Mute

I picked up James and Matthew from Mini Gymnastics Camp this morning and everything seemed normal until I asked James a question. He pointed to his tightly closed lips and shook his head.

*sigh*

Oh, it's going to be THAT kind of day.

Well, I didn't think he would be able to keep it up for long. Roll with the punches, Suz.

We drove to a friend's house to play and eat lunch. James' lips remained tightly closed all the way there. He gestured and used his voice, but that was it. I asked a ton of yes/no questions to see what kind of game he was playing...jinxed? don't understand English? under a sealed lips spell? ate glue? smacked his face and got hurt? The plus side was he didn't say anything to upset Matthew. It was a pretty pleasant ride.

We got to our friends' house and he still wouldn't speak. His gestures and grunting weren't very helpful beyond expressing that he wanted to go straight home. No playing. No lunch. No opening his mouth until he was at home. He sat on the couch in the living room while we ate in the kitchen. He alternately played with toys and begged to go home. Then, at some point, he indicated that there was something between his top lip and his gums. He was holding something up there.

What!?

Someone thought to get the boy a paper and pen. He agreed to draw what he was trying to communicate. He drew a flat top with two pointy legs.

Your tooth?!

Mm-hm.

You lost your tooth at camp and you're keeping it in your mouth until we get home?

Mm-hm.

Why?! Oh!! Your treasure chest! The dentist gave you a little tooth treasure chest last week!

Mm-hm.

Did you tell your camp leaders about the tooth?

*furrowed brow* Hm-mm.

Can I see it? I'm so excited for you! Your first lost tooth!

*shaking his head* Hm-mm *emphatic pointing at the car* Then he drew something that looked like a raindrop and colored it in. Blood.

"Did it bleed?"

Mm-hm.

"A lot?"

Mm-hm. *lots of head nodding*

Well, we immediately tried to find other cool containers for him to keep his tooth in. What if he swallowed the tooth before we got home?! He would not be convinced. Even when offered a big piece of chocolate and a shiny new container, he decided it was better to keep his tooth firmly lodged under his upper lip. We eventually finished our time with friends and then headed home.

Once home, James ran into the bathroom, plugged up the sink, and spit out the contents of his mouth: one little baby tooth, one giant blood clot, and oodles of drool.

Dude. If I had known he was carrying around a blood clot that big, I might have cut the play date a *little* shorter. Blech.

And here he is in all his toothless glory:

Well worth the wait (apparently) for that teeny orange treasure chest!

I can already see the grown up tooth coming in. He has another loose one right next to it. Won't be long for that one, I don't think.

At our house, kids get to decide if they want to play "Tooth Fairy." I can give them the money in a boring way, or sneak it under their pillow while they're sleeping. My kids have selected "tooth fairy" style almost every time. James included :)

Summer Magic

In sixth grade, my school district was considering a "year-round" or "balanced calendar" format where school breaks would happen in short bursts of 2-3 weeks every 6 weeks or so instead of one long summer. I can't remember how it all turned out, but I do remember one student asking my homeroom teacher his opinion on the matter and he wasn't terribly fond of the idea. He named a few pros and cons, then said, "But I've always believed in the "magic" of summer. There's something about it."

That made me wonder. What magic? Summer always made sense to me as a kid, but I couldn't think of one reason a teacher would find it any sort of advantage to kids.

In the moment, I thought he might mean the magic of kids physically growing up over 3 months. Then they could sit still better and learn more.

In college, I thought the magic must be the lazing about and getting bored bits that lead to untethered, spontaneous fun.

Today, though, with my kids the ages they are, this summer has felt a little magical. For the first time. Robert and Alice, in particular, have had the freedom/time/energy to explore their curiosity, test their independence, and try all sorts of new things in ways we didn't have the freedom/time/energy to try during the school year. That is what the "magic" of summer is for me this year.

Robert's dark cloud of grouchiness has lifted. Alice is bubbling over with ideas for stuff she wants to try. I love seeing them like this.

They excitedly pull me outside to show me three different kinds of mold that have grown on Matthew's soggy, abandoned graham crackers:

We theorize about why one cracker seems to have grown so many more colonies than the other.

They collect dozens of cabbage worms from the garden and make them their pets, releasing each one as it pupates and emerges as a fully-formed butterfly:

We get to observe and explore together. We make hypotheses and test them. It's the best thing ever! I love it. Love it, love it, love it.

I fall behind on my work...laundry, meals, landscaping, dishes...*sigh*...but I get to see how excited Robert is about measuring his baby trees' growth every week. He has an oak and a maple tree. The oak has not grown taller in a month, but the maple has shot up 2 whole inches!

Alice loves (I mean really, truly LOVES) the "home helper" work she has been doing this summer. She's completely embraced the nurturing/teacher thing. Kid Camp is totally her element.

I didn't get to see their energy and curiosity so much during the school year. I've missed it :)

Whoops and Forgiveness

This week at the farm, I didn't look closely enough at the instructions I was given:

"GH and HT. Wrapping tomatoes higher up their strings."

It took some time to figure out Greenhouse and High Tunnel. I saw "tomatoes" and figured I was being asked to do what I had been trained to do the last time I worked with tomatoes (field tomatoes). There were two volunteers that morning that I directed to prune and trellis the tomatoes as if they were field tomatoes.

Some time later, one of the more seasoned volunteers casually asked what we were up to. The way he asked about it gave me reason to pause. I checked my instructions again. There was no direction to prune. Just trellis. I, and the two volunteers I had personally instructed, had just taken 75 minutes to butcher hundreds of tomato plants. We had pruned off hundreds of dollars of potential revenue for the farm and their mission to feed needy families.

My stomach sank to my feet. I was disgusted with myself. So, so humbled. So, so angry for making such a stupid mistake. A costly mistake. A mistake I couldn't fix. Ever. Not even close.

I couldn't look my boss in the eye. I told him he should fire me, and I meant it. He was kind, though. He didn't get angry, even though he was upset. He said mistakes happen and if every farm hand got fired for making a mistake, there wouldn't be any farm hands left. Or farmers.

If he had docked my pay and condemned me to three weeks of compost duty, I would have gladly taken it. Instead, I got forgiveness. And that was a lot harder to take.

Talking to my friend at lunch today, this incident came up. We both would rather work and suffer to pay for a mistake than accept forgiveness outright. In our discussion, it became clear that repentance (be it earthly or eternal) requires 1) humility to admit a wrong and 2) humility to accept forgiveness when there is no possible way to repair the damage, and when you don't even want to forgive yourself. That second bit is especially tough for someone so fiercely independent and proud as me. Still working on that.

I am grateful for forgiveness, though. Grateful I do get to continue learning at the farm. I certainly won't make THAT specific mistake again, even if I make a hundred others :)

Orthodontist Referral

We had routine dental checkups for all four kids this morning. Alice got a bit of a surprise. No, not a cavity, but a referral to an orthodontist for her eye teeth. Apparently, her adult eye teeth are skewed (growing sideways) and there's no sign of the baby ones coming out on their own :( This was very, very hard news for her. Many, many tears. She's feeling a little better after some time to process it, but there are more unknowns than knowns in this process. She doesn't like to think about it...especially pain, shots, pain, surgery, and did I mention pain?

The dentist seems to think the baby teeth will need to be extracted. The adult ones might come in alright afterwards, but, well, who knows? Hopefully the orthodontist will shed some light on our options.

Jam Session

I loved walking in on Alice and her friend playing a duet just for fun.

Alice tells me it went a little like this:

"I want to play my violin."

"Okay. Hey, what key does the violin play in?"

"C"

"The flute plays in C, too!"

"Let's play something together."

After a few practice rounds they sounded pretty good, so I asked if I could get a movie of their duet. They agreed:



Please stay this way, Girlie. As long as possible.

To push or not to push?

I've finally come to realize that I will not see/learn/experience even 10% of what I want to from Sola Gratia Farm by working in the wee hours three times a week.

It's been a bit of a let down.

I'm therefore working vigorous exercise back into my summer schedule (that was the first thing to go in order to maximize Sola Gratia time). One afternoon and one evening a week. It takes away some time from the kids and Bobby, respectively, but I think it's worth it in this case.

I am also thinking about my time when school starts again. If I put Matthew into 5-day preschool, I could work 4-5 hours a day at Sola Gratia for the rest of the season (20-25 hours/week). The hourly wage would more than cover the cost of the additional 2 days per week.

BUT...

...if I cool my jets and wait a couple years, then Matthew will go into kindergarten and I can spend more time at Sola Gratia without sacrificing one-on-one time with Matthew. I will have the rest of my life to be alone during the school day (*mixed feelings*). Why rush Matthew out?


Some reasons to want to rush him out (5-day preschool):

--Don't know how long Hunter and John will continue to work there. I like them and their style. Don't know who or what will come after them. Hunter's last 3 farm positions lasted about 3 years each. This is Hunter's 4th season with Sola Gratia.

--The only thing keeping me from rushing the other kids out was a baby at home. Maybe. Most of the time, I think.

--What's it like with only one kid at home? I can't remember. And I've certainly never had a 3.5-year old around all by him/herself.


Some reasons to stay with 3-day preschool:

--One-on-one time with Matthew. That's my favorite kind of time with my kids.

--I really like Matthew. He's not terribly needy. Then again, he's always had siblings around to play with.

--I'll still have 3 mornings a week to do stuff on my own (12-15 hours/week at Sola Gratia).

--Maybe I'll enroll him in some sort of activity he enjoys...swimming lessons? gymnastics? morning soccer? I dunno. We'll have the flexibility to do that if it's just the two of us.

--Having a preschooler gives me an excuse to set up play dates and meet other moms. Who is his age in the ward? Hmmmmm. We could have some fun times.

--Working extra in the "shoulder" seasons won't change the fact that I won't be able to work full/part time in the summer until I'm willing to leave my kids home alone a lot of the summer. Not cool. Maybe in 10 years, I could work 6-11am 3 times a week. 10 years?! That seems forever away. But I know it's still small potatoes in the long run.

I feel pretty good about waiting, then. It's only a couple years. There's a lot of change coming in the next couple years...I don't want to be distracted.

Lake Michigan South Shore

We headed north this week to meet up with some friends at Lake Michigan. We rented a house right off the beach, just 20 minutes from the Indiana Dunes State Park and the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore (National Park). These friends are such good friends that our children call each other "cousins." I'm cool with that.

One big photo before we go! Four adults and six children. Who would have predicted this when we met 15 years ago?!

Hiking the 3-Dune Challenge. This was the first "peak". Can you see the three pairs of people down the dune?

Mostly happy crew near the second peak of the 3-Dune Challenge.

The stairs up the final dune. So many, so steep.

National Park Bison ;)

The kids buried Daniel while he sat in a beach chair.

Great sunset once the cloud cover cleared out :)

With this last piece, Bobby officially finished the puzzle, which means it's totally his and he won. I can't remember how doing a puzzle cooperatively became a competitive thing, but Bobby totally won.

We played at the beach, hiked sand dunes, ate really well (thanks, Rachel, for managing all the food!), went for long quiet walks, ate expensive ice cream, had s'mores and scary stories around a campfire, stayed up late, played ninjas, crafted sock puppets, played Catan and Forbidden Island, teased and joked all around, watched a movie, and had oodles of downtime just to be together and play. That many kids made for a pretty loud house most of the time, but there were places to go for quiet, too. Overall, a very satisfying experience :)

Decided

I pondered on my inner turmoil for some time before chatting with Bobby. It was a good thing I ran it by him when I did (i.e. after identifying my most pressing issues) because that's when I needed tipping point advice. Bobby is good for tipping point advice. I was sure I would agree to take on the additional responsibility, but the wage was still bothering me somehow. He suggested that I simply exchange the money for goods and services that I value more than the money...like buying some of our weekly produce from a local, organic farm.

*ding!*

Add that to the fact that my favorite local farm now allows you to view and order their produce online over the weekend (Saturday is my menu planning day) and pick it up nearby on Wednesday evening. I don't have to go to the Farmer's Market! No eye contact with strangers selling their wares, no braving the hip crowds with my gaggle of children begging for stuff, no temptation to buy items off my list, no purchases with "I'll think of something to do with this" pipe dreams. It's the best!

Decision made. So happy.

I still love spending time at Sola Gratia. This morning, I finished weeding half a row of baby spinach (it took me a total of 6 hours over 2 shifts) and got started on the next row. I listened to a couple episodes of my favorite podcast "The TED Radio Hour" from NPR. Today, I got to hear to an episode entitled, "The Meaning of Work." Loved it. Some of the very things that motivate people in their jobs  directly apply to my experience at SG: autonomy, learning something new, time to become expert at something, social capital, work that feels meaningful and appreciated. It applies to my work as a mom, too, mostly. The kids don't seem to get the "appreciated" bit, but I know they will eventually ;)

I also tasted field-fresh purslane for the first time. Tangy.

And I took all 4 kids grocery shopping. First time of the summer. Not my favorite.

And we met friends at the big pool and played for a couple hours. James learned that he's tall enough to play in the whirlpool feature on his own. He spun and spun and spun around in that thing most of the time. Matthew played chest-deep for a while, then came out to shallower water and proclaimed with surprise, "I feel a lot heavier in the air!"

Not a bad summer day, overall.

Farm Task

At the farm this morning, I was asked to prepare 17 flats with potting soil and plant them with brussels sprouts and fennel seeds. No biggie, right? I thought it would only take an hour or so. I was tempted to ask my boss what I could look forward to doing when I was done with this first task.

Well, it turns out, each flat of soil contained 128 cells for seeds. It took me all three hours of my shift to do the one thing asked of me. And more, actually. I was 15 minutes late getting home, which unfortunately messed up Bobby's work schedule, so I won't be doing that again :(

Anyway, trying to rush away, I was reporting to the manager about what I had done, feeling a little dumb that I only did the one thing, and she said, "You planted all of those?!"

*furrowed brow* "Yeah. Is that abnormal?"

"That's, uh, great!"

"Whew."

I like doing well.

I did the math when I got home: I had planted 768 brussels sprouts and 1408 fennel seeds. It didn't feel like that many. Time at the farm doesn't pass like normal time for me. Surprises me every shift.

Fingers crossed that I planted them well...erk...what if I planted over 2000 seeds too deep? I'll know by the end of next week, I guess ;)

This boy...love him to bits.

Chillin' with my best buddy and a delicious beverage in the heat.

Robert cooked a double-batch of crepes for the family this week. Very rewarding, though he was a little disappointed that there isn't a "Breakfast Cooking" belt loop for Cub Scouts.

Bobby's Sunday Summary (Actually Just Day Camp)

I know it has been a while, and I need to get back into doing this regularly, but last time to took a lot of rewards to build up a habit so don't hold your breath.

About a week ago one of the leaders that was going to take kids to day camp had to cancel for a very good reason.  I ended up having the day free enough that I could do it.  Robert had a blast, which made the sun, noise, humidity, bugs, and everything else almost worth it.  Sadly I could tell that Susan had had a long day too.  Well lets get on to the activities.

First up was instructions in the "Friendship Circle" we got the usual stuff, but then they divided up us and split the troop.  I was a bit confused by this, but it turned out to be really good.  I had been dreading a bit having just two leaders to take 9 boys around.  Mostly because the boys tend to feed off of each other and try to one up each other.  But by splitting them up I ended up with 4 of our boys and another leader with 2 boys joined.  The other group mostly stayed together and got another leader to help out too.

For my group we started with "Scout Crafts"

Which really means basket weaving.  One of the leaders from a group that went with us is an art teacher and he thought it was a bit beyond the skills of the younger cubs to do this, as he tries to do it with older kids and it takes 3 days not 45 mins to get a good result.  But S.  (Robert's Friend) really took to it, which inspired Robert to compete with him for who could make the best basket.  More on this later.

Next up was slingshots, bb-guns, and archery.  It was really well done for the safety instructions and helping the kids out on this.  But it also was taking a long time to get everyone through, so we did the slingshots first.

And BB-guns

But ran out of time for archery.  This ended up fine.  The pool had two pumps fail on it, so the last hour of the day which was supposed to be swimming we canceled, and we could come back at the end and make it up.

Robert and S ended up getting a little confused and were aiming for the same target.  One of them hit the cloths pin that was holding up the target and if fell down.  S claimed it, but then they had to both get shifted over to deal with a new target.

Next we crossed a small creek with a foot bridge over it to get to "Scout Skills"

Which let the boys set up an A-frame tent, tied several knots, and lit a fire.  Sorry this was the one place I didn't really get any pictures.

Next we had lunch.  I don't think the lunch was something I really want to spend a lot of energy remembering.  It wasn't bad, it just was...  Robert liked it because they had chips and cookies, and when everyone had gotten some they could have "seconds".  But we did get a few good pictures anyways.





Next came "Weird Science" with Alka-seltzer lava lamps;

Elephant Tooth Paste, but a toned down version so it didn't hit the ceiling; baking soda and vinegar rocket;

and mentos in coke.  The kids loved it all.

Next came "Sports", which really was an obstacle course where they asked you science questions as you went through it and made an impromptu dunk tank at the end where if you hit the target you could dump a bucket of water on one of the "leaders" heads.  By leaders they had a lot of regular scouts helping out so this leader looked only a few years older than the boys that were dunking him.

They also had peddle car go carts.

and bottle rockets.

If you couldn't tell Robert really liked the rockets.  While the other kids in the group spent nearly half an hour trying to soak the "leader" Robert shot off rockets as frequently as he could.

After that we went back to archery.  Then we went back to hang out with the rest of our group until 4 when many of their rides would arrive.  Robert and S ended up being able to finish their baskets and they turned out really good.  Some of the leaders were praising the boys and wanted to take their picture to possibly put on a calendar or post on Facebook.  The boys were so proud.

Although it was the leader that helped them to make the weave tight and finished tucking in the loose ends, but even so.

Inner Turmoil

I volunteer my time in several places, in several ways.

One day, I wasn't on my normal schedule, and I ended up volunteering alongside someone new. The inevitable and painful ritual of chit-chat began. He first asked if I was a volunteer or staff. It's a pretty harmless question. Other people had asked me exactly that before and I took it as a compliment from them. This time, though, I got a little defensive. Was it his facial expression? Or was it my own stinking insecurity?

He asked how long I had volunteered here.

"Two weeks. And you?"

"*chuckle**snort* Oh, I'm not a volunteer, I get paid to do this."

That was his response to me asking how long he had worked here.

And we stood right by each other doing the same work.

My sneaking defensiveness exploded into a seething, resentful sort of competition. The strength of the emotion surprised me a little. Until that moment, I didn't realize how much that particular job title mattered to me. And after some thought, I realized that I wanted to be treated and respected like staff, not a volunteer. Which meant I was suffering from the same us-them staff-volunteer hierarchy that I loathed in this guy. I hated him so much for that. And now I hated myself :(

It was a humbling experience. I have really, really enjoyed working with the staff and volunteers I've met at this place so far. A ton. And only this one guy has ever made me feel like something less. That said, I had another opportunity to work next to him this week. In the very moment I secretly promised myself that it was okay to hate someone forever as long as I was polite, I overheard him telling another staff member his backstory. It was not what I expected. Totally different. Now I understood why getting paid for this was so stinking important to him. He's actually a decent guy. I don't hate him anymore. Maybe his comment was kinda rude, but I judged him harshly out of my own insecurities and pride *sigh*

So, I know I have some issues to resolve in me. This much I know:

• I really, really, really want to get good at this thing :)
• I look up to the folks working in this thing and I want to earn their respect :)
• My schedule doesn't allow me to work at the times that I could be building those relationships and skills at the rate I want to build them :(
• I have committed myself to treating each person, whether staff or volunteer or board member, with the same friendly respect and camaraderie that I yearn for from them :)

This morning, at the end of my shift, I met with the director to chat about some number crunching I wanted to try out. She was happy to let me work on it. Then she said that the quality of my work and the amount of time I've committed to the job goes above and beyond their expectations for volunteers. She said they wanted to hire me as paid staff. Starting next week. And they would love for me to keep working my usual shift and to coordinate other volunteers who wanted to work at that time. 

I'm thrilled! Totally, totally excited that I proved myself worthy of the extra responsibility. I will absolutely coordinate whatever they need.

But I got a furrowed brow about the paycheck. I'm not convinced that it will help me enjoy the work any more. Or help me do my job any better. It may actually do the opposite. Y'know that thing about internal versus external motivation? If I'm doing something I love, and getting paid less than I feel my time is worth, then it kinda sucks the joy out of doing that thing.

And then there's that whole us-them staff-volunteer complex I'm working on.

I told the director about my paycheck hesitation. She seemed uncomfortable having me do staff work without a staff paycheck. I can see her point. Maybe I will accept the money and use it for something else important to me. Maybe I will donate it back to the organization. But wouldn't it be more useful to them before taxes and tithing get taken out on my end? Pbbbsh. Gotta think about this more.

I told the director I would get back to her after the weekend.

Superhero Kid Camp

Alice's first Kid Camp happened this week. She had 10 kids aged 3-6 years old over for three afternoons of superhero-themed fun. When I asked her about it for this blog post, Alice described it as, "Loud. Crazy."

But if you had seen her yesterday as the last of the campers headed home, she was glowing with delight. She really digs this age group. They listened to her pretty well. We had a whole series of superhero activities and games lined up, too, so there was never a dull moment. I particularly loved how Alice handled all the noisy work (gathering kids, giving directions, answering questions) while I got to run everything behind the scenes (clean up the last activity, set up for the next activity, prepare for the next day's activities, and defer all kid requests to Alice or Mamie). It took a lot of energy to run the camp, but I think it was worth it.

Alice got heaps of experience and burned off some of her extrovert leadership energy. She also got practice in budgeting and time management and thinking on her feet.

Robert could play or help or walk off to read a book as he liked. At one point, he got all the kids running after him with their pool noodle swords and beating him silly. He's young enough to find that fun and old enough not to take it too far. A quick video here:



James and Matthew were "in" the camp as enrolled participants. They were fully engaged with the other kids. James got a little clingy the last day, but not overly so. James, especially, helped a ton with the preparations. He loved cutting cardboard, spray painting shoe boxes, cutting out hero masks, making beanbags, choosing villains to print out, and testing out the activities before-hand. And he's capable of doing a lot of that on his own with supervision.

That said, I'm glad we don't have Kid Camp for another couple weeks :)

Strawberry Jam

Robert decided this year that he wanted to make strawberry freezer jam from all the berries he picked from our backyard. He gathered 6-7 cups over a week before I finally went out there and harvested everything that was ripe enough...another 6-7 cups. We made a pile of jam. Robert saved a jar just for himself. Alice plans to give a jar to Erin. James and Matthew were excellent berry taste-testers.

I took ZERO pictures. Ugh. Summer.