Posts by bluebirdmama
Make a Laptop
I’m not much of a kids crafter kind of person. My son usually likes to just do whatever he wants with the materials and takes over completely if there is any kind of agenda. For the most part we just let him do what he wants with the art materials which is usually to cut great wads of paper into tiny pieces, spread them around, declare the craft finished and refuse to put anything in the recycling. We find tiny squares of paper spread through the house for weeks afterwards and there is usually a sizable stash stored in Rain’s nightstand because they are too precious for him to part with. (My family is laughing hysterically right now about how the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree or some other dumb thing about how I used to do that, but whatever. I don’t let him have the tape anyways so I don’t even know what they’re talking about.) I got the idea to make a laptop with him out of an egg carton. Of course, a power struggle ensued about how it was to be done. I won because I’m bigger but that meant that I made the craft and Rain mostly watched so now we have no In-Process pictures for the tutorial. The laptop turned out pretty darn cool. I’ll tell you how it’s done and I won’t even be there to boss you around if you want to do it your way. But really, you can’t make a laptop out of a bunch of cut-up pieces of paper so it would be best if you listened to me. Just sayin. You’ll Need: 1 Egg Carton (empty) Scissors Glue Tape Paper 1 Piece of cardstock or thin cardboard I had just received a labeller as a gift from my husband for doing the books and marketing all year for our business. I have a secret stationary/office suply habit so the labeller was like giving me crack. Pretty sweet of him. The laptop would be the first labeller project. Rain also adores the labeller because of all the tiny buttons and portability. It’s like a kid sized computer. Heck, it’s like a laptop. That’s where the power struggle started. He likes to do everything himself. He drops things a lot. I don’t like broken electronics. If broken electronics were a publicly traded commodity, we’d be one of the top shareholders. Enough is enough. You’ll need a labeller or you could just use your computer/printer combo. Or I guess you could write letters with your hand and a pen but that seems kind of old-fashioned now doesn’t it? I mean if you could use a labeller or your own hand, what would you choose? First step, open the egg carton and using your scissors or an exacto (if you’re doing this craft while the kids are in bed, which let’s face it, is a better time to do crafts), cut off the 4-5 points that protrude up towards the lid. Cut them so that they are level with the edges. Next, cut the cardstock into a long rectangle the same size as the lower portion of the egg carton. Fit it in place to check if you have the surface flat enough. Some of the edges may need to be trimmed again. Glue in place. Now the fun part!! Copying the pattern on the keyboard, print off large bold letters and numbers. You can even do the arrows and other keys if you are so inclined. I was planning to do all the SHIFT, CTRL, ALT etc keys but started to get stingy when I saw how much label tape we were going through. I did start to relax though and let Rain press the keys, the print button and use the tape cutter. The labeller was great because we could just cut them and stick them on. If you are printing them on paper, you’ll need to use glue. I hope you don’t get carpel tunnel from not having a labeller for this craft. Especially if you are...
Read MoreIndependent Thinker
In the car in the preschool parking lot, Rain tells me he doesn’t want to go to school. He fakes sleeping in his carseat. He tells me that he’s sleepy and can’t go to school. I distract him and get him unbuckled. The day before he told me he was sick and couldn’t go. But there are no tears, no theatrics. He marches confidently down the hall, past the door to his class, trying another stalling tactic. When he sees me waiting at the door, he moseys back. Once through the door, he doesn’t hesitate. He takes off his coat, finds a hook, turns to kiss me goodbye, and tells me he is going to make some art. I watch him go. He heads straight for the back corner, then veers in a wide arc round back to the shelves of toys by the coat hooks. He looks up at me as he reaches for a large wooden tray filled with coloured blocks, dowels and cards with patterns, and informs me “This is new.” I follow him to the table. “How come you decided not to do art?” “There were too many kids,” he explains as he sits at an empty table. “So what do you do with this new toy?” I ask him. The preschool director sees us and comes to sit with Rain. “There are a few things you can do with this,” she begins. Rain already has two dowels and has started to fit them into holes on the tray. “I’m going to do this.” He ignores the pattern cards and starts loading all of the square blocks on the first dowel. The director laughs, “Of course you are.” and looking up at me, says, “We’ve got an independent thinker here.” I laugh too. “We’re certainly not worried about that.” Talking to Rain again, she says “You like to do things your way.” Turning her attention back to me, she tells me: “You’re going to get a call from the Kindergarten teacher.” She ruffles Rain’s hair to make him feel included – we’re not talking about you; we’re talking with you. “Sometimes you have to do things the way the teacher asks you,” she goes on. She smiles when she sees he’s got the whole dowel filled with just square blocks, leaving the round and rectangular blocks on the tray. “Wow. Can you tell me what you’ve done here?” she asks. Rain says “I put all the squares on.” I kiss him and take my leave. On the drive home, I’m even more convinced that public school is a bad idea. ————————————— There are a couple of things going on here. (Okay, more than a couple so I am going to do several posts and only focus on one at a time.) It concerns me that Rain is increasingly reluctant about school. Is it the number of kids? The structure? Something else? Is it totally normal? I really truly believe that kids love to learn and that school should be set up to facilitate that. Getting to the bottom of Rain’s reluctance about school could make all the difference in whether he retains his love of learning into adulthood. With Kindergarten looming, I am beginning to worry about how this will play out for him. Especially as a spirited, independent thinker. I recently read Raising Your Spirited Child by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka and found it incredibly helpful in working with Rain at home. We discovered what we already knew about him being slow to adapt to change, but also that he is perceptive (“often accused of not listening”) and energetic. The book has a chapter on Success in School and it begins with this quote: I didn’t want him to be “discussed.” I wanted him to be treasured. This chapter raised some flags for me about how Rain’s personality will likely be met in Kindergarten. A boy who is loud, full of ideas, talks a lot, moves a lot, dislikes changing from one activity to another. This is the boy that will be disrupting the Kindergarten....
Read MoreNagging or Something Noble
Last week, I posted another one of my son’s witticisms whereby he gave me a back-handed compliment for my nagging. I had praised Rain for having picked up the bath toys and he responded, “And I’m proud of you for asking and asking until I did it.” Truthfully, that is how it had all gone down. I had asked him several times to empty the tub. First he ignored me. Then he flat out refused. I pulled out my this-is-serious voice and told him he had to do it or else it was straight to bed. Leave it to a four-year-old to tell you he is proud of you for nagging and threatening. Essentially, Rain was jokingly pointing out that he hadn’t willfully done anything for me to be proud of. But I was proud of him. He had done a really good job despite not wanting to do it in the first place. I called the post Pride in a Job Well Done and later, I got to thinking about the whole dialogue. You know, beyond how funny it was. It occurred to me that the joke was all in whether or not I believed Rain was being sarcastic or sincere. As Aaron put it: “Either he doesn’t know what the word ‘proud’ means or else he was lying.” Maybe he wasn’t lying or joking. Maybe he was being sincere. Maybe he was telling me that I too had done my job well. Because really, if we look past the odious nature of my nagging and threatening, isn’t that my job as a parent: to ask and ask until my child learns? It’s easy to get worn down by the repetitive nature of parenting, of trying to get through to our kids, of attempting to be consistent and to follow through. Our kids are meant to learn by pushing boundaries and testing their limits. They are continually checking to see what they can get away with. I often get frustrated and I’m pretty sure I’m not the first mom to utter “You should know better!” in exasperation. My sister has pointed out to me a few times that the problem is in my expectations that it should be different. All we can really do as parents is to keep working at it: Keep reminding our kids about what is acceptable (and what isn’t) and hope that by the time our babies go out into this world they will have learned some of what we have tried to teach them. My job is just to keep showing them the way, modelling the behaviour we hope for, redirecting, and yes, asking and asking. You know the cliche about our children being our teachers? I wonder if this was another one of those cases where my son, my four-year-old, had the wisdom to see the truth in the situation. The truth that it is his job to see how far he can go and that it is my job to show him the way. I would have been happier if the whole story had involved less nagging and admittedly, a little less of me losing my temper. A couple of days later, I said to Rain “It would make me happy if you drained the tub and put the toys away” and he did it right away. I only had to ask once. Maybe we both learned a little something last week. How about you? Learned any great parenting lessons from your kids this...
Read MoreTrust
My sister and I have a plan to live together again. When we moved in July 2008, we (Aaron and I) essentially put our son and my sister’s kids through a divorce. They had grown up together, almost like siblings. The adults almost like surrogate parents, not merely aunts and uncle. Then we moved 4 hours away from them. It is still a little heartbreaking when I think of the poor kids that summer. We started making a plan to be together again. The plan is pretty detailed; more than I will get into here, now. I used to call it The Pipe Dream but lately it has become The Potential Pipe Dream in my mind. How pathetic is that? It’s not just a dream, it’s an unrealistic dream? And not even that for sure, just potentially? My sister teases me about this, and I do see the humour in it; but, it’s indicative of my state of mind. I struggle with the feasibility of The Plan in general given our financial situation but also because it feels like The Plan will make some of my other dreams and goals impossible. I’ve begun to question what it is that I really want. What am I willing to sacrifice? Where can I compromise? What is most important to me? I’ve been feeling like I just don’t know. At the beginning of January, I wrote about my hopes for this year. I wrote that I hoped 2010 would be the year where I get clarity, where I would discover my VISION. I also started exploring Mondo Beyondo. I missed out on the registration for the January session but in March I’m planning to tackle the 5 week online course in DREAMING BIG. The website explains that the course is for anyone but the more outrageous the dream the better. I asked myself: “What is my most outrageous dream?” And you know what? I know the answer. I know exactly what I want to be doing in fifteen years. This was no general statement like “I want to retire” (which isn’t my dream, by the way). I know in explicit detail what my most outrageous dream is. Without a doubt. Thinking back to Christine Kane’s Word of the Year tool, I realised that maybe VISION isn’t really the word for this year. It’s not vision that I am lacking. It’s FAITH. The reason I am waffling on The Plan is because the part of me that is scared and doubtful doesn’t believe we can do it. Here we are: three weeks into the New Year and I’m already re-evaluating my Intentions. Sheesh. So then. This might be the year called Believe. The year called Trust. The year called Faith. I still don’t know how to make The Plan a reality. Breaking it all down into manageable, bite-size, achievable goals is going to take some time. But I do know the first step is to stop calling it The Potential Pipe Dream. The second step is to Trust. This post was written to participate in the Crafting My Life series at...
Read MoreThoughts on Weaning
I consider myself lucky. In this culture of formula and inadequate support and work pressures, so many women seem to struggle with breastfeeding. For me, the struggle was actually weaning. Breastfeeding came easy. My babies latched well and I had a bigger issue with oversupply than with not producing enough. I had great support from my midwives and family, and I was lucky to have a whole year of Canadian maternity leave. My children were both enthusiastic nursers and as a result, weaning was a very long gradual process. I had initially intended to nurse my firstborn for 18 months. We did manage to night-wean him at 15 months when I got a part-time job but his day-time nursing made up for it. There was no chance he’d be weaned at 18 months. I didn’t want to stop breastfeeding before my son was ready. I wanted very much for the process of weaning to be loving and gentle and to move at a pace dictated largely by my son, with some encouragement from me. In that sense, I wouldn’t say it was truly child-led weaning as I definitely played an encouraging (or discouraging) role. I employed the oft-cited tactics like “Don’t offer, don’t refuse” and distraction or offering alternatives. Eventually, I would decline a request to nurse whenever I thought I could get away with it. I will be honest. Sometimes it felt like I would never get my body back. Sometimes I felt touched out and resented having to nurse again. Sometimes I felt that weaning gradually was too difficult, too slow. By the time Rain was two years old, he was only nursing before and after sleeps and when hurt or upset. A month after his second birthday, I got pregnant again. Nursing quickly became uncomfortable and I wasn’t sure I was interested in tandem nursing. I knew that the next 9 months held Rain’s weaning. We gradually got him into a bedtime routine that involved reading books, a cup of milk and some a lot of cuddles. By January 2008, he was only nursing once a day, before his nap. One day—was it January? February?—he was playing with his cousins in the house. They had the camping gear out and were pretending that the rolled blue foam sleeping pads were horses. They would sit on them and pretend to ride. Rain brought one back to the bus at lunch time. He asked to sleep with his horse during nap time. We laid down together on the bed in the back. I remember the light peeking through the curtains. I remember him putting his arm around Rose, his trusty horse and curling his body round the blue foam pad. I remember tucking his blanket around him. I remember how I stroked his hair and how he drifted off, forgetting to ask for a nurse. I don’t remember the day before, the day we nursed as we always did. I don’t remember the way he looked or what the light was like the last time we nursed. But I remember the day he didn’t nurse. I remember this day as the day he weaned. He did nurse again after that day: occasionally to sleep, when he fell and got hurt, after his sister was born and he would watch her nurse, curious and remembering how he had loved to nurse. By the time Noa was born, he would only latch, suck once or twice, grow bored and wander off to do something else. I remember the day with the blue foam horse named Rose because this was the first day he didn’t nurse. This was the real weaning: the day nursing was no longer a daily affair, no longer a part of the rhythm of our lives. I have many many memories of breastfeeding Rain. I remember the early days learning together, sitting up alone with him at night by the light shining through the closet door, listening to Aaron and the dog snore, listening to Rain’s sleepy swallows. I remember the toddler acrobatics as he nursed while...
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