May 12th, 2011
Family Playmobil Night
Our family loves playmobil. We hate plastic, but somehow still love playmobil. I don’t know how to justify it. All I can say is that this toy line is just sort of strange all by itself and that strangeness brings delight in our family.
BUT LOOK EVERYONE! A GAME!
Last week on family art night, we decided to drag out all the playmobil and create stories on our dining room table.
CAN YOU FIND…
- an aerial arborist?
- a girl street fight with saws, pitchforks and apples?
- a giraffe foster mother?
- Santa on clean up duty?
- a wounded donkey being auctioned off?
- a farmer’s market of small rodents?
- a unicorn acrobatic group?
- a badger doing a yard sale? (Crap, it looks like the badger got cut out of the photo!)
- a reindeer stunt group?
- kids jumping off a barn?
- a violent unicorn being subdued and trapped?
- a group photo!
GOOD WORK TEAM!
May 4th, 2011
Spring Garden 2011
I realized that I sort of jumped the gun on the garden photos with my mulch post. I just had to share my excitement while it was fresh. I truly spread the mulch and then ran into the house to blog about it. That is the sort of lightening-fast response time you can expect from me on important, breaking news about mulch!
This last weekend I plowed through the garden, putting most of it in on Sunday. (Plowed! Get it?! Ba-dump-bum!) It was a day of rest, but I couldn’t help but think of this work as the most enjoyable thing that I could have possibly done that day. I remember reading in Little House on the Prairie how Laura wasn’t even allowed to cut dresses out of paper for her paper dolls on Sunday because that was “work”. It doesn’t feel like work to dig around in the dirt, so I felt just fine laboring through the whole day.
I saved one bed for the kids to help finish off. They like the whole “planting” part of the garden, but not the digging or breaking up soil clods part, so I prepared the beds and let them sprinkle seeds willy-nilly. I’ll thin them out later.
plant waterer (?) Well, she is NEAR the plants at least.
We put in:
- cabbage
- cauliflower
- ONE zucchini
- ONE crook neck squash
- ONE lemon cucumber
- bush beans
- snap peas
- kale
- swiss chard
- three different types of lettuce
- onions
- marigolds (to ward off insects in the brassicaceae)
- beets
- sunflowers
Now how did we have room for all that? The answer is—we didn’t, but I like to try to pack it all in. I always get too many different varieties of seeds and starts. I forget what we are planning to do that year, get swept up in the moment and buy it all. In terms of food harvesting, I always want MORE. I am something of a food hoarder, which is why my freezer is packed with too much meat, I pick more peaches than I can can, and I kill myself peeling too many apples for apple sauce all while wishing I had filled JUST ONE MORE BOX. In the summer, some berries are not enough. I want more. (It just occurred to me that this is why I have TEN chickens instead of the FOUR we started off with.) MORE!
bean sower
April 20th, 2011
Chores
Like I said, the kids love a good gimmick. Enter the chore wheel (see last post).
Free Range Kids was not just a book about not being a stressed out, unhappy helicopter parent who allows children no freedom for fear of injury. It is also about kids becoming independent, capable adults. One of the points that resonated greatly with me was the section on children’s need for chores.
I believe in chores. Lenore Skenazy says that children need a sense of belonging and place within a family, and chores gives them a sense of accomplishment and contribution. In addition, chores teach young people necessary skills. I don’t have the book in front of me, so I can not properly give credit to the particular child specialist, but one point that I loved was thinking of chores as a long-term training program for life. Effectively, a young person has about 18 years in their parents’ home. Within that time, they need to learn every job that will keep a household functioning, and by the time they leave home should have mastered every job. This is such a simple idea but it sort of shook me awake, because I have LIVED with those people who seemed to have never learned the jobs necessary to keep a household functioning…and I can tell you, it sucked. They sucked. I hated them for the skills that they did not know they lacked.
For someone with very young kids, I can easily sign on to a chore philosophy. Yes. They need to do chores. On the other hand, when do they need to start doing chores? And to what degree of competency?
Enter the chore wheel. Wait. Didn’t I already say that? I keep saying it, so I figure I need to put the photo up here again.
When considering this chore issue, I figured that the kids needed to
- get in the habit of doing things regularly
- do small jobs that they can accomplish easily and quickly with a high level of personal satisfaction
- do meaningful things that make a difference in our home (i.e., my happiness)
- do jobs that will accommodate different skill levels
- have some clever gimmick that makes the whole thing seem game-like
Enter the chore wheel! (No I am kidding.) But really, we had this TERRIBLE jellybean box with a spin wheel and various jellybeans that looked alike. One might be apple pie, the other might be vomit—you spun the wheel to see the color you needed to choose and then took the risk with which kind you got. (Is this brilliant or disgusting? I have no idea who gave it to us. The kids liked it anyway.) When it came time to recycle the box, I couldn’t quite throw away the sweet little plastic spinner. I could make something out of this. What? What?
Enter the chore wheel!
I now have the kids doing chores three days a week, and thus far am very happy with it. They like spinning the wheel. They have their favorite chores already (Zephyr and Inez like cleaning the window in the front door and Francis likes sweeping down the stairs), but they seem to be doing whatever they get without too much complaint. They also seem proud of what they are able to do. In addition to the chore wheel, I have the kids taking turns unloading the dishwasher—a job I loathe. Zephyr and Inez work together and Francis does it on her own. The little kids need to stand on the counters to put stuff away, and dishes show up in weird places, but that is a small price to pay for having someone else do the job.
One thing that I quickly noticed was that this chore thing takes A LOT of training time. This is interesting to me for two reasons. One is a “no-duh” sort of thing about me. I am surprised that I am surprised that a 4-almost-5-year-old doesn’t just know how to scrub a toilet. Of course he doesn’t know. And if I didn’t teach him now, I would teach him….when? I have to say that I would probably never teach him and just live my life pissed that my kid didn’t seem to know how to clean the toilet. How much we parents expect without ever teaching! The other thing is that this training time is not unpleasant. At this age, teaching a kid how to hold a broom or get up under the lip of the toilet is not so bad. The kids don’t mind, and the job is done really well with the kids AND me doing it together.
In short, YAY chore wheel!
Okay, now EXIT the chore wheel. Bye!
April 6th, 2011
Who IS the most important Person?
I am not a brilliant logician, but I thought I did okay at illuminating the larger issues for my children. When Francis would whine about what she wanted to do when the whole family was discussing plans that should be fun for everyone, I would commonly say, “Francis, are you the most important person in the family?”. She had to think about it, but she would usually arrive at “No….” and seem to understand that she had to work within the confines of the group desires.
Today however, I heard Zephyr use this phrase on Inez. ”Inez, are you the most important person in this family?” There was a long pause. I felt proud of how my simple question illuminated the necessity that we all work together for mutual happiness, how the question shows that WE ARE ALL EQUAL HERE and our desires carry equal weight. Then he said, “No, Mama is!”.
Crushing. Goes to show that you can not enlighten the proletariat. Freedom within social boundaries is still seen as oppression. I’m going to Cuba.
March 29th, 2011
Grrrrr….
Lord you have blessed me with children, but I do not want 5 of them.
My two nephews are staying the night. They are perfectly lovely kids. Really. There is nothing wrong with them, but when paired with the chaos that is already present around here, it is… enough for angry face. Someone peed in a board game, two someones rubbed diaper ointment all over a window, the same two someones took scissors to a philodendron, and then emptied an entire kitchen cabinet. Someone else emptied the entire basket of trains….wait! That was me! (Now why did I do that? I’m sure I had a good reason to do that.)
Zephyr this evening took a fork to one of my very expensive dining room chairs. Then he lied about it and said Inez did it. The hilarious thing about the lie was that I misheard him and in an attempt to clarify said, “She scratched the chair with a knife?!” and he answered, “No, a fork”. Who had the fork in his or her hand? Zephyr. That is the problem with lying. The minute you give details, you enter the problem zone.
Brad is completely incensed by lying. He is entirely upright and ethical. He sees no reason to lie EVER and accuses me of dishonesty for all sorts of minor offenses. He was disgusted with me when our kids bit holes in an expensive toy of a friend’s and rather than tell the friend, (who I knew would say–”No big deal!”) I just replaced the toy with a matching one. ”Dishonest!” he bellowed.
He is not upset about the chair, but heaped on punishment for the lie. I am upset about the chair, but I sort of understand the attempt at lying. It bothers me in a sort of cosmic way, but I understand why a kid would try to dodge the bullet. I also understand that lying WILL screw you over.
Not can but WILL. I have gotten caught for every lie I have ever told, (except to Brad for the purpose of surprises and such—those always work. He is incredibly credible!), so I guess when I punish the kids for lying I only want them to understand that lying makes things worse, not better.
Zephyr was feeling the pain tonight. He was sent to bed right after dinner, and his computer password was changed for the week (No! Gasp! This is really akin to cutting off a hand or something. I swear the kid seems to have one week of computer privileges and then lose it the next. And Brad who would seriously die if someone removed his computer privileges seems to have no problem banishing the offender.)
I had better be good this week. No lying! Never! Not even when I tell my sister, “It was easy!” tomorrow morning.
January 6th, 2011
Burgundy Sweater Day
Is that a cowl neck?
The sad part is that the one she is wearing use to be mine before I shrank it in the wash….
November 15th, 2010
Family Art Night (kr)ugly Dolls
There is no such thing as Krugly Dolls, but in the interest of not receiving a cease and desist notice tomorrow, I am renaming them.
It all started when my kids picked up a toy catalogue and identified the items in question. ”Oh, we love them! Can you get them for us?”. What? Buy them? No way. I can totally make those suckers.
A quick trip to Joann’s Fabrics and several yards of fleece later, we were ready to embark on the project. First step was to draw the dolls and make a pattern.
Here is what I did:
Here is what Zephyr did: (Prepare yourself for preciousness)
I wish I could sew that.
Next we cut out this guy and I attempted to sew without swearing. I did not accomplish that.
My sewing machine is really, really old, and beset with problems that people with newer models might not have, hence there is more profanity necessary to keep the thing in line. It jumps up and down if I don’t yell at it a bit. Despite breaking a needle, tangling a bobbin impossibly, needing to cut a chunk out of this doll’s eye as I somehow wound the thread from the bobbin around part of the foot and the edge of the eyeball (huh?), and taking the Lord’s name in vain, we finally got to the good part.
And the other good part:
We didn't make this green guy. He is a "for real" that we borrowed from a neighbor.
And still more good parts:
November 10th, 2010
Halloween
I was informed that “people are waiting” for Halloween pictures of the kids. So here you are:
November 9th, 2010
Family Art Night
Sometimes Brad and I are awesome parents. Brad would say that he is always awesome. Here is his criteria: 1) Am I still here? I am awesome.
In particular, we have achieved a (hopefully) habit-forming awesomeness in the form of Family Art Night. Back in August Brad and I lamented that neither of us had time to work on our personal art in any meaningful way. I worried that Zephyr’s drawing skills were somewhat lacking. Both us noted that Francis was DESPERATELY needy regarding art time. She wanted MORE. MORE. MORE. “Can you help me make a quilt? Can you help me create a paper tower that is strong enough to let chickens play on it? Can you help me make a felt sleeping bag for Nutty the Squirrel? Can you help me make a hat out of clay? Can you help me make a robot that actually moves out of plastic milk jugs? Can you help me weld a STEEL PLAYGROUND FOR MY NEWT?”
What we couldn’t figure out was how to guide the kids without Family Art Night becoming completely subsumed by their wishes, because although we love our kids, part of the goal was that we might also pursue our own interests—-but together. And I am not one of those people who wants to sacrifice my interests on the alter of my children. I proposed taking turns guiding their projects. Brad had some idea about making them leave us alone that wouldn’t work. We argued and gave up.
But then we tried again with more reasonable expectations. Yes, the kids need our time, but if our over-arching message is “I will get you going and then you need to do it yourself”, everyone can be happy. They CAN do it themselves. They love to make me their art servant, but they can be taught to be self-sufficient. Hence, Family Art Night sits on Monday evenings. We have dinner early and then rush down to the basement where we get going on our own projects. It requires that I plan ahead a bit and have standby ideas and supplies to get them going, but that isn’t an unpleasant task.
Last week Francis felted a mini Totoro, and Zephyr made a beaded necklace. When they finished those projects, both kids painted with water colors.
I planned a sewing project and knitted on a hat for a friend. Brad worked on stained glass designs with us and then retired to the computer for more design time.
Inez is the only one who misses out on Family Art Night. She goes to bed early.