Fighting

To be stereotypical, my son is prone to wanting to fight.   I fully believe if he had a sibling that was male, there would be a lot of consensual fighting going on here.   There have been times when our neighbor's son has been over and I've observed him going at my son, seemingly angry or upset or something when I walked into the room.   On the contrary, he was just wanting to wrestle or fight or be physical and both boys were having fun.

I have thought about something my cousin, Carla, said many years ago at a family reunion.   I wasn't yet married and I was years and years away from having children.  She had two pre-teen boys at the time.  They were shoving each other off chairs and generally being rowdy.   When she saw me looking at them she said, "one of the great things about having boys is you can say in social situations, 'boys will be boys' and no one thinks twice about their behavior.  

No one was worried about their behavior as being poor manners in this case, we were outside and everyone was having fun in their own way.  I asked her about fighting though, because to me, that's what it looked like they were doing.  Oh yes, she told me, they fight all the time.   They were having fun and getting their energy out.

To me, it looked anything but fun, but I was an only child and I'd never roughoused with anyone like that before for fun.  My daughter seems to be of the same mind as me when it comes to fighting.   Commonly, over the years, her brother would want to be physical, rough, hitting, kicking, and punching and she would want nothing of it.   When this happened, my daughter usually came crying and complaining that her brother was being mean and we'd tell him he had to stop.  

That's what happened most of the time—but not always.   Sometimes, she would be equally interested in fighting, most commonly she'd be goaded into fighting back.   It would get rough and we'd be worried about her eyes and try to stop it—also, one of them was usually wanting it to stop by the time we intervened.   To get results, I typically tell them to go outside and finish the fight and to please let me know if I needed to call an ambulance.   This reverse psychology almost always stopped things.

Lately, my daughter has been wanting to fight more and more, and as things go in this house, it has me wondering if there is something underlying it emotionally that is causing her to want to be so hurtful.  Today, Blake came home from the pool with the children with my daughter launching into a litany of insults and angry words at him for something I wasn't able to figure out.   She stomped off and he came in to explain.

We always back our sitters on their decisions when "parenting" the children for two reasons: first, because they have good judgment and second, we need to never undermine their authority so the children will listen to them.   In this case, my daughter was ignoring Blake and the pool proctor's instructions to get off the rope.   She intentionally continued doing it.   Then she wanted to fight with her brother, even after he repeatedly told her to stop.   Finally, he pushed her away and she hit her head on the side of the pool (not hard) which threw her into an indignant rage.   Even after Blake calmed her down and told her she needed to stop, she went after her brother with an, "I'll get you back" attitude.   As you can well imagine, she didn't like the results.  

Is my daughter enjoying being aggressive and finding new strength mentally and physically as she's gone through a recent growth spurt or is she getting out anger and frustration related to accepting her blindness?   Parenting has far more questions than answers.

The Big Boy Update:  My son loves helping his sister out with her KiwiCo crates.   He can do the steps and put the pieces together, assemble the components or do whatever it is quickly and not always with the best explaination to her.   And yet she loves having him help.   I got her a few crates that would be doable with vision impairment and could be enjoyed by her without sight.   I'm so glad he wants to help her though, it's nice when they work together.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter never wants to get out of her pajamas.   I found a type she loves and bought several more pair on Amazon a while back in different colors.   Within any given week during COVID-19 stay at home, she's probably in her pajamas a good five full days out of seven.   It saves on washing but she keeps getting in trouble for going outside with her pajamas on to play in the yard and is getting them dirty.

Not a Divorce

My husband and I were having a conversation about something this afternoon while my daughter was around.   We were having to do that "code word" talking where you eliminate words or replace them with other words because the topic isn't appropriate for the child to hear.   This works when concealing information like where the Christmas presents are hidden to medical specifics about a family member or anything else like the plot of an audiobook that's wholly inappropriate for the child to know.   That kind of thing.

I'm going into a lot of explanation here because while I know it was something we didn't want my daughter to fully understand, I can't actually remember what we were talking about.   Typically my daughter is pretty good at figuring out things.   She gleans far more from the sound of a conversation than most people do.   So it surprised me when she said from the next room where she was listening to us, "If you're getting a divorce, I'm going to live with daddy."  

I burst out laughing and said, "Oh, sweet girl, your father and I are not getting a divorce."  Then I said to my husband, "You won.  You got our daughter!" laughing.   My daughter thought it was funny at this point and wasn't worried about the divorce as much but she continued, saying, "Daddy and I have more in common.   We both like golf...and we both like blue.   Daddy and I like to cook and to bounce and to play outside..."   She ended her pitch saying she was more like her father than her brother was.

Fortunately, she won't be needing to make a choice about which one of us to live with.   She's stuck with us both.

The Big Boy Update:  When my son pushes something, he doesn't give up.   Laundry folding.   His items separated out and prepared for simple folding and inserting into drawers by his father this afternoon.   Twenty minutes of complaining, wailing, moaning, and attempts at negotiation, all of which failed.   He negotiated himself into no more screens for the day as a final response from us because nothing else was working.   He was doing the work, everything we did as, "wrong".   His father had separated the clothes—wrong.   His father had gotten things ready to go upstairs and be put in drawers—wrong.   His father tried to help when he first started and was complaining—wrong.   My son didn't want help and he liked things messy.   So we almost messed everything back up again.   He wouldn't quit with the wailing and moaning, saying we were "forcing him to do" these things.   I could go on, but you get the point.   He finished the work but, unfortunately, he lost screens for the remainder of the day.   And that wasn't the first consequence, keeping in mind we didn't want to give him any consequences, it was about the fifth.   All he had to do was stop talking and do ten minutes of work.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter and son were upstairs at the start of our weekday work time, working on a KiwiCo Crate of  my daughters.  She now has mock s'mores, a hotdog with catsup and mustard, a fireplace with a twinkling electric candle in the middle.   And it all goes in a bear backpack she helped put together.   She is loving the KiwiCo crates.   I couldn't get her to work on them for over a month.   Paitence paid off it would seem in this case.

Dual Interface

I am so confused by Blogger, the platform on which I write these blog posts.   They've updated their site to have a new look and feel but it doesn't seem consistently implemented.  For instance, I'm writing in a window that looks just like it's looked since I started writing this blog in 2011.   However, there is a second window I have open that has the new interface.

How I get one version of the edit screen up versus the other isn't clear to me.   I did slightly different things just now to get to the post creation screen, coming from two different starting locations, but other than that I seem to get to one or the other rather randomly.

I have all ideas, the reasons why I get to one or the other options aren't at all random though.  This is based on generally knowing how software works.   I have a background of a B.S. in Computer Science followed up with years in the field of software development prior to having children and becoming a real estate agent.

What surprises me is that both versions of the interface are available at the same time.   There could be an option to chose the old version over the new if that's what I preferred, but I haven't changed any settings.   It wouldn't explain why sometimes I get to the new interface and other times the old.

I like the new interface, but the old saying of "what you know is what you like" is very true and I'm most at home writing in the well-known interface I've been using for almost nine years. I wonder if the old interface will someday just disappear and if I'll have any idea when it's going to happen.  

I'm not stopping writing.  I don't think I could if I tried.   It's part of my day and part of my life now.

The Big Boy Tiny Girl KiwiCo Crate Projects:  My son has been doing KiwiCo crates since Christmas.   They're little cardboard boxes with a project to complete in them.   My daughter did her first crate today from ones I ordered that didn't need sight to do and be successful.   She loved her crate in which we created a memory matching game where we hid the tokens behind leaves in a tree and then put the matches we made into a log for storage.   She and I made the tiles tactile with some shaped stickers.   Her brother made a Chinese lantern string that his father helped him on.   The lanterns are hanging under the top bunk, ready to light up his bed tonight when he goes to sleep.   These KiwiCo crates are great.   My daughter didn't want to do hers for a good while after I ordered them but decided to do one today.   After she and I finished the one, she and her brother got together and made a second one where they created three musical instruments together.

Hoot Owl Hoot

My daughter has been on a mission to have some of the games we play made tactile so she can play them independently without any help from us.   Sometimes this is easy and some games lend themselves to straightforward modification.   Other games are more challenging or in some cases would be hard to pull off.  For instance, I could add velcro to the cells on a Scrabble board and tiles so words entered onto the playing field would remain in place as she feels over the board to see what has been played, but it would be hard to also indicate which cells had additional information like double word or triple letter.

Today I worked on Hoot Owl Hoot, a game by the company Peaceable Kingdom.   Their games feature a different strategy than most in that all players work together cooperatively, playing against the game itself.   In this game, there are six owls who are trying to get to from the outermost point in the spiral (square spaces) to the center where the nest is.  Gameplay is simple: each person picks a card (not shown) that has a color on it and then moves an owl to the next available of that color towards the center.

There are strategies to the game such as moving one owl over other owls, effectively taking a larger leap forward, when other owls are occupying the color you drew.  Which owl you move forward in different situations helps you get to the center more quickly.   The goal is to get all six owls to the center before the sun comes up.  To the left of the playing field is the sun.   At the start of the game it's night but every sun card you draw moves the sun token one step closer to rising.   If the sun comes up before all the owls are in the nest, the team loses.

To make the game tactile, I had to come up with six textures my daughter could discern and also add a way to keep the owls and sun in place so when she feels over the board to find the next red space or to locate the sun to move it to the next slot, she doesn't disrupt the pieces.

I found six different textures in varying materials that I thought my daughter could tell apart easily.   I was also able to match the colors to the original game colors, but since I was covering up the circles both on the board as well as the cards, it didn't much matter—the game was transitioning from one based on color to one of texture.   The picture is mid-game with the owls part-way home.  On a construction front, I got lucky, having a circle punch that exactly matched the circles on the board, which made it easy to match the additions to the original layout of the game.  I finished by adding a bit of velcro on the spaces and owls helped them easily stay in place,

When I was done, my daughter, Blake, and I sat down to play.   Blake and I did nothing, letting her set up the game and manage the moving of pieces and reading of cards all by herself.  And it worked.   She could tell the difference in textures immediately.   She wanted to know what color each texture was but when I mentioned we didn't even have to talk in terms of colors she got into the idea and we started saying things like, "I drew a glitter card" or "I got a fuzzy card, we can jump one of the owls over the others now!"  She did humor us by also saying the colors, which is interesting because they mean nothing to her.   She likes colors a lot though and I think it's important to her to talk about colors as it doesn't emphasize her blindness as much.

Not only could my daughter completely play the game unassisted, but she was also quick at it, hands flying around the board, looking for the next available location of that texture.   The modifications worked and she was just as happy as I was that she was leading the game.

She has many other games she wants me to make tactile for her.   Now that the craft room reorganization is nearing completion, I've got the time and space to work on projects like these for her.

The Big Boy Update:  I put my proverbial foot down.   I told my son and husband I'd had enough of the delays and today was the day the LEGOs, after close to four months of occupancy, would be leaving the dining room table for good.   The table had been covered and stacked for a long time and they had been slowly getting things in order and removed from the room since my son had waned in his LEGO interest a long time back.   The project was low to no priority on their part though.   We still have a display model of an X-Wing Fighter from Star Wars as our centerpiece, but the table can now be used for other things, like eating on it.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  After playing a game of Hoot Owl Hoot with my daughter and Blake, I came into the craft room to write this blog post on my currently-relocated computer which is residing in here while I work on organizing things.   My daughter came in moments later after starting a second game with Blake.  She had one of the six owl game tokens in her hands and told me, "Momma, for some reason this owl is special.   Can we put a bumblebee sticker on him?"  I got her the wooden three-dimensional bumblebee sticker and she headed back to finish the game with Blake.

Summer Work

We're struggling with "Summer Work" here.   We don't want to call it "school" because there is a negative connotation with the term since school is officially out for the summer.   We even asked the children what we should call it and have settled on, "summer work."

Some of what needs to happen are important for the children to do over the summer.  Namely reading for both children and math facts for my son.   They are both good at reading, but repetition is important at this age.   My son does quite well in math, but his basic math facts of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division are lacking.

For instance, he should just know that six times eight is forty-eight without having to do the calculation in his head.   I remember when I was in school this was called memorizing the times tables (for multiplication) and was something I did in elementary school.  I have specific memories of the classroom I was in in my elementary school, sitting at a desk and working on one of the sheets.

When I was young we had Schoolhouse Rock.   For years for the multiples of eight I would quickly sing the song from Schoolhouse Rock in my head to get to the answer.   They do it a little differently now and there are apps to help, but it's essentially the same thing.

We're adding in fun things for the work portion of summer work which might be a craft, origami, completing a KiwiCo Crate activity, growing crystals or even making slime.   It can't be fun every day, but we're trying to make it enjoyable enough that they won't balk every day.

The final component is chores.   We're targeting a total of two hours every weekday divided up into an hour-and-a-half to reading and summer work and a half-hour of chores.   The problem we were running into was the children would put off doing the work until later in the day but by then, their friends had come over and wanted to play.   Since playing outdoors socializing with friends is important to their social development and physical activity, they ran out of time to get everything done many days.

This week we're starting with a new schedule—one the children suggested with our guidance during a conversation last night.   All work will be completed between ten and twelve each morning with the exception of chores, which sometimes may make more sense to do at night.   Today was the first day and it went well, with the children now free to enjoy the rest of their day, hassle-free from us.

The Big Boy Update:  My son hates family conversations when they're about things they have to do or not do.   Last night I tried to make the conversation go quickly.   When I told them we were done after only a few minutes my son said to me, "Mom, I approve of this conversation."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter had her summer Orientation and Mobility meeting with her instructor today.   She was deplorable in attitude and I have warned her if it happens again (they meet every two weeks) that she will be writing a single-spaced, one-page apology letter to Mr. Adam for her behavior.   The second half of the call was lovely though once she offered and he agreed to play Othello with her on the newly made tactile version of her game.  He'd never played before so she told him the rules and then they figured out how to play where he could give her a coordinate of where he wanted his tile placed (4C for the fourth row, third column) and then she would determine how the tiles were flipped.   She loves playing games with anyone who will play with her.

Scrabble

My daughter came into the bedroom this morning and told me she wanted to play a game with dad and me.   When I asked her what game, I was surprised to hear her say Scrabble.   I found out shortly after that that she had played a simplified version the other day with her father and then found out an hour after that she had tried to play with Blake.  

Blake had said she was frustrated by the game because she didn't want him to see her tiles but she couldn't tell what the letters were on the tiles so she needed his help.   As my daughter sat on the bed with me this morning I told her I thought we could make a version of Scrabble tactile fairly easily.   She wanted Blake to come over and help her make the tactile version of Scrabble (as well as cater to her every whim, something he excels at.)

I had been unintentionally prepared for this very thing by chance.   I had hoped my daughter would be able to feel the letter indentations on the Scrabble tiles and, should she be able to, we could use them for all sorts of things.   I had found on eBay about a year ago a large bag of tiles, number as many as you might find in ten Scrabble games, and had bought the lot.   When my daughter couldn't feel the letters successfully I shelved the bag for possible future use.

So this morning, while Blake was on his way over, I got the bag and then came to the computer to look up two things:  frequency of letters in a Scrabble set and points for each letter.   I put it in a document and printed it out for Blake and then embossed the same information for my daughter.

I met them upstairs in the bonus room, now playing the game Scoops Up in which you try and make the tallest ice cream scoop in numerical order (my daughter wins this game a lot and it was super easy to make tactile so she loves to play it.)  I showed them the bag of Scrabble tiles and gave them their respectively printed sheets of information on the tiles.

Then I went and got the braille letter stickers.   Blake and my daughter put braille letters on a full set of tiles and then placed them in a bag so they could fish out their tiles.   As they prepared the tiles, Blake and my daughter pretended to spell words so my daughter could practice scoring.   She memorized the points per letter very quickly.   It seems like a lot to remember, but it's not that complicated with only seven different point values and things like all vowels are worth one point.  It was easy enough to put a braille letter on the tile, but not enough room to also add the point value, hence why I printed the points for her to reference.

Tiles labeled, they played this first level of blind Scrabble.   I decided having a board would add a huge level of complexity both in how my daughter had to envision everything happening as well as how the tiles would have to be affixed to the board so when she felt around to see what was there or add her word, she wouldn't disrupt the playing field.   Add to that the complication of double and triple word and letters, which need to be indicated on the playing field while still allowing for items to be affixed to the area and you've got an engineering problem I'm not completely done figuring out yet.

For us, as sighted people, we can see the whole board in one glance and hone in on all the opportunities we might employ to spell our word.   My daughter would need to review the board before her turn, perhaps extensively, before making a move.   So for now, we eliminated the board from the game and left in the spelling of words for maximum score the goal of the game.

If this goes well (and she very much enjoyed playing with Blake today) I'm thinking of adding two dice to the game.   One die is the standard 1-6 while the second die has sides for double letter, triple letter, double word, and triple word.   So for example, if you rolled a three and double letter, the third letter of your word would be doubled.   If you rolled a four and double word, you would need to make a word at least four characters in length to double the score.   That's for a future expansion of the game once she gets more proficient at the basic version.

I told her Mimi and Aunt Jo play scrabble all the time and Scrabble is one of Mimi's all time favorite games.   Once COVID-19 is over, perhaps she can challenge them to a game.

The Big Boy Update:  The children had a slot at the pool today but shortly after they arrived a sudden thunderstorm arose.   It looked like it was going to pass as quickly as it came up but it persisted, including some hail.   Blake called eventually and asked if I could come to rescue them in the car as walking home in the downpour was going to be nothing but miserable to them all.  I got in the car and drove the two blocks to the pool.   When my son saw me, he headed out into the deluge, getting completely wet, instead of waiting for me to pull up at the front of the clubhouse.   He didn't seem to mind, aside from complaining that he had said this was a bad idea from the outset (he didn't want to go to the pool, even in the hot, sunny weather.)

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  In addition to making a tactile version of Scrabble today, my daughter and Blake modified the Othello game her braillist, Mrs. B. had given her sometime back when she could still discern black and white.   Some fuzzy stickers on the black side of the chips and the game was ready for her to play ten minutes later.   She beat Blake.   She was not surprised at this, she said she was good at the game.

Help Shaving

It's the Fourth of July.   Some people in my house enjoy fireworks, the dog and my daughter do not.   Our next-door-neighbor and their good friends from around the corner came over and were planning on setting off fireworks for the children.   My husband had a good number of fireworks as well so they decided to coordinate and had everyone meet outside at nine o'clock.

There were more people in the general vicinity than normal with social distancing still the norm, but we tried to keep distanced as best as possible.   It was a bit difficult with adults needing to light sparklers and children eager to have a lit sparkler, but for the most part everyone tried to stay apart.

My daughter has typically not liked fireworks.   She can't see them and the noise is less than fun to her.   I was hoping she wouldn't be terrified of them like she has been in prior years and to her credit, she just came inside and spent the time with me.  

I would have gone outside with everyone except a fancy sparkler ember burned her thumb so when she came in crying, I suggested we take a bath.   She's been interested in shaving lately and has made a huge mess of the tub with a bottle of shaving cream and a bladeless razor.   I tried to distract her from the fireworks, saying she could shave me and we'd get in the tub together.  

In part, I wanted to get her washed after being around the other children.   She tries to keep distanced, but she needs to be guided and that means people have to touch her to move her towards or more likely away from something.   A bath with lots of soap would kill any virus that might have gotten on her.

Since there were people outside, I suggested a bath in the dark.   This worked for her and me and we had fun in the tub with the dog anxiously panting beside us.   The dog couldn't tell from what direction the fireworks were coming from and so didn't know how to get away from them.  She did better than I thought she would though and calmly say there while I had soap put all over me by my daughter.

The fireworks are over and my in-laws have just left.   It was a good day.  The best part for me being the homemade peach pie my mother-in-law made.  

The Big Boy Update:  My son gets obsessed.   We told him he'd like the Avatar cartoon series but he wasn't interested until we got him to watch one episode.   Now he can't get back to the television fast enough to see the next episode.    He's going to be in a showhole for sure when he's seen all the episodes.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  While my daughter and I were having our bath in the dark my mother-in-law came in and read to us in the dark via the light of her iPad her latest story she'd just finished about Buster the dog.   Buster went to meet Grandma and Grandpa this episode and got cookies to eat.   She and I listened quietly while Nana read.  My daughter loves the Buster stories Nana writes.