Make It a Short Vlog

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

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

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

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

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

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

32, 25, 49, 6

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Lesson In The Rain

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Saddest Sadist

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

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

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

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

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

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

Guess How Much I Miss You

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Awake and In Trouble

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Interrupting Cow

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

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

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

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

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

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