the mother load

In no particular order...

2010-11-27T12:00:00.000-08:00

Due to more technical difficulties, I can't move the pictures for this blog so you get to view them before the script, which I wrote yesterday. And the photos are out of order and before the explanations, but here it is anyway:

Ah well, apparently it takes 9 days off from school, for me to find time to do a little update on our life. I guess I'm no longer blogging, just recording some little moments for our family. Here are a few highlights in photos. We are at the tail-end of a luxuriously long Thanksgiving break filled with play and friends and family.

We flew out to Colorado to see the CU-Georgia game with Rob's family, and hiked in the flatirons on the side. It was a trip in memory of Rob's mom, a Georgia fan who had always said she wanted us all to go to the game if the two universities faced off in Boulder. (Rob and I were married in Boulder and we both attended CU for our undergrad years and Georgia for our masters.) The game happened on Ann's birthday, and it was a treat to squeeze in a Colorado trip in the fall.

Will lost his first tooth and plotted to stay up and "trap the tooth fairy" so that he could see if Rob or I were really the tooth fairy. Thankfully he succumbed to sleep. So the tooth fairy lives! Luckily Will never asked us point-blank if the tooth fairy was fiction, because I don't think I would have lied about it. Perhaps Will realizes that he may profit by letting this little fairytale survive. (And an update, now that I'm finally posting the blog: Will lost tooth number 2 tonight. So the toothfairy's going to be working late again.)

Rob built an elevated fort for the kids, while they did some side hammer-nail-and-wood projects of their own. We call it the tree house, even though there's no tree attached, and it has brought new life to playtime in our little backyard.

Will is loving kindergarten and has started doing writing workshop on his own time at home. He is working on a book, using invented spelling, about a mouse named East, who is named after the direction and who likes to carve pumpkins. Owen, always inspired by his big brother, has also become a writer of letters -- and he's written two pages of his own book about a mouse named East, who as it happens, also likes to carve pumpkins.

And Owen, in his 3-year-old class at Wynnton, was a proud Indian at his Thanksgiving program and feast. He sings a sweet version of a little song called "I am thankful" that'll melt your heart. (At least if you're his mom.)

Prescribed fire party!

2010-09-02T18:33:00.000-07:00

A month since my last post -- I guess that's testament to the fact that I can't handle teaching four mornings a week and blogging simultaneously. I'm loving my new little gig as a pre-k teacher between that and shuttling Will back and forth to kindergarten each day, I feel busier than ever.

Still I can't bid goodbye to August without marking a couple milestones in photos. (Due to some technical difficulties, you'll be viewing photos out of order and before the rest of the text because old "blogger" is being stubborn for me right now and won't let me move pictures or even cut and paste text.)

First, Will sets out for his first day of kindergarten (where he has settled in happily with a great teacher):

And Will's sixth birthday party. When he told Rob and I that he wanted a "prescribed fire party," we couldn't help but laugh to ourselves. But it turned out to be a pretty cool concept, since Rob happened to have done a prescribed burn a couple days prior to the party and had access to a "fire engine" that normally lives in another part of the state. I held my breath and invited Will's entire kindergarten class, but only one of them came (perhaps because I seemed like some kind of nutcase with our prescribed fire party theme). With a few longtime friends, it made for a perfectly sized party.

When Will wrote his list of party plans, the first item on his agenda was "Bring the team." So luckily Rob's co-worker Trevor came to assist.

First we did a little tour of the wildlife of the Chattahoochee Valley in our living room that included a stuffed wild turkey and red-tailed hawk, a deer skull and a gopher tortoise shell -- plus some photos of fire-dependent species from red-cockaded woodpeckers and fox squirrels to indigo snakes and pitcher plants. Then the party-goers got to watch Rob light some pine straw on fire with a drip torch and douse the flames with a flapper and a backpack sprayer. And the kids took turns spraying water from the fire engine hose. Finally, Rob deployed an expired fire shelter and we played "see how many party guests can fit under a fire shelter meant for one."

Now Owen's already plotting a batman birthday for next July, and, well, that just doesn't sound as fun.

My sabbatical from regular blogging

2010-08-03T17:29:00.000-07:00

After three solid years of keeping a semi-regular blog of our life with Will and Owen (attempting at least a few posts a week), I’m going to take a partial sabbatical from blogging.

Next week I start working four mornings a week as a pre-k teacher and I’ve decided to direct most of my energies toward teaching for a while. I’ll still post here and there as inspiration strikes, as a way to keep friends and family updated on the quirks and highlights of our lives and as a way to preserve those memories for our immediate family. Will and Owen’s baby books are mostly empty, thanks to my negligence, so we’re counting on our printed version of the blog to stand in as our personal scrapbook of life with young kids.

The blog will stay connected to the Ledger-Enquirer website, but I’ll feel free to stay silent for days or even weeks at a time. A day may come when I’ll settle into teaching and realize that blogging is an addiction, and resume the regular posts. In the meantime, thank you so much for reading. I hope you’ll continue to check in on us now and then.

Penpal storytelling

2010-08-01T05:54:00.000-07:00

Today's Ledger-Enquirer includes a story I wrote about an e-mail story-telling project that my friend Grace and I launched with our oldest kids, Will and Ella after Grace and her girls moved north of Atlanta. For young kids, we found, collaborative e-mail storytelling is a great way to keep a friendship alive and to keep children inspired to create stories in their minds and enjoy the adventure of authorship.

Another great way to inspire children as writers is to help them find contests and publishing opportunities. Here are a few resources:

Scholastic sponsors an annual Kids Are Authors competition for children in grades K–8 to encourage students to use their reading, writing, and artistic skills to create their own books. Grand-prize winning books are published by Scholastic.

Stone Soup is a literary magazine that publishes stories, poems and illustrations by children ages 8-13.

PBS Stations hold local PBS KIDS GO! Writers Contests from January to March each year.

Pizza chefs

2010-07-31T07:15:00.000-07:00

Whenever I make dinner, assuming there's no raw meat handling involved, the kids are welcome to join me in stirring, chopping, mixing, kneading. Often they're off playing instead, but if they wander into the kitchen with an urge to cook, I try to welcome them.

It works especially well when I happen to be working on a "Friday Night Pizza" recipe, which I've been making here and there -- and not necessarily on Friday nights -- ever since I read Barbara Kingsolver's book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" a couple years back. It's a perfect recipe for two young cooks since it makes two pizzas. We split the dough in two and let them do their own kneading, and they each get to roll out their own pizza dough and spread sauce on it. (My short-cut for pizza sauce now is one 15-oz can of plain tomato sauce with a teaspoon each of dried basil and oregano mixed in. It's just enough to cover two pizzas.) We added carmelized red onions, red peppers and fresh basil, oregano and of course cheese to our pies, and Rob later sauteed some chili peppers, garlic and extra onions on the side so that he and I could enjoy the kind of pizza that makes you break a sweat.

Here are a couple pictures from our kneading session. The camera was not cooperating; hence the ghostly chefs.

Owenisms

2010-07-28T17:20:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I've just got to quote my little guy. Here's a few from this week.

While trying to get Rob to come over and play with him on the other side of the pool.
"Daddy, I want you! I need you! Give you to me!"

For no particular reason:
"Mommy, I like every people in the world."

And:
"Mommy, when I grow up into an adult I will still be Owen."

The beach in sepia

2010-07-25T06:19:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, we returned from a full week at St. Augustine beach, where we had a pretty wonderful time with Papa and Aunt Alicia and friends. It's kind of a tradition for us now to turn the camera settings to sepia and capture the kids on the beach for a while. Here are a few shots, plus a sand burial and a deck dance with Papa in full color.

Cannon balls and tortoise fights

2010-07-22T10:37:00.000-07:00

We are settling into the rhythm of beach life at St. Augustine quite nicely. It goes something like this: food, beach, pool, food, beach, pool -- with the occasional bike ride, excursion to town or sandy jog with the dog thrown in.

Owen has learned to swim the width of the pool.
Will has mastered his cannon ball.And both boys have been doing some surfing in the shallows, although Owen requires some assistance to balance on an incoming wave. Owen laughs and laughs when he's riding a little wave, and he announced today that he wants to marry his surf board. Meanwhile on our boardwalk journey to and from the beach we often get to watch gopher tortoises, who are flourishing in the dunes here. Yesterday, we watched from the board walk as two male tortoises faced off in a little territorial dispute that reminded me of Will and Owen's wrestling matches. We watched them shove each other back and forth until finally the superior tortoise managed to overturn his opponent, who remained yellow-belly-up with his little legs flailing for a few minutes while the victor stood calmly beside him, apparently relishing his dominance.

3 weeks old

2010-07-20T10:39:00.000-07:00

On Friday, Owen and Will got to meet their newest second-cousin -- and their only cousin in Georgia.

"He has the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen," Will said.

"When he older, I let him play with me," said Owen.

And I got teary-eyed just looking at the little guy. Oh, do I love a newborn.

I stole this off Rob's cousin Jessica's facebook page (she is of course Braxton's mama) but a bigger photo will be replacing it when we get home.

Post-party balloon games

2010-07-17T20:25:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday, Rob and the boys invented this game for balloons retired from birthday decorating. The object of the game is to carry as many balloons as you can from one end of the living room to the other in under one minute. It's okay to drop a balloon or two here and there as long as you pick it back up and finish out your awkward journey before the timer goes off.

They boys played this for about 30 minutes and were reluctant to quit for a bath.

Obviously bigger bodies have the advantage, as our stats bear out. Our records for balloons carried from one end of the room to the other were as follows: Owen, 6; Will, 8; me, 10; Rob, 12.

Battling the worries

2010-07-15T20:23:00.000-07:00

Will happily survived a half-week of Vacation Bible School this week before we head to Atlanta and then the beach. He had been struggling a bit with nerves and shyness while attending another summer camp and Vacation Bible School. He's got shy genes from my side of the family, although I don't point this out to him since I don't want to reinforce it. But this summer he would inevitably feel a sore throat or tummy ache or general sense of dread coming on as we drove to the sort of anxiety-inducing situations (for Will at least) where a bunch of kids are thrown together to "have fun" for one week of summer. Some very nice teachers and counselors got him through.

But as we drove to our first day of the Wynnton UMC Vacation Bible School on Monday, Will started complaining of a sore throat.

I told him I was sure he was fine, and then I tried to talk with him really frankly about living in the present. I told him as a new high school teacher I used to get a bit nervous at the thought of trying to teach in front of 30 students, but that once I was in the moment, up there in front of the students talking with them, I loved my job and I loved my interactions with the kids. I realized how important it is to not think ahead too much, to just really enjoy the moment I'm in. I haven't perfected presence by any means, but I talked to Will like an adult and he listened with great interest to my experience and asked me questions about my teaching.

Just look out the window at those beautiful clouds and the blue sky, I said, pointing at some nice wispy white ones. Enjoy what you see right now instead of worrying about what's ahead. And when you're at VBS just enjoy the art project you're doing or the song you're singing right then, in that moment and don't worry about what's going to come next.

It was like Will saw the light. He was suddenly sore-throat free and ready to take on the day.

And he had a good one. "You know why I liked Vacation Bible School?" he asked me that evening. "Because I remembered what you said about not thinking ahead and I didn't think ahead. Plus I had my lucky pennies and that made me feel better."

We are talking about our new philosophy, and at least for now Will "can't wait" for kindergarten.

2010-07-13T20:22:00.001-07:00

3, going on 4

2010-07-13T17:24:00.001-07:00

Playing weekend catch-up:

Owen celebrated his birthday Sunday, but he enjoyed a weekend full of parties -- on Saturday, with a few friends, an inflatable slide pool, a giraffe cake and an elephant pinyata

note Will's ferocious determination to give the thing a fatal whack.

The boys woke up early Saturday morning, excited for the party and Rob and I, still in bed, listened to Will talking to Owen in the hallway: "You grew last night," Will said. "You're a whole new 3 size. Yep, your pants aren't quite fitting..." And they went to the growth chart to do some measurements.

On Sunday Owen got his first scooter and his first bike as birthday presents. (We are grateful for the new bike path a block up the street.)
and enjoyed his second opportunity to blow out the number 3 candle.

I think he may have been spoiled by too much birthdaying though, because today he asked me, with a bit of whine in his voice, "Mommy, when am I EVER going to have my four-year-old birthday?"

Learning languages online

2010-07-11T06:35:00.000-07:00

Today’s Ledger-Enquirer includes a story I wrote about my experience using Mango, an online language-learning system that the Chattahoochee Valley Libraries began offering for free to library card holders in the fall. Just go to the library Web site, scroll down and click on the Mango icon on the right.

Mango is offered at many libraries across the country, so if you’re not a local reader, check your own library Web site to see if it's available.

For a few weeks I was diligently doing a Spanish lesson or two a night as a way to begin to fulfill a long-held desire to finally learn Spanish without having to commit to taking a class. I’ve fallen off the horse as I got busy preparing for Owen’s birthday, but I plan to return to the interactive lessons, which you can do from home, in my own lackluster, haphazard way whenever I have time.

Once I get some elementary proficiency (perhaps years from now?), I need to find a Spanish-speaking conversation partner. There are plenty of online resources beyond Mango that can help you learn languages from French to Arabic:

My Language Exchange allows you to form e-mail, penpal or voice chat partnerships with people who speak the language you are learning. The site is grounded in the Cormier method of language exchange, in which small mixed groups of native speakers of two languages spend half the time speaking in one language and half the time in the other language.

http://www.penpalparade.com/signup also helps you find a pen-pal for language learning.

And sites like http://www.spanishunlimited.com/members/denegado.asp offer online lessons, as well as word-of-the-day e-mail options, and more to members. (Membership is free but I haven’t joined, so I can’t vouch for the usefulness of the site.)

Zoo birthday prep

2010-07-09T20:23:00.000-07:00

Owen turns 3 on Sunday, but we'll have a little "zoo animal" party for him here tomorrow, so we spent much of today preparing. I decided to go the sort-of-lazy route, this year and just make cupcakes from a box with store-bought icing. Not as healthy, but it was nice and easy. So much so that they boys were able to help bake and decorate the cake. I held my breath as I let them ice the cupcakes alongside me (I did some follow up detail and repair work to make our giraffe recognizable if somewhat funky.)

We also assembled an even funkier elephant pinyata, which we've been making in stages over the past week. The boys named him "Cutie" and took turns photographing him perched on our dining room table.

Then they went off to gather any stuffed zoo animals they could find in their bedroom to place strategically around the house as 3-d decorations. I heartily recommend zoo animal birthdays. You've already got all your party supplies just lying around in the toy chest.

Here's one Web site I consulted for pinyata-making advice: "How to Paper Mache"

Kids weekend

2010-07-06T20:10:00.000-07:00

We are back from a long and lovely weekend at Lake Rabun with Uncle Graham, whose visit the boys had been anticipating continuously for weeks on end. On Saturday, we followed through with Will's suggestion and celebrated "Kids Day." Rob and I drew cards for the boys, Graham presented them with World Cup jerseys as early birthday presents, and we all played nonstop at the lake. We ate blueberry pancakes for breakfast and for dinner, we took a boat ride to the lakeside pizza joint where Rob worked one summer in college.

I made a point of talking with Will and Owen in the morning about the fact that when you have a day in your honor, it's not an opportunity to act entitled and spoiled but a chance to show your love for each other and your family and to enjoy your place of honor. And since Will and Owen are both kids, they immediately started celebrating each other.

As I made breakfast, Will and Owen sat next to each other on the kitchen floor and Will told Owen, "I'm so glad I have a brother like you. Your my best person in the whole family." They gave each other a hug and then took turns kissing each other on the cheek. Two times each.

But really the whole weekend was kid's weekend, since Uncle Graham was at Will and Owen's permanent disposal to play Uno, Monopoly, and ping pong, to wrestle and play "tickle monster," to swim and read with and tell stories to. If Graham ever tried to relax for a minute, Will was sure to climb on top of him and at least get some cuddle time in.

To top it all off, Papa had gotten an inflatable ski trainer for Will. So now when he says he's been "water skiing," it doesn't just mean he's been intertubing on his belly behind the boat but actually standing up and crusing, sometimes one-handed, like this.

Will skiied a couple times a day and never fell off, although he did take one tumble in the lake with Uncle Graham at the tail end of a joint intertube ride, as did Owen and I.

Owen seemed surprisingly brave during our little meeting with the lake, but he was quick to tell everyone matter-of-factly once we were back on the boat, "I almost died." Then when I attempted to water ski a couple days later and crashed again, he told Rob, "Go back and get her before she dies." Luckily none of these little spills were actually near-death experiences. But Owen quickly discovered that his favorite place during water skiing outings is on the boat, watching his big brother like this:
He also liked to let me pull him between the docks on the water ski so he could imitate his big brother in slow motion while Harvey splashed around behind.

On Sunday, we joined a whole bunch of other boats at the end of the lake for the fire works show. I think that gathering of lighted boats in the dark is more beautiful than the show itself. And Owen, who had never before stayed up to witness a fireworks show, declared it "very bootiful." Will meanwhile, survived his first full show rather than insisting on being taken home. But he trembled a bit in my arms and worried about whether the fireworks might fall on our head. He looked over at awe-struck Owen and said, "Mom, how come Owen's only 2 and he's not even scared of fire works?" In the end, I think it may have been his little brother's bravery that helped Will appreciate the show. On the way back home, Will learned to find scorpio and the big dipper, and he counted 124 stars in the sky. But he said he knew there were really "a hundred million billion thousand" stars. Or something along those lines.

Swimming graduates

2010-07-01T19:41:00.000-07:00

One reason I like to go to Psalmond Road Pool for swim lessons is that graduation day, the eighth and final day of class, consists of about 5 minutes of a swim lesson and 45 minutes of partying on the water slides. Small kids normally can't go down the slides but for swim lesson graduation they put a small army of lifeguards at the bottom of one slide and let you have fun. Hard not to love swim lessons when you get to do this

The easy-does-it pace of the Red-Cross-certified swim lessons seems to suit our sometimes sensitive children. And by the end of two weeks, Will was accomplishing a crude crawl, attempting side breathing and all. Here, Owen and I marvel at big brother's swimming.

Library picks

2010-06-29T19:36:00.000-07:00

We maxed out our library allowance with our visit last week and checked out 20 items. I feel guilty that the librarians have to reshelve our books, but we honestly read them all and then reread our favorites many times over. And I have a hard time saying no when Will or Owen is holding up a perfectly interesting looking library book and saying “Let’s get this one!”
This time around we checked out a few different books on tadpoles and frogs, only to watch our own poor tadpoles die a few days after their capture. We’re not sure what we did wrong, and now we’re feeling bad that we removed them from their creek without giving them the chance to return there as newly matured frogs. But it helped to read that one mama frog can lay up to 5,000 eggs, so we figure ours likely wouldn’t have made it to maturity anyway. (If any of you have words of wisdom about mistakes to avoid when raising tadpoles, please share. We’d like to try it again if we could avoid feeling like tadpole killers twice over.)

Our favorite frog book, by far, is “A Frog Thing,” by Eric Drachman. It tells the story of Frank, the frog, who is determined to fly even though his parents try to tell him that flying is just not “a frog thing.” A couple of birds help him achieve his dream.—sort of – as repayment for his rescue of one of the bird’s drowning fledglings. By the end though, Frank realizes he’s better off aspiring to be a great swimmer. Owen asks for the story every night.

One of Will’s favorites, meanwhile, is “The Bunyans,” by Audrey Wood, which tells of Paul Bunyan and his gigantic family as their various adventures lead them to carve out or otherwise create everything from Mammoth Cave and Niagra Falls to Big Sur, Bryce Canyon, the Great Sand Dunes and the “Martian Face.” We’ve read it several times over, most recently sitting by the computer with a globe so we could google images of the various national (and extraterrestrial) landmarks and also find them on the map.

In the car (and at home too) Will has been listening to some African folktales on Ashely Bryan's "Beautiful Blackbird and other Folktales" audio CD. I think he's listened to all 6 stories -- 80 minutes worth in total -- a few times over, sometimes in the car and sometimes just sitting on the couch. Bryan does a pretty lively telling of each story. Will especially loves the tale "Why Frog and Snake Never Play Together." Bryan's storytelling makes me chuckle too.

Will was also enthralled with a picture book version of “The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe,” based on the original book by C.S. Lewis and illustrated by Tudor Humphries. Now we're reading the chapter book, which Will finds equally captivating. It helps that he's attending a Narnia-inspired vacation bible school at St. Thomas Episcopal Church this week. Tonight we read a chapter of the book while Will checked a map of Narnia that he brought home from VBS to locate where the characters were in the story. I meanwhile, am reliving my childhood love for this story.

What are some of your children’s favorite reads this summer?

World Cup fever

2010-06-27T18:26:00.000-07:00

We haven't been watching much world cup since our extreme-basic cable package doesn't even include ESPN. So we were pretty excited to watch the U.S. play Ghana yesterday. About 10 minutes into the game Will ran off to his room and reappeared looking like this. Not much later we had to suit Owen up too.

Maybe it was because the U.S. was down by 1, but Will soon got restless as a cleat-and-shin-guard-wearing spectator, so I spent much of the second half actually playing soccer with Will and Owen outside, which at least made the loss less painful.

After the game we had a brief whole-family soccer game with the sprinklers on and then Rob and Will stayed out for a longer game of one-on-one. I'm thinking Will played as much soccer as the World Cup players yesterday, even with their overtime.

Underwater friendship and a rainbow wish

2010-06-24T17:56:00.000-07:00

Today we wrapped up our first week of swim lessons at Psalmond Road pool and this year, for the first time, both kids are loving every minute of it and swimming like fish, rather than crying in fear, refusing to do things like put their heads under water, or demoting themselves to toddler classes because they'd rather swim with their parents.

Will in particular was having a golden sort of day. He learned to do frog kicks and back floats for the first time and had a halfway reasonable looking crawl stroke going even if he hasn’t yet figured out how to breathe between strokes. And after a week of telling me, “there this girl I’d really like to meet,” he finally talked with his swim lesson classmate. I think the allure here may have been that she’s pretty brave in the water, willing to go under – but who knows.

Anyway this is how he described it: “It reminded me of Charlie Brown and the little red-headed girl. The way that I met her is that I went under water when she went under water and I looked at her with my goggles. I didn’t talk to her. She talked to me first… I always sat by her. She also looked like a very kind and sweet lady.”

Then on the way home, Will said in an almost whining voice, “When am I ever going to see a rainbow? When I’m ever going to see a rainbow?”

He’d asked the same question a couple days ago on our way home from swim lessons, and I’d told him then that you don’t see rainbows as often in Georgia as you do in Colorado because there are so many trees all around so it’s hard to see as much of the sky. But this time, less than two seconds after he posed his rainbow question, Rob and I looked to the left and saw a nice big rainbow just waiting to be admired.

Will couldn’t stop smiling and laughing at that little miracle.

"I just can’t believe it," he said. "I just said it, and it happened. It was so silly.”

Then he asked us, “What do you think happened?”

I turned the question back on him, and he said, “It might have been like a wish – like a real wish come true.”

More fun with boxes

2010-06-22T19:38:00.000-07:00

We may be back from our big trip to Colorado, but the boys continue to travel in house.

Today they rowed in these side-by-side boats for a while and later boarded this “connecting flight” to who knows where.

They carefully selected the luggage they would need for their journey and stowed it in the "overhead bins" on the bed. They also pulled the bed covers to the floor to create a tent-like extra storage compartment.

I remain a sucker for clean-looking boxes that I find on the curbside, mostly because I know that while it may be just a box to you and me, it's a blank slate for creative play for young kids. These I spotted behind the flower shop the other day, and they have bought us hours of happy playtime already.

“Thank you for getting these boxes, mom,” Will told me today. “They are great for making airplanes and boats.”

Happy Father's Day

2010-06-20T18:31:00.001-07:00

Here's to dads everywhere, especially ours, who is fun to climb on both in and out of the water and who is always so engaged with Will and Owen -- in play, in conversations, in music-making, art projects, and adventure-taking. We're lucky to have him.

We spent our father's day swimming, playing mini golf, riding the train and taking a paddle boat ride at Robin Lake Beach at Callaway. And later we went out to dinner and delivered our homemade cards to Rob. At the end of it all, Will decided that we should have a "Kids Day" too and he's plotting it for "the second day when Uncle Graham is here." Fair enough, I say, so we'll be having an inaugral Kid's Day on July 3. We all have to have fun together, and Will has stipulated that the adults must draw cards for the kids.

Tadpole captives

2010-06-19T17:17:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, the boys and I explored Flatrock Park, which is becoming one of our favorite close-to-home settings for little adventures. We started the day with our first mini-rock climbing since Arches.Then donned water shoes and waded in the creek, holding hands together on the slippery rock. Along the way, we observed butterflies, dragon-flies, water striders, hundreds of tadpoles, minnows, lizards, finger-nail-sized frogs, a crawdad, and a skink. We spent some time in the playground, then returned to the creekside rocks for a picnic lunch and used our empty sandwich tupperware to capture two tadpoles, which Will named Brittany and Averett.

Here are a few resources I used to sort out how to help our tadpoles survive past their initial capture in a container full of creek water:

Caring for tadpoles

Aqualand Fact Sheets on tadpoles

How to raise tadpoles

Big Brittany and little Averett are now swimming in a larger makeshift fish bowl munching on lettuce. We'd love to see them to froghood and then set them free back at the park, but we're amateur tadpole keepers, so who knows.

Rainbow socks

2010-06-18T05:07:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I brought Owen a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and told him it was time to get dressed. As he often does, he promptly rejected my offering and went back to his room to design his own fashion ensemble. It looked like this.

When I asked Owen if he'd like to wear two white socks that match, he said he liked red and white better. "Because I like every color," he said.

I don't engage in fashion battles except on special occasions, so we went to the park looking funky. Will started this rainbow-sock trend in our house; he also finds it pleasing to the eye to wear different colors. But I'm sure it doesn't help that I'm frequently throwing lone socks in the boys' dressers when I fail to find the match immediately.

Photographing flowers

2010-06-15T11:38:00.000-07:00

While we were in Colorado we visited a wholesale nursery, where a friend of my mom's had green houses full of containers just about to be shipped out to the various towns, landscapers and businesses that had ordered them. We gave each of the boys a camera and let them play flower photographers for a while.

Owen took many blurry close-ups of flowers on my mom's camera, while Will collected some crisper shots, like these:

Thank you Louisa!

Colorado in pictures

2010-06-10T22:32:00.000-07:00

We're wrapping up our Colorado vacation, where we've enjoyed lots of playing, biking, swimming and hiking and nothing but comfortable sunny days. Here are some highlights:

Owen learns to "swim" at the Glenwood Springs Pool, where the water's so comfortably warm we wound up staying 5 hours.

A concert with Grammy.

Exploring Sweetwater Indian Cave, where some pictographs from Ute Indians who used the cave for storage hundreds of years ago linger, surrounded unfortunately, by plenty of contemporary graffiti.

Owen wasn't sure he wanted to go on a hike until we told him he could bring this flashlight.

Close encounters of the bird kind. This Cassin's finch, which was blind in one eye, got used to us while we were eating dinner outside and gradually Will made his way closer and closer to the bird feeder.

Garden tour next weekend

2010-06-06T19:29:00.000-07:00

Today's Ledger-Enquirer includes a story I wrote previewing the 2010 Keep Columbus Beautiful Tour of Gardens. If you're in town next Saturday or Sunday it should be a nice way to spend a few hours of the day. With all the private gardens located on a relatively short stretch of Broadway in downtown Columbus, it will be a pedestrian-friendly tour this year. And proceeds go to the Keep Columbus Beautiful Commission.

Arches in pictures

2010-06-03T13:32:00.000-07:00

The boys and I are back from a camping trip with Grammy and Grandpa to Arches National Park in Utah, perhaps my all-time favorite place to go when I was a kid. With climbable rocks in all directions, it is the ultimate natural playground for kids (and adults) -- and it also happens to be one of the most beautiful places on Earth.

To keep young kids safe, it was definitely good to have three adults since our campground was surrounded by climbable rocks and chaseable lizards that beckoned Will and Owen even as we were trying to set up tents and prepare meals.

But the desert wildflowers were in bloom, the snow was still lingering on the mountain peaks in the distance, and we were all captivated by our surroundings. Will was inspired to hike further than he ever has in his life. We let him guide us and he learned to spot the cairns that marked the trails when they were crossing long expanses of rock. The highlight for Owen, who did his share of mild rock climbing, was rolling and tumbling in the sand at Sand Dune Arch. For Will, it was some big-kids-only rock climbing with Grandpa.

Here are some snapshots of the trip:

Look mom, no training wheels

2010-05-31T10:02:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, while I had my back turned, Will learned to ride a bike.

It's a bike that's too small for him, but mom thought that would be perfect for learning since Will could just put his feet down rather than falling as he got the hang of things. So I took the boys over to the school parking lot across the street from our house. Will went to work trying to scoot himself along on the bike until he was ready to put his feet up on the pedals. I gave him a couple pointers on steering and getting up enough speed to make balancing easier.

Then Owen called to me to come over to where he was pushing around a stroller, and as I was walking away from Will, he was shouting in excitement, "Mom, I'm riding my bike!" And sure enough, he was.

I'd always pictured pushing him along and then letting him go, but this was much simpler. And he made the big bike leap just a few hundred yards from the enormous basketball court and concrete playground where I learned to ride my own bike about 29 years ago. If we had this learning-to-bike paradise near us in Columbus, Will probably would have mastered a year or two ago.

Car rides with Grammy

2010-05-29T19:55:00.000-07:00

Will and Owen and I made it to Colorado after an hour and a half flight delay that made me grateful I had packed the card game Uno. Will and Owen befriended another 5-year-old in the Atlanta airport and we taught him the game and they played a few rounds together. We also enjoyed some extensive airplane maintenance and loading observation time.

I'm feeling relieved that we opted for the quick flight this year rather than the marathon road trip, especially since lately, when we are making the 8-minute trip from our house to downtown Columbus, Owen has been moaning the question: "When are we going to get there???" Three days in a car seat would apparently be an eternity to him.

And Will is thrilled that we will be able to spend an entire two weeks in Colorado. He's made his calculations and is constantly exclaiming, "I can't believe we get to stay 14 days!" (Rob is still at home for now, but he'll join us next week.)

After our arrival in Denver, I offered the back seat to my mom so she could entertain the boys while I relaxed in the passenger seat for the two-hour trip to Eagle. They played a game in which she wrote down interesting sights they passed on the trip over the mountains and they organized it all by category -- everything from horses and waterfalls to bikes, cliffs and caves. She told them to keep their eyes peeled for mountain goats and coyotes and the like -- but no luck. When they finally tired of that game they started sharing stories with each other. Mom's included tales of mountain lion and bear sightings that got Owen seeing animals on the hillsides. Will's included a detailed account of each hole on the mini golf course at Panama City.

Owen was inspired to drink so much in the arid Colorado air, that we had to make two emergency roadside pit stops. At the first, as Owen peed on some grass, he looked up and said: "That's a bear rock; I see a bear coming from the bear rock." At pit stop number two, he looked up at the hillside and said, "Better watch out. There might be a mountain lion goat up there."

Now if I can just ride shot gun on the five-hour trip to Arches National Park, where we plan to camp on Monday and Tuesday, we will all be happy travelers. I'd install Grammy instead of an in-car DVD player any day.

Bargain summer activities

2010-05-27T11:55:00.000-07:00

Today I signed the boys up for swim lessons through the Columbus Parks and Recreation Department. The low-key classes, in which red-cross certified instructors follow the comfort level of the kids, make learning to swim a sometimes longer process than the sink-or-swim lessons with private instructors that many parents opt for. But the rec department lessons seems to suit my tentative kids, and this year Will is truly excited to swim. Since we don't have a pool in our backyard I've felt okay about going the patient route. And it's definitely cheap. For $30 per child you get eight nearly hour-long lessons.

We're also going to let Will try a week of CSU's "Summer Spectacular" program, which at $25 per week, is also a great deal. I have a friend whose son has loved the program, which is geared for 4- to 11-year-olds and which provides an opportunity for teacher candidates to get experience working with kids. (The low fees are just enough to cover snacks and materials). This year's theme is "Structures: Ancient and Modern Wonders of the World". Go here for more information.

We'll also do a week of Vacation Bible School, and I'm calling it quits at that. I want the boys to enjoy some leisurely days filled with play before we ship Will off to all-day kindergarten.

What are some of your favorite summer programs for kids?

Birthday pup and the graduate

2010-05-25T19:52:00.000-07:00

Today Will graduated from pre-k and Harvey graduated from puppyhood. I'm not saying he's grown out of all his crazy puppy behaviors, but he is exactly one year old and he has matured way more than I ever imagined he could even four months ago -- and we are all loving our sweet dog.

And I'm not saying Will's outgrown all his crazy little kid antics, but he's getting gentler, more thoughtful, more reflective in his old age too. He had a case of the nerves combined with the beginning of a cold that had him too out of sorts to brave the stage for a medley of pre-k year-in-review songs. But he got his diploma and, having evaded the daunting task of speaking his line "In August, we made new friends" into the microphone, he was content to celebrate with his friends. (Will inherited my little-kid-shy genes although I never point this out to him since I don't want to define him as shy or make him feel otherwise doomed to follow in my quaking-with-fear footsteps.)

Here's the graduate delivering pseudo doggy birthday cake (or more accurately, dog food iced with shredded chicken) to the birthday pup.

A portrait in birthday hats. (We were going to let Will and Owen blow out the candle but Harvey snuffed it out first.)

And the dog digs into his gifts (wrapped by Will in newspaper).

Quotes of the Day

2010-05-22T17:28:00.000-07:00

From Will, who has recently been asking why we can't get another dog:

"When I grow up I'm going to have five dogs, five cats, one parrot, three guppies, two turtles, two hermit crabs, and three spotted lizards."

From Owen, while experiencing some bathtime flatulence:

"I can make bubbles with my bottom!"

From Will, after an evening wrestling match with dad and Owen:

"I love life."

Rocket ships and river picnics

2010-05-20T11:26:00.001-07:00

Yesterday Owen and I accompanied Will’s pre-k class to the Coca Cola Space Science Center, where Will enjoyed flying in space shuttle simulators and learning about the solar system at the Omnisphere theater. (He’s still talking about “rocky midgets” and “gassy giants” today, and he and Owen have been designing rocket ships in the living room.)

After the field trip, just the three of us went down to the river for a quiet picnic. There was a light breeze, perfectly warm weather and nothing to do but follow the boys’ whims as they ran up and down grassy hills, pitched rocks in the river and pretended to fish with sticks. There’s not much better, I think, than a riverside picnic with no agenda attached.

Art lines

2010-05-17T11:29:00.000-07:00

I stole this idea from my friend, who is an artist and potter, and who strung up her 2-year-old daughter's finger paintings with clothespins in front of their kitchen window. We made our own art line, using twine and paper clips, because we happened to have them on hand, for the boys' bedroom. Will and Owen love to look up at it and admire their work.

A couple times I've noticed Will gazing at one of the hanging pictures and then running to the kitchen for crayons and paper so he can sit down to work on another masterpiece. Kids, of course, get real satisfaction in displaying their work.

We may just have to put up another art line on the opposite wall.

A kohlrabi treat

2010-05-14T12:15:00.000-07:00

It’s CSA season in Columbus. When I got our half of the first produce bag last weekend, I felt slightly daunted by the prospect of preparing the contents for kid consumption. Will and Owen both seem to have grown a bit pickier over the past few months, and I was wondering whether I’d be able to sell them on kohlrabi, turnips, spinach, cilantro and kale. I knew they’d go for a spinach manicotti, but the rest of the veggies seemed less promising. But I take it as a personal challenge to consume or freeze all our produce before it goes bad, so Will and I set to work together, blanching and sauteeing kale and turnip greens according to Rob’s invented recipe (applied here to collards) and following this recipe for roasted kohlrabi that our farmers shared with us in their weekly e-newsletter:

Roasted Kohlrabi with garlic and parmesan

Ingredients
4 kohlrabi bulbs, peeled
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
salt and pepper to taste
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Directions
Preheat an oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C). Cut the kohlrabi into 1/4 inch thick slices, then cut each of the slices in half. Combine olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper in a large bowl. Toss kohlrabi slices in the olive oil mixture to coat. Spread kohlrabi in a single layer on a baking sheet. Bake in the preheated oven until browned, 15 to 20 minutes, stirring occasionally in order to brown evenly. Remove from oven and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese. Return to the oven to allow the Parmesan cheese to brown, about 5 minutes. Serve immediately.

Will declared the kohlrabi “very, very good” and even went so far as to call it one of his two favorite foods. (Tortellini was the other favorite -- at least in that fleeting moment).

And that is why I love belonging to a CSA. It makes us so much more adventurous when it comes to eating fresh healthy food.

Razor blades at the park

2010-05-11T17:50:00.000-07:00

Unsettling, to say the least, to hear that razor blades were found taped to the playground equipment at Lakebottom Park. I got a phone message from the city on the subject this afternoon. If you're a Columbus parent, and haven't heard the news, check out the story here. And be vigilant.

Mother's day at the beach

2010-05-10T18:40:00.001-07:00

I think I may have enjoyed my favorite mother's day weekend to date -- at the beach with the boys this weekend.

Normally Rob and I seek out state park beaches that are undeveloped and teeming with wildlife. But Rob had a meeting Friday relatively close to Panama City so we decided to make that our beach destination.

Turns out the Redneck Riviera is a pretty great place to take kids, and a super affordable place to get a beachfront hotel on an off weekend. And those obnoxious mini-golf courses that line the strip as you drive in were a hit with Will and Owen.

We spent most of our time on the beach digging giant holes and making "volcanoes,"

burying Will in the sand

and watching dolphins, among other things:

We made daily trips to the heated pool, where by day 2, our once water-timid Will finally learned how to swim, albeit not so gracefully,

Owen averaged about 35 hits per hole on the goofy golf course, but always managed to get his ball in the hole

and Will and Owen had the first ferris wheel ride of their lives.

I tried to tell Will repeatedly that we were not in "Hanama City" but "Panama City" but it just wouldn't sink in. Finally, he admitted, "I really like Hannah Monatana." He got in a few "Panama City" pronunciations yesterday, but today as he was making all kinds of plans for his future, he slipped again.

"I want to have a small house when I grow up but I want to build it myself so I can have it just how I like it. I want to be a palentologist and live in Hanama City."

"Me too," said Owen, who desperately wished that we didn't have to come home yesterday.

Feeding frenzy

2010-05-05T20:13:00.000-07:00

I’m finally posting weird animal photos from what seems to be becoming an annual trip with Papa to the Pine Mountain Wild Animal Safari. The boys went last year, but it was my first Georgia safari. There was something a little eerie about this collection of bold animals and their over-grazed landscape, but it was a grand old hoot for the boys to feed the animals and watch them slobber. Their favorite animals were some tiny two-week-old pigs and this llama, which Will named Wilts.

The highlight of our weekend was a Dinner on the Farm at the Jenny Jack Sun Farm. We forgot our camera. Otherwise, you'd be looking at lovely photos of children running in chest-high grasses, petting baby chicks, and digging for worms in the big worm compost bin.

How about this giraffe head with sky instead???

Talking with kids about race

2010-05-02T09:50:00.000-07:00

Today’s Ledger-Enquirer includes a story I wrote about how to talk with kids about issues of race and ethnicity – and why it’s important to start at an early age, even if it feels like awkward territory. I was inspired to find some local experts on the subject after reading this “See Baby Discriminate” Newsweek article back in September. The article is an excerpt from the book “NurtureShock” by By Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman.

In today’s story, Victoria Plaut, professor of social and cultural psychology at the University of Georgia, and Clubview Elementary fifth-grade teacher Charlene Coleman, offer many insights about the nuances of talking with children about race and the importance of having honest dialogue with children about difference rather than just hoping they’ll grow up “color-blind.”

For further information on the subject try these Web sites:

UnderstandingRace.org (Follow the “For Kids” link for activities designed to help kids ages 10-13 think more deeply about race and racism)

Multiracialsky.com (offers some links to books on race for various ages)

Civilrights.org (offers examples of how to answer difficult questions form kids)

Airplane races at the sick resort

2010-04-30T09:27:00.000-07:00

As my parents left yesterday, my dad joked that he didn't want to come to this "resort" again. Owen and I were sick for the bulk of their visit, which ranked right up there with the time they joined us at the beach about a year and a half ago, and Will threw up the first night and as soon as he was on the mend Owen started vomiting and didn't let up for the rest of our stay.

The boys, though, thought it was magical to have two willing playmates trapped mostly indoors with them. They played games, did puzzles, read books, built towers, drew pictures, went on treasure hunts and occasionally Will got to sneak outside for a park outing or some baseball in the back yard. After my parents left yesterday, and in spite of my many patient explanations that they had flown back on the plane to Colorado, Owen kept looking at me and saying in frustration, "Grammy and Grandpa STILL not come back." He must have said it 30 times.

One of the highlights of the indoor games were airplane races. The boys and my mom or dad counted "uno, dos, tres" and let their paper planes fly.

If your plane soared the furthest distance you could celebrate like this:

Events for the weekend -- and the sick report

2010-04-28T07:23:00.000-07:00

I've failed to keep up the blog for a week because I've been out of town and then out of commission. My parents arrived on Friday and Rob and I promptly scurried off to a Pine Mountain cabin for a weekend to ourselves while the grandparents babysat the boys. On Sunday we met up at Callaway and tried to introduce my parents, who'd flown in from some still snowy Colorado weather, to a taste of summer at Robin Lake Beach.

And then on Monday Owen and I came down with what seems to be the same peristent little virus that Will had the week before (the current theory with the doctor and me is that Will never had strep). So while Owen and I have been fighting high fevers and sore throats and congestion, my parents have been babysitting and taking care of things. I am grateful to have them here and the boys have done more puzzles and played more games in four days than they have in months.

This winter and spring has taught me a lot about patience and acceptance, and I'm hopeful that once I finally get my exhausted immune system some recovery time over the summer, I'll be back to relative good health for a long time to come.

This weekend we're hoping to have at least a momentary spell of good health. There are a lot of fun events for the weekend that we're hoping to take part in including a "Dinner on the Farm" Saturday night at the Jenny Jack Sun Farm and a Midtown "Party on The Lawn"of Wynnton Arts Academy from 3:30 to 6:30 on Sunday, featuring rythym and blues by Peggy Jenkins and the Bizness and free refreshments and face painting. Bring lawn chairs if you come.

Jack-in-the-box at bedtime

2010-04-21T10:02:00.000-07:00

It’s been two and a half weeks now since we boldly dismantled the side rail on Owen’s crib and converted it to his “big boy bed.” For a few days, Owen was so giddy with his newfound freedom that he’d still be up an hour and a half after bedtime as we negotiated potty trips, lotion needs (for “hurting” stomachs and legs), band-aid requests (for invisible boo-boos), darkness concerns, sibling complaints, unexplained smiling appearances and the like. Finally I decided it was time to bring out the no-nonsense “Jack-in-the-box” technique, courtesy of Marc Weissbluth’s “Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child.”

The strategy involves returning your kid to bed without looking at him or talking to him every time he gets out of bed, no matter how many times it takes. You let him know you’re going to do this ahead of time, but it’s a psychologically brutal parental experience on the first couple nights.
We started by making a sign with Owen’s sleep rules: “At bedtime we: 1. Stay in bed; 2. Close our eyes; 3. Stay very quiet; 4. Go to sleep

Will added a fifth rule in his own handwriting: “Be very still and don’t wake up your brother”

Owen colored a bit on the sign and decorated it with stickers. We posted it in the bedroom, and I braced for the imminent battle.

We’d resorted to the jack-in-the-box strategy with Will a few years back, and we put him back to bed something like 75 times the first night, 130 times the second night and then Presto, the magic kicked in and there were only a few return trips to bed or maybe none on night three. With Will it worked like magic for a couple weeks, then things quickly fell apart again as soon as we spent a weekend away from home and we’d have to do it over again.

Rob had such negative memories of the experience (he calls it the worst thing we went through with Will) that he was feeling really reluctant about releasing Owen from his crib. So I decided to take on the role of the evil, mute, eye-averting returner to bed. (It’s best for just one parent to do it per night anyway, Weissbluth says.) I handled Owen gently but gave him no feedback at all, and he was so devastated by the loss of interaction with me that he hollered and carried on and climbed back out of bed 57 times over the course of an hour. I snuck in a few tears of my own when Owen wasn’t looking; the whole process goes against every motherly bone in my body -- except that I know I’m going to have a well-rested kid after just a couple days of misery.

Meanwhile, we let Will sleep in our bed for the first hour or two of the night. In fact, I was putting Owen back in Will’s double bed. Since the boys share a room these sleep training issues are complicated. Owen prefers Will’s truly big bed to his little “big boy bed.” And yet in a way Will’s potential presence adds incentives for going to sleep quietly. Before we got to return trip 80 or 125 or whatever it might have been on that first night of jack-in-the-boxing Owen, I sent Rob in to make one final deal. If Owen would be quiet, Rob would return Will, now sound asleep in our room, to the boys’ room so that they could sleep quietly together. This did the trick. Owen lay still and silent and was soon sleeping soundly next to Will.

We had to remove Will again on night two, and after about 20 return trips to bed Owen got quiet and we moved Will back. By night three, Owen got with the program, followed his sleep rules and Will got to stay. Since then bedtime has gone relatively smoothly. But I’m sure we’ll regress.

Naptime in the bigger "big boy bed."

**On a side note, Will appears to be fever-free for the first time in six days and we are grateful for that. This was a rough round of Strep to say the least. He's still a little red under the nose, dark under the eyes, thinned out all over -- but at least he's up and playing and eating again.

Natural remedies for kids' congestion

2010-04-18T11:55:00.000-07:00

We’ve been a sick house for the past several days, beginning with Owen’s violent but fleeting 12-hour stomach bug and ending with a mysterious bug that has had Will running fevers of 103 between Tylenol doses. He’s been lying around miserable, fighting congestion, sore throat, headaches, an upset tummy and until today he was refusing all food. Rob and I have never seen him so sick. This morning we saw those tell-tale white pus pockets on the back of his throat and top of his mouth that scream “Strep!” so we got him started on an antibiotic.

In the meantime, I’ve finally found some natural kid-friendly methods for fighting congestion that seem to be helping my kids cope with some of the sinus issues and perhaps prevent some of the ear infections that have plagued us in the past. For stuffy noses, we use Little Noses saline spray as well as an Xlear Kid’s nasal spray, a spray that contains the natural sweetener xylitol and grapefruit seed along with the saline and water. Both Will and Owen think the Xlear is more effective at clearing their noses, and there seems to be some research to back it up. I also let the kids chew xylitol-based gum to stave off ear infections. Both the act of chewing and the xylitol are supposed to be good for preventing ear infections (and preventing tooth decay as well).

I’ll also boil some water, pour it in a mug and let Will breathe the steam in through his nose to loosen all that gunk.

These are the things you have to do when your kids are too young for Buteyko breathing method exercises or a neti pot (both of which have been helping me with my sinus issues).

For nighttime coughs, we’re still using honey -- another simple technique that research has shown to be more effective than any children's cough medicines.

What natural remedies have you found effective for coping with and/or preventing children’s congestion, coughs and ear infections?

New research on spanking

2010-04-15T12:31:00.000-07:00

There’s no denying that parents see immediate results when they administer a swift whack on the bottom to a misbehaving child. But a growing body of research suggests that in the long term children who are spanked are likely to become more aggressive and exhibit lower cognitive abilities than children whose parents use alternatives to corporal punishment as they discipline – and teach and talk with -- their children.

A recent Tulane University study of almost 2,500 children, found that even when controlling for children’s level of aggression at age 3 and other confounding factors, those who were spanked more frequently (more than twice in the previous month) were more likely to be aggressive by age 5. Go here for an abstract of the study, which was published in the April issue of the journal Pediatrics.

I wish we could all find ways to share this information with other parents in our life. Disciplining without spanking can feel like a long, frustrating process sometimes – but the payoffs are big.

Here are a few excerpts from a Time article reviewing the Tulane research:

“Now researchers at Tulane University provide the strongest evidence yet against the use of spanking: of the nearly 2,500 youngsters in the study, those who were spanked more frequently at age 3 were more likely to be aggressive by age 5. The research supports earlier work on the pitfalls of corporal punishment, including a study by Duke University researchers that revealed that infants who were spanked at 12 months scored lower on cognitive tests at age 3.”

“ ‘The odds of a child being more aggressive at age 5 if he had been spanked more than twice in the month before the study began increased by 50%,' says Taylor. And because her group also accounted for varying levels of natural aggression in children, the researchers are confident that 'it's not just that children who are more aggressive are more likely to be spanked.’ ”

“Compared with children who were not hit, those who were spanked were more likely to be defiant, demand immediate satisfaction of their wants and needs, get frustrated easily, have temper tantrums and lash out physically against others.

The reason for that, says Singer, may be that spanking instills fear rather than understanding. Even if a child were to stop his screaming tantrum when spanked, that doesn't mean he understands why he shouldn't be acting out in the first place. What's more, spanking models aggressive behavior as a solution to problems.”

“Spanking may stop a child from misbehaving in the short term, but it becomes less and less effective with repeated use, according to the AAP; it also makes discipline more difficult as the child gets older and outgrows spanking. As the latest study shows, investing the time early on to teach a child why his behavior is wrong may translate to a more self-aware and in-control youngster in the long run.”

Any thoughts from you seasoned parents out there?

Camping on the farm

2010-04-12T18:24:00.000-07:00

This weekend we babysat a friend’s daughter in the woods for a few hours and in exchange we got to play and camp on their rural wooded property.

Owen still hasn’t learned how to sleep well in his own sleeping bag, but in spite of the sleep that both he and I lose in a tent, spending a weekend under the stars and in the woods with my boys is more than worth it.

A few photos:

Four-wheeler riding (one perk of staying near a well-equipped friend’s house)

Campfire sing-along

Hot dog (and marshmallow) roasting and consuming. (We also roasted vegetables in our newly acquired dutch oven.)

Ravine climbing (we are getting excited about an upcoming camping trip with grandma and grandpa to Arches National Park in Utah, where we’ll get to climb on real rock)

Get festive with reptiles

2010-04-09T10:25:00.000-07:00

In the middle of a wild week of trying to train Owen to go to sleep on his own without crib rails to contain him, we are contemplating a camping trip. Not a wise choice, perhaps, but sometimes the woods beckon.

If we don't go camping, we will at least go hang out with some reptiles at Oxbow Meadows Environmental Learning Center's annual Reptile Fest . It makes a nice little adventure to bike down the River Walk to Oxbow and mingle with the reptiles before biking home.

Tooth fairy talk

2010-04-06T11:15:00.000-07:00

Anticipating a visit from an older friend who had likely already lost some of her teeth, Will launched into some tooth fairy skepticism yesterday. Here's how we danced around the issue:

W: "I don’t think there’s really a tooth fairy because fairies aren’t real, right mom?"

M: "Usually I think of fairies just being in stories but a lot of people say there’s a tooth fairy."

W: "Who says it? Do the scientists say it?"

M: "No, I don’t think the scientists do. But lots of parents and story books say there are tooth fairies."

W: "Do you think there’s a tooth fairy?"

M: "I’ve never actually seen a tooth fairy. But when I was a kid and I lost a tooth I’d put it in a little pillow with a special tooth fairy pocket and in the morning my tooth would be gone and there would be a quarter there."

W: “All you got was a quarter?!!?”

And so we left behind those tricky tooth fairy questions and launched into a more innocent discussion about inflation.

Happy Easter to you

2010-04-04T18:52:00.000-07:00

We had a joy-filled one. Hope you did too.

Rules for rules

2010-04-01T15:55:00.000-07:00

Here’s an NPR parenting story worth a listen: “The Rules About How Parents Should Make Rules.” The overarching premise is that rules designed for safety, health and basic morality work well, while rules that attempt to unnecessarily control kids can backfire – and that all rules applied in a gentle, non-authoritarian way, as choices between two or more alternatives that are acceptable to parents, are much more likely to be accepted and followed by children.

Marshmallow bunnies

2010-03-31T11:21:00.000-07:00

Normally we don't snack on marshmallows at our house (unless we're roasting them over a campfire) but I thought I'd break out a couple yesterday and let the kids make edible easter bunny sculptures. I cut the a marshmallow in half for head and body, then dissected another one for limbs and ears and let the kids mold the pieces, stick them together, and dip a toothpick in food coloring to pain on facial features. I got the basic idea here, then simplified.

Go dark for Earth Hour tonight

2010-03-27T06:31:00.000-07:00

We plan to celebrate Earth Hour today by turning off all but the boys' essential nightlight and living by candlelight for an hour. In fact we might start early this evening so the boys' can experience a little Earth Hour darkness before bedtime. We'll talk about saving energy and other resources by turning off lights and faucets and conserving and reusing paper throughout the year.

Earth Hour is a global movement, symbolizing the impact people can have by making simple changes to help conserve resources. Earth Hour takes place from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. local time, wherever you happen to be on the globe. Go here for Earth Hour children's activities and information.

Monster dad

2010-03-25T18:12:00.001-07:00

Given the choice of playing in the bathtub or playing monster with daddy and taking a lightning-fast shower instead, our boys opt to play monster. Rob dons a blue play tunnel as monster garb and either hides until the boys work up the nerve to find him -- or he walks around the house making monster noises and sticking his arms out of the tunnel in search of little boys to eat.

It's one of those games that produces lots of joyous shrieking and running and laughter -- in addition to the grunts and gobbling noises of the blue monster. I love to listen to it all while I do my post-dinner kitchen cleaning.

Monster catches food.

Monster eats food.

Monster emerges from his blue skin for some grand-finale wrestling.

What raucous games do your kids play with you or your significant other?

Greg Mortenson meets Columbus

2010-03-23T03:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I got to spend the afternoon at Brookstone School, where Greg Mortenson, bestselling co-author “Three Cups of Tea” and author of “Stones into Schools” was visiting for the day. Today’s Ledger-Enquirer includes a story about his Brookstone visit.

I also attended Mortenson’s evening talk at the CSU Lumpkin Center, but the highlight of the day for me was getting to see Mortenson inspire and engage the students at Brookstone and getting to meet him in person. He is a warm, humble person whose commitment to serving others and promoting peace is infectious.

As Brookstone senior McKay Sheftall said after Mortenson’s talk, “Dr. Greg” reminds us to “keep others before self.”

“He provides an example of someone who made things happen himself in such a huge way,” Sheftall said. “It emphasizes to me what a huge difference one person can make…To have him here to share his passion and goals has been inspiring and I hope will rub off on us.”

Saad Ahmed, a Brookstone senior of Pakistani descent, said he was glad Mortenson spoke to the upper school students about "the true meaning of what Islam is, because the media depicts Islam as very radical, and we do promote peace, just as every religion does."

The Pennies for Peace program is a powerful, concrete way to introduce students to the idea of service learning and empathy for others on a global scale. Students at Brookstone had created beautiful paper collages depicting scenes from Pennies for Peace as well as a large mural and many Pakistani dolls. They had learned Mortenson’s story by reading “Three Cups of Tea” or his children’s book “Listen to the Wind.” They had learned about the culture, politics and geography of Pakistan and Afghanistan in various classes. They collected enough coins – totaling more than $2,000 – to fund a teacher salary at a CAI school for one year. And the third grade choir performed a rendition of the song “Three Cups of Tea,” which was first performed by Mortenson’s daughter, Amira.

Across town, Columbus High students, who had been assigned “Three Cups of Tea” for summer reading, organized a “Pennies for Peace” drive of their own and collected almost $8,000 from students as well as contributions from the outside community.

Mortenson is a champion of children, and he empowers them. He talks about how his own children’s suggestions have influenced his work: Amira helped him realize the importance of including playgrounds at the schools the Central Asia Institute builds and she is featured in some of the Pennies for Peace web videos; and his 9-year-old son, Khyber, designed part of his power point slide show and has a passion for ridding the world of landmines that he has passed on to his father. Mortenson talks with conviction about the promise he sees in young people and their desire to effect change in the world. He reminds us to listen to them, and to listen more in general.

Mortenson also preaches the importance of listening to our "elders" and taking the time to learn their stories while we have the chance. On Monday I witnessed a nice exchange between Mortenson and an influential Columbus elder (as Mortenson would call him): William "Bill" Turner, past chairman and CEO of the W.C. Bradley Company. Mortenson had been presented with Turner's book, "The Learning of Love: A Journey Toward Servant Leadership" and the two talked together about the roots of Turner's passion for servant leadership. Turner was very influential in the founding of The Brookstone Servant Leadership program in 2006. As a mother, it was a reminder to me that wherever my children go to school, I would like to be a part of helping to coordinate a servant leadership program. At Brookstone, all students take part in the servant leadership program in some capacity.

Go to the Central Asia Institute for more information or to donate. Go to the Pennies for Peace Web site if you’re interested in helping your children learn about the children of Pakistan and Afghanistan and how they can help them, or to learn about how to launch a Pennies for Peace drive at your child’s school.

Things to do in the next few days:

2010-03-19T11:34:00.000-07:00

1. Check out the Thunder in the Valley Air Show this weekend. You can buy tickets, face the crowds and see the planes up close, or do some low-key longer distance viewing as you lounge on the grass around the parking lots at CSU’s Cunningham Center. I’m not sure which option we’ll go with this year.

2. Go see Greg Mortenson, author of “Three Cups of Tea” speak about his work building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The talk is 7 p.m. Monday night at the CSU Lumpkin Center. If you held onto tickets from his originally scheduled talk in November, arrive between 6 and 6:30 to make sure you get a seat. If you don’t have tickets, you should still be able to get a seat – the Lumpkin Center holds 4,500 people and they’ll start admitting everyone, with or without tickets, at 6:30. The Columbus Public Library Web site has info.

3. Check out this live video of a barn owl nest box. Mama barn owl is sitting on 5 or 6 eggs and they’re due to hatch any day now. We’re checking in on her daily. Thanks to my friend Grace for the tip.

Bedtime staller

2010-03-17T19:57:00.001-07:00

At 2 and a half, Owen is still taking an afternoon nap. And that means when bedtime rolls around at 8 p.m. he, unlike Will, is not quite totally exhausted. And so Owen has begun to turn into a master staller.

Owen is still sleeping in a crib (on this point Rob and I are the stallers; we are still haunted by memories of Will popping out of bed every 5 seconds as a 2-year-old). In any case, Owen is dependent on us when it comes to sleep procrastination.

For a while he would claim he needed to go potty about 3 minutes after we’d suited him back up in his pajamas after a failed attempt to go. (Until we made the rule “you can only go potty once before you go to sleep” I think he was actually deliberately holding it in on the first attempt in order to get to make a second.)

Once we cut out all but one round of potty shenanigans, he continued to think of lots of pressing questions to ask us before he felt ready for us to leave him in his crib.

“I have to tell you one more thing …” he would say about 15 times in a row as I tried to make a gentle exit.

And his favorite “thing” would be a question, since this typically elicits a more varied response – as opposed to an, “Okay, good night Owen” -- and lays the groundwork for further questions.

Here’s a sampling of the many “one more things” Owen has urgently needed to ask or tell us before we said our final goodnight:

“How does Pooh Bear take a shower?”

“How a train come through gate in our back yard?”

“Why I not get out like you guys?” (As in why are you still imprisioning me in this crib.
A valid question, I admit.)

“My belly hurts. I need some lotion on it.”

“What are these called?” (pointing to crib rails)

"What is that?" (pointing to crib bumper)

“What do elevators look like?”

"I can't sleep this late."

"I can't see anything."

And the list goes on….

Owen and I had ourselves a little meeting several days ago and agreed on our new bedtime rules: only one trip to the potty, only one session of water drinking, and he gets to tell me only “one more thing” to which I will respond simply “okay” even if that thing is a question. Then I say “Goodnight Owen. I’ll see you in the morning.” And the ritual ends.

But he still tries to bend the rules, and I can’t help answering at least one question a night and letting him get away with about three “one more things” before I notice myself racing to the door before he can get the next question in.

What bedtime stalling techniques have your kids devised (or how have you managed them)?

No kisses for this kid’s bride

2010-03-13T05:41:00.000-08:00

I’m not sure what got Will thinking about weddings yesterday, but at 5 years old, he is decidedly unromantic.

“What happens if they say you can kiss the bride and someone doesn’t want to kiss the bride?” Will asked me.

“I’ve actually never heard of that happening…” I told him and before I could say more, Will was fretting about his own future wedding.

“I bet I wouldn’t even kiss a bride because I don’t like kissing.”

And he scrunched up his nose and made that universal kid look that says, “eeeewwww, gross!”

Unload your hazardous waste

2010-03-10T19:03:00.000-08:00

Spring is finally in the air here I think, even if the rain's making things feel less than tropical. So if you're in the Columbus area and need an excuse to launch a spring cleaning campaign, here's one:

The Keep Columbus Beautiful Commission is holding a Household Hazardous Waste Recyling Day from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday at 25 22nd Avenue (across from Dolly Madison on Victory Drive). We're going to unload some old cans of paint and who knows what else. I only wish they were taking expired pharmaceuticals so I could finally safely clear all the expired medicines out of our cabinets.

Anyway, here's what you can unload:

• Paint and Solvents - latex paint, oil-based paint, furniture strippers, paint thinners, etc.
• Lawn Care Chemicals - fertilizers, pesticides, pool chemicals, herbicides, fungicides, etc.
• Cleaning Products - bleach or products containing bleach, ammonia or ammonia-based products, all-purpose cleaners, furniture polish, spot removers, scouring powder, oven cleaner, bathroom cleaner, bug spray, etc.
• Automotive Products - motor oil, oil filters, gasoline, anti-freeze, lubricants, car batteries, brake fluid, transmission fluid, car wax, metal polish, etc.
*Common electronic equipment including computers, printers, fax machines, copiers, and consumer electronics (no televisions).

For more information contact Keep Columbus Beautiful at (706) 653-4008 or kcbc1987@mindspring.com.

All for the trophy

2010-03-06T15:09:00.000-08:00

Today Will played in the first official soccer game of his life as member of “Team Chaos” a term that well describes the whole concept of soccer playing for 5-year-olds.

The kids played three-on-three with goals relatively closely spaced. At first Will stood around looking a bit dazed and when I met him for his first sideline water break, he smiled and said, “I didn’t realize we were playing the game. I thought we were just practicing.”

He warmed up to it a bit after that and wound up making four or five goals, only one of which was for the opposing team. Our team was generally a little lackluster and amateurish in comparison to our opponents who seemed to have less first-season players and ran the field with much more gusto. I’m pretty sure we must have lost but no one really kept score as far as I know and we didn’t discuss winning or losing at the end of the game.

Will said he had fun, but wondered when he would get a trophy. This is a continuation of a little trophy-obsession for Will, who I try to raise with relatively non-competitive play-for-the-love-of-the-game instincts, but whose preschool pals have managed to build real intrigue for him around the notion of acquiring soccer trophies..

The first time Owen accompanied Will to a soccer practice, Will told his younger brother, “This is where I play soccer. And this is where I’m going to get my trophy.”

Pig Won’t and Pig Will

2010-03-03T10:56:00.000-08:00

Last night, I escaped to my book club and let Rob put the boys to bed. This should be Rob’s post, I guess, but I’ll share it as reported to me.

While I was gone, Owen refused to lay down in his crib and insisted that “mommy” needed to put him to bed, in his most stubborn pig-headed 2-year-old manner.

Rob asked Owen to help him out since he was having to put both Will and Owen down all by himself.

“I don’t care about that!” Owen shouted stubbornly.

And so Rob called upon good ol’ Richard Scarry to help him out. Owen got a little board book as a birthday party favor entitled “Isn’t Pig Won’t Naughty?” The little tale of compliant Pig Will doing everything as his parents ask and stubborn Pig Won’t saying “I won’t” to everything – and catching a cold and missing a birthday party as a result -- delights both Will and Owen probably because they recognize a bit of both the sweet Pig Will and the strong-willed Pig Won’t in themselves. Their young minds pull them willy-nilly in both directions.

In any case, last night Rob told Owen that Will, who was tucked in bed and quietly attempting to sleep, was acting like Pig Will and that Owen was kind of acting like Pig Won’t. Owen thought about this for a moment and quickly decided to become Pig Will for the night. He laid down quietly and put himself to sleep.

I may try calling on Pig Won’t again in a pinch – although this may have been a one-time miracle-worker.

Have you noticed your children’s behavior change in response to a book or story?

A shower without the giftwrap

2010-02-27T18:00:00.001-08:00

Today I hosted a nontraditional shower/blessingway for a first-time mom-to-be, who is also a good friend and one of Rob's co-workers. We skipped the usual unwrapping of presents and instead brought a bunch of unwrapped second-hand baby toys, infant seats, bouncy seats, swings, cloth diapers, clothes and more for her to either borrow or keep. And then we had an envelope for monetary contributions so she can get exactly what she needs.

We had a tasty potluck, so that even though I'm recovering from pneumonia I didn't have to do any more work than the other shower-goers. And in the time we could have spent unwrapping presents, we instead strung a necklace for her, in blessingway tradition, placing beads on it from each of us as we shared birth stories, thoughts about her, and shared memories with her. We also gave her a little foot soaking with lavendar bath crystals.

I am always grateful for the time I spend with women at a blessingway-style shower. It's so nice to bond, to hear each other stories, to share some heartfelt appreciation for one another, and maybe even get a little teary-eyed together.

Thanks to my friend Tina, now far away in Sweden, for introducing me to the concept.

Time to consign -- and bargain shop

2010-02-24T11:35:00.000-08:00

It's that semiannual time of year when I consign the requisite 25 items so I can go to the Just 4 Kidz consignment presale. If you're like me, and prefer to get kids clothing recycled and bargain-priced, check out the web site. Consignment drop-off starts this week and the sale is March 2-13.

On a side note, my pneumonia is finally clearing up, even though I still don't have much voice. My energy is returning, and I'm discovering new ways to keep myself healthy -- everything from Chinese herbs, raw garlic, plenty of rest, a dairy-free diet temporarily, and a whole new method of breathing -- Buteyko style (I apparently managed to trigger some asthma for the first time with my little respiratory disaster.). I can say that there is nothing like a bout of pneumonia to make me cherish my normal good health.

Audio books to the rescue.

2010-02-20T16:48:00.000-08:00

One of the most frustrating things for me about this long battle with pneumonia has been my inability to read to Will and Owen without coughing a bunch or getting short of breath.

Last weekend we picked up some books on tape for Will to substitute for my reading when Rob's at work. Will has an insatiable appetite for stories and the only reason we ever stop reading a chapter book is because I call an end to our reading session, pointing out all the work I have to do.

So with an audio book, there is no stopping Will. He listened to three-quarters of William Steig's "Dominic" the other day, wrapped up in a sheet like this for a couple hours. It was all I could do to get him to turn the thing off for dinner. Then he spent all of dinner retelling the story to us.

100 hearts

2010-02-15T06:01:00.000-08:00

Over the past couple days, Will has developed a passion for cutting out construction paper hearts. He made 14 valentines for Rob, Will, Owen and I -- not to mention a few others for his teachers. I was too sick to organize an early Valentine-making project to mail off to our extended family, so if you fall into that category, please consider these an e-Valentines from Will to you.

A couple days before his heart-cutting venture began, Will was busy drawing hearts. He made me three get-well cards, all of which look about like this, featuring 90 colored hearts in total. I think those hearts have helped more in my recovery than any of the various drugs I’ve been prescribed.

Southern snow

2010-02-13T06:18:00.000-08:00

I read in the newspaper today that snow fell on 49 states yesterday – only Hawaii stayed snow-free. In our little corner of the country we got about 3 inches, a rare treat in Columbus. Georgia snow, when it does manage to stick (this happens once a year at most in our part of the state), is always perfect for snow man making. When we were in Colorado over Christmas, it stayed so cold that the snow was too dry for rolling snowballs.

Unfortunately Owen was cursed with a one-day fever that kept him inside with me yesterday while Rob and Will built our snowman for the year. The sun is out so he should be melting to the ground by this afternoon.

Meanwhile, I’ve stayed fever-free for almost three days now and I am so grateful to be regaining much of my old energy.

Post-script: Owen was back to healthy on Saturday, in time to make a baby snowman, which melted to nothing just hours after we built him.

Count birds

2010-02-10T06:03:00.000-08:00

Well my latest diagnosis after my fourth trip to a doctor in 3 weeks: atypical or "walking" pneumonia. I've been on antibiotics long enough now that I'm not contagious but I'm still feeling like a pretty pathetic excuse for a mom and wife. It's not in my nature to lie around and let other people work for me, but I'm trying to resign myself to it in the hopes of getting better faster. And I'm grateful to Rob for being super-dad for days on end. Luckily, winter break arrives tomorrow, so I can rest another week without missing any more work.

Anyway, if my blog posts are meager over the next little while, forgive me. This weekend since we'll be mostly cooped up at home anyway, I think we'll go ahead and participate in the annual Great Back Yard Bird Count. It's easy to do and there are resources for kids on the web site, so check it out and consider doing a 15-minute backyard birdwatching session with your kids. Or pack some binoculars and make an expedition of it -- somewhere beyond the home.

Potty Training 101

2010-02-07T04:51:00.000-08:00

Today’s Ledger-Enquirer includes an article about my potty training adventures with Owen. At the writing of the piece, Owen had miraculously potty-trained himself and gone at least a week without accidents. We’ve regressed a bit since then. On one day a couple weeks back, when Owen was constipated and short on sleep, he had six accidents and about sixteen temper tantrums. Luckily that was a blip on the screen but we still have the occasional accident and we’ve begun wearing the thicker training underwear again, since Owen’s initial determination to wear Thomas the Train and Elmo wore off a bit. So Owen often produces a little dime-sized spot of pee on his underwear before he decides to declare that he needs to use the potty. Potty training is inevitably a long journey, even when it goes relatively smoothly. All I know is I’ve given away most of our diapers and put some spares in the closet, and unless we have some visiting guests in need of them, I don’t intend to pull them back out. Because once you get to underwear in my house, there’s no going back.

I’m not providing links to any Web sites this time around, because I decided to stick with the built-in incentives of potty training and follow Owen’s lead – and forget all the tricks and gimmicks this time around. It seemed to work better for us, but of course, it helps to have a big brother around. (We did read Joanna Cole's "My Big Boy Potty" on occasion, though; it's a nice little book.)

If you’ve got potty training tips or stories or online resources to share, please do.

Oxygen please

2010-02-05T08:33:00.000-08:00

I have been about as sick this week as I remember being in my life. I’m still not quite sure on the diagnosis – it’s just a month-long cough, fueled by a combination of viruses and allergies, that’s gotten more productive by the day and finally landed me in bed with fevers on and off this week. I’ve been on antibiotics to no avail and am now enduring a 5-day stretch of prednisone, which seems to be helping but also makes me unusually weepy and unusually prone to nighttime mind-racings.

Yesterday I was feeling so much better that I decided to accompany Will on his field trip to the fire station (especially because the prospect of visiting the fire station was making him jittery and he was threatening not to go if I didn’t accompany him).

Today I paid with the fever’s return, but yesterday we had fun.Watched a couple firemen race to get dressed, watched another fireman climb to the talk of the ladder on the ladder truck, saw the firemen’s living and sleeping quarters, tried on firemen’s helmets -- and Owen was overjoyed to use the fire station potty.

Maybe I should have hooked myself up to one of their oxygen tanks. If you’ve got a miracle home remedy for relentless asthma-like bronchitis mixed with sinus infection, please share.

'Never been thinkin’ much ideas'

2010-02-03T11:12:00.000-08:00

Sometimes it’s fun to listen to Will share his wisdom about the world with his younger brother. He’ll take a simple message learned from us – that those nighttime leg aches are probably just growing pains, or that avocado is supposed to be good for our brains – and warp the message just enough that it gets more interesting:

After a night when Owen had complained of leg aches, Will told him:

“Those are ache pains. Ache pains make you grow.”

Then at lunch, when Owen declined my offer of avocado on his pita sandwich, Will told him:

“It’s good for your brain. Why you’ve never been thinking much ideas is because you never have avocado.”

What little pearls of wisdom have your children shared with you lately?

Collecting pennies for peace

2010-02-01T07:38:00.000-08:00

After a two-week Pennies for Peace fundraising drive at our preschool, Owen and Will and I pulled a wagon filled with a big, heavy jug full of coins into CB&T on Friday. We had a great time dumping the coins into the coin machine and watching as it calculated the money. We collected 6,769 pennies and about 1,200 other coins for a grand total of $300.29 – our modest contribution to help build schools in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

We read “Listen to the Wind” (Greg Mortenson's story of his first school-building experience in Pakistan) to our 3-year-old and pre-k classes and had fun sorting and counting change in the classroom. If you’ve got a tiny bit of spare time on your hands and the inclination to help your child’s school (or even just your family) launch a little Pennies to Peace drive, check out the web site. They make it simple and provide lots of online learning material.

Field dog

2010-01-29T07:48:00.001-08:00

Photos to accompany Wednesday's post. We're all feeling better about Harvey's new life as work dog, rather than pent-up backyard puppy.

He wishes he could drive the jeep though.

The return of Harvey

2010-01-27T17:33:00.000-08:00

So I haven’t been speaking of our now 8-month-old hyper lab-spaniel puppy Harvey much on the blog of late – and that is in part because his fate with our family was in limbo for a bit. Rob’s dad was gracious enough to watch him for a full month -- from Christmas break well into January -- and he even toyed with the idea of keeping him since I was feeling a bit overwhelmed by our big-dog-little-kids combo.

During my time away from Harvey, I began to feel such peace with our family life without a dog added to the mix – especially a dog that couldn’t safely co-exist with the kids and thus spent much of his time banned from the house and feasting on our deck as a way to deal with his puppy frustrations. I was wracked with guilt and short on sleep.

So when Harvey returned, it felt like an ominous thing to me – a weight returning to me as much as my sweet puppy coming home. But Rob is determined to make a good life for us and our dog, and so far we are all doing amazingly well together. Rob is working double time to make sure that my days and my domestic chores aren’t lengthened by Harvey being here. It’s field season for Rob at work, so he’s bringing Harvey with him to work most days, where he gets to ride around in a jeep and frolic in the woods while Rob collects data. Harvey comes home worn out and happy to lay on our deck.

The boys are still nervous about Harvey – and rightfully so. He’s not aggressive but he’s big and he plays hard and he’ll knock over an adult in a heartbeat. And that still makes me a bit uneasy, but I just keep the boys and Harvey in separate spaces unless Rob's here to help me manage safety issues.

The boys were watching the tail end of the PBS show “Martha Speaks,” the other day and it included a little video segment with a girl playing with a puppy as she spoke these words to end the show: “The best part of having a puppy is you have someone to play with.”

I sighed to myself, looked at Will and Owen, and said, “Should we go play with our puppy?”

“Maybe when I’m 15,” Will said. “He’s kind of big.”

But Will is enjoying throwing tennis balls to Harvey, under close supervision from us, and this weekend when we took Harvey on the leash, Owen in a stroller, and Will on his bike to the far end of Lakebottom park, Harvey came to the rescue. It was a longer ride than we’d ever asked of Will and the last uphill leg of the return trip had him worn out. So, in spite of my initially nervous protests, Rob tied Harvey’s leash to Will’s bike and then held it himself with the fierce grip of a father determined to keep his son safe. And Harvey became a work dog, pulling our tired boy home on his bike. The next day we tied him to the front of the double stroller and let him pull the boys home a bit that way. And while I would never recommend these nutty tactics to anyone, I somehow trust Rob to carry them out safely – and the boys are thrilled by Harvey, the sled dog. Harvey seems to love the role too.

As we ate dinner the day of that too-long bike ride, Will asked us: “You know what one of the funnest things in my life happened today?”

“What?” we asked him.

“Riding my bike with Harvey.”

Strange lunch ideas, from the kids

2010-01-24T17:33:00.000-08:00

I pack the strangest things in Will's lunch these days. He begs often for lunchables and I explain to him that I think it's too much packaging to throw out for just a few crackers and (processed) cheese and lunch meat. But I do try to respect his wishes, within the limits of our kitchen cupboards, when it comes to packing his lunch and we wind up with kind of strange sandwich fixings. One of his favorites is melted cheese and deli turkey (we get that natural nitrate-free stuff) on pita bread with salsa, sour cream and avocado. It's kind of a strange combo, invented by him, but I'll admit I kind of like it myself.

Last week, though, when he begged for a peanut butter, jelly and cheddar cheese sandwich, I was feeling skeptical. But since he was certain he would like it and he's been not too excited about plain PB&J's lately, I decided to give it a go.

"How'd you like your sandwich?" I asked him after school.

"Delish!" he said with a smile. Next time he wants me to throw in some raisins.

For snack today, he crumbled crackers into cottage cheese, added a dollop of salsa and declared it delectable.

As long as it's relatively healthy and gets eaten, I guess I'm just going to let him keep concocting strange foods.

What secrets do you have for keeping your kids lunching without lunchables at school? Or are you a lunchable lover?

The terrible's, take two

2010-01-21T12:06:00.000-08:00

It’s all so eerily familiar. At age 2 ½, little Owen is coming down with a case of the terrible twos. A few years back, Will was a little sicker with the terrible’s, I’d say -- a little more distraught at the fact that I had to buckle his seat belt for example and a little more likely to cry about it for 30 minutes instead of Owen’s five minute maximum. But Owen is breaking out the screaming fits for little things here and there – having to wear shoes in to preschool, not getting to pour more oatmeal into the pot for cooking and the list goes on and on. He’ll lie on the floor and start to kick and scream and get red-faced. But this time around it feels much easier for me to remain calm and aloof.

I remember, back in the worst of Will’s tantruming days, reading Harvey Karp’s advice (from “The Happiest Toddler On The Block”) for mirroring your toddler’s frustration by getting down on their level and trying to vocalize their frustrations with the same level of rage they seem to be feeling (“Owen is mad, mad, mad…. Owen wants to…..” hitting fists on floor for emphasis. Then following up with a more soft-spoken explanation of why they can’t have the thing that you totally understand that they want.) It never worked with Will, and with Owen I’ve never even bothered to get down to that furious, primal, power-hungry level.

It’s so much easier for me to just recognize that this will pass, and remain calm and unaffected by Owen’s frustration, to give him less of an audience for it. Sometimes I cart him off to his room and ask him to come out when he’s feeling ready to be happy with us (typically he follows me out once or twice in tears, so he has to be returned to his calming place a couple times before he decides to stay and calm down). All in all, I’m thinking if this is as terrible as the twos gets, it will all be very survivable. But if you see me calmly carrying a screaming, red-faced kid in the parking lot, you’ll know what we’re up to.

Paper doll chains on MLK day

2010-01-18T09:45:00.000-08:00

On the heels of my belated reading of the "Nurture Shock" excerpt about talking with kids frankly about race (see my Jan. 10 post), here comes Martin Luther King Jr. day. Will and I talked about who Martin Luther King Jr. was and what he believed in; we looked up photos of him online; and listened, by chance, to excerpts from his speeches on NPR.

Then I cut out some paper doll chains. It's a very simple task, but I must admit that I had to look up how to fold and cut them here. We had little chains of four dolls and bigger chains of two. Will drew brown- and white-skinned girls on the two-doll chains and then decided he wanted to make a sign for them to hold. So he cut this out and wrote his message: "Be nice to people even if they have a different skin color." All his idea, other than my cutting of the paper dolls.

William’s Unabridged Dictionary

2010-01-17T17:17:00.000-08:00

Our latest entry:

alonesick adj (2010) 1: when you’re lonely at home.

What words have your kids invented lately?

Help for Haiti

2010-01-14T18:37:00.000-08:00

I’ve been so glad to hear about the millions of dollars that people have been giving – much of it in the form of $10 text donations -- to help with the relief effort in Haiti. It’s nice when technology makes it convenient to do the right thing.

Today Will and I took some time to look at some online images from Haiti. We talked about what earthquakes are (and the fact that we are not in a place where earthquakes are likely to happen), looked at before and after images of the presidential palace before and after the earthquake and viewed an American Red Cross photoessay of the Haiti earthquake. We found Haiti on our globe and noticed how relatively close it is to Georgia. I asked Will if he would like to help the people in Haiti and I let him punch in the numbers to text our donation to the Red Cross relief effort.

Hope you’ll join us in chipping in, if you haven’t yet already. You can donate $10 to Haiti relief by texting “Haiti” to 90999.

Other places to donate

Doctors Without Borders
Oxfam America
Yéle Haiti

Sibling diplomacy

2010-01-13T18:59:00.000-08:00

We had a minor breakthrough today on the resolving disputes front. Finally, Will remembered my suggestion that when Owen hits him, he can take the high road and let Owen know that he will not tolerate hitting (as opposed to just hitting him back or yelling out in his whiniest voice, “Mom, Owen hit me!”). I often remind Will that he is teaching Owen with his actions.

Will strode proudly into the kitchen and recounted his victory in diplomacy.

“Mom, Owen hit me, and I didn’t hit back” he told me. “I said, ‘Owen, you do NOT hit me. You can either go into another room or be nice.’ And he said, ‘be nice.’”

I congratulated Will on his cool-headed diplomacy and Will returned to the living room for some peaceful play. Of course an hour later he gave Owen a whack on the back when his little brother frustrated him and, since I witnessed the whack, suddenly I was the one intervening again. But hey, I’m going to focus on our progress for the day.

Talking about race with kids

2010-01-10T08:19:00.000-08:00

I finally stumbled on this Newsweek article entitled “Even Babies Discriminate” from September. It’s an analysis by “Nurture Shock” authors Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman of how many parents avoid talking with children explicitly about race in spite of the fact that children begin to recognize racial differences at very young ages. (One study demonstrated that even six-month old babies will stare longer at pictures of people of a different race than their parents.)

Bronson and Merryman talk about the fact that white parents who imagine themselves to be progressive embracers of racial and cultural diversity are uncomfortable talking openly with their kids frankly about the subject and assume their children will be “color-blind.” When discussions of race do emerge, these parents talk vaguely about how “we are all equal” or “we are all friends” – and there are rarely specific mentions of race. Meanwhile, kids spend these early years making generalizations and categorizations on their own – with no help from their supposedly enlightened parents and teachers. And the result is a world where our kids may go to integrated schools but they segregate themselves nonetheless.

This is an important article – the kind of reading that has already prompted me to start talking more openly with Will. I still remember the day a few years back – Will may have been 3 at the time -- when we were walking around the track at the park and a young black man was approaching from the other direction. Will pointed, and said “There’s a basketball player,” with excitement. He was already forming categories in his mind, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t take the opportunity to have a long conversation with Will about his ideas about people of different races – and mine.

Today he and I looked at photos of different kids in a Parenting magazine and talked about skin color and how people of different races treat one another. Will said, “It doesn’t matter what your skin color is. We’re all the same.” I’m glad to hear that coming from him, but I’m still aware that I’m sending him to a preschool where all his classmates are white. I’m going to be more careful going forward about inviting conversations about race – checking books out from the library that feature kids and family of different races, including stories that talk on a simple level about oppression and struggle (see the article for why kids become more tolerant and empathetic when they don’t get a glossed over view of history – and why it’s important for kids to begin experiencing and forming ideas about interracial friendships before they hit second or third grade). Race may be a sensitive subject, but in our family we’re going to talk about it, and hopefully once Will enters kindergarten next year he’ll have the opportunity to live out his desire to be friends with kids of different races beyond some of the brief encounters he’s been having with kids at Lakebottom Park.

How do you discuss race with your kids? What observations from them have surprised you?

Big paper is fun

2010-01-08T14:14:00.000-08:00

I'm going to make a habit of salvaging larger scraps of butcher paper from the recycling bin at preschool, so we can get in one more use with it before sending it off for recycling or perhaps even using it as home-drawn recycled gift wrap. There's something about a big piece of paper and and an invitation to do collaborative cutting and drawing that is irresistable for kids. Here are Will and his friend drawing a "city for Transformers."

Goodbye diapers, hello world

2010-01-05T11:15:00.000-08:00

Today Owen had his first diaper-free day at school after a holiday of wearing mostly underwear. His only accident in the past week occurred in the seat of a friend's battery-operated riding jeep, a new Christmas acquistion that Owen was happy to pee in rather than stop for a potty break. I had it coming -- I put Owen on the thing about an hour after he consumed an entire sippy cup of watered down juice.

For the past couple nights Owen's been wearing underwear at night -- and today, Owen's teachers sent his diapers home. I've always been haunted as much by the waste of diapers as by the chore of changing them, and -- knock on wood, since regressions do happen -- I'm glad to be done with them.

In general I feel like Rob and I are rounding some kind of major corner as parents as we lose some of those baby duties and encourage the kids to do more and more themselves. Will makes pancakes for us on weekend mornings, the boys are starting the bath and climbing in on their own, sometimes they even clean up without our help at all. And I am finally finding just a bit of time to read at night. I was hoping this day would arrive. I'm basking in it -- no time to be nostalgic yet.

Resolutions with the kids

2010-01-02T10:47:00.000-08:00

This year we considered New Year’s resolutions in the airport with our kids. I wrote Will’s in the back of his Spiderman coloring book:

1. Give away a lot of pictures that I draw for people.
2. Give kisses and hugs to people.
3. Help people get better in the hospital.
4. Give away toys that I don’t want anymore.
5. Try to be friends with a lot of different people.

Owen, always, the imitator said he wanted to “be nice to people.” This is a good goal for a kid who has a current bad habit of announcing “I no like FILL-IN-THE-BLANK” within near earshot of a person when we are first entering their house. Generally after spending time with this supposedly no-good child or adult, Owen will leave announcing that he likes him or her. I also suggested that one of Owen’s resolutions for the New Year, could be to share toys with his friends and his brother. He agreed, in theory, that this was a good resolution for him.

We’ve got little proof of our resolve so far, other than starting work on Will’s resolution #4 (and Owen’s #1 and #2) two days ago as we filled a bag with toys the boys don’t need anymore to be taken, along with some clothes and canned goods, to the Damascus Way shelter for women and children.)

My main resolution is to remain eternally calm and peaceful as I interact throughout the day with my kids, my students, my husband (who often gets to bear the brunt of any lurking irritability on my part). And I think I might like to start learning Spanish too.

Who’s got a good resolution to share – yours or your kids’? Maybe we’ll add one to our lists. It never hurts to aspire.

Happy New Year!

Brotherly bliss

2009-12-30T07:29:00.000-08:00

One of the things I like least about returning from our Christmas vacation in Colorado is saying goodbye to my brother. We live on opposite ends of the country, so we only see each other during those times when we manage to meet in the middle – twice a year at most.

I hadn’t expressed this sadness to Will but I think he may be thinking ahead about how he and Owen’s relationship will change as they grow older.

On the drive back from the library yesterday, Will told me he wanted to marry Owen one day. I told him brothers don’t usually get married, and he seemed a bit worried.

“Will Owen and I get to see each other much when we’re grown up?” he asked.

I told him they might see each other a lot if they lived in the same state, but if they lived far away, like Uncle Graham and I, they might just see each other once or twice a year.

“I want to live right next door to Owen,” Will said. “Or maybe we can live in the same house.”

I guess Will and Owen’s relationship is already like a stormy marriage. They play together most of the day, much of the time happily, but they also have their share of domestic disputes. Lately, at least a couple times a day, Owen will come up to me and say “I no like my brother.” And at least a couple times a day, he will say, “Mama, I like my brother. He nice.” In general, though, when Owen’s not giving me an official report, I’d say liking each other wins. And I’m savoring this relative domestic bliss while it lasts.

Here are the brothers, together on a Beaver Creek gondola, and with Uncle Graham, the brother I haven't lived near in years:

Ski report

2009-12-27T11:03:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we braved some chilly weather for Will's second and last day on the slopes. This time Owen came along and rode the Gondola up and down with Grammy and expressed his intense desire to ski like Will. Maybe next year, I told him.

Will learned to slow down, stop and turn and then he got pretty keen on flying down the bunny hill by the end of the day, a little too quickly for my nerves, but he learned to make himself fall when all else failed.

He even survived a slow-speed crash with an equally young and equally inexperienced little boy that left neither of them in tears. (This was while Grandpa was with him and Rob and I were off enjoying a run on our own. Will was eager to report the incident to me when we met up at the bottom of the hill: "Two kids crashed," he said, "and one of them was me." On the drive home, Will made Uncle Graham and Rob recount in detail every big skiing crash they'd ever endured.)

Missed flights and merry Christmases

2009-12-23T17:05:00.000-08:00

Our trip to Colorado began with us missing our connecting flight from Denver to Eagle, the last flight of the day, with some of that East Coast weekend weather to blame. That wound up being a hassle with a silver lining, since we called on my cousin and his wife to put us up for the night at the last minute and our boys got to play with their second cousin for a morning and we got to admire and hold their little baby girl, who at 7 months is bright-eyed and sweet as can be. As the boys played, Rob and I sat on hold trying to figure out rescheduled flights and baggage issues. The phrase “We are experiencing high call volumes. Your expected wait time is 55 minutes” is still ringing in my ears. We made multiple calls, and always the wait time was 55 minutes.

We finally made it to Eagle, where we've been having a really nice visit, complete with sledding, deer-watching, and Scrabble playing. And today Will got his skiing legs under him for the first time since last year. We got a late start and he was so determined to keep skiing past the lift closures at 4 that we hiked up for one last mini-run.

So we are enjoying our white Christmas so far. Merry Christmas to you!

There's no place like the potty for the holidays

2009-12-16T21:02:00.000-08:00

Just in time for the holidays, we are making our first real sustained attempt at potty training Owen. Probably not so convenient with all our travel plans, but at least I’ll be with Owen throughout the day – and we can help my mom relive the memories of cleaning up occasional accidents on her carpet instead of mine.

What launched the whole endeavor was Owen’s recent interest in wearing Elmo underwear. (I had to bravely skip the drab thick training underwear that worked for Will but is apparently not snazzy enough for his fashion-savvy younger brother.)

Having long ago abandoned sticker charts and other bribery as futile in terms of our long-term potty training efforts, I now focus on talking shamelessly about all things fecal. Will and I talk about how much better we feel after going potty and we examine the shapes of Owen’s poops – are they walruses, caterpillars trees, or bouncy balls? (Today we had a mama hippo with two baby hippos; and a rattlesnake. Just try not to visualize.) I talk with Owen about how he is saving diapers and trees and how I don’t have to use any wipes on him now (he’s not a fan of them).

Often we lure Owen to the potty with the promise of reading a book he picks out as he goes and Will, sitting on a stool next to Owen’s potty seat, typically joins us for a reading session. I'm beginning to wonder if it will be my fault when my boys turn into men who read and general take forever in the bathroom.

We've still got lots of work to do though before it's smooth sailing. When Owen’s immersed in play he’s not too interested in taking care of business, so it should add some insanity to our holiday break.

As always, any tips from potty-seasoned moms are welcome.

'Tis the season to bake some cookies

2009-12-13T03:33:00.000-08:00

Will and I have spent several afternoons in the kitchen this month baking up holiday treats to unload on our classmates and co-workers. Owen’s “helped” out some too – although we confine him in to a counter place where his germ-infested cookies will only be eaten by him.

I wrote about the adventure of baking with kids for the holidays for a column in today’s Ledger-Enquirer. There I included a recipe for two of our favorites: Mexican Wedding Cakes and Magic Cookie Bars.

Here’s a link to the Triple Chocolate Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies recipe we tried after browsing a “25 Days of Christmas Cookies” recipe list at epicurious.com. If I make them again I will cut the amount of chocolate chips a bit and increase the cranberries -- either way, though, they're a nice indulgent holiday cookie. (We didn't even bother with the melted chocolate drizzle on top of the cookies -- would have been a nice aesthetic touch, but you don't need more sweetness in these!)

Of course, nothing’s more fun than cutting out and icing sugar cookies and gingerbread cookies – but I figure those are fairly standard recipes so I’m not including them here. I also make an easy fudge – nothing more than melted chocolate chips, sweet condensed milk and vanilla extract – to fill out the platter.

Next year, I imagine we’ll attempt something new. So if you have a favorite holiday cookie recipe to share, please do.

Hundreds of lights, millions of lights...

2009-12-11T17:21:00.000-08:00

Last night we went up to enjoy the Fantasy in Lights show at Callaway Gardens for the first time. We've intended to go in years past and somehow never made it happen. But having experienced the joy of watching our wide-eyed kiddos take in the Christmas lights spectacular, we'll be taking them every year from now on. We bundled up, brought blankets and hot chocolate (so hot in my overly efficient thermos that the boys couldn't drink it) and enjoyed the show from one of the trolleys.

The Christmas caroling we did en route reminded me of riding around carolling on a truck bed in the little Colorado town where I grew up. Outdoor caroling adventures are definitely memories that stick. I kind of wish people still got together and went door to door and sang to their neighbors. Does that ever happen anymore?

The boys stayed wide awake on our 45-minute drive home as we recounted favorite light scenes and sang more Christmas carols together.

I will admit, though, that I was feeling just a smidgen guilty about our complicity in encouraging Callaway Gardens to put on a show using 8 million lights and 3,500 extension cords -- but then I read on The Atlanta Traveler that Callaway offsets 100 percent of its energy use by purchasing wind power credits. So that eases my conscience a bit.

Owen stood up -- awed, bedazzled, and exclaiming -- for the entire hour-long lights tour.

Santa's astounding memory

2009-12-08T19:15:00.000-08:00

We went to the North Columbus Library today to see a Christmas puppet show and have a visit with Santa.

As he stood in line, Owen told me he was going to ask for Play-doh for Christmas, then changed his mind and decided he wanted a bear. But once he saw that the library Santa was handing out books, he decided to ask for a book – and was quite delighted when he immediately got his wish.

Will, for his part, timidly asked Santa for a transformer. I’m not sure that Santa actually heard his request and on the way home, Will, probably worrying that his transformer would be forgotten, asked me, “How does Santa remember what all the children want for Christmas?”

I offered a lame response on the order of: “I’m not sure – they say he really knows a lot about all the children of the world so I guess maybe he’s just a mind that can remember everything about children.” We also decided we'd better finish up our letter to Santa (which we started a week ago and abandoned mid-project) just in case he has any memory lapses.

Lately Will has been posing a lot of probing questions about Santa and his flying reindeer antics. It’s not that he’s a skeptic, necessarily; he just seems to be wondering about the mystery of it all.
So far I’ve been offering, “Well I’m not really sure, but the stories all say…” kinds of answers so that I feel like I’m being partially honest and yet keeping the myth alive for as long as Will seems to want to believe in it.

So for those of you with older and wiser kids, I’d like to know, what prompted you to spill the beans? (And for those of you with younger kids, how do you field the tough questions?)

Our tasty Christmas tree

2009-12-05T10:00:00.000-08:00

This year we decided to forego the commercial Christmas tree lots and farms, and instead drove over to our friend Jeff’s 19th-century family home near Waverly, Alabama, so that he could help us harvest a cedar on some land he’s planning to clear anyway. We petted a couple goats, then headed down the hill for our tree. Jeff remembers cutting down Christmas trees as a boy on the land that’s belonged to his family for six generations.

There was more tree than we needed so the boys chose a couple branches, which will become “trees” for their bedroom or our dining room. Jeff told us the goats would enjoy eating the base of the tree we were leaving behind.

“They like cedar,” he said.

As if to prove his point, by the time Rob got to the top of the hill, three of Jeff’s goats were following behind, grazing on the tree as they chased it. As Rob hoisted the tree atop the car, one of the goats jumped up on our car, hooves on a side window, mouth seeking tasty tree branches -- until Jeff redirected him. Turns out these goats are agile enough to climb to the roofs of cars and trucks when the mood strikes them.

Will, who’d already developed an attachment to our new Christmas tree, decided to stand guard near our car in case one of the goats tried to pull some more funny stuff. The goats had moved on by that point, but it all made for a memorable Christmas tree hunting adventure.

Our tree, pre-harvest.

Jeff told Will to haul his "tree" up the hill like a mule.

Three-tree parade

Feeding frenzy

You better watch out

2009-12-03T17:11:00.000-08:00

I keep forgetting to pull the Christmas CDs off the shelves at home and put them in the car, so ever since the calendar turned to December a few days ago I’ve been singing off-key a cappella Christmas carols to the boys on our drive to preschool. Will and I sing Jingle Bells together, but I have to go mostly solo for Up on the Housetop, We Wish You a Merry Christmas, The Twelve Days of Christmas and Frosty the Snowman (whose lyrics I generally bungle by the end). This is an all-request show, so I wind up doing the livelier tunes – Away in A Manger and Silent Night just aren’t quite rockin’ enough for Will and Owen’s tastes.

Today, when I was intending to break into Up on the Housetop, I instead found myself singing “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” – as in: “you better watch out, you better not cry….”

I swear I wasn’t trying to pull Santa threats on my kids, unless it was subconsciously?

Because it’s true that Owen has chosen this week to try out crying fits in hopes of getting his way. I’ve been gently escorting him to his room and encouraging him to come out just as soon as feels like being happy with the rest of the family. This has been working fairly well; he lies on the floor in tears for a couple minutes and eventually comes out teary-eyed, sucking air in loudly, but not quite crying and fairly ready to discover a little calm within. We’ve had to do it a few times though, and I think Owen’s aware he’s been crying more than usual.

Tonight as I was putting on his pajamas he asked me to sing “Better Watch Out” two times in a row. He seemed to be contemplating the lyrics, and he asked me, “Who better not cry?”

“It’s just a song,” I said, detecting some concern in his voice. “I guess it’s saying Santa likes to see kids use their words instead of just crying when their mad. Do you think it’s saying you better not cry?”

“No,” said Owen decidedly. “Babies better not cry.” He even named a baby we know, as if to insure that he wasn’t including his big boy self in the “you better not cry” group.
We’ll see if that means he’s resolving to reform or if it means he's not going to "not cry" and is already envisioning another crying fit on the menu tomorrow.

In the meantime, I'm only singing that song if it's requested. I don't think I want to turn Santa into a coal-delivering Big Brother in our house. I'd rather just encourage my kids to be good for goodness' sake. It feels more honest.

Fun at Fernbank

2009-12-01T12:52:00.000-08:00

One highlight of our holiday weekend was a rare 10-hour date for Rob and I that included Christmas shopping in Atlanta, dinner and a movie while Rob's dad and sister played with the boys and put them to bed.

Another was a trip to Fernbank Museum of Natural History, where Will and Owen marveled at everything from stuffed wildlife native to Georgia to huge replicas of dinosaur skeletons -- and some interactive exhibits in the "Sensing Nature" exhibit and in the children's discovery areas. Will and Owen agreed that a trip to Fernbank was even more fun than a trip to the zoo, perhaps because they weren't at all intimitated by the motionless animals (they tend to get spooked by gorillas and tigers and the like). Will said his favorite things in the museum were some model dinosaur babies emerging from large dinosaur eggs and a stuffed barred owl. Then Will reconsidered and said, "Actually Papa was my favorite thing."

Remembering on Thanksgiving

2009-11-29T13:36:00.000-08:00

It was a bittersweet Thanksgiving for us as we feasted with Rob's family in Marietta for the first time since losing Rob's mother and grandfather. On the way to our Thanksgiving dinner, Will and Owen and Rob and I talked about all the things we are thankful for -- including "Nana and Grandpa in heaven."

Will drew a picture of Nana and Grandpa (really his great grandpa) in flowers in heaven at preschool a couple weeks ago. Grandpa, who was seated in his armchair for most of the times Will saw him, is sitting in his armchair within his flower. Beneath them is someone crying. Will said it could be anyone in our family.

Will and Rob and I recently finished a draft of our Nana Memory Book, which we may continue to add to. For now it is 24 pages of photographs, reflections and memories from family and friends that will help Will and Owen know their Nana as they grow older. We plan to look through it on her birthday each year.

Thank you to everyone who sent us photos and memories.

Listen and be grateful

2009-11-26T08:19:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving.

Here is Will’s depiction of an early Thanksgiving celebrant, with loincloth slightly displaced, using fish to fertilize the soil and preparing to harvest some corn.

As long as you're pausing to feel real gratitude for your loved ones today, why not preserve some of their stories, their voices, their personalities, their quirks this weekend. Tomorrow is the “National Day of Listening,” a StoryCorps project that encourages people across the country to set aside an hour to record a conversation with someone important to them. You can go to the web site to participate officially and get guidance in generating questions if you choose.

So while you’re with friends and family, take a moment to break out a recording device and record some stories from older family members or some singing and talking by the children in the family who will one day marvel at their own little voice from long ago. I'm hoping to capture Owen singing Baby Beluga and Will singing the chorus from "Wagon Wheel," as they are both so often inclined to do. Maybe they'll tell me a story too.

Here's a sweet audio treasure, recorded in advance of the National Day of Listening, by NPR's Scott Simon as he talks with his 6-year-old adopted daughter about the story of her adoption and the making of their family. It's a story they tell together often, he says, and it grows richer as his two adopted daughters grow older.

If you’re reading this late, no matter. Shouldn't every day be a day of listening?

Offering choices

2009-11-24T09:39:00.000-08:00

About a month ago, I saw a book, “Parenting with Love and Logic: Teaching Children Responsibility” by Foster Cline and Jim Fay, on display atop a library shelf and grabbed it impulsively. I think of myself as a love and logic parent, but I’ve never actually read a “love and logic” book on the subject.
And it proved useful to me to pick up some specific strategies for working with Will and Owen, and even with my preschool students. There are many scripted scenarios in the book in which the parents’ actual words strike me as rather corny and contrived and there are plenty of scenarios where I wouldn't choose to impose the same "logical consequences" the book suggests, but many of the book's basic principles make good sense.

I’ve always known that it’s wise to offer young kids, who love to have some power, choices. But I hadn’t really recognized how easy it is to almost always offer children at least two choices you can live with even if the choices you present make the best path pretty obvious for them. Lately instead of barking orders or voicing my frustration when problems or conflicts arise with the boys, I’ve been asking them these kinds of questions:

“Do you think you can play together nicely and gently or do you think you should go to separate rooms?” (They almost always opt to stop hitting, pushing or whatever. I also avoid going into a room and asking this question until things get so heated that I’ve been called to the scene. Even then, I often start with the question: “Do you think you can work this one out for yourselves?” )

“Would you like to walk to the potty or the changing table or do you want me to carry you there?”

“Do you want to wash your hands by yourself or do you want me to help you?”

“Would you like to calm down now and speak nicely or go to your room until you’re feeling calmer and ready to be with us?” (If they don’t answer and keep fussing, they’ve made a choice to settle down in their room. But I give them a choice about leaving the door open or closed and tell them they can come out as soon as they’re feeling calm.)

“Should we clean up now or in 10 minutes?” (The choice is always 10 minutes, so I ask this in advance of the real clean-up time) And then…. “Do you want to clean up the blocks or the Legos first?”

None of these are direct from the book; they’re just my attempts to stay even-keeled and calm as a mom and offer my children choices that get them thinking instead of fighting as we get through everything from their stormiest moments to simply completing mundane chores.

Here a couple quotes on the subject from the book:

“Love and Logic parents avoid the helicopter and drill sergeant mentalities by using a consultant style of parenting as early as possible in the child’s life. They ask their children questions and offer choices. Instead of telling their children what to do, they put the burden of decision making on their kids’ shoulders. They establish options within limits. Thus by the time the children become teens, they are used to making good decisions.”

“…When we issue such commands we are calling our kids to battle, and in many cases these are battles we cannot win. Why not bypass these hassles and make our words ones that cannot be fought? Why not steer away from commands? Limits can be set much more effectively when we’re not fighting with our kids. It has been clinically proven that kids who are thinking cannot fight us at the same time.”

Love and Logic parents make statements with enforceable thinking words telling their kids what we will allow, what we will do. what we will provide (I’ll be glad to read you a story as soon as you finish your bath.) Our kids have little chance to fight these statements. They’re too busy thinking about the choices they have been given and the consequences that may result from their choice.”

For further reading, here’s the Love and Logic website.

What strategies do you use for helping your children through the inevitable little conflicts and power struggles that arise as you navigate family life together? Or what resources have you found useful?

Pumpkin Soup for every meal

2009-11-22T09:48:00.001-08:00

Here’s a link to a recipe for an incredibly simple but yummy Southwestern Pumpkin soup appropriate for the season, courtesy of epicurious.com. I had been planning to try a curried pumpkin soup, but this one seemed to get better reviews online, so I made it for a potluck yesterday. Will and Owen gobbled it up then and Owen has been wanting it for every meal since (I made him hold out until lunch today when he requested pumpkin soup for breakfast). I doubled the recipe and increased the pumpkin (used 3 cans of it for a doubled recipe) to make the soup thicker, after reading some advice to that effect in the comments. I also made the soup a day ahead to give the flavors time to linger. I'm sure this would be delicious with fresh pumpkin, for those of you more motivated than me.

For yourself, don’t skip the fresh cilantro as garnish (For the boys I just do the cheddar as garnish, since they are not yet cilantro fans). Next time I have a bowl I think I'll also throw in some roasted pumpkin seeds (which we've also discovered make a great salad topper).

Here's the recipe with some minor modifications:

3 cups chicken stock or canned low-salt chicken broth
1 cup whipping cream
1 15-ounce can pure pumpkin (I used 1 1/2 cans -- actually 3 cans since I doubled the recipe)
3 tablespoons (packed) dark brown sugar (I used 2 Tablespoons. You might even want less, so add slowly and taste.)
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
3/4 cup (packed) grated sharp cheddar cheese
Chopped fresh cilantro
Salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

Bring chicken stock and whipping cream to boil in heavy medium pot. Whisk in canned pumpkin, brown sugar, cumin, chili powder, coriander and nutmeg. Reduce heat to medium and simmer until soup thickens slightly and flavors blend, about 15 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper. (Soup can be prepared up to 1 day ahead. Cool. Cover and refrigerate. Rewarm over medium-low heat, whisking occasionally.) Ladle soup into bowls. Garnish each serving with cheddar cheese and cilantro and serve.

Thanksgiving mantlepieces

2009-11-19T16:02:00.000-08:00

We’ve started a little tradition I like to call the “holiday mantle” in our house this year, in which we pin or tape up lots of random pieces of kid-created holiday-themed artwork for the next upcoming holiday. We had a Halloween mantle that looked just as “ghetto” (as Rob likes to point out) as this Thanksgiving mantle.

But I am quite content to have things looking hodge-podge and scribbly if it inspires the kids. For this mantle (I didn’t get the whole view but you get the idea) we’ve got a lot of preschool art projects combined with drawings that Will colored and cut out at home for the express purpose of decorating the mantle: a couple loin-clothed Indians, a pumpkin, an ear of corn, a deer with a huge rack of antlers. Owen did some scribblings and cut them into sections for the mantle, so we call that Thanksgiving art too and give it its rightful place among the masterpieces. I’m not sure if we’ll find room for a Christmas mantle between the stockings – but we’ll find some other place to string up art and then return to the mantle for Valentine’s Day and Easter.

In the woods

2009-11-17T13:43:00.000-08:00

Before we had kids, Rob and I enjoyed backpacking together. But now that we have two young boys, one of whom is still wearing diapers, the prospect of a family backpacking trip has always seemed like a logistical nightmare. So this past weekend, we figured we were being brave enough attempting a car camping trip at FDR State Park with the boys and the dog. When we learned, after a phone call from home, that every site in the campground had been reserved for Friday night, we decided we'd try a half-mile backpack instead.

We looked a little ridiculous with Rob and I trying to cart in all the essentials and non-essentials (we each made one extra trip that wound up being a nice excuse to hike alone), but in the end getting the woods completely to ourself was more than worth it. I'm sold on short-distance backpacking from here forward. (At least until the boys are carrying their weight and we can shift to longer-distance backpacking instead). For this trip we carried Owen in a backpack and Will toted only his carefully selected toys and light-weight books.

The boys had a beautiful time -- we all did, even if I didn't sleep so well once Owen got cold at 4 a.m., asked for his crib and wound up sharing a sleeping bag with me instead. That took the "sleeping" right out of the bag for me.

Here are some highlights from our time in the woods, where Will led the way on many explorations:

tree climbing

brook crossingfire building

fire play

between trees

Puppy training - and an update on Greg Mortenson

2009-11-15T05:37:00.000-08:00

Today's Ledger-Enquirer includes a column I wrote about the experience of taking our hyper puppy Harvey to pet training classes, which became a sort of support group for me as we worked through our many issues with Harvey, whose "graduation" I half-jokingly attribute to social promotion. We love our puppy, but he is a handful and a half.

Also, for those of you who had been planning to hear Greg Mortenson speak, he sent out an e-mail to school and news contacts here explaining what happened. He was hospitalizied with an inflammation of the lining of the heart, which physicians say will take 2 to 8 weeks to heal. He hopes to make it to Columbus in early 2010.

Here is his letter:

To the community of Columbus and surrounding areas,

Today, I was supposed to join your community to meet with students, teachers and the public in a series of talks and events. I had been looking forward to this for weeks, and also eager to meet many of the students who had sent me inspiring letters, and also excited to meet with soldiers from Ft. Benning, who I have had the honor to communicate with recently, and have profound admiration and respect for.

Unfortunately, at the last minute, I was hospitalized in our local hospital with viral cardititis (inflammation of the lining of the heart) with perhaps something I had picked up on my recent trip to Afghanistan, which gives me an oxygen saturation around 85% on room air (most people its around 99%). The physicians told me it would take 2-8 weeks to heal and additional tests are being done.

A few people expressed concern over the explanation of the cancellation of my event due to 'unfore-seen' circumstances, so I want to make sure that you are appraised of the exact circumstances. I am sorry for any inconvenience I may have caused, especially with your children in anticipation of the event. I have two children myself, and I know how devastating it is when something they are looking forward to does not happen, so I especially apologize to them.
We will make up the event as soon as possible, and look forward to seeing you in the near future. My new book, Stones Into Schools (Viking 2009), will be released on December 1st, which discusses Afghanistan in more detail, about the dedication of our military, and also the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan. Unfortunately, the release of the new book puts me on a 21 day in a row book tour, so I may not be able to make it to Columbus by the end of the year, but we will do our best to get there by early 2010.

Thank you to all the students, teachers, civic groups, Ft. Benning soldiers and families, Brookstone School, Columbus State University, Chattahoochee Valley Libraries.GMC Columbus, veterans, places of worship, doctors and nurses, health care professionals, AAUW, local businesses, the Ledger Enquirer, newspaper, radio, TV stations and more.
More information about our nonprofit organization is on www.ikat.org, dedicated to support girls education in rural Afghanistan and Pakistan, and our children's program http://www.penniesforpeace.org/

Thanks for your understanding, and may God's blessings of peace be with you.
Greg Mortenson

PS: We had over 24" of snow yesterday in Bozeman, Montana, in the last day, but we had already made arrangements so I would not be stuck in Montana - and I heard you had a similiar dump of rain in Georgia.

Greg Mortenson talk postponed

2009-11-12T11:23:00.000-08:00

In case you were planning to attend the Greg Mortenson talk that I plugged in a post (and in the newspaper) a week and a half ago, hold on to your ticket but make other plans for tonight. I was about to head out to Brookstone School to cover his visit there for the paper, when I got the word that due to "unforeseen circumstances" Mortenson had to postpone his trip to Columbus. Please help spread the word. Four thousand people had picked up free tickets to see Mortenson at CSU's Lumpkin Center tonight, and I'm hoping we can keep as many of them as possible from making a wasted drive.

Here's the Columbus Public Library's notification:

Due to unforeseen circumstances, tonight’s appearance by Greg Mortenson has been postponed.We are working with Mr. Mortenson to re-schedule his appearance. If anyone has tickets, they should hold onto them. More information will be posted on the Library website as future details are confirmed.Mr. Mortenson extends his sincerest apologies and he looks forward to coming to Columbus in the near future.Thank you for your help in getting this information out to our volunteers.