The kids both have friends over right now. The boys are in the living room, in the dark (at 4pm because winter, ugh!), playing Minecraft. The girls are upstairs, blasting music, singing their hearts out, and doing artwork (at least last time I checked on them). Gender stereotypes abound, but everyone is happy. :)
Eve: “Hey, there’s a thrift shop. Can we go thrift shopping? What, What? What?”
Macklemore’s Thrift Shop
She had us in stitches!
Without Facebook I’m feeling at a loss for where to post my random thoughts to the world. Tonight I’m going to settle for broadcasting to the three people who read my blog.
We are on the final week of Lego League and having so much fun. I’m coordinating the project this year so I am much more involved than I was last year. It’s a lot of work and I’ll be happy when it’s over, but I also really enjoy going to the practices and hanging out with the coaches and kids. They are a funny bunch of kids, but all so nice with one another. I love seeing the 8th graders asking Lex for help and seeing him totally relaxed and happy with this tribe of geeks. I had a big headache this afternoon and was not looking forward to yet another practice this evening, but we went and had fun and I came home feeling great.
I’m a shy (anxious?) extravert, which makes for stressful times. I feed on those social situations, but dread them as well. It’s silly.
Wish us luck on Sunday! It will be a big day for the “Reduce, Reuse, Robotics” team!
That’s way too long for a Facebook post anyway. :D
I am typing this blog post on a brandy new laptop that Alan got me for my birthday! Yay!! This one even has a delete key and a caps lock, unlike my other laptop. :)
We are in the final week before Lex’s First Lego League presentation on Sunday. During the final week there are always extra optional practices that the kids can attend to finish up missions and projects. Lex has been excited for FLL this year, but in a somewhat different way than last year. He has been spending most of the practices working on the project, which is good, but I’ve started questioning why he isn’t working on the missions. I thought maybe he was focused on the project because I volunteered to run the project this year and he obviously hears a lot about it at home. :) Tonight he said he wanted to go to the practice, but at the last minute he backed out. We ended up in a discussion about why he had to go (the coach was waiting for him!) and why he didn’t want to go. He started with excuses about being too tired and just not wanting to, but eventually he said that the missions were just too hard this year and he didn’t know how to do them and he was bored at the practices. He was upset that the competition is less than a week away and he doesn’t have a mission and it’s too late to start one and they are all too hard anyway.
This is EXACTLY what we are working on with him and his anxiety these days! He is so smart and things generally come easily to him, so when they don’t he doesn’t really know what to do. We are working on strategies to help him in those situations because his current strategy is to shut-down, avoid, and cry. Exactly what he was doing tonight!
I was debating about letting him skip the practice (it’s optional anyway), but when the real problem came out I knew we couldn’t skip it! He followed me to the car, angrily, and sulked on the drive there. I asked him to think about some of the strategies he has been learning about lately and he grumpily did. When we got there he was in a slightly better frame of mind. I chatted with the coach a bit, explained the situation (and Lex’s anxiety) and the coach, of course, is great! He had a mission in mind that one of the other students was struggling with and he got Lex right involved. I hung around for a little while, then checked in with Lex before leaving. He was working on a mission, happily, and decided he wanted to stay until the end. When he got home he was really happy with the progress he had made and eager to go back tomorrow to keep working on it. Score!!
Sometimes it’s hard to know what is the right thing to do, when to push and when to back off, but tonight I got lucky and made all the right choices. Anxiety faced and overcome! He was and proud. So was I!
Look who made the newspaper yesterday! This makes her look like a pretty fierce player. :-)
Eve had an assignment to take a picture of herself at her favorite spots in town for a social studies project. She chose the river. It was a beautiful afternoon and the kids had a half day of school, so we decided it would be a good day to take a trip to the river. Despite my protests and reminders that is November, she insisted on bring her bathing suit and googles with every intention of swimming. She was even upset that she couldn’t find her snorkel. She’s a wild one, that girl!
Eve at her favorite place in town.
Then this happened. Of course.
It’s November, in Vermont, but hey, let’s go swimming!
As it turns out, the water as pretty cold. Surprise! A few weeks ago she and a friend had noticed something in the water and they thought it was a net that their class had left behind when they went to the river to study crayfish. Ever since then Eve has been committed to getting that net back. I think that was a big part of her motivation to go swimming today. That and, of course, she loves swimming!
Despite the cold, she persevered.
I sat on the shore and had fun taking pictures. :)
At one point she calls to me, “You’re lucky you’re not in this cold water, mom!” I called back, “Luck has nothing to do with it! I KNOW what river water feels like in November!” She was actually talking to me the entire way out and back. She likes narrate her world. I wonder who she got that from. :)
Yeah, this is what the river in November feels like!
She did it though! As she made her way out she began to realize her goal wasn’t actually a net at all, but a Black & Decker Weed Whacker! It was out deep enough that she had to push it back in with her foot and the stick a bit before she could pick it up. She consider just reaching down and getting her whole arm, upper body, and probably face wet, but opted to push/pull it along with the stick instead. :) As she got closer to the shore she was able to pick it up.
When she sets her mind to it, this girl can do anything! I love her commitment and passion.
Success!!!
Her skin was red and frigid when she got out! I toweled her off and wrapped her up as quick as possible. She loved it. :)
We weren’t sure what to do with the weed whacker though. It had been in there for many weeks and it was wet and stinky like river water. Yuck! I did not want it in my car. We brought it up to the marking lot and left it leaning against a railing. Hopefully someone will stop by and do something with it.
Eve is planning to write the story as a book and read it to her class next week. I hope she does! I’ll be sure to share here as well. It’s always an adventure when Eve is around. <3
Lex regularly amazes me with his attention to detail. Tonight he asked me why comics always write in uppercase. Then he commented that in the Calvin and Hobbes books Moe always speaks in lowercase and bold. Everyone else speaks in uppercase. Why is that?! Then he reminded me of a conversation we had years ago about why comics never use periods. They use question marks and exclamation points, but rarely use periods. And he wondered what font Randal Monroe uses in xkcd comics. His attention to detail astounds me.
Halloween 2015. It was a bit different this year. The kids both chose character costumes that required money, but little creativity. I was busy with work and did minimal decorating or planning.
Evie and Steve
We trick-or-treated with two of Eve’s friends and their mothers and siblings. I went out with the kids, thinking I could socialize with the moms, while Alan stayed home with one of the dads to hand out candy. Turns out Eve and her friends were a lot faster than Lex, so they were mostly way ahead while Lex and his big cardboard head and I lagged behind. Lex and I ended coming home before the rest of the crowd, which was fine. We got to socialize with Alan and the other dad a bit. Then one of Eve’s friends and her mom and sister came back to our house and we all hung out, laughing about the evening. That might have been my favorite part of the night. :-)
An excited Halloween crowd!
Trick-or-treating
A good night was had by all. Now to manage the massive amount of candy they acquired! We went to far more houses than ever before!
While doing is multiplication homework the other day Lex’s mind wandered to the concept of infinity. The idea that three times infinity is a smaller number than four times infinity. I guess he and Alan had been talking about it recently.
After talking about infinity a bit and pondering the size of infinity he said, “I like to think about mind-bending math. The stuff you literally can’t wrap your brain around. It kind of makes your brain hurt. I love that!”
The whole situation reminded me of a comment his teacher had made that he takes too long to do his math work in school. I suspect his mind is wandering to more interesting stuff and he looses track of the time. I certainly see it often at home!