and then keep moving.  Aside from the initial unpleasantness of finding something to eat, everyone had a very nice time. 

It reminded me of my Aunt Pat who would pick strawberries and then give them to us sometimes when we would get together to see her and my cousin Rebecca.   I don't know why I associate freshly picked strawberries with Aunt Pat, but I always have.   She would give us a lot, which made me think even as a child that she must love the process of picking the strawberries.  I remember as a child that it wasn't as fun as what we did today.  It was more moving along and slowly finding some that were ripe and a lot of scooting along on the ground.  Today, these were huge and all over the plants so there were a lot less to pick and the job went ever so much more quickly.   I miss Aunt Pat. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son was touched by a bug in the bonus room yesterday.  He is suddenly completely afraid of bugs and wanted to eat inside at lunch today.  I wouldn't let him, saying if he let his brain win out with fear this time, then it would only get worse and worse and that I wanted him to beat his brain and not let it win.  By the end of lunch, he seemed back to normal and had completely forgotten about bugs when we got to the farm to pick strawberries. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was the one who wanted to pick strawberries in the first place.  She really had a good time.  I am not surprised in the least.  She ate a good bit more than I'm sure you're supposed to eat whilst picking them. 

Finally MRI

It took about six months to get an MRI approved by the insurance company.  You know how it goes, it's just one of those things.  I am sure I will get a large bill soon.   What we found out was helpful though and now we know more.   The thoracic and lumbar areas in my spine aren't perfect, but they're not like my neck. 

It's not good.   It will be surgery.   Maybe not now.  No, probably not now, but it's moving in that direction.  We may have found what was causing the pain I'm having in my trunk.  Or we may not have.    Everything in the neck is funneled to lower areas in the body, so it might be that, or it might not be that at all.  

What we do know is that I need to go see the orthopedic neurosurgeon and see what he says about it.  He's a conservative doctor so we'll probably do nothing and wait for it to get worse.   I don't know how long I have before something will need to be done.  I'm sort of not sure how to feel about things.   It's bad news.   It's scary.   I don't know,  I don't want to have surgery but if this gets much worse, I may totally want to have surgery. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son told his friends tonight while my husband and I were talking, "guys, I hope it will stop soon, sorry".  We're an embarrassment to him.   He's already preparing to be a teenager. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was absolutely overwrought, dissolving into a crying blob because a branch on the tree out front had died.   She has such a hard time letting go of things.  She doesn't want anything to change in that respect.  

Oh, Hai Mom!

Things were happening today and most of those things were conference calls.   I talked to a German company for over an hour about their polypropylene filament and what we could do to help them (and they of course will help us as they're paying for our help.)

Then there were calls and other calls and confusion and several calls to sort out how the confusion happened.   And then another call from Protopasta that went much, much longer than any of us expected, but we did get some good ideas out of it.  

I went upstairs to look for something and for some reason I had to go to the front bedroom to look out into the front yard and when I walked past the bed my son popped up from nowhere and said, "Oh, hai Mom!" oh, hi indeed.  I reached down and got the iPad he'd taken and carried on with the things I was doing.   He knows he's going to have a consequence for it, but he doesn't know when.   I'm looking forward to surprising him with screen time compensation for what he did today.   

He wasn't playing a game, he was looking up something fairly useful, but he wasn't supposed to be on his father's iPad regardless.  

The Big Boy Update:  My son is in a LEGO phase again.  He has them everywhere.  He is bringing drawers places, pulling them all out on the floor or table or sofa and laying things out in perfect order.   And then he leaves it and looks at it and comes back later to collect it and then repeats again with something from another drawer. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter told her braillist today about being in the Braille Challenge finals. They screamed, they were so excited.   She told her class.   She is really excited.   I am too. 

Utterly Happy

My daughter was so taken aback with the phone call she got today, telling her she was a qualifier for the Braille Challenge finals in June in Las Angeles at the Braille Institute.   She is one of fifty students, ten in her age/level that will be going from the US, Canada and the UK to compete.  Five winners will emerge. 

She is excited.  She wants to practice.   She said she would like to come in third.   She's not going for first, although I'm sure she's secretly hoping to make first place, but she's going and I told her I was completely and totally proud of the accomplishment she'd made so far.  If she didn't want to prepare, that was fine by me, but if she did want to practice beforehand, I was right there to help her along the way. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son wanted me to print a LEGO helmet tonight.  He found the one he wanted  and thinks resin may be better, but I printed it in Empire Strikes Black filament.  He may want it in another color, but this one was good to start.   We can always print more. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter said she needed to get her mind on something else earlier today because the excitement was just too much.   She really is happy about making it to nationals.   It is truly a great accomplishment.   Her Brailist told me yesterday that I didn't appreciate how smart she was.   That in the thirty-four years she'd been working with children, she was the smartest she'd ever had.   

Qualifier (Secret)

I got a call today but I missed it.  This is a secret because my daughter doesn't know it yet and it hasn't been announced until all the qualifiers have been contacted, but...

My daughter qualified for the National Braille Challenge.   She is one of fifty blind children going to LA to compete in the biggest braille competition for US and Canadian students. 

And I can't tell her, because the person who called today wants to let her know.   This is one of those secrets that are SO hard to keep.   I think she will call after school tomorrow and I'll hand the phone to my daughter.  I am having a hard time not saying anything, and I'm a pretty good secret keeper, but this is big!

The Big Boy Update:  My son and husband are going to create a huge medieval castle out of LEGO bricks.  But, my son said, they might have to order some custom pieces.  "Oooooo, let me print them!" I said.  Or I said something exciting like.   Nope.  Not interested.   The children are 3D Printing overloaded I think some days.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter had a headache tonight.  Which she has sometimes.  I don't know if it was stress from the amount of homework she had or something else.   She did have lots of homework.  It wasn't eye pressure, that was in the perfect range today. 

A New Channel? Mouse Clicking, You Ask?

My son wanted to be a "YouTuber" a while back so my husband got him some streaming things for Christmas.  Only he never wanted to really do it after Christmas, even though we talked to him about it a few times.  But he's gotten interested again just recently.  

Tonight he wanted me to come downstairs.  He has a plan for the first seven videos he's going to do on mouse clicking.   And I know, you thought we covered it all with that post he wrote for me a while back with the accompanying video, but you would be wrong.  He has done so many additional things, there are so many additional tricks and skills and it is practically all my son practices.  

So when he gets his screen time back this weekend, we will try to help him with his video plan.  I made some suggestions on what to do with one of them and he said, "oh no, mom, you don't get subs with those kinds of videos."   

I also noticed he has five of the seven videos as montages and other "best of" videos that necessitate having videos completed that you can pull extra footage or best moments from.   He has a plan though, and it is very clearly thought out. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son practices "mouse clicking" skills all day long with his fingers.  If you didn't know what he was doing, you'd miss it, but he's practicing.   And he's pretty good. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter had only a few minutes to say goodbye to Mini and Gramps today before they left for the mountains after watching our dog while we were in Florida.   She did I think three rounds of hugs before they left.   We didn't get to see them much, but we're glad we got to say goodbye today.   We'll miss them. 

Already Behind

We had a long day of travel and getting back into things.  We got into our layover after a very early take off to hurry to the gate, grab food fast for the children, get on the plane, get ready to leave, oops, there is a hydraulic fuel leak so the plane is out of commission, get off the plane, grab a seat, get told immediately to go to another gate, get another seat, get called up and then board the plane and ultimately after running from one place to another, we got into town not that much later than we would have otherwise. 

We had our neighbor come over with the mail and his new dog, there were children in the yard and my daughter who said she really didn't want to do a full week's braille reading on her device because she'd put it off.  And her refreshable braille display was dead.   But we got it charged, I started to get one or two things done with interruptions throughout, my husband went to get groceries and at a certain point I couldn't take any more so I lay down and must have fallen asleep because I awoke with a start, afraid I'd missed my dentist appoint in the morning. 

We have dentist, eye doctor and one other appointment I've forgotten now tomorrow.  My parents are stopping by to say goodbye for the thirty minutes my daughter is home between school and going to choir.   We get in around seven at night and I still haven't gotten started on the work we're going to be behind on for Protopasta if the dentist appointment takes a good while tomorrow—and it might.  There is a chance I will lose the implant if things don't go well.   And that will be lots of fun. 

I owe my sister-in-law a call but I didn't have a period where I could go uninterrupted for a bit, but tomorrow hopefully there will be some time.  

We're back home, I can tell from the busy. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son is now officially in screen detox.  Period.  I will have a conversation with my husband when I press post to make sure we're both in agreement. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter's break is over and she's starting her last nine weeks as a fourth-grader.   She is almost tall enough to be a fifth grader already. 

Pack Pack Pack

It's the day before we return home from what has been a very relaxing almost double vacation.  We went to stay with my in-laws, something we have done over the spring break week with the children for many years now.  We also got to visit my brother- and sister-in-law's new house on the opposite side of Florida, thereby visiting both the East and West coasts of Florida all in one trip. 

We didn't visit the beach at either location, but we were right there at the waterway when we were at Eric and Kelly's new house.   We saw the iguanas and orange tree and mango tree and huge palm trees.   And their pool, of course.  At my in-laws, we spent lots of time in their pool.   We were wet a lot during the trip and spent much time in the sun. 

Today was packing day and tomorrow we leave for the airport very early for an eight o'clock flight.  We should get home by two-thirty.   This is the point in the trip when I'm ready to be home.  

The Big Boy Update:  When we were at Eric and Kelly's house their dog, Daisy, decided to sleep with my son.   It was just adorable.   He was excited to have her stay with him.  She lay right up against him and he fell right to sleep.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I tapped my daughter on the bed to get her attention.  She hollered like she was mad.  I was packing her backpack and wanted to know if something went into her backpack or stayed at the house here.  I gently tapped her again and she suddenly without any warning kicked me hard in the face.   I have a migraine now from my neck being whipped back.  As soon as I finish this, I'm going to bed.  She said she thought I was her brother trying to bother her.  She said he only posters her more.   I don't think tapping someone gently should ever merit a kick that hard.   I don't understand their relationship sometimes. 

How Tired Makes No Sense

I'm on vacation.  My workload is drastically, and I mean dras-tick-lee reduced.  I admit I was low on sleep and we were extra tired by the time we got out of town to come to Florida to visit with my in-laws for the week.   The first few days I slept in late, went to sleep early and lounged around during the day. 

My mother- and father-in-law have been wonderful (as they always are) with doing things with the children.  They were playing with them, my mother-in-law always make sure everyone is fed and the children were busy with the pool, their newest best friend.   And yet I was tired.  

I have continued to be tired all week.   Or am I tired?  Maybe I'm just lazy, I'm not sure what the reason is, but I've been wanting to sleep late, go to bed early and even nap during the day.   Is it the lack of things on my ever-increasing to-do list like I have at home?  I'm not really sure. 

We're still releasing content on social media at the same pace as we normally do while at home, something we can only do because of a lot of work we did before leaving to prepare seven videos we could release while here as well as prints I could do some quick little videos with my daughter or other things here that were summer and Easter themed.  

YouTube still seems to like us.  I'm not sure what's happened but after eight months of struggling to get the Algorithm to see us and suggest our content, it is going non-stop.  We're at a run rate of twenty million impressions in a twenty-eight-day period, meaning YouTube is putting our content in front of people five million times per week.  Not every impression is selected by someone.  When someone clicks on a link, it is called a "click-through" and there is an associated CTR (Click-Through Rate) which is an indication of how interesting your content is.  The more people click on your video, the better you're doing on the thumbnail, making it look interesting.   Of the people who watch your content, only a fraction of those will subscribe to your channel.  We're still at over a thousand new subscribers each day, which I consider crazy, knowing how we went for months just trying to get that first thousand subscribers. 

So the social media continues, but it's at a dull roar and more on autopilot while on vacation.  YouTube sees that we're still publishing things so it is continuing to suggest our content.   On another front, we also go a second month's bonus from the YouTube Shorts Fund.  It's not a lot, not even close to a sustainable revenue, but it's more than zero, and more than we thought we would ever get from the shorts views.   With that and the monetization income coming in (also a very small amount otherwise known as a pittance), we are actually potentially on the way to making meaningful money in a year or two if things keep going at the same pace.   But with social media, things can change any time for reasons almost always out of your control.  I'm just excited we've made money at all, no matter how small. 

Next week it's back to the busy hours and the children will be back in school.   I'll be glad to get back but also sad for the vacation to be over. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son pushed my daughter into the pool today and then took her kickboard.  He had to stand there and get pushed in by her.  He was not happy about this.  He complained about being cold (just like she did). And then he had to get out after a few minutes, dry off and have sunscreen applied.   He did not one bit like having done to him what he did to her.   Good. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is liking being able to listen to audiobooks without being told she can't have the next book.   But she doesn't want to learn how to navigate the interface.   She fights being independent, even though she very much wants to be independent.   Once she learns, she loves it.  

Happy Birthday Nana

Today was Nana's, my mother-in-law's, birthday.   I am going to stop right here and look at that first sentence because I don't know how to write that correctly.  Is the Nana possessive but the mother-in-law not possessive because it's a renaming of Nana?  Or are they both possessive as I have it written?   I have no idea.   I tried to reword the sentence, but I am tired and I didn't have another option that would circumvent both the possessive and renaming so I just picked what sounded the least incorrect and went with it. 

We slept in, or rather I slept in.  I don't know what I'm going to do when I get home and have to get up early after going to sleep early.   This going to sleep early and getting up late is the way to go, I've got to tell you.  It's nice.  I mean I would get bored being all rested after a while, but it's been a very nice week.  We have only a few more days before we return home to our very busy lives, school, activities, 3D printing, social media, etc.  

We had birthday cake my sister-in-law made last night and got to see some of our cousins, which was definitely nice.  We spent the night at Eric and Kelly's new home, which was absolutely beautiful.  I'd seen pictures of it but it's so hard to understand layouts before and after building updates.  Once we were there it all made sense.  

We drove back to my in-law's house after lunch and then went to Rocco's Tacos tonight for dinner, the only meal we'll eat out the whole time we're here.  No one minds being inside here because there is a pool and everyone is nice to spend time with.  

Happy birthday Nana, thanks for sharing your birthday with us. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I taught my daughter the Miss Mary Mack hand slap game two children play by sitting across each other and doing hand claps together and against each other.   I had to remember how to do it myself.  There are other ways to do hand games and I'm going to try and remember them.  She picked it up quickly.  

The Big Boy Update:  The way to get my son to talk to you is to ask him about the game(s) he's currently playing.  Once he gets going you have to cut him off.   He told me about the council he was in with his three friends in Minecraft.   If I could remember what it was called, I would tell you.  It's something involving the word, "sussibach' which means suspicious I believe or is a morph of that word.

Across the State

We traveled across the state of Florida today to visit my brother- and sister-in-law in their new, "retirement" home.  Not that they're retiring yet, but they have been wanting to move to Florida for some years now as their children grew older and went off to college.  

Their home wasn't new when they bought it and they wanted to do some updates to it and it has been under construction work for some time, and fortunately for us, it was ready for visitors when we came to visit our in-laws this week.   

So today we got in the car early in the morning, drove the few hours across the state, and stopped in for the day and overnight to visit and see their new home.   They have done so many things, both big and small, to make this just the home they wanted to have.   

Not everything is done, but a large portion has been completed that they wanted to have done initially.  It is beautiful.   The children loved their pool and I think their yard is just stunning, which turns out to be one of the things that drew them to the home.   

There is much to be done but hopefully, we can come to visit with them in future years during the summer, just like we used to do in prior years when we would go visit them in New Jersey. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son isn't the biggest of dog lovers in comparison to some of the rest of us, but their dog, Daisy, decided to sleep with him and is curled up against him on his air mattress now.   He looks quite happy to have her there. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has finally decided BARD, the blind library service that provides lots and lots of free audiobooks, just might be a good thing because I downloaded a whole series of books without making her wait for the next one.   She happily went to sleep listening to a book tonight,   I should go turn it off, now that I think about it. 

The Taco Kid

To say that my son likes tacos would be an understatement. He ran down the hall yesterday and beckoned me out into the hall, saying there was a smell.   I thought he was wanting me to smell something bad, but no, he wanted me to come out and smell, "the best smell in the world" which was Taco Tuesday on Monday being prepared in the early afternoon by Nana in the kitchen. 

Dinner later that day consisted of all the ingredients for tacos set out in little dishes or bowls on the rotating center area of the breakfast room six-seat round table. My daughter is also a fan of Taco Night, but in her case, she loves to have bowls with the ingredients she prefers the most piled up to be eaten by a spoon. 

The children, along with the four adults, all ate heartily.  My son tried out the crunchy taco, the soft taco, and the soft taco bowl.   My daughter even had a tiny burrito (in a soft taco wrap, so very tiny).  I ate a lot of the options.   Tacos are delicious on Mondays. 

The Big Boy Tiny Girl IT STINGS! emergency:  I launched out of the room where I was typing when I heard my children screaming in pain.   Their legs were on fire it appeared and I had no idea what was going on.   Apparently, they had had a shower after a long day in the pool and their red skin had had lotion applied—that stung terribly.   I ran out and we applied aloe vera to their legs, but that didn't help so to stave off the terrible pain, I put Neosporin with pain reducer in it on them.  I think it wasn't sunburn as much as it was some sun combined with them getting in and out of the pool and having the concrete rub against the back of their legs.   Or eczema.   I applied some steroid cream as well.  Hopefully tomorrow they'll be in better shape.  We have a day off from the pool tomorrow as we're going to see their aunt and uncle and will be in the car for a number of hours.  

The Easter Bunny Arriveth

Imagine my complete not surprise when my daughter ran in this morning at early o'clock to tell me the Easter Bunny had arrived.   She was reasonably patient but after enough of a time she and her brother could wait no longer and they dog piled their father, insisting he wake up.  I was already getting shoes on to head out into the kitchen. 

My daughter had done some looking for eggs earlier without moving any of them.  My son thought that was unfair, but I asked him if he knew where some eggs were because he could see them.  Yes, he admitted he could.  Did he move them or take them?  No?  Okay, so what is the difference in your sister using her hands as eyes to see the eggs provided she left them in place?   He grumbled, but couldn't find a counter argument. 

The egg hunt started and my son dashed off in a fit of unfairness and was running manically around to get the eggs.  His rationale was that they were going to split them evenly in the end.   We had to have him sit down for a bit to let his sister get close to equal the number of eggs.  

Then, for a good portion of the day, we didn't realize how much candy. they were eating until we checked on their baskets.   My son ate way too much of his basket so now both baskets are in our room up high on a armoire that neither can get to, even with a chair.  

How am I supposed to get up there for candy when things are so far away?

The Big Boy Tiny Girl 50% Rule:  Family friends were over today and some were meeting our children for the first time.  At the time, the children were playing well together in the pool.   When they asked how well they got along there were differing responses.  Numbers ranged from as low as forty percent to as high as sixty percent.  I'm averaging to at around fifty percent.   Hopefully the periods of harmony will increase as they get older. 

Nothing, Or Almost Nothing

I did a whole lot of nothing today.   There's not much to write because I didn't do anything.   I read some of the book my mother-in-law wrote, lounged at the pool, slept in late, went back to bed for a nap, had dinner and then helped my daughter with a surprise project.   But that's about it.  It was very nice. 

The Easter Bunny Question:  My children heard from Nana that she wrote the Easter Bunny and asked if he could come early because of some scheduling things we have going on here.  Apparently, he texted her back (she told us all at dinner) and will be here in the next few days.  My children think he will be coming tomorrow.  He is, in fact, coming tomorrow.  Part of this is so the candy can be eaten by us all while we're here and we don't have to cart it all home.   My daughter and I did a surprise thing for Nana tonight, laying out little bunny tracks in the kitchen, leading up to the candy jar.   Nana went to bed early (per my request) so we could do this secret little mission to surprise her.  

Copyright Strikes and Claims

We had twenty-one videos on YouTube that were directly taking our video and then posting it on their YouTube channel.  YouTube caught it, let us know, and we had the videos taken down   We asked YouTube ti to do thus fir ys, 

Other tha filling out a lot of information, the process was simple.  Today, I noticed two more had shown up.  I did the same thing, the form was now filled in so the process was even easier.  We are getting emails now (we're up to four) from the channel owner, begging us to remove our claim as he has two strikes against his channel already.  The question is, do we remove the claim?

If it was an accident, I would do so, even though he copied our video in its entirety and posted it, thinking it might be a mistake and a lack of understanding of how things worked.  But he has two things going against him: first, he has eighty thousand subscribers and should know the rules well at this point, and second, there are may more videos apparently copied from TikTok and reposted.   Both of those makes me not want to help him.  It may be that we're the only account that flagged the issue because the other channels only do TikTok and so he is getting away with the copying with impunity.

I'll decide what to do tomorrow.  In the meantime, we had a copyright claim put on one of our videos.   When I realized what I'd done, I could have kicked myself.  The "claim" isn't the same thing as a "strike: like we had from the channels that copied our content.   I had had some music playing on Spotify in the background and one os the song owners has brought the copyright claim against us.  

It was stupid to use the music in retrospect.   We have a music service we use for our videos.  It includes a huff amount of songs we can use in any video content we make. Our video stays up but has been demonetized.  Any ad revenue coming in from the video goes to the song one.  

Lesson learned.   We have a lot of lessons to go, I'm sure.   We do try to do the right thing and always give credit or ask permission. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles: my daughter wanted to get into the pool straight away this morning.  After donning her swimsuit, she wanted to be sunscreen.  She wanted it everywhere, and lots of it.  She remembered last year when she got so terribly.  

The Big Boy Update:  My son s getting corrected constantly, and I do mean constantly.  He is doing all sorts of negative things just from his high energy and desire to bother his sister yet still wanting to play with her.  We have to break the cycle, I told him tonight after he exploded, saying everything he did was wrong.  I talked to him a little bit about it.  He was receptive, but he still has a terrible self-image and I don't think one little conversation is going to take some work on all our parts to get things turned around. 

To The Best Parents in the World

How many parents would drive from their home to stay at another house that didn't have all the comforts of their main home just to take care of your dog while you go to see the other grandparents?  My parents, that's who. 

Thanks for taking care of Matisse, Mom and Dad.  We all love you and can't wait to see you when we get home. 

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Poke STOP! Story: Why my son felt he needed to pester my daughter today on our trip down is beyond me.  It was as though he couldn't control himself, because I was sitting beside him and around him at other times and I was annoyed just watching it.  My daughter was the "STOP!" monster, saying it for even the slightest indication that he might be thinking about moving over into her perceived space.   I was fed up with both of them by the time we arrived, but all evaporated away when we got her and weren't stuck in "travel mode" any longer.  

Almost Over

I think our crazy YouTube run is almost over.  YouTube is suggesting us less and less and we'll get back to normal levels of a few additional subscribers here and there in a day or so.  It's been amazing, and I'm still in awe that we have so many subscribers.  Hopefully, we can keep them and continue with content people want to see. 

My husband has been working for two days straight to get content ready for the week we're out of town on vacation with my in-laws in Florida.  My parents are here and will be with our dog.  My husband, more than anyone, needs a break.   He's been really working hard. 

The Big Boy Update:  I told my son I got him a book about puberty, written for children.   I said he might not be ready yet, but when he is, I wanted to have it.  Because otherwise, he might get incorrect information from friends.   I told him he could also have me tell him about it.  He got all huffy and left the room.   He's not ready to talk about puberty yet it would seem. 

The TIny Girl Chronicles: My daughter would not get up and go to the bathroom before putting on her pajamas tonight.  She fully admits she holds it for far too long and sometimes when that coincides with sleeping, she can run into troubles.  She knows what to do, she just likes the security of the night pants.   But we're going to have to end that soon enough. 

Packing Up the Allergies

I packed most of the day.  Or at least it felt like it was most of the day.   And my allergies are driving me nuts.   I just got done recording a bideo.  You might think I recorded a video, but I can't say that word well right now. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son was browsing for models to print to take on vacation tonight.  He hasn't ever really looked through the repositories of models you can buy or download for free before.  He got so excited when he realized how many models there really were out there (and he had only been looking for a few minutes.)  Maybe I can get him more into 3D printing in the future if he can pick models to print. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter played a duet with Mimi on the piano tonight.  I recorded them on my phone.  A sighted child might have been upset, but since she had no idea and I was quiet about it, she wasn't bothered at all.  

Review Nerves

We/ve been working on a product review that has dragged on and on since December.  I could have just ignored the whole thing and not bothered with it, but I said I was going to do it and over time we filmed it not once, but twice.  Then there was a third time that had camera problems. 

I canned it for a while but then the manufacturer announced a price increase and I vowed to get the review out prior to the increase in case people were thinking about purchasing one.  I think I may have scarred my husband from the sheer volume of editing in all the B roll cuts of other shots into the video but it's finally done. 

I don't even want to know what people think of it because while it's okay, I don't think it's our best work, and that largely lands on me, because I had to explain it all.  I'm the one who knows the product and wanted to buy the new version.   The product has a lot of negative feedback from people, many of whom I think don't understand how to use it.  I had one filament producer who got it and told me offhandedly that his was broken.  He'd never even bothered to tune it so that it was able to work with the filament he was putting in it, and without doing that one, key and absolutely required step, it can't do its job.   

This product takes a lot of blame.  There are people who say they have broken units that don't work.  I wouldn't doubt that that's the case: it's a very complicated product and I know from experience with the last version that it can very easily not work well.   

But it's done.   And I'm going to sleep.  But only after a little crazy additional information.  We have an actual real person at YouTube now that we can talk to about questions we have for our channel and content.  We hit a threshold that put us in the YouTube Shorts Partner program.   We even got $100 last month for our video performance.  

I thought that was rather exciting, until I heard on the partner call today (in which there were 105 other content creators) that there were three tiers of performance rewards each month.  $100 was the first tier, with $1000 and $10,000 being the next two higher levels.  I can't imagine how many views you'd need to get $10,000 from YouTube in a month.  There are very few channels that would get that much, but it's better than the option from before, which was no money was possible at all from short-format YouTube videos like we're producing.  I'm just excited we got the $100 and made it into the program. 

And on the subscribers front, something we struggled with for a long time that is completely typical for new channels.   We finally got five thousand followers and I was just thrilled, because I thought YouTube didn't like us and wasn't suggesting our content to people who were interested in 3D printing.   

Apparently, YouTube really likes us now because we're gaining three thousand subscribers every day.  Today, we gained over 4200 subscribers.   It is crazy, or at least it feels crazy to have over a million views of our content every day, which is the current view rate.   I continue to think this upswing is going to end, and I'm sure it will because everything I hear from other channel owners is that that's what happens.  I'm still trying to not picture that many people watching me stand there behind a slab of wood we got at the hardware store and talk about filament and 3D printing. 

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Excited Arrival Update:  My children were so excited Mimi and Gramps were coming to town today.  My daughter even said to me in the car she was so excited she could hardly wait.  It's been a long time since we've seen them.   I didn't have much chance to catch up today but I hope tomorrow we can have some time to say a proper hello. 

The Violinist

YouTube Studio is a tool that helps with managing YouTube content tht you've published to your channel.  I was in there yesterday when I  noticed the Copyright section and decided to see what it said.  It suggested I read this long bit about legal this and that and if I agreed to it, then click the button. 

What showed up next surprised me.  People have been taking our videos, exactly as they were published, voice and all, in their entirety, and republishing them on their pages.  YouTube already knew about this, had flagged them, and marked them as 100% copied from our page, which had published the content first.  

What did we want to do about it, YouTube wanted to know?  We could ask for the publisher be given seven days notice to remove the content and if they didn't comply, the video would be removed and they would have a content strike applied against them.  Or, we could have them be removed immediately and a strike immediately put on their channels. 

Oddly, most of the copies had had only a handful of views, so it's not as though the person was gaining much in the way of views or other benefit from reposting them.  The largest views was at thirty-five hundred, and that was an outlier.  

I had to fill out some very legal formal things, saying it was absolutely our content, we had created it and we were the sole owner of the content (which was all true).  This was in case we said someone had copied our content when in actuality we had perhaps copied theirs and they took us to court.   

YouTube then kindly asked if we would prefer in the future should this sort of thing happen again, that they go ahead and automatically remove the offending copy and place a strike on the other channel.  Sure, we said.   It was ever so nice of YouTube to handle all of this for us. 

We are contacted fairly regularly by companies who want to repost our content, saying how they are huge, large groups with millions of followers/subsribers.  One of them even said that they would get full ownership of the material, have exclusive rights to it, and could modify it in any way.   Who would fall for that?  Others aren't that sinister, but still want to make their brand by publishing other people's content instead of making their own.   And that's okay, it's synthesizing information that's similar into a cohesive collection.  

But I don't want to do any of it.  Perhaps we might get some views back to us or additional followers, but we might get nothing, while they get free content.  The stories I've heard make it sound like the latter is more probable.   Besides, we're muddling our way through this so far on our own, why stop now?

The Big Boy Update:  My son went to the grocery store with his father after school.  There was a man playing the violin in the food area and my son was mesmerized.  He asked if he could give the man some money.  When my husband was done shopping my son was still at rapt attention, listening to the classical violinist.  My son has always loved orchestra and classical music.  He asked if he could please give him some of his allowance.  He said he was amazing.  My father let him give some of his money to support the musician.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is going to have to wait in the waiting room while her father and  I have our teeth cleaned tomorrow.  We've never done this with her before.  She will be fine, she just likes to talk and will need to know she has to wait patiently until we get back, and that it won't be that long until we're done.  

Incoming

My parents are coming to town in two days.  We haven't seen them in quite some time and we're all excited about seeing Mimi and Gramps.  They're coming to do the very generous job of taking care of our dog while we're visiting the other two grandparents in Florida.  

Speaking of the dog, something very odd just happened.   Our dog isn't prone to vomiting, but as it goes with animals, sometimes they do vomit.   As I was working here at the computer I heard the telltale signs of a dog suddenly losing the entire contents of their stomach. 

I jumped up and turned the lights on (it was dark in here as it is quite late at night) to find the dog still asleep lying on her back with her legs in the air.   She had turned her head and vomited on the leather couch, I heaved a sigh of relief, because cleaning up vomit from carpet is not my idea of fun. 

The dog was still groggy and I think might have still been asleep.  I pulled her towards me and she started to wake up.   She walked over to the door, asking to go out and I left her outside while I cleaned up the vomit in the bathroom, having wiped it all into a hand towel. 

She seems fine and I have no idea what made her stomach upset.   Hopefully she feels fine in the morning.  

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Baby Talk Update:  My son talks in severe baby talk when he's in a mood.  I don't know what it is, because my daughter does it too.  There is something about wanting to be less in control or acting like they're younger and not accountable or something.  I am sure it is a well understood phenomenon but when they're doing it to you when they need to put their pajamas on or any number of other tasks they are far too old to need your help with, it can wear thin,   It's cute, I just worry it's a sign something isn't right in their psyche.

A Three Shirt Night

It was filming day here.   We're trying to both catch up and get ahead with some filming we need to do given that we leave for spring vacation at my in-laws in less than a week.   I finished (hopefully) principal filming on a big video I've been wanting to get out since December that has dragged on for far too long. 

Then we started in on the unboxing and tool tip videos.   It was a three shirt night because we were filming things that will be released over time and it doesn't make sense to have the same shirt on across all of them, so I changed out after a few.  

It's now after three in the morning and we didn't even get to the Story videos.  Tomorrow is going to be another busy day.   And at some point I need to pack, oh dear, I haven't even thought about that. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son was caught punching his sister—because she ran into him not knowing he was coming around the corner.  He got in trouble and lost is mind for a while.   He calmed down, but he didn't like the reprimand.   I told him it wasn't okay and it was never okay to retaliate with punching someone when that kind of thing happened.   He sulked on the couch for a while, but he was okay when I came by later and asked if I could put a blanket over his feet.   He wouldn't have asked if he was still in fury mode. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter fell asleep early after having a nice long play date with a friend down the street.   She got to also ride her new bicycle that is tall enough for her new height (she is in a big growth spurt).

Some Days I Worry

Are we doing a good job as parents?   I worry about that every day.  I think it's something parents from the start of time have worried about.  My son and I got into a discussion in the car that was heated this morning and I told him I worried he was behaving the way he was because of something we did, or didn't do as parents.   

Were we acceptive of behavior that we shouldn't be?  Were we overly harsh on him and he's being angry as a result at other people?  I just don't know.  Parenting is one of life's great mysteries.  

The Big Boy Update:  My son was excited to come home from school today and do more practicing with his mouse clicking skills.   His most recent thing is getting a wooden board to do stuttering moves with his mouse fingers so as to build up some skill to do some sort of clicking thing that will give him and advantage at doing something.   Just like all other parents in the world, I am very in tune to the exact things that are popular these days. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was unhappy at me today when I told her I wasn't getting her another audiobook, because I had gotten her a lot of audio books on BARD, part of the library for the blind.  She had a lot of new books, including one from my childhood by Arthur C. Clarke about a boy who  gets stranded at sea and is rescued by dolphins.   But she wasn't interested in any of those books.   She also didn't want to get dressed all day.   Or practice reading on her refreshable braille display.   I played some games with her and hid an Easter egg or two for her to find.   She beat me at Chutes and Ladders and then we had a lightning round to see how fast we could get to the top.  She surprised me in knowing that to get there in the fewest moves, she'd figured out you needed to take a chute at one point after a huge ladder to get in position to hit the final ladder spot that takes you to the end. 

The Pressure to Post

So I am sorry folks about all the posts being about 3D printing and our crazy life of content media production.   That, and my children is really my life right now.   And since my children are a bit older and don't want to spend all day with me (I'm about to enter into the mom is the most uncool person on the planet Tween phase I fear) the rest of the time is all 3D printing.  

The thing is, I don't think I'm behind on things.  Well, I mean I know I'm behind on things.  There are so many more things I want to get done than I can actually get done.   Content production is a fickle thing,  You create some and nothing happens.  You create more and still nothing happens.  You feel like you're going to never have anything happen, but you keep producing content because things are happening slowly, ever so slowly, and you're committed.  I mean I love this, I wasn't stopping, even if no one watched our videos.  I love it that much. 

But then suddenly you've got people who think you're someone and you've got more followers/subscribers than other channels you know and have watched for years.  And that feels very strange.   Like, for instance, I checked our subscribers tonight and we're now over 53K.   And for some reason that bothers me.   We shouldn't have more subscribers than these other people I respect.   They should be bigger than we are.   I can't explain why it bothers me, but it does. 

I digressed, what happens is once things start happening, you have this thought that it must be something you just did, and maybe you need to do more of that, whatever that was, because you're never sure what triggers a video to get lots of views or people to follow you.  So I feel this need to be sure we keep doing what we're doing so that the momentum continues.    Even if the momentum we feel has nothing to do with what's happening outside of our basement. 

It's a crazy world, this content creation.   I will say though that it's not a real burden, wanting to keep doing the thing you were already wanting to do.  I just need to be better about time management.  Or maybe I mean printer management?  Livestream management?   Okay, off to bed for me so I can fight the 3D printers tomorrow.  Unless they're in a good mood and all the prints were successful.   Those are always nice mornings. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter wanted to make pumpkin muffins.  She got the list and today she got everything out and organized it by the order it came in her recipe.  This is important when three spices all have the same shape.  We got the measuring cups and spoons in order and she was ready to make the muffins.   They were delicious.  Her father helped.

The Big Boy Update:  My son found lots of mice in his father's desk drawer yesterday.   He got some tools and (with permission) took one apart to see what was inside it.  And then he put it back together.   His new mouse then arrived in the mail.  He loves computer mice and all the things he's been practicing with them that will improve his skills in game.