Hiatus

Since I keep this primarily for the benefit of Robby while he's overseas, I am taking a brief hiatus while he is in the states and I am stuck in Fort Worth for work.

Be back next week.

world 8

in an effort to break the kids of their wii habit, i try to keep them out of the house as much as possible.  sure - it would be easier to just stand my ground and NOT allow them to play while we're home but there is only so much screaming and thrashing one human being can take before caving.  thankfully, the kids have made it through 8 of the 9 worlds in mario.  my fingers are crossed that they save the damn princess within the next week and slowly lose interest.  hopefully.

since i like to prove that my kids' intellect is not rapidly deteriorating with every bleep and bloop of video games, i try to squeeze in actual knowledge around the mundane tasks of life.  over dinner, i tried to explain halves and fourths using our food.  i'm pretty sure the take-away from this lesson is that one half of spinach equals zero because hardie doesn't like yucky stuff.  otherwise, i am pleased to announced that bea has mastered the four cardinal directions.  while taking a bath, she made a pirate ship, complete with compass, and then explained which direction each pirate's sword was facing.  i tried to explain fractions using spinach and tilapia, bea explains north and south using weapons.  clearly we are never ever ever going to make it in regular school. 

freebirds etiquette lesson

a lesson in itchy foilage

counting black beans

the arts: literature and fashion

weekend wrap-up, now with more napping

this weekend was both busy and profoundly lazy.  saturday was the last bout of the derby season (yay) and the kids came with me to see the game.

i'd like to say that this was the end of the night, but this is pretty much what the kids did while i skated.  after the game bea woke up enough to congratulate me on my win but went right back to sleep.  i don't think hardie woke up at all.  they are so supportive, those tiny people.

no one was interested in church sunday morning.  no one.

but things got a little rosier at breakfast. 

i'd like to say that we spent the balance of sunday being active and not watching tv or playing wii but i would also like to say that i don't lie so, um, yeah.  in an effort to not feel completely useless, we did have two really bad science lesson.  the first was dissecting a wasp's nest and the second was popping popcorn.  in both instances i was learned that, for the most part, i am science dumb.  i also learned that writhing wasp pupae are universally creepy.  next week i will either look up actual information before exposing my kids to 'um, yeah...the popcorn...gets...hot? and then explodes.  it makes a cool noise.'

staph meeting

did i mention that the kids' staph infection is finally under control?  did i mention that my own staph infection is not? 

stupid kid cooties.

censored for decency's sake

appropriate math

i don't know if elementary academics have changed dramatically in the last 29 years or if i've just successfully blocked out my own first grade experience but there seems to be an awful lot of homework for bea every night.  it may be the vague 'read.  do math.' instructions from her school or the guilt-inducing paper i have to fill out every night outlining exactly what we did and for how long but it seems like most of what we do every night is homework.  probably inappropriate homework.  i admit that i have no idea what a first grader should be reading or mathing.  the workbooks i found at barnes and noble that were labeled for bea's age group seemed ridiculously simple so i opted for generic math skills that offered work that would likely be challenging or at least more interesting than grouping flowers and adding 1+4.  similarly, my knowledge of reading levels goes from 'good night moon' to 'great expectations'.  also i'm not joking - i plan to introduce my kids to the flaming miss havisham just as soon as i find an expensive paperback version.  since the school year began, we've read tom sawyer, some halloween fairy nonsense, and started huckleberry finn.  admittedly i sort of regretted the tom sawyer bit but by the time i got to the overt racism and murder we were already pretty involved in the plot and it seemed a shame to put it down...then it seemed a shame to not continue the adventures.  at this rate, my kids will be amazingly well-read and able to do calculus by fifth grade but not be able to find michigan on a map.  or write in cursive.  or play four square.  one day i'm going to find my kids in a dark alley watching hannah montana on tv and surrounded by empty soda cans and candy bar wrappers. 

'two trains leave detroit at 2pm heading north...'

no gooooooooooooooooooooooooooal

yesterday was the first day of the fall soccer season and it was a total fail.  bea's coach didn't show up, nor did most of the team which leads me to believe that some sort of communication went out that we were not a part of either changing the day or the time or both.  so we used the opportunity to go to the pool and experience a late summer swimming fail - a freak cold front moved in and the pool was freezing.  overall, not a very sporty day but at least we stayed busy.

in school news, i happened to see bea walking with her class on friday and it didn't look like she'd made much progress in the social sphere.  she was walking alone, head down, at least 3 feet from another child.  i talk to her every night about school and she never mentions being lonely and she talks about other kids so i'm not sure if i just happen to always catch her at a lonely moment or if she interacts with a lot of people on a superficial level but doesn't have anyone she considers a friend.  hardie is ever aloof and almost never acknowledges that anyone else exists in his world outside of his immediate family.  academically they are both doing well.  bea is excelling at math in a way that is almost intimidating.  she seems to enjoy the montessori environment though sometimes i wonder whether it contributes to her isolation.  hardie's teachers make a point of chasing us down the hallway to say what a great student he is and how much of a joy he is to have in their class.  i suspect that he spends all day in quiet complacency waiting for the moment when he gets to play wii. 

not soccer

not soccer

not pleasant

a day in the life

our schedule these days can be best summed up by the following saturday morning quote from beatrice: 'why can't we ever just sleep and sleep until we're done with sleeping?'  exclusive of extracurricular activities (the kids' and my own) we have about 3 minutes of every day that isn't obligated to some Very Important Task.  bea started back at ballet on thursday and this week both kids start a new soccer season.  thankfully, my own derby season ends this weekend so that will free up a little time...to be filled with the height of race season.  sigh.

as for the weekend - i didn't manage to document anything other than our trip for ice cream and dance performance at miller outdoor theater.  the excitement here is that bea discovered butter finger as an ice cream/yogurt topping. 

pretty pictures

today was an exercise in artistic achievement.  hardie has taken up bea's favorite technique of coloring in rainbow.  i'm not sure where the D ran off to in his name or why the H A R all look suspiciously similar but i'm pleased with the development of both his increased interest in writing and his flair for, well, flair.

a study in rainbow letter by hardie

i love you, ikea pillow by bea

rainbow fish, kicking hello kitty ass by hardie

this has to be my favorite creation of the evening.  as it was explained to me, this is an illustration of bea's birthday party at a school called 'B-Fun'.  bea is represented at the bumble bee, while i am the butterfly and hardie is the fly.  there is also a bird, a fly, fire ant, a catepillar, and a grasshopper. since only some of the creatures can fly, those without wings are floating on leaves.  in the corner is a lonely sugar ant who is shaking his body so that he might look more like a spider.  everyone is having a snowball fight and has a grey snowball in their...hands? except for the sugar ant/spider.  he's already thrown his to the fly.  i am now more than ever intrigued by what goes on that little blonde head of bea.  it must be a fabulous place.  and also a terrifying place with changeling attack insects.  

laboring day of love. and wii.

i try to fill our days with activities other than playing wii, which has become the kids' most favorite activity.  ever.  ever.  the official guideline for 'screen time' is no more than 2 hours per day but if you've ever had to sit through 2 hours of the super mario brothers' theme song you will recognize that this is roughly 1 hour and 55 minutes too much.  it is also remarkably difficult to find 2 hours worth of activities that are as engaging as mario or as conducive to napping on the couch while the kids play in the (virtual) sewers.  and so labor day was a day of errands and shopping and car washing and math and heat...and wii.  and a nap.

hardie was not so excited to leave the house (wii) and would only do so as spiderman. 

since bea's daily homework is a vague 'do math' and i have no idea how to teach math, i am stumbling through teaching her whatever math i can think of that might be easy to explain.  addition and subtraction, some easy times tables, geometry.  i don't know if i'm helping or ultimately harming here since i'm not instructing in any sort of state-mandated, foundations-of-learning, this-will-come-in-handy sort of way.  i'm just throwing out some numbers and shapes and theories and seeing what happens.  also there is no theory teachings, i just liked the way that sentence sounded.

haphazard math lesson

haphazard math lesson nap

when we've resorted to math problems for fun, its time to go ahead and admit that the day is super lame and probably it would be better to just give in, play wii, and pretend that that whole geometry lesson never happened.

aaaaaaaaaand wii

since its pretty apparent in this photo, hardie's staph infection isn't improving.  he's developing sores on his back, his neck, and on his scalp.  they don't seem to be getting as infected as bea's got but what they lack in germ they make up for in quantity.  every night i find myself putting medicine on more and more of his little body.  i just can't get on top of it.  thankfully it has not had an impact on his ability to play wii.  thankfully.

sunday at the children's museum

in which someone gets robbed and i get a sandwich

today the kids had quite a lesson in humanity - the highs, the lows, the ineffectual.  we went to walmart and managed to exit the car at the same time someone was robbing two women in the cars across from us.  the kids saw everything, including the part where i tried (unsuccessfully) to chase the robber down.  i was terrified but i also couldn't just watch someone get violated and not do anything.  i didn't manage to catch him or even stop him and in retrospect i'm not even sure he noticed me.  but the babies did.  when i came back to the car, after apologizing to the second woman, the kids were staring at me with tears in their eyes.  i took both of them in my arms and spent a few seconds completely at a loss as to what to do.  i wanted to get out of there - out of the parking lot, away from the store, away from the women that i was ultimately unable to help - but i also didn't want upset the babies any more than they already were.  so we went to walmart.  we wandered aimlessly through the aisles and purchased a whole cart full of post-traumatic stress goods:  toothbrushes, soap, lasagna noodles, crackers in the shape of a whale, fabric softener, dried eucalyptus, lunch box.

witnessing crime tends to put a damper on the day so mostly we just came home and played wii.  i also spent a lot of time washing blood off of hardie, who now has open sores on his head and awkwardly bleeds on things (and people) but that story doesn't have nearly the same excitement as the robbery one.  in fact, it pretty much begins and ends with: hardie has open sores on his head and awkwardly bleeds on things (and people).  the great staph battle of 2012 rages on.

to end on a happy note, i have been trying to continue the useful lessons of montessori (independence, self-reliance, responsibility) at home and let beatrice explore the world of culinary arts.  so far she's managed instant oatmeal and peanut butter sandwiches but i am confident that once her knife skills improve i can hand over the dinner reins and spend my evenings drinking martinis and playing wii with hardie.

the saddest, open-woundedest little man 

just kidding.  

chef beazle