Quote Monday enjoys the great outdoors

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Evie: “Grandpa, do you have a 6?”
Grandpa: “No, go fish.”
::Evie draws a different pair::
Evie: “Grandpa, do you have a 6?”
Grandpa: “No, go fish.”
::Evie draws a different pair::
Evie: “Grandpa, do you have a 6?”
Grandpa: “No, go fish!”
Evie, to herself: “He still doesn’t have any 6s!”

Evie: “Brr, my teeth are cheddering!”

::Sara and I were overheard talking about a police officer who got killed::
Evie: “He got shot?”
Sara: “Yes, honey.”
Evie: “But why did they do that??”
Sara: “The man was a really bad man.”
Evie, extremely worried: “But…is he going to eat him?”
::Sara and I cracking up::
Sara: “That’s right honey, you should only shoot something if you plan on eating it.”

Me: “Okay Evie, new rule! No more naked bike riding.” – Well, technically she was wearing slippers.

Imagination

/ Shane / 2 Comments

There is nothing Evie likes more than playing pretend.

The downside is I have to play Cinderella. The upside is, Sara (excuse me, the wicked stepmother) got Cinderella to clean up all the dried mud the stroller had left around the front door.

She was really down there on her hands and knees, really scrubbing too! This has lots of potential…

Pontiac, we the American people owe you an apology

/ Shane / 4 Comments

The other day, Sara and I were looking at the car in front of us. At first I didn’t really think anything about it. Then I noticed that it was a Pontiac Aztek.

This was the dreaded Aztek. One of the 50 worst cars of all time. Nay, one of the 50 worst INVENTIONS of all time! The Telegraph rated it as the #1 ugliest car of all time. And here I was looking right at it, and I didn’t even really notice.

I think this is due to the rise of the “crossover” vehicle, the cross between a car and an SUV. The interesting thing is that the Aztec was out from 2001 – 2005, and crossover vehicles got big in 2006. Coincidence? Or did the Aztek pave the way for the crossovers? Could it have been ahead of its time?

The thing is, I remember the Aztek as being SO UGLY. But it’s not anymore. Now when I look at it, I just see a regular old car. For example:

Pontiac Aztek

Ford Edge

Yeah, they’re different, but they’re not THAT different (I just pulled the Ford Edge out of a hat, I didn’t try to find one that was specifically similar to the Aztek. I’m sure I could have found a closer example if I would have spent time on it.) And crossovers account for about 22% of all vehicle sales (it was hard to find a good, solid number on that. The one I found was from GM).

So I think it’s time to admit we were all wrong, and Pontiac was right. I guess it really wasn’t THAT ugly. Sorry about making you the object of public ridicule and eventually putting you out of business. I guess it’s small consolation now, but you were right about crossovers after all.

-The American People

Accordion vs. Guitar

/ Shane / 4 Comments

I remember one time my friends Jeremy and Chris were arguing about which is harder to learn how to play, the piano or the guitar. The argument basically went like this:

  • The piano is easier, because someone with no knowledge whatsoever of the piano can sit down and pick out a tune. You can’t do that on guitar.
  • The guitar is easier, because after you learn a few basic chords, you can play the vast majority of most songs.

Now that I am making some meager attempt to learn the accordion, I have discovered that they were both right! They are two totally different instruments, that both have their own advantages as far as ease of learning go. Keep in mind that I am less than a beginner when it comes to the accordion, so take my opinions with a grain of salt!

Advantage Guitar

  • Usually with guitar, you only play the rhythm part. You might learn a couple of little tidbits of picking here or there, particularly intros to songs, but during the song you usually only play the part that is sort of background, and then sing the melody. On accordion, you have to play both, simultaneously.
  • For guitar, any song you can ever think of is available online, for free. I assumed it would be the same for the accordion. Not so! It is very, very difficult to find free music for songs. Usually you have to purchase a book containing sheet music. The other downside to this is that I usually check out 2 or 3 guitar versions of a song and pick and choose what I like about each (there are always many different ways to play any song). I don’t think I will be getting 2 or 3 versions of a song if I have to pay for each one.
  • Guitar has a special, condensed way of designating how to play, called tab (or tablature) which is very easy to learn. For the accordion, you more or less have to learn to read sheet music. I haven’t looked at sheet music since 4th grade band. I am literally starting at square 1.
  • On a guitar, you have two actions to perform: playing the chords with one hand, and strumming with the other hand. On the accordion, you also have to play with two hands, but in addition you need to work the bellows. 2 is easier than 3.

Advantage Accordion

  • Like my friend said, with the piano you can sit down and pick out a song. The first time I picked up the accordion, I could play *something* (even if it was Three Blind Mice). There’s no way you could sit down and figure out a tune on guitar.
  • With the accordion, there are no hurt fingers! To really practice the guitar, you have to expect painful finger tips until you build up your callouses. If you play infrequently, like I do, your callouses go away, and your playing time is usually limited by how much pain you can handle in your fingers. It seems kind of crazy when I say it like that, but it’s true.
  • On the accordion, there are no sour notes. Nobody will believe me on this, but it’s true! The only sounds you can make are coming through tuned reeds. When you hit the G-chord button, you get a G-chord. On the guitar, you get rattling strings, badly formed chords, misplaced fingers. All sorts of hazards.
  • Any piano training is useful. I didn’t happen to have any, but if you already know how to play the piano, you could probably just start playing an accordion. I suppose there are other stringed instruments that you could know which would translate over into guitar, but the knowledge of these instruments is a lot less common than knowledge of piano.
Overall, in my limited experience so far, I believe the accordion is easier to learn how to play than the guitar, even including the extra stuff I have to learn, like how to read sheet music. But maybe I’ll change my mind as time goes along.

The D-word

/ Shane / 4 Comments

Dessert. Evie is straight up addicted, and it is driving us crazy!

Evie cannot stop thinking about dessert. From the moment we sit down to dinner, she starts asking about dessert. Are we going to have it? What are we going to have? It makes no difference if we say yes or no, she still asks non-stop. Can we have cookies? If she has even a hint that there is dessert (but especially if someone tells her in advance that we will have dessert) then she absolutely refuses to eat. You can practically see dessert dancing in her eyes. She’s a dessert junkie.

We don’t make Evie clean her plate. We are trying very hard not to give her food hang-ups. I myself have a plate-cleaning obsession, which is my biggest issue when trying to lose weight; even if I am eating healthy, I still have a drive to clean up food, and I end up eating things I don’t need, or even want. I’m not saying that it is because I had to clean my plate when I’m little, but food issues are so tricky, and so many of us end up with them, so we want to at least try to do what we can.

So, we don’t want to force Evie to clean her plate, and we don’t want to make dessert too much of a fuss. We try treat dessert as just another phase of the meal; it’s not a reward for eating, it’s not anything special at all, it’s just part of the meal. However, this has become increasingly difficult.

With toddlers, everything is about power. Eating usually ends up being ground-zero for these struggles, because it is one of the very few things they have control over. And the only way to win a power struggle with a 3 year old is not to play.

We’ve tried a few things, more-or-less unsuccessfully. One thing is to just not have dessert at home, since she gets dessert pretty much everywhere else she goes. However, we still get the constant dessert questions. Also, sometimes she doesn’t eat anything just in case we change our minds and decide to have dessert after all. We’ve tried making her take take two bites of everything, even if she doesn’t have to clean her plate. This just ends up making dinner a huge whining fight about everything. The only thing we’ve done that has been a little successful is to convince her that applesauce is dessert. She doesn’t buy that one completely, but there have been many nights where she at least gets one healthy thing in.

So, we have two new strategies to try:

  1. From now on, fruit only for dessert – Like I said, the only way to win is not to play. So we aren’t playing anymore. Dessert is fruit only. (Grandparents, this means you too! You can still bring delicious desserts, but they will be kept hidden until after bedtime!) If she skips dinner for dessert, then she still eats healthy. If she doesn’t want fruit, then she knows there is no possibility for anything else. The one caveat to this is that I still think it should be somewhat interesting. We have to remember to put the same amount of effort into dessert that we do into the regular meal. I think the whole thing will fail if she catches on that we are just saying, “Oh, here’s a banana.” So we’re going to try to have things that are still fruit, but maybe we’ll reserve things for “dessert fruits”. For example, putting cinnamon on sliced up pears, or having dried dragonfruit.
  2. Evie’s try-it – Evie has a chart. Every time she tries something that she’s never tried before, she gets a sticker. When she gets 10 stickers, SHE gets to plan the meal. We’ve only been doing it for a week or two and it has been exceeding my wildest expectations. Not only is she trying all sorts of stuff, but she’s already passed the 10 sticker mark. And what did she plan for her big meal? One of the new things she tried to get a sticker!

We’re still feeling our way through yet another difficult parenting decision, so we might need to tweak things a little bit, but hopefully this will bring a little relief to dinner-time!