Peeling off the Couch

Although I love staying home with the kids all day, sometimes I get down and feel like I'm failing.  Like this week, it seemed all the kids wanted to do was watch TV and eat ice cream.  I had to coax and beg them out of the house.

I know that I spent summers watching tv and eating ice cream as a kid, and turned out ok.  But I wish my parents had done more to get me off the couch.

The heat has been pretty mild this week, great outdoor weather.  I enticed them out yesterday with a trip to the car-wash.  I still find car washes a huge treat.

Often, I feel pretty isolated, like we don't interact with other kids enough.  I hope that changes in the future.

At least they have each other.  Kaio and Nala get along so well for the most part.

Here she's tickling him with a fern.  I love ferns.  It's one of my dreams to sleep on a bed of ferns.

Bad Date at the Movies

My boy and I went out on our fist date to the movies to see Iron Man 3.  I'm crazy for Marvel Universe films, they're so good!  Upon hearing that Iron Man 3 came out Kaio really wanted to go see it.  We've watched the first two are home already and the Avengers, but there are many parts that are too scary for him and he goes into another room or hides under a blanket.  Well it didn't go well, and I knew that it wasn't going to go well, but I wanted to see the movie so bad that I agreed to try.  He doesn't even sit through a full length movie at home without getting up and jumping around, so I didn't have much faith that he'd want to sit through Iron Man.  We made it to over an hour before he started begging to leave.  The movie is very violent with lots of indiscriminate killing of bad guys.  There were kids smaller than him in the theater too, some of them were crying, he wasn't the only one.

So we left and I didn't get to see the end, which has been bugging me.  I want to know what happens! I even googled, "Iron Man 3 Full Movie" and found a movie on youtube that when you click on it says, "Stop stealing movies, go to the theater."  Now the internet thinks I'm trying to steal movies.  I want to tell it that I DID pay to go to the movie, I just didn't get to see the end.

Workhouse Arts Center

My kids have never been so captivated in an art museum before and I know you want to check this place out.

The Workhouse Arts Center birthed five years ago on the site of an old overflow prison constructed by the inmates.  They built the bricks and laid them.  The Workhouse prison closed 11 years ago and in the space now serves as a venue for fostering and presenting art.  All types of art: music, clay, glass, oil, sculpture, performance, movement, culinary, so much!   They feature studio space for resident artists, free yoga on the quad on Saturdays, a weekly Smart Market farmer's market, museums about the prison as well as new exhibits, classes throughout the year, concerts, and an organic -locally sourced- cafe that's opening soon.  The place is awesome!

Each section houses a face with exhibited art and then studio space in the back.  Artists and volunteers greet you at each section.  Everyone was so friendly and took the time to answer questions about the pieces.

The clay studio.  We must have stared mesmerized at this pottery class for a good 15 minutes.  The kids asked to add clay throwing classes to their Christmas list.

They do not want you to take pictures of the artwork, but they did not mind me snapping a few of the kids' interest in the art.  The exhibit that brought us to the gallery ended up being a huge hit with Kaio and Nala.  Urban Decay 4 features populist urban art with influences from comic books, street graffiti, punk music and tattoos.

We cycled through the entire exhibit three times to check everything out.  The vinyl dolls especially delighted the kids.  Vinyl toys are a fast growing new part of the low-brow art movement.

Afterwords we grabbed some yum from the Smart Market farmer's market.  Can't wait to go back as there is so much to explore that we didn't see yet.  Lots for sale that would make perfect gifts. The place is great for kids of all ages, but you might want to avoid the clay and glass studios if your kids are very tactile.  There's lots of expensive breakables.

Volcanoes

hmm, ok let back it up.

I think this all started with a trip to the National Museum of Natural History to learn about Egypt, and see the mummies.  Here's the mummy:

Freaky, right?

There's also a little kid mummy.  But I didn't take a picture of him.  I think the mummies scared the kids.  They had wanted to see them since my mom took a trip to Egypt earlier this year and so Egypt has been on the mind.

After the mummies, we wondered over into the geology exhibit looking for gems.  The section included the asteroids to touch, videos about the solar system and plate tectonics.  Then we saw this interactive exhibit on volcanoes:

Eventually walking along, you'll be rewarded with a huge room full of gemstones and minerals:

So that was a great little field trip.  Then later in the week, the kids started talking about volcanoes again at lunch.  That same day, we ran into a volcano making kit that turned out to be a huge hit!

The kids took on the job of making the volcano completely independently.  And lucky for all of us, the mold only takes a half hour to set.  I don' think they could have waited much longer than that.

When painting, they coordinated on different jobs.  Nala took to painting the grey rock, and Kaio took charge of the lava.  I was happy to see that they didn't look at the example on the cover of the box, and instead drew their own vision.

So nice to see them working together on something, because that doesn't happen all the time.

They created a little village for the volcano to destroy, with dinosaurs and people...

Mix baking soda, vinegar, red paint, and a little drop of liquid soap, and voila

Even our neighbor wanted to come check it out.  The kids went through a whole bottle of vinegar that day.

Here's the kit we got, in case you want one too:

Butterfly Limerick

The butterflies have started to return from afar

Some may think their absence bizarre

but I saw a girl

with a pink net and a curl 

who trapped the poor things in a jar

Flunked Power Yoga

Four people walked out of my yoga class today.  I had been feeling pretty elated about my yoga set this morning during my home practice and thought others would enjoy it too.  As the fourth person rolled up her mat and left, I began feeling deflated.  I pushed through a big smile though and tried to focus on the moment, even though the little voice in the back of my head was saying things like, "you must be really bad at this."

Well after the class was over, three ladies rushed at me with huge smiles and thank yous.  One lady went on about how much she enjoyed it, wondering when I would teach next so could she take all my classes.  I received sincere looks of gratitude from the chunk of people who had stuck through the whole class.

It is so nice to receive positive feedback.  It helps give me confidence that I'm not wasting someone's time.  I truly love sharing yoga with people, but it can be so stressful to put myself out there in front of a group.

The class I was teaching today was a Power Yoga class at a gym.  I don't really even know what a Power Yoga class is, and maybe that's the reason that people left.  I imagine they must be looking for a more high energy class than the one I cued.  But that's ok, I just need to always remind myself of the spectrum of different tastes.  Although one person may not enjoy it, there are many others out there who will.

Activities for Learning

One of my apprehensions about homeschooling circled around whether I'd be able to come up with activities for learning.  Where could I find the inspiration for the dinosaur cutouts with macaroni noodle bones?  I mean, I know that there is pintrest! - but that requires sitting down to research, having the right materials, knowing the steps and how to teach them; it seemed daunting to get started.

At school every day it is the teacher's job to have many activities for the kids to work on.  These activities correspond to the lesson for the week, or the time of the year.  Ever since my kids have been in day care (since 12 months old), they've been coming home with these cute little art projects made from construction paper.  There's a drawer in their room that I've been stuffing them into.  Some have gone up on the wall, and reluctantly some in the recycling bin.

The library has tons of books on craft activities for kids, great books on making art from leaves and trash.    Then there is the before mentioned Pintrest.  There are curriculums  and mail in craft kits: where someone sends you all the materials in a box in the mail each month for craft activities.

So really, there are tons of options out there to help me get inspired and crafting like a pro Kindergarten teacher..

So what's my problem?

A year and a half ago I blogged about picking up a gingerbread man kit from Trader Joe's.  When I gave it to the kids to decorate, I observed Kaio looking at the box to see the image, then copying how it looked on the box.  I contemplated whether he learned to do this in school or not.  Well now I'm convinced he did (see A Subtle Act of Creative Defiance). I've seen him take this copy-the-example approach in other boxed craft activities too, and he does it without determination in his eye, but with a vacant subservience.  Like he's fallen into a pattern of how to approach the projects.

Back when Kaio was in school and daycare and the construction paper craft activities came home, Kaio was never that excited about showing them to me.  They were usually just stuffed in his bag, discarded.  I could ask about them and he'd explain that's a turkey, or a pilgrim hat, or a fire work, whatever.  He gets much more excited showing me his latest Lego starship.  Last Sunday he spent half the day building pirate ships and sail boats out of legos and trying to make on float in the bath tub.

So as I was saying, I was so worried about what activities the kids would do at home and how they would survive without seasonally appropriate crafts.

Well, I'm not worried anymore.  behold exhibit A, B & C:

One night I asked Kaio if he'd bring me a book to read him.  He responded that he wanted to make his own and read it to me.  So he got the paper, the oil pastels, and bound it with staples.   The next day we laminated it with contact paper.

Nala then, needed to make her own book too.

She called it the book of changes (like the Tao Te Ching), and each page shows the changes from day to night.

Another book Nala created with different types of flowers Starting from left to right: daisy, tulip, another daisy, lego flower, green flower. Bottom left to right: dandelion, sunflower, tomato flower, water flower.

Exhibit D:

Lego submarine.  You try to figure out how to make legos sink.  It's not easy.  He weighted it with a rock inside the submarine.

Exhibit F:

Rocket Ship.  Nala's in the background manning the control station.  

and Furthermore:

A trip to the craft store with a $5 spending limit

 Every pony likes baby racoon's tree

A swan eating a fish 

Tyrannosaurus and his favorite squeaky bunny toy named squeaky  

A dropship 

 A tank

Yoda refuling Ahsoka Tano's Space Shuttle

Rock painting 

A new skirt

So basically, I'm not worried about preparing daily craft activities for them anymore.  Original arts and crafts projects just exhale from their being.  An inescapable product of their childhood experience.  And the less parameters placed around this creativity, the more truth seeps out of their expressions.   

By recognizing these little events as just as valid as those macaroni dinosaur bone activities, I learn to take some pressure off myself.  They are teaching me that I don't need to be feeding them information.  

They are doing just fine.

Instill Independence Fearlessness Good Decisions and Safety

He ran like a freight train out of the living room, stomping his feet with each step, and I heard a door slam in the distance.

Exhale.  I took a minute.  This all happened because I told him not to play any video games tonight.  It's eight pm already, the summer sun remains bright in the sky.  But, I've asked him to start to wind down and get ready for bed.  The kids have been sleeping well past 10pm every night and I know that sleep is important for brain development.

It's been a tough balance for me: between my desire to provide an environment for the kids where they have as much creative and personal freedom as possible, while also ensuring their safety and healthy development.  I end up saying things like, "TV is not good for your brain, you need to see in three dimensions."  While in the back of my head knowing that most well paying jobs require you to sit in front of a screen for more than 8 hours.

So I took a minute to plan out how to explain better.  I've found that when I give all the information I have, Kaio then chooses something on his own accord rather than feeling forced.  But, really he's so quick to anger and I wish I saw signs of that abating, but not yet.

I go to look for him and he has locked himself in the classroom.  Locking doors is another new development he's exploring right now.  I knock on the door and have a parental de-ja-vu moment; from memory, I echo the words of my own parents.

I know I've been on the other side, I remember how refreshing the power to man that lock felt.  Now on the outside, I feel how troubling it is to know that your child needs to put up a barrier.  How unjust it feels to not have access to your baby.

This month Kaio's been infuriated by things that do not seem like a big deal to me.  He's told me he hates me and wants to leave, at least twice.  One night, the first time this happened, it was because we asked him to to stop a noise he was making with a toy.  He actually ran outside in the dark, yelling that he was leaving.   I plopped down on the stoop in shock, watching the little kid decide how far he would run.    He came back and cried about how mean we were being to him.

It seems that he interprets any disapproval I have as mean.  I can say the exact same thing to Nala and Kaio, "It makes me really mad that you guys made such a huge mess tossing packing peanuts all over the floor and aren't helping me clean it up."  Nala will just ignore and continue what she's doing unphased, Kaio will enrage and provoke like an itchy poison ivy he needs to scratch.  Neither will help clean up.

"Look under the door."  Kaio said.

I saw a sheet of white legal paper loosely folded and stapled.  oh, a note.  I opened it up to see it was blank.   

"No, it's a telescope, to use to look for me."  He said from the other side of the locked door.

Then he slipped another message under the door.

"It's a map to find me."

And came another de-ja-vu parenting moment.  I remember sitting in the storm drain across the street from my house, with a pink suitcase packed with clothes.  I told my parents I was running away, then I made a map with directions for how to find me, left the map at the front door, rang the door bell and ran back to my new home in the storm drain.

Last Christmas my dad made a comment around how he and my mom always wondered if I would understand what they went through once I had kids.  I replied that if he had given me more freedom, then I wouldn't have fought so much.  And he said, "But every time we gave you freedom, you'd do something to get in trouble."

And it's true.  Like driving drunk and crashing my car into a steam roller with my younger brother in the passenger seat.  Like getting brought home in handcuffs at midnight as my dad answered the door in his underwear.  Like saying I was spending the night at a friends house, but instead going camping in mountains with two older boys and the driver almost drove us off a cliff: three wheels were off the ground and we needed to crawl out of the driver side window to escape.  Like spontaneously driving across the country in December, having no idea the kind of snow and weather that exists on the rocky mountains and almost crashing on black ice.  So many other times that I put my body in danger.

And so I see how Kaio chooses to ride his bike down our huge steep driveway with no helmet even though he's hit the pavement with his head twice already, and I find myself fighting for this moment and for all the future moments.  Today I may be insisting that he wears a helmet, and asking him to unlock the door.  One day I'll be on the other end of the phone, asking him to come home when he's half way across the country in the winter without snow tires.

So the flip side to all my dangerous behavior is that I have always been a strong and independent person.  Although I made some stupid decisions, I've also experienced so many wonderful, beautiful and profoundly special and inspiring things that wouldn't have happened if I was so worried whatever it is that people worry about.

I remember a mountain top hike with my dad, and I was maybe 9 years old.  The hike summit ended at a jump off point for handgliders.  I wanted to peak over the edge, and my dad insisted on holding my hand as I peeked.  Or how he'd drive for an hour to pick me up from a friend's house in the morning so we could go to the movies together or the gym, never complaining about how far out of the way it was.

I haven't figured out the secret to parenting that instills independence and fearlessness, while cultivating good decisions and safety.  And I haven't definitively decided yet whether there is anything wrong with the decisions I made and the path they took me on.  I mean, good decisions can end tragically, so who's to judge a well-intentioned bad decision as 'wrong'?

But I know that through all the turmoil, I always knew my parents loved me and wanted to protect me, even if I didn't agree that I needed protection.  And that confidence and support is what has made the most lasting positive impression on my life.  So I think I can at least give my kids that and hope that things work out as they did with me.

Yesterday I left my flipflops at the pool and had to turn around to recover them.  From the other side of the fence, I saw my kids attempting to get into the locked car by walking onto the road, very carefully, keeping close to the car and trying to open the door.  I had one of those mom freak out moments, afraid that some crazy distracted driver would veer into my car and hit them.  So I hollered over to them to wait for me on the sidewalk.  Walking back out of the pool game me time to calm past my initial fear kids aren't supposed to do that reaction and realize that it was a good thing they were so brave.  I exited the pool and found them sitting on a picnic bench enjoying the ants on a log snack we had packed. Such sweet independent kids.

Serious Jedi Face