Author: Shane

Quote Monday learns about how the body works

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Ollie: “Every minute, every second, too much spit gets in my mouth and I have to swallow it down. That’s how MY body works.”

Ollie: “Evie is dill.”
Me: “What?”
Ollie: “Evie is dill, so she’s too weak to stand and she’s going to die.”
Me: “Dill?”
Ollie: “Yeah. Really sick.”

::We went out in to the storage area::
Evie: “It smells good out here!”
Me: “Really??”
Evie: “I would like to eat whatever this smells like.”

I guess she would like to eat some musty, dusty antiques, because that’s what it smelled like. Or maybe not, because later:

Evie: “It smells like the rotten potatoes. But I would still like to eat it.”

Oliver and the Tarantula

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“There’s a tarantula under my bed,” said Oliver.
“Buddy, we don’t have any tarantulas here. It’s too cold for them.”
“No it’s not,” he said. “They’re on the stairs, too.”

Oliver and I had been having this conversation for a long time. He insists every spider that he sees is a tarantula. I don’t know where he first heard about tarantulas – school maybe? – but he considers himself an expert and will hear no evidence that contradicts his vast knowledge of arachnids.

It’s kind of amazing how much this tarantula thing has captured his imagination. Why tarantulas? Nobody knows.

“Oliver, what’s this tray doing here?”
“That’s for fighting the tarantula that lives under my bed.”

He had literally stocked his bed with weaponry. I imagined him huddled up on the bed, afraid to let his toes dangle, ready to smoosh any tarantula that dared to show so much as a leg. It was kind of funny in that “all kids go through something like this” way, but I was also starting to worry that perhaps he was dwelling on tarantulas a little too much. I didn’t really want him afraid to spend time in his bedroom.

“Mama, come quick!” shouted Oliver one day during his relaxing time. “The tarantula is on the floor!” Sara came sauntering into the room. “Oh!” she said, encountering an ENORMOUS SPIDER. “Oh.”

Now, it wasn’t mythical proportions or anything, but it was just under. Somewhere between the size of a quarter and a half-dollar. We’re not talking about a little Daddy Longlegs here. It was probably about as close to a tarantula as you are likely to see in Chicago.

Sara grabbed a book and smashed it. “I already did that!” shouted Oliver, but he had apparently only stunned the beast. Later he told me, “I could see it under my bed, so I kept blowing on it to make it move until it came out.” Sara went to get some toilet paper to dispose of it, but Oliver just picked it up by the legs and disposed of it.

So there WAS a tarantula under his bed (kind of)! And he wasn’t frighted of it, merely being practical. Remind me never to doubt him about something like this again.

Except now he says there’s another one under his bed.

How Chickpeas Made Me a Better Parent

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Parenting in the summer is way harder than parenting during the school year. The kids are spending just a *little* too much time at home, if you know what I mean.

When it comes to parenting,  my default instinct is to punish. “If you don’t get your pajamas on, you’ll lose your story!” “You’re going to miss your chance for breakfast!” “If you don’t get in the car right now vacation is CANCELLED!” Not only does this not work very well, but you run the serious risk of losing all of your parental power. Most threats are completely idle bluffs and don’t stand up well to being called. The more your bluffs are called, the more the kids realize that you actually have no power in the first place. The whole parental authority thing has less basis in reality than the U.S. economy. Aside from that, who wants to be that guy who’s yelling all the time?

Instead, Sara came up with a strict chickpea policy. Every time the kids do something “good”, a dried chickpea is moved from the chickpea supply over to the “ice cream” jar. Once they get 100 chickpeas, they get ice cream.

As far as motivation goes, this works okay for Ollie, but works really well for Evie. She reaaaally wants that ice cream, and tries very hard to be helpful. I wish she wanted to be helpful for its own sake, rather than for external validation, but hey, I’ll take what I can get.

I put “good” in quotes up there, because it is very loosely defined. On the theory that success breeds success, we’ve just been trying to give them chickpeas for ANYTHING. I really think this is the key. I mean, why not, right? It’s not costing you anything, and you do want to encourage ALL good behaviors, right? Said thank you without being prompted? Chickpea. Let your sister pick first when you really, really wanted to pick first? Chickpea. Cleaned your room, helped fold laundry, and went 5 minutes without a fight? Chickpea, chickpea and chickpea. It really does seem like there is a snowball effect: the more chickpeas they earn, the more they want to earn them. (Along those lines, henceforth ice cream will be obtained at only 50 chickpeas. Success breeds success, right?)

The thing is, it’s more than just motivating the kids. This chickpea thing actually puts me in a better mood. It makes me think more positively; I find myself searching for good things to give chickpeas for instead of focusing on the bad things. This just naturally puts me in a better mood, and I don’t think it’s a stretch to say it makes me a better parent.

When I was a kid, my mom had a complicated system of marbles. There was a list of tasks which could earn you marbles, and a list of rewards you could “buy” with marbles. 5 marbles to pick from the prize bucket, 10 marbles to skip out on your “job” (i.e. mom would wash the dishes that night), 20 to spend the night at a friend’s house, etc. I remember this very fondly. Perhaps as time goes on we can elaborate on our system a little.

For now, though, we’re keeping it simple. And yes, the kids have earned their first ice cream!

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Quote Monday survived birthday weekend

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Me: “…she had a lot of specific plans for her birthday. We have to keep reminding her it’s her birthday not her coronation.”
Aunt Rachael: “Ha! Every time you tell me a story about her, she reminds me more of myself.”

::Evie, pushing a friend in a stroller::
Evie, with an exasperated look: “Now I understand how hard it is to have kids!”

Truly, pushing them in the stroller is the hardest part.

Evie, addressing a room full of adults on their phones: “Hey adults! How about we talk to each other!”

And finally, Evie’s last word on her birthday weekend:

Me: “That was a pretty perfect birthday weekend.”
Evie, ambivalently: “Yeah.”
Me: “Was there something you would have changed?”
Evie: “I wish I could have been more bossy.”
Me, trying to keep a straight face: “More bossy?”
Evie: “Yup.”

Too bad she was constrained by things like the number of hours in a day.

Hooray for Birthdays!

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Today is Evie’s birthday, and, I don’t know, it just seems like a big one.

I think it’s because she’s getting ready to start 1st grade. That just seems so old. She really isn’t a baby anymore.

Sometimes it is very difficult to distinguish Evie from a teenager. However, she can be so helpful when she wants to be, and it’s so nice to be able to give her a bit of a longer leash. I can trust her to be out of my eyesight. She’s almost TOO helpful when it comes to her brother, jumping to do anything for him that he doesn’t want to do, to the point that he’s quite used to getting her to do his chores for him. (Don’t worry, they still fight plenty too!)

Evie has *big* plans for her birthday. The closer we got, the more elaborate they became. Every single detail of her day is planned out, from what we will eat, to what presents she’s going to receive from whom, to what we will do and when. It started relatively simple: “…and then I will come upstairs in my pajamas, and you guys will give me a present which will be an outfit for me to wear…”, but it’s gotten more elaborate from there. The last I heard was that she wanted me to wake her up by playing happy birthday on the accordion, after which she would take the keyboard into each guest’s bedroom to awaken them in turn by playing happy birthday.

We have to keep reminding her it’s going to be her birthday, not her coronation.

I have to admit that I’m so thrilled that Evie has turned into quite the bookworm. It just reminds me so much of myself when I was a kid, that I can’t help but feel a little…proud? Honored? Excited on her behalf for all of the wonderful books she’s yet to discover? I don’t know. But when she stays up reading late into the night, I can’t help but get a smile on my face.

Happy birthday sweetheart. I love you more than the whole, wide world.

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