Archive for the ‘family life’ Category
Uneven: A poem about being 4
Uneven
by Betsy Bailey
Step down once – be careful! – from the shady porch to
The sun deck.
It’s a small step, but you’ll hurt yourself, they told him, if you’re not expecting it so
Mind the edge.
He doesn’t mind the edge at all! He’s a compact bundle of bright energy; the way we are when
We are four,
Our brains and bodies busy full-stop, clever scientists, as is appropriate but still makes
Moms nervous.
His current research project straddles the step, two wobbly legs on the porch and two on the patio. He
Makes a slope
With the cheap plastic chair, then scrambles onto its slippery seat and tips forward.
Feel the rush!
Mom kills joy. No joy; she fears a blooming purple kiss (which would actually feel like a whack in the head).
“Stop!” she shouts.
He startles but lands on his feet with a hop. He’s just fine after this flirt with physics
And concrete,
So she tries to eat dinner and politely converse and keep an eye on him all at
The same time.
Then the chair clatters, upended. The boy frowns, stubborn. Mom didn’t see but knows he pushed it over
On purpose.
He runs and he shrieks in abandoned delight. He roars so happy like a lion but probably like a
Dinosaur.
Dad says, “Seems like this is a stage.” He says it capital-S-stage; something that is a big deal and it is
Exhausting.
The boy has pincers plucking his sisters like he’s a crab but probably like
A T-Rex.
Sisters squeal and fuss. They are annoyed and anyway that
Was the point.
Dad says, “This stage might last until he’s five. Or so.”
And mom huffs
Out a small laugh that is more weariness and some amusement. ”Or so….” she fades. The sun slants
As it sets.
Teens titter and the little boy shrieks some more and then he
Wants a hug.
How we keep the kids offline after bedtime
It’s a common problem, yeah? How to help our kids resist the temptation of the Internet when it’s supposed to be bedtime.
I remember when my kids were little and we parents would ask each other: Would you ever let your kids have a TV or computer in their room? My answer was always an emphatic NO. But here we are in this crazy age, barely a decade later, and my kids are gadgeted to the hilt with wifi-enabled devices: Nintendo DSi, iPod Touch, netbook. For the purposes of entertainment, who needs an actual TV or wired computer anymore??
For awhile I had a policy of collecting all the devices at night and redistributing in the morning. But that was back in the day when the only gadget they owned was a Game Boy, and those were not wifi-enabled.
So this was Scott’s brilliant idea: Our household wifi access is controlled by MAC address (every wifi enabled device has one)…
1. Wifi is open to any device from 5 am – 6 pm
Hey, if the kids want to get up at 5 am, I do not have a problem with that!
2. Children’s devices lose wifi access at 9 pm.
Yes, they hate that. (And when their friends come to sleepovers here they are appalled. Ha!) But they have gotten used to it. I kind of wish we’d decided on an earlier time in the first place, but for now this suffices.
3. Scott/Betsy devices never go down.
My husband would love to take our net access down as early as 6 pm. But he realizes that would be cruel and unusual punishment. Maybe someday I will be strong enough! But for now I really look forward to a little Words With Friends each night before I turn out the light. 
Motivation
Even if the kids turn up with a wifi-enabled device that they’ve borrowed or have been gifted with, they won’t have wifi on it after 6 pm unless they give Scott the MAC address.
Those extra three hours prove very motivational in their desire to make full disclosure about devices. From the parental point-of-view it’s a beautiful system. And so far none of my kids are quite geeky enough to cross cyberswords with Scott and subvert this system.
Apparently I forgot who is the engineer (and who is not)
Jake, now 3 years old, loves to hook up whatever toy vehicle he can to the rear axle on his tricycle and pedal around (a skill he has just recently caught on to) exclaiming, “Look! Look! I have a trailer!”
Today he tried to hook up his miniature red wagon. I was pretty sure that would not work and I told him so. Bailey wisely counseled me (she and her sisters do that a lot), “You should just let him try, Mom. Let him figure it out for himself.”
He DID figure it out – and proved me wrong. It totally worked. He also managed to get three trailers going simultaneously.
I should just stay out of these matters about which I know nothing. ;-D
@SheKnows: How to teach kids to cook (using a video game)
Teaching kids to cook
My girls are 14, 13 and 10 — a great set of ages to get them really cooking. Over the years, they’ve learned some basics. My 14-year-old, Bailey, can make scrambled eggs and pancakes, grilled cheese, cornbread and brownies, among other things. But when it comes to putting the kids completely in charge of meals, I’ve been remiss. My 10-year-old hasn’t spent much time in the kitchen at all, and she is interested.
They are busy teen/tweens, and I’m a busy, multitasking mom who maybe has a few control-freak tendencies. Usually, I just make dinner because (a) I’m good at it, and (b) I’m fast at it.
The thing is, my kids aren’t learning as much about cooking as they could be. I have a feeling a lot of mamas can relate. Intellectually, we know it’s a sound investment. The trick is finding the time, the patience and the tolerance for chaos and a gigantic mess.
Fun for kids, big help for moms
When a publicist contacted me about a new game for the Nintendo DS called American’s Test Kitchen: Let’s Get Cooking and asked if I’d like to try it out, I was curious. She sent me a DSi XL, the game and even the ingredients for four of the game’s recipes.
Even better, my children (well, two of them anyway!) were curious. A cooking video game? What a fun idea! They couldn’t wait to get started. Once everything arrived, for two days in a row they prepared very, very nice large family meals (there are six of us for dinner most nights) with minimal adult assistance.
As I type this, my 10-year-old, Mira, is browsing the game for recipes she can make this week. She is considering Pasta Caprese and Strawberry Shortcake. Um? Yum!
Yeah… I like this game.
Hiking: Lost Dutchman State Park
We got some fresh air and exercise today, as well as an eyeful of some gorgeous scenery!
We did the Treasure Loop Trail (a little over 2 miles) at Lost Dutchman State Park, mostly staying at the base of the Superstition Mountains.
It was warm enough that Jake got a little frustrated being confined to the sweaty Ergo soft pack carrier.
Click the link below to see the complete photo story. 
Hiking: Lost Dutchman State Park – a set on Flickr.
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ALL the kids!
Amazingly, this is the first photo we have of all six of our children in one shot!
$2500 in orthodontia: Before and after
January and April 2007: M BEFORE orthodontia.
It’s a little hard to see in this pic to the untrained eye because she has so many teeth missing, but she has a HUGE open bite directly resulting from thumbsucking habit (sigh). It ultimately took an orthodontic appliance to break her of the habit. See how her incisors touch, but there is large gap between her top middle tooth and the bottom teeth?
January 2007
April 2007 – the appliance is in, so this is after a little improvement…
January 2009: M AFTER orthodontia.
She had a palate expander installed in early 2007, followed by a medieval looking anti-thumbsucking appliance, complete with spikes! to help further close her bite, followed by braces to help bring her crowded incisors down. She got her braces off two weeks ago (the first thing she ate was a big bowl of popcorn lol)
Something is not quite right here…
Crate training is reinstated for Gilligan. It seems he has forgotten the (carpeted – argh) living room floor is NOT a pottying facility.
Jake is giddy. He thinks the crate is his own personal play BOX. Bonus that it even has a door to open and shut and open and shut and open and shut and open and shut.
Lil Jakey’s world
Big boy enjoys a snack with big brother (he’s kinda done with the high chair <sigh>):
Scott is doing a renovation on our camper that is going to be pretty cool. It came with a bench seat (with storage under the seat and it converts to a bed). He took all that out and is building a dinette – with storage and bed conversion also) in its place. Will be much more comfortable to have a little table and seating instead of the bench. Hopefully it will be basically done by this weekend. I will post before/after photos once it’s done!
In the meantime, Jake is proud to be wearing daddy’s shop goggles!
Ever since Jake saw his baby friends Mia and Leland dining tidily with eating utensils, he has decided he also MUST hold a utensil while he eats. That’s all he does with it, tho! Well, he tries to spear microscopic crumbs of food and occasionally he will lick the empty fork tines, but I know this will turn into competency eventually.
That’s also his first experience with ketchup on the french fry that he’s eating. He, of course, loved it. The french fry you see here was at least triple-dipped.
Oops. Torchwood (is not for kids!)
I was just porting this old entry about parents taking their young kids into rated-R movies (Knocked Up, in this case) over from my archives and I had to laugh at the irony. Particularly the part where I said:
Sex, drugs, alcohol, promiscuity, profanity – you name it, it was in there. I can’t sit through quite a number of PG-13 movies with my teenage stepson. When so many PG-13 movies are so much on that edge of being too uncomfortable to watch with your kids, what are people THINKING taking an under-13-year-old to a rated R movie????
Not that the following incident was nearly so heinous, but… still.
First, some background. We are a family that caught on to the Dr. Who craze just this year. We started by Netflixing the first disk in the Season 1 set. Immediately, we were hooked. The kids like watching and re-watching the episodes, so Scott went online and purchased Seasons 1-4. And we devoured them in less than six months with no self-control whatsoever – all 140+ episodes and the DVD extras.
We were all a little melancholy a couple weeks ago as we watched the final episode of Season 4 (especially when we learned that Season 5 is all a mess. Three Dr. Who specials in 2009, but no full season until 2010!).
But we consoled ourselves with the plan of watching various Dr. Who spin-offs, like the Sarah Jane Adventures. And Torchwood. Maybe check out some of the old Dr. Who episodes from the 80s that Scott remembers with fondness.
It was with this in mind that Scott purchased the Torchwood Season 1 DVD and presented it to me as a gift on Christmas Eve. The kids were so excited! Dr. Who has really captured their imaginations – they talk about the episodes obsessively. The read about them online. They write fan fiction. Even my 16 month old toddles around the house singsonging the Dr. Who theme. True story.
So it was with much anticipation that we settled down to see the story of Captain Jack Harkness resumed in our lives. Boy were we in for a surprise.
(This is what happens when you don’t vet your children’s programming!!)
Where Dr. Who is sunny and bright – with a lot of day time scenes, I realize in hindsight – this first episode of Torchwood was dark and gloomy – a lot of nighttime, a lot of drenching rain. Where Dr. Who stops short of gruesome violence, Torchwood let’s the blood spurt (vividly). Where Dr. Who is rated G for language, Torchwood dropped the F bomb at least a dozen times.
Not that my kids have never heard the F word in real life, goodness knows. But I guess we’ve sheltered them adequately, because they are NOT used to it on TV. They aren’t even allowed to watch most PG-13 movies until they are 13. So they were visibly flinching with every instance of profanity.
So, yeah, obviously kids are not the intended audience here. We were chagrined. Bailey and HM were berating me for letting them watch such a horrible show: “Maaahhhhm. We are not OLD ENOUGH for this yet!”
I wasn’t planning to let them watch any more of it for several more years. But they caught the preview for the next episode. Whoa, there goes Captain Jack running NAKED across the screen. The girls erupted with squealing. So I don’t think they heard the part about how the aliens in that episode are somehow activated by the sexual act.
Yep, okay, this is NOT Dr. Who. No mistake about it. Oops.
The episode was great, though. Scott and I really enjoyed it (and the girls enjoyed the storyline, too, actually) and are looking forward to watching the rest. It’s just not gonna be family TV night is all.
The Sarah Jane Adventures it is. (After we watch the first episode ourselves and read up a little on the reviews first, just in case.)
Mom to 4 kids and 2 stepkids, I am a writer writing in the heart of chaos. I am the co-founder and former editor of 
