It Was All Candy (And a Pencil)

My daughter came home from school, opening the front door saying, “I have bubble gum but I’m going to spit it out because it doesn’t have flavor anymore”.  I had forgotten it was Valentine’s Day at that point.   My daughter was excited about all the cards she’d gotten from her friends at school that were in a white bag she had put on the counter.   But there wasn’t time to show me right then because friends had come over and she wanted to go outside to play with them.

We went to dinner with my husband and son who afterwards went to free running while my daughter and I returned home.   She did some math work with me at lightning speed and then some reading work, which is getting more impressive as she starts to be more proficient at reading braille.    And then it was time to go through the valentines cards.

And when I say, “cards” I mean it in the loosest sense of the word.   Because I think there were only three cards in the bag, including what came from her teachers.   It was all candy.   She and one other student had cards with nothing in them other than a message.   Everything else was candy of some sort, some also including a tattoo.   Oh, and there was one with a pencil (“that has to be sharpened,” my daughter told me).

Was the candy accompanied by a card?  No.  My guess is in years past bought sets of card with included candy had an issue of the card and candy being separated.   So to save time and trouble, the card was eliminated and a spot to write on was added to the wrapper of the candy.   Now all you need to do is write your name on the candy pouch or sucker or gummy bag and your valentines are all done.

For my kindergarten-aged child, that would have been fun work.  I can tell you she was most enthusiastic about all the candy she received from her classmates.    But I like what she did.  I like her cards she helped color on and seal.   Tomorrow her brother’s Montessori class celebrates Valentine’s day (they had a school conflict today).   I wonder what he’ll get by way of Valentine’s cards?

The Big Boy Update:  This morning my son was sitting quietly eating his breakfast.  Everyone had gotten up, gotten dressed, there were no complaints about breakfast and no one was whining or complaining.   When my husband walked into the kitchen my son confirmed the quiet morning by announcing, “we’ve gotten off to a good start today.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter discovered the wonder of the Blow Pop today.   She excitedly told me about this round lollipop that had bubble gum in the middle.   She loved it.   She was a sticky mess.   The bag she put the finished stick into was also a sticky mess.   I loved Blow Pops as a child and still do today.

Less Drops

My husband and daughter did one of those thirteen-hour trips to and back from Detroit today to see Dr. Trese, her retina surgeon, for an in-office check on her eyes.    Dr. Trese can tell a lot in a short office visit with the most amazing thing being how much he can tell from the extremely brief glances he’s able to get into my daughter’s eyes.

My daughter has been afraid of a lot of things when it comes to her eyes, for good reasons on a lot of fronts.   But Dr. Trese she’s never been afraid of.   That doesn’t mean it’s always easy to do what he needs her to do to see into her eyes.   She’s been light sensitive and in post-surgical pain.   She’s had to endure thousands of eye drops that sting and to top it off, she can’t really see straight or normally when asked to look in a certain direction.   All of that makes it hard to get a good look into her eyes.

But Dr. Trese does manage to see into her eyes and get the information he needs somehow.   And my daughter thinks he’s great.   Today he thought everything was looking good in both eyes.   Her right eye hasn’t shown significant re-scarring growth since he opened it up internally several months ago.   Her left eye is looking good as well, meaning it’s maintaining pressure and hasn’t had any negative changes.

And that means no more trips to Detroit until winter is over and spring has firmly begun in twelve weeks.    And there’s more good news.   I wish I could say she can see more, but we’re just happy to not lose any more vision most days.   No, this good news is about drops.   He’s wanting to start decreasing the frequency of drops slowly.    And for that, all of us are happy.

She has four rounds of drops daily, with two different solutions totaling twelve stinging drops a day.   We’re going to get down to only eight drops soon.   At one point we were doing twenty-eight total drops per day.   And that was no fun for anyone.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has been working on addition and subtraction memorization.   He does not like this work at all.   He says it’s hard, but it’s mostly anxiety because he knows he’s going to be tested at school.   I won’t go into the issues and battles we’ve had over this in recent days.   You would be hard-pressed to believe he actually can do the math pretty quickly in his head (or has memorized the answer) with all the complaining, whining, moaning and despair he brings to the situation.   But I think we have a solution.   Call out the flash cards and let him and his sister answer.   Don’t make it about who gets it first or count who got the most correct or make it about a reward.   Just have them yell out answers.   The casual and yet competitive environment tonight when I tried this and he was firing off answers.   So was his sister for that matter.   Hopefully a bit more of this and he won’t be so anxious about being tested at school.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter said to her brother the other day while they were eating lunch, “I really love your class name.”   His school gives each classroom a name.   She likes his because it’s Emerald.  Maybe this is because emeralds are green and that’s her favorite color?  Or maybe it’s just because she likes the sound of the word.   I should ask her.

The Fruit’s Where It’s At

Years ago, let’s see, maybe 1981 or 1982 my family was at a restaurant for dinner.   I got done eating early and was restless and there happened to be a Pac-Man game in the bar section of the restaurant.   I went over to watch a boy who was playing, Pac-Man being the hottest thing around at the time.   He was pretty good at the game, getting all the way into the “keys” levels before I had to go.   I don’t remember much about the game other than him informing me, “the fruit’s where it’s at” every time the fruit collectable would come on the screen.

That saying has stuck with me and pops into my head every so often at odd times.    Today I was packing my son’s lunch for tomorrow and looked in the refrigerator.    We were completely out of fruit, and that’s uncommon for us.  I looked over to the fruit bowl and this is what I saw:

The total amount of fresh fruit we had in the house consisted of one lone apple.   And that’s unheard of for us.   And what phrase from decades ago popped into my head?   You guessed it.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has become interested in the makes and models of cars recently.   He recognizes some and is interested in learning more.   Mimi printed out a list of car logos and we talked about the ones he knew at dinner last night.   He was fond of Ferrari and Lamborghini.   We told him he must like fast cars because both of those certainly were.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter and husband fly to Detroit in the morning for a day trip to visit her retina surgeon, Dr. Trese.   We don’t even make a big to do about the trips any more to her.   They’re fairly routine.   My husband I think is getting ready to start packing his backpack—the only bag they’ll take—on the trip.  

Altered Carbon

I rarely write about books or television shows but this one is too exciting not to.   Some years ago, I read Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon novel based on a recommendation from a friend.  When I was done with the book I went straight back to page one and read it through a second time.   It’s dense.  That’s the only way I know how to describe it.   There is so much going on it’s intentional confusing for a good part of the first half and then you feel like you’re just hanging on for most of the remainder of the book.  But it’s a tremendous read if you like cyberpunk science fiction—which I do.

At the time I had read up on the author and found out the movie rights had been sold in 2003 but nothing had been done to make a movie.   Then, a few weeks ago I pulled up Netflix and saw a trailer for Altered Carbon, the series, starting on February 2nd.  My sister-in-law wrote a blog post about the series, mentioning how it’s confusing at first to figure out what’s happening.   I’ve read the book twice, I know what the ending is and what all the interleaved side stories are and I would agree with her.   But it’s so well done.

I’m not sure how the story could have been told in a single movie; the ten episodes are packed, there’s just no filler and if you’re not paying attention you’ll miss something important.   I know some of the actors in the series and they do a compelling job of playing their roles.   There’s a lot of nudity, but it plays well with the story.   And who am I kidding, I like looking at attractive naked people, so I don’t mind.

I’ve watched the series twice, starting over once I finished it, just like I did the book.   Richard K. Morgan wrote two more books in the series with the same main character.  Hopefully they’ll make a second on Netflix.

The Big Boy Update:  My husband and I try to back each other up on parenting decisions but sometimes we don’t realize something’s happened.    For instance I might come in and say, “it’s time to get pajamas on now.”   I could get an incensed outcry from the child saying, “but dad said we had ten more minutes!”   So now I try to remember.   I saw my son with the iPad the other day when we were supposed to be getting ready for guests to arrive.   I came up to him, tapped him on the shoulder and asked, “do you have an agreement with dad?”  He nodded and said, “five more minutes” very calmly.   And in five minutes he put his iPad away.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is good at math.   She’s in kindergarten but she grasps a lot of the concepts very well.   She asked to be quizzed in the car last night on addition and subtraction problems.   She had gotten over a hundred correct with very little in the way of mistakes on the ride home from a birthday party.    She also seems to get fractions.  We told her she could get a stamp on her stamp chart for every four valentines cards she finished.   She worked with Mimi on Friday and completed ten cards.   She thought about it afterwards and told Mimi, “that means I get two-and-a-half stamps”.

I Like Your Quiet Soul

It’s valentines time again.   Or rather it’s getting close to that time.   The children have been working on theirs and it’s been one of those ups and downs kind of things.   The Montessori approach to Valentine’s Day is a little less commercial and a little more about meaning than it was from my memory in school as a child.

I remember getting the pre-made valentines and putting them in the bags for each student in the class.   There were a few outliers in my day that had something added like a piece of candy or a sticker.   There wasn’t a lot of choices at the drug or grocery store to buy but even so, most children didn’t make their own.   My children’s Montessori school is more about handmade and interesting.   Message and meaning, not commercialism and candy.   That includes a request for no candy by the teachers to the parents.

My daughter is in public school now and I have no idea what she’ll get home on the fourteenth, but I suspect she’ll be thrilled with what’s in her bag from the other students.    She and her brother, who is still at Montessori school, have been working on handmade cards.   I put a picture of them with the words “Happy Valentine’s Day 2018” and their name on a page and printed them.    Then I told them to get to work.

My daughter did some drawing of stick figures, hearts (that are hard to tell are hearts) and scribbles.   She added a sticker or two and then signed her name in print at the bottom.   We folded each sheet and then she selected some sealing wax pellets to seal each card.   I’d gotten a heart stamp for the occasion and my children have had a good time making color combinations to see what they can come up with as a final product.   Here are some examples:

My son has been having some challenges getting motivated to write his cards.   It’s mostly a matter of wanting to sit down and do the writing.   If he can get focused, he can work for a period of time.   But he has twenty-seven to write including main and resource teachers and it’s just going to take him some time.  

Today’s writing wasn’t going well from a motivation and attitude perspective.   I’d tried to be nice but I lost my temper and my son was in a dismal mood to match mine afterwards.  To skip to the end of the story, everything turned out find and he and I are the best of friends again, but for a period of time I didn’t think much was going to get done in the way of Valentine’s writing from him today.

But in came my mother to the rescue as we had a birthday party to take my daughter to.    When I got home my mother told me my son had worked diligently on writing four more of his cards.   She said he had the most interesting things to write, including one note to a student which said, “I like your quiet soul.”

The Big Boy Update:  After my son and I had it out today about the Valentine’s writing we took a break from each other.   A bit later he came to find and we sat down and talked.    We hugged and he said, “finally we’re getting along.”  Neither of us likes to be angry at the other.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My son was so angry at me earlier today he decided to leave the house.   I wasn’t particularly worried about him running away at seven, so I waited him out without saying a word.   But his sister noticed he’d left when she heard the front door open and close.   She was talking out loud, to no one in particular and said, “where in the world is he going?  He’s probably running away.   We can’t let him do that…he’s the only Greyson in the house.”

The Towel Calculation

I’ve mentioned before how we use white hand towels in our house for many things.   I started using them over twenty years ago and since that time I’ve gone through a lot of towels and sourced them from different companies.   I’ve bought in bulk, found them at clearance at Walmart and gotten them at Costco.   Since we use them for so many things they need to be sturdy enough to last many washings, while also being cost-effective enough that they’re not at the, “premium towel” price level.

Costco has had the best price to quality ratio and the latest batch was at an even better price point at fifty cents each.   I was wondering how much value I get out of the towels over time and how it compared to paper towels / napkins as an alternative.   It’s one of those fuzzy logic problems because there’s a lot of play in the numbers, but I can hazard a guess.

I replace the towels about every four years and at that time get about one hundred new towels.   We go through about a hundred towels through loads of wash each week I would guess which means any given towel, should it be used equally among its peers over four years, would receive 208 washings before being, “retired”.   At fifty cents per towel that calculates to 2.4 cents per use.

I did a comparison to the paper towels we rather infrequently use and on bulk sale they’re listed at two cents per foot, which is about the same dimensions as my white cloths, only far less absorbent and possibly not equal for doing the same job.  So from a price point it’s fairly close.  

Our cloths don’t get thrown away when I retire them either.   They are either passed on to our cleaning lady who puts them through another series of uses and washes, or they’re marked for use in the garage for final use purposes like tire cleaning.

All in all, it’s a fair price comparison to paper products.    I don’t have a good gauge on total cost adjustment due to the washing and drying though.   That adds to the 2.4 cents per cloth.    That will remain an exercise for another day though as family just arrived from out of town.

The Big Boy Update:  My husband told my son to get his shoes and jacket on for school.   My son, clearly realized he still had time to dawdle though when he said, “Mom hasn’t even made her tea yet.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was playing some imagination game.   I said to her, “I just heard you say ‘monster’.”  She said, “yeah, I just like to say ‘monster’.”  She didn’t want to tell me what game she was playing it would seem.

High Five

When I was little I got the magazine High Five from Highlights for Children.  I got a subscription for my children a few years back and although now it only is something my son can really see and do, it’s something he hasn’t been interested in.

Today on the way to school I put one of the magazines I’d been collecting in his hands and told him about all the fun things in each magazine.  On the way to school he looked through the pages, looking for the hidden object page until he found it.    He called out to me from the back seat when he’d located the page and said, “I found the toothbrush straight away.”    I told him when we got in drop-off line I would give him a pen and he could circle them as he found each item.

When we were situated in line I handed back my pen and he started telling me all the things he’d found.   I looked back a minuted or two later to see him circling the items not in the picture, but in the list on the preceding page.   I told him typically you’d circle the pictures in the drawing itself, not the list.   “I like doing it this way better” he said.

The Big Boy Update:  My son asked to play one of his favorite songs, “Spectre”,  in the car today.   He said to my husband, “it sounds so much better in the car than on Alexa.  I can hear the beat.”   Dad explained that the car had more than one speaker like Alexa did.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has had the same library books in her backpack on and off since November.   It wasn’t until yesterday that I found out why: she wanted them read to her more.   I told her she couldn’t get more books until we returned the two she had checked out.   That wasn’t a problem, she said.  All I needed to do was take down all the words on the books she had on a piece of paper.   Or wait, on second thought, she said, could I just photocopy the snowman book because she liked it the best?   We compromised and added the book to her Amazon wish list.    When we saw her brainiest at school today I mentioned the story and Mrs. Aagard said she’d been wondering about that because my daughter kept saying we never read the books to her.    Hopefully we’ll have some new library books home in the next week or two.