Set

When I started Filament Stories I was fairly terrified of being online in some sort of public form.  Initially, we were going to present videos with no spoken words at all and just provide information about the filament as we showed some models.  Thankfully, I have some good friends who have large to huge social media followings and they gave me some advice: you need to be in the videos. 

We went with me speaking as a result and I'm glad we did because people have made a connection to the person talking and not just the models and filament.  It makes sense though, I watch lots of things online that I don't have any intention of doing personally, but the content is entertaining and for that reason alone, I watch them.   

It was easier though because I wasn't me so much as just a voice.   What I've resisted though is actually being in the videos as a person, which goes back to the whole terrified thing.   But the longer we do the videos and the more comments we get and the more things I think about that would be interesting topics to cover, the more I'm realizing I'm going to have to get in front of the camera. 

For the last two days, I've been working on what a "set" would look like.   I abandoned a whole collection of options while also realizing how very little I know about the new camera we have.   But I also learned a lot of things.  

So soon, I'm not sure how long from now, but fairly soon we'll be releasing longer-length videos on YouTube with more information about 3D printing things.   I have so many ideas.  There is so much to talk about.   But I'm hoping this different approach will be received as well as the filament stories themselves have been.

We'll find out if I can get on camera and not look like a deer frozen in bright light.   As long as I pretend no one is really there, maybe I can do it.   

The Big Boy Update:  My son's hair is so very long.  He's gone through phases of wanting it cut but then, the next day, he says he wants to let it keep growing.   It's adorably shaggy right now.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  The first week of school is over and my daughter is in a much better mood than she was at the beginning of the week.  I think she was very worried about how things would be with a new teacher, a new braillist, and a new VI teacher.   Almost everything changed on her.  The one good thing is all her friends are still in the same class.   That was a big comfort to her.  

Contacted

I heard this would happen, but I didn't think it would be this quickly.   There are companies asking to work with Filament Stories.   It's just interesting and I'm not sure how to handle it yet.   And that doesn't mean they want to fund us or do anything major, just collaborations.   But it's interesting that with the very small size we are (and we are vanishingly small in comparison to most of what's out there on the Internet) that it's happened already. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son has never been allowed to eat in the living room.   We have new furniture and he is comfortable on the new couch he swore to hate when we got rid of the old couches.   And he seems to want to eat and drink on it!

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has homework in the middle of August.  She isn't upset by having to do it, she is a conscientious student.   But from someone who was out of school every summer, it's an odd thing to be doing homework when it's not getting dark until after eight at night. 

The Dress

My daughter likes comfortable clothes.   She doesn't want to be in frilly or fancy clothes.   She far prefers things that feel soft and she can move around in with ease.   She also likes something even at nine years of age, that she can sit on the ground and get dirty in.  She has never minded being dirty.  I keep wondering when we're going to see a change where she wants to be clean, but so far, that hasn't happened.  

Only now, suddenly, my daughter wants to have frilly dresses.   Or maybe not dresses, maybe dress.   When she and I were shopping for end-of-season shorts because she'd grown so much during the warm months that her shorts were tight on her and they even looked uncomfortable for me to look at her in them.

So we're at Target and my daughter finds something that is soft and voluminous.   And she wants it.  I thought, "I know how this goes, she says she wants it because it feels nice but then won't ever wear it," so I shuffled her on to the next area of shorts that also were unavailable in her size.  

But when we got home she talked about wanting that dress, or any dress for that matter.   And I got a distinct impression that she really wanted to wear a dress.   She has no idea that her neighbor friend, Nora, wears dresses all the time.   They don't have physical contact really.  Maybe they've talked about it, but she hasn't mentioned how Nora wears dresses and she wants to wear one too.   But the desire is coming from somewhere. 

 Today, my mother-in-law got my daughter from school while my husband was taking my son to another activity and I was having an injection in my spine.  They went to Target and when they got home I was instructed to close my eyes and ears and...surprise, she had on a fluffy, soft, and silky dress.   And she is thrilled.   

Maybe I'll have a little dainty, delicate girl soon.   Okay, I could barely write that without laughing.  I love my daughter and her very practical ways.   But it was nice to see her in a cute little dress with a big smile on her face. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son found out today that the Sensei at Code Ninjas that he likes so much is leaving.   He's going to go to the goodbye party for him this weekend.   My husband suggested he model something and 3D print it as a goodbye gift. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I told my daughter if she really wanted to make her dress look extra nice, she could wear the tights she has in her drawer that she sometimes mistakes for pants and put on her ankle boots.   She thought it was a good idea.

Second Day of School

Yesterday was a hard day for my daughter.   There was a lot of rebelling and a lot of silliness and none of it made sense.  She was getting into more and more trouble and she wasn't backing down, even though she knew it was only getting worse.   I know defiance from her and believe me, she has a lot of gumption, but this was something else. 

At the very end of the night when she'd lost miserably and had lost so many privileges she had very little more to lose, she gave in mentally and told us about her day.   If she had told me in the beginning, things might have been different.  But when she got in the car from school she lied about multiple things, making it sound as though the day were very bad, and then said she was joking.   Which was a good thing, because some of the stories weren't good. 

We had a conversation about how she got accommodations for her visual impairment but that hers were not the same as her classmate, Aditi, because Aditi's needs and vision was different.   She was thinking she was being treated unfairly and her blindness was being used against her.   This is a common phrase with her, and I can understand her worry.  

She's talking about it though, which overall is good.  We talked about how Aditi getting to sit at the front of the class on the carpet was probably something Aditi didn't want to do, but she had to ask and had been told to self advocate so that she could see what the teacher was doing.  This wasn't being treated special just because she was the teacher's pet, and it was something Aditi probably would prefer not to have to do. 

There were other things but it was clear she was very worried about school this year.   Today in the car on the way to school things weren't much better.   But when she got home today boy were things a whole different thing.  My daughter was happy and giddy and she talked about school and I think, thankfully, she's going to really enjoy fourth grade. 

The Big Boy Tiny Girl First Night Out Event:  There is a bounce house and Kona Ice and other fun things over at the clubhouse for First Night Out.  My son helped with the sand bags to hold the tents down.   We're heading over now.  My daughter will probably spend the entire time in the bounce house and will be drenched from the rain by the time we leave. 

Reading Ahead

My daughter was reading to us tonight when I realized something: she has to read ahead to know what magnitude a number is.   We do this without thinking and I suppose sighted children have to do this when they first learn to read numbers.   It struck me though that she will always have to read ahead to the end of the number with her fingers before being able to start saying or understanding the number, even when it's in the thousands, like the numbers on this page:

The Coin Flip Unhappiness:  The children agreed to abide by the results of a coin flip today.   My daughter lost.   She did not like the result and threw a mournful, wailing fit.  The results were not changed.   When she insulted someone as a result, she lost social privileges for the rest of the day.   She was even more unhappy.   Sometimes, losing is hard.  

Where is Mom?

I woke up in the middle of the night and I was alarmed.   Mom wasn't there.   I thought about it, my husband had come to bed, so dad was there, but where was mom?  And then I thought about it.  Wait a minute, when was the last time mom had come to bed because I couldn't remember.   

Maybe she came to bed late, my husband did, but, no, I don't remember her coming to bed at all.   Which meant where was mom?   I started thinking more and I realized I didn't remember her around the house either.   The children's father, my husband, had been there and I was there, but where was mom?   I didn't remember her being there at all. 

I remembered my husband and me making the decisions and taking care of the children, but if we were doing that, where had mom gone to?   She was just gone.  And that wasn't right because I know the children didn't seem to be missing their mother. 

If this is all sounding confusing, it was to me too.   I had gotten mixed up in my head that my husband was the children's father, and my mother was my mother and somehow in the middle of the night I'm not sure what role in the family I fit into in my head, but my husband was "dad" and my mother was "mom" and she hadn't been around and no one seemed alarmed that mom just wasn't there.  

There was a strange sense of fear that no one had noticed this and no one was upset by it.   It was about this time that I realized my mother was *my* mother and not the children's and that is why she wasn't coming to bed because I was the mother and I was already there.  And as it always goes with dreams like this, I was very relieved. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son has been so kind to me lately.  I don't know what's going on, but he comes in and hugs me.  And not a little tap hug where he tries to keep the rest of his body away from me, but a real hug.   I don't know what changed, but it's nice. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter wanted me to get a recipe for her online yesterday for chocolate chip cookies.  I found a long article with the recipe at the bottom.  It explained all about why the different ingredients were in the recipe and how they made the cookies better or softer or why you needed to refrigerate the dough or have the butter melted and the eggs at the same temperature.   She read the whole thing and has been making the cookies with her father today.  they just came out of the oven and boy are they delicious. 

How is it that...

It's now one-twenty in the morning and I feel like I was meaning to get some dinner, after meaning to lie down for a bit, after meaning to get some lunch?   The days are really stacked here.   And tomorrow is the last day of summer for my daughter.   How that happened, I don't know either.  

The Big Boy Update:  My son had intestinal cramps worse than he's ever had them before, tonight.  He was moaning and holding his stomach for the longest time and then I thought maybe something hot would help, microwaved my shoulder heating pad thing and gave it to him.  He hugged it for five minutes and then looked much relieved, saying, "heat is very helpful."  It may have been the heat, but it could have been timing too.  Either way, I was glad he felt better. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I thought my daughter was excited to get back to school but today she lashed out at me saying, "I hate school.  The only reason I don't get in trouble more is I'm afraid to go to the principal's office."   I don't know if it was school impending or her being frustrated at me at the time, but I hope she's looking forward to school.   I do think she's looking forward to getting back to see her friends.