POP!

Two Terrific Uses for Bubble Wrap:

1. Spread it with paint and make prints with it. Overlap colors and make yourself a riotously blooming flower garden!

2. Spread it out in the driveway and ride your bike/trike over it repeatedly. The neighbors will think guerilla warfare has come among them. (Note: this is especially satisfying if you wear only your paint shirt and underwear from #1. Even better, if your underwear is on backwards, giving you the three-year-old-wearing-a-thong look, because you recently took it off to pee in the yard.)

Trust us!

Artist at work

It's pretty rewarding to do artsy craftsy things with Caroline, because she just takes the idea and zoom! Blink and you'll miss 'er! Take this afternoon, for example. We started making hedgehogs out of chocolate-scented playdough and cut-up straws (couldn't find the toothpick box). I believe googly eyes were also involved.

Five minutes into it my mom called, so I ended up chatting with her for a while. She inquired about the difference between hedgehogs and porcupines. Would you like to know? We Googled it, of course. Hedgehogs have smooth quills; porcs have barbed ones.

But anyway. As my mom and I dished about this and that, Caroline quietly worked away. She finished her hedgehogs, and then very methodically moved on to another kind of chocolate playdough sculpture. A volcano, perhaps, with straws for molten lava. Then, a little later: a 3D collage. Lump of playdough and four pompoms affixed to a brown paper shopping bag (would you call that upcycling?) with plenteous Elmer's glue.

I would love to share pictures with you, but I bear sad tidings: the camera is on the blink. Temporarily, I hope, but the only handy person in the house hasn't had the time to devote to it. This is majorly cramping my style, not to mention my progress on Project 365.

That's the bad news. The good news is that Ian was awarded a full tuition scholarship for the theater class (see previous post). Hip hip hurray for multicolored fonts!!!

Question

If you were a decision-making person in the education office of a local theater company of renown, in charge of handing out tuition scholarships, and you were offering an entire semester-long class revolving around the works of Roald Dahl, and you had asked a mother to have her son write his own appeal, would you say "yes" to the following?

Dear Zach Scott,


I really like Roald Dahl books but i'm not completely sure I want to

join the class. But, i'm thinking I might.anyway, enough talk of that. what's your favorite Roahld Dahl book?Mine is: the BFG.My second favorites are:fantastic mr. fox and George's marvelous medicine.please write back saying your favorite Roald Dahl books. sincerely, Ian

p.s. will I get good parts in the play?

Oh, man! When I pasted this in, it lost all the flair. The entire first sentence is typed out with every letter a different color. Every single sentence is done in a different font. This epistle occupied the better part of an hour.

And I love the dismissive "enough talk of that." Reminds me of certain parts of the presidential/VP debates. "Actually, Gwen, I don't really want talk about that; I want to talk about TAXES ..."

I love that my son is so, so honest. He is unsure about the class since it involves being on stage, so he admits it right up front.

I hope they find it as endearing as I do.

But one thing I've learned as a mama is that there are times when other people do not find my children's quirks charms as endearing as I do. Such is the burden and blessing of parenthood.

Speaking of scholarships, Jenny has a doozy posted here. As I always tell my kids, "The reason that I insist you learn good manners is that one day you MIGHT be invited to dine with the President, and I will not have people saying your mama didn't teach you right." Enjoy.

Publish Post

For Pete's Sake!

We played the BEST, FUNNEST family game over the weekend, and I think it deserves some sort of Emmy or Oscar, because every single person in our family played and had a great time. And did I mention it was FREE? Go here to download the super-cute game boards and read the directions. We used gummy bears, and somehow, the whole family shouting "DON'T EAT PETE!" never failed to crack ourselves up (Note: this could be a fun and quick party game for adults as well).

As a result, gummy bears are now referred to in this household as "Petes." As in, "MOM, STOP DRIVING! One of my Petes fell on the floor of the car!!!"

And in keeping with the game theme, part of the date I mentioned in my last post was for Tim and I to play SET while sipping coffee in bed on Saturday morning. I think those particular gears in my brain were a bit rusty, but they got cranking eventually. Isn't that romantic?

It was actually helpful to engage in this sort of merrymaking over the weekend, because it distracted me from gnawing on questions like:
"Where will we be living next year?" [Tim is applying for jobs, although he doesn't graduate until December.]
"Where should we take our celebratory family vacation next December, and how much do we need to save for it?"
"Should I go to Boston for my friend Joe's wedding next month?"
"Should I put my middle child in school?"
"Why do I let my feelings get hurt over things that aren't really supposed to be personal, and why do I mourn for days?"

Hmph. Perhaps it's time for a round of Boggle.

Big people, big world

Tim and I were busy acting like adults this morning, meeting with our financial advisors while we let the TV babysit our children (Man Vs. Wild, Season 1 just arrived from Netflix).

Note on the financial advisors: We really like them, and if anyone wants a recommendation, just ask me. They have convinced us that we will NOT go bankrupt before Tim graduates, and they also congratulated me on keeping our household expenses so well under control. Which is good thing, because if they'd said anything else about our household expenses, I might have thrown something sharp at them.

Kidding. Mostly.

But we are being responsible parents, dealing with life insurance and educational savings accounts and retirement and all that, especially once we have an actual job, with an actual salary. How nice.

Speaking of salary, Caroline eventually wandered out and climbed into my lap. "Depending on your salary ..." one of the gentlemen was saying, and my girl perked up. "Celery? I want some celery sticks!" She made a beeline for the brimming Tupperware in the fridge.

A few minutes later, back on my lap, she heard him run through a list of life-insurance carriers (we need more than we currently have). He mentioned "Nationwide," and as if on cue, she began singing, "Nationwide is on your side!" (Remember the really annoying and ubiquitous commercials during the Olympics? Clearly, they had their designated effect.)

Holy bananas! Tim and I have a date tonight! Even more adult-ish! The children are all spending the night at their grandparents'. We have NO plan. But it'll be just the two of us.

Yup. Believe it.

And on a different note ...

... here are some fun links for you!

Inspiring Creativity:

One Pretty Thing - oodles of links to great DIY stuff on the web. Inspired me to make scented rice pillows with the girls this week.
Design Mom
No Time for Flashcards
Maya*made
A Foothill Home Companion has a nice recipe for chocolate playdough; we now have a stash in our playdough box.

And, inspiring thoughts of summer activities:
Book Club for Boys

And Nienie is blogging again! Amazing. But wrenching.

Letting you in

Why did we make an emergency run to Whole Foods today?

(Not the downtown WF, the flagship store beneath the world headquarters that can take hours to go through, especially if you stop for little samples at the nut butter bar because you're so enchanted by the offering of chocolate almond butter ... No. The north WF. Boring.)

Answer: to buy a box of coconut popsicles.

Why was this necessary?

Because Ian earned the popsicle privilege by accumulating a high enough rating on his new Attitude Scale by the midpoint of the week.

You know, there's really a lot that I don't share on this blog, believe or no, partly because like many other moms-who-blog, I have concerns about my kids' privacy. I would hate to share anything that might make them feel horribly betrayed if they were to stumble across my blog or even be given it to read one day. That's why I'm not posting any pics of my girls lying on my floor after their bath, buck naked, listening to Curious George Rides a Bike on the iPod.

We do have limits.

But, from time to time I think it might be helpful to share more than usual in case any of my struggles can be of use to anyone else out there. Sometimes, when you have a challenging child (or more than one), there's a tendency to feel that either a) it's your fault somehow, professional opinions to the contrary, or b) you're all alone, swimming at the rocky edges outside the mainstream.

Those who have only recently started reading might not know that my dear, sweet, intelligent son also has diagnoses of ADHD, giftedness, and a nonverbal learning disability (which makes social skills harder to grasp). Again, I wrestle with how much to share, but then I wonder if NOT sharing perpetuates an inappropriate stigma. There is nothing "wrong" with my child. There are simply parts of his brain that are slower to develop than others, and other parts are faster than average, so the fallout from such uneven development can sometimes be more than a parent feels that she can handle.

Lately we have been seeing a therapist who specializes in anxiety and attentional issues in children. Ian likes her, which is a major victory in itself. I like her too. Sometimes it's just reassuring to hear someone who knows what she's talking about tell you that you've taken on a huge, huge task, being the one who all day long is giving instructions to such a child. Plus raising other children, neither of whom is a shrinking violet. Plus, plus, plus.

She and Ian work out all sorts of deals together, working on becoming flexible, on being a good sport, on moderating his intensity with some coping skills. Sometimes it's just a relief to have someone else to whom he can be accountable.

Last Friday we agreed (with Tim present) that in order for me to continue homeschooling, certain parts of the system needed to be in place. Number One was more time for me to breathe. To step back and recuperate. To have the house to myself for a couple hours at a time on the weekend. The doctor felt this was imperative, and whom I to argue with a professional? :-)

We also came up with the attitude rating scale. Hearing "I hate schoolwork" is, well, kind of a bummer, especially when you do your best to make it stimulating and fun. I think it's not only a downer for me, but also unhealthy for him, since those thoughts tend to wear a groove in one's mind when entertained for too long. There is a fine line between suppressing one's feelings and deciding to think differently.

There is a poster hanging in our kitchen right now, detailing what the various ends of the scale "look like." We check in twice a day and see if our ratings (my eval, his self-assessment) match up. We go with my rating, but bump it up a point if our numbers independently match. Learning to self-evaluate, Dr. S pointed out, is a useful life skill. Tim had to use it once a year at Michelin. Theoretically, this exercise resulted in a nice raise.

So there you go. Sometimes I pray that all the lessons I'm learning, lessons I needed to save me from being that judgmental, condescending parent with the perfectly compliant, easygoing child who glorifies my excellent mothering skills, will be of use to just one person some day.

And if that might be you, or even if you've tasted discouragement for any other reason recently, then maybe the following will feed you as it did me today. The passage is spoken by Joshua and Caleb, the spies sent into Canaan by Moses who returned to hear their colleagues delivering a frightening report of the giants and dangers in the land.

"If the Lord is pleased with us, then He will bring us into this land, and give it to us -- a land which flows with milk and honey. Only do not rebel against the Lord, and do not fear the people of the land, for they shall be our prey. Their protection has been removed from them, and the Lord is with us; do not fear them." Numbers 14:8-9.