3 Ways To Spark Your Kid's Imagination

I actually shouldn’t be writing about this, I should be reading about this. Somewhere in my desire to not raise kids as legalistically as I was, we developed an electronics addiction in this house. I need a step by step AA level-esque game plan to kick the habit that doesn’t include never using electronics, and isn’t full of inspirational quotes. I need it to be practical and pragmatic. Does it exist?

In the meantime, this is what works thus far.

1. Put them to work. Trying to lure my children off of electronics never works. All of their toys are boring, there’s nothing to do and it feels like they sort of wade through life waiting for the next opportunity to get on electronics…even if that’s five days away. But if I assign mopping the floor, scrubbing the toilet and raking leaves in the backyard, they all do their jobs and then magically find plenty of things with which to entertain themselves.

2. Play by yourself. Adults don’t usually sit on the floor in a batman mask and start building a giant zoo out of magnatiles and play animals. It’s like catnip. (see previous post on how I get my children to eat their vegetables.) The same mom radar that allows babies to sense when a parent is trying to lay them down in a crib, is still alive and kicking at older ages. If you build it, they will come. Good luck trying to sneak away.

3. Turn off the router. Preferably have your husband turn off the router remotely from an app for the best Deus Ex Machina effect. If they start to read the instruction manual for the router, crawl under the house to see if the Cat5 cable is still intact, and hypothesize with each other on ways to fix the internet, then at least they’re getting language arts, PE and Socratic discussions done.

I wish these were my kids, but it will never be that green here. Ahem.

How to lose weight, find the bad guy, and cure the coronavirus

An oh so helpful list to enjoy over the weekend.

1. When people ask me how I stay so fit, I tell them it’s because I have four boys. They laugh, but it’s the gospel truth. I made myself poached eggs over curried vegetables for breakfast and got approx 1.2 bites before it was consumed by my ravenous children who beg for cereal and then act like they’ve never eaten five minutes after the dishes are cleaned and the food is put away. I have a current thing for stir fries. Stir fry with udon noodles…stir fry with couscous….stir fry with lentils. But doesn’t matter what kind of stir fry it is, I rarely get to eat it. I could put fried worms and rotten fish in my stir fry and all of my children would think it was amazing. I know it’s my own fault, but they’re so cute when they ask for a bite. The problem is there are four of them and a few of them have gigantic mouths. I guess I should be grateful they’re eating vegetables.

2. Part of the reason I don’t watch many movies or TV shows is because I am the most gullible and easily spooked person ever, and pretty much have to watch every scary-ish movie sitting in Jim’s lap, clutching him in terror (which he considers a perk…especially when we were d̶a̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ courting). I need clues, big obvious clues about who to trust and who not to, which is why I was stoked to read this: “Apple won’t let bad guys use iphones in movies”. This may make me actually like iphones a little….hmmm…or not.

3. Approximately 62,000 men and 26,000 women die from alcohol related deaths every year, which means that Corona (the beer) is more deadly than the virus (Thank you Owen for that one). I thought since my kids know their Latin, they would get a kick out of something being named “crown”, but no… they instead think it’s hilarious to pretend like they’re popping open a can and then clutching their throat and dying violently on the ground. I’m trying to nip such behavior in the bud, but it’s not going well. We haven’t been hit by the Corona virus, but we have had some lingering coughs here, and it rekindled my love for the Lobelia herb. Seriously works amazing on coughs, but tastes like death. My husband says that it cures your cough by making you never want to breath again. I use this one, but if you use it, don’t blame me if you sprout horns out of your tongue.

Pineal Gland, Repentance, and Smooth Moves

Or as I screw up and say it “Pineleal gland, repenitence and smeeoooth moves, which is totally unintentional, but in my opinion an improvement. (despite my husband dying of laughter every time I say stuff like this).

When I found out a few of my kids have legit auditory processing issues, I realized that it probably comes from me. Somehow I sidestepped the more difficult parts of an auditory processing problem by burying my long-skirted, homeschooled, nearsighted self in books where everything makes perfect sense (or not…but at least it’s all clear cut).

So take this with a giant grain of salt, but I had an epiphany the other day: What if listening to music or watching something on a screen is the same difference as watching somebody eat vs ingesting food, or watching someone have sex vs actually having it? There is absolutely no comparison between listening to a symphony (even if it’s on $300 headphones), and being in a symphony hall. Listening to an old message of a loved who has passed away is never going to be as good as actually having them in front of you. What if we’ve been sold so much on listening devices (I blame the inventor of the phonograph) that no one can actually play instruments in their home? Live?

I read a book(ish) on the the pineal glad (i.e. the intersection of ancient thought and modern thought, which is my kind of book, you can buy it here). Your pineal gland (located in your brain) has always been called the 3rd eye, but the only real thing we know about it these days is that it regulates melatonin and other circadian rythym things, but they think it’s very sensitive to music. Also, calcification is bad.

There’s an interesting study on it here.

They say organ music opens the pineal gland because of the vibrations. As I cried through a hymn in church today, I wondered if that’s why we have organs in churches the same way some churches have amazing stained glass.

Whatever the case, an open pineleal gland really helps with the repenitence.

The healing tank, 9 boys & a girl, and an overgrown playhouse

Tall pine trees, a sturdy three story house riddled by woodpeckers and the only thing that’s missing are all of my siblings saying goodnight like the Walton’s. My parent’s home is like a Star Wars’ healing bacta tank…although it maybe shouldn’t be since my dad broke his hip on a broken beam over the garage when I was eleven, and my sister Liz and I raised and schooled our younger siblings in the overgrown playhouse in the backyard while our parents worked at building a house from the ground up like Ma and Pa Ingalls. (I’m trying to see how many of my favorite childhood movies I can fit in.)

It’s currently inundated with a zoo of boys (and one adorable girl who gave me my first Disney makeover). When Jim and Kevin were college roommates, I don’t think either one off them pictured this one day.

Beethoven and Migraines

Nothing kicks off a migraine like Beethoven’s 5th symphony.

We finally made it to the symphony this week for the first time in a year or so. We’ve gone with our homsechool group for years (to the field trip version which randomly includes refrigerators, beat boxing and 40 yr old women play acting as children). Migraines aside, Beethoven this week was perfect. Sometimes I can’t relate to the music they play at the symphony (although I always enjoy it), but who can’t relate to Beethoven? He’s the original full range of feels.

Once, when I was super postpartum with one of my kids, we all went to the symphony… during that stage where the ergo is permanently tattooed to one’s hips, and all of the tears and things are still flowing like the opposite of the land of milk and honey. I couldn’t go in because the sweet, rule following ancient ushers didn’t want the baby to be inside the inner sanctum. I completely understood and so pawned my older children off on friends and listened to the music from the lobby. About halfway through, a kind extra ancient gentleman usher had pity on me and let me go sit in the back. I vividly remember sitting in the chair, jiggling the ergo (hoping the baby didn’t realize I’d sat down), not really paying attention to the music, but something snapped. Sometimes when you’re not paying attention to the music, the music is still paying attention to you. I don’t even know what piece it was, but nothing compares to hearing a live symphony. It wraps around you, and comes up the bottoms of your feet. It’s nothing like listening to the same piece on even the most expensive sound system., and so I started bawling. Every phrase and line was like balm to my poor, traumatized post partum self.

I’m passed that phase (thank goodness), but the magic of the symphony never ceases. My more musical kids were almost frozen (the boy version of frozen) with the awe of it.

Beethoven wasn’t to blame for the migraine (luck of the draw), but I’m seriously at my wit’s end with these things and will try anything if anyone has any suggestions. So far I’ve got a pantry full of different prescription meds. I’ve tried acupuncture, chiropractic, various forms of magnesium, supplements and cbd topical cream. They all help in varying ways, but not enough to make a dent. I end up wearing sunglasses, puking in the random trashcan and praying I don’t decapitate a student for clicking their pen off and on or breathing too loudly.

I’d blast Beethoven’s 5th at anyone who dares misbehave if that wasn’t super counterproductive.

Cranky children, French intensive gardening in the dark, and the moon

When I imagined having children, I was (am) naturally pessimistic enough to skip over the standard issue dreams of straight A students, star athletes and whatever else one hopes for when you see two lines on a pregnancy test. I did maintain a few visions perhaps of chubby, rosy cheeked toddlers with striped shirts, overalls and blonde curls (which coincidentally I got), but for the most part I’m hard to surprise.

So I wouldn’t say I was surprised by any of my children’s behavior today, but it did remind me that even though I may have passed the diapers and sleepless nights stage of parenting, there are plenty of new stages. Every time someone stops me at the grocery store and tells me to savor these moments because they go quickly, I want to stop and hug them for being one of the few people left who haven’t read the articles on Facebook and aren’t afraid to tell mothers that. I’ve considered passing out thank you notes to anyone who tells me I’ve got my hands full, or that I’m blessed…or cursed…. or that my child just ran over their foot with a cart, because I’m glad they’re not scared to say it (even though I’m somewhat scared of strangers). I like to live in a world where people notice children…. sometimes.

• One of my children ripped a reading book and evoked the berserker death glare that I’m sure is the fault of some Scandinavian grandfather nine generations back.

• One of my children didn’t earn his gummy bear in math, and proceeded to sneak the whole bag into the car where he was caught and burst into guilty tears and prostrations of penitence.

• One of my children is at camp this week and I miss him. He’s currently my only perfect child.

• All of my remaining children wouldn’t wake up today which made me think they might all have the Corona virus since early risings have been a lifetime achievement for all of them. They were so grumpy. I meant to check if the moon is waxing or waning although I’m not sure which one causes crazy behavior.

Speaking of the moon… I wasn’t into the whole moon thing until I couldn’t get a hospital room when the 3rd child was born and the nurses calmly explained it was because of the full moon. Now I blame almost everything on the moon. Your keys were found in the knife drawer? Can’t remember what a passive subjunctive verb is? A new pack of socks is mysteriously missing? All definitely caused by the moon. I’m only half joking, I read this study a few years ago that just solidified for me that all things can be blamed on the moon (or maybe just sleep patterns, I dunno).

We found that around full moon, electroencephalogram (EEG) delta activity during NREM sleep, an indicator of deep sleep, decreased by 30%, time to fall asleep increased by 5 min, and EEG-assessed total sleep duration was reduced by 20 min. These changes were associated with a decrease in subjective sleep quality and diminished endogenous melatonin levels. This is the first reliable evidence that a lunar rhythm can modulate sleep structure in humans when measured under the highly controlled conditions of a circadian laboratory study protocol without time cues.

One of my other New Year’s goals was to spend more time doing physical things and not abstract things, so when I got home I promptly went out to the backyard and worked on digging my garden (after I nearly put everyone in a worse mood with my own bad mood). I don’t think I’m cut out for gardening, but I like it so I’m going to stick to it even if it takes me months to dig up a 10’x10’ square of dirt. I hate jumping on the shovel and then hitting something so solid I either need to see a chiropractor or it is the chiropractor. I think there may be some leftover cement underground in my backyard… or maybe an old septic tank… or maybe a coffin. Who knows, but it’s square, and large and cement, and like I said, there’s nothing wrong with my imagination. I blame the moon.

Hair Extensions and Object Complement Nouns

I had the hair-brained idea to get extensions (literally I guess). Sometimes I worry my thought process runs on a permanent slippery slope fallacy.  I start out thinking about homemade kefir and somehow end up eating store bought ice cream. In my head the transition is always seamlessly logical.  I barely even notice going from kefir recipes, to raw milk sources, to researching ice cream makers on Amazon to settling for Trader Joe's coconut milk ice cream, to "Oh, well Walmart is closer and I'll buy the stuff with real cream and sugar" to "oh hey, sale on the store brand."  Ho hum. 

Some people are born with the ability to know what's socially acceptable and some people have to make themselves a spreadsheet and flowchart to know whether or not it's ok to shave your legs...but not your arms.  Or fake fingernails are ok, but not fake fingers. Push-up bras are fine, but fake boobs are suspect. For whatever reason, it's perfectly acceptable to color your hair, but not add fake hair. As someone with naturally curly hair, this has never really kept me up at night until recently when I was diagnosed with a subset of health conditions that has resulted in less than stellar locks. 

So I did what any normal person does and went straight to Amazon, then coerced a sister into installing my newly purchased 100% Human Hair Remy locks.  After I had an ethical crisis imagining some sort of Gift Of The Magi situation,  I pictured myself sauntering around looking like this. 

Instead I ended up more looking like this: 

Pros: I had more hair than Ariel, Elsa and Rapunzel put together (Ok, maybe not Rapunzel).  It braided beautifully, went up in a messy bun like I was born to be a nonchalant movie star with over-sized sunglasses, and my kids kept staring at me and backing away slowly.   

Cons: It clumped up and wouldn't blend with my regular hair, itched terribly, and I couldn't sleep. For those who don't like Jamberry or other sticker nails because of the way it feels like wearing a maxi pad on your finger... skip hair extensions altogether because that's exactly what it felt like, but on your head. 

Also, note to self: If the price is too good to be true, it will probably melt like green plastic army men. 

I stubbornly stuck with it though. My fake clumpy hair extensions were fabulous. I discovered a newfound appreciation for runway models, people with naturally long/heavy hair, and anyone else who has to endure weirdness in the name of aesthetics. I was trying to teach my 9yr old the difference between a direct object and an object complement noun and after the third time picking long stray hairs off his face, he said "Mom, I can't even take you seriously right now.".  Fair enough.  

So after a day of Jordan Petersoning all of my life's goals and taking a good hard look at my narcissistic tendencies, the hair extensions went back in the box and I resumed the normal pinned up and glasses look I've been sporting for years. It's fine. Better this way. On Mondays I teach a bunch of cute little preschoolers/kindergartners, and on Wednesdays I teach a bunch of equally cute but rather tall jr. highers, so channeling my inner Professor McGonagall instead of Trelawney is probably the better way to go. 

Next I plan to shave my head and wear a different wig for every day of the week (I kid, I kid...maybe).  

Oh, and if you're in the same boat with the whole teaching nouns thing.  And "No No D.O (direct object), label verb transitive" is a common refrain in your house. You might also try "Replace? Yes. Amen, label O.C.N. (object complement noun)" or "Describe? Yes. Hooray, label O.C.A. (object complement adjective)". 

The Samson Toddler

My childhood brain nearly imploded once when I overheard a learned adult hypothesize Samson was actually a scrawny guy. Blasphemy! Didn't they see the super accurate pictures on my Sunday School coloring page? But in a way, it kinda makes sense. Would everyone have been amazed by his strength if he looked like the Hulk with muscles rippling out like four Dwayne Johnson's stacked two high and two wide? Or would they have been more shocked if he had the typical dad-bod yet could swing a lion around like a small cat and go on a mass murdering spree with nothing but a donkey jaw?  

That sums up how I feel about my two year old right now.  He's a bit tiny for his age, although he does actually grow occasionally because I noticed recently his belly was starting to stick out of his 9-12 month shirts (which is unacceptable because we don't allow immodest crop tops in this household, so I promptly took it off and let him go shirtless). But despite having three other boys whose antics were very similar, I can't seem to help but marvel at the sheer insanity that is me trying to keep up with my youngest. But since we wrote down his older siblings' stories it would be remiss not to also chronicle his shenanigans: In a way, he's both easier and more difficult than Jamie was. Easier because I already survived one child who never sleeps and climbs everything, so I can sit this one out from the lofty towers of complacency. But it's harder because I don't have the time, energy or desire to train this last one or work as hard as I did with the first one. It really is true the youngest is more spoiled. I thought maybe it was just my jaded perspective as a firstborn, but unless everyone else is doing a much better job with their caboose child (don't answer that), I'm thinking this can safely move from theory to fact.  

When Jamie climbed out of his crib, Jim and I waited in the dark below his crib, rose up and went all Walking Dead whenever he attempted to climb out.  That didn't work so well with William because a) it kept his brothers awake more than it served as a compelling reason to stay in his crib  and b) like all strict parenting books tell you, you CAN train a child to be obedient, but while he did eventually learn to go to bed at bedtime, that didn't stop him from getting up in the middle of the night and raiding the pantry and fridge like a raccoon. c) no amount of training kept him from getting up for the day at 4:30/5:00 am.  

So we bought a sleep tent for the tidy sum of $100 (which I blogged about before) but was guaranteed to give exhausted parents a safe place to put their child during sleeping hours.  Within a week he broke the front panel out...just pushed his finger through the rip proof nylon until he got enough of an indentation to get a good grip, rip it open and emerge victorious in the baby game of Survivor.  We fixed that which earned us a whole month of sleep before he figured out how to wiggle the zipper down enough to make quick work of the rest (if he was smart, he would have figured that out first).  We used a carabiner after that to lock the zipper shut and that got us all the way to last night when Jim and I had just settled on the couch for a relaxing evening of Sherlock, bourbon and sewing projects when we heard a suspicious amount of bumping and activity going on in the back bedroom.  Jim went to go check and discovered our small son razing havoc like a small Tasmanian devil ping-ponging around the room.  

We assumed he'd just busted the carabiner lock (which had happened before), but no...he had ripped the entire tent off its base.  I assume, judging by the five star reviews, that this is not a common occurrence for other owners of this tent. And he seriously looks too small to do anything remotely that powerful, which is why I'm henceforth dubbing him my Samson toddler.  He may not talk very well, and he may not be super well behaved, but just to be on the safe side, I'm going to lock up the donkey jawbones.  

It's a good thing children look so angelic when they're sleeping? 

3 Things That Happened When We Put The TV In The Garage

Warning: You are entering a moderation-free zone.  Cultish rocks ahead. 

Jim and I took our giant flat screen TV off the wall, wrapped it in blankets and put it in the garage in a small space between the freezer and a tall tool rack.  I'm not sure how long it's going to hang out in its new real estate, but after a week of struggling to keep it off, and then a regression back to insanity, we put it out there out of pure frustration.  

This is how my morning usually goes.  Jamie and William are up before any rooster would even dream of deciding it's daylight. I turn on something like Little Einsteins in a half dead zombie walk and then go back to bed.  By the time I get up during the normal human zone of 6:00-6:30, the TV has already staked out its claim on my day.  And wrenching it back is like wrestling a dragon.  People like to think dragons don't exist anymore, but they do.  Mine go by names of "Netflix" and "Ipads" and "Minecraft".  

The problem with dragons is that they're not traditionally easy to kill right?  If it was a simple matter of hacking up your TV in the front driveway with a machete like some sort of post-modern Braveheart then we'd all do it in a heartbeat. Self-righteous parenting books, articles (and adults over the age of 50) make it sound so simple: Just limit your kid's screen time to NONE if you're a good parent, and 30 minutes a day if you're the weaker brethren. Fine. Wonderful.  But modern monasticism isn't a tenable strategy. Maybe the next Steve Jobs will have been raised on an organic goat farm with nothing but dragonflies and dandelions to keep them entertained, but this household makes up the peasant folk for sure. 

And so we're left battling the dragons in the pig pen because moderation is a thing worth fighting for (even if it means you constantly have to repair the fences in the North field too). Although with the TV dragon currently vanquished to the garage with a blanket over its head, and the rest of the little dragons hidden away in an underwear drawer, I must say it's been kind of nice.  Here are three "stop and smell the daisies" type of things I noticed today.  

The Whining Went Away 

Sure, the kids built a parkour course in the living room, I had to bathe the two youngest ones twice, and at one point in time, my living room was covered in cardboard and Elmer's glue. But no one told me they were bored, or tired, or cold, or hot or any of the other thousand little things that I thought were real things but now I'm wondering if they weren't just hind-brain justifications for wanting to watch TV. 

They Enjoyed School 

This one surprised me. Instead of falling apart at the drop of a hat when they didn't understand something, or moaning at the sheer magnitude of work their terrible mean mother makes them do, they actually did double the school today with nary a fuss. I think it was because there was no reason to get through it fast and when you're homeschooled, learning is easily mistaken for just hanging out and having fun with mom.  Kids aren't born hating chemistry or stories.  

They Talked More 

Maybe for some people, this would be a hard negative but in this Scandinavian-esque male household, I'm always thrilled when people decide to use real words instead of grunt or punch. There are those studies that show the more extroverted and talkative the mother is, the earlier her kids will learn to talk. This study clearly did not take into account my husband's strong stoic genes which apparently canceled out all of my talkative ones since I can rack up word counts with the best of them.  Today though, I not only heard a lot of sapient conversation going on, but the smallest one was talking too!  Winning! 

In conclusion...

I don't expect it to work so well tomorrow, but I enjoyed today anyway.  I think part of the reason there was such a stark difference was because the TV was physically gone.  It's hard to bargain for something that's tangibly missing. It helps I'm not strong or big enough to get it in from the garage if I wanted. Sometimes I get so stuck in the abstract world, that I forget something simple like not just saying we're going to watch less TV, but actually moving the solid object so you match the corporeal with the abstract.

 You know, slay the real dragon... but not with a real sword.  

Lentils, Insanity and Dinosaur Trains

I used to hate it when my parents sat us all down for a "family pow wow".  They were epic come to Jesus talks that usually ended with us all getting up early, doing more chores and sorting out whatever major attitude problems were shaping up into WWIII.  I loathed them so much, that early in our marriage when Jim casually mentioned "let's pow wow" I broke out into a cold sweat and treated the poor man like he'd just suggested a flogging post and torture rack.  

Now I have four kids, and although the word "pow wow" is still strictly forbidden, I realized I totally do the same thing.  Negotiating with a two year old is a slippery slope where you think peeling a banana a certain way or watching a show in the morning is not a big deal, and then before you know it you're standing on your head, holding your mouth a certain way and angling the banana so it correctly lines up with the earth's magnetic field as you peel it at 5 am while you watch the same dinosaur train episode.  ...and you don't even know how it got this bad.  

Multiply that by four, throw in the end of CC and state testing and it's no wonder people commonly burn out this time of year.  

So I sat all of the kids down and told them we were having a week reset of absolutely no fun (you have to set the standard super low so something like playing math bingo feels like you're getting away with murder). We're doing nothing but learning poetry, reading books, doing math and re-learning how to play nicely with our siblings. I cleaned up our food while I was at it, because I figured you might as well bum everyone out with one swift kick in the pants.  Our diet had slipped from pizza occasionally and cold cereal as an emergency backup to such a high level of consumption that they need to come up with a new scientific classification of consumers for us: Herbivores, Carnivores, Omnivores and the Junkavores. 

It had gotten so bad even Jamie was craving healthy food.  He's become so big and responsible this year (mostly) that he can babysit for short periods and go places independently. So when he kept bugging me and bugging me for lentil soup, I finally just handed him my card and told him if he wanted it that bad he was going to have to do it himself.  

...and I was surprised he called my bluff, but he did. He walked to the grocery store and asked someone where the leeks and lentils were located, used the self checkout and was home in ten minutes total. Jim and I teased him later that the only reason someone didn't get him into trouble was because they probably had never met a potentially troublesome sixth grader shopping for lentils and leeks.  Ahem.

 I wonder sometimes if other families have to go through the monumental, boot slogging task of feeling like they have to troubleshoot every.single.area of their kids' lives. Oftentimes it seems like my kids only struggle struggle struggle, and never succeed.  Everything needs extra work and effort, nothing comes easy.  We were back to forming ABC's today like we're in Kindergarten to fix a bunch of letter reversals that have been cropping up lately. William probably needs speech therapy too, but there is a limit to how many "therapies" one can juggle in a week, and his issues are mild (in comparison).  But see? It's a constant state of triage on who needs the most help.  Of course after three kids who needed speech therapy to even start talking, I feel like at this point I should just write my own.   "Speech Bootcamp For Stubborn Toddlers: The at home guide for parents who want to hear something other than 'EEEEEEEEGHH!' all day" 

But hey, two days in and everyone is doing a lot better (food wise, school wise, and behavior wise) so maybe my parents were on to something with their "pow wows".  And honestly there are worse things than sitting home all day eating watermelon and homemade beef jerky while you build epic train tracks and read Laddie aloud.  But in defense of electronics and Netflix...  Jamie said there wasn't one thing on his common core state test that wasn't in Wild Kratz and Magic Schoolbus. So there.