Dad: Alice, can I call you “hyper girly squirrelly shaker pop”?
Alice: Maybe.
Dad: Maybe?
Alice: Maybe means “maybe”.
Dad: OK, then I’ll call you that.
Alice: Maybe means “no”.
Dad: No, “maybe” doesn’t mean “no”, it means “maybe”.
Alice: Then “no”.
Dad: I can’t call you “hyper girly squirelly shaker pop”?
Alice: No.
Dad: What about Mom?
Alice: No.
Dad: But Mom can do anything!
Alice: Except call me that!
Mom and I were tired and grumpy this morning, but eventually we took on our daily missions. Mom’s required Alice’s presence, so Mom went off to make Alice get dressed and discovered that Alice was already dressed. Mom was impressed that Alice got herself dressed until Alice admitted that Charles had helped her. I don’t know what motived him, but Charles is generally the first one of us dressed on days without early deadlines. While it’s not quite as good as Alice self-dressing, I am not one to look a helpful Charles in the mouth (likely to be lots of nasty food there).
Mom, being a soft touch, let Charles buy a remote control Wall•E (with his own money, at least) yesterday, and it’s been the hit of the house for the last two days. Charles and Alice think it’s great and even Corwin has played with it.
On the other hand, over the last couple of week Mom has been gathering up a huge mass of toys that that kids are willing to give up to donate to charity / toss (depending on the toy — some of them I wouldn’t inflict on Josh or Jack). So we may have net outflow this month. Maybe.
The biggest problem seems to have been getting a box to put them in. Alice and Charles consider the boxes I get for them special, because they know I only buy the best. Mom had to do some fast negotiating with Alice to use the High Tech Box, which was a constant companion for Alice and Charles for several days. It was a box that had many features, almost all of them constructed, attached, or drawn by Charles. The outside and inside were complex tapestries of sophisticated controls and accessories. I still remember when Alice was inside the box and Charles rolled it over on its top, showing that Alice couldn’t roll her way out of a cardboard box. Whatever I spent on the toys for Dad inside, it was worth it to bring that kind of joy to my children, and it’s a sacrifice I will willing make again in the future, when it becomes necessary. I know Mom stands behind me on that, because she loves her children too, and nothing is too much for their happiness.
I know we’ll all miss High Tech Box. Click below for a brief pictorial remembrance.
Mini Rage first flight
Today was the annual rocket launch for the rocket club, so I was there instead of Corwin’s swim meet. Corwin came by later, once he was dry.
I had intended all year to get some cool new stuff ready, but of course time slipped by until it was too late. Corwin, however, managed to build two rockets since his last launch, they only needed some paint. So the few days last week that I had time to prepare was spent on helping Corwin get his rockets painted for the launch. He learned about priming, masking, and why grip strength is important for using spray paint.
The launch went well. The early morning weather was very marginal, but since it was the big launch and tomorrow didn’t look any better, the decision was made to go ahead. That turned out well, as after a few hours of miserable weather the day gradually turned very nice, although the wind was near the limit for safe launching most of the time.
I focused on getting in as many flights as possible early one, both to get things moving and because no one else was flying so I got my pick of launch pads and didn’t have to help out with administrative tasks. By late afternoon I had to stop for those reasons, but it was fine as I had already done more launches than I normally manage.
I didn’t fly any big rockets, as I am mostly out of motors for them and most are broken and waiting repair. Sigh. I flew the Green Rage 2 three times, twice having to retrieve from the buildings east of the park. So at least I got some exercise.
Corwin flew his rockets three or four times, his little one only once and the rest on the rocket he built for his Webelos den. The paint job turned out well and he named it “Min-Rage”, presumably after my “Green Rage” rocket fleet. The first flight was on an A8-s and it was a low flight, but that was good because it ended up landing very close to the spot landing stake (70 inches) which is much closer than any one else managed. The other flights used B6-4 motors and Corwin had to do some walking to get those back. I helped Corwin with the first couple of flights but after that he did all the preparation himself. Afterwards he lamented that, while fun, it would have been more fun if he had more rockets. I think I might be able to fix that …
Corwin had a swim meet this morning. It’s the third one for the team, but the first one where Corwin actually swam. The weather looked bad and I thought they’d cancel, but after a couple of hours of futzing it was on. I, unfortunately, was unable to attend due to other engagements. Mom had the privilege of taking the entire spawn set to the event and then enjoying several hours of quality time with them.Mom says they were well behaved (for them), which I deduced from the fact that we still had three children afterwards despite the proximity of a large quantity of water.
Mom also tells me that Corwin did decently, even though he was set as the sacrificial lamb for some fast heats. I think the team has next weekend off, but then maybe, perhaps, I will finally see an actual meet for myself.
This evening we all went to see Wall•E. I think it was mostly Mom’s idea, but the kids were reasonably enthusiastic. Charles liked the idea enough that when he, Corwin, and I were out shopping Charles picked up a copy of the Wall•E game. Naturally, he couldn’t actually play it, so Corwin did while Charles and Alice watched avidly (along with Abby while she was here).
But we made them stop playing the game so we could go to the movied. We all thought it was a good movie, especially Alice and Charles. So five buttery fingers up from all of us.
Today was a special day. Alice had to go potty and she was in a grumpy mood, so when I took up my station outside the bath room to watch, she said (oh, frabjous day!) “don’t watch me!”. Is my long voyeuristic nightmare finally ending?
[We’re going by a long display of Nintendo DS games. I notice Charles staring at them longingly.]
Dad: So, should we get you a DS for your birthday?
Charles: Yes!
Dad: Then you’d be happy for a while?
Charles: Yes.
Dad: For at least a week or two?
Charles: Yes.
Dad: Cool! [gives Charles a hug]
Charles: Maybe
Corwin, as noted, gets to sit in the front seat much more often. This is annoying in the van because he turns on the butt warmers. In late June. He then leaves them on for the next time I’m in the seat, or he forgets which control activates which seat (you’d think the “left for left, right for right” arrangement might clue him in, but you’d be wrong) and turns on both, just to be sure. I am left wondering why he doesn’t get a heating pad to keep his butt warm while he’s sleeping.
Batting with enthusiasm
Charles got to play first base one inning this evening, although that’s not as critical as it is in higher levels of play. He played outfield the first inning and second base the third inning. We almost had a loss of game because Charles remembered to bring his bat and glove but then left them in the van. I had to walk almost 30 meters or so to get them, which almost drove Charles to tears. But, eventually, after an near endless wait of a couple of minutes, Charles was properly equipped for the game.
Charles did well (for his age) with fielding, being one of the more aggressive and enthusiastic fielders. Mom’s right, though, I really need to work with him on throwing.
Oh, and Erica’s dad showed up to watch as well.
Alice has been suffering a lot this summer from insect bits. She got a couple of nasty ones on her upper arm that left a rash and mottled skin for most of a week before it faded. Now she’s got a big one on her back and another right below her left eye, the latter having swollen enough to make that eye squinty. This morning Mom thought the swelling was worse, but I thought it wasn’t as bad. We’ll see how she looks in the evening.
[Alice tries to take her cup full of water up to the sink, but spills it on the way]
Dad: Oh, Alice!
Alice: I was just trying to put my cup away.
Dad: Maybe we need to go the girl store and get a better Alice.
Alice: I am a better Alice!
Dad: OK. We’ll keep you, then. Problem solved!
Corwin has hit several personal growth marks in the few weeks which I have neglectfully failed to note.
Late afternoon and early evening was spent working on the tree house. Mom bought a bunch of planks for the cross beams and flooring. I had thought she’d get big 4×8 foot sheets of plywood, but she decided on planking. She also got some large metal spikes with 4×4 inch hollow tops. We, by which I mean I, pounded those in to the ground for two of the posts to keep the tree house from sliding away from the tree. We had a few alignment issues, but some pounding and “well, whatever” attitude brought us through to an officially declared successful conclusion.
Mom dragged us out to a local food / arts event, which promotes the variety of food and art in the local area. It was actually a very nice day for it, warm but not hot and only a couple of little sprinkles. Corwin, as usual, got a temporary tattoo although he opted for the washable instead of the semi-permanent1. Alice got a cute coronet made of a red/purple plastic ring with hearts and lace attached, along with a long set of ribbons that hang down to near her feet. Charles’ loot was a a PVC bow with some foam & dowel arrows. Mom wasn’t enthused about it, figuring it would break in a day or two, but I figured it cost less than we spent on lunch for him and would last longer, so why not?
We wandered a bit so Mom could check out all the artsy / crafty places. One booth was sponsored by the US Army. We tried to get Charles to talk to actual soldiers, but he refused to interact at all. Maybe he only likes being the general. In the end we let Alice have round in the bounce house which ended badly (Mom: “Alice, are you done?” Alice: “Yes” — leaves bounce house, then melts down because she left the bounce house). At that point we decided everyone needed a nap so we headed on home.
1 Because he’s on swim team now, that distinction actually matters.
This morning was Corwin’s first swim meet (there was one last Saturday, but because Corwin missed all of the practices due to being in Vacation Bible School, we didn’t know about it until too late). Unfortunately it clouded over and thundered on and off. Every time there was a peal of thunder, they’d make all the kids get out of the pool. After a couple of hours of that, the opposing coach (their team was hosting) announced that if things hadn’t cleared up by 10 AM (from a 7 AM start1) they’d just bag it rather than make every one wait the whole day. Right at 9:58, a downpour started. The poor coach didn’t even get to make the final announcement as everyone packed up and left spontaneously at that point.
The funniest bit was all the squealing kids as the rain came down. I can see that normally, but these kids were swimmers at a swim meet wearing swim suits — surely getting wet shouldn’t be traumatic!
1 We were almost early, getting there just before 7, but Corwin had forgotten his goggles so we had to go back. It turned out not to matter, at least. Corwin has already had to buy a new pair out of his own money because he lost his parentally supplied pair somewhere at some practice. I should set up a pool for when he’ll have to buy the next pair.
Gah! I managed to walk barefoot through some poison ivy between our yard the and field. Gosh, it itches! Still, I managed to hit a tennis ball thrown in the air with my paintball marker.
As part of his exciting and glamorous life style, Charles took his friend Josie to his acrobatics class because it was “bring a friend day” there. Mom had the privilege of being the escort and she says they had a good time. I guess it beats a brief yet opposing encounter at second base.
Today was Charles’ last day of Cub Scout Day Camp. I spent the day with him yesterday, because I had volunteered to be one of the adult minders (“walkers”) required to keep the camp from descending in to young boy chaos. After a day long exposure to other children, I feel better about Charles and sorrier for many other parents. Kickball was the worst — by the end of that period over half the kids had dropped out to sit by a tree in preference to playing. Charles soldiered on, even though later he told me he didn’t much like it1. I was surprised at the kids who played but seem to have no concept of the game (after playing it every day for a week) and would watch balls just go sailing by, then stare blankly at the other kids who were yelling “get the ball!”.
Ah well. I had to go today because it was family day (which I had overlooked in planning my schedule for the week). I had originally planned to just take Charles, but Mom decided that Alice should go along as well (Corwin was off at soccer camp). That went better than expected — Alice and Charles whined about going home around 10:30, but by the time I had gotten to the state where we could leave, they had changed their minds.
Alice spent most of her time waiting in line for the (one) bounce house. She was a very good little queuer, keeping her place and not complaining. Charles did the BB guns a few times and then the sling shot. Charles was really eager to do archery, but that had a very long line2. Eventually, though, it was time for what Charles and Alice had really been waiting for, pizza!
P.S. Charles got through the entire week, 5 days outside in the sun, with no sunburn. A bit red at times, but no actual burns. Of course, he wore long pants the entire time. He was not, however, the only person with long pants on.
1 A thing I found odd, since Charles is so fond of T-ball. I pointed this out and Charles claimed th two games were completely different because there was no T-ball stand in kick ball. OK …
2 Not so much because it was more popular, but because there was tall grass right behind the targets so retrieving the arrows as time consuming.
We survived our night hosting the soccer boys. They gorged on pizza and soda. I tried feeding them some fruit and veggies for lunch today with mixed success. There will definitely be some dietary adjustments needed this weekend.
In between gaming (on the PC and the wii), there were some water balloon fights, sword fights, glow stick tag, and movie watching. I also got the hear the complete text to several YouTube videos and some of Wierd Al’s grosser songs.
They got to bed at a somewhat reasonable time, but two of the boys (Josh and Keith) were up when I got up at 5:30 and trying to play on the PC. I sent them back to bed with the ruling of no electronics before 7am.
This morning had excitement with Jake’s nose spontaneously bleeding. This of course happened as I was trying to get Alan and Charles ready for cub scout camp and Alice ready to be dropped off by Alan. After three attempts that only stopped the bleeding for 10 or 15 minutes, I looked it up on the Internet, and that did the trick. Make the person apply pressure to the bridge of their nose for at least 5 minutes and have them lean slightly forward. Also, make sure they don’t sneeze or blow their nose for a couple hours.
I dropped them off at soccer camp this afternoon, and the next host parent (victim) will pick them up. We get Corwin back Friday.
Alice got to pay with the boys too — here Josh threatens Keith with Alice cooties
Charles had another T-ball game today. I am amazed at how patient Charles is when playing, which is not his normal attitude. He managed to spend his time in the field paying attention (mostly) without wandering off or playing with dirt, despite the fact that nothing was hit to him all game.
He batted well, and as you can see managed to run between bases. I think he’s been taught one bad habit, which is that runners should advance exactly one base on a hit. That’s the normal style in T-ball, but I think it’s more custom than rule.
Charles’ friend Josie was on the other team and the two of them had a nice chat while Josie was on second base.
Although Alice favors her Mom, she still (just like her Mom) pretends to like me now and then. She has at least learned that agreeing that her Dad is the Meanest Dad in the World just provides an excuse for him.
Anyway, a couple of weeks back Alice managed to get some nasty splinters in her foot again. Mom worked on the splinters for a bit, trying to make progress against a screaming and spasming Alice. She got one but left the other one while we tried soaking Alice in a bath to see if that might get it to pop out like last time. That was unsuccessful, so I was sent in to avoid any further damage to Mom’s reputation. Alice was very upset about having additional sharp objects stuck in to her foot, but I pointed out that the alternative was to have her foot hurt forever and make it so she couldn’t dance. I think the bath helped a lot, as with just a little bit of digging I managed to hook the splinter and get it out. I told Alice she was done being attacked by the Evil Daddy and she said “No, you are the nicest Daddy in the world”. Maybe I should arrange for more splinters.
Last week, after Corwin’s graduation, we went over to Jack’s house, a very somber affair because not only had Corwin and Jack graduated to middle school, but Anwen was moving on to high school. Gah!
Anyway, it was fun. I mostly just sat because, frankly, that’s what I do best, while the boys ran around and around the house. At one point they were a bit mean to Alice, so I decided let her have some revenge and tricked Charles in to coming over where I let Alice make a smoochie on him. Jack’s dad thought Charles’ reaction was hilarious, so he tricked Jack the same way. Jack went completely wild when exposed to Alice cooties1. Meanwhile, Alice is complaining because she didn’t get the smooch quite right. A bit tense, but still the kind of thing that can bring a smile to my face when writing about it a few days later. It’ll also be a great story to recount when Jack and Alice are dating in college. Or maybe Josh — Alice was calmed down by Josh’s mom pinning him and letting Alice do a well aimed smooch.
1 Corwin, for once having learned from experience, was too paranoid to be caught so easily.
“Sharky” got renamed this weekend to “Luke”. Apparently such direct naming is now a baby thing, or perhaps Sharky was just jealous of Timmy and his human like name. Charles wasn’t very clear on his motivation for this change. I wonder if he’ll remember in a week, though.
I scouted out a paintball field yesterday. I wanted to check out another one today. Corwin couldn’t go yesterday because he was over at Colin’s house. Today he was available so the two of us headed out with a load of gear in case of game. I had called ahead and the owner indicated a low probability for other players, but when we arrived there were two adults with four boys about Corwin’s age. One guy was a hard core player and the other looked like the dad of one of the boys, and the other guys knew the dad and the boys.
We ended up taking a while to get ready to play, because I am badly out of practice and shape, but eventually we got in 3 or 4 games for Corwin’s first paintball experience. He stayed bunkered up almost all the time, but he layed down some fire and actually got the good player out (hit him on the hopper). That guy had a tricked out marker that put out about 12-15 balls per second, which was a bit annoying, but Corwin still had a good time. When they left, the guy left Corwin his extra paintballs, and I let Corwin take out my marker and just walk around the field shooting. He got bored, but not until he shot about 400 or so paintballs and made his CO2 cylinder frost over.
I had called Jack’s dad last night about coming along, but they had a previous engagement. That was probably for the best, given all the things I forgot in getting ready for the expedition. Hopefully I’ll do better next time.
This week was Vacation Bible School, with all three kids attending.They seemed to have a good time, we didn’t have much problem getting them up and over there every morning. The end result is a short show during church service in which the kids are supposed to sing. I think we got a little bit of vocalization out of them this year. Alice claimed, on the way over, that she was going to sing but when it came time she was almost entirely silent. She later claimed she just didn’t know the words, despite having Mom play a CD of the songs in the van during all car trips for the week, to which Alice and even Charles would sing along.
Presumably as part of his interest in the cello Charles decided to build a stringed instrument in his workshop today. He got the base structure done all by himself but didn’t have much luck in getting rubber bands on as his strings. To entice me in to helping him, he managed to actually speak “Daddy, can you help me?” in a mumbling voice. That turned in to a project that took a big chunk of the rest of the day, but after a couple of dead ends we hit on a structure that mostly works, which you can see here with Timmy.
In hindsight, I probably should have just found rubber bands long enough to wrap around the entire length. Instead I bought a set of drill bits for my dremel and let Charles drill some holes with a power tool. I thought I could stretch the rubber bands through and tie them off on dowel chunks but that just didn’t work. We discovered that we could jam one of Charles’ small dowels in the holes and then tie the strings to that. The tieing is a bit tricky, but doable, and the posts look kind of cool. Charles seems to be happy with the result, and Alice likes it too.
After Abby’s dad picked her up, I asked Alice whether she’d enjoyed being with Abby. Alice denied everything, including that she’d ever met a girl named Abby. After some interrogation I got her to admit that she’d played with some girl earlier in the day, but even though Alice didn’t know her name, she she it wasn’t “Abby”. However, her story fell apart when I found this chalkd drawing on the sidewalk next to the house [cur dramatic music]
Busted!
Charles has been on a bit of a fairness kick lately. He frequently argues that something isn’t fair. Mom tells me that he’s complained that Alice has a bigger room (not true, although the boys do have to share). At dinner, it was that Mom and I have a nicer bathroom. I countered that since we paid for the house, we got to have the nicer bathroom. Mom noted that if Charles studied and worked hard, he could get himself a nice bathroom when he bought his own house. Charles wanted to know if he could have the nicest bathroom in the whole world. Kind of odd, but at least we now have a clear motivator for Charles to keep him on track.
Today was Abby’s first day of her wonderful new summer job, preventing our children (Alice, especially) from destroying Western Civilization1. I was away when Abby arrived, but Mom reports that Alice latched on to Abby and didn’t let go until we dropped Abby off on the way to Charles’ game. Charles said he liked Abby, and Corwin (when asked) just grunted and said he had hidden from her all day in the basement.
Abby’s schedule is a bit different this week because of Vacation Bible School (for all three kids this year). But next week we should be back on track, although since Charles will be gone all day all week at a Cub Scout outing, and Corwin will be at the Great Soccer Camp Rotating Sleep Over, Abby will get to have a truly concentrated dose of Alice.
1 For example, I noticed that Charles had silver splotches on his pants, from his former role as Charles Silver Hand. I noted this and Charles responded with a request for using spray paint. Yeah, that was a choice moment for that request.
Tonight was Charles’ first T-ball game of the season. We all went, even Corwin, who wanted to sit in the van reading a book the entire time (Mom made him actually go outside and experience a close facsimile of nature). Alice ran in to one of her friends from daycare, Helen, and they had fun playing.
It’s hard to say who won, as they don’t keep score, every batter makes it around the bases, and everybody bats once every inning. This means that which ever team gets more players to show scores the most runs and I neglected to count.
Anyway, Charles did reasonably well. He actually ran down a ball in the outfield and got back to tag a runner out (which counts as an out, but doesn’t send the runner off the bases). On the other hand, there was a hit to him later and it went right through his legs. Oh well. At least he was one of the better hitters on the team. Oh, yeah, he had a good time as well. But what’s that compared to satisfying my vicarious parental bragging rights?
P.S. We must remember to have Charles wear his athletic shoes, even though he has to tie them, for the next game.
Charles bought a toy knife (part of a combat set) a while back and it became a favorite toy among all the children for a while. This is Charles methodically terminating the Evil Bubbles.
In case you were wondering, Charles prefers to be called “Sparky” more than “Shiny Happy Charles”, even though I think the latter suits him better.
It’s the start of the first week after school let out. There was only an hour of school on Thursday and none on Friday. We let the boys vegetate after their last hour, but on Friday Mom took the spawn up north to do family things. But now we’ve run out of excitement and it’s back to the summer grind.
This summer Alice will be going to daycare two days a week. It didn’t work out to get a full time nanny, and the daycare said that Alice’s transition back last year was … challenging and took a couple of months. So this summer we’ll keep her in part time so it’s not such a big shock. We have a young nanny lined up for Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays so that Alice can spend quality time with her brothers.
One of the fun things about Alice is now and then she’ll break a silence with a very context free question or comment. Each of these quotes were completely out of the blue, after several minutes of quiet companionship.
“Daddy, when is Erica going to make babies?”
“I am not afraid of crabs anymore.”
“I will have a pink wedding dress.”
“I want a shirt with pink spiders.”1
1 I found one that Alice approved and it’s on order
Today was the rain date for the annual neighborhood picnic. Turnout was rather low, probably because of the rescheduling. When I got there with Alice and Charles, there were a good number of adults but the only other children were Mara and her sisters (Zina and Amalia). Later a couple of other children arrived, but it was pretty sparse.
Alice, Charles, and I had arrived before Mom because she hadn’t gotten the cookies completely baked. Shortly after we arrived, Polynomial showed up unexpectedly. I actually tried checking her tags to make sure it was really her, but they were missing. Apparently Poly is smart enough to realize that we had gone to the pond (which is a good distance and well out of sight of the house) and went there after she managed to escape from Mom. Naturally, I didn’t have a leash and it was fun watching her while trying to keep Alice and Charles from drowning in the pond.
The kids had a good time and I came within spitting distance of socializing with some of the neighbors. So it was a good picnic.
Oh, and Alice got to wear her new swim suit —
I was supposed to be exhausted this evening from a full day of scouting plus the annual neighborhood picnic, but the rain cut the first in half and postponed the latter. Since it had cleared up by late afternoon (mostly), Mom decided to take this unscheduled and unstructured time as an omen to get to work on the tree house. With much management of a reluctant staff, Mom managed to get the base framing up, as you can see here. I had originally thought she would chop off all the lower branches, to make construction easier, but that’s just not Mom’s way, Giver-Goddess Earth Mother that she is. So we set everything up in place, fighting the branches. In the end, as everyone who knows her would expect, Mom’s Will Be Done.
Today was a Cub Scout outing for Charles. It was supposed to be a day of fun and adventure, but it started raining yesterday and kept on in the morning. Mom thought it wasn’t worth heading out (since it’s a 40 minute drive there) but I was too sleep deprived to grasp her point, so off Charles and I went.
As it turned out, the scouts tried to have a good day but the rain was just too much. It would lighten up for a bit and then resume a heavy down pour. Charles and I tried to walk over to the BB gun range during an apparent lull, but the rain started coming down very heavily while we were walking and Charles gave up about half way there. He had some fun with the indoor activities, but we just stayed for lunch and headed out afterwards.
One activity that Charles liked enough to do twice was roasting donuts. They had some pre-made roll dough from which they’d break off chunks, have the kids roast them over some coals, coat with powdered sugar, and eat. Charles thought it was very tasty, if a bit long in preparation. What I didn’t understand was why the staff scouts spent so much time fiddling with the fire. As far as I could see, they’d have a set of coal, white with ash on the outside and cherry red on the inside, which I understood to be about optimal for charcoal. It looked like they were trying to achieve open flame but that’s just not the way charcoal works. Ah well.
When Mom’s cousin Harold was leaving, he was running a bit late so Mom went with him to drop off the rental car while he got checked in and on the plane. This meant that I had to go and pick her up later.
Charles: Where are we going?
Dad: To the airport.
Charles: Why?
Dad: To pick up Mom so she doesn’t have to walk home.
Charles: It would be healthier for her if she walked home.
There’s an entire saga of the box I need to write up, of which this is just one chapter
One of the life style changes I have neglected to write up is a change in the standard seating in our vehicles. This may seem small, but it is a topic of vital importance to the children, and especially the boyen.
A few weeks ago I was in a hurry and didn’t have time to move in a booster seat for Charles, so I let him just sit like a normal person. He really liked that and started a dedicated resistance program to having to use a booster seat again. We gave in, and there’s no longer a Charles booster seat in the van. This also means that he can sit in the way back of the van, which he tried out a couple of days after he won the right to an unboosted state in his previous seat.
Because life is a series of cascading events, Corwin leveraged this to insist on being able to sit in the front seat (both because it’s cooler, and because Charles was sitting with him in the way back — sitting in seats previously reserved for the younger kids was not even worthy of discussion). I had let Corwin in front a few times previously, in desperate times, but we’ve mostly given in to him as well and let him sit in front on a semi-regular basis.
It’s the modern way — no longer is a child’s maturity judged by his wood craft and hunting skills, but on what seating is is permitted in a car.
Today was Corwin’s graduation from primary school. We’re all very proud that he managed to make it all the way to middle school with out flunking out or being sent to juvenile detention. It was certainly a struggle at times, but I think we’ve convinced him that enduring school is better than being immediately rented out to a child labor sweatshop to get some extra cash for the family in his spare time. Personally, I think we should bring back sweatshops and make every kid spend his primary school transition summer in one. That’ll keep ‘em in school longer.
It was a nice ceremony, not too long or involved. It was in the morning because the gymnasium is not air conditioned. The rest of the day was spent entertaining the kids with movies, free time, recess, pizza, and swimming. Wouldn’t that be the perfect prelude to 2½ months of hard labor?
Mom’s been agitating about building a tree house for the last few months (years?). She’s gotten more serious about it since her chicken ranch fell through and she was left without a spring project. So last Sunday she took Alice out shoe shopping (her old shoes were leaving bloody blisters on her heel) and said that she’d look at tree house building supplies. Just look, she said. Naturally, when she got back, she had a van full of wood. Apparently the project is on. We have a basic design now, plus joists, but the first step is doing some tree trimming. I think Mom’s biding her time until the end of school / early summer rush of activities slows down a bit
As one of our presents for his birthday, I got Corwin a fixed blade field knife, something he could (hopefully) take on scouting trips. It arrived on Tuesday and it was Saturday before he managed to cut himself with it. That’s very good for Corwin. He panicked a bit, though, when he tried to put a bandage on it and discovered that because of previous medical care (some of which involved changing bandages every 10 minutes or so, or just using them as stickers) the only bandages left were Dora bandages. Corwin apparently considered just bleeding out rather than put one on, but since I knew how much Mom would whine if that happened, I forced Corwin to submit to the indignity. It’s not clear when he’ll recover from that, but the wound is healing nicely.
Today it was Charles turn, who somehow had gotten hold of a razor blade knife for his workshop. Neither Mom or I know how that happened, but naturally he managed to give himself a nasty cut on his thumb with it. He was in a lot of distress, but not actively screaming and only bleeding moderately, so I wasn’t too worried. He, too, was not happy about Dora based medical supplies, but was not nearly as reluctant as Corwin.
To celebrate Corwin’s birthday (as he didn’t think the concert counted) we had a party at our house. Corwin invited 12 guests, of which 11 (10 boys, 1 girl) showed up so it was a full house. The first lesson we learned is that 12 total kids at that age is a bit much, as they have enough personality for bad interactions but not enough maturity or history to overcome it well.
Corwin’s plan for the party was
We tried to get him to envision some other activity in case it rained, but he was not forthcoming. It should have occurred to use to also wonder about handling the case where the kids got tired of playing with beating sticks, but we were lulled by the extreme popularity from last year’s party. At least we cut back to four hours from five.
We also ended up getting lucky with the weather — it was a beautiful day, low 80°s, a bit of wind, bright sun, and low humidity. And for the most part, Corwin’s plan worked. Some of the kids hung out in the basement playing with the Nerf guns, and a few others fired up the computers and gamed, and with a bit of Wii to fill in the gaps we didn’t have any “bored bored bored” comments. There were only a couple of minor meltdowns and one major one, but by the end everyone was having fun. There were some complaints about cheating and uneven teams, but I tried to avoid intervening unless absolutely necessary, because I think it’s good experience for them to work out these little conflicts on their own. I tried to get Corwin to be a little more assertive, since it was his party, but that was not very successful.
Charles played with the older kids, much more successfully than he has previously. He even got picked for teams, rather than tolerated.
But overall I think it was a successful party. At one point during the beating stick battles, a neighbor came by and dropped off a bunch of his children’s beating sticks. They had made them years before but had out grown them. I thought it was a very nice thing to do and the kids liked the new / old sticks.
So, lessons learned for next year
Battle of Children
