First Time Tenting

It's mid-term season. Time to panic and study a lot. Apparently, it's also a good time for everyone to get sick. I missed an important day of training at the zoo because I had some kind of 24 hour stomach bug. I also missed an important day of standing in the passport line at the post office because I chose, instead, to spend that day waiting at an urgent care clinic so I could get an antibiotic prescription.

I managed to make up the passport day, but I'm still not sure when I'll get to make up the zoo training. Oh well. It could have been worse. At least I was lucky enough to have Papa stay home so I could rest. He even called in for me. Sweet guy.

Now, I want to take a moment to revisit some of the good times.

About a month ago, before all of this mid-term/sick business started, we all went camping with some friends. We had been trying to figure out how to go since the Cub started sleeping through the night, but kept talking ourselves out of it. How do you take a little guy camping with you? Was he going to sleep in a pack-n-play? What if he wouldn't sleep? What would we feed him? How are we all going to fit in our tent with a pack-n-play anyway?

Now, he's been sleeping in a toddler bed for months and eating what we eat for well over a year, but we didn't like the odds: 2 adults vs 4 small children, so we continued our holding pattern. Then, we realized that we have some amazing friends who also love camping and being outdoors. Who'd have guessed that we'd be friends with people like us?

They picked the camp site, helped us out with some gear and brought camp food. In fact, they handled a lot of the logistics, and I don't think we could have done it without them. Their preparedness allowed us to spend our time watching the kids and enjoying the experience. It was the first time the kids had been camping at all, and the first time I had been camping since I was a kid.

There's a learning curve. Just like playing video games, using new lab equipment, tap dancing and baking, it's probably best to take your kids camping for the first time with people who have a lot of recent experience with kids and camping (if not combined, then separately). I'm thankful we had some help. Besides, these people are good company.

We had a lot of fun. The kids explored the wilderness with practically every moment they could. They also got a lot of entertainment out of a glow stick and some red flash lights once the sun went down. We built a fire, roasted marshmallows and made s'mores. We all had/got to pee in the woods.

That, by the way, is a unique adventure. I think every kid should get to do it. The Cub is potty trained, and will stand to pee in the grass, but he relied on his potty the whole time we were out. Papa and I had to find places to dump/bury the contents. The girls, however, all took care of business like the grown ups... with only one, unfortunate incident.

We slept like sardines in our "6 person" tent. The Cub only complained that he wanted his bed for several minutes before passing out and sleeping the whole night through in his mummy bag. The girls all claim that sharing a tent with him was the worst part of the weekend, but I can't really imagine how.

It was cold and frosty when we woke up. It was definitely nearing the end of the campable season for leisure campers like us. The mummy bags we borrowed from our friends were lifesavers in the cold night, but the morning view was beautiful. Probably my favorite part of camping is waking up with the sun and enjoying the scenic sunrise. I always feel more awake after camping than I do at home.

We played and explored for the day, headed back down the mountain a bit for lunch, and then went home. The kids were all a little disappointed to be going home. I'm sure they're excited to go camping again, but we won't be able to sleep in that tent again until the warm weather comes back.

Pura Vida: No Worries

Photo: http://www.visitcostarica.com/

Every new thing I do is the new most amazing thing I've ever done. In January, I'm going to Costa Rica! I found out on the the 3rd (a week ago as I'm writing this) that I my application was accepted for a class that involved a biology research trip to Costa Rica. I didn't have time to be excited until now (and I barely have time, now).

I got an acceptance email on Thursday. I had a weekend backpacking trip to prepare for because I was leaving Friday. Then, I was gone until Sunday afternoon. The backpacking trip was part of a class, so I was busy learning and working my butt off all weekend, but it was one of the best weekends I've had in a long time.

When I came home from the trip, I had some "being a good friend" to do. Someone I care a lot about was in need of love and support. I love to love the people I care about. Don't get me wrong, it's sad when they really need it because I hate to see them hurting. Still, it makes me feel good when one of my friends come to me when they need something.

Anyway, Monday, I had no classes because it was Labor Day, so we took the kids to the zoo. Yes, the zoo, after I had just hiked more than a dozen miles with a 35lb backpack. I said I would, so I did... after I dosed myself with ibuprofen.

Tuesday, I went back to the zoo for an adult volunteer meeting. Then, I took a class designed to teach me the basics of front gate work, so I can volunteer to be that awesome, bubbly person who greets you and takes your tickets. I had planned to go grocery shopping after that, but the class ran long and I didn't have time. So, I was home for a little while before I went back to campus to take the test for my Outdoor Ethics class.

Wednesday, I had classes from 8am to 4:45pm and an online math quiz to take when I got home.

So, today....

Today, I'm finally trying to take a moment to let this sink in.

Reasons this is amazing:

1. I've never been out of the country before. 
2. Dr. Carello is my hero, and she's one of the professors who runs this trip. 
3. This will look great when I'm looking for a job after I graduate.
4. It sounds like it's going to be incredibly fun, not just academic.
5. 110 species of bats are known to live in Costa Rica, including fruit bats and vampire bats.
6. 52 species of hummingbirds.
7. There are over 300 different endangered species in Costa Rica. 
8. Seven active volcanoes.
9. Supposedly, older natives are pretty short so furniture is about 6 inches shorter there... I'm gonna fit right in. 

I'M 

SO

EXCITED!

Nature Nerding

How do you relax, recharge, and reconnect? It's Labor Day. It seems like this is the weekend when just about everyone tries to do those things. For most holidays, we invite family into our homes for celebrations, or go to their homes instead. We decorate and plan and cook and it can be crazy stressful. Labor Day is just different for most people.

We often spend Labor Day outside: at a park, in an open space... probably near some water. A few years ago, before Cub was born, we spend Labor Day teaching the girls about directions and compass use in a big park. Last year, I took the kids to an open space near our neighborhood, we packed a lunch, ate under a huge tree, and played in a creek. This year, I went backpacking with a group of other college students.

I'm taking a class called Outdoor Ethics and Leadership. We learned a little about map and compass use, and a lot about leave no trace camping. The class consisted of three girls and three boys with a professor and a student aid. It was amazing.

Probably the most important skill I got to practice and reinforce within myself was patience.

I don't think I could have asked for a better group of peers, but there was one member of our team who was a little less helpful and sometimes even a bit frustrated (and frustrating). The rest of us proved (for ourselves and each other) over an over again that a certain level of maturity and patience was the best way to deal with a bad attitude. After all, we were all there to help each other.

From little things like being physically incapable of getting your water bottle back into its pocket because it's behind you to bigger things like wounding yourself on the trail, we all need help. We help each other pitch tents, set up tarps, cook food, find a place to potty in the dark, get our packs back on, filter our water, wash our hands (someone has to hold the bar of soap for you when you're getting water from a canvas bag hanging from a tree), and understand the ethics of leave no trace camping. We put up with each other's snoring, tossing and turning in the night, lagging behind on the trail, and speeding ahead.

We didn't really know each other before this weekend, but I feel like I know these people better now than I do some of my friends. I actually think I know myself better now. And, as a parent, and a friend, I can see that I have changed, at least temporarily.

Five-Year-Olds: The struggle is real

I took my kids on a short bike ride this morning. There's a park .06 miles from my house. Just over four blocks away. Google says it should take 12 minutes to walk there, 3 minutes to bike. I love my bike, especially now that I have that nifty child seat for my toddler who loves the wind in his curls, but is growing so fast that he's possibly already too big for his seat.

There is construction on the street we normally use to get to the park, so traffic is down to one, very narrow lane. The other road we could take is much busier, so it can be stressful to take the smaller kiddos that direction. I laid out the options and we voted. It was unanimous, we would take the less busy road, despite the construction. C even presented a compelling argument: Cub would love to see the construction vehicles. Love these kids.

I'll gloss over the process of getting everyone ready because I'm pretty sure anyone who has even been near a person trying to get multiple kids ready for anything is aware of how that goes. This was one of the easier rodeos, but not worth breaking down for you.

Lunch in backpacks, shoes on feet, diaper bag packed, flat tires pumped up (how is it that 1/6 to 1/3 of their bike tires seem to always be flat despite my persistent replacement of inner tubes?), we're ready to go.

But M got a new, bigger bike recently and she's still pretty uncomfortable. She just learned to ride a bike this summer, and then we replaced her bike because she learned on a bike that she had already out-grown. We bought that bike for her over a year ago, when she first wanted to learn.

I know that google's estimated 3 minutes is unrealistic for a group of children being lead by a mom with a toddler attached to her handlebars. I wasn't concerned about time. But it wound up taking us somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes to get to the park... longer than google says it would take us to walk. 

Thankfully, the construction workers were very patient and positive. They suggested we use the road instead of the sidewalk. Given the circumstance, that made sense to me because of the various barriers, signs, and cones that might be in the way on the sidewalk and because sharing such a small road and sidewalk space, side-by-side with vehicles would be more dangerous. They stopped the cars while we got through the two blocks of road work on our bikes.

M gave up and tossed her bike to the ground multiple times on the way to the park, refusing to try again until I talked her out of her rage. In fact, she tried to quit at the opening to the one-lane road created by the construction zone. I was incredibly embarrassed, but the men with the signs were encouraging. One told M, "don't get in a hurry. Just take your time." How sweet.

We had a nice enough time at the park. M practiced on her bike and was just fine on the paths and the tennis court. She was even excited to show me how good she's getting at turning. We had a picnic lunch and played on the equipment. Still, by the time we got home, I was really tired of M's rage quit attitude while biking. She's fine when she is totally in control and without boundaries, she's definitely capable enough to handle planned bike rides. She doesn't seem to think that.

Of course, when you're out on your bike, you can't just quit. You've got to get home somehow. So, instead of quitting once and having it over with, she quits, I talk her back onto her bike for a few minutes, and she quits again... etc.

*sigh* That's enough of that.

What?

Conflict Resolution. I think these might be buzz words for our entire adult lives. I haven't been an adult for that long, but it doesn't seem like conflict resolution is ever going to stop being a topic of conversation.

Major political decisions are made with conflict resolution in mind. Thus, the way an individual deals with conflict can decide his or her political leanings. Conflict resolution can decide who your friends are and aren't, what activities you participate in, how far you're able to push for personal success, and how happy your entire life is. In my mind, I can't imagine a more significant and consistently useful tool, and it is learned in early childhood. In fact, watch out, because your kids will learn it accidentally (and maybe incorrectly) if you aren't teaching it to them deliberately.

I put the tent up in the back yard for my kids to play. I've done this a few times before, and it's generally fine. For some reason, today, the twins kept running into disagreements. For example: C wanted the windows open so she could see the butterflies in the garden. S wanted them closed, so C pushed S away from the windows. S came stomping toward the house declaring that she hates the tent.

This was a perfect opportunity to first point out that she doesn't hate the tent, she's just angry, then turn her back around and insist that she talk to her sister about what just happened. "Stomping off doesn't solve anything." But it's like pulling teeth, trying to get eight-year-old sister to talk about their disagreements. I feel like this is an incarnation of snake charming. I have to perform some special song in just the right way to get their words to come out... one... sentence... at a time.

The conversation went something like this:

Me: Tell your sister what happened.
C: She knows what happened.
Me: That's not the point. You still need to tell her.
C: She was closing the window.
Me: Tell her, not me.
C: You were closing the window.
Me: Now, why was that a problem?
C: Because she knew I was trying to catch butterflies.
Me: Tell her, not me.

You can probably imagine how the rest of it went.

Then, half an hour later, we had another kerfuffle. After prying that whole previous conversation out of both of them, I immediately felt the heavy burden of parenting being thrust upon me with the offended whine as the screen door closed behind C.

I guess S did a cartwheel in the tent, so she kicked C in the stomach because there's not really enough space for that. Instead of telling her what happened, C stormed off. I'd have liked to have thrown my hands in the air, tilted my face toward the ceiling, and exclaimed (to no one in particular), "No one listens to me!" I thought those things. But I said this: "Did you tell her what happened?"

Of course, C replied, "She knows what happened."

At this point, S came in and I set up the conversation so that I was pretending to be C, so C could see why it is important to tell what happened, even if you think the other person knows.

Me: You did a cartwheel in the tent, right?
S: Yeah.
Me: You did a cartwheel in the tent and you kicked me in the stomach.
S: Oh.
Me: Did you know that?
S: I do now.
Me: You did a cartwheel in the tent, so you kicked me in the stomach. Now, I think we shouldn't do cartwheels in the tent anymore.
S: Okay.

Sure, I reiterated the facts more times that I probably needed to, but the basis for the conflict resolution method I'm trying to teach them is this: What? So What? Now What?

What started this? You did a cartwheel in the tent.
So what happened? So, you kicked me in the stomach.
Now what should we do? Now, I think we shouldn't do cartwheels in the tent anymore.

I explained those steps to them and that I know it's hard to have these conversations. However, I think this method is very helpful because you can make a very convincing argument, and usually come to a mutually agreed-upon solution.

What? So what? Now what? is a useful angle for dealing with a number of things. Here is a Forbes article that explains how to use this method to turn data into appropriate actions. These questions also make great tools for reflecting on your work. What did you do? So, what did you learn or accomplish? Now, what direction should you go from here? There are lots of ways to consider these three questions, it would be impractical to try to list them all, but I think if you use the questions and a guide for untangling messy conflict, you'll find that they help, and they're so easy to remember. I hope to help my kids memorize them so they have a safety net for dealing with difficult situations.

Don't Let Me Get Me

I bought some of those Brain Quest work books, on sale,  at the grocery store the other day. I made some copies of pages from the Language Arts section of the second grade book. Wednesday, we sat down with them and had a review session. We talked about parts of speech I know we had talked about before, but probably forgotten. We practiced writing and how to form a statement vs a question. We reviewed punctuation and capitalization (which, I'm not gonna lie, I've told them all about a dozen times before, but still watch them flagrantly disregard).

The biggest obstacle we are having in our late summer refresher so far is this: ourselves.

C blasted right through the worksheets without much trouble, and only a few reminders. (ex: Tiny A is not a lower case a.) But S, who was doing just as well as C, was crying like writing sentences was painful. She could identify the common nouns, proper nouns, and pronouns. She could tell me how to order the words in the word bank to form a statement or a question. She could tell me which pronoun works best in each scenario. She was just writing like her pencil was the blood quill Umbridge uses on Harry Potter (okay. It wasn't that bad.)

It is my job to be patient and non-judgmental. I have not always been good at this, but I know I've gotten better. I repeatedly encouraged her with observations like, "Look, that's a really good spacing between your words. You've already improved." and, "Yes! That is how you make a lower case A, and you figured it out on your own!" I deliberately didn't correct every mistake, thinking I would choose our battles sparingly and we would have plenty of opportunities to cover everything else some other time. Spare her some stress. Still, the process seemed to be killing her.

So, we went through the worksheets, skipping the writing, to see if she got the concepts. Then, I gave her a sheet of paper with the standard, capital and lower-case, alphabet on it and this sentence: "The five boxing wizards jump quickly."

That sentence lightened the mood. How silly. Wizards?! It's just a random pangram I picked in order to give her practice writing sentences while she also writes all of her letters (especially the lower-case ones, because she's pretty much got the capitals down). After I got an accidental laugh out of her, and stopped asking her to do what she perceived as real work, as opposed to just informal practicing, things calmed down a lot. The worksheets were too serious. No matter how I tried to remind her that this was just between me and her and it was just good practice, she was kicking herself for making mistakes.

I told her it reminded me of that P!nk song from 2001, Don't Let Me Get Me. "Don't let me get me. I'm my own worst enemy. It's bad when you annoy yourself. So irritating. Don't wanna be my friend no more. I wanna be somebody else."

Copying a sentence about wizards cheered her up and she was still able to show me that she has all the skills we were trying to review today. Unfortunately, this exercise reminded me of why public school scares me a bit. Would her teacher have had the time or understanding to defuse this situation and find a way for S to get around it? Maybe. Maybe not.

They Want To Try Public School

How does anyone who has kids full-time ever blog?! All you other home-school bloggers are obviously wizards.

The twins want to try public school. I rode my bike (because I guess I'm that kind of person) to the administrative office, where there was no bike rack (because I guess there aren't that many of us). I went in expecting to talk to someone about options for my girls because they've been home-schooled for their entire education so far, and one of them has special, medical considerations. Instead, I found a room that reminded me of the social security office. You come in with your enrollment paperwork and turn it in at the desk, where they review it and your proof documents and send you on your way.

When I tried to ask who I should talk to about my concerns, they suggested I just enroll my kids and then talk to someone. What? "I don't want to enroll them. I want to talk to someone about our situation and our options first." I was directed to another woman who gave me two phone numbers. One, which was supposed to be the direct line to the special education coordinator, turned out to be the home number of someone with an entirely different name. The other, the office number, did get me through to the coordinator, who said she isn't the person I need to talk to.

She said I need to talk to my local school about a 504 plan, after asking if we already had a 504 plan. I had never heard of a 504 plan, because I home-school my kids and we've never needed a legal document that "spells out the modifications and accommodations that will be needed" (special children) for my kids to be able to perform at the same level as their peers. I am their teacher, their nurse, their principal. My multiple personalities don't need to sit down and agree on terms.

So, I called my local school. I told them our situation. I explained what I had heard so far. At this point, I still didn't know what a 504 was, I just used the term in this context: "the special education lady said I need a 504." Again, I was asked if we already have a 504. Again, I reiterated that we are home-schooling, and, though I don't even know what a 504 is, it sounds like a public school paperwork thing... so... no. And, again, I heard that I need to just enroll my kids and then talk to someone about their needs. I said, "I think that seems a little excessive. I'm not prepared to enroll them without knowing what we're getting ourselves into." So, I was forwarded to the 504 coordinator. So, I got to introduce myself as a "concerned parent" yet again, and explain our home-schooling/medical needs situation... again.

Finally, someone told me what a friggin' 504 is... but only after she asked if we already have one. I finally just said, "I don't even know what it is. Like I said, we home-school, so we don't have any public school paperwork except what says we don't go to public school. I just heard I needed one." At this point, I'm thinking the more I have to deal with these people the less I trust them to educate my kids.

The 504 coordinator said we could set up a time for me to come in and talk to the nurse about what our 504 would look like. We could figure out, in advance, what would be in our plan, but we couldn't write it up until after the girls are enrolled. This makes a lot more sense to me. You can't write up a legal agreement for a kid who isn't even associated with the school yet.

However... it'll be a few days before I even hear back from the 504 coordinator to try to schedule a time because they share the nurse with three other schools and they don't know exactly when they'll see her again in order to find out when she's available. She doesn't have a phone? An email address? What if she's at another school and you have a kid with a broken limb or something? I understand the pressures that result in sharing a nurse among several, nearby schools... but if you're going that route, how are you not able to contact her when she's not in her office?

The more I think about it, the less I like this public school business.