Candyland Lessons

In September of 1997, when I was 23 years old (woah...), I started my first Child Life Internship on the Neuroscience Unit at Boston Children's Hospital.  To begin, my job was to simply see what it was like to be a child in the hospital.  Meet the kids, play with them, get a feel for their experience...

I remember spending a morning with one child playing Candyland.  Opening the box.  Setting up the game.  "What are these picture cards?"  "This game has changed since I was a kid..."  "No", their mother told me.  "They have always been part of the game..."  Hmmm.

I went home that night and called my mom.  "When I was little and we played Candyland," - for I do remember playing Candyland. a lot. - "were there picture cards that jumped you forward and backward on the board?"

My mom was quiet for a moment.  And then laughed.  Yes, there were evidently picture card even way back in the seventies.  My mother took them out of our game and hid them.  They made the game last way too long, she told me.  As an early twenty-something, I was a little appalled. 

Fast forward fifteen years or so.  Ollie has finally discovered (and loves) Candyland.  It is out on our living room floor more often than not.  And those picture cards drive me nuts.  You see, my almost six year old is not a gracious loser.  And those picture cards?  They incite crying, whining, and board clearing swipes.  We don't even make it to the end to see who wins.  Just the anticipation of losing brings on the tears.  Oh dear, I drew Princess Frostina again.  I'm sorry!

So, I have recently thought about taking the picture cards out of our deck.  Ollie has even asked me to do so - at least he is self-aware, right?  But we keep them in.  Because there are lessons being learned here, right?  Instead, we talk about being a gracious loser.  And how Candyland is a game of chance.  And how you really don't know who is going to win until the very end.  And we take deep breaths.  And draw another card.  And hope that really that game of chance won't let me win for a third time in a row...

Business - Busyness

This is one of those weeks where there just doesn't seem to be enough time to stop (or even slow down) and play.  I am in full swing gearing up for the Holiday Art Star Craft Bazaar and a smaller local fundraiser the weekend before.

The kids are out of sorts - Ella yearning for a pet (more about that later) and Ollie just soaking up all Kindergarten has to offer faster than his little brain can handle.

So I have to remind myself to slow down.  To slow everybody down.

I get carried away at this point in the process.  Where it feels all about production - I think it carries over from the studio into the flow of our days, which really isn't much fun for anyone.

This afternoon we will play, read, and do a little bit of homework.  With my undivided attention, which is really what they want need.

Determination

First Day of School, 2008

When Ella was three years old, she took her favorite stuffed dog to nursery school for show and tell.  The rule routine was that, when you arrived, you put your show and tell item in a basket and it stayed there until show and tell.

When I picked her up, her teacher apologized and said she felt really bad for making Ella cry. 'What happened?', I asked.

First Day of School, 2009

Ella couldn't leave her precious puppy in the basket.  She wanted to share nursery school with him.  So the teacher gave her a warning, took the puppy, and put it back in the basket.  Later, Ella took him from the basket again to play.  So the teacher took the puppy back again and put him up high on a shelf where Ella couldn't reach him.


So Ella took a chair, pulled it over to the shelving, and tried to get her puppy down.  I don't remember what her punishment was.  Honestly, I really think that seeing her puppy up high and not being able to get him back was punishment enough.  She was reprimanded.  She cried.

First Day of School, 2010

I don't know why I thought of this story this morning.  Maybe because this story is so classic Ella.  I'm sure she comes by her strong-willedness (I know that's not really a word - what is the right one?) genetically.  And her passion as well.  And we struggle with it every day but we also love her more because of it.

She still will do almost anything to get what she wants.  We're working on that.  But how do you temper that without breaking the piece that will be so important in the future?  Our focus right now is teaching her to think about how her actions affect (actually looked up on dictionary.com if that was an a or an e) others.

First Day of School, 2011

And even though as I drove her home from nursery school that day I talked with her about how important it is to listen to your teachers and follow directions, I still know that she was only three and she wasn't hurting anyone by wanting to hold her puppy.

This Boy

This boy

who wanted his head shaved but settled for a mohawk,

who has no interest in starting Kindergarten next month because he would love to stay in nursery school forever,

who requires more patience right now than I sometimes feel I have,

who knows exactly how he wants things and cries when his young hands can't comply.

I've said it before - It's so hard to be a little kid...

Nature Does Not Hurry...

...yet everything is accomplished.

I bought this little bowl for myself last year at Artista and this week it has become my mantra.  Especially in the morning when I keep watching the clock as the kids get ready for school.  I've noticed that less worry and less hurry gets me there at exactly the same time as rushing around and fussing at the kids about not wanting to be late.  Hmmm...

I was also happy to see that the artist, Sharon Bartmann, will be showing at The Highlands with me this weekend.  I have been coveting her pears.  Her work is just beautiful.

On another note, thanks for the comments on my last post.  Have I ever said how much I love comments?  They make me feel a little less like I'm just sitting here talking to myself!  I think those bags may just be Treasure Totes.  You're right, Kathy, that's exactly what they are used for.  Thanks!

Happy First Day of School

For us, summer is not quite officially over (O doesn't start school until Monday) but it certainly feels that way.

We celebrated with a Back To School Feast last night.  The kids requested home made chicken pot pie, mashed sweet potatoes, and the vanilla cake from this cookbook.  It definitely tasted like Fall.

This morning, E headed off to a brand new school for first grade.  Hopefully ending a yearlong saga of worry and concern.  We live in a city.  (I think) a great city.  In a fabulous neighborhood.  Unfortunately it is a city with a reputation for really bad schools.  We believe (and know) that they are not all bad.  And that everything is relative.  And we really hoped that our neighborhood school would work.

When E came home from her first day of Kindergarten saying she never wanted to go back and that she 'hated that place' we were concerned.  She reported that the Kindergarteners had been yelled at at lunch.  We waited.  Then she came home a couple months later looking conflicted.  Finally, after some prying, she asked "How come it's okay for my teacher say "Shut Up" but not me?"  But she loved her teacher.  And she was not getting yelled at.  Then after the winter break, she started talking about being bored with her specials.  A kid who loves art and music.  But we had no other options and while she was struggling with the envrionment she was making some good, good friends and excelling in reading and writing.

Then late last Spring we found out that they had a seat for her for first grade at a local charter school.  A highly ranked charter school.  The only one in the country to sit on the grounds of an environmental education center.  And The Dad and I sat and breathed and acknowledged once again how amazingly lucky we are.

Then we spent the summer deprogramming.  When anyone would ask her where she went to school she would say: "I'm going to ___  Charter School.  Where they're not allowed to yell or say Shut Up or Boy or Girl."  As in 'Get out of my face, BOY' or 'Sit down in your seat, GIRL.'

She had her first day of first grade today.  For Art they went outside and picked a tree ('We each got our very own special spot') and drew it.  She had a fabulous day.  No one yelled.

While I am not breathing my sigh of relief quite yet, I am almost there.  And oh so grateful.

When In Doubt, Get Them Out

We are in the home stretch, with two more weeks until the kids go back to school.

Blackberry and Raspberry Picking

It is still hot here.  E is starting to freak out a bit about going to a new school.  She will be attending a local charter school with an Environmental Ed focus this year for first grade - and hopefully staying through until 8th!  She doesn't do well with big transitions and is getting anxious about a new school, new teacher, new kids, and the great unknowns.  I am sure she will love it.  We just have to get her there.

Hopewell Furnace

The kids are starting to get on eachother's nerves, as well as mine.  I love them dearly and am surprised (and a bit sad) at how much I am looking forward to the start of school.

Fonthill

I have learned, though (took me long enough), that when the bickering, whining, fussing, etc. starts, we need to get out.  I have learned that to say "If you can't be nice to each other, we won't go to the zoo/pool/coffee shop..." is tantamount to shooting myself in the foot.  Because if they don't earn an outing, we ALL sit home suffering.  Whereas if we all get out and do something stimulating, adventurous, and or fun, the day passes easily and they are oh-so-much more enjoyable (the days and the kids).

The Mercer Museum

Needless to say, we have been getting out much more the last couple days.  And we are all soooo much better for it.

Have you gone anywhere fun lately?

Kids' Sewing with Liesl's City Weekend

I have to admit that I went to the Vermont Sewing weekend with grand (and knowingly unrealistic) visions of a bit of free fabric involved.  A girl can dream, right?

We did receive, in our little welcome bags, charm pack of Liesl's new fabric line City Weekend.

The kids were fascinated by all these little squares and in a moment of desperation on Monday I sat them down on my studio floor and spread the squares out between them.  Then I let them choose, taking turns, one square at a time until they were all divied up.

O wanted to make a tail.  Attached to a belt that he can wear.  Which he's been fascinated with since seeing If You Give A Mouse a Cookie last Spring.

O lined his up in the order he wanted them and I stitched them together and then stitched them to some webbing for the belt.  One snap later and he was all set.  And beaming.  Oh, if things could always be that easy.

E wanted to make a barbie quilt.  She, who has been asking to sew with my machine for about a year, was determined to piece the squares herself.  After a little guidance in the beginning, she was quick to push my hand away when I tried to help guide the fabric.  "Mom!  I'm six years old.  I know how to do it myself."  And really?  By the end?  She did.

I backed it with some minkee and she was good to go.

Of course, the next time I went to use my machine it was kind of dead...  The result of the 6 year old foot on the pedal?  Or just too long since the last servicing...  Keep your fingers crossed.

I Remember Being Forced To Play Outside

Yesterday, with a weather forecast calling for four days of rain, I told my children that they had to play outside.

At 1:00 (it was a half-day at school), I brought them out.  I sat on the front steps, the door to the porch open and the door into the house closed.  And, with visiting playmates and each other, they played outside.  For four hours...

The fort.  The logs.  A sled.  Collecting bark.  A warship.  A rescue helicopter.  A ladder hanging from a tree branch.

Four hours.

And I remembered, as a child in a small town, living down a dirt road in 'the woods', how my aunt would gather my mother and their friends to sit and drink coffee and smoke cigarettes and play scrabble.  They would usher the kids outside and actually lock the front screened door.  We were forced to play outside.

There was the injustice of the one little girl who was allowed in with her mom, there was a bit of whining through the screen, but much more than that, there were hours of creative play among the trees and in the dirt. 

I'm sure we bickered, but the adults rarely interfered intervened.  I remember those hours outside much more than I remember any time playing with toys inside.

I realized yesterday that you don't have to live in a small town, down a dirt road, in the woods for kids to have this experience.  Though I didn't lock them out yesterday, I did challenge them.  And they rose to the occasion.  I look forward to many more days of this as Spring continues to reveal itself.

Ahhh...

To Play Outside Alone...

 

It sounds crazy when I actually write it out, but for the first time today my kids went out and played in the yard alone.  Without me sitting on the steps with a book or magazine or on the enclosed porch with the door open.

We sat in the dining room talking with friends after brunch, turning around every once in a while to look out the window and make sure they were still there.  And...  They were.

You see, I'm not afraid someone is going to come into the yard and take them.  We live in the city, but on a somewhat secluded corner lot.  Bordered by two streets.  Two streets I am just beginning to trust my children not to wander into.

So today was the first step.

They didn't last too long.  They were soon calling for us to come and join them.  And to fix the pulley system, since The Dad, in building it, had not anticipated that they would try to fit a child into the basket. 

They pulley is the latest addition to The Fort.  Now with a second story and recycled slide.  Hours of fun, I tell you...  Hours of fun...

30 Days of Summer :: Day 26 :: Attempting to shoot the Storybook Skirt

To re-open my shop, I need to get some pictures done.  Which means I need some cooperation - both from the weather and from the kids.

Usually, I attempt some pictures on a sunny day when the children are playing quietly.  Although this usually ends the playing quietly piece.

So today I thought I would try to incorporate them into the shoot.

I may just have to wait until school starts...

And the Tooth Came Out

After two weeks of anticipation, E lost her first tooth. In Costco, off all places. As her father held her chin and told her how much he loved her.


She placed her tooth in a little fairy box she has had since Minneapolis.


In true fashion, we had nothing special planned for the tooth fairy to leave. After the kids were in bed, we looked for that random silver dollar we thought we had stashed away but couldn't find it. Since we always have change floating around the house and E is used to handling quarters and other coins, I really wanted to do something different.

So we folded up, very small, a paper dollar and placed it in the secret spot within the fairy's flower.


While happy for the money (and immediately dreaming of all the things she could spend it on), E was much more excited about showing everyone the space the missing tooth had left behind.

Bedtime Reading

Over the last couple months, I have struggled with chapter books for E. We have found some that we've loved (Winnie-the-Pooh, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Toys Go Out, The Doll People) and some that we've gotten a couple pages into and stopped.

E's at that cusp where she really wants something long and engaging but is still only four two young to understand some more mature stories. The Dad and I have learned (sometimes mid-sentence) that we really like to stay away from too much sassiness, violence, and language like 'hate', 'stupid', 'gun', or anything else we don't want her repeating before she really understands it.

When I was in second grade, I picked up my mother's copy of Flowers in the Attic and actually got a good way through it before my mom realized what I was reading and it 'got lost'. There really are some things kids don't need to learn about before they're ready!

It's hard finding a book that challenges E's brightness while addressing age-appropriate issues. Fortunately, we've finally found another good one. Recommended by a nursery school parent a while ago and then rediscovered on an Amazon list of Early Chapter Books, we checked out My Father's Dragon from the library today. Written in the 40s, it has humor, talking animals, a young hero, and a simple, engaging tale of the rescue of an exploited and overworked baby dragon.


We made it to Chapter 8 tonight with E still asking for more. I'd say it's a hit.

On Having Another Baby

O loves babies. He seems to spot them everywhere. He coos at them, pats them, and, when permitted, kisses them. Lately, we've been having lots of conversations like this:

O: "Mama, when are we going to have a newborn baby?"

Me: "Oh, honey, we're never going to have a newborn baby."

O (looking up with pleading eyes): "Pleeease?"

Nothing like a little boy asking for a baby brother or sister to get you thinking... And then I think a little more:

• Remember what it was like to feel sick all day every day for almost 9 months?
• Remember what it was like to do that with a toddler to look after?
  
• Can you really remember the last good night's sleep you had? (I think I can count on two hands how many nights I've slept through over the last almost 5 years)
• I'm 35. Where all the risk factors change.
• In September, E will be in Kindergarten and O will be in nursery school. Would we really want to start all over again.
• We tend to breed very independent, determined children. One was hard. Two is harder...
  
• Right now, we can still one-on-one the kids.
• We've been very, very lucky so far...

No, we will never have another newborn baby... I know that.

I've given everything away as the kids have outgrown it. We are very happy with the family of four that we are. And yet, when I think of having a little baby in the house again, of watching O become a big brother, of nursing, and that tiny baby smell, I get a tiny bit wistful.

And then I say again, more to myself than anyone else: No, we will never have another baby.

Celebrating Milestones

My daughter is a storyteller. A pretender. A make-believer. She is constantly changing clothes and characters. I know, when she tells me something that doesn't seem quite plausible, to ask her "Really? Is that the truth or pretend?" Lately, I have begun asking her "Is that Truth or Moonshine?"

Last week, we finished Ramona the Pest. In one of the last chapters, Ramona loses her first tooth. For a couple days now, E has been walking around pretending she has a loose tooth. When a friend came over yesterday, E said to her "I have a loose tooth!". And I added "Just for pretend. Right?"

Today when I picked her up at school, she said "Mama, want to see my loose tooth?" And she opened her mouth and showed me. Her loose tooth. No moonshine.

I almost cried.

She asked if we could have a celebration. And then she spent the rest of the day talking about how she is almost grown up because she is old enough to have a loose tooth. Mama, people will think I'm, like, eight!

So tonight, we celebrated. A yummy vanilla cake, at her request, from the beautiful cookbook Apples for Jam. And tonight I go to bed knowing that my little girl is not quite so little and wondering how long I can put off this 'growing up' thing...

I Missed A Meeting This Morning

I was supposed to be part of a meeting this morning right after I dropped my daughter off at school. A meeting to plan an event next week. The meeting was at school. I didn't even need to go anywhere else for it. And yet, 20 minutes after the meeting started, I found myself across town in the parking lot of the children's museum pulling some papers out of my purse before O and I went in. I glanced down. Nursery School Valentine's Tea... Oh. No. I had missed my meeting.

Before I had children, I had some version or another of a palm pilot. I took it everywhere with me. I consulted it constantly. My time was scheduled down to the half hour, sometimes to the 15 minutes.

And then E was born and I stopped working. I continued to use my palm pilot but it was kind of a joke. Really? Mom's group once a week? A Dr.'s appointment every couple of months? One more thing to carry in the diaper bag? I tossed it aside and never went back.

For 2008 we had a calendar hanging in our kitchen. It was used mostly to mark when The Dad was traveling. Shows we had tickets for. Dr.'s appointments and the occasional playdate. I consulted it somewhat regularly and it sufficed.

At the end of the year, I found this great weekly planner on Etsy. I love the art. It's simple enough for the few things I put into it. I don't consult it regularly.

That is all about to change.

Suddenly, with the kids now almost 3 and almost 5, with one in school and a very small and very slowly growing business I seem to need something again. I will start checking it every day. I will start carrying it with me. And I will not miss another meeting.

10 Things I'm Loving Right Now

1. This book - I've been trying to get it from Amazon for months and finally found a used copy from the Strand. Such fabulously inspiring photos - I now have a three page list of things to do around the house.

2. That O spontaneously reaches out for a snuggle and says "I love you too."


3. Going through the boxes from my parents' storage locker (currently taking over our porch), taking a little trip down memory lane, and then either recycling the papers, passing things on to the kids, or boxing things back up for a garage sale.

4. Our new tradition of saying "Grace" at dinner and then going around and each giving one thing we are thankful for, though 9 times out of 10 O says "Pirates".

5. Reconnecting with folks from all different times of my life on Facebook. Here I thought it was just for teenagers and college students...


6. Watching my youngest come into his own in his first real "class".

7. Doing something every day to make the house look a little nicer.

8. Having one of the kids fall asleep in my arms while rocking before bed. I always hold them a little longer and snuggle a little closer when this happens.


9. This new-ish Michael Miller fabric line. Hmmm... Placemats and napkins?

10. Reading Ramona the Pest with E at bedtime and still remembering what comes next.

Unexpected Rituals

It always surprises me to turn around and look at something that I've seen 50 times before and realize that it is a little ritual that has come into our lives.

This morning, as Doug left the house for work, I watched the kids clamor to pull 2 chairs over to the kitchen window. They climbed up, watching, calling for him. They waited, knowing he first needed to put on his shoes. Knowing that when they heard the click of the outside door he would be on his way. He reached the window, faced them, and jumped up and down a couple times, waving.

I watched this little routine, trying to remember the day that the jump added itself into The Dad's exit. It only took once. And then it had to happen every time. Their special good-bye.

I wonder what other rituals are evolving before my eyes. Becoming part of our routine, our expectations.

I know that every time I buckle one of the kids into their car seats, after the click, before I close the door, I lean over, kiss them, and tell them that I love them. I don't think I did it when they were infants, but I can't remember really not doing it. And actually, if I don't do it, I feel like I have forgotten something as I climb into the driver's seat.

Be aware today. Pay a little more attention. Notice those little rituals that have nestled themselves into your days without you realizing.