It’s Like Christmas

My husband has been playing a lot of golf lately.   He was a professional golfer at one time but decided it wasn't what he really wanted to do a number of years ago and got his amateur status back.   He still enjoys entering into tournaments and this seems to be the time of year qualifiers are happening, because he's gone frequently these last few months.   Golf couldn't be easier to social distance as a sport so he either gets a cart all to himself or walks the course. 

He'll be in shortly from today's tournament he entered into with one of his golfing friends.   While he's been gone, my children have been busy doing different things, giving Blake and me a day off from child management.   

My son has been playing Minecraft beside me and telling me all about the different, "mods" he's been adding to the world he's creating and playing in.   It's a good game in that it gives children the ability to create things similarly to how you'd build LEGO projects, only there are monsters you have to protect you and your land from.   That is, if you don't have Creative mode on and are a god in the game, having all resources at your disposal and being invincible.   My son is usually in Creative mode.    

My daughter is busily imagining things with Nora from next door, social distanced outside and Blake is doing something with fishing lures at the table in the basement.

I'm in the basement too, a location I didn't spend much time in until we got the 3D printer.   I'm working on settings to see how well I can print models.   I'm watching videos to learn new things about different filaments and all the while, I'm printing on the printer.   

I can't explain why I find it so fun, so exciting.   Maybe it's because it feels like Christmas every time I take a finished model off the printer.   It's a model I selected, in a color I picked out at the size I wanted to make it in.   I love it.

The Big Boy Update:  Blake went to Bass Pro Shop today and got my son a present.   He's been working on it all afternoon while my son has done other things.   Blake got a small tackle box and a few supplies and then went through his larger tackle box to find extra items and put it all in my son's surprise box.   Then he also got him his very own fishing rod.   My son went fishing with Blake a while back and loved it.   Now he has his own gear and can fish any time he wants.   My son was quite happy about it, although he was scared of having his own fishing knife.   He asked me to keep it, "until I'm responsible."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Nora came over to the back yard this afternoon and after a bit of playing, my daughter asked if she could bring out the American Girl doll things her cousin, Coco, gave her.   They played for the longest time with all the things, relocating to the front yard when it was getting dark in the back.   My daughter missed lunch and only came in when it was dinner time.   Tomorrow, they're going to continue their game of hair salon, chef, doctor, lemonade stand, and dead centipede undertaker.  

Dinner is Served

Some nights I get a lot of sleep and other nights I don't.  It's part that I am in the basement working on 3D printing things and part that I don't fall asleep or wake up in the middle of the night and don't fall back to sleep.   It's not a bad thing, as long as I can get caught up on sleep at some point.  

Today, I worked on a collection of things today, strangely at this point it's a list I can't easily enumerate because it is not possible to sit at the computer and get uninterrupted work done here.   I get fragments of work done, eventually making progress.   My daughter suggested I, "quit my job."   

I told her it wasn't the kind of thing you could just quit.   Scheduling conferences for the children because it's that time in the school year for progress reports.   Responding to the email about it, signing up on SignupGenius.com, adding an entry to both my husband and my calendar for the conference, making sure the conference link is in the calendar entries and texting my husband to let him know I'd signed up for the conference so he could ignore the email from the teacher.   That, I told my daughter, was the kind of thing I was doing and it wasn't something I could just quit as a job. 

My daughter doesn't understand what we do as adults so I tried to give her an example of something she had a reference for—her teacher conference.   She has a lot less understanding of all the other things we do as parents.   She just knows I'm in the basement and thinks anytime is a good time to come talk to me about anything.   

I took a break after school was out and went to have a nap before dinner.  I fell asleep almost immediately and woke up when my daughter came into the room to tell me dinner was ready.    What were we having? She wasn't sure other than a roast chicken and that Blake had made dinner for us all. 

Blake is an aspiring chef and has been cooking since he got here.   I'm very impressed with not only what he cooks, but the ease with which he cooks and prepares all manner of things.   His knowledge about cooking is extensive, especially since he's not yet twenty-one years old.

The Big Boy Update:  My son had an ice cream social with his class tonight.   It was over a Google Meet. I listened to him talking to his friends and eating an ice cream sundae I made for him while he got on the call.   He has some good friends in his class. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter came down the stairs today to the basement where I was working, crying her scared and injured cry.   I met her half-way up the stairs and she immediately jumped into my arms.   She's getting too big to pick up, but she was hurt, having walking straight into the basketball goal pole, squarely hitting her forehead.   Blake had gone to get her an ice pack and three minutes later she was fine.   Walking around has to be scary to her, or maybe it's not, but running into something hard is.

I Had No Chance

My daughter's school got a Mantis refreshable braille display for my daughter.  I had gotten some information about the Mantis and I knew it was the latest and greatest thing out there.   This also means it was very expensive.   I have no idea how they got one purchased for her since they're having problems getting approval for three-ring binders, but however it happened, I have it here at the house. 

I plugged it in this morning and saw on the braille readout it was charging,   While this device is high technology, it is for blind people and it has no screen.   I had to read the braille on the single line of the display to know what was going on. 

I wanted to get my daughter interested in it and had downloaded the user manual.   She came downstairs and I let her touch it.   She started navigating through it and I couldn't keep up with her.   She found Bookshare and saw she could download books.  I hadn't realized there was Bookshare (a library service for the visually impaired) integration. 

My daughter asked me how to log in and I gave her her user id and password information (something she's never known about before now as I always download for her here.)  It told her there was no Internet connection so she suggested going to the settings.   

While I tried to find the location in the manual, she got to the WiFi area and started paging down through WiFi networks around us until she found ours.   I gave her the password and it connected successfully she read.   Then she went back to Bookshare. 

She figured out how to log in and then she started browsing book titles and picked two books to download—without my help, only confirmation when she was in the right locations.  

I tried to show her how the buttons worked, but she wasn't interested because she'd already figured it out by trial and error.   She was about to go into one of the books and do some reading but the next thing she got to was a message about a required software update so she decided to come back later. 

I'm going to have to write more about this exciting new reading development for my daughter.   I think it's going to change a lot of things reading-wise as well as accessibility-wise.

The Big Boy Update:  This is what's happening here right now: my son is doing his Spanish homework on his computer after just arriving home.  Interestingly enough, he wanted to do it as opposed to fighting us later after avoiding it until it got late at the end of the day.  My son is having the app speak out the questions and answers in Spanish.   However...he is asking Blake and me what things mean and when we don't know, he's saying we should have that App that translates it via pictures like his father has.   He says Spanish is a lot easier with his father. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was so excited Blake was coming to stay with us that this morning she prepared a "Boo" bag as a welcoming gift for him.   She put Halloween things in there such as Halloween stickers and candy but then general other things like a pencil, a seashell, and some bubblegum balls.   She couldn't wait for 10:00 for Blake to arrive.

Corona Far From Home

We're going to have a houseguest.   It's not a new houseguest, it's someone we have here all the time, we're just adding overnight to his visits.   Blake, our sitter or "Manny" is coming to stay with us until October 10th.   His sister, Shane, is at school and has contracted COVID-19.  She's fine with her only symptoms being a fever and sore throat, but she needs to come home until she's clear.

She is in a dorm and the administration has required any student who contracts COVID-19 leave the campus if they test positive.   You may remember that Shane and Blake lived next door until two months August at which time Shane went off to college for her Freshman year and Blake and his parents moved to a townhome in the area here. 

Their townhome is smaller with fewer bedrooms than their prior house next door, which makes distancing Shane from her father, who has Chrone's, a bit of a challenge.  The plan is for their father to move to the basement to Blake's room.  He'll use the entrance to the unit from that floor while Shane stays on the second floor, totally separate from him for the next ten days.

When they called tonight, asking if Blake could stay here, we were honestly all excited—my daughter most of all.  We've always been close with our neighbors but it's been even nicer having Blake here to help with my daughter during school and do fun things with them both when they're not in school.   

The only concern I have is helping my children understand that some of the time Blake will be working and they will be expected to listen to him as they would us.   This, they already do when he's here working.  Then, we told them, some of the time will be fun time and he might play a game with them if they want or a video game with my son.   That will be up to him.   But then there will be times that are Blake's time and he won't be available during those times.   

They are going to have the hardest time with the last part because they like doing things with him so much.   We'll see how it goes.   Blake comes to stay tomorrow as Shane is coming home in the afternoon. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son was excited to hear Blake was coming to stay with us.   His first question was, "is he staying forever?"  Then he said, "maybe we can get him his own Xbox account!" 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter was worried about Shane.   Her mother told her we could call and talk to her once she got home tomorrow.   Me, like the non-thinking mom I sometimes am, said, "we can FaceTime her too."   My daughter likes FaceTime because she knows other people like to see what's going on, but it's no fun for her because she has to stay in frame, can't move around freely, and doesn't know how to show things easily on a call.   That, and she can't see at all.   She much prefers to just talk on the phone.  

On What to Write

I can't decide what to write here sometimes.   Originally, I started this blog and kept the existence of it a secret.  It was an online diary for me.  Prior to the blog, I had never written a single page of a diary in my life.   Diaries required writing, and that wasn't something I enjoyed doing very much.  I wasn't sure I'd be successful at writing so I kept at it for a while before I told anyone.   My goal was never to keep the blog a secret but back then I had a good bit of insecurity about how well I wrote.   I wanted to do it though, to write down one thing about each child and something on my mind.   That was the formula.   That was the plan.  Nine years later and I haven't deviated from my original plan. 

For a decent period of time, I had a cringing feeling when I admitted I had a blog.  I was actually worried the person would want to read it.   Over time, that feeling faded.  I became more confident that what I was writing wasn't all that bad.  It was no literary masterpiece, but I'd improved in my writing and it wasn't as stumbly or awkward as those first few months of posts. 

Today, I tell people about this blog fairly regularly.   This typically happens because something comes up about the children and I mention I have a blog where I document my children's lives one day and a few sentences at a time.   That's why I'm here; that's why this blog exists—for the children.   Or at least that's what I thought.   But I was wrong. 

It took me a long while to realize it, but I finally figured out this blog is for me.   I hope someday my children will come here to read about their lives when they were young.  Perhaps they'll want to read about their mother and what I was like when they were young.   Maybe they'll laugh when they remember the 3D printing craze I went through before the invention of the Matter Compiler all homes now have and it wasn't always that you could create any object with the single press of a button.  

This blog has also done some things I never thought it would.   It was the primary communication location when my daughter's eyes revolted, fought, and ultimately failed.  It was exhausting dealing with the medical trauma, my daughter's social and emotional health as well the depression as parents we went through as it became more and more clear my daughter's vision couldn't be saved.  

So where am I going with this post?   I'm having to remember myself.  I was typing this up, with a clear vision two hours ago, despite the audiobook my son was listening to playing from the Amazon Echo three feet away from me.  Then I got called away.   The children are in bed now and I'm trying to regroup.   This happens with children, with life here—the distractions—years ago I wouldn't have dealt well with it but now it's standard happenings in my life. 

Where I'm going with this is that every day when I sit down to write a post I realize I have two audiences: me and you.   I try to balance the posts so that I document our lives for the you of now and for the you of the future on the one hand and the me of today on the other.   The 3D printing posts are me posts.   It's my current passion, or if you ask my children, my obsession. 

And speaking of 3D printing (because I know you were hoping for an update) what have I been doing lately?   Lots of things.  I've figured out how to print larger models quickly that are sturdy and strong by changing the nozzle to a larger diameter and adjusting slicer settings to extrude lots of filament quickly.   This wouldn't work for specific, small and precise items, but for much of what I'm doing that doesn't matter, like the tissue box in the picture below that I printed in a fifth of the time it would have taken with traditional extrusion settings. 

Here are some of the things I've printed just in the past week.   So be warned: if I see you after this whole Coronavirus mess is over, it's likely I'll foist one of my prints on you so I can make room to print more.   Thanks in advance for your understanding. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son has to make his own lunch for school.   He doesn't want to do this so he rushes through it and doesn't pack much.   I was thinking he'd learn a lesson soon enough but the Adderall causes him not to be very hungry until it wears off when he gets home so so far, his hurried lunch preparation has been working to his advantage. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I heard my daughter singing along to a song she and Chelsea, her music therapist, were making up as they went.   Chelsea is skilled with her guitar and follows my daughter's lead.   My daughter's voice continues to improve, even though they're not doing formal voice lessons.   I would have titled the song from today, "Here I am" because my daughter kept repeating those words and then saying something related to her or her life.   I always listen to see if she says anything about being blind, but she's usually singing about other things that I wouldn't have guessed.

Mine Mine Mine!

I don't know what's been going on with my son lately but he's been wanting to claim everything as his.   He wants ownership of broken models from the 3D printer, things of his sister's he normally not care about, the odd random toy, an empty soda can, you name it.  

He's so intent on having the item he borders on the verge of obsession.   He wanted this ceramic pumpkin his sister got for her father for his birthday yesterday so badly I couldn't get him away from it.   I had to forbid him from touching it.   I had hoped he would forget about it, but as soon as his father opened the present, he was back trying to touch it and carry it around with him. 

He anthropomorphizes the item and talks to in a baby voice sometimes.   I know, from everything we've done in the past with therapists, that there is some underlying reason he's acting this way.   I don't know if it's something we're doing but I'm paying attention to our interactions with him to see if I can figure something out.

The Big Boy Update:  My son was so excited about the LEGO he got for his father's birthday present.    He couldn't wait for him to open it.   It's a LEGO model that's not so much a model as it is a mosaic picture you build with little round caps.   I hope he and his father will do the project together.   You can build three different pictures from the one set so it'll be interesting which one they choose. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Blake came downstairs today with a foam snow sled in his hands.   He said, "I may have just saved your daughter's life."  She had gone up to the attic and found the sled and was about to slide down the wooden stairs, face first.

I Had Totally Forgotten About...

My daughter had wanted to go to Target today to get a much needed new water bottle.   The one she'd been using I think I got when she was three-years-old, and since she's almost nine, it's had a good life.   We didn't realize how much she needed a new water bottle until we went to clean it and discovered there was mold in places that were cracked and couldn't be replaced.  

My children love their water bottles and have been using one for most meals for years now.   As much as we get things wrong, we've cultured a preference for water over other liquids like juices.  Hopefully, this will serve my children well as they grow up.  

There was a second reason to go to Target, and that was for the children to get their father a birthday present.  We don't take them out much or go out much due to COVID-19, but they've been out enough to know the drill.  They had their masks on before we had parked and we calmly walked into the store. 

That's where the calm part of the story ended though, with both my children going wild in their own ways.   Eventually, I got them under control but as we were leaving (after getting the chocolate my daughter wanted for her father) we walked past a display in the middle of the aisle for cereal.   My son asked about it and I did something I would never have been allowed to do when I was a child:  I bought them all.

I had completely forgotten about the special Halloween cereals: Count Chocula, Franken Berry, and Boo Berry.   First of all, they're not the best cereals for you—by a long shot.  There is a lot of sugar, dyes, and artificial flavorings.   But they're so fun!

I wouldn't have wanted the cereal most likely when I was young because I think I tried them at my friend's house and didn't like the fruit flavor or chocolate cereal.   Still, they were from my childhood and I couldn't resist. 

I got home and my daughter wanted to try them all as I unpacked them and put them into the empty bins where we keep cereal that had recently been finished.   She liked Count Chocula the best. 

The Big Boy Update:  In Target, my son wanted to drive the cart and to do so like he was race car driving. For the most part, he was being safe and he definitely was following social distancing guidelines, but he was a little, okay a lot, energetic.   He helped me out though later in the trip when I had to leave his defiant sister.   He said he'd go back and help her.   He did, and by the time I caught back up with them, she was in a good mood again.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter had problems in Target because she wanted to be independent and shop for herself.   She did not, at all, want me involved.   Also, she wanted to run up and down the aisles.  Also, she didn't want to use her cane.   Inside, I felt for her because she just wanted to be free and independent.   Outside, I had to be very firm with her because we were in a store with other people and we had to stay safe.   I checked out and left her in the store with nothing for her father for father's day because she wouldn't listen to me at all.   Her brother and a very nice lady who worked at Target and could see what was going down, helped by talking to my daughter.