It's been kind of rainy here the last couple of days, and at the assembly this morning, the school principal asked the kids to stay out of the puddles at recess pointing out that if they got wet, then they'd be sitting in cold wet clothes in class.
Contrast then, the warning of the principal with the story I got from Ben. He asked me if he could wear his clothes to bed, and not change into pajamas (he was wearing sweat pants) because they were still clean. So I asked him when he'd changed. He became quite anmated and told me that he'd changed when he got home from school because his clothes had gotten wet on of the times he was jumping over a puddle at school, and how much fun jumping over the puddle at been, and how sometimes he slid on the wet ground before and/or after he was running up to jump over the puddle. All this re-enacted in our kitchen and dining room in both slow motion and at nearly full speed.
I could only smile and laugh out loud and how much fun it had been. Apparently the wet clothes had been more than worth it. Good for him.
Last night Percival apparently climbed into Eli's bed. Eli says he tried to get him out, but was too tired to make a big deal of it. Personally, I'm pretty sure what actually happened is that Eli called him into bed...
So tonight Eli asked if Percival could sleep in his bed. Up to now, the rule has always been no dogs in kids beds (a long time ago, before kids, we let Ruby into our bed, but she usually left and slept on the couch anyway). So, we're not sure about letting the dogs up into the kids' beds, and said no for now.
A little later I went in to check on some laundry and just about tripped over something. Eli had made a bed for Ruby and Percival (out of the two thick comforters) and was laying on the floor with them, only having the somewhat thin blanket for himself. And he was so crowded his knees are doubled up against his bed.
So, he found the loophole in the rule and took the opportunity to use it to cuddle the dogs. A kid after my own heart.
I've always been grateful to be an American. After 9/11 I felt patriotism in that I was connected to the rest of the country in my mourning and anger. But I've never really experience pride in my country.
But today, reading the news of record voter turnouts and the history making decision we collectively made, for the first time in my lifetime, I felt truly proud of my country.
This country, the America of November 4th 2008, the country that voted this man president, this is the country that is moving forwards. This is the country that aided its allies in World War II. This is the country of hope, the land of opportunity, the home of the free, and this is the country I am proud to be a citizen of.
A friend of ours, a little girl, was Darth Vader for Halloween. She told her dad she wanted one of those Darth Vader voice changer things, and that she wanted to say, "I find your lack of candy disturbing."
We spent a big part of yesterday working around the house. Eli and Ben and I spent a lot of time organizing the playroom, then working in the yard, and finally I went out back to put up some rope lights around the patio cover. Eli offered to help me with the lights, and wanted to go up the ladder. I let him go up the ladder, and he helped put up some little clamps to hold the rope lights. At one point he stopped and thanked me for letting him help, and he said it made him feel (and you could see him grasping for a description) good to do something. I think he was enjoying the sense of productivity and belonging. I need to try to find more opportunities to work on stuff with him. Though I already know he's not too fond of helping clean up after the dogs and put away dishes...
I've surfed more in the last year than in whole rest of my life before that. I went twice this week (which I don't expect to keep up, but there was a good swell, low tide in the later afternoon, and the weather was beautiful - clear and in the the 70's).
Surfing is apparently one of those things that gets funner and funner the better you get at it. Yes, "funner". "More fun" is just to formal sounding for surfing. Joann said our friend Jen, who died last year of breast cancer, once gave her a quite a bad time for saying "funner". Jen, when she was sick and we were all confident she was going to get better, had asked me to teach her to surf some time. I'm sorry I won't get a chance to do that. I think she would have thought it was funner than a lot of other things too.
My birthday was Monday (I turned 39) and as usual, what I really wanted to do was spend the day at the beach, doing all kinds of fun beachy things, with my family. Since the kids have school on Monday, I had this crazy idea that I could stitch together one perfect day from two or three days at the beach. So, Saturday (while Joann was visiting her cousin) I took the kids to Manresa State Beach. It was a little cool, and a little windy, but pretty okay all in all. And we had a great time.
Over the summer I got the boys each a short sleeve wetsuit, which we put to good use with it getting cooler. The tide was low, and the swell almost non-existant, so there were lots of little 1-2 foot waves rolling in - plenty to be fun for kids, but nothing big enough to be intimidating. And since we were at Manresa at low tide, you could walk out 20-30 yards and still only be in knee-high water (the slope of the beach there is very shallow, unlike a lot of other beaches around here, and so it's great for kids). These factors together let the boys feel a little brave, and they both tried riding a could of little waves on my boogie board, and had a great time.
(To be continued... roasting hot dogs and marshmallows over a fire, watching the sunset playing frisbee, buying a Jawa costume the next day, and going back to the beach for more boogie boarding on Monday)
The boys often lay in bed and talk for awhile (too long) when they go to bed. Sometimes they're playing, just imaging stuff and telling each other stories, etc. Tonight they're talking about whether they believe in aliens and God.
The boys love Legos, so I subscribed them to the Legos club, which means they get a little magazine/catalog in the mail. One came, and they went all through it showing me all the stuff they like (pretty much everything).
One of the things was a "knights and trolls" chess set. Ben like this (they both play chess a little). A little later he tells me, "I saw a chess set in the Legos magazine and I was thinking I could make one." So I say, "Yeah, sure you can do that! Great idea." and offer to help him.
So yesterday I dug out a bunch of little squares for the board while he made "Lord of the Rings" (we just got the cartoon from the library and Eli and Ben both like it a lot) themed guys. Ben didn't have quite enough guys for all the chess pieces, so Eli lent him his. And we played chess with Legos guys. Way cool.
On the other hand, recently Ben also got quite frustrated because Eli "just wanted to build stuff" and "that's boring". I think the was on the 4th of July, which we spent at the beach. I'm farly certain it had to do with building sandcastles and Ben wanting to have a battle.
The 4th of July was great. The weather was nice (little windy, but not bad) and we played at the beach all day. The boys even did some body surfing. We stayed until dark and watched fireworks - predominantly ones shot from the beach by locals. There were an amazing amount of fireworks being shot off the beaches, in spite of signs warning of one thousand dollar fines and a fairly impressive presence of park rangers, private security, county sheriffs, and even some firefighters. (I'm not kidding.) And we were at a relatively less crowded beach a little ways down the coast (though it was still the most people I've ever seen at that beach). The evening was beautiful, with clear skies, a crescent moon, and an orange sunset fading into a purple night sky. And then the fireworks, while we ate BBQ hamburgers.
Ben Riding his bicycle (well) for the first time (on July 1):
And Eli is getting quite good and pretty confident by now. Only thing was, he tried to zoom past Ben on the track at the school where we were riding, just as Ben was getting kinda wobbly and they had a pretty good crash. We've got it on video. Maybe I'll post it later.
So, we went camping with some friends, who also have kids. They were playing in a "secret area" behind a tree in front of the parking strip. The adults were eating dinner (or something) and suddenly one of my friends (who happened to be sitting closest to the kids, says "Oh my god!"
So of course the rest of the adults were like, "What? What!?" But he just sat there with his mouth open and his eyes very wide, and we all went "What is it???"
Finally he says that he heard one of the girls, who happens to he 6 (Ben's age) say something. She said, "Hey guys, wanna see some boobies?"
The boys and I went down to Marina State Beach (the nearest sizable sand dunes that I know of) and tried out the sandboard today (the one we made from formica and one-ply hardwood plwood). It worked! Well, I think it's a little too wide because it's kinda slow and we had to ride it on a pretty steep slope, but it works! So I'll probably shave a little off the sides, and see if that helps.
We also went for a walk in the dunes, read all the nature signs, and saw a lot of native plants, and lizards. Bunchs of lizards, a few up close. Eli and Ben really liked this lizards.
We also found out that the beach we went to a place for hangliders to take off - there was a wooden ramp where apparently they jump off to soar over the dunes, beach, and possibly ocean. Eli thought that was crazy.
So, Eli and Ben have both told me about a school rule that says there is no touching. know that can't play tag, or have any kind of contact like that, but they both insist that the rule means no touching. So we talked about nice touching, and unwelcome touching, and that I was sure that it was okay to offer a hug to another child if they looked like it might be appropriate.
But they are sure there is no touching.
That would be quite a cold environment, and I have a hard time accepting that. From knowing the school, and some of the teachers, and from meeting the principal and having an idea of where he stands, I doubt that they really mean that. So, I emailed him with the story and with my concerns. I hope to be able to got back to Eli and Ben and tell them I was right...
We'll see...
UPDATE: I talked to the principal, who is a very genuine and sincere nice guy. I explained the whole deal to him. He said that the did have a "no touching" rule, but that it was really about games and pushing, that kind of thing. He agree that hugs (as long as the other child wanted a hug, and it wasn't distracting to the class) were of course okay. It was nice to be able to report this back to Eli and Ben.
(Copied from an email to my dad a couple days ago...)
The boys are going through a round of colds; Eli is in the middle of
it, and Ben is just getting over it. Fever, sore throat, lasts a
couple days. Poor Ben missed the "Walkabout" day at school, which he
was pretty excited about, but we just couldn't see sending him to
school with a fever and sore throat. The Walkabout thing was cool -
it's a fund raiser where the kids walk laps around the field and get
pledges of money. The fire department was there with the ladder truck,
and the hooked it up, raised the ladder, and shot water out over the
field. Those things pump an amazing amount of water. Whe we were
underneath it, it was like a good hard downpour. So, now Eli and I can
say we've been sprayed with a firehose
(I went down for about 45 minutes to hang out with Eli while he was walking.)
They
went to a birthday part Saturday, and thankfully they were both pretty
healthy at that time, but I had an inkling when afterwards Eli was
complaining of being tired. So we bought a few plants at the hardware
store and put them in the garden but otherwise had a pretty mellow
day. Eli spent yesterday lying on the couch. He's reading a lot now;
we went through a whole "Goosebumps" book yesterday. A full 32
chapters. Ben's reading amazingly well too - in the last couple of
months he's become quite proficient. Several times now at night, I've
gotten out a book to read to them and Ben has said, "I think I can read
that" (and I reply, "do you want to?" so he ends up reading the book to
us). Academics are seeming to come pretty easy to him; he's reading
and doing math apparently without struggle. Things have gotten easier
for Eli too - he reads for fun, and he's doing multiplication in math.
They're taking soccer (through the "Kids Love Soccer" program) on
Saturdays - this is a very fun program that de-emphasizes competition,
and focuses on playing fun skill-building games. They both enjoy it a
lot.
A few nights ago (late last week) after I had put the boys to bed, Ben came out of the bedroom (into the living room, where Joann and I were). This was his second time that night, and while this used to be common when he was younger (3 or 4, for example), anymore he usually stays in bed, or perhaps comes out once. He had already come out for a drink of water (the most common reason).
So I asked him what was up. You could tell that his brain ws really working and he was trying to get the words out, becuase he say something like, "Well, uh, you know that move 'Night at the Museum'?" And I said "Yeah..."
He said, "We haven't watched it in a long time and, uh, how about not tonight but another night we can watch it?"
It took me a second to digest this, but then I did and said "Oh, sure! That sounds like a fun plan. Were you just thinking about that?" To which he answered "Yeah" and I said, "Okay, well yeah we haven't watched that in a long time... that will be fun. But now go back to bed, okay?"
So anyway, I remembered this conversation the other night, and we put on "Night at the Museum" and we all watched it together, cuddling on the floor on a blanket. Very nice evening. At one point in the movie, Larry (Ben Stiller) is arguing with Dexter the monkey, and Dexter slaps him. Larry slaps him back, and they start this fast-paced slapfest. So, Teddy Roosevelt (Robin Williams) walks up and tells Larry to stop. Larry complains that Dexter was harassing him, and Teddy Roosevelt asks Larry, "Who's evolved?"
A night or two after that, Ben and Eli were arguing about a video game. Usually Ben gets frustrated first, but this night Eli gets frustrated and walks away. Ben mutters after Eli has left the room, "Who's evolved?"
We went to Soda Springs to go play in the snow over the weekend. Before going, we had the usual scrounging for snow equipment, having the kids try on last year's stuff to see if it still fits, etc. Ben needed snow boots and (at the time) I couldn't find any gloves for Joann or myself, so after calling around a bit on Thursday, I took Ben to Mel Cotton's sporting goods.
At Mel Cotton's we found some rain/snow boots for Ben, and we bought wool socks for both boys (I remembered their feet getting wet and freezing in their cotton socks in previous years), and we also looked at some clearance stuff just for fun. Well, Ben found these red and grey sneakers and fell in love with them. He wanted to buy them, but they were $30 and I was concerned about the money (we were spending a bunch anyway) and not really convinced he needed new shoes yet. We talked a bit and I could tell he really liked them, but I told him I'd think about it. So we bought some more snow stuff and went home.
We headed out the next day, and the snow trip was great. I had been concerned that there would not be much snow (the weather forecast was in the 40's and even though I knew they had snow at the ski resorts, I didn't know how much there would be near where we were staying). There was tons of snow. Like eight feet deep kind of tons. So we played until we were totally exhausted, sledding (there were hills right outside our place) snowball fights, building a snow fort, the whole thing. Eli even tried some of the faster hills and had a good time. Ben seems to have developed a real skill and did an outstanding job sledding - he steered around obstacles (people) at the bottom of the hill several times, and at a pretty good speed.
So we got back Sunday night, and unpacked and so forth. Monday I thought about Ben's red shoes, and yesterday I went back and bought them (in a half size bigger than his current shoes, which just fit, so he has a little room to grow). I gave them to him when I got home, and he was so happy and surprised. He opened the little box and exclaimed, "The red shoes!". When he was trying them on, after he put the first one on, he grabbed is foot (with the show) and pulled it up to his face and kind of hugged it (he's very limber).
Totally adorable. One of the best uses of $30 in my life.
