Need More Cowbell

Pop Culture is an infectious thing.  My daughter tonight after the children had been excused from dinner asked Nana where those "other toys" were she'd told her about.   Nana said to look in the bottom drawer in the dresser in their room.   It was no surprise when not two minutes later the call for, "Mommy?" came floating down the hall in a high, tinkling little girl voice.  

I went to see what questions she might have about the toys, which to a sighted child would have been obvious.   A child with vision would have gone through the things and decided what they wanted to do first.  My daughter needed help though because she didn't know what was in the drawer.   She didn't know if she wanted to play with any of it, because she didn't know what it was.  

I described each thing, labeling a lot with, "it's a seeing thing" and telling her what she might do with the things that I thought she could do.   Even with the list narrowed down to only those things she might be able to do, most of them required an adult or other person to be able to do.   But she was okay about it, she had at least a few new things to play with. 

I went back to the dinner table and a few minutes later my daughter came down the hall making a banging noise, saying, "Greyson, we need more cowbell" as she banged on a little cowbell from a charity event.

One of the big Saturday Night Live skits of my era was the, "Gotta have more cowbell" one with Will Ferrell and Christopher Walken.   Even our car has a cowbell mode where it plays a portion of the skit with the Blue Oyster Cult skit in the background.   My husband and I were proud of her in a strange, pop culture sort of way.  

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Early Egg Hunt Cooperation:  My son was a gentleman this morning and helped his sister find an equal number of eggs in the early Easter Egg hunt my mother-in-law planned.   She told them she had talked to the Easter Bunny and asked if he could bring the baskets and eggs over early so she could help him.   The children didn't have any problem with this at all and were just glad to be getting eggs.   My daughter was very worried she wouldn't get an even number of eggs and had to, unfortunately, be sent to her room at one point, because she was so focused on not getting an egg or the evenness of eggs, even though everything was very carefully being done to ensure things were equal.   She finally calmed down after her brother came to give her one of his eggs after seeing how upset she was.   He was very sweet. 

Framing The Picture

My daughter is having her picture and a comment added to the media for a company that makes 3D printers for children.   Getting a picture to the company has been a bit of work for multiple reasons but we got it done today and tomorrow the picture and comment goes live.  

I had to get my daughter's buy-in on this whole picture and video thing.   She helped, but she doesn't want to be shown just because she's blind.   So I deemphasized that part.   Once she decided to help, she sort of got into it.   

What surprised me was how little she knows about some things.   I was trying to set the shot up so I could get her standing beside the little ToyBox printer.   I had to explain how I wanted both of them in the picture.   Then I had to tell her t face a certain way so she didn't block things. 

She was looking at the little mini planter pot a face on the front, including glasses.   I had to tell her to stop looking at him so I could get him in the picture.   If what I just wrote doesn't make sense, it's because my daughter was "looking" at him with her fingers.   She moved them away from the facial features on the front of the printed little planter pot and I started to try and make her laugh. 

You have to try and make her laugh, because her forced smile is, like so many other children's, awful.   We got some pictures and she even did a little video clip that I sent to the company.   I think she enjoyed helping out, even if it kept her from the pool for a bit this morning. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is going to peel maybe tomorrow.   This week for certain.   This was a bad burn.   She's blistered all along the tops of her arms and shoulders and is in a lot of discomfort.   If you're thinking about lecturing me, don't bother, I've been lecturing myself since Monday I've been so upset about it.

The Big Boy Update:  My son knows how bad his sister feels with her burn and yet today he decided to take his shirt off late afternoon and run around without putting any sunscreen on.   I don't know if now I have a second child burned.  I hope he stayed in the shade or wasn't out for long in the sun.     

The Fanfare

Chelsea is still trying to get my daughter interested in piano lessons.  So far, all she can get my daughter to do is listen to her play and let her help in figuring out the songs she's interested in playing for her right hand.   My daughter is not one bit interested.   She can learn a new song quickly, then get better and better playing it more quickly and after she's learned it to her satisfaction, she moves on to the next song to pick out. 

Part of the problem is she knows she's going to have to learn a new way to use braille.   The six dots in the standard braille cell have been remapped to be used to represent music notation and notes.  When Chelsea tried to introduce this new system to my daughter, she met extreme resistance.   We had bought an entire piano course because you can't teach music reading to a blind person with standard sheet music. 

The introductory concepts should have been easy, but Chelsea couldn't get past the remapping of the keys themselves.   If they hadn't put braille letter stickers on the keys a year prior, it might have been different, because the stickers on the keyboard at the time were completely wrong for true braille music notation.  And my daughter hated it. 

There was more though.   When you type in braille, your thumbs are used for the space key alone.   Every key you type doesn't need the thumbs.   Thumbs aren't part of the words.   When my daughter sits at the piano, she plays with four fingers and rests her thumbs on the wood below.    Chelsea doesn't know if she can get her to break that habit—and my daughter doesn't want to. 

She does, however, want to play songs.   The last time Chelsea was at our house. she sat at the piano with my daughter and Reese said, "you start with the fanfare."   Chelsea dutifully started playing a song using both hands and my daughter chimed in at the right points with her single note at a time melody.  

They play like this a lot.   Chelsea is trying to get Reese interested enough that she'll want to learn more.  For now, she's being a stubborn brick wall.   Chelsea, knowing her well, thinks pushing her isn't going to help, it will make her less interested in playing altogether. 

The Big Boy Tiny Girl All Day Pool Time:  They were in the pool all day.   My daughter did a good bit of screaming because she was in pain from the sunburn we accidentally let happen yesterday.   Everyone feels so badly about it.   I think ultimately it was my fault because even though she got to the pool very early, I should have thought about sunscreen even then.   She's better now and she and her brother played all day and got along almost the entire time,   I spent some time with them each, but they were having lots more fun without adults, doing imagination games all around the pool. 

The Sun Miscalculation

My daughter likes water.   She would gladly spend the entire day in the backyard pool at Nana and Papa's house.   This morning she was up early and had a breakfast of fruit and freshly made pancakes from Nana.  The minute she had finished eating, she asked if she could go into the pool.  

She put on her swimsuit from the night before and got into the hot tub.   I moved my breakfast outside and then went over beside her.   Her brother came out shortly, put on his swim trunks, and then they just took over, playing with each other, screaming, laughing, playing games, having fun. 

I had to go inside to get my swimsuit on so I told the children to make sure each other was safe and promptly got stuck inside for a while.  Other people went out and I did make it back outside in a bit, after taking care of the dog. 

It wasn't until lunchtime when I suddenly realized I never put sunscreen on them.   And worse yet, they weren't long sleeve swim shirts.   We fixed the situation at that point, but the damage had been done, literally. 

My daughter did the screaming bloody murder thing while she had aloe vera lotion and Solorcain.   She is now chilled from the sun and is under a load of blankets.   It's always the first day in the sun that you forget to put sunscreen on, no matter how early it is, even though the sun isn't high enough to shine on you.   Forgetting can hurt.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has worn his bathing suit on backward for the past two days.   He turned them around once, but he seems to like them on backward.   Somehow, they fit.  He's so thin right now as he starts to grow.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter walks very carefully around the pool so as to protect herself.   She still got hurt a half dozen times today, but she brushed them off.   She can play games with her brother and just go with all the visual things he talks about.   I don't know how she does it, but for a lot of the day today when I saw her playing in the water, I didn't think about her blindness, watching out to make sure she doesn't get hurt and calling out in time to stop her if needed.

You Can't Get There Any Faster

We've been on the road for fourteen hours now heading to my in-law's house in Florida.   The house is snugly taken care of in our absence by the homesitter that doesn't need to be fed: our alarm system and cameras.   The trip has been long and grueling in the back seat, but it works for me because I can help with things the children need (my daughter more so than my son) and I can run interference when bickering occurs.

The other reason I sit in the back is to let the dog have the front seat.  It's fairly cramped in the single seat I sit in in the back.   The dog is covered in fur and the cooling back here is much less than it is in the front.   She can sit in the seat itself, or drop to the floorboard and get blown on by the air-conditioning directly up front.   She spends most of the time on the flat surface of the floorboards, being cooled as much as she can. 

We've stopped four times for relatively short durations at the supercharger.   They are getting faster with the later versions they release.   We achieved the fastest charging we've ever had at our last stop, charging at an astonishing 660 miles per hour.  By the time we had gone to the bathroom, we were ready to go.

One of the things that's interesting about driving an electric car is that you can't get to your destination by driving faster.   The faster you drive, the more electricity it takes to move the car.   The more electricity you use, the more time it takes to charge or, the more charge stops you need to make.   In our case though, we can't go for that long without a "potty break" stop with the children.   Or a, "I'm so hungry, I can't wait any longer!" repeated every five minutes.  

But we're almost at Nana and Papa's house.  Everyone is excited.   The dog even knows something big is about to happen.   For me, I just can't wait to get out of the back seat, get in their hot tub and hope my back will stop cramping. 

The Car Naming Discussion:  My son asked me, "Mom, what's your favorite filament?"  The children know I am singularly obsessed with 3D printing and the filaments you use to print with, but when he asked. I just stared dumbly at him and said, "Uh, I don't really know."   He said, "Because I think you should name your car whatever it is."   You can give a Tesla car a name that shows up on the dash.   He said a few minutes later something I couldn't stop laughing about.   He said, "What about Filament Flying?"   My daughter wanted to get in on the action and offered up, "The Power of FIlament."  I'm not sure yet what I'll name the new car, but I do like their suggestions. 

Negative + Packing + Printer

We're all negative, having a high probability as a family that if we were COVID-19 positive, one of us would have turned up with a positive result.   Today, the children have been in school but due to COVID-19-related things both children have been doing distanced learning.   Tomorrow we're off on vacation.   

I've been packing all day.  My husband has been doing things to prepare for our departure like cleaning my car.   I love a clean car.   It gets easier every year as the children get older as there is less child-specific packing and they can help with some of their own things.   Still, it's a good bit of work. 

My husband said something so nice last week I didn't know what to think.  He said, "why don't you bring one of the 3D printers with us?"   I have a small one that's easy to pack.   It's the same one I took to my son's class for the demonstration.  

So it's packed.   With some filament and any tools or parts I might need while I'm working with it.   I packed Easter colors and plan to print Easter-themed items.  

We get up frightfully early in the morning to leave.   When I finish packing, I'm heading to bed early. 

The Big Boy Tiny Girl What Is That Sound Question:  As I'm writing this I can hear a strange sound in the back yard combined with my children running in and out of the basement door, banging it as they come and go.   I just looked out and they are putting ice on the trampoline and then jumping with it.   The odd sound is the ice pieces all hitting the trampoline bed at the same time.   They're screaming and having a great time. 

A Little Taller

We measure my son and daughter's height every year on their birthday, marring a wall with a line and the date so that years from now, we can look back at how they grew over the years.   My daughter has always been a little shorter than her brother at the same age marks but we figured that was about par since children grow so quickly.  

The children have always been normal on the growth charts every year and they seem to be normal in nearly every way.   So that surprised me when my son mentioned something about being the shortest in his class.   

He seemed to be not that upset about it, but you could tell he wished he were a little taller.   I talked to him at one point about it and how he was a fourth year and that he would likely be not as tall as his classmates who were fifth and sixth years.   He knew that, but he also said he was the shortest fourth year boy as well.   again, not with any real anger behind it, just sort of a wistfulness that he might be taller. 

Today, as we were packing to go visit Nana and Papa for the spring break week (and only Nana and Papa, staying in their house with them is enough for us so that we can remain hopefully COVID-19 safe.)  I looked at my son, who was wearing shorts due to some warm weather that had come through.   I noticed his knees looked more pronounced and his legs looked longer. 

I asked him if he thought he had grown recently.   He was working on a slider puzzle that went up to twenty-eight and was focused, but he heard me and nodded, saying, "a little, maybe."  I said he might be in a growth spurt and might not be the shortest in his class soon.   "That would be nice," he replied.  

The Big Boy Tiny Girl IT TICKLES! Trauma:  We got COVID-19 PCR tests today in preparation for our trip.   There was a small fuzzy thing we each put in our nose and swabbed  for five seconds per nostril.   My daughter has been traumatized by the deep sinus probing tests in the past two weeks and was already in near terror form.   My husband got to my son first and the noises my son made did not make my job any easier.   My daughter was terrified of ten seconds of tickle.  When I finally got her calmed down enough to do the swab, she said, "was that it?"